[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[June 10, 2000]
[Pages 1120-1125]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Luncheon in Minneapolis
June 10, 2000

    Thank you very much, Vance. Thank you, 
Darin. And thanks for being my friend for 
such a long time, and thank you for giving us a little walk through 
memory lane. [Laughter] I'm still proud I was a child of the sixties. 
[Laughter]
    I never have known what I was supposed to be embarrassed about. I 
remember President Bush used to refer to me as the Governor of a small 
southern State. I was so dumb, I thought it was a compliment. [Laughter] 
I still feel that way.
    I want to thank my friend of more than two decades, Joan 
Mondale, for being here, and for all the years 
that we've shared together. I'd also like to thank your former secretary 
of state, Joan Growe, for being here. Thank you, 
Joan. Sandy Novak, thank you. And 
I'd like to thank the people here from the Minnesota Teachers Group for 
their leadership in this event and for sticking with the Democratic 
Party and for their support of education reform.
    Let me say, first of all, I am glad to be standing here, because in 
the last week I have been to Portugal, Germany, Russia, Ukraine. I came 
back to the United States to meet with the King of Jordan, and then I flew to Japan to the funeral of Prime Minister 
Obuchi, then came back to meet with the President of Mexico. And now I'm here. [Laughter] I feel like a character 
in that H.G. Wells novel, ``The Time Machine.'' [Laughter] But if by 
some chance I should slip a word or two here, you'll just have to make 
some allowances for me. [Laughter]

[[Page 1121]]

    I would also like to thank Mayor Rendell. He didn't really plan on leaving the mayoralty of 
Philadelphia and taking this little part-time job that I talked him 
into.
    One other, just--thing I want to say preliminarily, I've been to 
Minnesota three times in the last 5 weeks--[laughter]--and it's really 
funny, because I was screaming to the point of irritability at my 
scheduling staff for months before that. I said, ``Look, here's three 
places that I have not been in 2 years, and I'm really upset,'' and one 
of them was Minnesota. I said, ``I really want to go.'' [Laughter]
    So then, they said, all right, you know. So Fritz Mondale and I went to a farm in David Minge's district to talk about the China vote. And then I went 
to St. Paul on my education tour, to the first charter school in the 
United States. There are now over 1,700, thanks to our administration 
pushing that, and they're working well. And today I got to speak at 
Carleton about the importance of opening the doors of college to 
everyone. It's been a really rewarding thing.
    The people of Minnesota have been so good to me and to Al Gore and 
to Hillary and to Tipper. You know, I still remember when we rolled into 
Minneapolis on the bus tour in '92, we were about an hour and a half or 
2 hours late, and there were over 25,000 people in the streets. And I 
think Vice President Mondale kept the crowd 
there--[laughter]--by hook or crook. So I'm very grateful to you.
    I just want to say a couple of things briefly--one other thing. I 
want to thank Vance for helping 
Hillary, too. She's doing well. You'd 
be proud of her. I think she's going to win that race, and I'm very, 
very proud of her.
    When we took office 7\1/2\ years ago--Al Gore and I and our whole 
team--we were animated by some fairly basic ideas. One is that we could 
have good economics and good social policy, but to do it, we'd have to 
get rid of the deficit and have to go through the fire of doing that. 
The second was that we could grow the economy and improve the 
environment. The third was that we had to stop the politics of personal 
destruction and the kind of old rhetoric that had paralyzed Washington 
and try to find some way to bring the American people together as a 
community. And the fourth was that we had to abolish the distinction 
between domestic and foreign policy, that in the 21st century in a 
globalized society, it really wasn't going to be as--there are some 
things that are clearly, discretely foreign policy-oriented, like what 
we did--this is the one-year anniversary of our victory in Kosovo over 
ethnic cleansing, something I'm very proud of. But by and large, we 
needed to begin to look at the world more in terms of how it affected us 
here at home and look at how we were--what we were doing at home in 
terms of its impact around the world.
    So, for example, I think that it helps America that we're trying to 
relieve the debts of the poorest people in the world, that we now treat 
AIDS as a national security problem. I know Senator Lott made fun of me the other day when our administration 
announced that we considered the AIDS problem to be a national security 
problem, but I think it is. Seventy percent of the AIDS cases are in 
sub-Saharan Africa. There are countries there that are now routinely 
hiring two people when there is a job vacancy because they expect one of 
them to die within a few months. And this could wreck whole societies, 
wreak havoc on the continent, just at the very time when Africa offers 
the promise of new partnership to so many of us.
    Anyway, we had these ideas, and so we set about trying to make them 
work. And lo and behold, they did. And I'm grateful for that, and I 
thank you. But I just want to make a couple of points very briefly, 
because somebody might ask you why you were here. And if you say, 
``Well, I wanted to shake hands with Bill Clinton,'' that's a good 
answer, but that won't get any votes for us.
    The first thing I would like to say is that ideas matter in 
politics, and they have consequences. And while we have had our fair 
share of good fortune, it flowed from a set of ideas and policies that 
we implemented. The second thing I want to say is, there was, 8 years 
ago, there was, 4 years ago, and there is today a significant and honest 
difference between the two parties. It is not necessary for us to do to 
them what they worked so hard to do to us, to convince the American 
people they're bad people, and they're no good, and we should tar and 
feather them and run them out of town. There are differences.
    The previous administration vetoed the family and medical leave law 
as being bad for the small business economy. I signed it and said it 
would be good for the small business economy if parents weren't all 
agitated all day every day about whether their kids were sick at home. 
And now, in each of the last 7 years, we've

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set new records for small business formation. The debate's over, but the 
American people may not know it.
    The previous administration vetoed the Brady bill on the grounds 
that it was an infringement on the constitutional right to keep and bear 
arms and wouldn't do any good because crooks didn't buy guns at gun 
stores, they bought them at gun shows. That's what they said. Now they 
say they don't buy them at gun shows, but anyway--[laughter]--back then 
they said they did, and that it was an incredibly burdensome thing, and 
so they vetoed it.
    We passed it and signed it, and it turned out 500,000 people who 
were felons, fugitives, and stalkers did buy guns in gun stores, and we 
stopped them. And gun crime is down 35 percent; homicide is at a 30-year 
low; overall crime is at a 25-year low, and not a single hunter has 
missed a day in the deer woods. So the debate is over. We won that 
debate. We were right, and they weren't.
    And we raised the standards for air quality, for water quality, for 
land conservation. We set aside more land permanently in protected areas 
than any administration except those of the two Roosevelts. And I think 
we've proved you can grow the economy and improve the environment at the 
same time.
    I say that not to be self-serving but to say that they are ideas; 
they have consequences. We need to tell people this. And if you look at 
the debate today, you see the same sort of debate unfold. That's the 
first thing I want to say.
    So what are the issues today? Well, first of all, there's a big 
issue, huge issue: What do you think we ought to do with this situation 
we've got in America today?
    Now, in my lifetime, we have never had at the same time an economy 
this strong, so much progress on the social issues, and the absence of 
domestic crisis or external threat. The last time we had an economy this 
strong and a lot of the social indicators were beginning to look good 
was in the 1960's, and it came apart because of the civil rights 
challenge at home and the Vietnam war abroad. So I'm not sure it's ever 
happened in the history of America, but in our lifetimes, it had never 
happened before.
    The last longest economic expansion in history, the one that 
consumed the 1960's from '61 to '69, and it ended because we couldn't 
reconcile our external problems over Vietnam, our internal problems over 
civil rights, the economics associated with it, and the social fabric 
came apart, and I remember how it ended. I graduated from high school 9 
weeks after Martin Luther King was killed, 2 days after Bobby Kennedy 
was killed, 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he couldn't run for 
President anymore because the country was too divided. A few months 
after I graduated from college, the last longest economic expansion in 
history ended.
    So these things don't last forever. This is highly unusual. So the 
big question in this election year is, overshadowing everything else, 
is: What do you propose to do with this? I have done everything I could 
do to turn this country around, to prepare this country for a new 
century, a new millennium. And it's your turn now. You get to decide. 
That's what this election is about: What are we going to do with all 
this prosperity? Ideas have consequences. It matters.
    What I think we should be doing is taking on the big challenges and 
the big opportunities. I think we ought to say, ``If we could create the 
future of our dreams for our kids, what will we do?'' I can only tell 
you what I think. I think we ought to extend opportunity to the people 
and places that aren't part of the recovery. I think we ought to make a 
commitment to ending child poverty and giving every family the time and 
tools it needs to succeed at home and at work.
    I think we ought to make a commitment to giving every kid a world-
class education in the public schools and opening the doors of college 
to all Americans. I think we ought to have a commitment to roll back the 
tide of climate change and the environment, and to deal with the 
challenge of the aging of America, so we baby boomers don't burden our 
children and our grandchildren.
    I think we ought to commit to stay on the cutting edge of science 
and technology not only to reap the benefits but to deal with the most 
troubling potential burdens that are coming up, including the invasion 
of our privacy by the explosion of information technology.
    I think we ought to commit to continuing to work for one America 
across all the lines that divide us, and I think we ought to be more 
involved, not less involved, in all kinds of nonmilitary ways with the 
rest of the world. I think the trade agreements we made with Africa, 
with the Caribbean Basin, with China, trying to alleviate the debt of 
poor countries, the money

[[Page 1123]]

we're trying to raise to develop vaccines for AIDS, TB, and malaria--
these things are all good, and they would directly benefit the United 
States by giving us a more peaceful, more free, more decent world to 
live in. That's what I think we ought to be doing.
    Now, how do you tell what to do in an election, if you've decided 
that? So you've got to decide what you think of it, that's what I think. 
Because I don't know if this will ever happen again in my lifetime, and 
I'd like to see America not relax, not lay down but say, ``This is an 
unbelievable gift, and we're going to make the most of it.''
    So what does that mean? That means that you've got to decide who's 
going to be the President, who's going to get elected to these Senate 
seats, who's going to get elected to the House seats. What are you going 
to do if you decide that that's what you want?
    Now, there are the following almost certain consequences to the 
election, based on the differences and ideas. And you don't have to 
believe that the two candidates for President are anything other than good people. Yes, 
I think you should believe they're both going to do what they say 
they're going to do. But you have to believe they're going to do what 
they said they would do in the primary as well as the general election. 
[Laughter]
    But there's a lot of studies on this, by the way, which show that by 
and large, even though our friends in the press try to convince you that 
we're all a bunch of slugs in politics, that Presidents historically 
have a pretty good record of doing what they say they're going to do. 
And when they don't, we're usually glad they didn't. [Laughter] I mean, 
aren't we glad Franklin Roosevelt didn't balance the budget in the 
Depression? Aren't we glad Abraham Lincoln didn't keep his promise not 
to free the slaves? I mean, once in a while, it doesn't happen. But, 
mostly, people do. An historian did an analysis that said I'd kept a 
higher percentage of my commitments than the last five Presidents. I was 
proud of that. But people do that.
    Okay, so what will happen? What is the difference in the economic 
policy? Well, there will be a difference. Al Gore will be for a tax cut that still enables us to invest in 
education and health care and science and technology and keep paying the 
debt down to take care of the aging of America. And if you both have a 
big tax cut and privatize a part of Social Security and guarantee the 
benefits to all the people that are older, you spend all the surplus and 
then some right there, before you spend a nickel on anything else. So 
we're going to have a different economic policy; we're going to go back 
to see if we can do without these surpluses and balanced budgets. And if 
you believe both candidates are honorable, that's what's going to 
happen. And I do.
    There will be a dramatic difference in environmental policy, if you 
believe that both candidates will do what they've been doing. In the primary, the 
nominee of the other party promised to reverse my designation of over 40 
million acres of roadless areas in the national forests, which the 
Audubon Society says is the most significant conservation move in the 
last 50 years. So there will be a real difference there in their 
attitudes, in clean air, clean water, how do you reconcile these 
conflicts.
    There will be a huge difference in the crime policy. You saw what 
Mr. LaPierre at the NRA convention said, that 
if they could just get us out of the White House and the Republicans 
won, they'd have an office in the White House. Now, I don't know if 
literally he will; they would probably be a little too red-faced to do 
that. But that's what will happen. You can book it; that will happen.
    And it's not like we don't have any evidence here. You've got 
evidence. You put more police on the street. You do things to keep kids 
off the street. You keep the economy strong. You try to keep going into 
these neighborhoods that are in trouble trying to change the texture of 
them, and do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and kids. 
The crime rate goes down, and more people live. This is not complicated.
    And they keep talking to me about gun control. I get tickled--I 
asked one of these--I was at a debate the other day. I said, ``You know, 
there was a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.'' I said, ``I 
don't think you interpreted it right, but let's just assume you did.'' I 
said, ``There's also a constitutional right to travel.'' And I've 
exercised it. [Laughter] I said, ``Now, when I travel around, I look, 
and I see there's speed limit laws, seatbelt laws, child safety 
restraint laws. I never hear anybody talking about car control. Do you? 
Now, if I go get your car and put it in my garage, that's car control. 
'' [Laughter] ``But otherwise, it's highway safety.''

[[Page 1124]]

    There's a huge consequence here. You've got to think about this. 
There are consequences.
    In health care there are consequences. We're for the Patients' Bill 
of Rights, and they're not. And I've been for managed care. My record on 
this is pretty clear. I've said that we couldn't sustain what we were 
doing in the health care system; we'd have to manage the system better. 
But I still think the critical decisions ought to be made by the 
professionals and the patients.
    And the court system will change dramatically, because there will be 
somewhere between two and four appointments to the Supreme Court. And if 
you think Roe against Wade should be repealed and that's an important 
issue for you, then you should vote for them, because that's what's 
going to happen. And if you don't, and that's an important issue for 
you, then you should vote for us. So there are consequences.
    The last thing I want to say is this, to follow up on what Vance 
said. I know Al Gore better than anybody 
but his wife, I believe--maybe his mother, who will chide me if I claim to know him better than 
her. [Laughter] She is an astonishing woman, once practiced law in 
Arkansas, 70 years ago--an amazing woman. Here are some facts you need 
to know.
    He supported me on every hard decision I ever had to make, whether 
it was going into Bosnia or Kosovo or Haiti or helping Mexico when they 
were about to go bankrupt. And we had a poll that morning that said by 
81 to 15, the American people didn't want me to do it. There was a real 
winner. [Laughter] But I knew it was the right thing to do. We had to do 
it.
    He cast the deciding vote on the 
economic program, without which we wouldn't all be standing around here 
today. Then he cast the tie-breaking vote on the--to close the gun show 
loophole and put child safety locks and ban large capacity ammunition 
clips when the Senate voted on that. And in between, he's done a lot of 
other things.
    He ran our reinventing Government 
program, giving us the smallest Federal establishment since 1958. The 
Democrats did that, not the Republicans--eliminated more positions and 
more programs. And I'll give anybody here $5 who can name three of the 
programs I eliminated. [Laughter] There are hundreds of them. We put the 
money--and we doubled investment in education with the money.
    He's managed our environmental 
programs, including our Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. He 
ran our very successful program to establish empowerment zones in poor 
areas which have created thousands and thousands of jobs. Ask Mayor 
Rendell; one of them is in Philadelphia.
    He managed a big part of our foreign 
relations with Russia, with South Africa, with Egypt, with a number of 
other countries.
    And you heard what Ed said about the Vice Presidency; I've actually 
done a study of this. Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale were the first two 
people that ever took the office systematically seriously, in the whole 
history of America. I love Franklin Roosevelt, but as sick as he was, 
it's unbelievable he didn't take any more time picking Harry Truman and 
didn't tell him anything. Harry Truman didn't even know about the bomb 
when he became President. Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale were the first 
two people who ever took the job systematically seriously.
    If you look at the whole history of the office, Vice President Nixon 
and Vice President Johnson had more influence than their predecessors. 
And then here's Mondale up here. And to President Reagan's credit, he 
gave Vice President Bush a lot to do, and they had more of a systematic 
relationship. And then when--and Al Gore and I actually made a study of 
this, what had happened throughout history. And I decided that this was 
crazy; that, first of all, this guy might be President any day now, 
especially with the kind of mail I've been getting the last--
[laughter]--and secondly, why have a person with a lot of energy and 
intelligence just hanging around waiting to go cut ribbons?
    And so, I put him to work. And I nearly 
broke him a couple times. I never saw anybody work any harder; he's the 
only guy I ever met who worked harder than me. But you need to know that 
there has never been anybody in that job who had more of an impact on 
more issues across a broader range of areas, and that a lot of the 
success we enjoy today would not have been possible if it hadn't been 
for him. So there's nobody that's any better prepared, not only by 
virtue of past service but by virtue of future orientation.
    So I realize this is not a big campaign speech, but you need to 
think about this. If somebody says tomorrow, ``Why did you go there?'' 
say, ``Well, but first, I'm really concerned about what

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we're going to do with this prosperity. It's just as stern a test of the 
country's character, what you do with good times, as what you do with 
bad times. It's not as if you've got a lot of options when your back is 
against the wall. Second, ideas matter, and there are honest differences 
between the candidates and the parties. Third, I think based on the 
evidence and the argument, I agree with the Democrats, and here are some 
examples.''
    Now, I hope you can all do that, because this is going to be a close 
election. And part of it--in a funny way, we're almost disadvantaged by 
how well things have gone. There are young people who are voting in this 
election who can never remember a bad stock market, never remember high 
unemployment, never remember the kind of social discord and rising crime 
and those kinds of things. They just think it happened. It didn't just 
happen.
    And I don't mean by any stretch that I am solely responsible; that's 
not what I mean. America changed in the nineties. We became more 
community-oriented; we became more civically responsible; we became more 
interested in opportunity for other people as well as for ourselves; and 
we began to think about tomorrow as well as today. It wasn't just me. I 
was just a part of it.
    But you need to really keep that in your mind between now and 
November. This is a big election. It's about what we're going to do with 
our prosperity. It's a stern test, ideas matter, and you think we're 
right--if you can sell that, I'll feel pretty good about the outcome.
    Thank you very much.

 Note:  The President spoke at 2:30 p.m. in the Atrium Room at Key 
Investment, Inc. In his remarks, he referred to luncheon hosts Vance K. 
and Darin Opperman; Joan Mondale, wife of former Vice President Walter 
Mondale; State Senator Steven G. (Sandy) Novak; President Ernesto 
Zedillo of Mexico; King Abdullah II of Jordan; Edward G. Rendell, 
general chair, Democratic National Committee; Gov. George W. Bush of 
Texas; Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president, National Rifle 
Association; and Vice President Gore's mother, Pauline.