    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 13, 2000]
    [Pages 455-459]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Lincolnwood,
    Illinois
    March 13, 2000

        Thank you very much. Mike, I loved that
    introduction, but it sounds suspiciously like a eulogy, you know?
    [Laughter]
        I was in Cleveland today, before I came here, and I reminded the
    crowd there that the last time I had come to Cleveland was to say
    goodbye to former Representative Lou Stokes,
    who was retiring from the Congress. And we went to an elementary school
    in his district where there were a lot of young AmeriCorps volunteers,
    like the ones who met me in Chicago tonight when I got off the plane.
    And they were serving in their communities, helping kids. They were
    teaching all these kids at this school to learn to read and kind of
    navigate their way in the world.
        And I got down--I started with the oldest kids, and I got down to
    the 6-year-olds, and I'm shaking hands with all these 6-year-old kids.
    And this little kid looked way up at me, and he said, ``Are you really
    the President?'' [Laughter] And I said, ``Yes, I am.'' He said, ``But
    you're not dead yet.'' [Laughter] And I realized that for him,
    Presidents were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and a part of the
    job description was you had to be deceased. And when people talk about
    me the way Mike did, I have to pinch myself and
    say, ``I'm still here.'' [Laughter] But I loved it.
        I want to thank Mike and Pat for having us in their beautiful home, and I want to
    thank them. And Jim, thank you for the work you
    did on this event tonight. And so many of you have been so good to me
    and to the Democratic Party. My friend Ed Rendell--I asked him to take this part-time job when he retired as
    mayor of Philadelphia, and he's wearing himself out at it. And thank
    you, Senator Durbin, for being here. Yes,
    he's doing a great job. Give him a hand. [Applause] I want to thank Lou
    Weisbach and Joe Cari for the work they're doing to help our party. And thank
    you all for coming.
        I know we're going to have a little time for questions when I
    finish, so I'll try to be brief. But I want to say a few things. First
    of all, I am profoundly grateful to the people of Chicago and the people
    of Illinois for the support that they have given to me and Hillary and
    Al and Tipper Gore, starting in December of '91, when I began my
    campaign here in earnest, through the Democratic primary in '92, through
    two great elections and all of Illinois' electoral votes. And I am very
    grateful.
        Secondly, I want to thank you, those of you, a large number of you
    in this room, who have already helped my wife in her quest to join Dick Durbin in the U.S. Senate. I thank you for that.
        Thirdly, I want to thank Mike Cherry for all
    those ties. [Laughter] That would be--that's a good reason--if I could
    run for a third term, I would, just to get 4 more years of ties from
    Mike Cherry. I was--one wag that works in the White House asked me the
    other day, he said, ``What are you going to do when you're not President
    anymore and you'll have to start buying your own ties? You'll be
    bankrupt in no time, you know.'' He's spoiled me.
        The second thing I want to say to you is that what Mike said about
    the progress that our country has made over the last 7 years is very
    important to me. But it really only matters insofar as it's evidence of
    what we can and should do in the future. After all, that's what you
    hired me to do. And I ran for President because I thought Washington was
    off on the wrong track, and they were just up there fighting with each
    other and divided among themselves, and the way people even talked about
    issues and politics and real life in Washington bore no relationship to
    what I had tried to do for many years as Governor of my own State.
        So I thank you for that. But the important thing is the future. Some
    of you heard me tell this story, but I used to go out to the State

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    Fair in Arkansas every year on a day I'd have Governor's Day, and I'd
    just sit there and meet with whoever showed up. In 1990--1989, late
    '89--I was trying to decide whether to run for a fifth term as Governor
    in 1990. And this old boy in overalls showed up, about 70 years old, and
    he said, ``Well, Bill, are you going to run again?'' And I said, ``Well,
    I don't know. If I do, will you vote for me?'' He said, ``I guess so; I
    always have.'' And I said, ``Well, aren't you sick of me after all these
    years?'' And he said, ``No, I'm not, but everybody else I know is.''
    [Laughter] I said, ``But don't you think I've done a good job?'' He
    said, ``Well, sure you have, but that's what we pay you to do.'' He
    said, ``You collect a paycheck every 2 weeks.'' It was a healthy little
    reminder that elections are always about tomorrow. That's why we're
    still around here after over 200 years.
        And I have tried to give this country a relentless focus on the
    future and a way of getting there together. I believe everybody matters;
    everyone should have a chance. I believe everyone has a responsible role
    to play. I believe we all do better when we help each other. Simple
    ideas, and the country is better off than it was 7 years ago. And for
    that I'm grateful.
        But we've got a lot of work to do this year. We've got a profoundly
    important vote on whether to approve China's entry to the World Trade
    Organization and acquire massive access to their markets, which we don't
    have now. We're trying to raise the minimum wage for workers that are
    still working 40 hours a week and living on the edge of poverty. We're
    trying to get tax deductibility to middle class parents for the cost of
    college tuition.
        We're trying to get seniors on Medicare the option of buying
    prescription drug coverage, when we know three out of five seniors in
    this country, in spite of all our work, still can't afford the medicine
    they need. We're trying to get a tax break for people who take care of
    their elderly or disabled relatives at home, because it's such an
    expensive but lonely choice, and I think they need our help.
        We're trying to modernize our schools by repairing and building
    thousands of them and making sure they're all hooked up to the Internet
    and giving all the troubled kids in this country access to after-school
    programs. We've got a big agenda. And it's very important that we
    continue to build on the work of the last 7 years in this year, to keep
    moving relentlessly forward.
        And the last thing I'd like to say about all this is it's also very
    important that we make the right decisions in this election year.
    Several of you mentioned today the almost incredible attack that the
    leader of the NRA leveled on me, saying that
    I actually wanted a bunch of these kids to die so we'd have a reason to
    inconvenience gun owners. And you know, I don't want to get into a big
    personal shouting match about a comment that is clearly ridiculous. What
    I want you to understand is, there will be a lot of shouting and name-
    calling and elbowing in this election. There always is. But what I want
    you to understand is that underneath all that shouting and name-calling,
    notwithstanding what Mayor Rendell said, I don't think it's necessary to
    believe that Governor Bush is a bad human
    being to believe he shouldn't be President. I don't believe it's
    necessary to believe that the Republicans in the House and Senate are
    bad people to believe that they shouldn't be in the majority.
        And I have to tell you, my experience in politics--I'm not running
    for anything. I'm just telling you, I've been in this business a long
    time. Most of the people that I have known in both parties worked harder
    than they got credit for and were more honest than people believed they
    were and did the best they could, day-in, day-out.
        This election is about people who honestly have different views
    about the way to the future. And what I hope you'll tell people is, it's
    not like we don't have a test here. We tested their way, and we tested
    our way. And now you've got a choice, because in the election of 2000,
    the Vice President says we ought to keep paying down the debt; save
    enough money to save Social Security and Medicare, so when the baby
    boomers retire they don't bankrupt their kids and their ability to raise
    their grandkids; and give the rest of it, after we invest in education
    and health care, to the taxpayers in a tax cut we can afford.
        And Governor Bush says we ought to have one even bigger than the one
    I vetoed last year, which means we can't guarantee the security of
    Social Security and Medicare or invest in education, or if we try to,
    we're going to go back to running big deficits.
        Now, we tried it their way, and we tried it our way. And you have to
    decide whether you

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    think it was better in '91 and '92, or it was better in '99 and 2000.
    But you don't have to think they're bad people. This is an honest
    difference of opinion.
        We believe that it is not unbearable to ask legitimate hunters and
    sports people in this country to agree that all handguns ought to have
    child trigger locks; that the Brady background checks we do at gun shows
    ought to be done--I mean, at gun stores ought to be done at gun shows
    and urban flea markets; that since we banned assault weapons, we
    shouldn't let people get around it by importing these big ammunition
    clips. And they disagree. It's an honest disagreement. I think we're
    right and they're wrong. We've got a 25-year low in crime rate, 30-year
    low in the gun death rate; half a million felons, fugitives, and
    stalkers haven't gotten handguns because we started doing these
    background checks. And we have to choose.
        You know, I believe we ought to provide more health insurance for
    lower income working people and their kids. I think it would be good for
    the hospitals, too, that are strapped for money. And we have a proposal
    on that. I believe we can grow the economy and improve the environment,
    and so does our Vice President.
        I think experience matters, and there's no question, even the people
    that don't agree with anything I've done and don't agree with anything
    he's done will admit that Al Gore has been the most influential Vice
    President in the history, that's had the biggest impact over the largest
    number of issues, in the history of the Republic. Now, that's a fact.
    That's not something to debate. And I guess it's self-serving for me to
    say because the President has to okay that. But I never could figure out
    why Presidents would want Vice Presidents if they didn't want to put
    them to work; never made any sense to me. [Laughter] And I could never
    figure out why anybody would want to be Vice President if they didn't
    want to get up and go to work every day. And fortunately, I found a
    fellow workaholic who did a fabulous job.
        You know, Dick Durbin--I believe he
    did the right thing to try to protect our children from the dangers of
    tobacco. I think he did the right thing--and to protect them from guns.
    Now, I believe--and I could go on and on and on. So what I want to say
    to you is, I hope that even though--I think I've done a pretty good job
    of bringing this country together, not such a good job of bringing
    Washington together. That may be something beyond human powers.
    [Laughter]
        But I hope that we Democrats this year will go out there and run an
    aggressive campaign, not shy from debates, don't mind a fight, but make
    it about the American people. You know, voters are not stupid. They
    know, when politicians are throwing off on each other, they're trying to
    help themselves; they're not interested in them. But when they're
    fighting about issues, they can relate to that, because that has to do
    with how the rest of us live.
        And when people ask you why you came tonight, say, ``Look, I came
    because the country's better off than it was 7 years ago. They had some
    good ideas, and they turned out to be right. I came because I support
    what we're trying to do this year. And I came because this is a big, big
    election.''
        And let me just close with this thought. I have spent a lot of time
    trying to build what I call one America, to bring people together across
    racial and ethnic and religious lines, fight against hate crimes and
    fight for the ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act,'' and to be a force
    for reconciling conflicts around the world.
        And if God came to me tonight and said, ``Well, I'm sorry, you can't
    finish your term. You've got to finish tomorrow. You're history. And I'm
    no genie, I'm not going to give you three wishes, but I'll give you
    one,'' I would wish for America to be one nation, one united country,
    where people celebrated our differences but revered our common humanity
    even more, because I don't think we'll be able to do good around the
    world unless we are good at home.
        And that goes to our political differences as well. I had more fun
    in the State of the Union watching the Republicans and the Democrats
    when I told them that according to all the research, we were all
    genetically 99.9 percent the same. [Laughter] And I could tell they both
    were grievously discomfited by that statistic. [Laughter] But it's true.
        I've now got this--last year one of the great experiences I had was
    Neil Armstrong came to see me with two of his
    astronaut partners to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Moon
    landing. And he brought me this vacuum-packed Moon rock, which I now
    have on the table right in front of the chairs in the Oval Office. You
    know when you all see the pictures of the Oval

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    Office on television? There's two chairs and two couches, this big
    table. Well, you notice the next time you see it on television, there's
    this vacuum-packed Moon rock. And when people come in and they talk and
    they get real angry--like, we had this conference on gun safety the
    other day, and they got all agitated because I was pushing them to do
    this bill. And they get angry and mad; I stop everybody, and I say,
    ``Chill out. Look at that rock. You see that rock? That rock is 3.6
    billion years old. We are all just passing through, and we need to do
    the best we can right now.'' I want this campaign to be vigorous and
    hard-fought, but it ought to be a happy time. But you ought to be dead
    serious about it.
        The only other point I want to make is one that's kind of heavy on
    me now because a week ago yesterday I got to go to Selma and march
    across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the 35th anniversary of Bloody
    Sunday, when John Lewis and Hosea
    Williams and others were beaten badly trying
    to march to Montgomery to campaign for voting rights. As a southerner,
    it was one of the great moments of my life, with John Lewis, who's one of my true heroes. But here's what I want to
    say to you about it.
        I've been thinking a lot about the sixties lately, because in
    February we had the longest economic expansion in history. Now, before
    we broke the record, the record was held by the decade of the sixties,
    1961 through 1969. And I see a lot of young people here tonight. I was a
    high school senior in 1964, in the middle of this vast expansion, and we
    thought the economy would have high growth, low unemployment, low
    inflation forever. And when I graduated from high school, the country
    was getting over the grief of President Kennedy and honored that
    President Johnson was trying to pass all the civil rights legislation
    through Congress. And we thought all of our racial problems would be
    fixed by laws passed through Congress. And we thought we would win the
    cold war against communism without having the country divided. That's
    what we thought was going to happen. And we were all very--not just the
    kids, like me, the grownups--we just took it for granted, this is what
    was going to happen.
        A year later, Selma occurred. And whites and blacks died in the
    sixties, just 35 years ago, for the right to vote. A year later, '66, we
    had riots in the streets. Then in 1968, when I was a senior in college,
    Robert Kennedy was killed 2 days before I graduated. Martin Luther King
    was killed 2 months before I graduated. Nine weeks before I graduated,
    Lyndon Johnson said he couldn't run for President again. The country was
    split right down the middle over the Vietnam war.
        A few weeks later, Mr. Nixon was elected President on a divisive
    campaign, that he represented the Silent Majority, which meant the rest
    of us were in the loud minority. And it was a campaign of ``us'' against
    ``them''--were you an ``us'' or ``them''? And we've been ``us-ing'' and
    ``them-ing'' ever since. And then a few weeks after that, this vaunted
    economic expansion came to an end, and it was over.
        And what I want all of you to say--a lot of you brought your
    children here tonight. Forget about me being President; as an American
    citizen, I have waited 35 years for my country to be in a position to
    build the future of our dreams for our children together--35 years. And
    I thought about it walking over that bridge and having John Lewis tell me what it was like when he finally realized he was
    going to get his brains beat out. And I thought about how easily things
    can change and how easily we can be lulled into a sense of complacency.
        I've worked as hard as I could for 7 years to turn this country
    around. I'm proud of what's happened. But believe me, nothing has
    happened that can hold a candle to what we could do together now that we
    have good basic conditions. What has happened is nothing compared to
    what we can do.
        And that's what I want you to think about. America is always about
    tomorrow. And those of you who have been blessed enough in this life and
    this economy to be able to afford to come to this dinner tonight--I'm
    glad; I like that. But you wouldn't be here, you'd be at somebody else's
    dinner if you didn't also think that the people that served your food
    ought to make a decent living and ought to be able to have health care
    and their kids ought to be able to go to good schools and that we're all
    going to do better if we go forward together. If you didn't believe
    that, you'd be at somebody else's dinner tonight.
        So I'm telling you, I'm glad you're here. I thank you for helping
    our party. I thank you, those of you who have helped Hillary, those of you who have helped the Vice
    President. I thank you for all that. But
    the fight is still ahead of us. And don't forget this. America is

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    always about tomorrow. And I watched it once before in my lifetime; it
    can get away from you before you know it. This is a solemn
    responsibility we have and an enormous chance. Let's make the most of
    it.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:45 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Mike and Pat Cherry and cohost Jim
    Levin, president, JHL Enterprises; Edward G. Rendell, general chair, and
    Joseph A. Cari, Jr., finance cochair, Democratic National Committee; Lou
    Weisbach, chief executive officer, HA-LO Industries, Inc.; Apollo 11
    astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, and Michael Collins;
    civil rights activist Hosea Williams; Gov. George W. Bush of Texas; and
    Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president, National Rifle Association.