[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[February 29, 2000]
[Pages 342-345]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at a Reception for Congressional Candidate Elaine Bloom in Miami, Florida
February 29, 2000
Thank you. Well, I was looking out at the beautiful vista--first, I
was looking down on you. Did you see me up there? And I was looking at
this magnificent home and thinking how fortunate we are, all of us, to
be in this country at this moment, to be free citizens, to be able to
come here to support someone in whom we believe.
I want to begin by thanking Phil and Pat
Frost. They have been with me a long time,
too, and I am honored to be here in their magnificent home. I want to
thank all of you who helped to spearhead this immensely successful event
for Elaine tonight. I want to say that I'm glad that her children,
David and Anne, are here,
and I'm sorry the judge couldn't come. But far
be it for us to get him in trouble. We want him to stay on the bench and
make good decisions. [Laughter]
I want to say how grateful I am for the friendship and support I
have enjoyed from Congressman Peter Deutsch
and his wife, Lori, who is here. And I thank
them so much for their service to the United States. And Representative
Sally Heyman, we're glad you're here.
And I want to say a special word of thanks to my longtime personal
friend Bill Nelson. I
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am thrilled that he is running for the Senate and thrilled he is doing
so well.
I want you to know why I'm here tonight, besides the fact that I've
been dying to see Phil and Pat's house. I'm here for three reasons. One is, Elaine
was there for me when only my mother thought I could be elected.
[Laughter] And she reminded me tonight that when we first met, she said,
``Now, look, I'm going to ask you some questions, but I want you to know
in advance I'm going to be for you anyway, so you don't have to tailor
your answers. Just shoot me straight.'' And we've been shooting each
other straight now for, well, more than 8 years.
I'll never forget when the first significant victory I won was in
the Florida Democratic Convention when they had this straw poll. And
Elaine and some of my other supporters hauled Hillary and me from
meeting to meeting to meeting. I thought New Hampshire was tough till I
met these people in all these little caucuses, you know. I had to answer
400 questions. When I got through with that caucus, I said, ``I hope we
did well, but I'm so tired, I don't care whether we win or not
anymore.'' [Laughter] It was an amazing experience. And we had a lot of
opponents, a lot of good people running for President in 1992. And we
got a majority of the Florida Democrats at that caucus, and I feel
profoundly indebted to Elaine Bloom.
The second reason I'm here is because she embodies the philosophy
that we call the New Democratic philosophy, that is conservative in part
but also liberal in part. I believed, when I ran for President, that
there was something really wrong with the way things were going in
Washington. I felt that it bore no reasonable relationship to the work I
had done for a decade as Governor, the work that she was trying to do
here in the legislature with people like Governor Chiles and Governor,
now Senator Graham before him, the work of
getting people from different walks of life together, defining goals,
defining opportunities, defining problems, then figuring out what to do
about them.
Washington was a place where, maybe because people felt they were so
far from their constituents and it was so hard to get that 15 seconds on
the evening news at night, they seemed to me to be more interested in
sort of lobbing rhetorical bombs at one another and putting each other
in little boxes and repeating over and over and over again the fights of
yesterday as America kept moving into tomorrow.
I was absolutely convinced then that there was nothing wrong with
this country that couldn't be fixed by what was right with it. And so,
with Elaine's help, with the Frosts' help, with a lot of you in this
room, I asked the American people to give me and then give me and Al
Gore a chance to see if a unifying philosophy of opportunity for every
American and responsibility from every American and a community
including all the people of this country could lead us to new ideas and
a new direction. And now it's worked out pretty well.
And I am immensely gratified to have been a part of the progress
this country has made. I'm proud of it, and I know I am not solely
responsible for it. If it hadn't been for--[applause] Thank you. It
wouldn't have been possible if this country weren't the greatest
environment for entrepreneurs and businesspeople in the world. It
wouldn't have been possible if the American people weren't committed to
working harder and smarter, and as the economy grew they didn't ask for
inflationary pay increases. They understood they were in a world
economy, and they ought to be tied to the growth of their enterprises.
It wouldn't have been possible without the support of the members of my
party in Congress, who, without any help from the Republicans, voted to
bring the deficit down in 1993, got interest rates down, and started
this long job-creating boom. So I am very grateful.
But the third reason I'm here is the most important of all, and that
is that in 11 months or so I'll be just another citizen, but the work of
America goes on. We've turned this country around. We're moving in the
right direction. But if you really think about what you'd like America
to be, there's a great deal yet to be done.
Yes, we've turned deficits to surpluses. But I think we ought to
take this country completely out of debt, for the first time since 1835,
to keep interest rates down for a new generation.
Yes, the schools are getting better and more of our kids are going
to college. But I don't think we ought to stop until we've got the
certainty that every child, without regard to race or income, can get a
world-class education and every person can go on to college and stay
there for 4 years and not have to drop out because of the cost.
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I don't think we should stop until we find a way for every American
to have affordable health care, until we find a way to--[applause] Thank
you. And Florida--I don't think we should stop until we know that when
the baby boom generation retires--and I'm the oldest of the baby
boomers; that's everybody born between 1946 and 1964--when we all get
into our retirement years, there will only be two people working for
every one person drawing Social Security. And I don't believe we should
stop until we have modernized Social Security and Medicare for the 21st
century and secured it so that the baby boomers can retire without the
gnawing worry that we will be an awesome burden to our children and our
children's ability to raise our grandchildren.
And I can tell you, the people my age, we think about this a lot.
And I'm trying to get this Congress to lengthen the life of Social
Security, to lengthen the life of Medicare, to add a prescription drug
benefit, but we can't stop until that's done.
I'm proud of the fact that we've done a lot to save the Everglades,
but I don't think we should stop until we reverse the tide of global
warming and prove we can grow the economy as we improve the environment.
I'm proud of the fact that we've made progress for peace and freedom
around the world, but there are still threats from biological and
chemical and nuclear weapons. There are threats from terrorists. And
there are still profound problems in every corner of the world that
people have because of their racial, religious, ethnic, and tribal
differences. And we shouldn't stop.
And I can tell you that it profoundly matters who is in the
Congress. It's a big deal whether Bill Nelson
gets elected to the Senate or not, more than you can imagine. There's
going to be somewhere between two and four Justices appointed to the
Supreme Court. I hope that Vice President Gore will be making those appointments, but the ultimate
backstop is the Senate.
That's another reason I'm so interested in the Senate race from New
York--one of many. [Laughter] And I want to thank--so many of you
tonight said something nice about Hillary or said you were helping her, and I'm very grateful to
you for that.
It matters because we're going to have to decide whether to follow
the path of fiscal responsibility or not. We have doubled spending on
education and training in my term, while getting rid of the deficit. And
we did it by giving you the smallest Government in 40 years, by
eliminating hundreds of programs. Was that a conservative decision or a
liberal decision? Well, it was conservative: We got rid of the deficit.
It was liberal: We doubled spending on education and training. That's
the kind of discipline and values and vision we need. It matters.
And finally, I'd like to thank all the law enforcement people who
are here for supporting Elaine Bloom. One of the reasons I wanted to be
identified with her is that she knew you could be a Democrat and still
believe we ought to drive the crime rate down and that you could be
tough and smart about crime. That's very important to me.
I don't know if you had a chance to watch the news tonight, but a 6-
year-old child near Flint, Michigan, shot another 6-year-old
child and killed her today. Now, I don't know
all the facts yet. I thought I had them, and I didn't. The first version
I had wasn't right, but anyway, somehow--what's a 6-year-old kid doing
with a gun, anyway? And what can we do about it?
I've supported putting 100,000 police on the street. I've supported
more efforts in the drug war. I've supported putting 50,000 more police
out there now in high-crime areas. But we've got to do more to keep guns
out of the hands of criminals and away from children. We just do.
There's a huge difference there. Is that conservative or liberal? The
NRA crowd says that's liberal. I think that I'm trying to conserve life.
I think it's conservative in the best sense, and I think it's the right
thing to do.
So I'm here because I feel obligated to a woman I love, not only
because she supported me, because when she disagreed with me or was
worried about it, she'd call and chew me out about it. And I like that.
Too many people are afraid to tell Presidents what they think, and
that's what gets Presidents in trouble. She was a true friend. She
always told me exactly what she thought. I'm here because she shares my
philosophy. But mostly I'm here because of you, and because when I'm
just a citizen and I'm not President anymore, I want my country to do
well.
I said something today at lunch I'd just like for you to think
about, and I'll say it much briefer tonight. The last time we had--we
now
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have the longest economic expansion in history. The last longest
economic expansion in history was 1961 to 1969, the years in which I
grew up, graduated from high school, went to college, and finished
college. When I graduated from high school in '64, Lyndon Johnson was
President, passing civil rights legislation. We thought the economy
would boom forever. We thought the civil rights problems would be solved
in law, not in the streets. We thought we would prevail in the cold war
without any division in our country.
When I graduated from college 4 years later, it was 2 days after
Robert Kennedy was killed, 2 months after Martin Luther King was killed,
9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he couldn't run for reelection. The
streets of Washington had burned after Dr. King was killed, and this
country was divided right down the middle on the Vietnam war. And we
were divided in a Presidential election where President Nixon said he
represented the Silent Majority, which meant those who disagreed were in
the loud minority, people like me. And we've been having these ``us''
and ``them'' elections ever since--``us'' and ``them'' politics.
Now, the country has been turned around, but we have big challenges
out there. And what I want to say to you is that, in 1964, if anybody
had told us the wheels would run off by 1968, no one would have believed
it.
This is not just a time for celebration; this is a time for humility
and for resolve. As a citizen--not as President, as an American--I have
been waiting for 35 years for my country to be in a position to build
the future of our dreams for our children. That work will have to be
done by the people who will be here after the 2000 election. That's the
most important reason I am here. I trust Elaine Bloom with my
daughter's future, with my grandchildren's
future, with the future of America.
And I ask you all to be vigilant and disciplined and active in this
election. Just because we're doing well doesn't mean you can relax. You
should feel a heavier obligation. And whenever you are tempted to think
it doesn't matter, you remember this story I told you tonight. I have
waited 35 years. We've got a second chance, and we need to make the most
of it.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 7:25 p.m. at a private residence. In his
remarks, he referred to Phillip and Patricia Frost, reception hosts;
Elaine Bloom's husband, Philip, a judge in Florida's Eleventh Circuit,
and her children David and Anne; State Representative Sally Heyman; and
6-year-old Kayla Rolland, who died after she was shot by 6-year-old
classmate Dedrick Owens at Theo J. Buell Elementary School in Mount
Morris Township, MI. Ms. Bloom was a candidate for Florida's 22d
Congressional District.