    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [June 12, 2000]
    [Pages 1134-1135]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Gala for Senator Christopher J. Dodd
    June 12, 2000

        Thank you very much, Rosa. I want to
    thank you and Stan for your friendship, and I
    want to thank you for being graceful enough not to say that in 1980,
    when Chris Dodd got elected, I became the youngest ex-Governor in the
    history of America. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Chris and Jackie for
    trusting me to get up here at the podium tonight. And Senator
    Daschle and Senator Lieberman, thank you for what you said and for your
    friendship. Boy, ol' Bob Dole was great, wasn't he?
    [Laughter] He owes me a lot, Bob Dole does. [Laughter] I mean, if it
    weren't for me, he'd be just like all us gray-haired 50-year-olds; he'd
    have to pay for his Viagra. [Laughter] We've had a lot of fun, Senator
    Dole and I have, in the last 3\1/2\ years. And we had a little fun
    before. But I appreciate his coming tonight.
        And I want to thank Father Fluet for his
    prayer and his remarks, quoting that wonderful chapter from Matthew. It
    so captures the political philosophy of Chris Dodd. He did ask me, he
    said, ``You know, Mr. President, they say I only have 3 minutes, and I
    need more than 3 minutes. Can I have more than 3 minutes?'' I said,
    ``You're Chris Dodd's priest. If I could do it, I'd make you a
    cardinal.'' I said, ``Take whatever you want.'' [Laughter]
        It's an amazing crowd of people here tonight, and not all of them
    want to be Vice President. [Laughter] But a lot do. I just want to say,
    this really says something about Chris Dodd. In addition to Senator
    Lieberman and Senator Daschle and Representative DeLauro here, we either have now, or we have had--because some of
    them had to leave and go vote--listen to this: Senator
    Lautenberg from New Jersey; Senator
    Reed from Rhode Island; Senator Reid from Nevada; Senator Akaka
    from Hawaii; Senator Wellstone from
    Minnesota; Representatives Larson,
    Maloney, and Gejdenson, obviously from Connecticut; Representative Pelosi from California, who just came in; Representative Chet
    Edwards from Texas; Representative Sherrod
    Brown from Ohio. Those are just the ones I
    saw.
        Now, what does that tell you? They want Chris Dodd's contributor
    list. [Laughter]
        I want to say a couple of things very briefly. First, I would like
    to associate myself with every good thing that's been said about Chris
    Dodd tonight. I want to thank, on behalf of myself and Hillary, Chris
    and Jackie for being such good friends,
    for the private time we've spent together--time playing golf, time just
    having dinner, time talking about our family, our friends, our dreams.
        I want to thank Chris Dodd for making it possible for the first bill
    I signed as President, over 7 years ago now, to be the family and
    medical leave law. He introduced me tonight to the woman who, with her
    child, inspired that law in his mind and heart. I like a person who
    believes politics is about flesh-and-blood people and how they live,
    their hopes, their dreams, what they try to make of themselves and their
    children.
        And you may remember that the Democrats had passed that law in the
    previous administration, and it had been vetoed. And I promised and made
    it an issue in the '92 campaign. I said, ``I want to sign this bill. I
    want it to be the first bill I sign.'' And I listened to all that
    whining about how, you know, this is going to be a terrible burden on
    small business, and we were going to bankrupt the economy, and how awful
    it would be.
        And 7\1/2\ years later and 22-plus million jobs later, we've set
    records for small business formation in every year, and over 20 million
    of our fellow citizens--over 20 million--have been able to take a little
    time off when a baby was born or a parent was sick, thanks to the fact
    that Chris Dodd didn't give up in the face of a

    [[Page 1135]]

    veto, an opposition, and all that rhetoric. It changed America.
        And I believe that one of the things we ought to be doing with our
    prosperity now is building on the work he did with the child care tax
    credit and the family and medical leave law, because the idea behind it
    is a very simple but powerful one, which is that we ought not to ever
    ask an American to choose between succeeding at work and succeeding at
    the most important work of all in life, raising your children. Thank
    you, Chris, for giving us that--[inaudible].
        I want to thank Secretary Daley and
    Secretary Richardson for coming. I don't
    know if they want to be Vice President or if they just want Chris to
    take care of them after the next election. [Laughter] But they love you,
    too.
        I want to thank you for agreeing to become chairman of the
    Democratic Party after the Republicans won the Congress in '94 and
    everyone said we were dead--we, generically, and me, specifically--and
    you didn't believe it. And you went around and gave hope and cheer and
    energy and fight and courage to people when all the pundits said we were
    history. I thank you for that. A lot of good things have happened in
    this country in the last 4 years because of what you did.
        And lastly, I think someone ought to remark more explicitly on one
    of the reasons for your remarkable blend of quality. You are, to the
    very core of your being--and notwithstanding the fact that you know more
    about Latin America than anybody in the Congress--completely,
    irrevocably Irish. [Laughter]
        Now, as an apostate Irish Protestant, whose people come from
    Fermanagh, just across the Republic's border into Northern Ireland, it
    has been my great good fortune to involve the United States in the Irish
    peace process. You will never know how many times along--[applause]--
    thank you. You will never know how many times along the way, including
    sometimes calling me from the west of Ireland, where he has a place, at
    all hours of the day or night, Chris Dodd and I have talked about
    Ireland--all the things we have said in good times and sometimes the
    unprintable things we said in the difficult times; how many times I've
    called him just to sort of check, just to make sure I had it right, that
    I wasn't misreading the tea leaves and the incredible, emotional
    complexity of Irish politics.
        I say that because any Irish person with any sense knows that the
    only things that count in life are affairs of the heart and that if
    you're blessed by God with a pretty good mind, it's only supposed to be
    used to have a better understanding of the human heart and what counts.
        So for all your gifts, my friend, for all the things you've learned
    in life with its ups and downs, the thing which brings you to this night
    with your optimism intact, with your energy still high, with your
    wonderful wife and this legion of
    friends, is that in the very best sense you were faithful to the idea of
    the Irish. You have followed your heart, and the world is a better
    place, and your friends are all richer. We love you very much, and we
    thank you.

     Note:  The President spoke at approximately 10 p.m. in the Ballroom at
    the Mayflower Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Representative Rosa
    L. DeLauro, who introduced the President; Representative DeLauro's
    husband, Stan; Senator Dodd's wife, Jackie Marie Clegg; former Senator
    Bob Dole; and Father Gregoir Fluet, who gave the invocation. The
    evening's program was entitled, ``A Salute to 25 Years of Service--An
    Anniversary Gala Honoring Senator Christopher J. Dodd.''