    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 16, 1999]
    [Pages 787-793]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Luncheon in San Diego,
    California
    May 16, 1999

        Thank you very much. I was hoping that no one in California had
    heard that joke I told. [Laughter] They liked it in Albany, however.
    [Laughter]
        Let me say to Irwin and Joan, first of all, I want to thank you for opening this
    wonderful home and for giving me a tour of the art and a tour of your
    family. [Laughter] What a wonderful, big, beautiful group they are. And
    I

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    thank you for your philanthropy and for your commitment to so many good
    causes, and for bringing all of us together today. A lot of my old
    friends are here and some people that I've never had the honor to meet
    before. I appreciate that.
        I'd also like to say how glad I am to be here with Bob and Jane Filner. You know, I deal
    with a lot of Members of Congress--on occasion, even Members of the
    other party deal with me. I can honestly say that I have never met and
    dealt with any Member of the House of Representatives who was more
    consistent and persistent in trying to get me and the White House to
    respond to the needs of his district than Bob Filner. There isn't
    anybody else who works any harder at that, and you can be very proud of
    that. He's done a very fine job.
        I want to thank Assemblywoman Susan Davis
    for being willing to run for Congress; it's an arduous endeavor. It
    takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of heart.
        When I was 27 years old in 1974, I ran for Congress, and I lost. I
    wonder if I'd be here today if I'd won. [Laughter] But I remember, I ran
    against a man who had 99 percent name recognition and 85 percent
    approval. And I ran for 11 months, and 6 weeks before the election, I
    was still behind 59 to 23, and I lost--I got 48\1/2\ percent of the
    vote. I say that just to encourage you. Every election has a certain
    rhythm, and my instinct is, if you go out there and talk about the
    things you have done so well in the assembly, the passion you have for
    educating our children, the role that Federal Government needs to play
    to support our local schools, and the other issues, I think you'll do
    very well. And I hope we can be of help.
        I want to thank Joe Andrew and Beth
    Dozoretz and all the people on our team for
    working with the Democratic Party. And I'd like to say a word of
    appreciation to everyone in San Diego who is responsible for the
    selection of my friend of 30 years Alan Bersin,
    the new superintendent of schools. I thank you.
        When I saw Alan today--he's got a great gift for one-liners, which I
    have appropriated over the last 30 years. And so he came through the
    line today; he looked at me and said, ``And I thought you had a hard
    job.'' [Laughter]
        But let me also say I have a very special feeling about this
    community. I've had some wonderful days here. I've had some wonderful
    family vacation days here. As you noted, Hillary just got back from Macedonia and a trip to Northern
    Ireland--a brief trip to Northern Ireland, where we're working to try to
    close the last gaps in the peace process there--and couldn't be here.
    And I talked to her this morning on the way down, and she was quite
    jealous that I was coming back to San Diego. We have nothing but
    wonderful memories of this great place.
        Also, in 1992, when the Vice President and I carried this county, it
    was the first time since Harry Truman had carried it in 1948 that a
    Democrat had carried it--and looking at the signs, pro and con, on the
    way in today, I would say there's still some disagreement about what
    ought to happen. [Laughter]
        Let me say, you're here at a fundraiser for the Democratic Party.
    And I'm grateful for that. I'd like you to know why I'm here. I mean,
    I'm not running for anything. Maybe I'll try to get on a school board
    someday, but I won't be on the ballot in the year 2000.
        I am here because I believe in what I have done and because I
    believe that whatever good has come of the country because of my
    Presidency, I should be grateful for. But I am under no illusion that
    the most important thing was me. The most important thing was the vision
    that we shared for America and the ideas we pursued. And I believe it
    needs to continue. That's why I'm here. And when you leave, I hope
    you'll be convinced that that's why you were here.
        When I ran for President in late 1991 and '92, it was not something
    I had intended to do until just a few months before in that year. I was
    very concerned about the problems that our country was having and that
    there didn't seem to be any driving vision. And I don't think you can
    run any great enterprise without one.
        I also believed as a Governor--as President Bush said, a Governor of
    a small southern State--that most of the rhetoric I heard in Washington,
    unfortunately often from both parties, bore so little relationship to
    the world I was living in and the problems I was facing and the way I
    was having to deal with them. And it seemed to me that we needed to
    change the nature of the debate and to come up with some basic ideas
    that were not then driving policy in Washington, that were new but
    rooted in the very old-fashioned vision of our country.

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        I have always believed that when Americans widen the circle of
    opportunity for all responsible citizens, when they deepen the meaning
    of freedom, when they strengthen the bonds of community, we do well. And
    so I went out and said I want a 21st century America where every
    responsible citizen has the chance to live out his or her dreams, where
    across all of the differences we have we are bound together more closely
    as one community and where we are still the world's leading force for
    peace and freedom and prosperity. And I think to get there we have to
    think about things in a different way.
        For example, I think that we have to think about rewarding
    entrepreneurs in a way that expands the middle class and gives more poor
    people a chance to work their way into the middle class. I think we have
    to believe that we can grow the economy and preserve and even improve
    the environment. I think we have to believe that we can create a country
    in which people can succeed, not only at work but at home, in the most
    important job of any society, raising children. I think we have to
    believe that we can reduce the welfare rolls and put people in the work
    force in a way that does not require them to stop being good parents to
    their children. I think we have to reduce the crime rate, not only by
    doing a better job of enforcement, but a better job of prevention--
    something Mr. Bersin did in his previous
    incarnation as your U.S. Attorney.
        Anyway, those are just some of the ideas. I believe that we had to
    be a much more active force for peace in the world, but I thought we had
    to be willing to use our power to stand up against terrorism, weapons of
    mass destruction, and ethnic and religious cleansing and killing. And
    most of the last 6 years have been an effort by the Vice President and
    our administration, our Cabinet, and all the rest of us, working with me
    to try to find ways to put those ideas into concrete policies and make
    them come alive in the country.
        Along the way, we've given the American people the smallest
    Government they've had since John Kennedy was President. Federal
    establishment is now the smallest it's been since 1962. But it is more
    active in trying to create the conditions and give people the tools to
    solve their own problems. And I believe that these ideas resonate pretty
    well with Americans, whether they're Democrats or independents or
    Republicans, because they make sense and because they are related to the
    world toward which we are moving.
        Now, there is a lot of the future present in this room in what you
    all do. It seems to me that the two most dominant elements in the world
    of the 21st century toward which we're moving, are the explosion of
    technology and the increasing interdependence of people across national
    lines. Even our biggest threats grow out of that. We are increasingly
    vulnerable because of the openness of our society and the openness of
    our technology to people who would use this for destructive forces.
        And what we have to do now is to look ahead to the unmet challenges
    of the country and bring sort of the same sort of commonsense commitment
    to that vision. It means politically we have to have good candidates
    properly financed to have a good message to run in the year 2000 for all
    of our positions. They have to know why they're running.
        You know, whenever anyone comes up to me and asks me if they should
    run for office, I always say, ``Why do you want the job?'' And you
    better be able to tell a total stranger in 30 seconds and then have a 5-
    minute version on why you want the job. And if you can't answer that
    question, you shouldn't run. And if you can, ignore the polls and run.
        And so I think it's important that we do that. But in the last
    election, where we had a historic victory in the House of
    Representatives, you should know that we were out-spent by $100 million.
    But we still won seats in the House and didn't lose any in the Senate--a
    truly historic election--because we had a message. We knew what we were
    for; we knew what we were against; and we had enough to get it across.
    So it's very important that you're here.
        Now, as we look ahead, let me say that in the next 2 years, with all
    the energy I have, I'm going to do what I can to get our country to
    reach across party lines to deal with the aging of America, to reform
    Social Security and Medicare and do something about making long-term
    care more available, and helping people save for their own retirement
    more. I'm going to do what I can to make sure that we finish our work of
    modernizing our schools, help to modernize facilities; make sure we hook
    all the classrooms up to the Internet; provide more opportunities for
    more charter schools, like you have in this school district; and other
    things that will

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    raise standards; and dramatically increase the resources we provide to
    local schools for after-school programs, summer school programs,
    mentoring programs, the kind of things that will help our kids, so that
    we can have more uniform standards of excellence in education. And there
    are many other things that I intend to do.
        The Vice President has a livability
    agenda we worked very hard on that we're going to try to pass to try to
    help all of our communities deal more with traffic problems, with having
    the need for more green space, as well as setting aside more land in
    reserve.
        I'm very--by the way, just parenthesis--I'm very proud of the fact
    that our administration has protected more land in perpetuity than any
    administration in the history of the Republic except those of Theodore
    and Franklin Roosevelt. And I think 50 years from now people will be
    very grateful--even the people in the red rocks area of Utah, who are
    still kind of mad at me about it, I think they will be grateful.
        So there are a lot of things that still have to be done. But I have
    to tell you, if you ask me to describe in a sentence what I think is the
    most important outstanding work of the country, I would say it is an
    attempt to get people to define community in terms of our common
    humanity instead of our evident differences, both at home and abroad.
        And if you look at what happened in Littleton, there are many
    tragedies. And doubtless, a lot of the elements, as it's all unpacked,
    will turn out to be highly peculiar to the two young men in question and
    the whole psychology of murder-suicide. But there is also clearly an
    element of--part of what drove them over the brink was the fact that
    they were in a group that was disrespected, and they developed a
    grievance against those they thought were disrespecting them. And then
    since they thought they were disrespected, they looked around and they
    found another group--the minority students in the schools, in this
    case--that they could then look down on.
        I was just in Texas with the daughter of
    James Byrd, Jr., the African-American who was dragged to death and
    virtually dismembered by people who killed him because he was black--you
    remember, about a year ago. I was, the other night in Washington, at the
    Leadership Conference on Civil Rights dinner with the mother of Matthew Shepard, the young man who was killed in
    Wyoming not so very long ago because he was gay.
        And I say this to point out, if America wants to do good around the
    world--I appreciate what Congressman Filner said about Kosovo, and I
    want to come back to that--but if you want to do good around the world,
    we've first got to try to be good at home. And we have to recognize that
    there is something deep within all of us that represents the oldest
    curse of human society, which is the propensity to hate the other people
    who are different from us.
        And if you look, isn't it ironic--here we are, you and I were
    talking about how we had to break everybody's mindset of believing that
    in order to grow the economy, you had to have industrial age energy use
    patterns. We had to modernize energy use. But if you look at what
    they're fighting about in Kosovo or what they fought about in Bosnia or
    what they slaughtered over in Rwanda or what the continuing turmoil of
    the Middle East is about or Northern Ireland, they're not arguing about
    who is going to get the franchise to sell solar panels or who gets to
    represent Microsoft.
        Interesting, isn't it? We're thinking--look at all the high-tech
    activity in this room. We're thinking about a 21st century in which we
    want our kids to have pen pals in every conceivable country of the
    world, travel around, you know, do unimaginable things because of all
    these technological wonders. We all expect to live to be 125 because
    by--within the next couple of years the human genome will be totally
    unpacked and the intersection of computer technology and biomedical
    discoveries will doubtless lead to breathtaking and, at present,
    unimaginable discoveries that will enable us to prolong life, prevent
    disease, cure disease.
        But the biggest problem we've got is the oldest problem of human
    society. First, people are scared of people that are different from
    them, and their fear leads them to hate them, and their hatred of them
    leads them to dehumanize them, and then that legitimizes killing them.
    And this has been a factor in human relationships since people first
    joined together in tribes--before there was any writing or any language
    or anything else. And here we are, on the edge of this great modern age,
    beleaguered with this.
        And so I say to you, to me that is very important. One of the people
    at our table was telling me that she was a native of Sarajevo and that

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    these are old and deep differences here. That is true.
        I do not believe--if I could move to Kosovo for a minute--I don't
    believe the United States can intervene in every ethnic conflict. I
    don't think we can ask people to like each other. I don't think that can
    be a requirement of international law or a justification for military
    intervention. We can't even ask people not to fight each other if one
    group wants to secede and the other doesn't.
        But we can say that in the international arena there ought to be
    certain limits on this. And what is now euphemistically called ``ethnic
    cleansing''--when you unpack it, what does that word mean? That means
    you look at people who are of a different--in the case of the Balkans,
    religious group, and therefore--and with a different ethnic history--and
    you say, ``I'm afraid of you; I don't like you; I hate you; I dehumanize
    you, therefore, I can kill you; I can rape your daughters; I can blow up
    your mosques; I can blow up your museums; I can destroy your historical
    records; I can take your own property records, and I can burn them up. I
    can take the young people of military age and wrap them up and set fire
    to them while they're still alive. I can do these things because this is
    my land, and our greatness depends upon our ability to get rid of you.''
        And in the most benign form, ``We'll burn all your villages and run
    you by the hundreds of thousands off your land, because we can't share
    this land with you, because you're Muslims and we're Orthodox
    Christians; you're Albanians, and we're not. And, oh, by the way, 600
    years ago the Muslims came through here and had a big battle in Kosovo,
    and we've hated you all ever since.''
        Now, what our position ought to be in this is not that we're telling
    other countries how to live; not that we're telling them how--what their
    governmental arrangements have to be, but that in Europe--and by the
    way, I think, anywhere else that the United Nations or others have the
    power to stop it--we say we know there will be ethnic conflicts; we know
    there will be civil wars. There's a terrible, regrettable conflict going
    on right now between Eritrea and Ethiopia, who once were one and then
    split, and now they're, in effect, having their tribal conflict over the
    border.
        No one has suggested--10,000 people have been killed there--no one
    has suggested that some third party should intervene and fight both of
    them. That is not what is going on in Kosovo. That is not what Bosnia
    was about. That was about ethnic cleansing; it's a mass killing of
    people because of their ethnic and religious background. And if we can't
    stop that in the underbelly of Europe on the edge of the 21st century,
    then we're going to have a very difficult world ahead of us, because
    there will be a lot more of it. They will get aligned with organized
    criminals, with terrorists, with people who have access to weapons of
    mass destruction. They will use all this technology and all these open
    airports and all this other stuff, and these conflicts will not stay
    confined to the land on which they occur.
        So this is in America's interest, but it is also morally the right
    thing to do. Think about these children who were here today. What do you
    want their children's America to be like? What do you want their
    children's world to be like? The 21st century can and should be the most
    interesting period in all of human history, in a largely profoundly
    positive way. But it will not happen unless we find ways to deal with
    our differences which, after all, as we see in America, make life much
    more interesting if they can be respected and celebrated but limited in
    their impact.
        When there is no limit to what you can do to somebody else who's
    different from you, life quickly becomes unbearable. That is really what
    is at stake here. Yes, there are many difficulties in this endeavor we
    have undertaken, we and our NATO Allies, in Kosovo. And you may have
    many questions in your mind.
        But let me ask you this: How would you feel, in this gorgeous
    setting today, with the birds singing outside and the ocean before us,
    in all of our comfort, if I came here asking you to give money to the
    Democratic Party, and I was having to explain to you why we were sitting
    on our hands and not lifting a finger while those people were killed and
    uprooted and dislocated? I prefer to answer the hard questions about
    what we're doing than the hard questions I would never be able to answer
    to you if we had done nothing in the face of this travesty.
        But, remember what I said: We should have a higher standard for
    ourselves at home. Abroad we are simply saying, ``You can have your
    fights; you can have your arguments; but we're against ethnic cleansing
    and the slaughter that goes

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    along with it--and if we can stop it, as an international community, we
    ought to.'' At home, we have to do better than that. We have to say,
    ``The differences that we have make us stronger, make us better, when we
    respect and celebrate them, but when we're not consumed by them.''
        And therefore, I want to say again what I said yesterday and the day
    before. We need a national campaign to protect our kids from violence.
    We will never get there unless we first of all teach people respect for
    one another and, secondly, find a way to connect with every one of our
    children in a very personal way. A lot of people are strangers in their
    own homes, and they are lost to their parents, to their classmates, and
    to others. This is a very hard job.
        And we will never get there unless all of us ask not, ``Who is to
    blame?'' but ``What can I do?'' That's what the entertainment industry
    ought to do, not because any movie or television or video game caused
    those young men or others in these other school killings to do what they
    did, but because the average 18-year-old sees 40,000 murders by the time
    he or she is 18, because there are 300 studies now--300--which show that
    sustained exposure to violence diminishes--and it diminishes one's
    sensitivity to the consequences of violence; and because we know that we
    have a higher percentage of kids who spend more time in front of various
    media and less time with their families, or with their friends doing
    other things, than virtually every other country, and we have a higher
    percentage of kids who are at risk. And we don't give families the
    support we should give to balance family and childrearing--work and
    childrearing.
        So if you have more kids at risk, more vulnerable, and you bombard
    them with things that will desensitize them, you will increase the
    number who will fall over the line. It's just like the guns. The NRA
    slogan is actually, of course, literally true, that guns don't kill
    people, people do. That is literally true. But people with guns kill
    more people than people without them. [Laughter]
        And again, I say if you have more--if you have more vulnerable
    people and it's easier for them to get assault weapons, or other weapons
    they have no business getting their hands on, then more of them will
    fall over the line and you'll have more violence. A lot of you have been
    involved in that, and I would just close with this--the Government has
    its responsibility in this crisis, too. And one of our responsibilities
    is to give both law enforcement and citizens the help they need by
    having sensible gun restraint measures.
        There was a police officer out at the airport today when I stopped
    at the marine base on the way over here. And when he said, ``Mr.
    President,'' he said, ``I'm a police officer; I'm off duty today; I came
    out here with my family, and I just want to thank you for taking on that
    gun fight.'' He said, ``We need all the protection we can get out there
    and so do the kids.''
        And all we've done--look what I've asked them to do. I've asked them
    to close this gun show loophole so you can't buy a gun at a gun show if
    you can't buy it in a gun shop. We've asked them to--and the Senate has
    voted to close the loophole allowing big, multiple-ammunition clips to
    come in from foreign countries, and to raise the handgun age to 21.
        We've asked them to strengthen the Brady bill and reinstate the 3-
    day waiting period. We've asked them to do a background check on people
    who buy explosives--which, after Littleton, you will see, is very
    important--very, very important--and do some other commonsense things
    that help us to trace and keep records on these weapons. This is crazy,
    that we would permit our society to put more children at risk than any
    other society in the world would when we already know we've got more of
    them that are fragile.
        Now, we don't have to point fingers at each other. We should all
    sort of say, ``Forget about who's to blame. We're showing up for duty
    tomorrow. What can I do?'' That's what everybody ought to be asking. But
    the Congress of the United States needs to pass this legislation, and I
    was very encouraged that some of the Senators, after the American people
    expressed their feelings, have begun to change their votes.
        But I want to see this as a part of our struggle to be one
    community. Most of the people--there was a great article in the Los
    Angeles Times today about a woman from Colorado, rural Colorado, who had
    her rifle and used it to run off wild wolves that were going to kill her
    livestock, and who felt so threatened in her way of life by all these
    city folks, like us, trying to regulate her guns. Well, of course,
    nobody's trying to regulate her guns. She'd just been told that. And if
    she needs something other--that

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    she has to do a background check on, she's got nothing to fear.
        But I understand, there is that whole other culture out there of
    people who are law abiding; they pay their taxes; they show up for duty
    when we need them to fight for our country, to defend us, to do whatever
    else; and a lot of them just think that this is some big urban
    conspiracy to take their guns away. Well, it isn't. And we all need to
    be talking to each other. We need to quit this sort of--you know, trying
    to make this chapter 57 in the culture war for someone's political
    benefit.
        So I say that to you--hey, if you ask me, yes, I hope we get--before
    I leave office, I will be very disappointed if we haven't reformed
    Social Security, committed ourselves to pay down the debt over the next
    17 years, reform Medicare, pass my education and my environmental
    agenda. But the American people will get the rest right if we decide to
    do what it takes to be one America, if we decide to do what it takes to
    reach out across all the lines that divide us and say, ``You know, our
    common humanity is more important than our interesting differences.''
        And if we do that, then we will be able to lead the world to a
    better place and give our children the future they deserve. That's what
    I think my party represents. That's what I've worked for 6 years to
    bring to the American people. And when you leave here today, I hope
    that's why you believe that you came.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:15 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to luncheon hosts Irwin and Joan Jacobs; Joseph J.
    Andrew, national chair, and Beth Dozoretz, national finance chair,
    Democratic National Committee; Renee Mullins, daughter of murder victim
    James Byrd, Jr.; and Judy Shepard, mother of murder victim Matthew
    Shepard.