[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[July 13, 1998]
[Pages 1221-1223]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the National Treasures Tour Kickoff
July 13, 1998

    Thank you very much. Is this a great way to start the week, or what? 
[Laughter] Thank you, Secretary Heyman, Ms. Rimel, Mr. Mayor and members 
of the city council, Mr. Moe. Thank you, Denyce, as always, for being so 
wonderful. Thank you, Ralph Lauren, for this incredible act of 
generosity and, I think, foresight. And I want to thank the First Lady 
for once again creating something of enduring value to our country in 
this Millennium Project.
    You know, Hillary mentioned this, but 1814 was not a particularly 
good year for America, and the British did burn the White House. And 
we've just finished a 15-year renovation of the White House, and we left 
two of the great stones unpainted to remind people that it only became 
the White House after the British burned it. And when the burn marks 
couldn't be scrubbed off, the beautiful stone had to be painted white to 
cover the memory of what had happened. It's rather nice, actually, to 
have a couple of the stones unpainted so that we don't completely 
forget.
    Not since that time has the United States been invaded. And so the 
confidence of all the people who were involved was well-founded. Francis 
Scott Key wrote ``The Star-Spangled Banner'' in the midst of a very 
fierce battle. He was standing on the deck of a ship, behind enemy 
lines, looking into darkness, searching for the fate of the flag. The 
poem he wrote about it became our national anthem. If you remember the 
words and then you look at this massive flag, you can imagine what it 
must have been like in 1814, waving gallantly during the fight, standing 
unconquered in the dawn's early light. Think how you would have felt if 
you had seen it then.
    This Star-Spangled Banner and all its successors have come to embody 
our country, what we think of as America. It may not be quite the same 
for every one of us who looks at it, but in the end, we all pretty much 
come out where the framers did. We know we have a country founded on the 
then-revolutionary idea that all of us are created equal and equally 
entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that this whole 
country was put together out of an understanding that no individual can 
maximize the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness 
alone, and so we had to join together to reinforce each other's efforts.
    And then there was another great insight, which is that in the 
joining we couldn't repeat the mistakes of the monarchies from which we 
fled and give anyone absolute power over anyone else. And so we created 
this written Constitution to say that, okay, we've got to join together, 
and some people have to be our representatives and they should be given 
authority to make certain decisions, but never unlimited and never 
forever.
    And I'd say that system has worked pretty well over the last 220-
plus years. And that's what that flag embodies--at a moment when we 
could have lost it all, when the White House itself was burned, when a 
lot of people didn't think that we had such a good idea. And so now it's 
standing there, a little worse for the wear, but quite ready to be 
restored. And in that sense, it is a metaphor for our country, which is 
always ready to be restored.
    When Hillary and I were talking about what we should do to 
commemorate the millennium and she came up with this phrase, ``Honoring 
the past, and imagining the future,'' I loved it because it seems to me 
to be so much two sides of the same coin. You heard her only slightly 
making fun of me there about my obsession with the history of the United 
States and the White House and this great city. When I became President, 
I was often made fun of for my obsession about the future and trying to 
modernize the country. And to me, the two things are not inconsistent at 
all, because America is a country that has always been in the act of 
becoming.

[[Page 1222]]

    You heard--if you listened carefully to the remarkable statement by 
Secretary Heyman, he mentioned the phrase of the Founders, ``to form a 
more perfect Union.'' If you think about it, that is the enduring 
mission of America. They were very smart people, and they understood 
that any great nation is always a work in progress. They understood that 
they could never imagine the far reaches of America's future. They 
understood that these ideals they set up would never be perfectly 
realized. And so they gave us a mission that will be just as good for 
our grandchildren as it is for us, just as good as it was for George 
Washington and Abraham Lincoln, ``to form a more perfect Union,'' 
because there will always be something there to do better, always a new 
challenge. And I agree that if you look at where we are today, we have 
both the traditional responsibilities of every generation of Americans, 
to deepen the meaning of our freedom and to widen the circle of 
opportunity, and all these new challenges.
    One of them is to deal with our phenomenally increasing diversity. 
Didn't you get a kick out of seeing all those kids standing there doing 
the Pledge of Allegiance, from all their backgrounds? Who were their 
grandparents? Who were their great-great-grandparents? Where did they 
come from? What was their story? It doesn't matter, because they now 
have a chance to live the dream that was promised to all of us so long 
ago. That's what that flag embodies.
    We have all kinds of responsibilities now to the rest of the world 
we didn't have before, because now the world is yearning for freedom, 
and there is no cold war, and we must summon ourselves to understand 
that in the 21st century, preserving everything good about America at 
home requires us to be more involved with our neighbors around the world 
than ever before.
    We have new challenges when it comes to our natural environment, to 
prove that we can continue to enjoy the fruits of material prosperity 
while replenishing the Earth, not destroying it.
    There will be new and different challenges, but we can meet them 
best if we remember what got us here. That's why saving the Star-
Spangled Banner is important. That's why I asked the American people to 
do it in the State of the Union. That's why I'm very grateful to Ralph 
Lauren today for stepping forward. You know, most of us have--well, 
maybe not most of us, but a lot of us, including Hillary and me--have 
those great Polo sweaters with the American flag on it. I wish I had one 
with the Star-Spangled Banner on it because that's the gift that he's 
given America today.
    Now, I want to echo what Hillary said. There is more to do. 
President Lincoln and his family and many other Presidents' families 
used to stay in a little cabin up with the Old Soldiers' Home here in 
Washington, DC, in the summertime because the Potomac was so hot. That 
ought to be preserved for all time to come. And this committee has 
identified dozens of other sites.
    But I also want to emphasize something else Hillary said, as she 
begins this tour over the next 4 days to identify nationally significant 
treasures. Every community in this country has got some piece of itself 
that needs to endure. And I hope that the public airing that this event 
receives today will make people in every community across our country 
once again say, ``What have we got here that we should preserve for our 
grandchildren and for all time to come?'' Americans need to know the 
stories of their country, their States, their communities, their 
families.
    Let me especially thank the History Channel for doing its part to 
share the story of the Star-Spangled Banner by producing its own TV 
documentary and providing teachers with educational packets about it.
    Again let me say to all of you, too, we must continue to imagine the 
future. I asked the Congress to pass the Save America's Treasures 
program, as well as the biggest research program for the future in 
history, and to put them together so that our people could see that the 
story of America is a seamless one.
    I hope all of you in this room and all of the people who are 
involved in this endeavor, every time you see the Star-Spangled Banner 
for the rest of your life, will think about preserving our past, 
honoring it, but also will think about imagining the future. What an 
imagination it took in 1814 to believe that America had a boundless 
future. The Continental Congress said when it authorized the first flag 
of 13 stars that they were ``a new constellation.'' They were right.
    When I looked at all those children today saying the Pledge of 
Allegiance, I thought, now we are a newer constellation--different than 
they could have imagined--racially, religiously. We have no longer a 
small country on the eastern seaboard but a continental nation, with the

[[Page 1223]]

greatest influence for good the world has ever seen and an enormous 
responsibility for the future.
    And that is the last point I would like to make today. You can 
neither honor the past, nor imagine the future, nor achieve it without 
the kind of citizenship embodied by all of our memories of the flag. So 
as you see this flag and leave this place, promise yourself that when 
your great-grandchildren are here, they'll not only be able to see the 
Star-Spangled Banner, it will mean just as much to them then as it does 
to you today.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:48 a.m. at the National Museum of 
American History. In his remarks, he referred to I. Michael Heyman, 
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution; Rebecca W. Rimel, president, The Pew 
Charitable Trusts; Mayor Marion S. Barry, Jr., of Washington, DC; 
Richard Moe, president, National Trust for Historic Preservation; mezzo-
soprano Denyce Graves; and Ralph Lauren, chairman and chief executive 
officer, Polo Ralph Lauren Corp.