    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [January 19, 2000]
    [Pages 84-88]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Gala
    January 19, 2000

        Thank you very much. I would like to begin this evening by asking
    you all to give another round of applause to my friend Phoebe Snow and her band. I thought they were great here tonight,
    and I thank them for coming. [Applause]
        I want to thank Ed Rendell for
    agreeing to become the chair of our party, for the work we have done as
    friends and partners in the last 7 years. I want to thank Joe
    Andrew, who has really been an
    indefatigable sparkplug. You know, most people think I'm in a good humor
    most of the time, but he makes me look like a sourpuss. [Laughter] I
    mean, the guy is always up. He's like the--and I don't mean this in a
    demeaning way, but he's sort of like our

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    Energizer bunny. He's just always plugging away there. He's always
    there, and I thank him for that.
        I always tell the people that work around me, in good times and bad,
    that reality is composed more or less in equal parts of what happens and
    how you react to it, because we can't control everything that happens,
    but we can always control how we react. This guy is always reacting in the right way, and I thank you. And
    we're in good shape today and well poised for this millennial election
    year.
        I want to thank all the other officers of the DNC, the former
    officers who are here, especially the three new co-finance chairs who
    are here: Carol Pensky, Joel Hyatt, and Joe Cari, all long-
    time friends of mine, and I thank you for your willingness to do this.
        I will be brief tonight for two reasons: You've heard me give a
    speech or two before. And secondly, if I'm not careful, I'll blow what
    little I haven't revealed about my State of the Union Address, and I
    don't want to do that. Let me try to just say a few things that I hope
    you will remember and carry with you when you leave tonight and wake up
    tomorrow.
        First of all, I want you to know that I am profoundly grateful for
    the support and the friendship I have received from so many of you in
    this room who have been with me and Hillary and Al and Tipper all along
    the way, in good times and bad.
        Secondly, I want you to know that I am also very grateful for the
    success America has enjoyed during my tenure and the fact that we were
    able to end the 20th century and begin the 21st on such a high note.
    Most of the credit belongs, as it always does, to the American people,
    without regard to party, people who just get up every day and dream
    their own dreams and take care of their own families and obey the law
    and pay their taxes and make this country hum.
        But it really does matter what tools they have to build their dream.
    It really does matter whether the conditions in which they live and
    labor and raise their children help or thwart those dreams. And that is
    why politics matter. That is why ideas matter.
        I was so glad that Mayor Rendell said what he did. I don't know how
    many times I've said that in the last 4 months. I actually find myself
    watching these debates--and I tried to watch the debates, no offense,
    that the other party was having, too, but I think ours are more
    interesting because our guys actually know a lot of things so they have
    something to say in these things. [Laughter] And it really is
    fascinating to me to listen to them talk. I think that's great.
        But underneath all the specifics, the Democratic Party has been
    transformed and in the process has helped the transforming of America
    over the last 7 years. When we celebrated over the millennial New Year's
    the great achievements of the 20th century, for the world and for the
    United States and the triumph of freedom, it is easy to forget that 7
    years ago two guys that worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer, in Mayor
    Rendell's hometown, in 1992 wrote a best-selling book, the title of
    which was, ``America: What Went Wrong?'' And it swept the country. I
    read it through twice, underlined it.
        Why was that a best-selling book? Because we had an unusual
    combination of high unemployment, social decline--that is, exploding
    welfare and crime rolls and all the other indicators--political gridlock
    in Washington, and after 12 years of trying, the Republicans had finally
    succeeded in discrediting the Government of this country. They told us
    how sorry it was. It took 12 years, and they just about convinced
    people. So there we were in quite a fix: economic distress, social
    decline, political gridlock, and a discredited Government.
        And at least to someone like me, sitting out in the country a long
    way from Washington, it appeared that the debates that were going on
    here were like a broken record. Over and over and over again, you know,
    there was a prescribed Democratic position and a prescribed Republican
    position. There was the prescribed liberal position and a prescribed
    conservative position. And everybody was put in these little boxes, and
    they lobbed their rhetorical artillery across a no-man's land at each
    other. And not much happened, but it was enough to fill the airwaves at
    night. And I thought to myself, you know, if I ran my State like that,
    we'd never get anything done, and we'd just be in a ditch. If people ran
    their businesses like that, we'd have 20 percent unemployment. If people
    ran their families like that, the divorce rate would be 100 percent. It
    was just crazy. It was like we were stuck in this sort of over and over
    and over again way of doing things.
        So I said to the American people, ``I have an idea. I'm a Democrat
    by heritage, instinct,

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    and conviction. But I think we're living in new times; we have to have
    new approaches. We've got to be willing to try new ideas. We've got to
    be willing to break out of old patterns. But we ought to be anchored in
    the fundamental ideas that every American should have opportunity, but
    every American should be a responsible citizen, and that all of us are
    part of a community, and whenever the least of us is in trouble, the
    rest of us are lessened. And no one should be shut out of this community
    just because they're not like the rest of us, as long as they're willing
    to show up every day, obey the law, and be good citizens. And beyond
    that, we ought not to rule out anything; we ought to be willing to try
    new ideas.
        ``And the first thing we've got to do is get this country out of
    debt. But we can't pretend that you can do it by calling for a
    constitutional amendment to balance the budget and then never do
    anything about it. You either have got to raise taxes or cut spending or
    do both.'' Somebody said, what was the single new reform I brought to
    Washington? I think it was arithmetic. [Laughter] We brought arithmetic
    back to Washington.
        Anyway, the rest is history. But I want you to understand that this
    idea--we proved, for example, that the progressive party, or the liberal
    party, if you will, could run the first back-to-back surpluses in 42
    years--not the conservative party, the progressive party--and that we
    could do it and still double our investment in education and training
    because we've given you the smallest Government in 37 years; we've
    eliminated hundreds of programs; we've cut out 16,000 pages of Federal
    regulations. We got rid of stuff that nobody ever comes up to me and
    tells me how much they miss. I'll give anybody here $5 if before I walk
    out of here tonight, you can come up and say, ``I really miss this
    regulation,'' and tell me what it was; or, ``I really wish you hadn't
    gotten rid of that program.'' And I got rid of hundreds of them, so just
    come tell me one. Tell me how you yearn for its return. [Laughter]
        So we said, ``Why should we choose between investing in education
    and science and technology and the environment and health care and
    getting rid of the deficit? Let's do both. Why should we choose between
    tougher punishment or better prevention to lower the crime rate? Why
    don't we do both? Why should we choose between improving the environment
    and growing the economy, especially with the present state of
    development of technology and energy? Let's do both.''
        And the results, I think you'll all agree, have been pretty good.
    And it's not just about economics. Twenty million people have been able
    to take a little time off from work without losing their jobs when there
    is a sick parent or a baby is born under the family leave law, a bill
    vetoed in the previous administration, vetoed because it was supposed to
    be so bad for business. Almost a half million felons, fugitives, and
    stalkers haven't gotten a handgun because of the Brady bill, a bill
    vetoed in the previous administration because it was supposed to
    undermine our freedom to keep and bear arms. Ninety percent of our kids
    immunized against serious diseases for the first time. And I could go on
    and on.
        Now, the first thing I want you to go out and tell people is--I used
    to say when I was at home, ``When you find a turtle on a fencepost, the
    chances are it didn't get there by accident.'' We have worked hard to
    modernize our party and to modernize our country. And we don't claim
    credit for every good thing that went on in this country, but we did
    establish the conditions and give people the tools to make the most of
    their own lives. And that's what we believe the role of the National
    Government is in the 21st century.
        And the second thing, elections are always about tomorrow. I said on
    New Year's Eve that as long as our dreams outweigh our memories, we can
    be forever young. And that is the destiny of this country. And so what
    Americans have to think about is, in '92 we had economic distress,
    social decline, political gridlock, discredited Government; 2000, we've
    got the strongest economy in history. The social fabric is clearly on
    the mend. We have developed as a nation a new consensus, even though
    sometimes you can't tell it here in Washington, for a progressive
    politics that is fiscally responsible but socially concerned. And the
    credibility of the Government's ability to do its job has been restored.
    And for the first time, all these things have happened, and we are not
    paralyzed by an internal crisis or an external threat.
        So the big issue about--if the 20th century was about freedom and
    its triumph, the beginning of the 21st century is about whether we will
    use this wisely. What are we going to do now? And that's what I want you
    to focus on all year long. When you get tired of coming

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    to these things and calling somebody else to help our party, when you
    get weary or some little bump in the road occurs in these elections, I
    want you to remember we didn't get here by accident. You brought us
    here--all those times you wrote checks you'd just as soon not have
    written, all those nights you went to those dinners when you had rather
    stayed home and watched a movie, all those times you've showed up at
    some public event because you wanted to be loyal.
        This is about ideas and change, and the people's lives have changed.
    And we are in a position never before existent in my lifetime to write
    the future of our dreams for our children. What I always hoped we could
    do in my tenure as President is turn this country around and get us
    moving in the right direction, so that our children would literally have
    a chance to build the future of their dreams.
        And so the big question for us now is, what are we going to do with
    this magic moment? Are we going to indulge ourselves in it, pretend that
    the elections don't matter, take some sort of short-term benefit that
    may or may not help us get there? Or are we going to say, ``Thank you,
    God, for giving us this moment. Give us the wisdom to use it well and
    try to honestly say, now what are the big opportunities and the big
    problems that are out there staring us in the face, and what in the
    world are we going to do about it?''
        And for the next year I'm going to do my best to finish the
    unfinished business of the last Congress, from the Patients' Bill of
    Rights to sensible gun legislation, to hate crimes and employment
    nondiscrimination legislation, to trying to extend the life of Medicare
    and get a sensible prescription drug benefit for our seniors--75 percent
    of them don't have it today. I'm going to try to chart the long-term
    direction that I want America to go in. And then I'm going to have as
    ambitious a program for what we can do in the next year as I have ever
    offered the American people in the State of the Union, because I think
    they hired us to show up for work.
        People keep telling me, ``Well, it's election year, you know.'' And
    I say, ``Well, we're all drawing a paycheck, aren't we?'' It's election
    year, and then people who aren't in the election want to use that as an
    excuse not to go to work or not to get anything done. I don't understand
    that. I think we ought to get more done this year because we're not
    running. I don't understand that.
        But hear me well, now. As Democrats we have two obligations that you
    must shoulder. We must be competitive in this campaign. We must be
    determined not to be so out-spent we can't be heard, and we must never
    forget that our job, since we are governing, is to do good things for
    the American people, including good things with our friends in the
    Republican Party whenever they're willing to work with us, and if
    they're not, to the best of our ability on our own. So just remember,
    you've got a lot to be proud of; you've got a good story to tell.
        But the American people now have to decide whether they think this
    turtle got on the fencepost by accident and where they want to go with
    this magic moment in the future. And what I really care about is
    thinking that all this stuff we've labored to do the last 7 years can be
    used together to sort of liberate the energy, the imagination, the
    heart, the spirit of America to be a force for peace and freedom and
    prosperity around the world; to give all the poor people in this country
    who are willing to work a chance to live the American dream; to give
    everybody a world-class education; to bring health insurance to the
    people who can't afford it now; to deal with these big challenges.
        You can make your own list, but just remember the most important
    thing. If you look at where we are now compared to where we were then,
    we got there because we had good ideas, rooted in good values, with a
    real vision. If you look at where we are now, compared to where we can
    go, and you understand that the sky is the limit, you begin to
    appreciate the importance of this election.
        Joe and Ed talk about how I show up at the drop of a hat, even
    though I'm not running for anything. There is a reason. I have never
    forgotten, a day I was here, for whom I was working. I have never been
    under the illusion that I was anything other than the hired hand of the
    American people. And it's contract time again. And they're going to give
    a lot of employment contracts this year, from the White House--in Joe's
    terms, from the White House to dogcatcher. Just once in my life I hope I
    meet the Democratic nominee for dogcatcher some day. There have been
    days where there is not much difference in that and the White House.
    [Laughter]

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        Anyway, it's contract time again. And if you believe in what we've
    done, if you believe in why you drug yourselves out in good weather and
    bad and when you weren't feeling good and you worked all these dinners
    and receptions, if you believe in why you wrote all those checks and did
    all those things, remember, it's contract time again, and the people
    have to decide again. And if we blew this decision, we wouldn't be the
    first people to blow a decision just because things were so good. How
    many times have you made a mistake in your life because things were
    going along so well, you thought there were no consequences to what you
    did or what you decided on any given day?
        This is a momentous election. The American people have been well
    served by our party. They need to be well served by our voices and by
    our continued service. I'll do my part; you'll do yours; we'll have the
    biggest celebration yet in this millennial year.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:27 p.m. in the North Hall at the Corcoran
    Gallery of Art. In his remarks, he referred to entertainer Phoebe Snow;
    Edward G. Rendell, general chair, Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, and
    Carol Pensky, Joel Hyatt, and Joseph A. Cari, Jr., finance cochairs,
    Democratic National Committee; and authors Donald L. Barlett and James
    B. Steele.