    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 14, 1999]
    [Pages 767-773]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Luncheon in Seattle,
    Washington
    May 14, 1999

        Thank you. I couldn't help but thinking when Jack was up here talking and saying all those wonderful things,
    that Joe Andrew had just said that we would
    win every election in 2000, from dogcatcher to President. And my
    immediate reaction was, that's not such a great distance. [Laughter]
    That's because I spend too much time in Washington. [Laughter] Now, when
    I'm in Seattle, it feels great.
        Let me first of all say how grateful I am that the Governor and the mayor are here. Thank
    you both for coming; our State party chair;
    your former mayor and my good friend, Norm Rice, and his fine wife. I thank our
    officers for coming out here to Washington. And Jack, to you and Ron, my long-time friend,
    and Ted and Ben and the
    others who are here who have helped so much, Mr. Marshall and others, I thank you all.
        I was thinking when I got on the airplane today--you know, when a
    politician tells you a true story, your immediate reaction is, it
    couldn't be true--[laughter]--but this is a true story. The first time I
    ever came to Washington, when I was running for President in 1992, I
    came rather late. I'd been out there running

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    for quite some time, and I was nervous as a cat. And I knew that Senator
    Tsongas had been here a lot and had built a lot of support. And I really
    wanted to make a good impression, and there was this event planned, and
    we had a very nice crowd.
        And I came into the airport in my modest little plane, and,
    coincidentally, the Seattle police force, under Mayor Rice, who has been trying to pay me back ever since--
    [laughter]--they were practicing how to provide security and rapid
    transportation to dignitaries. So here I arrived, you know, as President
    Bush used to say, a Governor of a small southern State--[laughter]--in
    an airplane not quite as grand as the Boeing I fly in today. [Laughter]
    And I look up--I swear, there were more than 50 motorcycle police
    officers there. [Laughter]
        And we go, and you know, I know how MacArthur felt with his ticker-
    tape parade in New York City now at the end of the war. And we're going
    in, you know, and I've got this little 2-car motorcade--[laughter]--and
    50 motorcycles. I mean, I couldn't breathe. I thought, my God, there
    won't be a person in this town that votes for me. [Laughter] And sure
    enough, I lost the primary in Washington State. [Laughter] And I've
    often thought it was because of those--it was quite a grand thing, you
    know. I don't have 50 motorcycles today when I go anywhere. [Laughter]
        But the Seattle police were well-trained, and they've always been
    very polite to me, and I never will forget it, though. Every time I land
    on the tarmac, I get a little nervous. [Laughter]
        Let me seriously say the people of Washington State have been very
    good to Hillary and me and the Vice President, to our administration, in
    two elections, in 1992 and 1996. We suffered a terrible setback here in
    the congressional elections in 1994, and then made up a great deal of
    ground in 1996 and 1998. And I think we will more than make up the rest
    of the ground in the year 2000, thanks to people like you.
        I would like to just--you know, I just made myself a few notes here
    on the way in. Sometimes I don't even do that. But I've got some
    things--I don't get to come here as much as I'd like, and I would like
    to say a few things.
        When I made the long trip out here the first time in 1992, I did so
    with some mixed feelings, because I had a job I loved in a place I loved
    and my family was doing well and things were going great for us. But I
    was very concerned that our country was drifting and divided, that we
    had all kinds of problems, and that no one seemed to be offering a clear
    vision about what kind of country we were going to be in the 21st
    century and how we proposed to get there.
        And I had in my own mind a very simple idea of the world I wanted
    our daughter to grow up to live in. I wanted 21st century America to be
    a place where there was opportunity for every responsible citizen, where
    we were joined together, across all the lines that divide us, into an
    American community united by our common humanity and where my country
    was still the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and
    prosperity.
        In short, I wanted to find a way to take advantage of the two great
    things that are happening in the world today, the explosion of
    technology and the increasing interdependence of people across national
    lines--both of which are perfectly embodied in this room, in this city,
    and in this State--in a way that would give everybody a chance to
    participate in it and give us a chance to let go of the problems that
    besiege us.
        And it seemed to me in order to do that we had to move beyond the
    old political debate in Washington. And so I went around the country
    saying, ``I believe if we're committed to opportunity and responsibility
    and community and to being a 21st century democracy, then we have to
    find a way to reward entrepreneurship and build the middle class and
    help the poor work themselves into it. I believe we have to find a way
    to grow the economy and protect the environment.
        ``I believe we have to find a way to help people succeed at work and
    at home, because everybody's most important work is still raising good
    children. I believe that we have to find a way to reform welfare that
    requires able-bodied people who can work, to work; but doesn't require
    them to sacrifice their responsibilities as parents because they can't
    afford child care or health care.
        ``I believe we have to find a way to reduce the crime rate, not
    simply by better enforcement but also by better prevention. I believe
    that we have to find a way not only to increase the quantity but the
    quality of education. I believe we can expand trade and lift the
    environmental and labor standards of the world instead of driving them
    lower. I believe that we can

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    be a force for peace in the world and still be willing to use force if
    it is the only way to achieve legitimate, indeed, compelling
    objectives.''
        I believed all that. I also believed that we could do it with a
    Government that was markedly smaller, but more active, if we focused on
    what a 21st century mission would be. And for me, it is overwhelmingly
    the mission of establishing the conditions and then giving people the
    tools to solve their own problems, but not alone--working together.
        Now, all the work that those of us in our administration have done
    in the last 6 years has been a labor of love to try to take those basic
    ideas and make them real, working facts of life in America. And I am
    profoundly grateful for the results. I literally get up and try to live
    with the spirit of gratitude every day for the good things that many of
    you have played a large role in bringing to our country: the longest
    peacetime expansion in our history, over 18 million new jobs, the lowest
    minority unemployment rate we have ever recorded, welfare rolls about
    half of what they were before, a 25-year low in the crime rate, the
    highest homeownership in history, over 90 percent of our children
    immunized against serious childhood diseases for the first time ever,
    dramatic progress in the quality of our air and water, more land set
    aside in perpetuity under this administration than under any
    administration in the history of the country except those of Theodore
    and Franklin Roosevelt.
        We're almost there with our goal of hooking up all our classrooms to
    the Internet by the year 2000. We have now over 1,000 and will soon have
    3,000 charter schools, which I think are the most exciting new
    innovation in public education. There was one when I became President.
    We have 100,000 young people who have now served in AmeriCorps, serving
    their communities as service volunteers. It took us 4 years to get to
    100,000; it took the Peace Corps 20 years to get to 100,000 volunteers.
        I am grateful for the work we've been able to do in the world to
    help our friends when they're in trouble, to try to reform the global
    financial system, to be a force for peace from Northern Ireland to the
    Middle East to Bosnia and now in Kosovo. And I am grateful that I had
    the chance to serve in this job at this time to bring these changes and
    for the role our Government had, as well as for the role all of you and
    others like you all across America had.
        But I am here today to tell you that the important thing is the
    ideas--the ideas. If we had the right ideas rooted in the right vision
    and we had the right attitude about our work, then we can continue that.
        You know, I won't be on the ballot in 2000. It's the first time in a
    long time I haven't been on a ballot. But it is terribly important to me
    that everyone in America understand that this, on the one hand, didn't
    happen by accident, but on the other hand, is not dependent upon any
    person alone, including the President. What matters is that we have the
    right ideas based on the right vision and that we have the right
    attitude about our work.
        There was a wonderful article in the Christian Science Monitor in
    the last couple of days, which pointed out that even though I have had
    what some people might characterize as a fairly tumultuous 6\1/2\
    years--[laughter]--I had enjoyed more stability in my Cabinet and senior
    staff than most other Presidents have. There is a reason for that. The
    people that work on our team know why they're there. They're not there
    to occupy offices or sit at certain places behind certain name cards at
    tables or wonder who is leaking on whom in the paper the next morning.
    They're there because they passionately believe in what we are doing,
    and they understand that this is a job. It is not about political
    positioning; it's about putting the people of this country first and
    having a vision of where you want to go, having guiding ideas, and
    making them real. That's why I'm here. That's what I want you to
    understand.
        When somebody asks you why you were here today, tell them it's
    because you like what happened in the last 6 years; we've got a lot more
    to do, and the vision and the operating ideas of the Democratic Party
    should continue to guide the United States of America. That is what I
    believe.
        We've got a lot of things to do. We've got to deal with the aging of
    America. We've got to deal with Social Security and Medicare and long-
    term care, and people have to be able to save more for their own
    retirement. We have to continue to tend to the world economy, and I
    badly want to prevail in my argument that we must use this surplus in a
    way that both deals with the aging of America and pays down the debt of
    the country.

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        My plan, in 17 years, would give us a debt that's the smallest
    percentage of our economy we've had since before World War I broke out.
    And that means lower interest rates, less dependence on foreign capital,
    higher investment, higher growth, more opportunities for people in high-
    tech havens like this and in small rural towns like those I represented
    for so many years. It's very important.
        We still haven't come to grips with all the challenges of education.
    We cannot pretend that we can be the country we want to be until we can
    offer a world-class education, not just in our universities but in our
    kindergarten through 12th grades, to all Americans. We still haven't
    done everything we have to do to help people balance work and family by
    a long shot. We need to do more with child care; we need to do more with
    family leave; we need to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights. We have a lot
    of things we have to do.
        We have big environmental challenges. Several of you discussed
    environmental issues with me today. I'm very proud of the livability
    initiative we have, to try to bring environmental issues into the
    practical lives of people in urban communities; and the lands legacy
    issue we have, to try to add more lands to the permanent legacy of the
    United States. And I will continue to try to persuade my friends in the
    other party in Washington, DC, that the crisis of climate change is a
    real issue that demands a real response from the United States, and that
    we cannot expect others to do their part unless we're ready to do ours.
        But the most important issues we have, I would argue--and if we get
    this right; the rest of it will work out all right; people in this room
    will solve half the problems that are out there--the most important
    thing we have to decide is what kind of country we are going to be. In
    the last several days, couple of weeks, the headlines have been
    dominated by two pieces of sobering news--notwithstanding the Dow going
    to 11,000 and having 18\1/4\ million jobs and all of that. One, of
    course, was the tragic killings in Littleton; the other is the ongoing
    conflict in Kosovo.
        I would like to just say a couple of words about that, kind of
    picking up on what Ron said. I talked with Hillary for a long, long time about what happened in
    Littleton. And we had a family conversation about it, too. And we talked
    with Al and Tipper Gore about it, because they've worked on a lot of these
    cultural and family issues for years.
        And then I talked with people all around America. I have to tell
    you, I do not believe that there is a single thing for us to do; I think
    there are a lot of big things for us all to do. When we had our meeting
    Monday to say that we're going to have a national campaign against
    violence against children, Pam Eakes was there,
    and I want to thank her for the wonderful work she's done with Mothers
    Against Violence.
        I think that you have to understand that we live in a world where
    there are a lot of people who are alone even when they're in a crowd,
    where there are a lot of children who never knew they were the most
    important person to anyone. And when you have large numbers of
    vulnerable people, then things that other people can't imagine would be
    problems can be big problems. So if it's easier for a kid in America to
    get an assault weapon, whereas it's impossible in most other countries,
    and you have a higher percentage of vulnerable, disconnected kids, more
    bad things will happen. If it is easier for a child in America to play
    an interactive video game where you score by how many innocent people
    you kill, and you have more vulnerable kids, then it's more likely to
    have a bad impact.
        If we have 300 studies now which show that hours and hours and hours
    a week after years and years and years and years of watching sustained,
    indiscriminate violence makes young people less sensitive to violence
    and to its consequences, if there are a larger number of disconnected
    kids, then it will have a more destructive impact than in other
    countries.
        So all of us--not pointing the finger at anybody--we've got
    something to do to rebuild this web of support to build that village
    that Hillary always talks about it takes to raise a child. There are
    things for families to do, things for schools to do, things for
    communities to do, things for the gun industry to do, things for the
    entertainment industry to do, things for Congress to do.
        I hope Congress finally, next week, will get around to passing that
    bill that closes the loophole on background checks for gun sales at gun
    shows. They did pass yesterday, in the Senate bills, to raise the age of
    handgun ownership to 21 and to close the loophole in the assault weapons
    ban, which has allowed the sale of large ammunition clips if they're
    imported since 1994. They voted for that, and I applaud them.

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        But we need to pass all these common-sense measures. We've moved a
    long way since we had Democrats from Washington State losing elections
    in 1994 because they voted for the crime bill, with the assault weapons
    ban, and the Brady bill. We've come a long way. The voters in Florida--
    not exactly a raving liberal State--voted 72 percent to close the gun
    show loophole on the ballot. So we're moving in the right direction.
        But I don't want to see our attempts to save our children turn into
    chapter 57 of America's ongoing culture war for someone's political
    advantage. What I want to see is to see every single segment of our
    society stand up and say not, ``It's someone else's fault,'' but, ``What
    can I do?'' And let's work through it.
        How we deal with this issue--you know, we had all those school
    killings last year. We did a lot of things. We sent out these wonderful
    handbooks to every school in the country, and they're very, very good.
    And people were horrified by it, but somehow, when Littleton happened, I
    think it finally, like, broke a dam in the psyche of America. I think
    finally people said, ``My goodness, this really can happen anywhere.''
        And we cannot--we owe it to those families and those children who
    perished not to let this opportunity pass from us and not to let it
    disintegrate into finger pointing. Everybody needs to just stand up and
    say, ``Okay, what can I do?''
        But we have to be honest about how every one of these things--look,
    I can make a case that no single thing--whatever you say the problem
    is--I've heard all these arguments. I can stand up and debate you and
    say, ``No, that's not the problem; something else is the problem.'' And
    I've heard it all. And you know, I could take either side in the guns-
    versus-culture argument.
        But the truth is, start with the facts. There are disconnected
    children in America, some of them in crowds every day. There are a
    higher percentage of them in our country--for whatever reason--getting
    killed every year than in other countries, in spite of all of our
    prosperity and all of our intelligence and all of our technology and all
    of our everything else. It's a fact. It's a human fact.
        And all the things that happen to a person in life, and all the
    opportunities that are present or absent, they all have an impact. And
    we need to unpack it and quit saying it's not our problem, and just have
    everybody show up and say, ``Well, what can I do?''
        If there was a fire down the street today and we heard the fire bell
    ring, every one of us would walk outside; we'd walk up to the firemen
    and say, ``What can I do?'' That's the way we ought to look at this. It
    ought to be an occasion for bringing this country together.
        We were talking at lunch, here. I was down in Texas a few days ago
    with the daughter of James Byrd, the man who
    was dragged and dismembered to death in Texas, trying to help pass the
    hate crimes legislation there. And I hope we can pass it in Washington,
    and the ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act.'' Why? Because it will make
    a big statement about what kind of people we are and what our level of
    mutual respect for people who are different from us is.
        And you ask me, ``Well, what has that got to do with Kosovo?'' Let's
    just move into that.
        It is the supreme irony of this new millennium--I mean, here we are.
    We've got all these folks here from Microsoft and Boeing, first one
    place and the other, and everybody's got all these great--you know, all
    of you are more technologically literate than me, doubtless. But isn't
    it ironic that you can simulate virtually every problem in the world
    with a software package. You can do things and communicate with people
    in ways that already are unimaginable. And within 5 years, there'll be
    things that we're not even thinking about now. And these will be
    accompanied by breathtaking advances in the biological sciences, as the
    mysteries of the human genome are unlocked. And then the interaction of
    computer technology and the genome project will be completely explosive
    in ways that I can't even imagine.
        Isn't it ironic that in this world we're going to live in, where
    we'd like to think, ``Gosh, you know, we'll finally run the average life
    expectancy up to 120 years, and we'll all be flying around on safe, fast
    planes, and we'll be able to get into cars that won't have traffic jams
    because we'll be able to program them all, and they will all run right.
    And what a fabulous world it will be. And we're now building an economy
    that actually requires less energy, not more--if we do it right--so
    we're not going to have to burn the planet up after all.''
        We have all these grand dreams for our children's future, and it is
    threatened by the oldest

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    problem of human society, which is that we have a hard time getting
    along with people who are different from us--because we're afraid of
    them. And once we get our crowd together, it's easy for somebody to stir
    us up and turn our fear into hatred. And once we start hating somebody,
    then it's easy for somebody else to come along and turn our hatred into
    violence.
        And there's a little of that in the reported accounts of Littleton.
    There was certainly that in the death of James Byrd or in the death of
    Matthew Shepard. And it is the thing that most bedevils the world in
    global politics today.
        What is consuming the world today? Fights over technology? Not on
    your life. What happened in Rwanda? Why is the Northern Ireland conflict
    unresolved? What are they fighting about in the politics of the Middle
    East today? What are the Balkans about? Who gets the right to sell Apple
    computers? Whether somebody represents Microsoft in Belgrade? That's not
    what they're fighting about, is it?
        They're fighting about religion and ethnicity and imagined history
    and old slights--real and imagined. That's what the whole thing's about.
        And I ask you to think about that. Look at Seattle. Next time--just
    walk down the street, here. That's what you want America to look like,
    isn't it? Look around this room here. That's what you want America to
    look like, and that's what you'd like the world of your children to be
    like.
        Now, I don't ask all these ethnic groups, many of whom are still
    very poor and early on experiencing their democracies--anywhere--to like
    each other. Don't even ask them not to fight. But I do not think it is
    too much to ask, as we have first in Bosnia and now in Kosovo, that
    there be no ethnic cleansing and slaughter, or to recognize that if that
    becomes an acceptable basis of behavior in the world, especially in
    Europe right at the doorstep of our closet allies and trading partners,
    that it bodes very ill for the future. We made a terrible mistake with
    the bombing of the Chinese Embassy, and I regret it more than I can say.
    I talked to the President of China today and told
    him that. But you can see that on CNN.
        What you do not see on television is the tales told by the refugees
    of the little village where 15 men had a rope wrapped around them and
    were burned alive because they happened to be Albanian Muslims, of all
    the young girls that were systematically raped because they happened to
    be Kosovar Albanian Muslims and because the people who were oppressing
    them knew that even though that is horrible in any culture, it is
    especially awful in theirs.
        So I say to you: The reason I talk about all this stuff all the time
    and the reason we have joined with our NATO Allies and we're doing what
    we're doing in Kosovo is, I don't want to let the promise of the 21st
    century be overcome by the oldest poison in human society's history. And
    America is about to get it right.
        The framers of the Constitution knew when they said all of us were
    created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights,
    including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--they were smart
    people. They were not dummies. They knew we were nowhere near living
    that.
        You go to the Jefferson Memorial and you see one of Thomas
    Jefferson's great quotes: ``When I think of slavery, I tremble to
    consider that God is just.'' They knew that. Well, we're about to get it
    right. And that's why we have to fight to give all our children a safe
    future. That's why we have to fight against the last vestiges of
    discrimination, and that's why we are right to stand with our NATO
    Allies against ethnic cleansing and manslaughter in Kosovo. It is the
    world we want our children to live in.
        I want to close with this story. A couple of days ago, I had 19
    Indian tribal leaders in the White House representing the Dakotas and
    Montana, the northern high plains tribes. They are the poorest tribes in
    America. And you can imagine that their geographical position doesn't
    make them very well positioned to get a lot of new and modern
    investment. You want to put a data center there, they'd be glad to have
    it.
        So anyway--and I got a lot of my Cabinet there, and they asked if we
    could sit in a circle in the Roosevelt Room, as was their custom. And so
    we did. And the tribal leaders, each in their turn, got up and talked,
    and they talked about housing and education and economics and all of
    that. And then at the end of the meeting, their spokesperson, a very
    tall man whose name was Tex, believe it or not, the
    chief of his particular tribe, he pulls out this scroll, and it is a
    proclamation where the tribal leaders are signing an endorsement of the
    United States position in Kosovo. And he said to me, ``We know

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    something about ethnic cleansing. And America has come a very long way.
    And we think we should stand with you.''
        And then another young tribal leader
    asked if he could speak. And he stood up; he had a beautiful Indian
    silver necklace on. And with great dignity he said, ``Mr. President, I
    had two uncles. One of them was on the beach at Normandy; the other was
    the first Native American fighter pilot in the United States military.
    My great-great grandfather was slaughtered by the 7th Cavalry at Wounded
    Knee. I now am the father of a young son. We have come a long way from
    my great-great grandfather to my uncles to my son. I love my son more
    than anything. But because of the distance we have come, I would gladly
    have him serve to save the people of Kosovo from having their culture
    and their lives destroyed.''
        And there was not--you couldn't breathe in this room because we knew
    that this dignified man representing people with all kinds of problems
    was the living embodiment of everything that this country ought to be.
    And his people were here first. All the rest of us are latecomers.
        So I say to you: The best politics for our party is to do what is
    right for our children and our country for the new century.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:35 p.m. in the Kirtland Cutter Room at
    the Rainier Club. In his remarks, he referred to event chair Jack J.
    Spitzer; Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, and Wayne C. Marshall,
    regional finance director, Democratic National Committee; Gov. Gary
    Locke of Washington; Mayor Paul Schell of Seattle; Paul Berendt, chair,
    Washington State Democratic Party; former Mayor Norman B. Rice of
    Seattle and his wife, Constance; King County Executive Ron Sims; event
    cochairs Ted Johnson and Ben Waldman; Pamela Eakes, founder and
    president, Mothers Against Violence in America; Renee Mullins, daughter
    of murder victim James Byrd, Jr.; President Jiang Zemin of China; Tex
    Hall, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation (the Three
    Affiliated Tribes); and Gregg Bourland, chairman, Cheyenne River Sioux
    Tribe.