    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [June 15, 2000]
    [Pages 1153-1154]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Reception for Mayor Anthony A. Williams of the
    District of Columbia
    June 15, 2000

        Thank you. You know, when the Mayor said he was going to run for
    Mayor, he was absolutely terrified about making a political speech. I
    think he's about got the hang of it, don't you? [Laughter] I thought it
    was great.
        I want to thank him and Diane for
    their willingness to serve. I want to thank Greg
    and Kathy and the others who put on this event
    tonight, and Ron and Beth for opening their home once again for an eminently
    worthy cause. I want to thank Senator Dole or
    President Dole or Bob--[laughter]--for being here and for speaking, and
    Jack Kemp, who came and left. And Judge
    Webster, thank you for being here.
        I'd like to thank all the Republicans and Democrats and the
    independents who are here in support of our Nation's Capital tonight. I
    will be very brief but, I hope, to the point, because I'll be moving out
    of Washington in a few months. But when I moved here, I had very rich
    memories because I had gone to school in Washington, and I lived in
    Washington for 4 years in the mid-sixties. So I was here when the city
    burned. I was here when the city's main thoroughfares were often full of
    empty stores. I've seen it at its best, at its worst, and at its in-
    between.
        When I came back here and Hillary and Chelsea and I moved into Blair
    House in the 3 weeks before I took office, one of the first things I did
    was to walk down Georgia Avenue and meet with the merchants and talk to
    them. And I always wanted to have a chance to be a good citizen of
    Washington, DC.
        I worked with Senator Moynihan
    and others who were rebuilding Pennsylvania Avenue and was proud to be
    there at the dedication of the Reagan Building, which I think has been a
    wonderful addition to this great city. I went with Steve Case not very long ago to a high school here to talk about
    how we could improve the quality of education with technology.
        I was just today with Reverend Wintley Phipps, whom a lot of you know, at the U.S. Dream Academy
    here in Washington, doing wonderful work giving kids from very tough
    backgrounds a chance to have a better life.
        I love this place. And I was honored that we had a bipartisan big
    block of support for the legislation to revitalize DC. Essentially, what
    we did was, we took--the Federal Government assumed the functions that
    the DC government was having to pay for, that no other city in America
    had to pay for because all the other cities had a State to pay for it.
    We've also provided big tuition support for DC students to go out of
    State to school as in-State students and tried to provide some
    initiatives to encourage more private investment here, as well as to
    have the Government do more directly. And we've got a lot more to do,
    and I hope in the next 6 months, working with Speaker Hastert and others, you will see a big bipartisan
    initiative which will lead to more investment in the District of
    Columbia. So I hope that will happen.

    [[Page 1154]]

        But you know, it has been my great honor on your behalf to travel to
    over 60 other countries. Senator Dole and I did an
    event the other night, and he said he was glad that the event could be
    scheduled on a night when I was visiting America. [Laughter] And I took
    it pretty well, considering I was jet lagged. Actually, I thought it was
    pretty funny.
        But I've been to all these other capitals. You know, I've been to
    Paris. I've been to London. I've been to Moscow. I've seen the billion-
    dollar restoration of the Kremlin, which is breathtaking, if any of you
    ever get a chance to see it. But there is no capital city in the world
    as beautiful as Washington. And there is no city now that is any more
    diverse.
        Yes, we've still got a lot of these problems, but what Tony Williams
    did was to prove that the Mayor's Office was a job, a very important
    job, a job that required vision and leadership as well as management
    skills, but a job where arithmetic still counted, a job where it still
    mattered if you showed up for work and really worked hard, all day,
    every day, a job where it mattered if you treated everybody just the
    same, whatever their race or political affiliation. And because all of
    us love the District of Columbia, he enlisted in an overwhelming
    response by being extraordinarily good at doing what he'd be the first
    to tell you he simply should have done.
        And now that we have the kind of leadership that he has given our
    city, I want to ask all of you: When I'm gone from here and I'm no
    longer a citizen of this city, it will always be a big part of my
    childhood, always be obviously the major part of my adult life and
    service. But we can make this city in every way the finest capital in
    the world and a good place for all the children who live in it. And
    ironically, in order to do one, we have to do the other. We owe it to
    this man to help him, not just with contributions but every day. No one
    could ask for more from a Mayor than he is giving us. We have to be
    willing to give whatever he asks from us.
        Thank you very much.

     Note:  The President spoke at 7:39 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Mayor Williams' wife, Diane Simmons Williams;
    event cochairs Greg Earls and Kathy Kemper; reception hosts Ronald I.
    Dozoretz and Beth Dozoretz; former Senator Bob Dole; former
    Representative Jack F. Kemp; former Judge William H. Webster, U.S. Court
    of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; Steve Case, president and chief
    executive officer, America On-Line; and gospel singer Wintley Phipps,
    founder and director, United States Dream Academy.