[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[February 28, 2000]
[Pages 329-333]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Democratic Governors' Association Dinner
February 28, 2000

    Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm 
welcome. Thank you for this wonderful book. Governor Patton, Mrs. Patton, Governor 
Davis, Governor O'Bannon; to B.J. Thornberry and all 
the officers of the DGA and especially my great friend Mark 
Weiner. I want to acknowledge also the 
presence--Mark Weiner did a good job tonight, and all the rest of you 
did, raising this money. I thank you for that.
    I want to acknowledge the presence in this audience of the man who 
was the executive director of the DGA when I was a member, my good 
friend Chuck Dolan. I thank you for 
being here and for all you did for us. And all my colleagues--I know 
there are five or six Governors out there who are former Governors with 
whom I served--thank you for being here.
    I want to acknowledge the Governors who are retiring. Governor 
Rossello, thank you for everything you've 
done. And Governor Carper and Governor 
Carnahan are going to be Members of the United 
States Senate, and that will be a good thing for the Senate, a bad thing 
for the Governors.

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    I want to say a special work of thanks to the man who nominated me 
to be vice chairman of the DGA in 1979, Governor Jim Hunt, one of the finest people I ever met in my life. Thank 
you, Jim Hunt, for what you did.
    You know, I will treasure this book. I have a first edition of 
``Profiles in Courage,'' but not one signed by John Kennedy. Hillary 
says that the reason I admire John Kennedy so much is, he's the only 
person to ever serve as President whose handwriting was even harder to 
read than mine. [Laughter] But I can recognize the signature, and I 
thank you.
    President Kennedy once said, ``The party which, in its drive for 
unity, discipline, and success, ever decides to exclude new ideas, 
independent conduct, or insurgent members is in danger.'' Well, thanks 
to the Democratic Governors, to your new ideas, your independent 
conduct, and your willingness always to try to do better and to be 
different, the Democratic Party is in no danger. We're stronger tonight 
than we have been in many, many years, thanks to you.
    As President, I have been deeply indebted to my service as Governor. 
It has stood me in good stead. And I have been deeply indebted to so 
many of you for the friendship, the advice, the counsel you have given 
me, and to so many who were members of this organization with me who 
continue all during these years to call with a helpful word or sometimes 
just a word of friendship and support.
    Thanks to our partnership and the hard work of the American people, 
our country is in good shape at the dawn of the new millennium. We have 
21 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the 
lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest crime rates in 25 years, 
the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest Hispanic- and African-
American unemployment rate ever, and the longest economic expansion in 
history. We are well-positioned for this new century.
    And I am very proud that there is in this country, embodied in the 
service of the Democratic Governors, a new Democratic Party, committed 
to new ideas and the old principles of opportunity for all, 
responsibility from all, and a community of all Americans. I am proud of 
what we have done together.
    But you came here tonight because we're raising money for the 
elections of 2000. And as dearly as I loved every single word Paul 
Patton said, and I'll treasure it for a lifetime--and he'll never be 
able to get away from it because everywhere I go, the White House 
Communications Agency captures things on film. I've got a movie, a color 
movie of Paul Patton, and the next time he 
gets mad at me, I'm going to play it for him. [Laughter] I will treasure 
everything he said for a lifetime. As much as I treasure and as much as 
I have loved being President, elections are about the future. And in 
this election season, those of you who are running and those of you who 
are serving and not running must be very active in defining the choices 
for the future.
    Last night at the dinner at the White House, I reminded all the 
Governors that we are now in the longest economic expansion in history, 
and it's easy to feel comfortable and confident, maybe even a little 
complacent. But the last time we had the longest economic expansion in 
history was in the decade of the 1960's, between 1961 and 1969.
    In 1964, when I graduated from high school, America was still 
profoundly sad about the loss of President Kennedy, but very optimistic 
and very united behind President Johnson; absolutely convinced we'd just 
have high economic growth with low inflation from now on; absolutely 
convinced that we would solve the civil rights challenges of our age 
through the Congress; absolutely convinced that we would prevail in the 
cold war as a united nation.
    Within 2 years, we had riots in the streets, and the country was 
divided. Within 4 years, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been 
killed. Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run for reelection. The country 
was split right in two. We had a Presidential election which for the 
first time in a long time was about the politics of division. You 
remember the election of 1968? ``Vote with the Silent Majority.'' And it 
was ``us'' and ``them.'' If you weren't in the Silent Majority, 
presumably, you were in the loud minority. I know; I was one of them. 
And in just a few months, we lost the longest economic expansion in 
history. And we've had decades of ``us'' and ``them'' elections and 
``us'' and ``them'' politics in Washington, DC.
    I ran for President because when I was a Governor, I could not have 
survived practicing politics the way it was done here every day, and I 
was sick and tired of people all caught up in the Washington political 
game, deaf to the voices of the people like those in Appalachia

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that Paul Patton introduced me to. On that 
hot day in Hazard, Kentucky, which I'll never forget because it was so 
hot, I saw people like the people I grew up with. They don't want much 
from us. They get up every day and go to work, and they obey the law, 
and they pay their taxes. All they want us to do is to work as hard at 
our job as they work at theirs and to pay attention to what their 
concerns are and to think about how their children are going to do 
better.
    And I came to Washington determined to do that. I am profoundly 
indebted to every Governor who served with me, who helped me, and to all 
of you since. But what I want you to remember is, elections are about 
the future, and so is governance. And don't you dare be complacent about 
this. I have waited for 35 years for my country to be in shape again to 
build the future of our dreams for our children. Our party can lead the 
country to do that. We're going in the right direction. We have the 
right ideas. We have the right values. And you have to lead to make sure 
it happens.
    And you have to be willing to do things that may not grab the 
headlines all the time. We have to take what Theodore Roosevelt said at 
the dawn of the century: ``A growing country with a young spirit should 
always take the long look ahead.'' Today some of you came in to see me, 
including Governor Carper and former 
Governor Dukakis, who is here tonight, to 
talk about my Amtrak budget. Well, that's not a headline grabber, but 
it's important to the future that America have a high-speed rail system 
that guarantees our energy security and our safety and our strength. 
It's part of our long look ahead.
    It's part of our long look ahead that we recognize that we've got 
the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years. That is the good news. 
The challenge is that nearly every family in nearly every income group 
is having some difficulty balancing the burdens of raising their 
children and succeeding at work, and whenever this country has to make a 
choice--any family--we lose.
    And we have to do more to help people to succeed at home and at 
work. We have to do more to bring economic opportunity to the people and 
places that have been left behind. If we can't bring free enterprise to 
Appalachia, to the Mississippi Delta, to the inner cities, and to the 
Indian reservations of this country now, we'll never get around to it. 
And the Democrats ought to lead the way. Everybody deserves a chance to 
work who is willing to do so.
    Jim Hunt said something today I want to emphasize. We started out 
together in 1979, and we all wanted--especially in the South, where we 
knew we had to do it--we all wanted to make education better. But we 
really didn't know how to do it, especially with all the kids from all 
the different backgrounds, the different economic and racial and 
religious and ethnic backgrounds, with all their different burdens that 
they carried from home to school.
    But we don't have an excuse anymore. Now, we know what works. We 
know how to turn around failing schools. We know all our kids can learn. 
And we know how to invest in it. We know how to demand high standards. 
We know what to do. We in the Democratic Party have to lead America to 
excellence in education for every single child in this country, across 
all the lines that divide us.
    When I became President, there were a lot of people that never 
thought the crime rate would go down again. But we know how to do it. We 
know you've got to put more police on the street, people who are trusted 
by folks in a community, who work with them, who know how to prevent 
crime as well as catch criminals. And we know--even in the South, we 
know--we've got to do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals 
and away from children. We know what works. The Democratic Party ought 
to lead the country to making this the safest big country in the world. 
We owe that to our children.
    We know that in the digital economy the Governors came here to talk 
about, you do not have to weaken the environment to improve the economy. 
In fact, we know that we can improve the environment and the economy at 
the same time. There is a $1 trillion market in the world today for 
environmental technologies that avoid the worst consequences of global 
warming and clean up local air and water systems and preserve the land--
$1 trillion market. We know that. And a lot of our friends in the other 
party don't know that yet. The Democratic Party ought to lead the way to 
a 21st century economy that proves we can have the strongest economy in 
history and the cleanest environment in history. We ought to lead the 
way to that sort of future.
    And we know, even those of you that come, as I do, from a landlocked 
State in the middle

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of the country, that there is no more artificial dividing line between 
foreign policy and domestic policy. We know that our welfare is tied to 
the welfare of people all around the world. That's why I've worked so 
hard for peace in every region of the world and why I've worked to 
expand trade and why I believe we ought to take advantage of an 
agreement that finally opens China's markets to us, the way our markets 
have been open to China for decades now; why I believe we ought to 
continue to work to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction, 
chemical and biological terrorism; why we ought to adopt the test ban 
treaty--even though the Senate voted against it last year--because we 
have got to make a safer world if we want our kids to live on safer 
streets and have a safer future in every State in the United States of 
America.
    And, finally--you know, I get apprehensive when people start giving 
me gifts, even one like this that I treasure. That's the kind of thing 
that they ought to do for you when you're not around anymore. I have to 
pinch myself. I'm still alive; I'm still here. [Laughter] I hope to be a 
useful citizen when I'm no longer living in the White House. But if the 
good Lord came to me tonight and said, ``I'm sorry, you can't finish 
your term. You're out of here tomorrow morning. And I'll only give you 
one wish. I'm not a genie; you get one wish, not three,'' I would set 
aside everything I just said to you and pray that America could find a 
way to overcome the profoundly ingrained tendency of people everywhere 
to distrust people who are different from them by race, by religion, 
people who were gay, all these things that are different.
    Why? You've been here talking about the Internet economy. I've got a 
cousin in Arkansas who plays chess once a week with a guy in Australia 
over the Internet. People are being drawn together as never before. I 
was in poor villages in Africa where the school buildings had maps that 
still had the Soviet Union on it. But because they're getting computer 
hookups, pretty soon they'll just be able to print out maps that are 
new, and those poor little kids in those little villages will be able to 
learn the same geography our kids do in our finest schools.
    We are being drawn together as never before, and yet we are 
bedeviled by the oldest problems of humankind. Sunday I'm going to Selma 
to be with Governor Siegelman and the veterans 
of the Selma march 35 years ago. For me, particularly because I'm from 
the South, it is a signal honor. And we will celebrate all the great 
things that have happened in the last 35 years to bring us together.
    I see Governor Barnes out there from Georgia. 
He went in on a great vote that carried in two African-Americans to 
statewide elected office in Georgia. And there are things like that 
happening all over America: Governor Locke out 
there, the first Chinese-American Governor our country ever had; 
Governor Cayetano from Hawaii, a 
Philippine-American. But it is still true that even in America--we had 
kids at a Jewish community center in California, little kids shot at 
just because they were Jewish; a Filipino postal worker killed just 
because he was Asian and worked for the Federal Government; all those 
fine people killed in the middle of the country by that man who said he 
belonged to a church that didn't believe in God but did believe in white 
supremacy; Matthew Shepard stretched out on a rack in Wyoming.
    Now, most of the news in America is good. But I am telling you, 
we're a smart people. You can't keep us down no matter what, as long as 
we've got our heads on straight. But the Democratic Party ought to take 
the lead in reminding us that one of the things that we have learned as 
we've unlocked the mysteries of the human gene is that we are 
genetically 99.9 percent the same and that the differences among 
individuals within racial groups are different--are greater than the 
differences from group to group.
    Whether we like it or not, we're all in this boat together. And 
those of you who have been in the Oval Office know that I keep on the 
table there a Moon rock that Neil Armstrong 
gave me on the 30th anniversary of the landing on the Moon. It's a lava 
rock that is 3.6 billion years old. And whenever anybody gets all hot 
and lathered up in the Oval Office in a meeting and they act like the 
whole world is about to come down, I say, ``Time out. See that rock? 
It's 3.6 billion years old. Now, we're all just passing through. Chill 
out.'' [Laughter]
    But even though we're all just passing through, every minute, every 
hour, every day is precious. So I ask you all, apart from everything you 
do on all these issues I mentioned: Model that, model one America. 
Remind people that if you believe everybody counts and everybody ought 
to have a chance, then you've got

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to believe we're all better off when we help each other instead of look 
down on one another.
    That's another thing the Democratic Party has stood for. We lost a 
lot of Presidential elections because we stood for it, but we're coming 
back now because we stand for it. You've got 13 seats up in 2000 and 36 
up in 2002. I'm going to help you with the 13, and when I'm just a 
citizen, I'll help you with the 36 if you want me to. But we will never 
have a national Democratic Party that's as strong as it ought to be 
until we have a majority of the governorships again and until we can 
prove, where people live, that we care about them, that we can produce 
for them, that we reflect their fondest hopes and deepest values. You 
can do that.
    You have helped me to help America. You have immeasurably enriched 
my life. You've been good to me and Hillary and Al and Tipper. And for 
all that, I am profoundly grateful. I will treasure this book for the 
rest of my days and my friendships and, seriously, what Paul Patton 
said. But America is always about tomorrow. So be proud of what we've 
done, but keep your eye on tomorrow, and lead the American people where 
we ought to go.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:17 p.m. at Union Station. In his remarks, 
he referred to Gov. Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, chair, Gov. Gray Davis 
of California, vice chair, B.J. Thornberry, executive director, and Mark 
Weiner, treasurer, Democratic Governors' Association; Governor Patton's 
wife, Judi; Governors Frank O'Bannon of Indiana, Pedro Rossello of 
Puerto Rico, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Mel Carnahan of Missouri, 
James B. Hunt, Jr., of North Carolina, Don Siegelman of Alabama, Roy 
Barnes of Georgia, Gary Locke of Washington, and Benjamin J. Cayetano of 
Hawaii; former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts; and astronaut 
Neil Armstrong.