    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [February 3, 1999]
    [Pages 184-186]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Reception for Jane Harman
    February 3, 1999

        The President. Let me begin by saying that I'm really here for
    Sidney. We are running--we are running on the
    same ticket this year. We're trying to get elected to the congressional
    spouses caucus. [Laughter] He's my guy, and I'm with him until the end
    of time, so here we are.
        I want to thank Representative----
        Audience member. Can't see you.
        The President. Yes, can you see me now? I'll step in. How's that?
        Audience member. Thank you.
        The President. Good. You never saw Jane; she actually was here. I
    wasn't--[laughter]--you may all think I mimed all those previous
    speeches.
        I want to thank Nancy Pelosi and Brad
    Sherman and Congressman Baca for being here, and all those who were here before to
    show their support for Jane. I want to thank my good friend Molly
    Raiser. I think--Skye
    was reminding me--I think the fundraiser I had in this house in 1992 was
    the very first one I had outside my native State of Arkansas. So we're
    all heavily indebted to this wonderful home and its occupants.
        I want to say that I'm profoundly honored to be here tonight,
    because Jane Harman is exhibit A of why the Democratic Party is now the
    true majority party in the United States. She represents a very
    difficult district, and she is proof you can be pro-family and pro-work.
    She's proved you can be pro-environment and pro-growth. She's proved you
    can be pro-labor and pro-business. She's proved that all the things that
    Republicans used to say about us, that they made votes and got elected
    time after time--and there are a lot of people in here, including Gerry
    Ferraro, who have been the victims of
    these sort of cardboard-cutout, preconceived, bogus campaigns that were
    run so effectively for more than a decade. They don't work anymore. And
    one of the things that I feel very blessed to have done, maybe just
    because I have an accent, is to help liberate the

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    Democratic Party from its vulnerability to those kind of attacks.
        But I'm telling you, Jane Harman proved, in getting elected and
    staying elected and doing the right things and taking tough votes, that
    we could build a new majority in this country and that the results would
    be good.
        And I want to say, since she said what she did, I think one of the
    underappreciated things that all of us, the Democrats, have been able to
    do in the last few years is, in spite of the economic difficulties that
    we had to overcome, we've not only produced big budget surpluses; we
    actually have passed an awful lot of progressive social legislation.
    There are over 2 million fewer children in poverty. Over 20 million
    people have taken advantage of the family and medical leave law. Over 5
    million poor people have gone to college with the HOPE scholarship tax
    credit. I could go on and on and on. Ninety percent of our kids are
    immunized against serious childhood diseases. Two million kids now have
    been insured under the Children's Health Insurance Program; by the end
    of this year, I think it'll be 4.
        And that's where America is. This is not a mean-spirited country.
    This is just a country that wants to help people who are disadvantaged
    move into the middle class without breaking down middle class economics
    or values. This is a country that wants everybody to have a chance. And
    Jane Harman represents that.
        And she and Sidney have been great friends
    of mine. I had--one of the best days I've had as President was the day
    that Sidney took me through his wonderful factory in California, and I
    talked to all of his hundreds of employees. And we had a great day.
        But I'm here because Jane Harman, to me, represents not just someone
    who's been my friend and has helped me politically but what the
    Democratic Party embodies and why we can win in 2000 and in the years
    ahead.
        More important than that is, I want her to win because when I'm
    gone, I trust her to do the right thing, and that's very important.
        You know, I don't feel wistful; I don't even feel particularly sad
    about having to leave office at the end of my term, even though I love
    it and I'd probably do it forever if the Constitution didn't stop me.
    [Laughter]
        But I do want you to think about this, and I want you to know why
    I'm going to do--I'm not on the ballot this year, and I am going to do
    more events like this than I have ever done in any year. And I have
    already done more than any previous President has ever done. And I want
    you to know why: because I think so much of what we've done the last 7
    years is to turn this country around, get it going in the right
    direction, and give the American people the confidence that we can build
    a more just, a more decent, a more humane society, and play a more
    constructive role in the world, and still do well. And in fact, the more
    we do the right things, the better we're likely to do economically. And
    it's been a big job, turning this huge ship of state around.
        Now, as I said in the State of the Union the other night--I don't
    want to talk about the specifics tonight; I'd just be singing to the
    choir. But I want you to think about this, and Jack Valenti will identify with it, and so will Lloyd Hand. Our country has had the longest economic expansion in
    history. Virtually every social indicator is going in the right
    direction. There is a very high level of confidence that we can do
    whatever we set our minds to do, and we have the smallest amount of
    internal crisis or external threat we've had in my lifetime. Never in my
    lifetime has this happened.
        Now, the last time it almost happened was in the early sixties,
    which was the previous longest economic expansion in our history. When
    President Kennedy was killed--I disagree with all these people that date
    the start of American cynicism and all that to the assassination of
    President Kennedy. That's not true. People are rewriting history.
    President Johnson did a fine job in taking over, and President Kennedy's
    family was supportive. And the country rose above that, and we were
    moving forward.
        When I finished high school in 1964, we had low unemployment, low
    inflation, high growth, high expectations, and most people believed that
    the President and the Congress would find an orderly, legal way to meet
    the civil rights challenges of this country, to meet our
    responsibilities in the cold war, and to move on to greater heights. And
    a lot of people, frankly, just took it for granted and didn't see a lot
    of the big challenges there in the way that they might--plus which, time
    and chance intervened.
        All I know is, when I finished high school, everybody in America
    thought we were headed in the right direction, no interruptions ahead.
    Two years later, we were divided over Vietnam. We had riots in the
    streets. Trying to meet

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    both obligations undermined our economy. It has taken us 35 years to get
    back to the point, as a nation, that we were then.
        I'm not saying to you this as a President or a Democrat. As a
    citizen, as an American, I have waited for 35 years for my country to be
    in a position where we could build the future of our dreams for our
    children and be genuinely good neighbors to people around the world. And
    we have tools to do it now and the absence of clouds that were not there
    35 years ago.
        That's why I'm here; that's why I'm going to do more of these
    things. Because people tend to get in trouble--individually, in
    families, at work, and as nations--in two kinds of circumstances, and
    anybody that's over 30 here will identify with both. One is, you tend to
    do really stupid things when you get mad and hurt and exhausted because
    you can't sleep, because you're so mad, hurt, and exhausted. The second
    time when you make a lot of mistakes is when you think things are going
    so well there are no consequences to what you do, and so you don't have
    to think and plan and look ahead and deal with the big stuff. That is
    what we face today. Democracies are great in times of crisis. We were
    hell on wheels in the Depression. We were great in World War II. We had
    a remarkable constancy all during the cold war, notwithstanding the fact
    that we had disagreements over the details.
        What are we going to do now with all this? That is the great
    question. I trust Jane Harman to not let us forget that we're going to
    double the number of people over 65 in the next 30 years, to not let us
    forget that the children of this country are growing more numerous and
    more diverse, and they'll either be our greatest asset or a big drag on
    the world we're trying to build. You know, I trust her to deal with
    these big things that I talked about in the State of the Union Address.
        And I trust you to continue to support that. When you go home
    tonight and you think about how many more times somebody's going to ask
    you to show up at one of these things this year, you think about how
    many times you'd rather be doing something else, you think about how
    tiring this gets, you just remember this, especially those of you that
    are around my age: We have waited for 35 years. And we must make sure
    the American people--in this Presidential race, in these congressional
    races, in everything we say and do--dominate the conviction of America
    to make the most of this moment.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:54 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Jane Harman, candidate for California's 36th
    Congressional District, and her husband, Sidney, chief executive
    officer, Harman International Industries, Inc.; Molly Raiser, member of
    the board of directors, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, and her
    daughter Skye; former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro;
    Jack Valenti, president, Motion Picture Association of America; and
    Lloyd Hand, executive committee member, Congressional Economic
    Leadership Institute.