    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [October 6, 1999]
    [Pages 1694-1696]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Ceremony Unveiling a Portrait of Former Secretary of
    Commerce Mickey Kantor
    October 6, 1999

        Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Secretary Daley, thank you for your comments and your extraordinary
    leadership. I thank

    [[Page 1695]]

    Secretary and Mrs. Glickman, Secretary Richardson,
    Ambassador Barshefsky, John
    Podesta, Ambassador Zuzul from Croatia for being here, and the many friends and
    family members of Mickey Kantor, but especially Heidi, and Leslie and Bruce, and Doug and Allison, and Alix,
    and of course, Ryan and Zachary.
        I think that when they're old enough to watch the videotape of this
    ceremony, they will enjoy it a lot. They will see that their father was
    one of America's greatest public--their grandfather was one of America's
    greatest public servants. They also, because of what I am about to say,
    will know that he's known for something other than cuddles and hugs.
    [Laughter] After all, you don't earn the title he actually earned in a
    poll once, there of the ``third most hated man in South Korea''--
    [laughter]--by being Mr. Nice Guy all the time. [Laughter]
        I went to South Korea, and I gave a speech to the South Korean
    Parliament. And it's always a big deal, the American President goes to a
    foreign parliament. I spoke to the French Parliament; I've spoken to
    parliaments all over the world, and they're always so excited and happy,
    not because of me but because it's the United States. Not in Korea.
    [Laughter] They all sat there glumly, with--and they held up little
    protest signs that said, ``Rice.'' [Laughter] Thanks a lot, Mickey. It
    was great. [Laughter]
        Secretary Daley has already alluded to this, and I just want to say
    briefly, in April of 1996, after Ron Brown and the other fine people
    from the Department of Commerce died in that terrible plane crash, I
    really thought there was no one else I could turn to to run this
    Department. I hesitated to ask Mickey to do it. I thought that he had
    been one of the truly most outstanding and effective Trade Ambassadors
    we had every had.
        But when I did ask him, without a moment's hesitation, even though
    he'd rather carry his own scheduling book and make his own deals, he
    came over here to this massive Government Department to do the Nation's
    work again. And he did it out of loyalty to me, to Ron, to the thousands
    of grieving Commerce Department employees, and to the United States. And
    I am very grateful.
        I like this portrait an awful lot. Mr. Polson, you did a remarkable job. But on the way over here, I
    was sort of hoping that you'd break the mold and you would lift this
    curtain and I would see Mickey in his Speedo bathing suit, flexing his
    biceps. [Laughter] But instead he's got that double-breasted suit on, he
    can afford now that he's left Government service. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Mickey for many things. I've been a close friend of
    his for what seems like forever now, more than 20 years. Bill mentioned
    his service in the Navy. I think it's worth, for the record, to point
    out that he served on an aircraft carrier. What you may not know is that
    he and the rest of the crew of the U.S.S. Wasp were on the frontlines of
    the Cuban missile crisis, locked eyeball-to-eyeball with Russian sailors
    for those 14 harrowing days.
        I think it was good preparation for the rest of his life and the
    constant, constant occasions he has had to call upon his steel nerves.
    This has served Mickey well in everything he's ever done: in turning 9th
    inning double plays at Vanderbilt to dealing with 11th hour crises in
    our '92 campaign to closing the deal on some of the largest trade
    negotiations in America's history.
        Back in 1993, when Mickey was using those nerves of steel in a
    series of complex negotiations with the Japanese, some teenagers were
    spotted at Japanese Disneyland with a T-shirt that sums it up well.
    Mickey Kantor was drawn to look like Mickey Mouse calmly beating the
    dickens out of sumo wrestlers 10 times his size. [Laughter]
        We all like watching Mickey work. If we want to watch Mickey at all,
    we have to like to watch Mickey work. [Laughter] We've all seen him up
    for days and nights at a time on some difficult negotiation. Instead of
    just throwing in the towel or throwing a chair, he sort of does that
    ``I'm just a country lawyer from Tennessee'' routine, and you turn
    around, and you've lost your wallet.
        We all know that Mickey has on occasion shown displays of temper; at
    least he has to me, but I deserved it, and it served the conversation
    well at the time. But let me say to all of you, the thing that I like
    about him so much is that he does have passion, and he does have nerves
    of steel. He has courage and a good mind, but he also, most importantly,
    has the right kind of heart.
        When he was a teenager, he was profoundly moved when his father lost
    his job on the Nashville School Board because he had the temerity to
    believe that Nashville ought to abide by the Supreme Court's order to
    desegregate our schools. Later he was inspired by the activism

    [[Page 1696]]

    of Caesar Chavez and went down to Florida to defend poor farm workers
    against labor abuses.
        As Secretary Daley mentioned, Mickey worked with Hillary on the board of the Legal Services Corporation
    when President Carter served here, helping to secure every American's
    right to equal justice under the law. He also served on the board of the
    Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and created an award
    and scholarship in Valerie's name. He created the Los Angeles
    Conservation Corps, giving hundreds of young people a chance to make a
    difference in their communities and exposing me to the Corps in 1991 and
    1992, which was, along with City Year in Boston, for me, the model that
    led to AmeriCorps, and has now given over 100,000 young Americans the
    chance to serve in their communities and earn some funds to go on to
    college--in just 5 years, more people than served in the first 20 years
    of the Peace Corps. I am very proud of that and very grateful to Mickey
    for giving me the inspiration.
        Mickey has done things that I think are important for America's
    politics beyond the jobs that he's held. He's always believed we could
    fight for the underdog and make life good for everyone else. He was the
    prototypical New Democrat, before the phrase became popular.
        When we were working on this campaign, in '91 and '92, whenever he
    sensed the message of the campaign drifting he would always say, ``We
    have to prove that our party can grow the economy, can get the deficit
    down, is committed to expanding trade, not running away from the
    globalized future we all face. We have to prove that we believe in
    welfare reform, that able-bodied people can work and raise their
    children and succeed.'' And he used to talk all the time about how
    important it was for us to follow policies that would drive down the
    crime rate and make America safer, things that didn't always fall within
    the direct ambit of his work in the campaign and later as trade
    negotiator. And whenever he felt we were drifting away, he would call me
    on the phone and say, ``Remember what we ran; remember what we promised;
    remember what we've got to do.'' And still, even though he's not in
    public service and now that he's not in my employ--sometimes with
    greater color--[laughter]--he calls and reminds me of that, if he ever
    senses any drift.
        So Mickey, before I turn the program over to you and give you a
    chance to rebut the charges of the Koreans, the Japanese kids, and your
    President, let me say, thank you for 21 or more remarkable years of
    genuine friendship. Thank you for astonishing public service. Thank you
    for being a good model, as father and husband and citizen. And thank you
    for believing in things and people, enough to fight for what you believe
    in. Our country is much better because you have served it.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:05 p.m. in the main lobby at the Herbert
    C. Hoover Building. In his remarks, he referred to Secretary Glickman's
    wife, Rhonda; Croatian Ambassador to the U.S. Miomir Zuzul; and artist
    Steven Polson, who painted the portrait.