[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[May 16, 1999]
[Pages 793-797]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception in Las Vegas, 
Nevada
May 16, 1999

    The President. Thank you very much. First, I would like to say to 
Elias and Jody, we're 
grateful to be here, and thank you for turning the Muzak off. [Laughter] 
And all the televisions--I couldn't compete with them. [Laughter] And I 
thank you for being my friend for so many years, when I was up and when 
I was down, and for being my mother's friend, something I will never 
forget, and for having me into your home for the second time.

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    I thank Senators Reid and Landrieu and Senator Bryan and 
Bonnie for being here; and Representative 
Berkley, newly married--glad that 
Larry came. And your attorney general, Frankie 
Sue Del Papa; Mayor Jones; and former Governor Miller and 
his wife who, as of this morning, is Dr. Miller, so we have to be appropriately respectful there. Former 
Congressman Bilbray, my good friend; and 
Chairman Andrew; and Beth 
Dozoretz, our national finance chair, and her 
husband, Ron. And to all of you, my old 
friends in Las Vegas, and some of you I have not met before. I'm 
delighted to be here.
    I was sitting here thinking--you know, I've had a rather rigorous 
schedule. Last week I went to Europe, to Germany, to see our forces who 
are involved in the operation in Kosovo and then to meet with the 
refugees. And then I had to go right down to Texas and then to Oklahoma 
to see the aftermath of the worst--the most powerful tornado ever 
measured in the history of the United States down there.
    And then I came back to Washington, and then I came right back out 
here a couple of days later; and I was in Seattle, northern California, 
Los Angeles, San Diego, and now I'm here. So I'm slightly disoriented. 
And I was wondering if maybe Rich Little would 
come and give the speech for me. We would never know the difference. 
[Laughter] And if you got tired of me, then you could hear President 
Carter, President Reagan, President Nixon, you know--[laughter]--sort of 
a little walk-through of American history. Thank you for coming.
    Rich Little. Oh, it's a pleasure.
    The President. I won't take a lot of time today. I enjoyed having a 
chance to visit with all of you in the line. I would like to begin with 
what is to me the most obvious thing about this day. I want to thank all 
of you who brought your children here. I'm delighted to see all these 
young people here.
    When I ran for President in 1991, when I made the decision, it was, 
believe it or not, a rather difficult one for me to make, because our 
daughter was in the eighth grade, or then finishing the seventh grade. 
She was as happy as a clam and doing well, and Hillary and I were doing 
well. We had our friends, and I had been Governor for, at that time I 
was in my 11th year. And believe it or not, I was still having a great 
time. I loved my State; I loved my job.
    And I decided to run because I was convinced that our country was 
sort of stumbling toward the 21st century with no governing vision that 
would create an America where every person who would be responsible 
enough to work for it would have opportunity; where all the diversity 
that you see so glittering in this room, all the differences among us 
would be respected, even celebrated, but where our common sense of 
humanity would give us a stronger American community as we grow more 
diverse; and where our country would still be the world's most important 
force for peace and freedom and prosperity.
    I knew--I believed, and now I believe more strongly--that to have 
that kind of vision come alive in the 21st century, we had to be able to 
deal with what was going on here that is different. And what is going on 
here that is different? We're in the middle of the biggest explosion of 
technology in the history of the country, in the history of the world. 
We also are seeing the shattering of all kinds of barriers, making 
people ever more interdependent and drawing us closer and closer 
together across all national lines.
    Most of that is quite good, but we know there are some serious 
problems. The global economy and the information revolution has made 
untold numbers of new millionaires, but it threatens to leave people 
without an education behind. Drawing closer together has given greater 
mobility, greater knowledge, greater access to things through the 
Internet and through travel than ever before; but the open borders and 
the Internet technology mean that people who want to use it for bad ends 
can learn how to make bombs on the Internet, and that the possibilities 
for collision of terrorism and organized crime and weapons of mass 
destruction are greater, and we have to deal with that.
    And so what I have tried to do for the last 6\1/2\ years is to lead 
first the Democratic Party and then the Nation to a whole different 
approach to politics nationally, to say that we have enough tough 
decisions to make, but we're going to put behind the false ones. We 
believe, for example, we can grow the economy and reward entrepreneurs 
and still expand the middle class and give poor people a chance to work 
their way up.
    We believe that working people should be able to succeed at work, 
but also at home, because the most important job of any society is

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to raise its children well. We believe we can improve the economy and 
actually improve--not just protect but improve--the environment, because 
we no longer have to use the same energy patterns of the industrial age 
to grow the economy. We believe we can reduce crime by not only 
prosecuting it more vigorously but by doing a better job of preventing 
it in the first place. We believe we can reduce the welfare rolls 
without hurting the children on welfare.
    These are things we believe we can do. We believe we can be a force 
for peace from the Middle East to Northern Ireland and still stand up 
against ethnic cleansing and terrorists. And in large measure, the work 
that Hillary and I and the Vice President and our Cabinet, our 
administration and our allies in Congress have done the last 6 years has 
been a vigorous effort to take these ideas and turn them into policies 
so they could be made real in the lives of the American people.
    We also have tried to change our notion of the primary role of 
Government. I have downsized the Government dramatically. Most people 
have a hard time believing this, but the Federal establishment is now 
almost exactly the size it was when John Kennedy was President in 1962--
smallest Federal Government in 37 years now. But it is more active, and 
we focus on two things. One, creating the conditions for prosperity and 
for security, and two, giving people the tools to solve their own 
problems and to make the most of their own lives.
    And I am very grateful for all the good things that have happened in 
America and for whatever force for good we've been in the world in the 
last 6 years. And I'm grateful for the people who have expressed their 
support for me through thick and thin. But I am here today for the 
Democratic Party because what I want you to understand is, that while I 
am grateful I had a chance to serve--and I hope that my leadership had 
something to do with the good things that have happened--the most 
important thing is, we had the right vision and the right ideas; we had 
a sense of teamwork, and we got up and went to work every day doing the 
right things.
    And that's why it's important that your Congresswoman be reelected, 
that we elect a new Democratic Senator from this State, that we win the 
Presidential election, and that we keep the country on the direction it 
is going.
    I am very grateful to the citizens of this State for voting for me 
and Al Gore twice, when most people didn't think any Democrat would ever 
win here again. And I'm very grateful to Governor Miller and your two Senators for making sure that I never made a mistake on a 
local issue, so that at least I wouldn't fall off the knife edge we were 
on and we could hold on to our victory.
    But what I want to know when you leave here today is, it's important 
that people who have supported me all these years understand that no 
person, not even the President, can have a good impact unless you have a 
good vision, good ideas, a good team, and you're doing the right things. 
And all of that will be here when I am gone. I won't be on the ballot in 
2000. But all these issues really matter. It matters where we stand on 
these issues.
    If I could just mention two or three things today. In the next 2 
years, I'm going to do a lot to try to keep this going. We were 
talking--the Senators and I were, on the way in--we want to have our 
version of saving Social Security and Medicare, helping people deal with 
long-term care, helping people to save more for their own retirement. We 
want to see this debt paid down. Who would have ever thought we'd be 
paying the debt down? First, you thought you'd be grateful to see the 
budget balanced. We now have the biggest surplus ever. I want to pay the 
debt down. I want to pay it down. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.
    I want to pay it down because I know the more we pay it down, the 
more we'll have low interest rates, high investment, more jobs, and 
better incomes. And the less we need to borrow money around the world, 
the more our friends who are in trouble, who are our trading partners 
and our neighbors, will be able to borrow money. The Japanese are in 
trouble today. We want to help them. When they do well, we do well. If 
they need to borrow money, they can borrow it at less cost if we're 
paying our debt down. This is a good thing.
    I want to do some more things in education. I'm going to spend an 
enormous amount of time both trying to raise educational standards, to 
bring technology and good facilities and good teachers to all of our 
kids, and continue to open the doors of college to all Americans. I want 
to do that. And there are lots of other things. But what I want to say 
today, I want to think about one thing. We look at these kids. And

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look at this audience. Look how different we all are. Look at 
Elias' background--the story of the American 
dream--coming out of the Middle East, coming here without a nickel to 
his name, struggling through college, doing all the things that he has 
done, and then marrying way above himself. [Laughter]
    Elias Ghanem. I agree. I agree with you.
    The President. Having all these wonderful children. Look at all 
these kids here. I want you to listen. This is the most important thing. 
You know, if tonight I woke up in the middle of the night, and the good 
Lord appeared to me, and he said, ``I'm sorry, but you've already had a 
heck of a good life, and I'm not going to let you do all these things. 
But I will let you do one thing for the next 18 months. You only get to 
do one thing.'' And then here's what my answer would be: I would think 
about Littleton, Colorado, and I would think about Kosovo, and I would 
say, ``It seems to me supremely ironic and very humbling that here we 
are on the edge of the 21st century, where we have all these wonderful, 
high-tech dreams for our kids, right?--I mean, these kids can have pen 
pals in Mongolia and Botswana and Singapore. They can look forward to 
going everywhere, doing everything; maybe we'll all be living to be 125 
years old within 20 years. We'll unlock the mysteries of the human gene 
and all that.
    ``Isn't it ironic that on the verge of such an incredible era of 
discovery and potential, that what we are bedeviled by at home and 
abroad are the oldest demons of human society--these children talking in 
Littleton about how they were disrespected by the athletes, so they 
hated them. And then they had to look for someone they could disrespect, 
so they looked down on the minority kids.''
    I was in Texas the other day with the very pregnant young 
daughter of James Byrd, the African-American 
man who was dragged to death not very long ago there, trying to help 
them pass the hate crimes legislation, the Texas legislation. The 
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights had its annual dinner last week in 
Washington, and I went by and acknowledged the presence of Matthew 
Shepard's mother, the young man who was 
murdered in Wyoming because he was gay.
    Don't you think it's interesting that here we are, celebrating all 
this wonderful, high-tech, modern future, and what bedevils us most is 
the darkness of the heart, the fear of the other? It is as old as when 
people first had to join into tribes to stay alive in the cold and to 
kill game and to live in caves, before there was language, before there 
was writing, before there was anything. And maybe at some point there 
was some rational reason for it.
    And then as people developed their religious faiths, very often they 
fought more over their religious faiths than the fact that the color of 
their skin or the nature of their history was different. But when you 
strip it all away, it starts with: You're different from me; I'm afraid 
of you; therefore, I don't like you--no, I take it back, I hate you; 
therefore, I will dehumanize you; therefore, it's okay for me to kill 
you. It is a very short step.
    And it is easy for us to demonize others, but the truth is, every 
one of us gets up every day with a little light and a little darkness 
inside. And it's almost like they're on scales, and we fight this 
lifelong battle to make sure that the light always outweighs the 
darkness on the scales.
    So if I were given one wish, I would say I would like to build a 
stronger sense of community in America, and I would like to do something 
to advance a sense of common humanity around the world. Because if we 
could do that, you and people like you all over our country would take 
care of the other problems.
    That's why I'm for the hate crimes legislation. That's why I'm for 
the nondiscrimination in employment bill. That's why I'm for all these 
sensible gun control measures. That's why I've asked the whole country 
to join with Hillary and me and Al and Tipper Gore in a national 
campaign to reduce violence against children. That's why I've spent all 
my life trying to advance the cause of civil rights. That's why I've 
worked for peace in the Middle East and Northern Ireland and why I'm 
proud that we stopped the war in Bosnia and why I'm trying to stop it in 
Kosovo.
    We can't stop every war. People have a right even to fight, 
sometimes. That's how we, after all, created our country. But on the eve 
of the 21st century, we should say, ``You know, you don't have to like 
each other around the world, but we won't tolerate mass killing based on 
religious and racial and ethnic differences.''
    I know that in a world where we're used to seeing the news be 
different every day, it is frustrating to some people that this 
difficulty in Kosovo is not yet done. And I know there

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are many questions about it. I wish I had time to spend 3 or 4 hours 
here and answer your questions. But I can tell you this: I would far 
rather be here today, where we are, standing up against ethnic 
cleansing, standing for the rights of a different people not to be 
exterminated--because they happen to be Muslims and they happen to have 
Albanian heritage and they happen to have no guns--than if I were here 
asking you to give money to me and to our party, and we were sitting on 
our hands enjoying the sunshine, and I had not lifted a finger to stop 
it.
    And so I leave you with that thought. I have tried to make our party 
a party where all people of good will could feel at home and, more 
importantly, our country.
    Life is infinitely more interesting because it's more different, 
more various. Look around this room. This is an incredible group of 
people from all over, everywhere. And if we can respect and celebrate 
our differences, our lives are literally more fun and almost always more 
profitable. But if there are no limits on the importance to which we 
give our differences, life can quickly become unbearable. So I ask you 
to think about that and help us.
    I thank you for your contributions. I thank you for your support. I 
thank you for your friendship to Elias and 
Jody. I thank you for helping me be President.
    But remember, what has made these last 6\1/2\ years, and what will 
keep America going for the next 220 years, is not any one leader, but 
it's having the right vision and the right ideas and working together. 
And we need more of that.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 6:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to reception hosts Elias and Jody Ghanem; Senator 
Richard H. Bryan's wife, Bonnie; Representative Shelley Berkley's 
husband, Larry Lehrner; Mayor Jan Laverty Jones of Las Vegas; former 
Gov. Bob Miller of Nevada and his wife, Sandy; former Representative 
James H. Bilbray; Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, Democratic National 
Committee; impersonator/comedian Rich Little; Renee Mullins, daughter of 
murder victim James Byrd, Jr.; and Judy Shepard, mother of murder victim 
Matthew Shepard.