    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [February 28, 2000]
    [Pages 329-333]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Democratic Governors' Association Dinner
    February 28, 2000

        Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm
    welcome. Thank you for this wonderful book. Governor Patton, Mrs. Patton, Governor
    Davis, Governor O'Bannon; to B.J. Thornberry and all
    the officers of the DGA and especially my great friend Mark
    Weiner. I want to acknowledge also the
    presence--Mark Weiner did a good job tonight, and all the rest of you
    did, raising this money. I thank you for that.
        I want to acknowledge the presence in this audience of the man who
    was the executive director of the DGA when I was a member, my good
    friend Chuck Dolan. I thank you for
    being here and for all you did for us. And all my colleagues--I know
    there are five or six Governors out there who are former Governors with
    whom I served--thank you for being here.
        I want to acknowledge the Governors who are retiring. Governor
    Rossello, thank you for everything you've
    done. And Governor Carper and Governor
    Carnahan are going to be Members of the United
    States Senate, and that will be a good thing for the Senate, a bad thing
    for the Governors.

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        I want to say a special work of thanks to the man who nominated me
    to be vice chairman of the DGA in 1979, Governor Jim Hunt, one of the finest people I ever met in my life. Thank
    you, Jim Hunt, for what you did.
        You know, I will treasure this book. I have a first edition of
    ``Profiles in Courage,'' but not one signed by John Kennedy. Hillary
    says that the reason I admire John Kennedy so much is, he's the only
    person to ever serve as President whose handwriting was even harder to
    read than mine. [Laughter] But I can recognize the signature, and I
    thank you.
        President Kennedy once said, ``The party which, in its drive for
    unity, discipline, and success, ever decides to exclude new ideas,
    independent conduct, or insurgent members is in danger.'' Well, thanks
    to the Democratic Governors, to your new ideas, your independent
    conduct, and your willingness always to try to do better and to be
    different, the Democratic Party is in no danger. We're stronger tonight
    than we have been in many, many years, thanks to you.
        As President, I have been deeply indebted to my service as Governor.
    It has stood me in good stead. And I have been deeply indebted to so
    many of you for the friendship, the advice, the counsel you have given
    me, and to so many who were members of this organization with me who
    continue all during these years to call with a helpful word or sometimes
    just a word of friendship and support.
        Thanks to our partnership and the hard work of the American people,
    our country is in good shape at the dawn of the new millennium. We have
    21 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the
    lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest crime rates in 25 years,
    the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest Hispanic- and African-
    American unemployment rate ever, and the longest economic expansion in
    history. We are well-positioned for this new century.
        And I am very proud that there is in this country, embodied in the
    service of the Democratic Governors, a new Democratic Party, committed
    to new ideas and the old principles of opportunity for all,
    responsibility from all, and a community of all Americans. I am proud of
    what we have done together.
        But you came here tonight because we're raising money for the
    elections of 2000. And as dearly as I loved every single word Paul
    Patton said, and I'll treasure it for a lifetime--and he'll never be
    able to get away from it because everywhere I go, the White House
    Communications Agency captures things on film. I've got a movie, a color
    movie of Paul Patton, and the next time he
    gets mad at me, I'm going to play it for him. [Laughter] I will treasure
    everything he said for a lifetime. As much as I treasure and as much as
    I have loved being President, elections are about the future. And in
    this election season, those of you who are running and those of you who
    are serving and not running must be very active in defining the choices
    for the future.
        Last night at the dinner at the White House, I reminded all the
    Governors that we are now in the longest economic expansion in history,
    and it's easy to feel comfortable and confident, maybe even a little
    complacent. But the last time we had the longest economic expansion in
    history was in the decade of the 1960's, between 1961 and 1969.
        In 1964, when I graduated from high school, America was still
    profoundly sad about the loss of President Kennedy, but very optimistic
    and very united behind President Johnson; absolutely convinced we'd just
    have high economic growth with low inflation from now on; absolutely
    convinced that we would solve the civil rights challenges of our age
    through the Congress; absolutely convinced that we would prevail in the
    cold war as a united nation.
        Within 2 years, we had riots in the streets, and the country was
    divided. Within 4 years, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been
    killed. Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run for reelection. The country
    was split right in two. We had a Presidential election which for the
    first time in a long time was about the politics of division. You
    remember the election of 1968? ``Vote with the Silent Majority.'' And it
    was ``us'' and ``them.'' If you weren't in the Silent Majority,
    presumably, you were in the loud minority. I know; I was one of them.
    And in just a few months, we lost the longest economic expansion in
    history. And we've had decades of ``us'' and ``them'' elections and
    ``us'' and ``them'' politics in Washington, DC.
        I ran for President because when I was a Governor, I could not have
    survived practicing politics the way it was done here every day, and I
    was sick and tired of people all caught up in the Washington political
    game, deaf to the voices of the people like those in Appalachia

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    that Paul Patton introduced me to. On that
    hot day in Hazard, Kentucky, which I'll never forget because it was so
    hot, I saw people like the people I grew up with. They don't want much
    from us. They get up every day and go to work, and they obey the law,
    and they pay their taxes. All they want us to do is to work as hard at
    our job as they work at theirs and to pay attention to what their
    concerns are and to think about how their children are going to do
    better.
        And I came to Washington determined to do that. I am profoundly
    indebted to every Governor who served with me, who helped me, and to all
    of you since. But what I want you to remember is, elections are about
    the future, and so is governance. And don't you dare be complacent about
    this. I have waited for 35 years for my country to be in shape again to
    build the future of our dreams for our children. Our party can lead the
    country to do that. We're going in the right direction. We have the
    right ideas. We have the right values. And you have to lead to make sure
    it happens.
        And you have to be willing to do things that may not grab the
    headlines all the time. We have to take what Theodore Roosevelt said at
    the dawn of the century: ``A growing country with a young spirit should
    always take the long look ahead.'' Today some of you came in to see me,
    including Governor Carper and former
    Governor Dukakis, who is here tonight, to
    talk about my Amtrak budget. Well, that's not a headline grabber, but
    it's important to the future that America have a high-speed rail system
    that guarantees our energy security and our safety and our strength.
    It's part of our long look ahead.
        It's part of our long look ahead that we recognize that we've got
    the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years. That is the good news.
    The challenge is that nearly every family in nearly every income group
    is having some difficulty balancing the burdens of raising their
    children and succeeding at work, and whenever this country has to make a
    choice--any family--we lose.
        And we have to do more to help people to succeed at home and at
    work. We have to do more to bring economic opportunity to the people and
    places that have been left behind. If we can't bring free enterprise to
    Appalachia, to the Mississippi Delta, to the inner cities, and to the
    Indian reservations of this country now, we'll never get around to it.
    And the Democrats ought to lead the way. Everybody deserves a chance to
    work who is willing to do so.
        Jim Hunt said something today I want to emphasize. We started out
    together in 1979, and we all wanted--especially in the South, where we
    knew we had to do it--we all wanted to make education better. But we
    really didn't know how to do it, especially with all the kids from all
    the different backgrounds, the different economic and racial and
    religious and ethnic backgrounds, with all their different burdens that
    they carried from home to school.
        But we don't have an excuse anymore. Now, we know what works. We
    know how to turn around failing schools. We know all our kids can learn.
    And we know how to invest in it. We know how to demand high standards.
    We know what to do. We in the Democratic Party have to lead America to
    excellence in education for every single child in this country, across
    all the lines that divide us.
        When I became President, there were a lot of people that never
    thought the crime rate would go down again. But we know how to do it. We
    know you've got to put more police on the street, people who are trusted
    by folks in a community, who work with them, who know how to prevent
    crime as well as catch criminals. And we know--even in the South, we
    know--we've got to do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals
    and away from children. We know what works. The Democratic Party ought
    to lead the country to making this the safest big country in the world.
    We owe that to our children.
        We know that in the digital economy the Governors came here to talk
    about, you do not have to weaken the environment to improve the economy.
    In fact, we know that we can improve the environment and the economy at
    the same time. There is a $1 trillion market in the world today for
    environmental technologies that avoid the worst consequences of global
    warming and clean up local air and water systems and preserve the land--
    $1 trillion market. We know that. And a lot of our friends in the other
    party don't know that yet. The Democratic Party ought to lead the way to
    a 21st century economy that proves we can have the strongest economy in
    history and the cleanest environment in history. We ought to lead the
    way to that sort of future.
        And we know, even those of you that come, as I do, from a landlocked
    State in the middle

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    of the country, that there is no more artificial dividing line between
    foreign policy and domestic policy. We know that our welfare is tied to
    the welfare of people all around the world. That's why I've worked so
    hard for peace in every region of the world and why I've worked to
    expand trade and why I believe we ought to take advantage of an
    agreement that finally opens China's markets to us, the way our markets
    have been open to China for decades now; why I believe we ought to
    continue to work to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction,
    chemical and biological terrorism; why we ought to adopt the test ban
    treaty--even though the Senate voted against it last year--because we
    have got to make a safer world if we want our kids to live on safer
    streets and have a safer future in every State in the United States of
    America.
        And, finally--you know, I get apprehensive when people start giving
    me gifts, even one like this that I treasure. That's the kind of thing
    that they ought to do for you when you're not around anymore. I have to
    pinch myself. I'm still alive; I'm still here. [Laughter] I hope to be a
    useful citizen when I'm no longer living in the White House. But if the
    good Lord came to me tonight and said, ``I'm sorry, you can't finish
    your term. You're out of here tomorrow morning. And I'll only give you
    one wish. I'm not a genie; you get one wish, not three,'' I would set
    aside everything I just said to you and pray that America could find a
    way to overcome the profoundly ingrained tendency of people everywhere
    to distrust people who are different from them by race, by religion,
    people who were gay, all these things that are different.
        Why? You've been here talking about the Internet economy. I've got a
    cousin in Arkansas who plays chess once a week with a guy in Australia
    over the Internet. People are being drawn together as never before. I
    was in poor villages in Africa where the school buildings had maps that
    still had the Soviet Union on it. But because they're getting computer
    hookups, pretty soon they'll just be able to print out maps that are
    new, and those poor little kids in those little villages will be able to
    learn the same geography our kids do in our finest schools.
        We are being drawn together as never before, and yet we are
    bedeviled by the oldest problems of humankind. Sunday I'm going to Selma
    to be with Governor Siegelman and the veterans
    of the Selma march 35 years ago. For me, particularly because I'm from
    the South, it is a signal honor. And we will celebrate all the great
    things that have happened in the last 35 years to bring us together.
        I see Governor Barnes out there from Georgia.
    He went in on a great vote that carried in two African-Americans to
    statewide elected office in Georgia. And there are things like that
    happening all over America: Governor Locke out
    there, the first Chinese-American Governor our country ever had;
    Governor Cayetano from Hawaii, a
    Philippine-American. But it is still true that even in America--we had
    kids at a Jewish community center in California, little kids shot at
    just because they were Jewish; a Filipino postal worker killed just
    because he was Asian and worked for the Federal Government; all those
    fine people killed in the middle of the country by that man who said he
    belonged to a church that didn't believe in God but did believe in white
    supremacy; Matthew Shepard stretched out on a rack in Wyoming.
        Now, most of the news in America is good. But I am telling you,
    we're a smart people. You can't keep us down no matter what, as long as
    we've got our heads on straight. But the Democratic Party ought to take
    the lead in reminding us that one of the things that we have learned as
    we've unlocked the mysteries of the human gene is that we are
    genetically 99.9 percent the same and that the differences among
    individuals within racial groups are different--are greater than the
    differences from group to group.
        Whether we like it or not, we're all in this boat together. And
    those of you who have been in the Oval Office know that I keep on the
    table there a Moon rock that Neil Armstrong
    gave me on the 30th anniversary of the landing on the Moon. It's a lava
    rock that is 3.6 billion years old. And whenever anybody gets all hot
    and lathered up in the Oval Office in a meeting and they act like the
    whole world is about to come down, I say, ``Time out. See that rock?
    It's 3.6 billion years old. Now, we're all just passing through. Chill
    out.'' [Laughter]
        But even though we're all just passing through, every minute, every
    hour, every day is precious. So I ask you all, apart from everything you
    do on all these issues I mentioned: Model that, model one America.
    Remind people that if you believe everybody counts and everybody ought
    to have a chance, then you've got

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    to believe we're all better off when we help each other instead of look
    down on one another.
        That's another thing the Democratic Party has stood for. We lost a
    lot of Presidential elections because we stood for it, but we're coming
    back now because we stand for it. You've got 13 seats up in 2000 and 36
    up in 2002. I'm going to help you with the 13, and when I'm just a
    citizen, I'll help you with the 36 if you want me to. But we will never
    have a national Democratic Party that's as strong as it ought to be
    until we have a majority of the governorships again and until we can
    prove, where people live, that we care about them, that we can produce
    for them, that we reflect their fondest hopes and deepest values. You
    can do that.
        You have helped me to help America. You have immeasurably enriched
    my life. You've been good to me and Hillary and Al and Tipper. And for
    all that, I am profoundly grateful. I will treasure this book for the
    rest of my days and my friendships and, seriously, what Paul Patton
    said. But America is always about tomorrow. So be proud of what we've
    done, but keep your eye on tomorrow, and lead the American people where
    we ought to go.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:17 p.m. at Union Station. In his remarks,
    he referred to Gov. Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, chair, Gov. Gray Davis
    of California, vice chair, B.J. Thornberry, executive director, and Mark
    Weiner, treasurer, Democratic Governors' Association; Governor Patton's
    wife, Judi; Governors Frank O'Bannon of Indiana, Pedro Rossello of
    Puerto Rico, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Mel Carnahan of Missouri,
    James B. Hunt, Jr., of North Carolina, Don Siegelman of Alabama, Roy
    Barnes of Georgia, Gary Locke of Washington, and Benjamin J. Cayetano of
    Hawaii; former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts; and astronaut
    Neil Armstrong.