[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[March 16, 1998]
[Pages 389-391]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
March 16, 1998
Thank you very much, Len and
Steve. Ladies and gentlemen, a lot of you go
to a lot of these dinners. I was sitting here thinking, what could I say
to you tonight that you have not heard already? Then I thought, well,
maybe I should say to you tonight what you have heard already.
You may have heard me tell this story, but one of my favorite
insights into communications came not at a political speech but at a
rock concert several years ago, where Tina Turner was singing when she
made her great comeback. She finished this new album, ``Private
Dancer,'' and she was going around the country doing these concerts. And
she sang all the new songs; all the young people in the audience loved
the songs. At the end she started to sing ``Proud Mary,'' which was her
first hit, and all the old guys like me loved that. And so she started
to sing it a couple of times, and the crowd was cheering so loud she
backed away. And finally she said, ``You know, I've been singing this
song for 25 years, but it gets better every time I sing it.'' [Laughter]
So maybe I should just say the same old thing.
Let me say today--I'd like to talk to you about what I did today, in
two different ways, because I think it stands for what I believe we
ought to be doing as a country. I started today by getting in a car and
driving out to suburban Maryland to a high school to meet with two dozen
people, including experts in national testing, other education experts,
experts in science and math education, the mayor of Los Angeles, the
mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Governors of
West Virginia and Maryland, the superintendent of schools in New York
City, and the State superintendent in Kentucky,
a number of others, to talk about math and science education and why
Americans scored so low in the international math and science test for
high school seniors when we were near the top of the scores of the
international math and
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science test for fourth graders. What happens between the 4th grade and
the 12th grade?
Then tonight, before I started my rounds, I was meeting--having the
first of a whole marathon set of meetings I'll be having over the next
30 hours or so with participants in the Irish peace process, trying to
get it back on track and hopefully bring it to a successful conclusion
this year. Two apparently disparate things, but they both represent--
especially since the high school where we met in Maryland had students
who were basically white students, students who were African-Americans,
students who were Hispanic students, who were Asian, who were South
Asian, Arab-Americans--I mean, it's an amazing student body--both things
represent to me what we ought to be doing now, which is looking to the
long-term interests of the country, preparing for the 21st century,
thinking about the big issues.
And that's what I tried to talk about in the State of the Union
Address. It's all very well to say--and, believe me, I am profoundly
grateful that we have the lowest unemployment and crime rates in 24
years, 15 million new jobs, and all-time high homeownership, lowest
inflation rate in 30 years, and the lowest welfare rolls in 20 years. I
am profoundly grateful for that. And for all of you that helped me do
any of that and helped the American people achieve that in your private
capacities or as citizens, I'm grateful for that. But we need to take
this time, which is highly dynamic, and imagine what we want this
country to look like in 20 years and do what it takes to get us there.
And so I just mention those 2 examples because they're 2 of 10 I
could mention. That's why I want us to reform Medicare and Social
Security for the 21st century and the baby boom generation before we go
about spending this budget surplus that is just now beginning to
materialize. It's why I want us to take a serious look at our
educational and environmental challenges and prepare for the 21st
century.
You think about it. Everybody in this country knows we've got the
best college system in the world, the best system of higher education in
the world. No one in America believes we have the best system of
elementary and secondary education in the world. And yet, we have
wonderful people involved in it, teaching in it, being principals in it,
trying to make it go every day.
There are systematic problems here that have nothing to do with the
overwhelming difficulty of the task, because we have not put our minds
to it: setting national standards and having some national measure of
whether our kids are meeting those standards, whether they're in south
Alabama or northeast Maine; making sure that when teachers teach math
and science they have actually had the requisite academic background--
this is the only advanced country in the world where people teach--
regularly teach math and science to our children without not only a
major or even a minor in the subject in school, because of the teacher
shortage in these areas--requiring our students to take more courses if
they want to go to college or even to have a high school diploma. It's
breathtaking when you see what happens as more and more students go all
the way through high school without taking algebra or trigonometry or
calculus or physics or chemistry.
You know, we say this is an age of science and technology. We've
done everything we could to hook up all the schools to computers--hook
up computers to all the schools and classrooms. But unless we have
trained teachers and students taking those courses, we are going to
continue to fare poorly compared to other countries.
What is the practical matter? We have such a powerful economy; maybe
if only half of our kids get it, we'll be able to keep the economy
going, but the society will not be as strong as it should be if half of
our young people drop out because they never got on the escalator when
they were in the seventh grade, the eighth grade, the ninth grade. So
anyway, it's a big issue.
The Irish peace process--I could talk about the Middle East or
Ireland or anyplace else. I'm grateful for the fact that the United
States could play the role it's played in Ireland, the role it's played
in Bosnia, the work that the Secretary of State is doing now with our allies to try to keep Kosovo from
causing a new turmoil in the Balkans, the fact that I will become the
first President ever to take a real trip to sub-Saharan Africa ever in
the history of the country, starting at the end of this week. Why?
Because I'm thinking about what it's going to be like for us 20 or 30 or
40 years from now, as well as in the immediate future. I want to get a
settlement and legislation passed in this tobacco case to end this whole
chapter of our history in a way that will enable us to save a thousand
lives a day and protect the health of our children in the future.
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These are the things that we try to do. So when you go home tonight,
before you go to bed, I want you to think about why did I come to this
dinner? Why did I do that? Why did I show up there? Why didn't I stay
home and watch pro basketball or whatever? And I hope that the reasons
will be part of your vision for America in the 21st century.
I'm grateful for what we've achieved, but what we've achieved simply
imposes on us an even greater obligation to use the success of the
country, the confidence of the country, the elbow room that this kind of
new prosperity gives us, to really look at the long-term challenges our
people face and to meet them.
We've got 3 years to do it, and I am convinced that 3 years from now
this country will be in even better shape than it is today thanks to the
support of people like you.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 10:12 p.m. in the South Drawing Room at the
Decatur House. In his remarks, he referred to Leonard Barrack, national
finance chair, and Steve Grossman, national chair, Democratic National
Committee; Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles; Mayor Lee R. Clancey of
Cedar Rapids, IA; Gov. Cecil H. Underwood of West Virginia; Gov. Parris
N. Glendening of Maryland; Rudy Crew, chancellor, New York City public
schools; and Wilmer Cody, Kentucky commissioner of education.