[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
[November 4, 1997]
[Pages 1496-1499]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Dinner for Senator John F. Kerry
November 4, 1997

    Thank you very much, John, Teresa, ladies and gentlemen. First of 
all, I would very much like to thank Senator Kerry for explaining the 
commitments he made in the last election, because we were all wondering 
why we were here tonight. [Laughter] And now we know we've come to help 
Reverend Kerry keep his vow of poverty. [Laughter]
    Let me say on a only slightly more serious note, I liked a lot of 
things about the campaign of 1996. I liked the fact that we were able to 
go out and finally say that there were two different visions of this 
country. The American people voted for one of them in 1994; they voted 
for another one in 1992. They fought us on everything we tried to do 
with the economy, with crime, with welfare, with the environment. The 
results were in, and the American people made a judgment.
    And John Kerry in many ways had to run the most difficult of all 
races for an incumbent, because he had to run against a sitting Governor 
who was immensely popular and was not sort of a cardboard cutout of the 
contract on America. And I was absolutely determined that if I could do 
anything to help him get reelected, I would do it. And I loved every 
minute of every day I ever spent in Massachusetts, and I was tickled 
that he won.
    And I might say, in the campaign that he had to put together to win, 
with the grassroots support and the intensity, it was--Massachusetts 
became the only State in the country where every single Republican 
running for Federal office was removed. And it was a great, great 
effort. And it is not because--contrary to what a lot people think--the 
State is a doctrinaire liberal State; that's just not true. Those of you 
who live there know that. [Laughter]
    So, I'm glad to be here. I'm also glad to be here because I do 
consider that John and Teresa are sort of soulmates of mine and 
Hillary's and our whole crew. They believe in the nobility of public 
service, and they believe in the imperatives of change.
    You know, when I came here back in '93, one of the reasons I ran for 
President is that I really thought our country was getting in deeper and 
deeper and deeper trouble and drifting more and dividing more because 
Washington continued to be dominated by the same old stale debates and 
name-calling and categorizing that didn't bear much relationship to the 
real world in which I lived.
    You know, on the budget, are you going to cut taxes and explode the 
deficit, or spend more money and just run it up a little less? On crime, 
were you tough or soft? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. I never 
met anybody who was for crime. I'm still looking for the first person to 
come and say, you know, ``My policy is, vote for me and I'll bring you 
more crime.'' [Laughter] We should either treat everyone on welfare as 
if they're pikers who are milking the system, or just give them more 
money for the same system--all these things that you heard in these 
debates and it was--it was so jangling. And I realize a lot of it--now I 
know a lot of it is the way it is presented to the people through the 
interlocutors. But what we tried to do was to change the way people 
thought.
    And I agree with John--a lot of--I'm not sure that it's all that 
clear to the American people that that's been done, but it is true. I 
said, you know, on the economy, why don't we cut

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the deficit and balance the budget and find a way to spend more money on 
education and research and technology? If we had the right priorities 
and right discipline, we could do that. And everybody said I was crazy, 
but 4 years later--we started with a $290 billion deficit, we have one 
that's $22 billion now, and we're spending more money on education. We 
just opened the doors of college to all Americans that are willing to 
work for it in this last balanced budget, thanks in no small measure to 
John Kerry's support and the fact that he stepped up to the plate in 
1993 and helped us when everybody in the other party said I was bringing 
a recession to America.
    On welfare, we said able-bodied people should be required to work, 
but don't take away the guarantee of health care and nutrition from 
those children, and give child care to the parents, because the most 
important job any of us ever have is taking care of our children.
    On education, we said we want to spend more money, but we want to 
raise standards, too. On crime, we said, yes, be tough, but how about 
being smart for a change. Put more police on the streets, and take the 
assault weapons off the street. If somebody's got a criminal or a mental 
health history, don't let them buy a gun. That may seem common sense to 
you, but the leaders of the other party and almost all their members 
opposed us on every single one of those things.
    And we were just determined to break new ground. John understood it 
from the beginning. He knew that we had to break new ground not only to 
make the Democratic Party a majority party but, far more important, to 
bring the country together and to move it into a new century. And I'm 
proud to be here for that reason.
    Today he was one of a majority of our caucus voting to invoke 
cloture on the fast-track legislation, which I think is a very good 
thing for America. It will give me a chance not only to break down more 
barriers to our goods and services but also will give me more leverage 
to do what those who oppose us in our party say they want, which is to 
lift the labor and environmental standards that other countries observe, 
as well. So I feel comfortable here because I think we're engaged in an 
important enterprise.
    I also want to say a special word about the campaign finance reform 
issue because John's worked very hard on that. He didn't take any PAC 
money running for Senator. I didn't take any PAC money when I ran for 
President. And I started off being the next-to-least well-known person 
in the field in New Hampshire.
    Now, some say, well, is there any difference between the two parties 
because the Democrats raised so-called soft money? All I know is what 
John just said: All of our Senators, 100 percent of them, said, ``Bring 
the bill up; we'll vote for it.''
    But I think it's also important that you understand what's driving 
campaign finance reform. I do not believe that campaigns are too costly 
and require contributions that are too large because people like you are 
running up to us throwing big checks at us to try to get major 
influence. I think what happens is people like you worry that people 
like us are going to get beat if we don't have enough money to buy 
increasingly expensive advertising. In other words, this is not a 
supply-driven problem. This is a demand-driven problem. And some of the 
people that excoriate us the most over this campaign finance problem--I 
haven't noticed any of them calling me and offering to give all the 
people who observe stricter limits free or reduced air time. That is the 
problem. So we have to find a way solve it. It's more likely that we'll 
solve it because John Kerry is in the Senate. And it's important because 
the faith of ordinary citizens need to be restored in the day-to-day 
processes of our institutions--all of them.
    You know, when we denigrate other people in terms of their motives 
and what they're doing to institutions, when we attack people 
personally, when we pretend that people are somehow ethically inferior 
to ourselves--when we do that, any of us, whether we're in public life 
or the press or whatever--we may gain a short-term advantage, but in the 
end what we do is we increase public disillusionment with all 
institutions. And that's what all the surveys show is going on.
    I had a fascinating conversation with Senator Dole not long after 
the election. He came by the White House and we sat and talked. And I 
said, ``You know, Bob, you've been here in this town a lot longer than I 
have.'' He said, ``Yeah, that's what I tried to convince the voters 
of.'' [Laughter] And we were having a great talk. And I said, ``Now, 
tell me the truth. Is politics in Washington more honest or less honest 
today than it was 30 years ago?'' He said,

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``My Lord, it's not even close.'' He said, ``It's far more honest today 
than it's ever been. There's far less corruption, far less 
impropriety.'' He said, ``It's by far the best it's ever been.''
    Why don't the American people think that? And insofar as any of us 
ever contribute to their not thinking that, we ought to reconsider our 
positions. We need to fix the campaign finance system because it's over 
20 years old; it's no longer consistent with the present realities of 
campaigning. But many of the very people who say, ``All those 
politicians, they're all raising too much money,'' a lot of those people 
vote for the people who have the most effective negative television ads 
on, or just the most television ads on.
    So we have to say this is an American responsibility. We have to 
work through it. And we need to find a commonsense solution to this, not 
a name-calling solution. But we'll do it. We always figure out how to do 
these things. It's more likely that we'll do it because John Kerry was 
reelected to the Senate.
    Let me just make one general point. If you look at the fight we had 
over the Contract With America, if you look at what we tried to do with 
the economy, with the environment, with crime, with welfare, all these 
issues, if you look at the arguments we have over affirmative action or 
over whether we should open positions of public service to gays and 
lesbians, or any of these issues, you see a contrasting view of how we 
should define our American community. And in a funny way, that may be 
the most important issue of all.
    My three little watch words are: opportunity, responsibility, 
community. Everybody ought to have an opportunity, everybody ought to be 
responsible, and everybody who is responsible should be part of our 
community. And if we can reach across all the lines that divide us to 
make one America, then everything else will probably come out all right. 
That's what I believe.
    But we are having a debate today that you could see in the '92 
election, in the '94 election, in the '96 election, that I predict will 
play itself out for another decade or so, about how we're going to 
define America in the 21st century: What will it mean to be an American? 
How will we define our country? And it's a debate we periodically have.
    The first time we had it, ironically, it was the predecessors of the 
Republican Party, the Federalists, who gave the right answer, when John 
Marshall became the Chief Justice of the United States and basically 
said there are times when there must be one Nation, one law guaranteeing 
the constitutional rights of the American people, the minority as well 
as the majority.
    Eighteen sixty, Abraham Lincoln redefined the Nation, said, ``If I 
have to give my life, I'll do that to keep the country together and to 
recognize the rights of people previously oppressed.''
    In the Progressive Era, Theodore Roosevelt, coming out against 
abuses of child labor, the preservation of our natural resources, using 
the power of the Nation to bring us together and to look to the future 
and to put our children first, redefined again the importance of our 
conscious working together as a Nation, and the Government as an 
instrument of citizens coming together.
    Then a funny thing happened. The mantle of carrying the Nation on 
shifted from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, and Woodrow 
Wilson took it up. And then it was reinvigorated under Franklin 
Roosevelt in the Depression and World War II and then under Harry 
Truman. And then after the war, there were, frankly, progressives in 
both parties who shared a consensus that maybe the cold war helped them 
to hold together. After all, it was a Democratic Congress and President 
Nixon that produced the EPA and the first Clean Air Act.
    Then in the last two decades, you have seen again a splitting apart 
of the consensus of what it means to be an American. We, as Democrats, 
believe that individual rights are important. We believe our individual 
values are important. We believe what happens to all children affects 
our children. We believe we don't have a child to waste. We're proud of 
our heritage, but we think we owe everybody else's as much respect. And 
we believe that our Government should not be a pain in the neck, it 
shouldn't be any bigger than necessary, but it ought to be strong enough 
to give people the tools to make the most of their own lives and to 
build strong families and strong communities.
    Increasingly, the other party has said that Government is the 
problem, and that we're bound together as a community if we say we 
believe in the same things, but we really don't have any enforceable 
obligations to one another. I disagree.

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    But if you look at the real debates we've had--on welfare reform, I 
had no problem with requiring everybody on welfare to go to work. I had 
a big problem with taking away the guarantee of health care and 
nutrition from their kids, for example. On crime, I had no problem with 
making people who did terrible things serve longer sentences. But I knew 
we'd lower crime more if we put 100,000 cops on the street and took the 
assault weapons off the street. And it turned out that was right. But 
those were joint decisions we made together for the common benefit of 
everyone.
    I want you to think about the political debates that we see just in 
the next 2 years, and you remember what I said tonight. And you will see 
people redefining their own allegiances based on new issues for a new 
time and what they think binds us together as a country.
    I'm convinced that we were able to win the White House because more 
and more people who thought they were Republican or independent, who 
lived in suburbs, began to feel common cause with their neighbors and be 
willing to make common policies that affected us all in ways that they 
didn't before--on the budget, on crime, on welfare, on education, you 
name it, across the board.
    But I think that's what makes our party special. It's not liberal/
conservative. It's whether you believe that you are a piece of the main 
and a part of the whole, whether you really believe that your family 
will only be as good as it can be if everybody else's family has a 
chance, too. That is the single driving passion of our party today, and 
I think John Kerry embodies it. And I'm proud to be with him tonight.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:23 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to Senator Kerry's wife, Teresa; and William F. 
Weld, former Massachusetts Governor.