[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[March 3, 2000]
[Pages 372-376]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in San Francisco, 
California
March 3, 2000

    Thank you very much. The first thing I would like to say to all of 
you, after thank you for the warm welcome, is that this is not the first 
time I have come here to campaign for Senator Feinstein's reelection. In fact, I'm an old hand at this. I came 
here in '94 to campaign for Senator Feinstein's reelection, and she 
stayed in Washington. I had to do it all by myself. [Laughter] So it's 
nice to be here with the evidence of my argument. I thank you very much.
    I also want to thank Senator Barbara Boxer 
and Stu for being here, and Representative 
Barbara Lee, who is also off to a very fast 
start. The women from California in the Senate and the House have defied 
all of the preconceptions about how long it takes to become effective in 
the Congress. It could have something to do with that practical instinct 
of worrying more about what you're doing than where you're sitting. And 
they have really, really done a good job.
    I thank the McCarthys for chairing this event. And as you said, I can't 
remember anybody who ever got more done in her first term in the Senate 
than Dianne Feinstein. And I want you to 
know, I'm here for many reasons--and I'm not running for anything--
[laughter]--and on most days I'm okay with it. [Laughter] But I care a 
great deal about not whether we're going to change but how we're going 
to change and where we're going from here.
    And one of the things that I always admired about Dianne 
Feinstein and her husband, Dick--who's been giving me training in how to be a 
Senate spouse--[laughter]--Stu Boxer and Dick 
and I decided that we would start right now planning for next year. 
We're looking for a fourth--[laughter]--for golf, for tea, for whatever; 
we're open. [Laughter] Life's funny, isn't it? I mean, really, it's 
great. [Laughter]
    Let me say, one of the things that I really admire, maybe the thing 
I admire most about Dianne Feinstein is, 
first of all, she cares about a lot of things. How many conversations 
have we had about China, about Tibet, about different parts of the 
world; about saving the California redwoods, which meant a lot to me, 
too; about setting aside the desert--now we have two national parks--
it's meant a lot to me, too; about taking on this gun issue, which I 
started to try to do with the Brady bill concept as Governor more than 
16 years ago, and I backed off, to my everlasting regret. When I became 
President, I promised myself as long as I was standing I would do it. 
And she's been a great ally, and I thank her for that.
    But one thing that Dianne does that 
sometimes politicians in both parties, especially when you get in 
Washington and you get all caught up in this atmosphere, you know, and 
you spend all your time watching talk shows--[laughter]--do you realize 
that if you've got a halfway good cable selection, you don't ever have 
to watch anything but talk shows anymore? [Laughter] And do you realize, 
to get on one, all you have to do is take a firm position and never 
change your mind, and it's better if you don't know anything. [Laughter] 
Actually, if you have any evidence, any background, any real policy 
knowledge, it's a terrific encumbrance because you're supposed to be 
shouting to great effect on these programs. [Laughter] Now, we're all 
laughing, but you know it's pretty close to the truth. [Laughter]
    And Dianne, you know, she's like me. 
We're still under the illusion that when you elect us to these things, 
they're actually jobs, and we're supposed to get up and go to work every 
day. And like your job, it yields to effort. I mean, it really makes a 
difference if you pass a few

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days in the headlines to figure out what actually ought to be in the 
bill. And then if you actually pass a law, it can really change people's 
lives.
    Now, you're laughing, but I'm telling you, you have no idea how hard 
it is to concentrate on your job if you live in Washington today. 
Barbara is nodding her head. Representative 
Lee is nodding her head. We live in this sort of 
constant culture of critiquing and carping and talking and who's up and 
who's down and who's in and who's out. And I wanted to be here tonight; 
I'm proud to show up for somebody who still believes being a United 
States Senator is one of the most important jobs in the world, and with 
effort you can get results which change people's lives for the better. 
And that is the measure of public service, and she fulfills it in an 
astonishing way.
    Now, the second reason I'm here is to tell you I want you to go vote 
on Tuesday. I can't vote in this primary, but I hope you'll vote. You've 
got a big ballot. You'll have an opportunity to vote for things that 
will affect your future and to send a signal where California is. I hope 
you'll vote, as Dianne said, for proposition 26. Why? Because it'll 
build people up; because we're going to have 2 million teachers retire 
in the next few years as our student bodies get larger; because we've 
got, already, untold numbers of kids in schools that are either 
overcrowded or tumbling down; and because California has shown a 
commitment to turn around failing schools, to adopt charter schools, to 
try things that will work. And you need to get all the roadblocks out of 
your way to building your children's future.
    And for me, I hope you'll vote against proposition 22 because--
[applause]--now, wait a minute. Calm down. I want to say--I'll say more 
about this in a minute--because however you stand on the question of gay 
marriage--and I realize that San Francisco is different from the rest of 
California, is different from the rest of America. But that's not what 
is at stake here. This initiative will have no practical effect 
whatever. This is a solution in search of a problem that isn't there.
    So people are being asked to vote on this to get everybody in a 
white heat and to divide people at a time when--you know, look around, 
folks, we just had this little 6-year-old girl 
killed in Michigan by a 6-year-old boy who got a gun that was stolen, 
that he shouldn't have been able to get his hands on. That's a problem 
we ought to be working on. You had a guy flip 
out in western Pennsylvania and start shooting people at random, 
apparently out of his imagined grievance that had some racial basis. You 
had a guy in Los Angeles shoot at Jewish kids--kids--who were going to 
school, just because they were Jewish. And then he killed a Filipino 
postal worker just because he was a Filipino and he worked for the 
Federal Government; he had double satisfaction. You had Matthew Shepard 
stretched out on a rack in Wyoming. You had James Byrd dragged to death 
in Texas. You had this guy who said he belonged to a church that didn't 
believe in God, but did believe in white supremacy, kill a Korean 
Christian walking out of his church and the former basketball coach of 
Northwestern, an African-American, last year. And I could go on and on.
    We've had all the turmoil in New York City over this Diallo case. 
And I don't want--as I said before, I don't pretend for a moment to 
second-guess the jury. I didn't sit there and listen to the evidence. 
But I know most people in America of all races believe that if it had 
been a young white man in a young, all-white neighborhood, it probably 
wouldn't have happened. Now, that doesn't mean they were guilty under 
the criminal law. And the Justice Department is looking into that, in 
the Civil Rights Division, and that's the way to handle that.
    But what it does mean is, there's this huge gulf out there still, in 
too many places, where people wonder if they can be treated fairly. So 
what I'm trying to do--the reason I ran for President was that the 
country was in trouble. California was in real trouble back in '92, and 
Washington was dominated by sort of a talk show mentality--and the 
Congress, too, and in the White House. ``Did you get your 10 seconds on 
the news tonight?'' And the only way you could get it is if you were 
bombing the other side. And there was the liberal position, and there 
was the conservative position. There was the Democrat position, and 
there was a Republican position, and we were supposed to get in here and 
basically fight. And it didn't matter if anything ever got done.
    And I thought to myself, you know, I've been a Governor for 10 
years. I thought, if I ran my State that way, we'd be in the ditch; if 
you ran your business that way, you would be broke; and if we ran our 
homes that way, the divorce rate would be 100 percent. I mean, this is--
it was crazy. And what I want you to think

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about tonight is this. I thank Dianne and 
others who have been so generous. So many of you said to me tonight kind 
things about my service for which I am grateful. But I want you to think 
about that tonight.
    Elections are about the future. America has stayed young by thinking 
about tomorrow. And the point I want to make to you, if you like the 
fact that America is doing well, the only way we can continue to do well 
is to keep striving to do better, because the world is changing very 
rapidly and because there are still unsolved problems and unseized 
opportunities in this country. And that's what this election is about.
    Dianne mentioned a few of them. How are we going to keep the economy 
going? How are we going to bring economic opportunity to people in 
places that have been left behind: the Mississippi Delta, where I come 
from; the Rio Grande Valley, where I was last week; the Pine Ridge 
Indian Reservation and other reservations, where unemployment runs as 
high as 70 percent; the inner-city neighborhoods in California and 
elsewhere, where there is still an unemployment rate 2, 3, 4 times the 
national average. What are we going to do to reach them? The rest of us 
need that. If you want to keep doing well, you've got to try to do 
better. Why? Because if you invest there, you get inflation-free growth 
that benefits everyone else. We're living in a time where, economically, 
doing the morally right thing happens to be good for you, too. Equal pay 
for equal work for women is morally right; it's good for the economy. 
Raising the minimum wage is good for the economy. Closing the digital 
divide is good for the economy.
    I was out in northern California a couple of months ago, and I was 
with some eBay executives who informed me that 20,000 Americans now make 
a living on eBay--not working for eBay, trading on eBay. And they've 
done a profile of these people and, lo and behold, they found that a lot 
of them used to be on welfare. So what happened? That little computer--
when the digital divide was bridged--I believe intelligence is equally 
distributed across racial and income lines. And I grew up in one of the 
poorest places in America, and some of the smartest people I ever met I 
had known by the time I was 10 years old. I've always felt that luck had 
something to do with the fact that I was standing here, even though all 
politicians want you to believe they were born in log cabins they built 
themselves. [Laughter]
    But anyway, consider this. What does it mean that 20,000 people are 
making a living on eBay and some of them used to be on welfare? It means 
if you bridge the digital divide, you collapse the distance not only 
between people who are physically isolated from markets and 
opportunities but may be isolated from bank loans, isolated from 
education, isolated from other things. So it's a big question.
    How are you going to educate all these kids? I mentioned proposition 
26. California is doing better, with the most diverse student body in 
the country. But I can tell you, we've got a lot to do. But we know what 
to do. I was laughing with some of my old Governor friends the other 
day; we didn't always know what to do. Now we know how to turn failing 
schools around. It's just a question of whether we're prepared to invest 
the money and the time and the effort and the discipline and the 
accountability and give the support to the kids in trouble with after-
school and summer school and mentoring and other programs to do what 
needs to be done. But we know what to do now.
    How are you going to help people to balance work and family? Are we 
going to do more about child care or not? I could go on and on. How are 
we going to make efforts to continue to grow the economy and improve the 
environment? It is now no longer necessary to degrade the environment to 
grow the economy. This is a digital economy. We don't have to do that 
anymore.
    And for those of you that are younger than me, I'll make you a 
prediction: Within 20 years it will become clear, and probably within a 
decade, that the only way to improve the economy is to continue to 
improve the environment. There is a trillion-dollar market out there for 
people who are committed to new technologies to combat global warming.
    Now, how are we going to make the most of the scientific technical 
revolution? What does it mean that we're going to sequence the human 
genome? What will it be like when we can cure all kinds of cancers when 
there are just a few cells forming, so there's no possibility of 
metastasis? What will it mean when we can block the defective genes that 
cause Alzheimer's or diabetes or Parkinson's? What will it mean? If you 
live to be 65 in America, your average life expectancy is already 82. 
Dianne told me tonight that there were three people that she knew of 
that were 90 years old in this audience. Can

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you imagine? Just 10 years ago you'd never go to a group like this, at 
this hour of the night, and find three people who were 90 years old. 
True. [Laughter] Ten years from now--10 years from now you will come to 
a meeting like this, and there will be 25 people that are 90 years old. 
Now, what does all this mean to us?
    What does it mean to say we're in a global economy, in a global 
society? What are our responsibilities to those poor people that are 
clinging for life on those trees in Mozambique tonight? Was I right or 
wrong to send the NATO planes, the American planes in so that the people 
could go home in Kosovo? These are big questions. What are our 
obligations to the peace process in the Middle East, in Northern 
Ireland, in the tribal wars in Africa? What is it that binds us together 
as a people?
    That's what this election is about. You've got to think about these 
big things. Don't get into this sort of old, broken-record, kind of 
cheap-slug mentality in this election. This is a big election. And it's 
not about what will get you 15 seconds on the evening news or what makes 
for a hard punch on a talk show.
    This country is doing well because we have been animated by good 
ideas, new ideas rooted in basic values: opportunities for all, 
responsibility from all, a community of all Americans. It's working 
because we have--our crowd does, in Washington--some basic ideas. We 
think everybody is important, everyone matters. We think everybody ought 
to get a chance. We think everybody's got a role to play. We think we 
all do better when we help each other. That's what we believe.
    Now, the results are pretty encouraging. But I am imploring you: Do 
not be lulled into a false sense of confidence or think for a moment it 
does not matter whether you keep looking to tomorrow or whether you 
exert particular efforts to vote in the elections this year.
    I want to close with a little story which will betray my age. 
[Laughter] Over Thanksgiving I had the kids of friends of ours over--
Hillary and I had a couple friends and their kids come stay with us. And 
this one beautiful little girl looked up at me--she was 6 years old--and 
she said, ``How old are you, anyway?'' [Laughter] And I said, ``Well, 
Mary, I'm 53.'' And she said, ``That's a lot.'' [Laughter]
    And to those of you who are younger I will say--and to those of you 
who are older, you know what I'm saying--it is a lot, but it doesn't 
take long to live a life, no matter how long it is.
    When we passed this milestone this month and we had the longest 
economic expansion in history, I went back and studied the last economic 
expansion in history. Do you know when the record was that we broke? 
Nineteen sixty-one to 1969. Now, let me tell you a little something from 
my 53 years of life.
    In 1964, I finished high school. Our country had been heartbroken by 
President Kennedy's assassination, but then we had rallied behind 
President Johnson. And he was wildly popular because we had an economy 
we thought would go on forever: high growth, low inflation, low 
unemployment. We were passing civil rights bills right and left in the 
United States Congress. And most people believed we would actually solve 
the problems of race through the laws, through Congress and the courts. 
The Vietnam war had not yet manifested itself in the way it later did. 
And most people believed that we would prevail in the cold war, which we 
subsequently did, but most people thought we would do it without 
torment, turmoil, and division. We were feeling pretty cool in the 
summer of 1964. We thought we'd have social justice, economic progress, 
and freedom and national security in the world--and it would just 
happen. That's what we thought when I graduated from high school.
    Not long after that, we had the Watts riots. Not long after that, 
the streets of every major city were filled with antiwar demonstrations. 
Within 4 years, when I graduated from college at Georgetown, it was 2 
days after Robert Kennedy had been killed, 2 months after Martin Luther 
King had been killed, 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run 
for reelection. Our country was split right down the middle over the 
Vietnam war. And in just a couple of months, President Nixon would be 
elected President on the first of our campaigns of division. You may 
remember, he said he was representing the Silent Majority, which meant 
the rest of us, I guess, were in the loud minority. [Laughter] But the 
message was clear: ``America is divided into two camps, `us' and `them.' 
And anybody who's not with us is `them.''' And we've been ``us-ing'' and 
``them-ing'' ever since, in some way or another.
    And ever since I ran in 1992, I have done my best to heal those 
breaches and to bring us together and to get us to let go of some

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of that stuff, that poison, that venom, that need we always seem to have 
to be divided one from another.
    But I tell you this because when I was 18 in 1964, times were just 
about like they are now, and I thought it would all be fine. And in next 
to no time, all the wheels ran off, and by 1967 everything was divided. 
And within a few more months in 1968, within a few more months our 
expansion came to an end.
    I say this to you not as your President but as a citizen. I have 
waited for 35 years for my country to be in a position to build the 
future of our dreams for our children that all of us could be a part of, 
not just those of us that are wealthy enough to come here but the people 
that were good enough to serve us tonight, not just those of us that are 
doing great and have lived most of our lives but those of us that are 
just beginning.
    But I remember. Don't you be overconfident. Don't you be overcasual. 
You know, in life we're always lucky when we get a second chance, and 
most of us are lucky enough to have had more than one. But a country is 
indeed graced by God to get a second chance. I'm glad I helped to build 
America's second chance these last 7 years. We've got it now. I've 
waited 35 years to see it.
    That's why I'm for Dianne Feinstein. 
That's why I'm traipsing all over the country trying to get people to 
think about this. And when this political debate goes on, don't you get 
caught in all this little stuff. You lift this country up; lift the 
people in your community up. Tell the people why they ought to vote. 
Remind them of how we lost our last expansion. Think about all the 
possibilities for the future. Be big. Be big and remember: We all do 
better when we help each other, and the only way to keep doing well is 
to be committed to doing better.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 7:50 p.m. in the Peacock Court at the Mark 
Hopkins InterContinental Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Stewart 
Boxer, husband of Senator Barbara Boxer; dinner chairs Robert J. and 
Suzanne McCarthy; Richard Blum, husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein; 
Kayla Rolland, who died after she was shot by 6-year-old classmate 
Dedrick Owens in Mount Morris Township, MI; Ronald Taylor, who allegedly 
went on a deadly shooting spree in Wilkinsburg, PA; and West African 
immigrant Amadou Diallo, who died after being shot in the Bronx Borough 
of New York City by four police officers, who were acquitted of all 
criminal charges on February 25 in Albany, NY. The President also 
referred to California's proposition 26, School Facilities Local 
Majority Vote, to permit a simple majority for school bond issues as 
opposed to the super majority currently required; and proposition 22, 
Limit on Marriage Initiative, to ban gay marriages in California.