    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 4, 2000]
    [Pages 382-384]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception in Los Angeles,
    California
    March 4, 2000

        Thank you, Neil. I want to begin by just
    telling you that from the moment I got out of the car, I realized that I
    was going to have a wonderful time this evening. I thank the Nazarians, the Farahniks, and the Kadishas, and all of you for being here.
        Gray Davis was talking about this being the
    Governor's Mansion. When I walked in here and looked up at the spiral
    staircase, I said, ``You know, I really do live in public housing, after
    all.'' [Laughter]
        Seriously, let me say to all of you that I am profoundly honored to
    be here with you tonight because what our host said in his opening
    remarks, about coming here from Iran with nothing and how well he has
    done, and all of you have done, is a testament to the power of faith and
    family and work. Thank you for having the rabbi here tonight. He even
    gave me a book to read tonight. [Laughter] I promised to read it as
    quickly as I can.
        I ran for President because I felt that this country had the best
    system in the world if people were given the conditions and the tools in
    which their faith, their family, their work could flourish. And it has
    been a joy and an honor to serve. For whatever role I have played in our
    prosperity and our improving social progress and our role in peace
    around the world, I am very grateful. But I want you to think tonight
    about, also, the role you can play. There is no such thing as a time to
    completely rest, maybe a day, a week, but not a long time. And a country
    becomes great by always trying to do better, sometimes in small steps,
    sometimes in large steps.
        I believe some very basic, simple things. You said that the
    President is not royalty yet. Most of the people in the national
    political press certainly agree with that statement. [Laughter] But I
    came from the heartland of America. I was the first person in my family
    ever to graduate from college. But I was taught to believe something as
    a child I still believe. And I look around here, and I see the living
    embodiment.
        I believe every person counts, that everyone should have a chance,
    that everyone has a responsible role to play in life, and that we all do
    better when we help each other. I believe that freedom is the best
    system of government to allow the values that any of us have to
    flourish. And the fact that you can come here, preserve your community,
    and be a part of the larger American community is stunning evidence that
    that is right.
        I regret that so many of you had to leave your native land, one of
    the most wonderful places in all of human history, one of the most
    important places, culturally, in all of human history. And I hope and
    pray that what we have seen in three elections now, there, means that
    there is a movement toward openness and freedom there, too, and that
    someday all of you will be able to go home to visit and have two homes,
    complete and open and free.
        I have done my best to support that process in the limited way any
    American President can. I have also done my best to stand against the
    forces of religious and racial and ethnic and tribal hatred throughout
    the world, as you pointed out, from Northern Ireland to the Middle East
    to Africa to the Balkans. I have tried to protect the right of every
    person in this country and to advance the right of every person in every
    country to practice their faith as they see

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    fit. And I have found more than ever that usually, when you do the right
    thing, it turns out to be the practically beneficial thing.
        And so, as I think about this moment--here we are on the eve of
    another set of elections--it seems like only yesterday I first took the
    oath of office. And this is the first election in almost 30 years that I
    have not been involved in as a candidate. And on most days, I'm all
    right. [Laughter] But tonight I speak to you not only as your President
    but as a citizen. I believe that our obligation in this election is to
    show that we are grateful for our prosperity, and we intend to do
    something with it. I believe our obligation in this election is to show
    that we are not arrogant about our progress, because we realize we'd
    have profound challenges here and around the world that we can still
    have an impact on, and we should shoulder those challenges and embrace
    them eagerly.
        I believe that this election will be determined by what the people
    of this country decide the election is about. If they decide it's about
    who can offer the most immediate, short-term gratification, we'll be in
    trouble. If they decide that this has been a pretty good 7 years because
    we continued to take the long view and we asked people to save a little
    so that we could get the country out of deficits, and now we're trying
    to get the country out of debt--and lo and behold, it turned out to be
    good social policy, because when interest rates dropped, more jobs were
    created. And more poor people worked themselves into the middle class,
    and the welfare rolls were cut in half. And we were still able to double
    our investment in education. So that's what I am concerned about, as
    your President and as a citizen.
        You came here, some of you came here directly from Iran after a
    terrible upheaval. You know, therefore, that you can never take life's
    blessings for granted. I don't want the American people to take life's
    blessings for granted. I want them to take this as an enormous
    opportunity to build the future of our dreams for all the children of
    this country. If we do that, we'll be just fine.
        Tomorrow I'm going, at 5 o'clock in the morning, to Selma, Alabama,
    where 35 years ago tomorrow, 600 brave Americans walked across a bridge
    for the right to vote. Some of them were killed for it. Many of them
    were brutalized for it. But because they walked across that bridge, this
    country is a better place.
        What I want to say to you is, at the time that happened, most of you
    were not in this country then. Most of you in this room weren't even
    born then. But I was just a young boy. I believed that my President was
    doing a great thing to give every American the right to vote, something
    that had been too long denied. I believed that my Congress was doing a
    great thing to guarantee the civil rights of all Americans. And I
    believed that we were in an economic period of opportunity that would go
    on forever.
        You may know that last month we celebrated the longest economic
    expansion in the history of America. I'm proud of that. The last longest
    economic expansion in the history of America was the decade of the
    1960's, and because we were not careful, it got away from us. And
    instead of passing civil rights laws in Congress, we had riots in the
    streets. Instead of winning the cold war by the power of our example and
    our values and our strong defenses, the country was torn apart over the
    war in Vietnam. Instead of electing people that we admired, we saw
    Senator Kennedy and Martin Luther King killed just before I graduated
    from college.
        I say that not to depress anyone but just to remind you of what you
    who are immigrants and who had to flee your country know: Opportunities
    in life are not to be taken for granted; good fortune is not to be taken
    for granted. We are never to believe that we deserve everything we have.
    Instead, we are to ask ourselves, what is our responsibility? And the
    greater our good fortune, the greater our responsibility. It is not only
    true for families and communities, it is true for a country.
        This country has never had the chance it now has to literally build
    the future of our dreams and to be a force for peace and freedom
    throughout the world. For all of you who have helped me to serve, I am
    very grateful. I worked as hard as I could to turn it around and to get
    things going in the right direction. And I'm not done yet. I get a
    little queasy when people start thanking me for doing a good job. I feel
    as if I'm hearing a eulogy, and I pinch myself--[laughter]--and I feel
    perfectly alive and still very much in harness. But you do have to think
    to the future. You are having elections. You are planning for the
    future.
        The reason I like this Governor and the
    reason my wife, who wishes she could
    be here tonight, told me--when most people thought he had no chance to
    win, she said, ``He'll win,

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    because he's serious about the job, and he has thought more about what
    he would do if he got it.'' And Vice President Gore and I, we've worked
    hard to be serious about the job, to do things that would advance the
    values that we share.
        And so I say to you, I thank you for your help. We'll do our best to
    invest your contributions wisely. But I hope you will continue to talk
    to your friends and neighbors. If somebody asks you tomorrow or the next
    day or the next day, why were you here tonight, don't say, ``Father made
    me come.'' [Laughter] Tell them you came because you understand that
    this good fortune has to be nourished. You understand that it carries
    with it responsibilities, because you want every American to have the
    same chances that you have had, and because we all do better when we
    work together.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:46 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to reception cohosts Neil and Dora Kadisha, Parviz
    and Pouran Nazarian, and Leon and Debbie Farahnik; and Gov. Gray Davis
    of California.