    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [June 24, 2000]
    [Pages 1259-1263]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Association of State Democratic Chairs in Los Angeles
    June 24, 2000

        Thank you very much. First, I thank you, Joan, for 8 years of friendship and for the remarkable support
    that you and the State of Massachusetts have given to me and Al Gore and
    our whole team.
        Thank you, Governor Davis, for your
    friendship and for the extraordinary example you've set here in
    California, with your education legislation, your crime control
    legislation, and your devotion to our party. And we thank you, and we
    thank you for the day you had with the Vice President up in northern California yesterday. I liked reading
    about it. It was good press, and we thank you.
        Thank you, Joe Andrew, for leaving
    their ranks and coming to ours. It's hard for me to say--I thank Bill
    Daley for leaving my Cabinet. [Laughter]
    But he might take it wrong. But I thank him for his willingness to
    assume the chairmanship of the Vice
    President's campaign. And I thank you, Donna Brazile. And thank you, Johnny Hayes,
    who is my political memorabilia partner. I thought I had a lot of it
    until I met Johnny.
        I want to thank Maxine Waters, who had me
    in her home in 1992 to meet with people from Los Angeles after the riots
    here, to deal with the economic and the social problems. And we walked
    down the streets together, burned out streets, and talked to people in a
    very different Los Angeles, a very different California, and a very
    different America than we have today.
        I thank Dennis Archer and Kathy
    Vick and Bill Lynch
    and Lottie Shackelford and all the rest
    of you, so many of you I've known a long, long time. When you were
    introduced, ma'am, as having been at every convention since '36, I've
    been at every one since 1972 and that makes me pretty creaky, I guess.
    [Laughter]
        But I'd like to say a few things. First, I just got off the phone
    with the Vice President, and he told me to
    tell you hello and to thank you. Secondly, I don't think you can
    possibly know how grateful I feel to all of you for your loyal

    [[Page 1260]]

    support in '92 and '96 and in the all the times in between, in the good
    times and the bad times. I've had a real good time doing this job, and
    I'm glad it has worked out so well for the American people.
        But I want to have a brief but serious conversation with you now. We
    have to win. We have to win the White House. We have to win the Senate.
    We have to win the House. We have to win these governorships. We need to
    get some more of them back. And to win, we have to make sure that the
    election is about the right subject. People ask me all the time, ``Who's
    going to win this or that election?'' I say, ``It always depends on what
    the voters believe the election is about.'' Very often, the answer you
    get depends upon the question you ask.
        And for me, it is a pretty simple matter. I have worked as hard as I
    could to turn our country around, to get us going in the right
    direction. You know, you didn't have to be a genius in '92 to figure out
    what the election ought to be about. The economy was in the tank. All
    the social indicators were going in the wrong direction. Washington
    politics was basically a matter of lobbing rhetorical bombs, or, as I
    like to say, ``I got an idea, and you've got an idea. Let's fight. Maybe
    we'll both get on television tonight.'' [Laughter] And it often got
    people on television, but it didn't often change the way we were living.
        This country is in good shape now. But there are some huge
    challenges out there still and huge opportunities. And I would argue to
    you that how a country deals with its prosperity is at least as big a
    test of its judgment and its character as how a country deals with
    adversity.
        For me, it's not even close, because I know that a time like this
    comes along maybe once every 50 years, where you have a strong economy
    and improving society, a lot of national self-confidence, the absence of
    crippling domestic or foreign threats. And those of us who have lived
    most of our lives have a profound obligation to make sure that this
    election is about building the future of our dreams for our children.
        What are they going to do, when all those baby boomers retire, about
    Social Security and Medicare? How are we going to make aging meaningful
    in terms of helping people to work who want to work, making sure people
    have affordable prescription drugs who need it? What about the largest
    and most diverse group of schoolchildren in our country? Will they have
    world-class educations or not? Will they all be able to go on to college
    or not?
        What about the environment? Will we continue to improve it as we
    grow the economy, or will we go back to the old idea that you can't
    improve it and grow the economy? Will we really seriously take on this
    problem of global warming and climate change that Al Gore has been talking about for years and years and years now,
    and now everybody recognizes it's real, and he was right all along? Or
    are we going to continue to deny that it's a real problem until we see
    the flooding of the sugar cane in Louisiana, and the Everglades in
    Florida and a lot of farmland dry up and blow away?
        What about all the people that have jobs but still have problems
    raising their children and doing their work? Are we going to do more for
    child care, for after-school programs, for long-term care for elderly
    and disabled relatives? Are we going to do more for family leave? Are we
    going to do more, in short, to help people balance work and family? What
    about people like a lot of the people who work in this hotel that are
    doing the best they can, but they need some help to reward their work so
    they can raise their kids, too? We're going to take account of them in
    the tax policy of the country, in the education policy of the country.
        What about the people in places that have been left behind? Are we
    going to bring them into the free enterprise revolution or not? What
    about the digital divide? Are we going to close it or let it gape open?
    What about our responsibilities around the world? What about here at
    home, where people still get hurt and unfortunately sometimes killed
    because they're black or brown or Asian or gay or they work for the
    Federal Government or some other reason? We may never get another chance
    in our lifetime to take on this big stuff.
        So the first thing you've got to do is to convince people back home
    that this is a huge election. It is just as important as the election of
    '92 or '96--every bit as important. Point number two, there are real
    differences. Point number three, only the Democrats want you to know
    what they are. [Laughter] Now, you laugh, but it's true, isn't it? Do
    you ever hear them talk about their primary campaign? They want America
    to develop amnesia about their primary campaign--who was on what side,
    who said what,

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    what commitments were made. You don't see them passing out copies of
    that Texas Republican platform, do you? [Laughter]
        I was down in Texas the other night when that thing came out, with a
    bunch of my old friends. And one of them said that it was so bad, you
    could get rid of every Fascist tract in your library if you just had a
    copy of the Texas Republican platform. [Laughter] And I noticed their
    leader didn't go to the convention, and he
    didn't repudiate it. He just said, well, he was talking about other
    things. I say that in a good-natured way.
        But let me say this. I don't believe we have to have a negative
    campaign this year. I don't think we should. I'm sick and tired of these
    campaigns where this vast amount of money and effort is spent to try to
    convince people that there's something wrong with their opponents. How
    many elections have we had in the last 20 years where basically the
    whole deal is designed to put everybody into a white heat, including our
    friends in the press, to convince the voters that your opponent is just
    one step above a car thief? Now, we don't have to do that this year.
    This country is in good shape. And what we ought to do is to have a real
    debate here. We ought to say, ``Let's assume that everybody is
    honorable. Let's assume that they're pretty much going to do what they
    say they're going to do.''
        That's what history indicates is the case, by the way. Most
    Presidents do pretty much what they say they're going to do. And when
    they don't, we're normally glad. Aren't you glad Lincoln didn't keep his
    campaign promise not to free the slaves? Aren't you glad President
    Roosevelt didn't keep his campaign promise to balance the budget when
    unemployment was 25 percent? But basically, Presidents do what they say
    they're going to do, so we can have this debate. So you've got to go out
    and say, ``Folks, whatever your take on this is politically, this is a
    huge election. We may never get another chance in our lifetime to
    actually vote to make the future of our dreams for our children.''
        Secondly, we have real differences. I'll just mention a few. We
    think we ought to raise the minimum wage, and they don't. We think we
    ought to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights--if somebody gets hurt, they
    ought to be able to sue--and they don't. We think we ought to have a
    voluntary prescription Medicare drug benefit available to everybody who
    needs it, and they don't.
        We think we ought to close the gun show loophole, require child
    trigger locks, and not import large capacity ammunition clips that make
    a mockery of our assault weapons ban. And we don't believe anybody is
    going to miss a day in the deer woods if we do that. But they're not for
    it. We think we ought to put 50,000 police on the street in the highest
    crime neighborhoods, because the 100,000 we put on worked so well, and
    they disagree.
        We think we ought to build 6,000 new schools and modernize another
    5,000 a year for the next 5 years, and they don't. We think that we
    ought to require schools to turn around or shut down failing schools,
    school districts in States, but we ought to give them enough money so
    that every child who needs it can be in an after-school or a summer
    school program, and they don't. We think we ought to put 100,000 more
    teachers out there in the early grades to lower class size, because it
    has a direct impact on student achievement, and they don't.
        We think we ought to keep trying to clean up the air and the water
    and deal with climate change and develop alternative sources of energy
    and support the development of cars that get better mileage, and they
    voted against that stuff every year I put it up. They just don't agree.
    If you're buying gasoline in Chicago and Milwaukee now, you probably
    wish we'd move faster to develop alternative sources of fuel and higher
    mileage vehicles.
        So in all these things, I think we're right, and I think they're
    not. But they ought to be given a chance to have their piece--say their
    piece. Most important of all, on how we're going to keep the prosperity
    going, they think that we ought to have a tax cut that costs over half
    of the projected new surplus, which is real big, and that we ought to
    spend the rest of it on--the projected surplus--on the partial
    privatization of Social Security, on a big national missile defense
    system, and on whatever else they promise to spend money on, even though
    all that together is more than even the new surplus projections.
        Now, we're taking a more politically risky position at a time when
    people feel kind of relaxed. The Vice President says, ``Why don't we not
    spend all our projected surplus.'' What's your projected income for the
    next decade, folks? Are you ready to spend it all tomorrow?

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    Everybody that wants to spend your entire projected income for the next
    decade should seriously consider changing parties, because that's their
    position. And everybody that doesn't, who's not in our party, should
    seriously consider changing parties.
        So what does Al Gore say? He says, ``Why don't we just start by
    saying there is at least 20 percent of this projected surplus we are not
    going to spend, because we're getting it from your Medicare taxes,
    anyway. So we'll put it over to the side, and we'll pay the debt down
    with it. And then we'll take the money we save from doing that and put
    it into Medicare so when the baby boomers retire, we can keep Medicare
    alive, we won't bankrupt our kids. And, by the way, we're not going to
    spend all this projected surplus.
        ``And why don't we have a generous tax cut that helps working
    people, especially at modest incomes, to set up their own retirement
    accounts and invest, if they want, in the stock market and generate
    wealth, while we don't mess up Social Security; and then help others
    with the cost of child care or long-term care or paying for our children
    to go college, so we can open the doors of college to all; and one that
    gives wealthy people the same incentives to invest in poor areas in
    America to create jobs we give them to invest in poor areas in Latin
    America or Asia or Africa. And why don't we do that, and then we'll
    still have some money to invest in the future.''
        I know what I think is more likely to keep this prosperity going.
    People ask me all the time now that I've just got a few months left, 7
    months left. They say, ``What was the secret of your economic policy?
    What was the genius that Bob Rubin and Lloyd
    Bentsen and all of them brought to
    Washington?'' And I look at them, and I say, ``Arithmetic.'' [Laughter]
    The Democrats brought arithmetic back to Washington. If we didn't have
    it, we didn't spend it. We made a commitment to cut out programs that we
    didn't have to have, so we'd have more to invest in education and
    technology and the future.
        But I'm just telling you, these are big issues, and you ought to
    clarify them. But if the public believes that this is a big election and
    it's about building the future of our dreams for our children, and if
    the public believes that there are real differences--and I only touched
    on a few of them. There are real differences in our position on what it
    really means to include women and gays and people of color, people of
    all different backgrounds in the Government and in the life of America.
        The next President is going to get two to four appointments to the
    Supreme Court. They've made different commitments about what their
    heartfelt positions are on the right to choose, for example. And I think
    you have to assume that both these
    people now running for President will do what
    they have promised to do on this. You have to assume that they are
    honorable and they will. So you have big differences. And we can have a
    great debate.
        Let me just say one other thing I want you to know. I think I know
    Al Gore about as well as anybody alive
    except his family. And I've seen him at every conceivable kind of
    circumstances, in good and bad times for him, good and bad times for me,
    good and bad times for our administration. There are three things that I
    think you ought to know--or four.
        Number one, this country has had a lot of Vice Presidents who made
    great Presidents. Thomas Jefferson was Vice President. Teddy Roosevelt
    was Vice President. Harry Truman was Vice President. Lyndon Johnson was
    Vice President. But we have never had anybody who, while he was Vice
    President, made so many decisions and did so many things that helped so
    many Americans remotely compared with Al Gore. He has been by far the most important Vice President in
    the history of the United States of America.
        Whether it's breaking the tie on the economic plan or leading our
    empowerment zone program to bring economic opportunity to poor people,
    or leading our efforts in technology, or our efforts to reinvent
    Government that has given us the smallest Federal Government since
    Kennedy was President, or our efforts to continue to improve the
    environment while we grow the economy, or our efforts with Russia or
    South Africa, or our arms control policy, or sticking by me when I made
    very, very tough decisions in Haiti and Bosnia and Kosovo, in financial
    aid to Mexico--a lot of them some of you didn't agree with me on--
    he was always there.
        The second thing I want you to know is, it's my opinion, based on a
    lifetime of experience with this economy and some fair understanding of
    it, that our economic policy, the one he
    has embodied, is far more likely to keep

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    this economic expansion going and get the most out of it.
        Thirdly, and in some ways most important of all to me, I think that
    we ought to have a President in a time of prosperity who is genuinely
    committed to helping all families participate in it, to giving all
    people a sense that they belong in America, and to giving everybody a
    chance to express their opinions and to be part of the future.
        And fourthly, I think it's quite important that we have a President
    that really understands what the future is going to be like, that really
    gets it. I don't know how many people I've said--heard tell me that Al
    Gore is the first person that ever talked
    to them about the Internet. He said when we took office that someday the
    whole Library of Congress would be on the Internet, and I thought it was
    something that would happen in 20 or 30 years, and it's just about there
    right now.
        He was the first person I ever heard
    talk about global warming. The first lunch we ever had, in January of
    '93, he was showing me his charts. Now everybody says it's real. I had
    to listen to 8 years of some people saying it was some sort of
    subversive plot to undermine the American economy. [Laughter]
        I'll give you another example, something really important in the
    future. We're going to have all of our medical records and all of our
    financial records on somebody's computer somewhere. I think it's
    important whether you have privacy rights. I think you ought to be able
    to--you ought to have to give specific approval before somebody goes
    into somebody else's computer and gets your financial records or your
    medical records in ways that can affect your life. I think that's
    important. That's a big issue.
        I could give you lots and lots of other examples. I'll give you one
    chilling one. The same things that are working in the information
    technology revolution that are going to give you little computers you
    can fit in the palm of your hand, with a screen that works just like the
    Internet so you can bring up things--you'll even be able to watch CNN
    news or something on a little screen you're holding in your hand--all
    that's going to happen in weapons systems. The biggest challenge we're
    going to face in the future, I think, over the next 20 years will be
    from the enemies of the nation-state, from the terrorists, the
    drugrunners, the weapons peddlers, and people who will have miniature
    weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological--God forbid--maybe
    even nuclear weapons. We need somebody who understands this stuff,
    somebody that's worked at it for years and years, somebody that gets it.
        So that's my pitch. We've got--our nominee is the best Vice
    President the country ever had. He is
    clearly the person who is offering an economic strategy most likely to
    keep the recovery going. He has a clear commitment to help all the
    people to make sure nobody gets left behind. And he understands the
    future and can lead us there.
        Now, if the public understands, if the people we represent believe
    that this is a huge election, that it's a chance of a lifetime to build
    the future of our dreams for our children, if they believe there are
    real differences, if they understand what the differences are, then
    he will be elected President, and
    Hillary will be elected to the
    Senate, and so will a lot of others, and we will win the House back, and
    we will be celebrating.
        Now, that's your job. You've got to make sure people understand what
    the deal is. That's what our job is. This is a happy job. You never have
    to say a bad word about a Republican. All you have to do is go out and
    say, ``Here is where we are. Here is where we want to go. Here are the
    honest differences, and at least our party would like you to know
    exactly what they are.''
        Thank you, and God bless you.

     Note:  The President spoke at 2:30 p.m. in the Century Room at the
    Century Plaza Hotel & Spa. In his remarks, he referred to Joan M.
    Menard, president, Association of State Democratic Chairs; Gov. Gray
    Davis of California; Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, Kathleen M. Vick,
    secretary, Bill Lynch, vice chair, Dennis W. Archer, general co-chair,
    and Lottie Shackelford, vice chair, Democratic National Committee;
    William M. Daley, general chair, Donna L. Brazile, campaign manager, and
    Johnny H. Hayes, finance director, Gore 2000; former Secretaries of the
    Treasury Robert E. Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen; and Gov. George W. Bush of
    Texas.