[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[August 4, 2000]
[Pages 1558-1562]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at a Reception for Hillary Clinton in Nantucket, Massachusetts
August 4, 2000
The President. When Smith started that
story I didn't know where it was going. [Laughter] I thought he was
going to say he called a surgeon or something.
Let me say, first of all, I am delighted to be back here. I had a
wonderful time last year, and Hillary and I came back. Chelsea came with us this year. Just took a tour of
Nantucket, and it's a beautiful place. And I want to thank all of you
for coming out here tonight to help.
You know, we just finished the Republican Convention, and now it's
our turn. And one thing that we apparently agree on--they did agree that
the country was in good shape. [Laughter] And I appreciated that act of
uncommon generosity on their part. [Laughter] We disagree on how it
happened--[laughter]--and on what to do with it. I say that--I like to
hear you laugh. I like to hear them laugh more. [Laughter] I mean, we
need to lighten up here. But on the other hand, we need to be more
serious about the election.
I actually think this is a great opportunity for the American people
because we don't have to say bad things about our opponents as people.
And if I have anything to do with it, the Democrats won't do that. I
don't like it. I've never liked it, and we don't need it. All we need to
do is to give the American people the chance to have an honest debate
over the issues, what are the differences and what are the consequences
of the election.
But if I could just say three or four things. First, I am profoundly
grateful for the chance that I've had to serve. It's been a joy. Even
the bad days were good, and the fights were worth making--if I had to
fight it all again, I'd do it all again. I loved it.
Audience member. Thank you.
The President. And secondly, when we ran in '92, we had a very clear
strategy. I didn't have any idea if it would work or not. I mean, when I
started, the incumbent President was at 70-something percent approval,
but the country was not in good shape. And so I actually laid out to the
American people in great detail what it was I would try to do if I were
fortunate enough to be elected.
And I tried to make it a campaign of ideas, committed to change, but
change rooted in endless American values, opportunity for everybody who
is responsible, and a community in which all Americans can be a part.
And it's worked pretty well. I mean, we voted in '93 to get rid of the
deficit, and the lower interest rates led to a boom in the stock market
and lower interest rates and getting rid of the--and more jobs, and you
know the rest. It's worked pretty well.
Last year I couldn't say this, but now we've had the longest
economic expansion in our history and over 22 million new jobs. So if it
worked, and you have evidence, then the question is, which course is
more likely to keep this going and to spread the benefits of the
recovery to the people in places who still aren't part of it?
When I became President, the crime rate was going up. Now it's gone
down for 7 years. We put 100,000 police on the street. We took assault
weapons off the street. We passed the Brady background check law, and it
plainly had a big impact on the crime rate. And so if there's a
difference in crime policy, you have to decide, since America is nowhere
near safe enough, which strategy is more likely to keep the crime rate
coming down.
When we tried to do welfare reform, I had to veto a couple of bills
first, but then we said, ``Okay, able-bodied people ought to go to work,
but the kids ought to be able to keep their guarantee of medical care
and nutrition.'' And the welfare rolls have been cut in half, and all
the horror stories that some people predicted haven't materialized
because we went out of our way to give people, that we were requiring to
work, the education, the transportation, and the support to be good
parents so that it would work. And so you have to decide what you think
is best for low-income people and how to empower them to go to work.
The same is true in health care; the same is true in the
environment. Somebody came up to me tonight and asked me to sign a
picture of the Grand Canyon, and I was saying we just set aside another
million acres around the Grand Canyon to protect the watershed. And Al
Gore
[[Page 1559]]
and I have now set aside more land in the lower 48 States than any
administration in history except those of Theodore and Franklin
Roosevelt.
And the other side is on record as to committing to repeal my order
setting aside 43 million roadless acres in the national forests. The
Audubon Society says it's the most significant conservation move in 40
years. So you get to decide which you think is better.
And I'd just like to say that for me--I'm not running for anything
this year--[laughter]--and most days I'm okay about it. [Laughter] But I
care a great deal about what we're going to do with this moment of
prosperity. Let me just mention one other issue. In education, our
theory was, have fewer regulations but higher standards; invest more,
require more--more preschool, more after-school, smaller classes, better
trained teachers--and a strategy to turn around failing schools; and
then open the doors of college to everybody.
Well, test scores are up. The dropout rate's down. The African-
American high school graduation rate equaled the white majority rate
last year, for the first time in history. And we have record numbers of
people going to college. So we have a strategy about that, and there
will be differences, and you have to decide which you think is right.
But all this is just to say, the most important thing to me--all
these races I've run since 1974, I used to have a simple theory which is
that I wanted to make sure that on the election day, every person who
did not vote for me knew exactly what he or she was doing. Because I
always felt that if I lost, then I would have no complaint, that if the
people who voted for you and the people who voted against you knew
exactly what they were doing, I would have no complaint.
Therefore, I think it's important for people like you, who come here
to help Hillary, to make a commitment that goes beyond writing a check,
because you're obviously interested citizens. And what I think you
should do is to go out between now and November at every conceivable
opportunity and say, ``Isn't it nice that we can have an election where
we don't have to run down our opponents, where we can posit that they're
good, patriotic people, that they love our country, that they will do
what they believe in, and all we have to do is to ask ourselves, what do
we want to do with this moment of prosperity?''
It is literally unprecedented in our country's history that we would
have at once so much economic prosperity, so much social progress, with
the absence of crippling internal crisis at home or overpowering threat
abroad. So what is it that we're going to do with it?
More than half the people in this audience are younger than I am,
and a huge number of you have more years ahead of you than you do behind
you. What is it that we propose to do with this? It is a huge question.
And that--my experience is that very often the answer you get in an
election depends upon the questions people ask in the first place. Or to
be blunter, who wins the Presidency, who wins the Senate race in New
York, who wins a lot of these other elections depends upon what the
people really believe the election is about.
And we have a chance, literally unprecedented in our lifetime, to
build the future of our dreams for our children. But it requires us not
to be complacent with our prosperity but to look over the horizon, to
take on the big challenges, to seize the big opportunities.
I tell everybody who will listen that there are four reasons I think
Al Gore ought to be President. He's been
the best Vice President in history and had more influence in that job
than anybody ever had. He's got an economic program that will work
instead of one that will spend the whole surplus on a tax cut today when
the surplus hasn't materialized yet. I tell everybody that our proposal
is, cut taxes but only to the extent that we can afford it and still
invest in education, provide a prescription drug benefit for people on
Medicare, and keep paying the debt down, because that will keep interest
rates low, which is a de facto tax cut, and prosperity going.
And so if you have a tax cut that essentially takes the whole
projected surplus away--I can make you a good speech for it. I can say,
``We're going to have this big surplus, and it's your money, not the
Government's. And we're going to give it back to you.'' Sounds good,
doesn't it? Except it hasn't come in yet. It's kind of like--did you
ever get one of those letters from Ed McMahon and Publishers Clearing
House? [Laughter] Think about it. ``You may have won $10 million.'' Now,
if you went out the next day and spent the $10 million, you should
support their program. But otherwise, you ought
[[Page 1560]]
to stick with us and keep this thing going. [Laughter] So that's the
second reason that I think it's important.
The third reason that I'm for Al Gore
is that he understands the future, whether it's information technology
or the human genome project or global warming. They made fun of him in
'88--I mean, when he wrote the book. They made fun of him in '92 when we
ran. Now even the oil company executives say global warming is real. It
could change the climate of the whole world. It could flood the
sugarcane fields in Louisiana and the Everglades in Florida we've worked
so hard to save, and change the pattern of agriculture in the United
States. And already you see in Africa malaria at higher and higher
altitudes because of the warming of the climate.
One of the biggest problems we've got--many of you mentioned the
Middle East peace process to me. One of the biggest struggles we're
going to have is to figure out how to provide water for all the people
who live there, because of climate change. And I don't know about you,
but if that's really a big issue, I'd like someone in the White House
that understood it.
And that's not an insult; that's a plus for Gore. That's not a criticism of his opponent. There's nobody
that understands that in public life as much as he does. That should not
be interpreted as a criticism of his opponent; it's a plus for him.
Look, all your medical and financial records are on somebody's
computer somewhere. Don't you think that we ought to have somebody in
the White House that really understands what the privacy issues are?
It's going to be wonderful--all the young women in this audience, when
you start having babies, when you go home--and within 5 to 10 years,
you'll take a little genetic map home with your baby. It will tell you:
Here are the problems your baby has, but if you do the following five
things, you will increase the chance that the child will have a great
life.
There are young women in this audience tonight who will have babies
with a life expectancy of 90 years. That's not an exaggeration. But it
seems to me that we ought to have somebody there that understands
whether somebody ought to be denied a job or a promotion or health
insurance based on their gene card. We need somebody that really
understands the future.
And the last thing is, we ought to have somebody that will take us
all along for the ride. That's what the hate crimes bill, the minimum
wage, the employment nondiscrimination bill--that's what all that
stuff's all about. Should we all go along for the ride or not? And I
presume that all of you believe that or you wouldn't be here.
Otherwise--because the other guys are going to give you a bigger tax cut
than we are. [Laughter] But we'll give you lower interest rates and a
better stock market. You'll make more anyway. But I think we ought to
all go along for the ride.
So now, that brings me to Hillary--[laughter]--and this reason: It
is very hard for me to say anything that is not either sappy, or I'm
always afraid I'll be over the top and ineffective here.
But let me just tell you. I've been President for nearly 8 years
now. It really matters who is in the Senate. There is a gentleman here
that I went to college with who is from South Dakota. We were bragging
about Tom Daschle and how I couldn't have
functioned the last 5 years without him, and it's really true.
Many of you came up to me tonight and said, ``I'm so glad not only
what you did but what you stopped--all the attempts to weaken the
environment and all the attempts to weaken our economic policy or cut
education or do other things, all the things that were stopped over the
last 5 years.'' Well, it really matters who is in the Congress and,
especially, who is in the Senate. They get to vote on the confirmation
of judges, and if they don't want to bring them up, they don't. So I've
tried for 7\1/2\ years to get an African-American judge in the
southeastern part of the United States. There's never been one before.
But their side doesn't want one, so we've got two perfectly well-
qualified people that I still can't get confirmed.
There's an Hispanic-American who grew up
in El Paso and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard. The ABA gives him
unanimous high ratings. I can't even get him a hearing in the Senate
because he's not part of what they think the bench ought to be about.
Senators make a difference. The next President will appoint two to
four judges to the Supreme Court. The Senate will confirm them. And
whether you like it or not, when you vote for President and you vote for
Senate, you better think about that, because the balance of the Supreme
Court will change. And you have
[[Page 1561]]
to assume that any President you vote for and any Senator you vote for
will vote and appoint his or her convictions. You have to assume that.
The most important thing that I think that I could say to you about
Hillary is two things. One is, this is just the last in a long line of
lifetime public service for her. When I met her in 1971, when she wasn't
old enough to vote, but I was--[laughter]--when I met her in 1971, she
was already involved with the Yale Child Studies Center and issues of
children's health care, children's education, family law. She took an
extra year in law school to work at the Yale hospital in the Child
Studies Center so that she would not have not only a law degree but a
clear background in the legal issues affecting children's health and
children's welfare, before anybody else was doing it--that kind of
thing.
Her first job out of law school was at what became the Children's
Defense Fund, where she later served as chair of the board. Her first
project, when I was elected Governor of Arkansas, was to build a
neonatal nursery at the Children's Hospital in Little Rock. And when I
left office, in my little home State, that was the seventh biggest
children's hospital in the United States of America, and she ran the
fundraising drive every year. She founded an advocacy group for children
and families when we were living in Arkansas, and then when she came up
here, she took up the cause of children's health care, our education
reforms. She led the way to a total revision of the laws affecting
adoption, cross-racial adoption, and what happens to foster care kids
and how to improve their welfare. Things at a level of details unheard
of for First Ladies to be involved in. And along the way, she found time
to host conferences on early childhood and brain development, children
and violence, and a lot of other things.
And then this year, she ran our millennium program for the last 2
years, which the gentleman who is the head of the National Historic
Preservation Trust told me that Hillary's millennium program, which has
now gotten $100 million for the preservation for American treasures,
slightly over half public money, the rest private, was the largest,
single historic preservation effort in the history of the United States
of America.
So when Senator Moynihan
announced he wasn't going to run again and all these Democratic House
Members came and asked her to run, I can promise you, it had never
occurred to her before, because we assumed he was going to run, and we
would support him.
And so she started traveling around New York. And she found out, A,
she kind of liked it, and B--not liked New York; she kind of liked
politics; she knew she liked New York; she liked politics--[laughter]--
and B, she found out that people understood that what they needed in a
Senator was somebody that would put their families first and think of
their children's future and make the most of this moment of prosperity,
which allows me to close this circle here.
I cannot tell you--again, I'll say, no American who has not been
where I am can possibly appreciate the importance of every single Senate
seat--nobody. And I can tell you this. I knew, and I told her when we
started, that we would have a hard fight the first time. But if she wins
in November--and I'm convinced she will--she'll never have a close race
again, because she'll be the best Senator they ever had.
And I said something here last year I will say again. I have been
privileged in my life, over, almost 30 years in public life now, to work
with hundreds of people. I have known some magnificent leaders around
the world; I have known some wonderful American public servants. I have
never felt the kind of personal animosity for people in the other party
that some of them seem to feel for us from time to time, because I
wouldn't be able to get up in the morning if I was that torn up and
upset all the time. [Laughter] And I basically like people in public
life. I've found most of them are smart and honest and work hard and do
what they think is right.
But of all the people I have ever known, bar none, she has the best
combination of heart, compassion, brains, and just plain old stick-to-
it-iveness, persistence. And you need that in a Senator. So you've
helped her tonight, and if you can do anything between now and November,
I'll be very, very grateful.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 8:10 p.m. at a private residence. In his
remarks, he referred to reception host Smith Bagley; Enrique Moreno,
judicial nominee, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; Ed
McMahon, Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes spokesperson; and Richard
Moe,
[[Page 1562]]
president, National Trust for Historic Preservation. The President also
referred to his memorandum of October 13, 1999, on protection of forest
roadless areas (Public Papers of the Presidents: William J. Clinton,
1999 Book II (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001) p.
1765).