[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

[[Page 390]]

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.