[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[February 3, 1999]
[Pages 184-186]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Jane Harman
February 3, 1999

    The President. Let me begin by saying that I'm really here for 
Sidney. We are running--we are running on the 
same ticket this year. We're trying to get elected to the congressional 
spouses caucus. [Laughter] He's my guy, and I'm with him until the end 
of time, so here we are.
    I want to thank Representative----
    Audience member. Can't see you.
    The President. Yes, can you see me now? I'll step in. How's that?
    Audience member. Thank you.
    The President. Good. You never saw Jane; she actually was here. I 
wasn't--[laughter]--you may all think I mimed all those previous 
speeches.
    I want to thank Nancy Pelosi and Brad 
Sherman and Congressman Baca for being here, and all those who were here before to 
show their support for Jane. I want to thank my good friend Molly 
Raiser. I think--Skye 
was reminding me--I think the fundraiser I had in this house in 1992 was 
the very first one I had outside my native State of Arkansas. So we're 
all heavily indebted to this wonderful home and its occupants.
    I want to say that I'm profoundly honored to be here tonight, 
because Jane Harman is exhibit A of why the Democratic Party is now the 
true majority party in the United States. She represents a very 
difficult district, and she is proof you can be pro-family and pro-work. 
She's proved you can be pro-environment and pro-growth. She's proved you 
can be pro-labor and pro-business. She's proved that all the things that 
Republicans used to say about us, that they made votes and got elected 
time after time--and there are a lot of people in here, including Gerry 
Ferraro, who have been the victims of 
these sort of cardboard-cutout, preconceived, bogus campaigns that were 
run so effectively for more than a decade. They don't work anymore. And 
one of the things that I feel very blessed to have done, maybe just 
because I have an accent, is to help liberate the

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Democratic Party from its vulnerability to those kind of attacks.
    But I'm telling you, Jane Harman proved, in getting elected and 
staying elected and doing the right things and taking tough votes, that 
we could build a new majority in this country and that the results would 
be good.
    And I want to say, since she said what she did, I think one of the 
underappreciated things that all of us, the Democrats, have been able to 
do in the last few years is, in spite of the economic difficulties that 
we had to overcome, we've not only produced big budget surpluses; we 
actually have passed an awful lot of progressive social legislation. 
There are over 2 million fewer children in poverty. Over 20 million 
people have taken advantage of the family and medical leave law. Over 5 
million poor people have gone to college with the HOPE scholarship tax 
credit. I could go on and on and on. Ninety percent of our kids are 
immunized against serious childhood diseases. Two million kids now have 
been insured under the Children's Health Insurance Program; by the end 
of this year, I think it'll be 4.
    And that's where America is. This is not a mean-spirited country. 
This is just a country that wants to help people who are disadvantaged 
move into the middle class without breaking down middle class economics 
or values. This is a country that wants everybody to have a chance. And 
Jane Harman represents that.
    And she and Sidney have been great friends 
of mine. I had--one of the best days I've had as President was the day 
that Sidney took me through his wonderful factory in California, and I 
talked to all of his hundreds of employees. And we had a great day.
    But I'm here because Jane Harman, to me, represents not just someone 
who's been my friend and has helped me politically but what the 
Democratic Party embodies and why we can win in 2000 and in the years 
ahead.
    More important than that is, I want her to win because when I'm 
gone, I trust her to do the right thing, and that's very important.
    You know, I don't feel wistful; I don't even feel particularly sad 
about having to leave office at the end of my term, even though I love 
it and I'd probably do it forever if the Constitution didn't stop me. 
[Laughter]
    But I do want you to think about this, and I want you to know why 
I'm going to do--I'm not on the ballot this year, and I am going to do 
more events like this than I have ever done in any year. And I have 
already done more than any previous President has ever done. And I want 
you to know why: because I think so much of what we've done the last 7 
years is to turn this country around, get it going in the right 
direction, and give the American people the confidence that we can build 
a more just, a more decent, a more humane society, and play a more 
constructive role in the world, and still do well. And in fact, the more 
we do the right things, the better we're likely to do economically. And 
it's been a big job, turning this huge ship of state around.
    Now, as I said in the State of the Union the other night--I don't 
want to talk about the specifics tonight; I'd just be singing to the 
choir. But I want you to think about this, and Jack Valenti will identify with it, and so will Lloyd Hand. Our country has had the longest economic expansion in 
history. Virtually every social indicator is going in the right 
direction. There is a very high level of confidence that we can do 
whatever we set our minds to do, and we have the smallest amount of 
internal crisis or external threat we've had in my lifetime. Never in my 
lifetime has this happened.
    Now, the last time it almost happened was in the early sixties, 
which was the previous longest economic expansion in our history. When 
President Kennedy was killed--I disagree with all these people that date 
the start of American cynicism and all that to the assassination of 
President Kennedy. That's not true. People are rewriting history. 
President Johnson did a fine job in taking over, and President Kennedy's 
family was supportive. And the country rose above that, and we were 
moving forward.
    When I finished high school in 1964, we had low unemployment, low 
inflation, high growth, high expectations, and most people believed that 
the President and the Congress would find an orderly, legal way to meet 
the civil rights challenges of this country, to meet our 
responsibilities in the cold war, and to move on to greater heights. And 
a lot of people, frankly, just took it for granted and didn't see a lot 
of the big challenges there in the way that they might--plus which, time 
and chance intervened.
    All I know is, when I finished high school, everybody in America 
thought we were headed in the right direction, no interruptions ahead. 
Two years later, we were divided over Vietnam. We had riots in the 
streets. Trying to meet

[[Page 186]]

both obligations undermined our economy. It has taken us 35 years to get 
back to the point, as a nation, that we were then.
    I'm not saying to you this as a President or a Democrat. As a 
citizen, as an American, I have waited for 35 years for my country to be 
in a position where we could build the future of our dreams for our 
children and be genuinely good neighbors to people around the world. And 
we have tools to do it now and the absence of clouds that were not there 
35 years ago.
    That's why I'm here; that's why I'm going to do more of these 
things. Because people tend to get in trouble--individually, in 
families, at work, and as nations--in two kinds of circumstances, and 
anybody that's over 30 here will identify with both. One is, you tend to 
do really stupid things when you get mad and hurt and exhausted because 
you can't sleep, because you're so mad, hurt, and exhausted. The second 
time when you make a lot of mistakes is when you think things are going 
so well there are no consequences to what you do, and so you don't have 
to think and plan and look ahead and deal with the big stuff. That is 
what we face today. Democracies are great in times of crisis. We were 
hell on wheels in the Depression. We were great in World War II. We had 
a remarkable constancy all during the cold war, notwithstanding the fact 
that we had disagreements over the details.
    What are we going to do now with all this? That is the great 
question. I trust Jane Harman to not let us forget that we're going to 
double the number of people over 65 in the next 30 years, to not let us 
forget that the children of this country are growing more numerous and 
more diverse, and they'll either be our greatest asset or a big drag on 
the world we're trying to build. You know, I trust her to deal with 
these big things that I talked about in the State of the Union Address.
    And I trust you to continue to support that. When you go home 
tonight and you think about how many more times somebody's going to ask 
you to show up at one of these things this year, you think about how 
many times you'd rather be doing something else, you think about how 
tiring this gets, you just remember this, especially those of you that 
are around my age: We have waited for 35 years. And we must make sure 
the American people--in this Presidential race, in these congressional 
races, in everything we say and do--dominate the conviction of America 
to make the most of this moment.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 7:54 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to Jane Harman, candidate for California's 36th 
Congressional District, and her husband, Sidney, chief executive 
officer, Harman International Industries, Inc.; Molly Raiser, member of 
the board of directors, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, and her 
daughter Skye; former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro; 
Jack Valenti, president, Motion Picture Association of America; and 
Lloyd Hand, executive committee member, Congressional Economic 
Leadership Institute.