    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [May 15, 2000]
    [Pages 936-938]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Reception for Representative Robert Wexler
    May 15, 2000

        Thank you very much. When Rob started saying all that, I had to
    pinch myself and make sure I was still alive. [Laughter] I want to,
    first of all, thank all of you for being here for Rob and for
    Laurie. And I want to thank you for your
    support for what his career has embodied.
        I feel just as strongly about him, if not more strongly, as he
    apparently does about me. I was very pleased. I admire him because he
    stands up and fights for what he believes in. He'll take a tough vote
    when it has to be taken, and he tries to think things through in ways
    that always have an eye on the future.
        You know, the great problem that any advanced society has is that
    it's always well organized, and that's good. But the bad news is, too
    often there are too few people who will be willing to change and move us
    toward the future.
        And he was a part of this, what we called the New Democratic
    movement, when I started back in '93. We believed we could be pro-
    business and pro-labor. We thought we could balance the budget and still
    invest in education more. We thought we could be pro-economic growth and
    pro-environmental preservation. And I think part of it was his
    experience with State Government before coming here, because a lot of us
    who had lived in the real world before we moved to Washington--
    [laughter]--thought that it was sort of strange here. Everybody expected
    you to get on one side of an issue or another, and then just scream as
    loud as you could and hope every third or fourth day you'd get your 15
    seconds on the news. It wasn't a very efficient way to govern or run a
    country, and we were paying for it.
        And so we've had a pretty good run here. But you must understand
    that very little I've achieved would have been possible if I hadn't had
    the support of Members of my own party in Congress at critical times.
    And nobody embodies, in my view, the approach we ought to be taking
    toward the future any better than he does. I'm really proud of him.
        And we have a lot of big decisions to face this year and next year.
    But when you encapsulate them all, I would say, here's the story line:
    When I took office in 1993, a lot of people didn't know whether America
    would work or not. If I said to you in '92, in the election, ``Vote for
    me, folks, and when I get done here, we will have turned deficits into
    surpluses, and we'll pay off $300 or $400 billion on the national
    debt,'' you'd say, ``You know, he seems like a pleasant young man, but
    he's slightly deranged. We'd better send him home.'' [Laughter]
        So what did we do? We had to worry about, first of all, getting our
    priorities in order, putting people first, as I called it in '92,
    getting the right kind of ideas, and then, basically, pointing the
    country in the right direction. That was the metaphor I used in our '96
    campaign, building a bridge to the 21st century. And a lot of it was
    really tough.
        We passed our economic plan by one vote in the House and the Senate
    in '93. And there were several other times during the last 7 years when
    we won by one vote, especially in the Senate. As Al Gore always says,
    ``Whenever I vote, we win.'' [Laughter] And lamentably, he had to vote a
    lot. So it wasn't easy.
        Now the country plainly is going in the right direction. Just last
    week we announced that for the eighth year in a row, crime is down, gun
    crime down 35 percent since '93, the lowest overall crime rate in over
    25 years. So it's not just the economy--welfare rolls cut in half, 90
    percent of our kids immunized for the first time in history. And I could
    go on and on.
        So what's the question this time? The question this time is, what do
    we as a people propose to do with this prosperity? When you go home
    tonight you ought to think about it. Those of you that brought your
    children, you ought to look at them before you answer.

    [[Page 937]]

        You know, as I get older--and unfortunately, it seems to be an
    irrevocable process--[laughter]--and I have a longer memory and probably
    more days behind me than ahead--there are some good things about it. And
    I know that it is a very rare time when a country has so much
    prosperity, so much social progress, so little internal dissension and
    relatively distant external threat. And a time like this comes along
    just once in a while. But it's happening now at a time of breathtaking
    change. So nothing lasts forever, and a long time is quicker than it
    used to be.
        So this is very, very important. This election this year is just as
    important as the ones we had in '92 and '96, don't kid yourself. And
    yet, the danger is, because things seem to be going very well, everybody
    will take a relaxed attitude. And in fact, you should say, ``Goodness
    gracious, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'm going to think
    real hard about what to do with this election.''
        For me, this kind of opportunity means just one thing: We have the
    space, the emotional space; we have the money; and we have the knowledge
    to identify what the big, outstanding challenges are facing this country
    and what the greatest opportunities are and to actually go after them.
    In other words, in '93, we were bailing water out of America's boat. Now
    we have a chance to build the future of our dreams for our children, and
    in so doing, I might add, to be a much more responsible and constructive
    member of the world community.
        I appreciate what you said about what we did in Kosovo and Bosnia
    before, and what we tried to do throughout the world on ethnic and
    religious and racial conflicts. We have to decide, what are we going to
    do?
        Now, I gave the Congress an agenda that would choke a horse back in
    my State of the Union Address because I wanted to make the point that we
    ought to be building the future of our dreams for our children, and that
    if we let this moment get away from us, if we're at all confused about
    what the subject of this election is, we'll never forgive ourselves,
    especially those of us who are old enough to know better.
        And I'll just tell you one last little story here. The last time we
    had a time which even approximated this was in the mid-sixties, the
    early sixties. We just celebrated the longest economic expansion in
    American history, longer than any expansion, including all the ones
    including our wars. But the last longest economic expansion was during
    the Vietnam war, 1961 to 1969. But it started in peacetime.
        Frankly, I think people--those of us who came of age--I graduated
    from high school in 1964. We thought the thing would go on forever. I'm
    telling you, I graduated from high school with an attitude like I am
    afraid people will take in this election. Oh, I was for all the right
    things. But I thought the economy would expand forever. I thought the
    civil rights crisis of America would be resolved in the Congress and the
    courts, not in the streets. I never dreamed Vietnam would tear this
    country in two. And neither did most other people, and they didn't think
    about it when they were voting.
        And by the time I got ready to graduate from college in 1968, it was
    2 days after Robert Kennedy was killed, 2 months after Martin Luther
    King was killed, 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he couldn't run for
    reelection, and just a few months before the longest economic expansion
    in American history came to a shrieking halt, with not much to show for
    it.
        And I can tell you--I'm not running for anything, you know?
    [Laughter] And pretty soon I'll be Joe Citizen again. I'm telling you,
    as an American citizen, I have been waiting for 35 long years to see my
    country once again in a position to build the future of our dreams for
    our children. And we ought to be doing these big things. That's why I
    was thrilled all those million moms showed up here yesterday. You know,
    yes, we've got the lowest crime rate in 25 years. Does anybody think
    it's low enough? We can make America the safest big country in the
    world, but not if we don't have prevention. And he's taking this issue
    on, and I appreciate it.
        I told somebody the other day, every time we get ready to do
    something that make sense, the other side screams ``gun control,'' talks
    about we're infringing on the constitutional right to keep and bear
    arms. And yesterday I said what I always say, ``You know, there's a
    constitutional right to travel, too.'' There is. But when we have speed
    limits and seatbelt laws and child restraint laws and we require drivers
    to get a drivers' license, you don't hear people standing around on
    street corner screaming about car control. [Laughter] They're talking
    about highway safety, and we like it, and we wish there were more of it,
    don't we? Now, if I come get your car and take it away from you, that's

    [[Page 938]]

    car control. Otherwise, it's highway safety. And it's the same thing
    here.
        It's a classic example of what I mean. It's easy to take a pass on a
    tough issue like that because times are good and your constituents are
    in a good humor. But it's not the right thing to do. The right thing to
    do is to say there will never be a better time to take on the big
    challenges; there will never be a better time to seize the big
    opportunities. And we need more people in public life who have the kind
    of mind and the kind of heart that he does. That's why I'm here tonight.
        Thank you very much.

     Note:  The President spoke at 7:35 p.m. in the Dining Room at the Hay-
    Adams Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Representative Wexler's
    wife, Laurie.