    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [March 10, 1998]
    [Pages 351-354]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Business Council Dinner in Cincinnati, Ohio
    March 10, 1998

         The President. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you can all tell
    I'm a little hoarse tonight, and I don't know if I can shout over the
    machine back there, but I'll do my best.

    [At this point, dinner host Stanley M. Chesley asked that a heater be turned off.]

        The President. Well, if you all start to turn blue--[laughter]--I
    promise to end the talk. I don't know if you can turn it off or not. But
    let me say first to Stan, thank you for
    having me here; thank you for having all of us here in your beautiful
    home, in this modest little tent. [Laughter] You know, it reminds me of
    the ones I used to camp out in when I was a Scout--[laughter]--pitch a
    little tent; get in your sleeping bag.
        Thank you, Dick Lawrence, and all
    the other cohosts. Thank you, Governor Romer, for
    your passion and your commitment and your wonderful remarks. I think Len
    Barrack is here, too, our new national
    finance chair of the Democratic Party--thank you. I want to thank Mary
    Boyle and Lee Fisher and
    Roxanne Qualls for running for public office.
    It's not so easy to do these days. They tell me I'm sort of impervious
    now. [Laughter] I'd also like to acknowledge a candidate for the
    Congress just across the State border in Kentucky, Ken Lucus, who is here. Ken, stand up. [Applause] Thank you for
    running. These are two of the people that, when they win, will give us a
    net gain of four seats, because we expect to change from Republican to
    Democrat in their seats. And we thank them. I want to thank David
    Leland for leading the Ohio Democratic
    Party.
        And again, let me say to all of you, your presence here, your
    support, means a lot to me. The people of Ohio have been very good to Al
    Gore and Bill Clinton. We won here in 1992, and when I won the primary,
    it put me over the top. At the Democratic Convention in New York, the
    votes of Ohio put me over the top. On election night in November in '92,
    when they announced Ohio, they said Governor Clinton had enough
    electoral votes to be President. Then in 1996, our victory margin here
    was more than 4 times what it had been in 1992. So for all of you who
    are from Ohio, I thank you so very much.
        For those of you who come from other States, I thank you for the
    effort you made to come here. We've got a lot of people here from
    Louisiana, my neighboring State. They gave me a huge victory this last
    time, and I'm very grateful to them for that, and elected another
    Democratic Senator.

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        I want to give a little bit of a different talk tonight to kind of
    play off something Governor Romer said. I presume that most of you heard
    my State of the Union Address, so just imagine that I just said it to
    you again--that's what I want to do--all the details. What I want you to
    think about is the big picture for our country and then where you fit in
    and why you're here.
        When I became President it was apparent to me that we were going
    through a period of not only dramatic change in how we work and live and
    relate to each other and the rest of the world but that it was change
    that was so different it was almost impossible to comprehend the full
    dimensions of it, and that Washington was essentially paralyzed by an
    antiquated view of Government that only worked for people that were
    playing power games in Washington. And in all candor, those who were
    telling us about it I think kind of liked the way it worked, because it
    was easy to explain: Democrats never met a program they didn't like, and
    Republicans thought Government was the source of all evil. And so they
    fought.
        Now, for those of us who live out here in the real world, like Mayor
    Qualls, for example, I didn't know many Republicans who felt that way,
    and I didn't know any Democrats who felt that way, and I didn't know any
    real people who thought you could run a country that way. And if we
    tried to run any organization, from our families to our businesses to
    our local governments, by spending all of our time maneuvering for power
    and personal destruction of our opponent and wondering about how we
    would look in the paper tomorrow morning instead of what we would do for
    our children and grandchildren, our families, our communities, and our
    businesses would all break down. And so I basically asked the people to
    give me a chance to serve in '92 to try to build a country for the 21st
    century, to try to imagine what we wanted America to look like, take
    account of all these changes, and then figure out what the role of the
    Government ought to be and what kind of Government it would take to
    achieve that mission. That is simply all we've tried to do. And I tried
    to get good people together, and I suggested we show up for work every
    day and good things would happen. And that's what has happened.
        Now you don't hear people engaging in this old ``Government is the
    salvation; Government is the enemy'' argument. We know that the role of
    Government is to give people the tools they need to make the most of
    their own lives, to create the conditions in which they can succeed, to
    provide for the security of our people, and to do what we can to be a
    catalyst for ideas in the future.
        Your Government now is the smallest it's been since John Kennedy,
    but it is a far more progressive Government than it was 6 years ago. And
    I'm proud of what's been done. I'm glad that we are going to have the
    first balanced budget in 30 years, that we have the lowest unemployment
    rate in 24 years, and the lowest inflation rate in 30 years, and the
    highest homeownership in history, the lowest welfare rolls in 27 years,
    and the lowest crime rate in 24 years, and 15 million more Americans
    have jobs. I am very proud of all that. But what I want to say to you is
    the American people did that in no small measure because we did things
    in Washington that made sense and sort of acted as a catalyst to make it
    possible.
        What we need to do now is to take these good times and to imagine
    the future we want for our children and then go build it and recognize
    that we're living in a time where knowledge is doubling every 5 years--
    literally, every 5 years. Medical discoveries at NIH that used to take 9
    years, now because of the human genome project can be done in a matter
    of 9 days. Just in the health field alone, when we finish mapping the
    human gene and complete the kinds of things that are going on now with
    nerve transfers, it is conceivable that we will be able to solve health
    care problems that were once thought completely fatal. It is
    conceivable, if the rest of us will do our part, that we'll be able to
    get genetic maps that will enable us, if we have the discipline, to
    prevent all kinds of diseases and problems and the conditions we used to
    worry about. It is conceivable that people who have had their spinal
    cords severed will walk again. It has already happened in laboratory
    animals with their spinal cord severed, that had movement in their lower
    limbs.
        If you look at the environment, where I'm very worried about the
    problems of global warming, we now know that we have the technology to
    reduce pollution and grow the economy to a greater degree than ever
    before. Our ability to do that depends, in my view, on two things. We've
    got to be committed to modernizing relentlessly the Government to do
    what works; and second, and far more important,

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    we've got to be committed to being faithful to the things that got us
    started as a country in the first place.
        You want to make peace in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland,
    fight the weapons of mass destruction, stand up against chemical and
    biological weapons, create an environment of global prosperity? You want
    to figure out how to make one America out of an ever more diverse
    country? A school district across the river from me in Virginia has
    people, kids from 180 different countries, speaking 100 different
    languages in one school district. You want to figure out how to give us
    the best system of education in the world? Everybody knows we've got the
    best system of college in the world; now we've opened the doors to
    everybody. Nobody thinks we've got the best system of elementary and
    secondary education in the world. You name an American problem; I argue
    you not only have to be modern in your thinking and willing to change,
    you've got to be faithful to how we got started. Roy talked about it in
    referencing Selma.
        Why did you come here tonight? Because we've got a good economy and
    I have high numbers, or because you believe in the principles that got
    us here? I hope the answer is the latter. I hope the answer is the
    latter.
        We've got a huge agenda. I mean, we're trying to finally pass
    comprehensive legislation to resolve the tobacco issue. We're trying to
    pass a Patients' Bill of Rights. We're trying to pass a bill that will
    lower class sizes in the first 3 grades of elementary school to 18 and
    help 5,000 schools be built or renovated. We've got a thousand things to
    do.
        Let me just talk to you about three big things. How did this country
    get started? All these people came over here because they hated
    arbitrary power--unlimited, arbitrary power. And they said, ``We believe
    freedom works better.'' Freedom to do two things: freedom to pursue
    happiness and freedom to get together to form a more perfect Union--
    freedom, opportunity, union. If you look at the whole history of
    America, look at Abraham Lincoln, what was he about? Freedom, union, and
    oh, by the way, he signed the Morrill Land Grant Act, which is the
    greatest thing that ever happened to higher education, built all the
    State universities in America.
        Theodore Roosevelt--from Abraham Lincoln through Theodore Roosevelt,
    I hate to admit it, the Republican Party represented, more than we did,
    opportunity, freedom, and union. But from Woodrow Wilson through every
    single Democratic President down to the present day, the Democratic
    Party may not have been right on every issue, but we have been on the
    right side of history. It has been our party that has consistently stood
    for widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of
    America's freedom, and bringing this country together and the world
    together around a union of civilized people, based on civilized
    principles.
        That's why I'm here. That's why I hope you're here. That is what is
    going to take us into the 21st century, and that is why these people
    should be elected to the offices they seek in Ohio and Kentucky. That's
    why I hope you're here tonight.
        You ought to try this every now and then--you made a significant
    investment to come here tonight, and I'm going to hush now before you
    get pneumonia and sound worse than I do. [Laughter] But every now and
    then, you ought to do what I do every day; every day since I have been
    your President I have asked myself, what do I want my country to look
    like when we start the new millennium? What do I want my country to be
    like when my daughter has children her age? And for the last several
    months, as I have read more and more of the history of our country in
    periods where Americans don't know much about it, and before the Civil
    War and after the Civil War, for example, I have asked myself, why,
    really, am I a Democrat? Why do I belong to this party? Why am I proud
    to be here? It's more than my granddaddy remembering that Franklin
    Roosevelt cared about him. It's because of what we stand for. And what
    we stand for is what got us started, what has carried us through, and
    what will make the next century another American Century.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:24 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to attorney and dinner cohost Richard D. Lawrence;
    Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado, general chair, and Leonard Barrack, national
    finance chair, Democratic National Committee; Mary Boyle, Ohio candidate
    for U.S. Senate; Lee Fisher, Ohio gubernatorial candidate; Mayor Roxanne
    Qualls of Cincinnati, candidate for Ohio's First Congressional District;
    Ken Lucus, candidate for Kentucky's

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    Fourth Congressional District; and David J. Leland, chairman, Ohio
    Democratic Party.