[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[November 20, 1999]
[Pages 2127-2131]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at a Dinner for the Conference on Progressive Governance for the
21st Century in Florence, Italy
November 20, 1999
Thank you very much. Professor Dorsen,
Dean Sexton, President Oliva, to my fellow leaders, and especially to our hosts, Prime
Minister and Mrs. D'Alema. Let me say a special word of appreciation to my good
friend Romano Prodi for the very good outline
he has given us of the challenges facing not only the nations of Europe
but the United States and all other economies more or less positioned as
we are.
The hour is late, and what I think I would like to do is to briefly
comment on why we're here and what exactly are the elements of
progressive governance in the 21st century--what do we have consensus
on, and what are the outstanding challenges facing us?--without going
into any detail, in the hopes that that's what will be discussed
tomorrow.
First of all, I think it's worth noting that it's entirely fitting
that we're meeting here at this beautiful villa in this great city where
the Italian Renaissance saw its greatest flowering, because we know
instinctively that we now have a chance at the turn of the millennium to
shape another extraordinary period of human progress and creativity.
There are many parallels to the Renaissance era in this time. For at
the dawn of the Renaissance, Italy was a place of great economic ferment
and change, rapidly expanding trade, new forms of banking and finance,
new technologies and new wealth, more education, vibrant culture,
broader horizons. Today, we have the Internet, the global economy,
exploding diversity within and across national lines, the simultaneous
emergence of global cultural movements, breathtaking scientific advances
in everything from the human genome to discoveries about black holes in
the universe.
We have, in addition, a much greater opportunity to spread the
benefits of this renaissance more broadly than it could have been spread
500 years ago. But there are also profound problems among and within
nations. Making the most of our possibilities, giving all people a
chance to seize them, minimizing the dangers to our dreams, requires us
to go beyond the competing models of industrial age politics. That's why
we're here. We think ideas matter. We think it's a great challenge to
marry our conceptions of social justice and equal opportunity with our
commitment to globalization. We think we will have to find what has
often been called a Third Way, a way that requires governments to
empower people with tools and conditions necessary for individuals,
families, communities, and nations to make the most of their human
potential.
In the United States, we have proceeded for the last 7 years under a
rubric of opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and a community
of all Americans. We have also recognized something that I think is
implicit in the whole concept of the European Union, which is that it is
no longer possible, easily, to divide domestic from global political
concerns. There is no longer a clear dividing line between foreign and
domestic policy. And, therefore, it is important that every nation and
that all like-minded people have a vision of the kind of world we're
trying to build in the 21st century and what it will take to build that
world.
I think there is an emerging consensus which you heard in Romano
Prodi's remarks about
[[Page 2128]]
what works and what challenges remain. There is also a clearer consensus
that no one has all the answers.
So let me briefly give you an outline of what I hope we will discuss
tomorrow and in the months and years ahead. First, I think there is an
economic consensus that market economics, fiscal discipline, expanded
trade, and investment in people and emerging technologies is good
economics. In the United States, it has given us an unparalleled
economic expansion, the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest
inflation rate in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the
lowest unemployment among our women in the work force in 46 years, the
lowest poverty rates in 20 years, and the first back-to-back surpluses
in our budget in over 40 years. But there are problems. I will get to
them.
On social questions, I think there is an emerging consensus that we
should favor equal opportunity, inclusion of all citizens in our
community, and an insistence upon personal responsibility. In addition
to low welfare rolls through welfare reform in the United States, it has
given us the lowest crime rate in 25 years and unprecedented
opportunities for women, racial minorities, and gays to serve in public
life and to be a part of public discourse.
We have also worked particularly hard to reconcile the competing
religious concerns of our increasing diverse communities of faith in the
United States. The challenges to this economic and social policy are, it
seems to me, as follows, and this is where we have to close the gap.
Number one--what Mr. Prodi talked about quite a lot--the aging of
all of our societies. In the next 30 years, the number of people over 65
in our county will double. I hope to be one of them. [Laughter] Now this
is a high-class problem. In all the advanced economies, anyone who lives
to be 65 today has a life expectancy of 82. Within a decade, the
discoveries in the human genome project will lead every young mother--
including Mrs. Blair--[laughter]--within a
matter of years, young mothers will go home from the hospital with their
babies with a little genomic map. And it will tell these mothers and the
fathers of the children what kinds of things they can do to maximize the
health, the welfare, and the life expectancy of their children. Many of
our best experts believe that within a decade, children born in advanced
societies will have a life expectancy of 100 years. Now, this is a
terrific thing; but in the short run, it means that within 30 years,
more or less, all of our societies will have only two people working for
every one person retired--challenge number one.
Challenge number two, in spite of unprecedented economic prosperity
in many places, there are still people and places that have been left
behind. I'll give you the most stark example.
In America, we have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, 4.1
percent. On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the home
of the Lakota Sioux, the unemployment rate is 73 percent. And in many of
our inner cities, in many of our rural areas, this recovery simply has
not reached because of the lack of educational level of the people or
because of the digital divide or because of the absence of a conducive
investment environment. But every advanced society that seeks social
justice and equal opportunity cannot simply rest on economic success in
the absence of giving all people the chance to succeed.
Number three, there has, by and large, in all of our societies with
heavy reliance on the market, been an increase in income inequality. I'm
happy to say it is moderating in the United States. In countries that
have chosen to make sure that did not happen, very often there have been
quite high levels of unemployment, which people also find unacceptable
and which is another form of social inequality.
The next problem, with more and more people in the work force, both
women and men, and more and more children being raised in homes that are
either single-parent homes or two-parent homes where both the parents
work, it is absolutely imperative that we strike the right balance
between work and family. In this case, I think virtually every European
country has done a better job than the United States in providing
adequate family leave policies, adequate child care policies, adequate
supports.
But let me just put it in this way. If most parents are going to
work, either because they have to or they want to, then every society
must strive for the proper balance, because if you have to choose
between succeeding at home and succeeding at work, then you are defeated
before you begin. The most important job of any society is raising
children; it dwarfs in significance any other work. [Applause] Yes, you
may clap for that. I appreciate that. It does.
[[Page 2129]]
So if people at work are worried about the children at home or in
child care, they're not going to be so productive at work. That means
that either the economy or the social fabric will suffer. It is a
profoundly important issue that will only grow more significant in the
years ahead.
The next big issue, I believe, is the balancing of economic growth
and environmental protection. And because of the problem of global
warming, we will have to prove not only that we can maintain the quality
of the environment but that we can actually improve it while we grow the
economy. I want to say a little more about that later, but it's a very
important issue.
Finally, I would like to put another issue on the table. There is a
political problem with achieving this vision, and I'll give you just
three examples involving all of us here. In order to pursue this
economic and social vision, if you start from a position of economic
difficulty and you believe that fiscal discipline is a part of your
proposal that is necessary, then you're going to have upfront pain for
long-term gain. And the question is, will we be able to develop a
progressive governance that will be able to sustain enough support from
the people to get to the gaining part? Because everybody likes to talk
about sacrifice, but no one likes to experience it. Everyone likes to
talk about change, but we always want someone else to go first. And I
have seen it. In our country, I was elected in 1992, and in 1993 I
implemented my economic program, and in 1994 the public had not felt the
benefits of it, and that's one of the big reasons we got a Congress of
the other party.
Chancellor Schroeder is facing the
same sort of challenges. President Cardoso is facing the same sort of challenges. So it's all
very well for us to come here when--as in my case--that things are
rocking along well in our country and the public is supporting us. But I
think it's important that we acknowledge, if we believe in these ideas
they will often have to be pursued when they are controversial in the
knowledge that these difficult changes have to be made in order to have
results over the long term.
And so one of the things I hope we'll be able to frankly discuss is
how we can develop and sustain political support for like-minded people
in all countries who are determined to pursue this approach that we all
know works and has to be pursued in order to create the kind of future
we want for our children and grandchildren.
Now let me just say a word about global politics. I believe there's
an emerging consensus that it's good for the world to promote peace and
prosperity and freedom and security through expanded trade; through debt
relief for the poorest nations; through policies that advance human
rights and democracies; through policies in the developing countries
that expand the rights and opportunities of women and their daughters;
through policies that stand against terrorism, against the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction, and against the spread of ethnic,
racial, and religious hatred.
What are the specific challenges to this consensus? I'll just
mention a few. How do you place a human face on the global economy?
We're going to have a WTO ministerial in Washington State in a few days.
There will be 10 times as many people demonstrating outside the hall as
there will be inside. And I understand more than half of them may not
even be from the United States.
I personally think this is a good thing. Why? Because the truth is
that ordinary people all over the world are not so sure about the
globalization of the economy. They're not so sure they're going to
benefit from trade. They want to see if there can be a human face on the
global economy, if we can raise labor standards for ordinary people, if
we can continue to improve the quality of life, including the quality of
the environment. And if we believe--we, who say we believe in social
justice and the market economy, really want to push it, we have to prove
that the globalization of the economy can really work for real people.
And it's a huge challenge.
Number two, we have to deal with the fact that about half the world
still lives on less than $2 a day, so for most of them, most of this
discussion tonight is entirely academic, which is why debt relief is so
important. We have to deal with the fact that while we talk about having
smaller, more entrepreneurial government, the truth is that in a lot of
poor countries, they don't have any government at all with any real,
fundamental capacity to do the things that have to be done. Even in a
lot of more developed countries, they have found themselves blindsided
by the financial crisis that struck in 1997.
[[Page 2130]]
So we have to acknowledge while we, who say we are developing a
Third Way--and in our case, we've been able to do it with the smallest
Federal Government in 37 years--we have to acknowledge the fact that
some countries need more government. They need capacity. They need the
ability to battle disease and run financial systems and solve problems,
and that it is fanciful to talk about a lot of this until you can
basically deal with malaria, deal with AIDS.
You look at Africa, for example, AIDS consuming many African
countries. But Uganda has had the biggest drop in the AIDS rates of any
country in the world because of the capacity of the Government to deal
with the problem. And I think we have to forthrightly deal with that.
Let me just mention a couple of other issues a little closer to
home. We're going to have to deal with the conflict between science and
economics and social values. Example: the conflict between the United
States and Europe over genetically modified seeds and the growing and
selling of food; the conflict between Britain and France over the sale
of beef.
Listen, this is hot stuff now, but you can see that there's going to
be a lot more of this. And we have to find a way to manage this if we're
going to be in a global society with a global economy, where there are
honest differences and real fears. We have to find a way to manage this
that has integrity and that generates trust among ordinary people.
Another problem that I think is quite important is, all of us will
have to decide how we're going to cooperate and when we separate in an
interdependent world. I think, for example, our Congress did a very good
thing to finally pay our U.N. dues and to enable the United States to
participate in the global debt relief movement. And I think they made a
mistake to defeat the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. But every
one of us will have to deal with these kinds of questions, because there
will always be domestic pressures operating against responsible
interdependence and cooperation.
And finally, I'll mention two other things. I believe that the
biggest problems to our security in the 21st century and to this whole
modern form of governance will probably come not from rogue states or
from people with competing views of the world in governments, but from
the enemies of the nation-state, from terrorists and drugrunners and
organized criminals who, I predict, will increasingly work together and
increasingly use the same things that are fueling our prosperity: open
borders, the Internet, the miniaturization of all sophisticated
technology, which will manifest itself in smaller and more powerful and
more dangerous weapons. And we have to find ways to cooperate to deal
with the enemies of the nation-state if we expect progressive
governments to succeed.
The last and most important point of all, I believe, is this. I
think the supreme irony of our time, as we talk about a new
renaissance--by the way, that would make New York University the
successor of de'Medici--[laughter]--I think--consider this: The supreme
irony of this time is that we are sitting around talking about finding
out the secrets of the black holes in the universe, unlocking the
mysteries of the human gene, having unprecedented growth, and dealing
with what I consider to be very high-class problems: finding the right
balance between unemployment and social justice, dealing with the aging
of society. Isn't it interesting to you that, in this most modern of
ages, the biggest problem of human societies is the most primitive of
all social difficulties: the fear of people who are different from us?
That, after all, is what is at the root of what Prime Minister
Blair has struggled with in Northern Ireland, at
the root of all the problems in the Balkans, at the root of the tribal
wars in Africa, at the root of the still unresolved, though hopefully
progressing problems in the Middle East.
A few weeks ago, Hillary invited two men to the White House for a
conversation about the new millennium. One was one of the founders of the Internet; the other was one of our
principal scientists unlocking the mysteries of
the human genome. And they talked together. It was fabulous, because
these guys said, number one, we would not know anything about the gene
if it were not for the computer revolution because we couldn't have done
the complex sequencing. And then the scientist said, now that they had
done all this complex sequencing, the most stunning conclusion they had
drawn is that all human beings were 99.9 percent the same genetically,
and that the differences of individuals in any given ethnic group,
genetically, were greater than the genetic differences of one ethnic
group to another.
So if you had 100 west Africans and 100 Italians and 100 Mexicans
and 100 Norwegians,
[[Page 2131]]
the differences of the individuals within the groups would be greater
than the composite genetic profile differences of one group to another.
Now, this is in an age where 800,000 people were slaughtered by
machetes in 90 days in Rwanda a few years ago, when a quarter of a
million Bosnians lost their lives and 2\1/2\ million more were made
refugees.
So that's the last point I would like to make. We need a little
humility here. What we really need to be struggling for is not all the
answers, but a unifying vision that makes the most of all these wonders
and relishes all this diversity which makes life more interesting, but
proceeds on the fundamental fact that the most important thing is what
it has always been: our common humanity, which imposes on us certain
responsibilities about how we live, how we treat others who are less
fortunate, how we empower everyone to have a chance to live up to his or
her God-given potential.
If you ask me one thing we could do, it would not be all the modern
ideas. If I had to leave tonight and never have another thing to say
about public life, I would say if we could find a way to enshrine a
reverence for our common humanity, the rest would work out just fine.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 10:43 p.m. in an outdoor tent at the Villa
La Pietra. In his remarks, he referred to Norman Dorsen, professor, and
John Sexton, dean, New York University School of Law; Oliva L. Jay,
president, New York University; Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema of Italy
and his wife, Linda; European Commission President Romano Prodi;
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany; President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso of Brazil; Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom and
his wife, Cherie; Vinton G. Cerf, senior vice president for Internet
architecture and technology, MCI WorldCom; and Eric Lander, director,
Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research.