    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [June 23, 1998]
    [Pages 1030-1033]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Dinner for Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Garry Mauro
    June 23, 1998

        Thank you. Thank you, Garry, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen,
    for the warm welcome, and even more, thank you for being here for Garry
    Mauro.
        I don't know what to make of that eulogy you gave me at the end of
    those remarks. [Laughter] It reminds me, the other day I was in
    Cleveland--this is a true story--I was in Cleveland the other day, and I
    went with Congressman Lou Stokes who is
    retiring after a long and distinguished, wonderful career in Congress on
    a motorcade through his Congressional District in inner city Cleveland,
    and we went by all these little schools, and then finally we stopped at
    a grade school.
        And I was there because a wonderful community program called City
    Year which may have a chapter in Texas, I think they do, and it has a
    couple thousand kids around the country, they're all part of our
    AmeriCorp program, our national service program; they were having their
    national convention in Cleveland.
        But I went to this elementary school where some of our young
    volunteers are working with the kids in the inner city. So I gave them a
    little talk, you know, and then I went down the line, and I was shaking
    hands with all the teachers and the parents and as many children as I
    could possibly shake hands with. And I got to the very end of the line,
    and there was a little kid standing there that barely came above my
    knees. He was probably 6, I guess he could have been 7, but I don't
    think so. He looked up at me, and normally when I see kids like that
    they say, ``I've seen you on television,'' and I say ``Thank goodness.''
    [Laughter] This kid said, ``Are you the real President?'' I said, ``Yes,
    I am.'' He said, ``And you're not dead yet?'' [Laughter]
        Then I realized that he thought Presidents were--you know, he had
    studied George Washington and Abraham Lincoln--he thought a part of the
    job description was you couldn't be living anymore. [Laughter] And some
    days I wonder whether he's right or not. [Laughter] But at least I died
    with honors from Garry's introduction.
        Let me say to all of you I think you're doing a good thing here. And
    I think it's even more important that you're doing it because you know
    you have a long way to go. But I would like to tell you a story or two.
    In 1991 when I started running for President, only my wife and my mother
    thought I could win. My daughter thought I had a chance. [Laughter]
        When I entered the New Hampshire primary I was fifth among the
    Democrats starting out, and the incumbent President was at a 75 percent
    approval rating. When I won the nomination of my party on June 2, 1992,
    with the victories in California, New Jersey, and Ohio, I was running
    third in the public opinion polls; 6 weeks later I was first in the
    public opinion polls--6 weeks later.
        Go back a few years; I met Garry Mauro over 25 years ago when we
    worked in 1972 together. Two years later I ran for Congress. I ran
    against a Member of Congress who had 99 percent name recognition and an
    85 percent approval rating in 1974. And I was zero, zero. On Labor Day I
    was behind 59 to 23, on Labor Day, not June the 28th, on September the
    whatever it was that year. And I got 48\1/2\ percent of the vote. If I
    had had another week to campaign, I could have won. I say that to make

    [[Page 1031]]

    this point: When people are satisfied with good conditions, and they
    like their incumbent officeholders personally, they tend always to say
    they are for them and so would you if you didn't know him or you didn't
    happen to be in the other party.
        In order to make an election in this kind of an environment it is
    necessary that people believe there is a reason to think about the
    election and that there is a choice to be made and that the choice, if
    it is made, would be good for them. And I think you've got what you need
    here. You've got a good candidate who is a wonderful human being and an
    exemplary public servant with a record that anyone could be proud of.
    You've got the right issues--and I want to say a little more about that.
    And you've got, if you all do your part, an adequate support base so
    that people in your vast, huge State will be aware that you have a good
    candidate, and the right issues, and there is a reason to make a choice.
        You also have, in my view, the best of all possible worlds because
    Garry Mauro can just get out there and run as himself and run a
    completely positive campaign and only talk about those areas where there
    is an honest disagreement.
        Now, then it determines--it really turns on the same thing that
    really will shape the elections in November here for Congress or that
    will shape the attitudes. How do people respond to good times? I'm very
    grateful--I'll just amplify what Garry said--I am very, very grateful
    that today in our country we have the lowest crime rate in 25 years, and
    the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years, 16.1 million new jobs, the
    lowest welfare rolls in 29 years, the first balanced budget and the
    surplus we believe this year in 29 years, the lowest inflation in 32
    years, the smallest Federal Government in 35 years, and the highest
    homeownership in the history of the country. I'm grateful for that. And
    I think that--[applause]----
        I also know that the American people deserve primary credit for
    that. But the decisions made by our administration, more than half of
    which were made under withering partisan criticism from the leadership
    of the other party, had a lot to do with creating the framework in which
    it became possible for the American people to do these great things.
    Now, having said that, the question is: When times get good, what do you
    do? A lot of people say, ``Well, I've been working hard for years, and
    I'm tired of thinking about insecurity and difficult things, and you
    know, I would like to take it easy, and I don't want too much to
    change.''
        Well, there are two problems with that. One is nothing ever stays
    the same anyway, ever, not in an individual life, not in the family's
    life, not in a business, not in a State's life, not in a nation's life.
    The second is all you have to do is pick up the paper every day to know
    that things are changing quite a lot around the world, and there are a
    lot of outcomes that aren't clear.
        I'm going to China tomorrow, as all of you know, against a backdrop
    of the nuclear tests in India and Pakistan which occurred after years
    and years and years in which--just since I've been President we had
    gotten an indefinite extension of the nonproliferation treaty, we had
    gotten all these countries to agree to control their missile technology,
    we passed the Chemical Weapons Convention, we passed the Comprehensive
    Test Ban Treaty. We had 140 something countries around the world sign
    it. We and the Russians began to lower our nuclear arsenals dramatically
    and destroy nuclear weapons, and it seemed that we were on a constant
    and stable path. Now we have a new challenge.
        I'm going to China at a time when we are appreciative of the
    discipline with which the Chinese have managed their economy and the
    fact that they haven't yet felt the need to devalue their currency. Why?
    Because of the economic difficulties in Indonesia, the challenges that
    Japan faces and any number of other Asian countries. It's a big deal
    because a huge percentage of our economic growth has come from foreign
    trade, about a third of it, no small measure, from Asia.
        So I tell you this because it's well to be reminded that whether
    you're the President of the United States, the Governor of Texas, or the
    mayor of Seattle, Washington, you know when times like this come along,
    if you relax in an atmosphere of change, you'll spend the rest of your
    life, if you've got a conscience and a brain, kicking yourself in the
    behind because you didn't take advantage of them to do every single
    thing you could to meet the challenges of the day and prepare for
    tomorrow. That is the case that has to be made not just in Texas but in
    every community in this country.
        And if you look at what Garry talked about--let's just take--what
    are these big challenges?

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    Some of them have to be dealt with by us here in Washington. For
    example, we've got to reform Social Security and Medicare so that when
    the baby boomers retire, we've still got a social safety net, but it
    doesn't bankrupt our children and their ability to raise our
    grandchildren. We owe that to the next generation. That has to be done
    in Washington.
        There are things that we need to do in other areas in improving the
    quality and access to healthcare, in improving public education and
    access to college--and we've done a great deal there--in proving we can
    preserve the environment while we grow the economy--if you just take
    those three things--in extending economic opportunity to people who
    still don't have it even though we've got a low unemployment rate.
        Now I will mention those four things. In all those areas we have a
    role to play. But in none of those areas can any of those endeavors be
    successful unless the States are doing the right thing. Yes, we want to
    move more people from welfare to work. The States are basically in
    control of that program now.
        So it matters more who the Governor is now in terms of whether
    initiatives are taken or not than ever before, at least in my lifetime.
    And because I used to be a Governor and I believe in the system, I've
    off-loaded a lot of responsibilities to the States. But in doing that,
    you know, you run the risk--you get the benefit of having people closer
    to the grassroots issues make the decisions--you run the risk that if
    you've got somebody who is relaxing when they ought to be moving that
    the consequences won't be so good.
        Now you just take the issues Garry reeled off here. I'm trying to
    get the Congress to approve a budget that will help to build or repair
    5,000 schools, that will help 100,000 more teachers to be hired to lower
    class sizes in the early grades, that will connect the classrooms and
    the libraries of this country to the Internet, that will help to improve
    teacher training and accountability and train more teachers to be master
    teachers, nationally certified master teachers to help all the others in
    their schools. But none of this will amount to much unless there is a
    complementary commitment at the State level where the primary
    constitutional responsibility for public education is lodged to do those
    things.
        And I don't think there is a person in this room that believes--I
    don't care how big Texas gets; I don't care how may billionaires you
    have--I don't think any of you believe that your State will ever reach
    its full potential until you can say, ``We're proud of our university
    system, and now everybody who deserves it can afford to go'' number one,
    and number two, ``Now we're proud of our kindergarten through twelfth
    grade too, we've got the best system of elementary and secondary
    education that the world can offer.'' And no one believes that any State
    in the United States can make that claim today, no one.
        So, I say to you I'm glad you've got these good times. I am grateful
    to have been given the chance to serve at a moment in history where my
    experience as a Governor enabled me to see what I thought our country
    needed to do. I am grateful that the consequences have been as they have
    been. I'm very grateful the American people have done all the things
    they have done. But I'm telling you we're living in a dynamic world
    where things are changing more rapidly than ever before, where we've got
    to learn to live together across the lines that divide us both at home
    and with others in the world, and where it all begins with whether we
    are treating individuals with the dignity that I think is embodied in
    this Patients' Bill of Rights that I've advocated at the national level,
    that you've advocated at the State level, and most importantly with the
    commitment to develop the capacity of every young person. There is
    nothing more important, nothing.
        The last point I want to make in this regard is that there are a lot
    of things we can do at the national level to deal with what I predict to
    you will be one of the three biggest issues of the next 40 years, which
    is how to do better at preserving the environment as we grow the
    economy.
        Now, you know that's going to be a big issue. There are a lot of
    things we can do at the national level but an enormous amount of
    environmental protection, an enormous amount of resource conservation,
    an enormous amount of figuring out what kind of flexible, sensible ways
    you have to adopt to grow the economy while you preserve the
    environment, that's done at the State level. I know, I was a Governor
    for a dozen years. And I dealt with all kinds of national
    administrations that had different philosophies on the environment.
        There is not a person in the State of Texas, nowhere--this is no
    disrespect to the current

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    Governor--there is nobody in the State of
    Texas that has a better background than Garry Mauro for making the right
    decisions about how to protect the environment and grow the economy.
        I want you to think about that. I want you to go home to Texas and
    talk about it. And I want you to forget about the public opinion polls.
    The only poll that matters right now is the one inside your heart,
    inside your mind. If you believe that your candidate is as good as I
    believe he is, if you believe that the issues are as important as I
    believe they are, if you believe he's on the right side of the issues,
    and most important of all, if you buy what I just said about the nature
    of this time, yes times are good, yes we are grateful--but it just
    imposes on those of us who have done well enough to show up at this
    fundraiser tonight a bigger responsibility to see that we use these good
    times to prepare for our children's future. You're going to have a fine
    election, and you're going to be proud of what you're doing.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:47 p.m. in the Mount Vernon Room at the
    Sheraton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. George W. Bush of
    Texas.