    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [May 9, 2000]
    [Pages 873-875]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 873]]

    Remarks at a Reception for Senator Mary L. Landrieu
    May 9, 2000

        I think that young is a relative term. [Laughter] I've decided that
    young is anybody today younger than I am. [Laughter]
        Let me say, I want to thank Jim and Ann for having us in their beautiful, beautiful home. I love
    this place. I always love to come here. And I want to thank Mary and
    Frank and little Connor, who I knew even before he was here. And I want to
    thank all of you for being here for Mary. A lot of you must feel old,
    you come--you do all these things over and over again. So I thank you on
    behalf of Senator Landrieu and Senator Daschle and Senator Lieberman and
    Senator Breaux and Senator Lincoln and Senator Edwards. And
    Congressman Jefferson, thank you for
    being there for us.
        I can't help but tell you, we did this great event for China today,
    where President Ford and President
    Carter came, and Henry Kissinger came. And he always sounds like God with a German
    accent. [Laughter] Maybe God has a German accent, for all I know.
    [Laughter] And Jim Baker--and they all
    gave great talks. And we talked, and I looked out there, and I realized
    that there are all these former Secretaries of State, Secretaries of the
    Treasury, National Security Advisers, chairmen of the Foreign Relations
    Committee of the House and Senate, Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of
    Staff. It was the most--Trade Ambassadors--the most astonishing group of
    Americans.
        And Gerald Ford got up and started
    talking about a vote he cast in 1949 for trade with China that was
    joined in by John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Carl Albert, and Albert Gore,
    Sr. And I realized that I was there with people that represented the
    last 50 years of American history. And then I realized there was one
    person there that represented the whole 20th century, Mike
    Mansfield, who is 97 or 98 now. Didn't
    tell the truth about his age when he was 15 and talked his way into the
    Marines in World War I. And then he came home and studied Asian-Pacific
    affairs, became a professor at Montana, became a Congressman, a Senator,
    President Kennedy's Senate majority leader, a post he held for about 14
    years, I think, a long time anyway. Then President Carter appointed him
    Ambassador to Japan.
        And when Mary said I was young, it reminded me of a story. Shortly
    after I became President, when my mentor, Senator Fulbright, was still
    alive--he was 87 and Mike Mansfield was 91, and they had lunch together
    one day. And the next day Senator Fulbright came to see me. He was
    hitting us all up at the time, and he was still in great shape then. And
    Mike Mansfield looked at him and said, ``Now, Bill, how old are you
    again?'' He said, ``I'm 87.'' And Mansfield said, ``Oh, to be 87
    again.'' [Laughter] So this youth, you know, it's a relative thing.
        I will be very brief. First of all, I first met Mary Landrieu when
    she was a very young State representative and I was a young Governor,
    and neither one of us looked our age. And she still looks younger than
    she is, and I now look more than my age. [Laughter] But I thought she
    was great when I first met her. I always loved her daddy, from the time
    I worked with President Carter and his administration when I was
    attorney general in my home State, and I've known her a long time. And I
    thought when she ran for the Senate that if she could be elected, she
    would be uncommonly effective. Senator Breaux
    worked hard for her; Congressman Jefferson did; Mayor Morial of New
    Orleans did; and I certainly did. And it all worked out pretty well, and
    she has exceeded even my very high expectations.
        I think sometime in the next day or two, the House of
    Representatives is going to pass a House version of this bill that she
    and others have been working on for a long time, to create a permanent
    conservation fund that could literally change the face of hundreds of
    American communities and give us a permanent conservation legacy in
    America, the likes of which we have never had before. That's quite an
    achievement for a first-term Senator. Now, we have to do it, but--
    [applause].
        She is also, as you heard, supporting the administration's
    initiative to get permanent normal trade relations with China. And we
    had that meeting today, and there's no point in me repeating what Gerald
    Ford and Jimmy Carter and all the others said, but I will tell you this:

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    This is the most important national security vote we will make this
    year.
        A lot of you here agree with this issue because you understand the
    economics of it. And as I pointed out today, most of the people who are
    against this are against it out of their frustration or their anxiety
    about globalization, generally, or their frustration because China keeps
    doing things they don't like in human rights, or they don't like the way
    the World Trade Organization operates, or some other reason. It has
    nothing to do with whether or not this is or is not in our economic
    interests or our national security interests.
        But this is an easy vote for a Democrat to say no to. And that's
    another reason I'm here, because Mary Landrieu says yes, because it is a
    significantly important vote. And we will be paying the price for a
    decade if we fail to adopt this. And we could start paying the price
    within a matter of months. It is a profoundly important issue to the
    world that our children and grandchildren will live in. And so I'm here
    for that reason.
        And the third thing I want to say is that Mary and a lot of her
    colleagues have supported our efforts to raise education standards. One
    of the things that bothered me when I ran for President was that people,
    even people who were supporting me, they wanted to vote for change. They
    thought I had a lot of energy, but a lot of them, frankly, didn't
    believe we'd make any difference. They had been so disappointed for so
    long and heard so much political hot air that they didn't think we could
    make a difference. They didn't think things could be better.
        And--welcome, Senator Robb. Thank you
    for being here. You'll forgive me for being impertinent. If you hadn't
    given him a contribution, I hope you'll give him one, too. [Laughter] If
    ever a person deserved to be reelected, he does. And he's going to be,
    and you might as well help him because he needs your help.
        Well, anyway, the thing that bothered me, even in my campaign there
    were people who thought, ``Well, I like old Clinton's ideas, but you
    know, we can't really turn this deficit around or make much of a
    difference in the economy or reduce the welfare rolls or''--you know, I
    heard it all.
        And now, you know what's happened. We've gone from deficit to
    surplus. When I leave office, we will have paid off $355 billion of the
    national debt. And I'm very proud of that. And we'll have the longest
    economic expansion in history and the lowest unemployment in over 30
    years, but also the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment
    ever recorded, the lowest female unemployment in 40 years, welfare rolls
    half the size they were when I took office, and 8 years of declining
    crime.
        Now, what's the point here? We don't have an excuse not to do our
    best anymore, because we know that our common challenges are like all
    other problems: They do yield to intelligent effort.
        And the reason education is so important--I took this education tour
    last week, and I don't want to bore you with the whole thing, but I'll
    just give you three examples. I went to the first charter school in the
    country, which is a public school set up outside the normal rules and
    regulations to serve a specific population or to pursue a specific
    education mission. And if they do well, they can stay in business. If
    they're not, they're supposed to have their charter jerked. That's the
    whole idea, that they're super-accountable.
        Now, they haven't all worked well. We've had problems with one or
    two here. But you should know that when I ran for President, there was
    one; today there are 1,700. Mary's voted to help me create more.
    Overall, they've done better than average schools, and they're vastly
    oversubscribed. People want to get into them.
        And I visited this school in St. Paul, Minnesota, where there are
    over 100 kids who have had terrible problems in their lives, terrible
    problems in school. They were all in school. None of them were dropping
    out. There were no violence problems, no drug problems, no nothing. They
    were showing up every day and learning, and they felt like they had a
    home. And they were performing at a high level.
        I went to Columbus, Ohio, to a school in a very poor neighborhood,
    where they--in Columbus, they've got 55 of these 100,000 teachers we got
    out. And we've been attacked by the Republicans. We got attacked by
    their nominee for President. They say we're trying to micromanage the
    school system. The people met me, everybody from the superintendent on
    down, to thank me for the fact that we were giving them teachers and the
    money had to go for teachers in the early grades. They've gone from 25
    average class size down to 15.

    [[Page 875]]

        And in this one school, in a very poor neighborhood, in one year
    they went from 10 percent of the kids reading at or above grade level to
    45 percent, 10 percent of the kids doing math at or about grade level to
    33 percent, 10 percent of the kids doing science at or above grade level
    to 30 percent--in one year. And they have two of those teachers.
        And then I went to Owensboro, Kentucky. Four years ago the Congress
    required the States--first we required the States to set up school
    standards. Then we required the States to identify schools that weren't
    making it and to come up with a strategy to fix them. Kentucky got out
    there early. Four years ago, they identified 170 failing schools. Within
    2 years, 91 percent were off the failure list.
        This school I visited had two-thirds of its children eligible for
    the free or reduced school lunch program. And they had one of those
    teachers we required to lower class size in the early grades. Listen to
    this. In 4 years, here's what they did--two-thirds of the kids on free
    or reduced lunch. They went from 12 percent to 57 percent reading at or
    above grade level. They went from 5 percent to 70 percent doing math at
    or above grade level. They went from 0 to 64 percent doing science at or
    above grade level. They ranked 18th in the entire State of Kentucky in
    academic achievement. Ten of the 20 best grade schools in Kentucky now
    have over half the kids eligible for free or reduced lunch. Race and
    income are not destiny. And we can also turn the schools around and give
    everybody excellence in education in this country. And that's another
    thing that brought me here tonight.
        Now, this is the last thing I want to say. You want to know how this
    Presidential election is going to come out, how these races for the
    Senate and House are going to come out? It depends upon what people
    think the election is about. Whatever they decide the question is will
    determine the answer.
        What do you think it's about? If you don't remember anything else I
    say, you remember this. I think it should be about, what are we going to
    do with this moment of promise? I think the answer to the question
    should be: We're going to meet the big challenges and seize the big
    opportunities. How are we going to do it? We're going to do it not by
    doing just what I've done but by changing in the direction we're moving
    and not taking a U-turn on economic policy, on education policy, on any
    of these other policies.
        So what do you think the election is about? Do you really believe
    it's about making the most of this moment? What does that mean? It means
    taking on the big challenges and opportunities. How should we do it? We
    ought to keep changing in the direction that brought us here.
        Now if people believe that, then Al Gore will be elected President. We'll pick up seats in the
    Senate. We'll win the House back. And within no time at all, the
    Democrats will be rewarded by the American people for the good
    governance they have brought. That is really the issue.
        But to do it, we have to keep meeting the challenges every day. We
    can't duck the hard votes, like this China vote. We've got to show up,
    be counted, and deliver for the American people.
        I hope you will share this with people. Somebody asks you why you
    came here tonight, tell them you love Mary Landrieu, just like I do; you
    think she's done a great job; but you don't want to see America blow the
    most terrific opportunity we have had in my lifetime to prove we can
    build the future of our dreams for our children. And we've got to have
    people like her to do it.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

     Note:  The President spoke at 7:45 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to reception hosts James and Ann Free; Senator
    Landrieu's husband, Frank Snellings, and their son, Connor; former
    Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker III; Mayor Marc
    H. Morial of New Orleans, LA; and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.