    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 15, 1999]
    [Pages 781-787]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees
    Dinner in Beverly Hills, California
    May 15, 1999

        I have never before had the honor of being the warmup act for Andrea
    Bocelli, but I will. I will do my best.
    [Laughter] I want to--and if I sing a little, you will just have to--
    [laughter]. I want to say first of all how grateful I am to all of you
    for being here, especially to the chairs and the cochairs of the dinner
    and, of course, to David and Steven and Jeffrey. I want to
    thank my leaders, Senator Daschle and
    Congressman Gephardt. I was looking at
    them up

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    here. We knew each other, of course, before I was elected, but not so
    well as we do today. And I can tell you that it is a joy and an honor
    every day to work with them. They are people that we can really be proud
    of.
        And I have seen them in far less comfortable circumstances than we
    find ourselves tonight, and they are what they seem to be, and they're
    always there for the American people.
        I'd like to thank Governor Davis and
    Sharon for coming. I'm thrilled by his success
    and was honored to be asked to campaign here a time or two last year.
        And I want to echo what has already been said about Senator
    Feinstein and Senator Boxer. They are on the forefront of this still ongoing and
    yet unfolding struggle to protect our children on the gun issues, and I
    want you to give them a big boost tonight and a lot of support, because
    it's been pretty tough there, although the American people did a great
    job in turning some of those votes around last week.
        I'd like to thank Senator Torricelli for being here. It's his unhappy, or sometimes happy, duty
    to go around and try to make sure that we've got someone to actually run
    for all these Senate seats and take on some very tough fights. I thank
    Congressman Kennedy and your Congressmen,
    Henry Waxman and Brad Sherman, for being here. And Mayor Levin gave me a gift from the city tonight, so I'm delighted to
    be here. [Laughter]
        And I'm glad to be here in, as far as I know, the only beneficial
    product to the Teapot Dome Scandal here--this beautiful place.
        Most of what needs to be said has already been said, but I would
    like to try to put a few things in perspective, talk a little bit about
    some of the events of the present that are of great concern to people.
        When I came to California in 1991 and early '92, this was a very
    different place in a different country. People were divided and confused
    and drifting and frustrated. And I believed very strongly it was because
    we had no overriding vision for our future, no strategy to achieve it,
    no way, therefore, of pulling the American people together and getting
    us pointed in the right direction. And that's really why I got in the
    race for the President.
        It was not the easiest of races. I was laughing with Goldie
    Hawn tonight because I remember her being in the
    Biltmore in Los Angeles on June 2, 1992, when I was nominated for
    President, really officially. I won in California and New Jersey and
    Ohio that night, so it was clear that I had enough votes to be
    nominated. And all the stories were the exit polls showing that Ross
    Perot was really in first place, and I was in third place. I say that to
    caution you about reading too much into any polls. [Laughter]
        But I knew something, I thought, about the American people, about
    where we were at this moment in our history and where I thought we ought
    to go. Just 6 weeks later there had been a complete reversal in the
    polls, and thank the good Lord, they stayed that way through November,
    and the people of California were very good to me and to Al Gore and to
    our families and our administration, twice. And I am very, very
    thankful.
        What I want you to do--you know what all the individual issues are,
    but what I want you to think about tonight, just for a minute, before we
    hear a magnificent performer and before you go home and you go back to
    your lives tomorrow and the days ahead, is what you would say to people
    if they asked you why you came tonight. You could say, ``Well, Geffen
    made me.'' [Laughter] Or there's a lot of things you could say. But I
    hope you will have some really good answers.
        I guess the first thing I'd like to say to you is, obviously, this
    is a fundraiser for the Congress. It's not for me. I can't run anymore.
    And I'm here because I believe very strongly that the people you just
    saw should lead the majorities in the House and Senate; because while I
    am very grateful for the opportunity I have been given to serve the
    American people as President and for whatever role I was able to play in
    this remarkable economic turnaround and the big drop in crime and
    welfare and the improvements in almost all the indicators of social
    health--the lowest minority unemployment in history, the highest
    homeownership--all the things that are moving in the right direction,
    I'm grateful that we've had a chance to be a force for peace and freedom
    around the world. What I want you to understand is, first, most of what
    we have done could not have been done, had it not been for the support I
    received from the Democrats in the Congress. Second, most of what we
    stopped could not have been stopped, had it not been for their support.
    And third and most important, what we did grew out of a vision of 21st
    century America as a

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    place where there is opportunity for every responsible citizen, where we
    celebrate our differences but we come together in one community, and a
    place that can still lead the world for peace and freedom and
    prosperity, and out of a willingness to think in different ways about
    the future, to break out of the old vices that were paralyzing
    Washington.
        We believe, for example, that we can reward successful
    entrepreneurs, like many of you in this audience, and still expand the
    middle class and give poor people a chance to make it. We believe we can
    grow the economy and improve the environment. We believe we have an
    obligation to help people succeed not just at work but also at home,
    because raising children is the most important job of any society.
        We believe these things. We believe that we can have a quality and
    excellence and high standards and accountability in education. We
    believe we can be a force for peace in the world and still stand up if
    we have to, against ethnic cleansing and weapons of mass destruction and
    terrorism.
        And the work of the last 6 years has largely been our combined
    efforts to take these ideas and that vision and hammer them into
    specific proposals. It's what animates our efforts today to deal with
    the aging of America, with the reforms of Social Security and Medicare,
    doing something about long-term care, helping people to do more to save
    for their own retirement.
        It's what's driving me now that we have a big surplus instead of a
    huge deficit to say that we ought to deal with Social Security in a way
    that pays down the debt for the first time in anybody's memory, so that
    17 years from now, we could actually have the smallest debt this
    country's had since before World War I, which will mean for our children
    lower interest rates, a stronger economy, less dependent on the vagaries
    of the world economy.
        We believe that we have to continue to improve the environment in
    ways that are tangible. I'm proud of the fact that the air is cleaner,
    the water is cleaner, and we set aside more land than any administration
    except those of the two Roosevelts, in our term, but we have a lot more
    to do. And this environmental issue will continue to dominate public
    concern for at least another 30 to 40 years. So we still have more to
    do.
        But what I want to say to you is, those of you who are here because
    you've helped me through thick and thin for all these long years, this
    did not happen by accident, nor did it happen just because I was
    President. It happened because we had the right vision and the right
    ideas, and we worked to make them real. And it couldn't be done without
    the help of the people who have spoken before me and what they
    represent, and they deserve the chance to be in the majority so that we
    can see these ideas fully implemented in the beginning of the 21st
    century. That is what I want you to think about when you leave here
    tonight.
        Let me say, in spite of all the good news, most Americans have been
    sobered in the last several days because of the terrible tragedy at
    Littleton and the ongoing conflict in Kosovo. And I would like to say to
    you that I think how we respond to both of these will say a lot about
    what kind of country we have for years to come.
        And I believe that the ideas that I've tried to infuse into all of
    our work ought to be looked at against the backdrop of these two issues.
    I do think--you heard Dick Gephardt talking about what the person who
    lost a child at Littleton said, ``Don't let my child die in vain.'' I do
    believe that, even more than all the terrible tragedies that happened
    last year, because of the sheer scope and power of this event, it
    touched a deep nerve in America that has profoundly opened up our
    country to a serious examination of what it would take to give our
    children a safer childhood.
        And last Monday I had a lot of people from every sector of our
    society into the White House, with Hillary and Al and Tipper, to talk
    about how we could have a national campaign against children's violence
    in the same way that we have seen other national campaigns prevail in
    the past. And what I'd like to say is--what I've pleaded with people to
    do is not to make this chapter 57 in the ongoing American culture war
    saga.
        You know, if the house next door here were burning down, we'd
    probably all be willing to go over there and help put the fire out. And
    think how absurd it would be if Norm looked at David and said, ``I'm not
    going to help put the fire out because it's your fault you left your car
    running outside the house, and its sparks from the fumes caused the
    fire.'' And David said, ``Norm, if you'd quit smoking years ago, you
    wouldn't have put a cigarette over in the yard, and that's what caused
    the fire.'' And so

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    everybody gets in a fight about who's at fault here, and we let the
    house burn down--that is a dumb thing to do.
        This is far more important. We can't let those children have
    perished in vain. And I don't know--you know, probably a lot of you are
    like me. I have watched the parents of these children being interviewed.
    I have seen the school people. I have seen some of the wounded children.
    I have been, on the whole, profoundly moved and impressed by these
    people, by the depth of their faith and their conviction and their
    genuine striving to understand and go beyond this.
        So for me, I think we ought to--since I think what happens to our
    kids is more important than whether the house next door burns down, I
    think we ought to have the same attitude. We ought to say, ``Okay, I'm
    showing up for work. Tell me what I can do.'' And I believe that we have
    to do more to help parents do their job, whether it's better child care
    or family leave programs or, literally, people helping people understand
    that your kids can become strangers in your own home.
        And I agree with what has already been said. It is a fact that most
    parents in America spend far less time with their children today than
    they used to spend. That is not free. That's why I say, we will never be
    the society we want in the new century until we better balance work and
    family.
        I think we have to help the schools do more. I was in a fabulous
    school in Alexandria, Virginia, the other day--that's the most
    culturally diverse school district in America now, just across the river
    from the White House--where they have peer mediation programs and
    counseling services and mental health services and a 1-800 anonymous
    hotline that if one kid calls and says, ``I'm worried'' about another
    one, they know it will be followed up on, and they know they will be
    kept anonymous. We have to do those kinds of things. We have to give
    every school the ability to protect our children better.
        I think the people in the gun business ought to come to the table
    and help us. And I want to say one thing that wasn't mentioned, that I'm
    very proud of, is that the gun manufacturers, who for years sided always
    with the NRA and always opposed all these measures, have changed. And
    every one of you who believes that it's a good thing that we raise the
    handgun ownership age to 21 and that we close the loophole--and Senator
    Feinstein's assault weapons bill, so now we
    can stop these big ammunition clips from coming in--it's never had any
    purpose, anyway.
        We can also thank the gun manufacturers who supported the
    legislation this time in Congress and had the kind of civic
    responsibility that we need more from every American. I appreciate that.
        Now, we've still got a lot of work to do. We've got to do background
    checks on explosives. We've got to get this gun show loophole closed in
    the right way. And I'm going to watch it pretty close, because unlike
    most Americans, I've actually been to a lot of these gun shows. It was
    part of my job description at one time when I was Governor of Arkansas.
    And I enjoyed them greatly, but they ought to have background checks,
    and they ought not to have loopholes.
        So that's a big part of it. I also believe--let's talk about the
    entertainment issue. You know, I think the--here's the way I look at
    this. It's like the NRA can say, ``Guns don't kill people, people do.''
    That's true, but people with guns kill more people than people without
    them. And we're the only country in the world that has no reasonable
    restrictions. There are now over 300 studies that show that sustained
    lifetime, week-in and week-out, night-in and night-out, exposure to
    indiscriminate violence through various media outlets over a period of
    time makes people less sensitive both to violence and to the
    consequences of violence.
        Now, for most kids, it won't make any difference. But if you have a
    society where we have already positive--there are more kids who are
    spending less time with their folks and less time being connected to
    somebody that they know they're the most important person in the world
    to, and if that same society has those same kids having easier access to
    weapons, then desensitizing them will be more likely to push those that
    are vulnerable into destructive behavior.
        Now, that doesn't make anybody who makes any movie or any video game
    or any television program a bad person or personally responsible with
    one show for a disastrous outcome. There's no call for finger-pointing
    here, but we just look around and we know that all these things go
    together, starting with the raw material that you've got more kids who
    are more isolated, some of them in their own homes, strangers.

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        So I would like to say, first, like I said about the gun
    manufacturers, it ought to be put in the record that the entertainment
    industry for 6 years has worked with Al Gore and me and with our
    administration on the V-chip, the television rating system, the video
    game rating system, the screening technologies that the video people--
    the Internet people have worked with us to try to help parents screen
    inappropriate material away from their kids on the Internet.
        Today in my radio address, I said there were two or three other
    things--I had been studying this and listening--that I think ought to be
    done. I think that if young people can't see certain kinds of movies,
    then they shouldn't see the advertisement for the movies if the
    advertisement has the same stuff that caused the movie to be rated as
    inappropriate. And that's something I think the entertainment industry
    can look at and ought to look at very seriously, that the advertising
    ought to be consistent with the rating in terms of the audience that
    receives it.
        I also think there's a lot of evidence that these ratings are
    regularly ignored, not by you but by the people who actually sell or
    rent the video tapes or the video games or run the movie theaters. And
    the rating system ought to be used by checking ID's. And finally, I
    believe in light of the most recent research, it would be a very good
    thing if the industry would reexamine the nature of the rating system,
    especially the PG-13 as it relates to violence, not because anybody is
    willfully doing something that they know is going to hurt somebody, not
    because any one television program or video game or movie will do it,
    but because we know that by the time a person becomes 18 in America, he
    or she has seen about 40,000 killings, and because we have a higher
    percentage of vulnerable people.
        But we are determined to do this as a family. When we were at the
    White House, we sat around a big old table, and everybody was there, and
    everybody was asking, ``What can I do?'' And I say again to the
    Congress, this is not the time to let any interest group control doing
    things that are common sense. How in the world we can let somebody buy a
    gun at a gun show that they can't get in a gun shop because they've got
    a criminal background is beyond me. And this is a classic example--to go
    back to what my leaders said earlier--the people of Florida, not the
    most liberal State in America, voted last November, 72 percent to close
    the gun show loophole with no ifs, ands, or buts, no wrinkles or
    curlicues or subterfuge.
        So I say this is a time for all of us to do this. And how we deal
    with this, and whether we really come up with a kind of grassroots
    national campaign, like the campaign that Mothers and Students Against
    Drunk Driving launched that precipitously lowered deaths from drunk
    driving in America, like the effort that has been made that has
    precipitously lowered the teen pregnancy rate, like the grassroots
    effort business made that led to 10,000 business people hiring over
    400,000 people off welfare--how we do this will have a lot to say about
    whether we're really going to build one community.
        But there are other things we ought to do, too. And let me come back
    to Kosovo and talk about--you say, ``Well, what's that got to do with
    this?'' Well, first of all, all the studies, the reports indicate that
    these young men who were involved in this terrible tragedy at Littleton
    felt like they were a disrespected group and felt like they had to find
    some other groups to look down on or hate, the athletes, the minorities
    in the school.
        And in Kosovo what you see and what you saw in Bosnia is people who
    have been ethnically cleansed. That's a sort of sterilized word for
    being systematically killed, uprooted, raped, having your property
    records destroyed, having your mosques and your museums and your
    libraries destroyed, having an effort to basically eradicate your
    existence.
        But it's very interesting. Don't you find it ironic--especially
    those of you--I was talking to Steven the
    other day about my library, and we were talking about whether we could
    have some virtual reality effects in my library in the museum, you know.
    Sometimes I feel like I'm living in virtual reality, so I'm highly
    interested in this. [Laughter] This is the kind of thing you guys think
    about when you think about the 21st century, you know? Our kids are all
    on the Internet, and the human genome secrets have all been unlocked,
    and we all live to be 135, and we whiz around the world in safe
    airplanes that never have wrecks. And we'll be driving on the Los
    Angeles freeways, and there won't be any more traffic jams because all
    our cars will be computer programmed and directed and everything will be
    managed just fine. This is the exciting--and our kids will all have pen
    pals in Mongolia and Zimbabwe and Bolivia and

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    every place around the world. Technology will bring us together, and
    there will be a new golden age. That's our sort of image for our
    children in the 21st century.
        Don't you think it is ironic that here we are in the last year of
    this millennium and that image is threatened by the oldest demon of
    human society, the hatred of the other? It starts as fear of the other,
    goes to hatred of the other, goes to dehumanization of the other, goes
    to killing of the other. Don't you think that's interesting? I mean,
    these people in Kosovo, they're not fighting over who gets the right to
    show the latest Hollywood movie in the theaters in Pristina. In Rwanda,
    they weren't killing each other over who got the latest software
    package. They're talking about how they worship God and what their
    ethnic group is, what real or imagined slights they have against one
    another as groups. And we are not free of it here.
        I was in Texas the other day meeting with the daughter of James Byrd, the African-American who was dragged to
    death in Texas. The other night, I went to the Leadership Conference on
    Civil Rights dinner in Washington and recognized the mother of Matthew Shepard, the young man who was killed in
    Wyoming because he was gay. So America's got some work to do here, too.
    We ought to pass the ``Hate Crimes Act'' and the ``Employment Non-
    Discrimination Act,'' and we ought to--to show that we understand this.
        But let me say, how we respond to Kosovo will determine what kind of
    world we're going to live in. I think all of you who know me know that I
    have worked for peace, that I deplore violence, that I have been
    heartbroken by the people who have been innocents in this battle who
    have perished.
        You know, I'd a lot rather be in Northern Ireland giving speeches to
    my people about how they ought to put all their guns down. I want to go
    back and work on peace in the Middle East. I don't even think that we
    can intervene in all the ethnic conflicts in the world. We're not asking
    everybody to get along. We can't even ask them not to fight. But if we
    cannot stand, after the lessons of the 20th century, against the
    systematic killing of people and their uprooting because of their
    religion or their race or their ethnicity, then what kind of world are
    we leaving to our children?
        You know, I had a wonderful day today. I spent the day with my
    daughter today, and Hillary just got back from Macedonia. That's where she was in
    the refugee camps. And so we called her, and then we got lonesome, and
    we'd call her again. The three of us were talking about all this. And
    she was talking to me about these people and how they have lost
    everything and how they have loved ones they don't even know what
    happened to. There are tens of thousands of people who are unaccounted
    for. Nobody knows what happened to them. And she talked about this
    little girl that was holding her hand while she was speaking. The little
    girl had no idea what she was saying, just holding her hand.
        I saw them in Germany when I was there, the young women and the
    Muslim families--where rape is an even worse thing than it is in our
    culture--saying, ``I want to talk to you, but these are things I cannot
    discuss in my family.'' A 15-year-old boy stood up and said, ``I cannot
    talk about Kosovo,'' and sat down and started crying.
        I ask you to think about this. What Europe and the United States is
    doing, what we are now engaging the Russians in trying to do--we're not
    trying to redraw the map of Europe. We're not playing some power game. I
    don't want to control anybody's life. All I want to do is to create a
    world in which we do not idly turn away from systematic bigotry based on
    hatred of the other that leads to mass killing. And I believe, as
    difficult as all the questions are I have to answer here--God, I grieve
    for those Chinese people that were killed in that horrible mistake that
    was made. As difficult as all the questions I have to answer, I would
    rather answer these questions than answer the question of, why am I
    having a good time in Los Angeles tonight and we have not lifted a
    finger to help those people? That is the question I would have no answer
    to. I would have no answer to that.
        They are a part of our community. If you want a world that will
    really be fit for your children to live in, if you want the benefits of
    the modern world, we need at home the philosophy the Democratic Party
    has brought that we're going to have all these benefits; we're not going
    to leave anybody behind if we can help it. We're certainly not going to
    leave anybody behind that's willing to work to be a part of it. But even
    more, we have to build a sense of community, where we not only tolerate
    each other, we actually relish our differences. And

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    we can have the security to relish them and make our lives more
    interesting because underneath we know that what binds us together is a
    whole lot more important than what's different about us.
        And I want to close with this story. Tom Daschle told you that we had these tribal leaders come to the
    White House. And he didn't tell you the whole story.
        We had the heads of 19 Indian tribes from the high northern plains,
    from the two Dakotas and Montana. They asked for a meeting at the White
    House through Senator Daschle and his colleagues. And then they came
    into the Roosevelt Room at the White House, which is in honor of Teddy,
    Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Teddy Roosevelt's Nobel Peace Prize
    is hanging on the mantelpiece.
        And so the tribal leaders said, ``Well, could we sit in a circle?
    That is our custom.'' So we sat in a circle. And each in their turn,
    they stood up and said, ``Well, here's what we'd like to have help on.
    Here's our education concerns, our health care concerns, our economic
    concerns.'' And I came into the middle of the meeting, listened to it
    all. It was just fascinating.
        Then at the end, the guy who was sort of their main spokesman, the
    tribal leader, whose name was Tex Hall,
    interestingly enough, stood up and said, ``Well, there's one other thing
    we want to do.'' He said, ``Mr. President, we want to talk to you about
    Kosovo.'' He said, ``You see, we know something about ethnic cleansing.
    And our country has come a long way. And we believe what you are doing
    is right. And so the chiefs have signed this proclamation supporting
    it.''
        And then at the end of the room, another young man who was a tribal leader stood up, and he said, ``I
    would like to speak.'' He had this beautiful silver necklace on. And he
    was very dignified, and he said, ``Mr. President,'' he said, ``I had two
    uncles. One landed on the beach at Normandy. One was the first Native
    American fighter pilot in the United States military.'' He said, ``My
    great-great-grandfather was slaughtered by the 7th Calvary at Wounded
    Knee.'' He said, ``We have come a long way from my great-great-
    grandfather's time, to my uncles' time, to this time.'' He said, ``I
    have only one son, and I love him more than life. But I would be honored
    if he went to Kosovo to stand up for the human rights of people who are
    different from the majority.''
        That is the journey America has made. That is the journey I hope we
    can help the world to make. And if we do, you will take care of the rest
    of our challenges.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:20 p.m. in the Courtyard at the
    Greystone Mansion. In his remarks, he referred to event cohosts David
    Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, founders, DreamWorks
    SKG studios; Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli; Gov. Gray Davis of California
    and his wife, Sharon; Senator Robert G. Torricelli, chair, Democratic
    Senatorial Campaign Committee; Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, chair,
    Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Mayor Sandra J. Levin of
    Culver City, CA; actress Goldie Hawn; Norm Pattiz, chair and chief
    executive officer, Act III Productions; Renee Mullins, daughter of
    murder victim James Byrd, Jr.; Judy Shepard, mother of murder victim
    Matthew Shepard; Tex Hall, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara
    Nation (the Three Affiliated Tribes); and Gregg Bourland, chairman,
    Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.