[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[January 13, 2000]
[Pages 55-59]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception in New York City
January 13, 2000

    The President. Thank you. First of all, let me say I've had a good 
time tonight. I've enjoyed taking the pictures with all of you, and it's 
the only way I get to make absolutely sure I meet everyone. [Laughter] 
So I'm sorry that we had to do it so quickly, but at least I got to see 
all of you briefly.
    I want to thank John and 
Margo for opening their beautiful home 
for us and for being my wonderful friends for a very long time now. And 
I want to thank the other cochairs of this event for the efforts that 
you made and the success that you had. And I would like to just take a 
moment to say some things that may be obvious to all of you about why I 
think it's important that you did this tonight.
    When I ran for President in 1992--and I'm quite sure that most 
people in New York could not imagine voting for a guy who was Governor 
of a State that many people here couldn't find on a map, you know--
[laughter]--as President Bush said, a small southern State. [Laughter]
    Let me say something else--I know I usually get on--[inaudible]. I 
keep reading--several times in my tenure, for various reasons, the press 
has said that I was a lame duck, and now they say I really am because I 
only have a year to serve. You know what a lame duck is, really? That's 
when you're supposed to show up at an event, and you do, and nobody else 
is there. [Laughter] So you all were immensely reassuring to me tonight, 
and I thank you. I'll sleep well tonight. I thank you very much.
    But let me say to you----
    Audience member. [Inaudible]
    The President. Listen, that is--part of the reason we're here 
tonight; it's a high-tech economy, you know all these cell phones----
    Audience member. Buy 500 shares. [Laughter]
    The President. Even I know it's--[inaudible]. The thing that I want 
to say about it, just very

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briefly, why I hope you will--if somebody asked you tomorrow why did you 
come, apart from you wanted to get a picture or you wanted to say 
something to me about a particular issue, Cyprus or something else--I'll 
say more about that in a minute. I just want you to remember, 7 years 
ago, when I ran for President in 1992, we had economic distress, social 
division, political conflict, and Government was discredited.
    And the only reason I ran--I was actually very happy at home in my 
job, raising my daughter, with my friends--some of whom have become your 
friends, some of you, in the last 7 years. But it really bothered me 
because I knew this was a great country that had more strengths and more 
potential for the 21st century than at any time in our history. And I 
felt we had an obligation to the rest of the world because this is the 
only place that has the kind of economic strength we have and political 
strength, and also we have people from everywhere else on Earth living 
in America. We have people from everywhere else on Earth, nearly, in 
this room tonight. [Laughter] And that's very important.
    So, anyway, we set about our work. And the reason this is so 
important is now the American people have to decide whether to ratify 
the approach that has had such a large role in producing the last 7 
years, or take a different approach.
    John talked about we've gone from a big deficit to a big surplus. 
We've got the first back-to-back budget surpluses in 42 years, and in 
the last 2 days we actually bought in Government debt before it was due, 
for the first time in the history of the United States. We're going to 
get this country out of debt.
    And all of you know we've got the lowest unemployment rate in 30 
years and the longest--in just a few weeks, we'll have the longest 
economic expansion in the history of America, including the times we 
were fully mobilized for war. And I'm grateful for that. And I'm 
grateful for the fact that we have the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years 
and the lowest murder rate in 30 years and all of those things.
    But what I want to say to you is, elections and public work are just 
like your work: It's really always about tomorrow. And I appreciate what 
John said about the job that we've done. But I never will forget when I 
was thinking about running for a fifth term as Governor--we used to have 
2-year terms, and then we went to 4-year terms--I went out to the State 
Fair. And this old man in overalls came up to me and said, ``Are you 
going to run for another term?'' And I said, ``Well, I don't know. If I 
run, will you vote for me?'' He said, ``I guess so. I always have.'' 
[Laughter] I'd been in 10 years. And I said, ``Well, aren't you sick of 
me after all these years?'' He said, ``No, I'm not, but nearly everyone 
else I know is.'' [Laughter] So I got my feelings hurt. I said, ``Well, 
don't you think I've done a good job?'' He said, ``Yeah, but that's what 
I hired you to do.'' [Laughter] He said, ``You drew a check every 2 
weeks, didn't you?'' It was a very interesting encounter.
    So every time we come around to a decision, we always have to think 
about the future. And the only thing I want you to think about is this. 
This is the only time in my lifetime when we have had at the same time 
dramatic economic progress, dramatic decline in our social problems, the 
absence of an internal crisis, and the absence of an external threat to 
our existence. We have never had all those four conditions at one time. 
Therefore, we have the opportunity of a lifetime to chart the future of 
our dreams for our children here at home and to be the world's most 
responsible nation abroad.
    A lot of you came up to me; some talked about the Middle East peace 
process, which I'm heavily involved in. I hope and pray we can reach an 
agreement between Syria and Lebanon and the Palestinians in Israel in 
the next several weeks. And several of you talked to me about how we've 
made some progress in repairing the breach between Turkey and Greece, 
but we haven't done enough on Cyprus. You think about it: There's no 
other place in the world where people would come and talk to the head of 
a country and talk about these things. And it's a great privilege to be 
an American, to live in a country where we have people from everywhere 
and where our country has the opportunity and the responsibility to try 
to move the world toward greater harmony, to go beyond the racial and 
ethnic and religious conflicts that have caused so much turmoil in the 
world. And I think that's important.
    We have an opportunity to do the same thing here at home. We have an 
opportunity now--the reason I'm here today in New York is I came to the 
Wall Street Project, sponsored by Jesse Jackson, Sandy Weill, and 
Dick Grasso--now, that's an interesting trio. 
[Laughter] And

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why are they doing that? For the same reason that I'm going around 
America trying to get changes in the law and new investments and tax 
incentives to invest in areas and people that have been left behind, 
because we'll never have the opportunity we have right now, today, to 
give people who have been poor and forgotten a chance to be part of this 
free enterprise economy. If we don't do it now, we'll never get around 
to it--we'll never get around to it.
    Let me just mention two or three more issues. We've got the most 
diverse group of young people in our country's history and the largest 
number of students. We've got the best system of college education in 
the world, and we have effectively opened the doors of college to 
everybody, although I'm going to propose some things to make it more 
affordable in the State of the Union. But no one believes we've done 
what we need to do to give every child a world-class education, 
kindergarten through 12th grade. Until we do that, we won't be secure in 
the 21st century.
    The number of people over 65 is going to double in the next 30 
years. I hope to be one of them. [Laughter] And I'm trying to get the 
Congress to take the Social Security Trust Fund out beyond the life of 
the baby boomers and to add to the life of Medicare and to let elderly 
people on Medicare who can't otherwise afford it buy insurance so they 
can have prescription drugs when they need them. These are big issues.
    And just one more--I could mention four or five more--I want to 
mention one more. I had an incredible experience this week, which I hope 
every one of you will have at some point in your life if you have not 
already. I flew in very late at night into the Grand Canyon. And I spent 
the night in an old lodge built in 1905, with a balcony right over the 
edge of the Canyon. And I spent an hour in the morning watching the Sun 
rise over the Grand Canyon.
    Thirty years ago, when I was a much younger man, I spent 2 hours 
crawling out on a ledge to watch the Sun set over the Grand Canyon. And 
it's a source of infinite humility. People ask me all the time about my 
legacy. It took millions of years to form the Grand Canyon; doubtless in 
a few thousand no one will remember that I did a lot to save it or 
expand it, you know. It's not about your legacy; it's about your life.
    But if you go to the Grand Canyon and you watch the sunrise or the 
sunset and you see that it took millions upon millions of years for all 
these layers of rock to form and they're different colors and different 
shapes, so when the Sun sets you watch the light come up out of the 
Canyon and, when the Sun rises, you watch the light dive down into the 
Canyon, and it's like watching this breathtaking, constantly changing 
painting, there's nothing like it anywhere in the world.
    And I went out there because I added a million acres to the land 
we're protecting, almost doubling the size of the Grand Canyon. And when 
we did that, our administration has now protected more land in the lower 
48 States than any administration in history except those of Franklin 
and Theodore Roosevelt. [Applause] Thank you. You don't have to clap for 
that, but I like it. [Laughter]
    But here's why I make this point. When I ran for office in 1992, I 
used as my theme song that old Fleetwood Mac song ``Don't Stop Thinking 
About Tomorrow.'' And all during the times I've been President, the good 
times and bad, I have hammered my Cabinet and my staff to remember why 
we came here. I was immensely gratified when, a couple of years ago, a 
scholar of the American Presidency said that we had--and this was 3\1/2\ 
years ago--already kept a higher percentage of our promises to the 
American people than the previous five administrations he'd studied. And 
it's not a mystery. We just sort of showed up for work every day, and no 
matter what else they were lobbing in, we just kept working and kept 
working.
    The reason I think it's important you're here tonight is this: Just 
remember, for all the good things that have happened, what we have 
basically done is turn the ship of state around, got the country going 
in the right direction, and got it coming together.
    We now have a chance to think about these big things--I mean really 
big things. Just think about it. We could make America the safest big 
country in the world. We could prove forever that you could grow the 
economy and improve the environment. We could move beyond our own racial 
and religious and ethnic conflicts and basically make a lasting peace in 
other parts of the world. These are things we could do. We could prove 
you could educate all children. We could prove you could bring free 
enterprise to poor people. These are things we can do.

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But they won't happen unless we make a decision, as a people, in this 
election that we will not be devoted, distracted, or divided by the good 
times before.
    Now, there are a lot of young people here, and I'm glad that you're 
here. But everybody over a certain age can cite some personal experience 
when you made a big mistake in your life because you thought things were 
going so well that there were no consequences to the failure to 
concentrate. Everybody over a certain age--[laughter]--isn't that right? 
I have about 10 laws of politics, one of which is, you're always most 
vulnerable when you think you are invulnerable.
    This country will never get an election like this again in our 
lifetime, when all these things are in alignment. And now we have to 
make a decision about what we want to do for our children and our 
grandchildren. And it's not as if we don't know what the great 
opportunities and the great challenges of the next 30 or 40 years are 
going to be. So we have no excuse. We know.
    So if somebody asks you why you came tonight, say, ``I got to see 
the President, and he told a joke or two, and we took a nice picture. 
But I care about the America and the world my children and grandchildren 
are going to live in, and I want us to use this election to take what 
Theodore Roosevelt called, almost 100 years ago, the long look ahead.''
    Thank you very much.
                    
    Audience member. One or two questions.

Judicial Nominations

    Audience member.  [Inaudible]--so much about the future, and one of 
the reasons I think everybody is here is because of their concern. And 
one of the key things that keeps coming up in this election is not about 
the next 4 years; I think it has a great effect on the Federal judiciary 
for the next 30 years. I don't know the statistics, but I know the 
Supreme Court is basically up. I just wondered if you could comment on 
this.
    The President. I think a lot of people have not given much thought 
to this, but when you vote for--now, this is a self-interested statement 
I'm about to make. When you vote for the Senate--[laughter]--and when 
you vote for President, one of the things you should know is, I have 
appointed a very large number of judges. In spite of the fact that I 
think the Republican Senate has been way too slow in considering our 
nominees, I've appointed more than 40 percent of all the judges in the 
city today, but only two members of the Supreme Court.
    Most people believe there will be at least two and maybe as many as 
four members of the Supreme Court retire in the next 4 years. That 
means--and there are only two groups of people that matter then, the 
President who nominates and the Senate who confirms.
    And all these people have been pretty honest, I must say. The 
candidates have been pretty honest. Governor Bush said the other day 
that the two people on the Supreme Court that he most admires were 
Clarence Thomas and Justice Scalia. That's what he said. So he's sending 
you a signal. He said, ``I want you to know that so you'll know who I'll 
appoint to the Supreme Court if I get elected.'' And you have to 
assume--I can tell you that the people who are in the President's party 
are more likely to vote to confirm his nominees, whether or not they 
agree with him.
    So you need to think about that. What do you want in a Supreme Court 
judge? Do you care if they repeal Roe v. Wade, or not? Do you want them 
to? Do you not want them to? It's a big issue. And nobody is talking 
about it yet, but you should be aware. This is not an idle, sort of 
sideline conversation. This is a real, significant possibility. And so 
it's something you should think about. And there's not just that, there 
are all the civil rights cases and a lot of other issues that are big, 
big issues. So you should know that.
    The power of the President--I really tried to--and my judges were 
much less politically controversial than previous judges, both Democrat 
and Republican, because I focused on getting people who had good skills 
and were highly regarded by the American Bar Association. Even though 
there were more women and more minorities in my appointees than anybody 
in the past, they also had the highest ratings. So I tried to keep it 
out of politics. But it could get very political very fast, and the 
public would be making a mistake if they didn't take into account these 
things as they voted.
    Thank you.

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Note: The President spoke at 9:05 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to reception hosts John and Margo Catsimatidis; 
Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; 
Sanford I. Weill, chief executive officer, Citigroup; Richard Grasso, 
chairman and chief executive officer, New York Stock Exchange; and Gov. 
George W. Bush of Texas.