[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[June 15, 2000]
[Pages 1153-1154]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Mayor Anthony A. Williams of the
District of Columbia
June 15, 2000

    Thank you. You know, when the Mayor said he was going to run for 
Mayor, he was absolutely terrified about making a political speech. I 
think he's about got the hang of it, don't you? [Laughter] I thought it 
was great.
    I want to thank him and Diane for 
their willingness to serve. I want to thank Greg 
and Kathy and the others who put on this event 
tonight, and Ron and Beth for opening their home once again for an eminently 
worthy cause. I want to thank Senator Dole or 
President Dole or Bob--[laughter]--for being here and for speaking, and 
Jack Kemp, who came and left. And Judge 
Webster, thank you for being here.
    I'd like to thank all the Republicans and Democrats and the 
independents who are here in support of our Nation's Capital tonight. I 
will be very brief but, I hope, to the point, because I'll be moving out 
of Washington in a few months. But when I moved here, I had very rich 
memories because I had gone to school in Washington, and I lived in 
Washington for 4 years in the mid-sixties. So I was here when the city 
burned. I was here when the city's main thoroughfares were often full of 
empty stores. I've seen it at its best, at its worst, and at its in-
between.
    When I came back here and Hillary and Chelsea and I moved into Blair 
House in the 3 weeks before I took office, one of the first things I did 
was to walk down Georgia Avenue and meet with the merchants and talk to 
them. And I always wanted to have a chance to be a good citizen of 
Washington, DC.
    I worked with Senator Moynihan 
and others who were rebuilding Pennsylvania Avenue and was proud to be 
there at the dedication of the Reagan Building, which I think has been a 
wonderful addition to this great city. I went with Steve Case not very long ago to a high school here to talk about 
how we could improve the quality of education with technology.
    I was just today with Reverend Wintley Phipps, whom a lot of you know, at the U.S. Dream Academy 
here in Washington, doing wonderful work giving kids from very tough 
backgrounds a chance to have a better life.
    I love this place. And I was honored that we had a bipartisan big 
block of support for the legislation to revitalize DC. Essentially, what 
we did was, we took--the Federal Government assumed the functions that 
the DC government was having to pay for, that no other city in America 
had to pay for because all the other cities had a State to pay for it. 
We've also provided big tuition support for DC students to go out of 
State to school as in-State students and tried to provide some 
initiatives to encourage more private investment here, as well as to 
have the Government do more directly. And we've got a lot more to do, 
and I hope in the next 6 months, working with Speaker Hastert and others, you will see a big bipartisan 
initiative which will lead to more investment in the District of 
Columbia. So I hope that will happen.

[[Page 1154]]

    But you know, it has been my great honor on your behalf to travel to 
over 60 other countries. Senator Dole and I did an 
event the other night, and he said he was glad that the event could be 
scheduled on a night when I was visiting America. [Laughter] And I took 
it pretty well, considering I was jet lagged. Actually, I thought it was 
pretty funny.
    But I've been to all these other capitals. You know, I've been to 
Paris. I've been to London. I've been to Moscow. I've seen the billion-
dollar restoration of the Kremlin, which is breathtaking, if any of you 
ever get a chance to see it. But there is no capital city in the world 
as beautiful as Washington. And there is no city now that is any more 
diverse.
    Yes, we've still got a lot of these problems, but what Tony Williams 
did was to prove that the Mayor's Office was a job, a very important 
job, a job that required vision and leadership as well as management 
skills, but a job where arithmetic still counted, a job where it still 
mattered if you showed up for work and really worked hard, all day, 
every day, a job where it mattered if you treated everybody just the 
same, whatever their race or political affiliation. And because all of 
us love the District of Columbia, he enlisted in an overwhelming 
response by being extraordinarily good at doing what he'd be the first 
to tell you he simply should have done.
    And now that we have the kind of leadership that he has given our 
city, I want to ask all of you: When I'm gone from here and I'm no 
longer a citizen of this city, it will always be a big part of my 
childhood, always be obviously the major part of my adult life and 
service. But we can make this city in every way the finest capital in 
the world and a good place for all the children who live in it. And 
ironically, in order to do one, we have to do the other. We owe it to 
this man to help him, not just with contributions but every day. No one 
could ask for more from a Mayor than he is giving us. We have to be 
willing to give whatever he asks from us.
    Thank you very much.

 Note:  The President spoke at 7:39 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to Mayor Williams' wife, Diane Simmons Williams; 
event cochairs Greg Earls and Kathy Kemper; reception hosts Ronald I. 
Dozoretz and Beth Dozoretz; former Senator Bob Dole; former 
Representative Jack F. Kemp; former Judge William H. Webster, U.S. Court 
of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; Steve Case, president and chief 
executive officer, America On-Line; and gospel singer Wintley Phipps, 
founder and director, United States Dream Academy.