    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 4, 2000]
    [Pages 384-388]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Los Angeles
    March 4, 2000

        Thank you very much. I don't know about you, but I've been to one or
    two of these events in my life--[laughter]--and I had a wonderful time
    tonight. This is a marvelous restaurant. I've never been here before, in
    all my years of traipsing around L.A., and I think we ought to give them
    a hand for making us feel so welcome.
        I want to thank Mayor Rendell and our
    national finance chair, Joel Hyatt, for coming
    out here with me. I especially want to thank Chuck and Elizabeth and
    the Zimons,
    the Nathansons,
    all the others who have worked so hard. I want to thank all the people
    from the entertainment community who came. Kenneth and Tracy, thank
    you for being here. I want to thank especially Gregory and Veronique Peck for
    being here. And all the rest of you.
        Mac Davis, thank you. I'm sure you remember
    this, but your show was on in Washington about the time I became
    President the first time. And in the last year of her life, my beloved
    mother got to go, and she thought you were the best thing since sliced
    bread. And I will always be grateful to you for the joy you gave to my
    mother when she was very ill, and I thank you for that.
        And Olivia, I did my best not to sing
    along with you tonight. [Laughter] But when you started singing, I
    looked at Marc Nathanson; I said, ``How many
    of her albums do you have? I mean, the old albums.'' [Laughter] I said,
    ``I've still got that one where she comes up out of the water.''
    [Laughter] And I still look at it every now and then. [Laughter]
        So I want to thank you not only for
    your work as an artist, but especially because of my family's
    experience, I thank you for your continued fight against cancer, for
    children, and for being a role model for women all over this country by
    going on. Thank you very much.
        And I don't know what to say about Governor Gray Davis, except I think we ought to maybe change his first name
    to ``Red Hot'' after tonight. [Laughter] You know, it's okay for you to
    get a little funny, but if you get any better, your shtick won't work
    anymore. [Laughter] That was a pretty good rap.
        But you're also--I might add--Hillary and I were talking about the
    California Governor's race when it started, and we knew his primary
    opponents and liked them. But I had known Gray for years and years. And
    I said, ``Hillary, what do you think
    is going to happen in that race?'' She said, ``Oh, I think Gray
    Davis will win.'' And I said, ``Why?'' She said,
    ``Well, because he really wants to do the job, and he has a really good
    idea of what he would do if he got there, and that will communicate
    itself over the course of the campaign and build a lot of confidence
    among the voters.'' And I think that pretty much says it, and I think
    the confidence of the voters has been well placed.
        I'll try to make this fairly brief tonight, but I want you to think
    about why you came and what you'll say tomorrow if somebody asks you

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    why you came. And I want to begin by telling you what I'm going to do
    tomorrow. About 4 o'clock tomorrow morning I'm going to get out of bed
    here in L.A., and at 5, I'm going to leave, and I'm going to fly to
    Selma. And I'm going to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma on
    the 35th anniversary of the great march that led to the passage of the
    Voting Rights Act in America, with Congressman John Lewis, my friend and brother who was there 35 years ago.
        And for me, as a southerner, it will be the experience of a lifetime
    to be able to go there as the President of my country, having lived
    through it as a young boy. I don't even have the words to say to you
    what it means to me. But I would like to remind you that people actually
    died to get the right to vote, in my lifetime. It's a big deal.
        And so we're going to have this millennial election this year, at a
    great time of prosperity and progress. And if I have had any role in all
    of that, I am profoundly grateful for the chance I've had to serve. This
    will be the first election just about in over 25 years that I haven't
    been on the ballot somewhere. [Laughter] Most days I'm okay about it.
    [Laughter] But I care a great deal about how it comes out.
        And I have learned something about this mystical process of
    democracy. This is basically America's greatest job interview. You're
    going to hire a President. You're going to hire Senators. You're going
    to hire Members of Congress. A few Governors will get hired. And what I
    have learned is that the difference in this job interview and a lot of
    things is that in every election, the bosses--the employers, you, the
    people--you've got to define what the job is. And the decision in terms
    of what the election is about will determine who wins, assuming all the
    candidates cross what I always thought of as the basic threshold.
        And the four that are left, they cross that threshold. That is, if
    you look at them for a couple of minutes, can you imagine them being
    President? And if the answer to that is no, you can spend $500 million
    and campaign for 30 years, and you'll still never get there.
        But half of them have to say bad things about me because that's what
    their party requires of them, but the truth is, they all pass that
    threshold. They are people that have lived good lives. They've
    accomplished things. They have things they can say they've done as
    public servants that they're proud of, and they have honest differences.
    So how this comes out depends on what you think the election is about.
        And so I want to begin by saying, tomorrow morning, I want you to
    think about this tomorrow, and I want you to watch for it on the news.
    And I want you to see us all walking across that bridge and remember 35
    years ago when people did it, they were risking their lives just to be
    able to vote. So you ought to do it, and you ought to take it seriously.
    And it matters what you think it's about.
        Now, what I think it's about is, what are we going to do with this
    magic moment? I worked as hard as I could. You remember what it was like
    here in California in '91 when I showed up here. How in the world did I
    carry this State? I would have never had a chance to carry this--I was
    just the Governor, as President Bush used to affectionately refer to me,
    as the Governor of a small southern State. And I rather enjoyed being
    the Governor of a small southern State, and I learned a few things about
    human nature and basic economics that have stood me in pretty good
    stead. But I worked hard to help you turn this country around.
        And so what do you think we ought to do? That's the most important
    thing. What I believe with all my heart is that we have this opportunity
    that is also a big responsibility. People--listen to the speeches these
    people are making in this election. They could have never even talked
    about this stuff 8 years ago. Why? Because we can now make the future of
    our dreams for our children. We can be a systematic, consistent force
    for good and decent things around the world, for freedom, for democracy,
    for liberating millions of people from disease in Africa and Asia and
    throughout the world. We can do things.
        You know, what I think it's about is keeping the economy going. Gray
    talked about how I changed the way people thought about Democrats. I'm
    passionately committed to social justice, but the best social program is
    still a decent job and being able to support your family and letting
    poor people work their way into the middle class. And it matters.
        So how can we keep the economy going? Should we pay the country out
    of debt for the first time since 1835? I think we should, because it
    keeps interest rates low, investment high, more businesses being
    started, and more people

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    being hired, more wealth being spread more widely. I think we should.
        Should we take this moment and for the first time maybe ever bring
    economic opportunity and enterprise to people in places that have been
    left behind? On the Indian reservations, the unemployment's as high as
    70 percent. There are urban neighborhoods and rural areas in this
    country--in the Mississippi Delta, where I come from, or in the Rio
    Grande Valley of south Texas--where the unemployment rate is still 2, 3,
    4 times the national average. I want to give people like you the same
    incentives to invest there you have to invest in poor areas around the
    world, because if we can't bring those people economic opportunity now,
    we will never get around to it.
        And I'm telling you, I grew up in a place like that. Intelligence is
    equally spread. There are people down there just as smart as anybody
    anywhere, who can do anything anybody anywhere can do, and who are dying
    to have a chance to do it. And we need to bring economic opportunity to
    the places that have been left behind. That's what I think this election
    ought to be about.
        For over 20 years now I have had a serious interest in education.
    And I can tell you that I now know something I didn't know over 20 years
    ago when I started. And when Hillary and I started going around to all
    the schools in our State, trying to figure out how to improve them, we
    didn't really know how to do it. We do now. I could take you to schools
    in the poorest, most dangerous neighborhoods in this country that are
    performing at a world-class level. We know how to do it.
        But we have never figured out a way to systematically replicate
    educational excellence. One of the things that I promoted were these
    charter schools that California has been a leading proponent of. There
    was one when I became President. There are 2,000 today, and there are
    going to be 3,000--I hope--before I leave office, because that was my
    goal for the country.
        The main thing I want to say to you is, it's one thing to talk about
    it, and another to do it. But you don't have to be skeptical anymore. We
    can turn around failing schools, and all kids can learn. You have to
    have high standards. You have to have accountability. I believe we
    should stop social promotion, but not until we can give every kid who
    needs it after-school programs, summer school programs, and mentoring
    programs to make sure they can succeed.
        Chicago stopped it, but they didn't make the kids failures. Instead,
    they created a summer school that is now--listen to this--the sixth
    biggest school district in the United States of America--the summer
    school of Chicago. Needless to say, as a peripheral benefit, the
    juvenile crime rate dropped like a rock because people were doing
    positive things.
        I think everybody that wants to go to college ought to be able to go
    and stay 4 years. We gave a tax credit called the HOPE scholarship that
    allows basically 2 years of community college to be made available
    universally in America. Now I want to allow tuition to be tax
    deductible. And if I don't pass it, the next President ought to, because
    we ought to make it possible for people to go 4 years. You've got to
    decide whether you think that's what this election is about.
        We have a remarkable opportunity to help families balance their
    responsibilities to their children and at work. Equal pay for women,
    increase in the minimum wage, more child care, doing something to lift
    all of our children out of poverty--I think that's what this election is
    all about.
        I think we can grow the economy and improve the environment for the
    first time in history. The digital economy means you can get rich
    without burning up the air. And we now have cleaner air, cleaner water.
    We've set aside more land than any administration in history, except
    those of the two Roosevelts, in the continental United States. And the
    economy keeps getting better. And yet, some people in Washington think
    my crusade against climate change is some dark conspiracy to wreck the
    American economy. You have to decide. I think you ought to vote for
    somebody who is a committed environmentalist who also believes you can
    grow the economy. I think it's a big issue. You have to decide that.
        These are just some of the issues that I think are important. But
    you have to decide what you think. I think it's a good thing that
    America has been a force for peace from the Middle East to Northern
    Ireland to Kosovo to Bosnia to the tribal wars in Africa. So I disagree,
    respectfully, with one of the Republican candidates who said we had a
    feckless foreign policy. I think when we sent a million people home who
    were run out of their homes just because

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    they were Muslims in Kosovo, without losing a single American soldier in
    combat, that was not feckless. That was a moral, good, decent thing to
    do. But you have to decide whether you agree with it. You've got to
    decide.
        And you know, I do think a lot of my Vice President. And I didn't come here to make a campaign speech, and the
    nominating process is not over, but you have to decide whether you
    believe this is a job. One of the reasons I wanted to go to Washington
    is that I thought Washington had become turned in on itself. I thought
    it was dominated by talk show mentality instead of a show-up-for-work
    mentality.
        I did an event for Senator Feinstein
    last night, and I said, ``You know, even when Dianne gets mad at me, I
    like her because she has this idea, this crazy idea that being in the
    Senate is a job--[laughter]--and that she's supposed to show up for work
    and say, `Here's what I intend to do,' and then she goes out and does
    it.'' So as a first term Senator, she passes the California Desert
    Protection Act, the assault weapons ban, and then we saved the redwoods.
    Why? I'll tell you why, because she was more worried about passing those
    bills than her 15 seconds on the evening news or who was up or who was
    down or who was in or who was out.
        You realize that you can actually go crazy on your own initiative
    now; you can watch talk shows 24 hours a day. And you won't ever learn
    anything, because to get on one you've got to take one position, and you
    can't ever say you might be wrong, and you can't ever change your mind.
    And you've got to be talking real loud by the time the other person's
    making a good point so no one can hear it. [Laughter]
        Now, this is true. Now, you watch these things; now, if you ran your
    business that way, if you made movies that way, if you made records that
    way, if you ran your home that way, everybody would be bankrupt, the
    divorce rate would be 100 percent, and every kid would be a school
    dropout. I mean, I wanted to change that.
        So you've got to decide whether--you know, Gray makes fun about this charisma quotient business--I think
    it's pretty charismatic when children learn more. Children are going to
    learn more because of what he did in the California Legislature. That
    gets my blood going.
        You know--but you have to decide this. I just want to leave you with
    this thought, because people are going to ask you, ``Why did you come
    here?'' And I'm thinking about it because of tomorrow. But in February
    we celebrated the longest economic expansion in the history of the
    country and the only one of anything like this duration with no war. And
    I was profoundly proud of that. But I was feeling sort of reflective, so
    I did a little research into the last longest economic expansion, the
    one whose record we broke. And some of you in this audience, you're old
    enough to remember it. It was 1961 to 1969. Now, I want to tell you
    something about that expansion, how it came to end, and what happened.
    And I want you to think about it in terms of your responsibility in this
    election.
        I graduated from high school in 1964. My President, John Kennedy,
    had been murdered, but our country rallied around President Johnson. He
    was overwhelmingly reelected. We passed a civil rights law; the next
    year we passed the Voting Rights Act. And when I finished high school,
    we were all happy as clams. We thought the following things were true:
    We thought this economy would go on forever, low unemployment, low
    inflation, and high growth; we thought we would win the cold war just in
    the ordinary course of things; and we thought we would solve our civil
    rights problems in the Congress and the courts, and we would become a
    just and decent society in the course of things.
        So I finished high school. It wasn't too long that we had riots in
    Watts. It wasn't too long after that we had demonstrations in every city
    in America against the Vietnam war. By the time I graduated from college
    on June 8th, 1968, it was----

    [At this point, microphone feedback interrupted the President's
    remarks.]

        The Republicans got ahold of the mike. [Laughter] Listen to this. I
    want you to listen to this. I graduated from college--in '64, everybody
    thought things were just going to be on automatic. In 1968, I graduated
    from college, 2 days after Robert Kennedy was killed, 2 months after
    Martin Luther King was killed, 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson, who won
    with the biggest majority in modern history, couldn't run for
    reelection. The country was split right down the middle over the Vietnam
    war. And we had an election for President that was determined on a
    slogan called the Silent Majority. Do you remember that? And if you
    weren't in the Silent Majority, you were in the loud

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    minority. That was me. [Laughter] And there was something wrong with the
    loud minority. It was like ``us'' and ``them.'' And we've been having
    those ``us'' and ``them'' elections ever since. We've been ``us-ing''
    and ``them-ing'' ourselves to death.
        And I tried to end that. But I haven't entirely succeeded, not when
    these Jewish kids get shot going to their school in Los Angeles just
    because they're Jewish, or Matthew Shepard gets stretched out on a rack
    and killed just because he's gay, or James Byrd gets dragged to death in
    Texas because he's black, or a white supremacist in the middle of the
    country kills a Korean Christian coming out of a church and the black
    former basketball coach at Northwestern, and he says he belongs to a
    church that doesn't believe in God but does believe in white supremacy.
    We haven't gotten rid of all that.
        What I want to tell you is--I say this as a person, not a
    President--I have waited for 35 long years for my country to be in a
    place to build the future of our dreams again. And it's easier for us
    now, because we don't have the civil rights crisis at home. It's easier
    for us now because the cold war is behind us now. It's easier for us now
    because we're a nation of many, many nations growing more diverse every
    day, with California leading the way.
        But the stakes are still very high. And we should be humbled, as
    well as happy, by this good fortune. And we should feel responsible, not
    entitled, as a result of this prosperity. I'm telling you, I lived
    through it before. It can go away in the flash of a moment. We should
    cherish this. And you should understand--and I want you to think about
    it tomorrow when they walk in Selma. People died for the right to vote.
    You've got to go vote. You've got to go get your friends to participate.
    But you've got to make the right decisions about what is this about.
        And I'm telling you, we've got a second chance as a country in my
    lifetime. Most of us have gotten second chances as people. Most of us
    are darn grateful for it. That's the way we ought to feel as citizens.
    And if we do, everything will turn out just fine.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:50 p.m. at the Cafe des Artistes. In his
    remarks, he referred to Edward G. Rendell, general chair, Democratic
    National Committee; Chuck and Elizabeth Meyer and Richard and Daphna
    Zimon, dinner hosts; Marc Nathanson, chair, Mapleton Investment Corp.,
    and his wife, Jane; singer Kenneth Edmonds, popularly known as Babyface,
    and his wife, Tracy; actor Gregory Peck and his wife, Veronique; singers
    Mac Davis and Olivia Newton John; and Gov. Gray Davis of California.