[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[July 13, 2000]
[Pages 1416-1424]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks to the NAACP National Convention in Baltimore, Maryland
July 13, 2000
Well, let me say it's good to see you. Thank you for making me feel
so welcome. Thank you, Julian; thank you,
Kweisi. Thank you, Myrlie Evers-
Williams, Ben Hooks, Elaine Jones, the whole
board. Thank you, Wendell Anthony, for
letting me come to Detroit to the biggest dinner in the history of the
world.
I know I had dinner with Wendell in
Detroit with over 10,000 people, because he told me so, but I couldn't
even see the people at the other head table, it was so big. [Laughter]
Thank you, Mayor O'Malley, for
welcoming us to Baltimore and for being such a great leader. Thank you,
Representative Elijah Cummings, for
representing Baltimore so well. And thank you, Mayor John
Street, for representing Philadelphia so well
and making it true to the Founders' dreams.
I have, I know, oh, a dozen or more members of the White House staff
here, but I would like to mention a few: Thurgood Marshall,
Jr., whose father was a native of
Baltimore; my chief speechwriter, Terry Edmonds, a Baltimore native. I thank Mark Lindsay; Mary Beth Cahill; Ben
Johnson, who runs our One America
office; my political director, Minyon Moore;
Janis Kearney; Broderick Johnson, a Baltimore native; Orson Porter; and we have at least another half a dozen folks who are
here because they wanted to be here with you today.
This has been a remarkable week for African-Americans. Venus
Williams became the first African-American
woman since Althea Gibson to win the Wimbledon. Perhaps even more
remarkable for those who know the mysteries of the church, Baltimore's
own Dr. Vashti McKenzie became the first
woman bishop in the history of the A.M.E. church.
And you have had an amazing conference. I'm really glad Governor
Bush came. [Laughter] I am. But I thought the
other fellow gave a better speech.
[Laughter] And I liked especially the speech that that Senate
candidate from New York gave. I
caught that one on Tuesday.
I want to tell you, I'm very proud, as we look back on the last 7\1/
2\ years of all the work that my wife has done, not just for those but
for 30 years for children, for families, for education, for health care.
But as First Lady, she has done so much to increase adoption and improve
foster care, to increase the access to children to health care and to
early education. And one thing that ought to be of particular importance
to the African-American community--for the celebration of the
millennium, she started--she had this theme, we were going to honor the
past and imagine the future. And part of honoring the past was setting
aside millennial treasures, a lot of which are important landmarks of
the civil rights movement, Abraham Lincoln's summer home at the Old
Soldiers' Home, Harriet Tubman's cottage up in New York, a lot of other
places.
And the head of the National Historic Preservation Trust came up to me the other day when we were protecting
Mr. Lincoln's home, and he said, ``Mr. President, I want you to know
that your wife came up with this idea
of the millennial treasures. It has now raised $100 million in public/
private money. It's the biggest historic preservation movement in the
history of the United States of America.'' So I'm very proud of her for
that.
Now, as all of you know, I came here from Camp David this morning,
where we are meeting with the Israelis and the Palestinians in an effort
to resolve the profound differences that have kept the people of the
Middle East apart for a very long time. I know that in our quest for a
full, fair, and final peace--which Dr. King reminded us is more than the
absence of war, but the presence of justice and brotherhood and
[[Page 1417]]
genuine reconciliation--I know we will have your prayers and your best
wishes.
But I had to come to Baltimore today, because you embody the spirit
of freedom and reconciliation we're trying to capture there, that we
need so badly in our talks; a spirit that is woven into the fabric of
American life because of the contributions of African-Americans from
W.E.B. Du Bois to Rosa to Thurgood to Martin to Daisy Bates, Coretta,
Medgar, Malcolm, to Jesse, and John Lewis and Julian and Kweisi.
One of the greatest days of my Presidency was last March, on the
35th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when I was honored to walk with many
people in this room across the Pettus Bridge in Selma. I said then
something I'd like to repeat today, that as a son of the South, the
brave souls who marched across that bridge 35 years ago set me free,
too. It is important to know that every movement for human rights in
this country is about even more than gaining equal opportunity and equal
rights and decent justice for the oppressed. It is also about
forgiveness and healing, about letting go and moving on, about giving
our children a better tomorrow.
So I wanted to be here especially during these peace talks to draw
strength from you and take the spirit of the NAACP back to Camp David.
And I wanted to come here one last time to say thank you, a simple but
deep thank you for your support, your prayers, your friendship over all
these years, for all that we have done to turn America around and bring
America closer together.
Eight years ago this week--I can't believe it--8 years ago this
week, at your national conference in Nashville, I was the Governor of
Arkansas, the apparent nominee of the Democratic Party. And I brought my
choice for Vice President, Senator Al Gore,
to the NAACP convention. Rather, I accepted Ben Hooks' mandatory invitation to appear. [Laughter]
And I pledged then--and I want to quote it exactly; I don't want to
miss a word--I pledged you, ``an administration that looks like America,
one that knows the promise and the pain of this country, one that will
rebuild, reunite, and renew the American spirit.'' I think together we
have honored that pledge.
The American dream is real to more Americans than it was 7\1/2\
years ago. And we are more nearly one America than we were 7\1/2\ years
ago with 22 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment and welfare rolls
in 30 years, the lowest crime rates in 25 years, the lowest child
poverty in 20 years, the lowest minority unemployment rates ever
recorded, the lowest female unemployment rates in 40 years, the highest
homeownership in history, the longest economic expansion in history. We
have more opportunity than we did 7\1/2\ years ago.
And perhaps equally important, our social fabric is on the mend. The
family and medical leave law, the first bill I signed, vetoed in the
previous administration, has allowed over 20 million Americans to take a
little time off when a baby was born or a parent was sick, without
losing their jobs, and it's been good for the economy, not bad for the
economy.
For the first time ever, 90 percent of our children are immunized
against serious childhood diseases. Our food is safer. Our air is
cleaner. Our water is purer. More land has been protected for all time
to come for Americans to enjoy; 150,000 young Americans have served in
communities in every State in this country in AmeriCorps. The high
school graduation rate of African-Americans is virtually equal with that
of the white majority for the first time in the history of the United
States of America. And all over the country I have seen schools, that
once were failing, turning around.
In Harlem, I was in a school the other day where 2 years ago 80
percent of the children were reading and doing mathematics below grade
level; 2 years later 74 percent of the children reading and doing
mathematics at or above grade level--in just 2 years. This is happening
all over America.
Today we're releasing an annual report on the status of our
children. According to the study, the teen birth rate for 15- to 17-
year-olds has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded. The birth rate
for African-American adolescents has dropped by nearly one-third since
1991.
The report also found that child poverty continues its decline. And
the rate of serious violent crime committed by young people has dropped
by more than half since 1993 to the lowest level recorded since
statistics has been kept on this subject. This is very good news. And I
hope you will trumpet it, not because we're as safe as we need to be but
because we need to destroy stereotypes so we can start making real
progress on the issues still remaining.
Now--so that's my report. Thank you for giving me a chance to serve.
That's my report.
[[Page 1418]]
Now, here's my question: What do you intend to do with all this? You
know, I'm going to treasure this award for the rest of my life. But what
really matters is what all of us do tomorrow with what our yesterdays
have piled up. So before you leave here, when you go home and people
say, ``What did you do in Baltimore?'' if you don't answer any other
thing, you ought to be able to say, ``Well, I figured out what I was
going to do with all the prosperity and progress my country has made in
the last 8 years.''
That is the issue. And I guess I can say this now because my hair is
a lot grayer, and I've got a few more wrinkles than I had 8 years ago.
But one thing I know--how a nation deals with its prosperity is just as
stern a test of its judgment, its vision, and its values as how a nation
deals with adversity. After all, when you elected me 8 years ago--and
the other side kind of referred to me as a Governor of a small southern
State, and I was so naive, I thought it was a compliment. [Laughter] And
you know what? I still do. But when you elected me, it didn't require
rocket science to know that if we had quadrupled the debt in 12 years
and all the social indicators were going in the wrong direction and the
country was coming apart at the seams and unemployment was going up and
crime was going up and opportunity for our children was going down, that
we had to change. I mean, this was not--I don't want to deprive myself
of any credit, but it wasn't rocket science. We had to do something. So
you said, ``Well, I'll take a chance on that fellow.''
Now, every person in this room--we've got a lot of young people
here, and I'm grateful for that, and I'm grateful for the role that
you've done to bring all the young people back into the NAACP. But
listen, everybody over 30 in this room--listen to me--if you're over 30,
you can remember at least one time in your life when you have made a
mistake, not because times were so bad but because times were good, so
good you thought there was no penalty to the failure to concentrate. Am
I right about that? [Laughter]
Listen to this. In the Scripture, Ecclesiastes 11:25 says, ``In the
day of prosperity there is forgetfulness of affliction.'' Everybody over
30 has had that kind of forgetfulness at one time or another. Am I right
about that? So here is my point to you. You look at these kids before
you leave here. We cannot do that now. I have done everything I knew to
do to turn this country around, to move this country forward, to lift
people up, to lift people together. But man, the best stuff is still out
there. And the big challenges are still on the horizon. And we will
never forgive ourselves if we don't say we are going to use this moment
of prosperity to build the future of our dreams for all God's children.
That's what this is for.
That's what this millennial election is all about. I want to commend
the NAACP for your campaign to register new voters. I want to join you
in mourning the passing of the chairman of your voter empowerment
campaign, Earl Shinhoster. But you need to finish his job. And then, you
have to get people to actually go to the polls, to choose and choose
wisely.
We must make it clear again that every election is a choice. This is
a big election. There are big differences, honest differences, between
the parties, the candidates for President, the candidates for the Senate
and the House of Representatives--big and honest differences.
I'm determined to make as much bipartisan progress with the Congress
as I can in the last 6 months. I think we'll get a lot done, but no
matter how much we do, there will still be a lot that remains on
America's future agenda. And there will be differences. And the thing I
like about this election is, if we've got the right attitude about it,
it can be an old-fashioned election, the kind the civics books say you
ought to have, where we don't have people swinging mud at each other and
repeating what we've seen in too many elections in the past where people
basically say, ``You ought to vote for me, not because I'm so great,
because my opponent is just one step above a car thief.'' [Laughter] I
mean, how many elections have you seen run like that?
Well, we don't have to do that. We can assume everybody is honorable
and good, got their merit badges in the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, but
they're different. There's a choice to be made, and there are
consequences.
So when you leave, you say, ``What I learned was, we've got to use
this year to decide what to do with this moment of prosperity. It may
never come around again in our lifetime. I want to build the future of
my dreams for my children. This is a big election. That's the main arena
right now, and there are big differences.''
Now, let me just mention a few of them. On economic policy, the Vice
President and
[[Page 1419]]
most people on our side of the political aisle, we believe that we ought
to keep the prosperity going and do our dead-level best to extend it to
people and to places that have been left behind so far. But we think to
keep the prosperity going, the right thing to do is to take the taxes
you pay for Medicare and take them off the books, like we do with Social
Security; keep paying the debt down; use the interest savings to put
into Medicare and Social Security to lengthen our life so us baby
boomers don't bankrupt the rest of you when we retire; invest in
education and science and technology, the health care, and the
environment; and then have a tax cut we can afford that helps families
with the basic things they're dealing with and still leaves us the money
to meet our responsibilities around the world--to help fight AIDS in
Africa and Asia, to help relieve the debt of the poorest countries of
the world, to help promote freedom and stand against ethnic cleansing,
fight against terrorism--that allows us to do these basic things and
still get this country out of debt over the next 12 years.
Why? Because that will keep interest rates lower. And if interest
rates stay a percent lower over the next 10 years than they otherwise
would be, that saves families--listen to this--African-American
homeownership at an all-time high--that will save families $250 billion
in home mortgage rates in a decade.
Now, they say something different, and it's easier for me to give
you their pitch, and it sounds better the first time you hear it. They
say, ``We have a projected surplus of $1.9 trillion, and it's your
money. So we're going to give more than half of it back to you in a tax
cut. And then we're going to spend the rest of it to partially privatize
Social Security. And when we take money out of the Social Security Trust
Fund, we'll put money in it from this surplus.'' And by the time you do
that, they've spent the whole projected surplus and then some.
Now, here's the problem with that. If I ask you--I want to ask all
of you right now--you just think about this real quiet, now; you don't
have to say anything out loud, but everybody think about this--what is
your projected income over the next 10 years? Now, think. How much money
do you think you're going to make over the next 10 years? How confident
are you that you're right about your projected income? [Laughter] Now,
get it on up there to where you're about 80 percent confident. Now, if I
sat here at a desk with a pen and a notary public, and I said, ``I want
every one of you to come up here right now and sign a contract that
commits you to spend every penny of your projected income,'' would you
do it? Well, if you would, you should support them. If not, you should
support us and keep this economy going. That's what this is about.
Then there are the issues of economic justice. How can we assure a
fair share? We believe that we should strengthen efforts to require
equal pay for equal work for women, and they don't agree with us. We
think we should raise the minimum wage a dollar over 2 years, because we
think the people that serve our food at restaurants and help us do
things, we think they ought to be able to raise their kids, too, and
send their kids to college and make a decent living. And they're not.
Our top tax cut priorities are for working families with low incomes
and a lot of kids, for increasing child care assistance, for a long-term
care tax credit, when you've got an elderly or disabled loved one, for
retirement savings, and to allow you to deduct college tuition for up to
$10,000 a year. That's our top--[inaudible]. We can do all that and
still pay the country out of debt over the next 12 years and have money
to invest. Their top tax cut priority rolling through Congress like a
hot knife through butter is a complete repeal of the estate tax, which
costs $100 billion over 10 years, and half of the benefits--half the
benefits go to one-tenth of one percent of the population. There's a
difference here.
In education, we know that every child can learn. I just told you
about the school I visited in Harlem. I was in rural western Kentucky
the other day in this little old school that, 4 years ago, 12 percent of
the kids--over half the kids on school lunches--4 years ago 12 percent
of the kids could read at or above grade level; today, 57 percent; 5
percent of the kids could do math at or above grade level; today, 70
percent; zero percent of the kids could do science at or above grade
level; today, 63 percent--in 4 years. It's amazing. It's happening
everywhere.
Now, intelligence is equally distributed. It's opportunity that's
not equally distributed. So our education policy is to invest more and
demand more--higher standards, greater accountability, but empower
people to develop the capacities
[[Page 1420]]
of all of our children. And it's working. But we have a very definite
set of ideas about that, based on what we have seen and what educators
have told us.
We want to modernize or build 6,000 schools and repair another
25,000 over the next 5 years. And the other side doesn't agree with us.
They think that's wrong. We want to keep our commitment to hire 100,000
teachers for smaller classes in the early grades, because we know that's
important to long-time learning capacity, and the other side doesn't
agree with us. They don't think we should require that, somehow, of the
States.
We want universal access to preschool, summer school, after-school
for all kids who need it. You can't say, end social promotion and then
blame the kids for the failure system; you have to have a system that
says, okay, no social promotion, but here is how the children are going
to meet the standards and go on and learn and do what they're supposed
to do.
So there are differences here in the economy, in economic justice,
in education, and there are differences in health care. And the Vice
President talked a lot about this
yesterday, so I won't beat it to death. But this is very important. We
believe that because we have the money to do it, we should have a true
Medicare prescription drug benefit that's available and affordable to
all seniors and disabled people who need it. We think we should do this.
They say it might be too costly. I'll give you their honest--and I
think they really believe this. [Laughter] No, I do. I think they really
do believe this. They say it could cost more money than we think it
would, and so we ought to have this more limited, private benefit,
funded through insurance companies.
The problem is--let me say just this--the problem is--I fought with
the health insurance companies quite a bit, you may have noticed that.
But I've got to give it to them, they've been real upfront about this.
The health insurance companies have said, ``No, this won't work. We
cannot offer these poor people an insurance policy to buy drugs that
they can afford to buy that will be worth having.'' The insurance
companies have been really honest about it. And you know what? Nevada
adopted a plan just like the Republican plan, and you know how many
insurance companies have offered coverage under it? Zero. Not one.
So we've got this interesting debate going on now in Washington. We
said ``We're for Medicare prescription drug coverage,'' and they say,
``So are we.'' So the ``so are we'' is designed--I learned from reading
the newspaper that they hired a political consultant to tell them what
language to use so you would think they were for something they were
not. [Laughter]
And I'd rather them say, ``Look, we're not for this, because we
think it will cost too much money.'' But if they took that position,
then they would have to explain how come they want to spend $100 billion
on repealing the estate tax and give 50 percent of it to the top one-
tenth of one percent of the population and not spend money on drugs for
our seniors. There are choices to be made here.
We don't have to be hateful. They really believe this. They don't
think it's a good idea. But instead of trying to convince us that they
are really for our plan, they should fess up that they're not and
explain why they're against it. And then you decide whether we are right
or they are.
And the same thing on the Patients' Bill of Rights. The Patients'
Bill of Rights we're for covers all Americans and all health care plans
and gives you a right to see a specialist, a right not to be bumped from
your doctor if you change employment and you're in the middle of having
a baby or a chemotherapy treatment or any other kind of treatment. It
gives you a right to go to the nearest emergency room if you get hit--
God forbid--when you walk out of the convention center here today. And
if you get hurt and you're wrongly treated, it gives you the right to
sue. Their plan doesn't cover 100 million people, and it doesn't give
you a right to sue.
Now, we say we're for the Patients' Bill of Rights. They say--what
they should say is, ``We don't agree with this. We think it will cost
too much.'' But that's not what they say. What they say--they try to
figure out how to convince you they're for what we're for. So they say,
``We're for a Patients' Bill of Rights''--if you ever hear that, if you
hear ``a'' instead of ``the,'' big alarm bells ought to go off in your
head. You ought to say, ding-dong, hello, what is going on here?
But this is a huge deal. You heard the Vice President talking about this yesterday. I was down the other day in
Missouri with the Governor, and we were with an emergency room
nurse, a male, who was 6'1'', weighed 230,
[[Page 1421]]
looked like he could bench-press me on a cold day. [Laughter] And this
big old husky guy spends his life trying to save people's lives. And he
almost couldn't get through his talk, talking about somebody who died
because they couldn't take him to the nearest emergency room. This
happens every single day.
We're one vote away from passing it. I want to compliment the
Republicans in the House who voted for the Patients' Bill of Rights, and
the four in the Senate who did. We are one vote away. I'm telling you,
there are big issues here. This affects 100 million of your fellow
citizens.
We're for expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program that
Hillary did so much to create. We think the parents of the kids ought to
be able to buy in, too. We think people who are over 55 and not old
enough to be on Medicare but lost their insurance at work, ought to be
able to buy into the Medicare program, and we should give them a little
help of they need it.
And we want to do more to close the gaps and do something about the
fact that people of color suffer far higher rates of heart disease,
cancer, AIDS, and diabetes. Let me just give you one example. Diabetes
is 70 percent higher among African-Americans than white Americans.
Hispanics are twice as likely to suffer from it.
Type I diabetes, commonly known as juvenile diabetes, affects a
million Americans alone, half of them children, but research has taken
us to the threshold of a potential new breakthrough. Recently,
researchers successfully transplanted insulin-producing cells into seven
individuals with juvenile diabetes, and apparently, every single one of
them was cured.
Now, if we can repeat these preliminary findings, it could put a
cure for juvenile diabetes within our reach, a true miracle--for anyone
who has ever had this in your family, you know this. But we have to do
more to get there. That's why today I want to tell you a couple of
things we're doing.
First of all, the National Institutes of Health is investing in 10
research centers immediately to try to replicate the results of the
first study so we can prove it wasn't an accident. This is part of a
larger partnership between the NIH and the Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation--we have some of their leaders here with us today--with a
commitment of $300 million over 5 years for research and the prevention
of diabetes.
Now, I've been pretty tough on my friends on the Republican side
today, so I want to say something nice about them. This is one we all
agree on--that there is no partisan position on whether we would like to
see our children lifted from the burden and the fear and the terrors and
the agony that can come with juvenile diabetes. But we actually have
some research here that may allow us to close one of the big racial gaps
and help disparities in our country. And I just want you to know we're
going to do everything we can about it, and I hope we'll have your
prayers and your support. It's worth some of your money to spend on
that.
The last thing I want to talk about in terms of your decision this
year is civil rights and equal justice. I don't have to come here and
say nobody should be denied a job, a home, access to school or a loan
because of their race or any other condition; that no one should have to
fear being a target of violence because of the way they worship God or
their sexual orientation. And I don't have to come here for you to know
that those indignities are still all to real to too many Americans. I
have proposed the largest investment in civil rights enforcement ever,
so that the EEOC, the Departments of Health and Human Services,
Agriculture, and others can enforce our civil rights law.
And we're fighting for passage of a strong hate crimes bill. And I
am so grateful--I'm so grateful--that our unanimous caucus was joined
the other day by enough Republicans who are willing to break from the
leadership to pass the hate crimes bill in the Senate. I am grateful for
that, and I hope that we can pass it in the House.
But the hate crimes legislation, if it does not become law, should
be an issue in this election. The employment nondiscrimination
legislation, if it doesn't become law, should be an issue in this
election. This is not negative politics. We should talk about what side
we're on and why, and let people decide. It's important.
You look all around the world at all these places that are bedeviled
by the hatreds of the groups of people within their countries for one
another, from Kosovo to Northern Ireland to the Middle East to the
tribal wars in Africa to the Balkans. I mean, look at what the world has
been dealing with just for the last few years. We have to keep hammering
away at this. It's not over.
[[Page 1422]]
And you look at all the hate crimes that have occurred in America in
the last few years, in spite of all of our improving attitudes and
greater contact across racial and religious lines. We've still got
problems here. This deals with the biggest problems of the human heart.
We've got to keep at it, and we ought to debate our different approaches
to it in an open way. We may never have this chance again, where we are
secure and confident and we know we can go forward if we make the right
decisions.
One other thing I want to say about this: One of the most important
responsibilities of the next President is appointing judges, and one of
the most important duties of a Senator is deciding whether to confirm
the people the President appoints. Now, I believe the next President
will be called upon to appoint in the next 4 years between two and four
Supreme Court judges, more than a score, much more, Court of Appeals
judges; and perhaps over 100 Federal district court judges.
The record here is instructive. The quality of justice suffers when
highly qualified women and minority candidates, fully vetted, fully
supported by the American Bar Association, are denied the opportunity to
serve for partisan political reasons.
Now, just last year the Republican majority in the Senate, on a
party-line vote, defeated my nominee for the Federal court in Missouri,
Ronnie White, the first African-American
State supreme court judge in the history of the State of Missouri,
plainly well-qualified, defeated on a party-line political vote in an
attempt to give the incumbent Senator a death penalty issue against the
incumbent Governor in the race for the U.S. Senate in Missouri. Never
mind that--throw this guy's career away. Act like he's not qualified.
Distort his position on the death penalty. Ignore what it will make the
African-American community in Missouri feel like. It was awful.
As we speak today, there are four African-American appellate court
nominees poised to make history if the Senate would just stop standing
in their way: Judge James Wynn, Roger
Gregory, Kathleen McCree Lewis, Judge Johnnie Rawlinson. That's just the ones I've got up there now. But let me--to
put that in perspective, in the 12 years that they served, the two
previous Presidents appointed just three African-Americans to the
circuit courts of our country--in 12 years.
Of course, we all want justice to be blind, but we also know that
when we have diversity in our courts, as in all aspects of society, it
sharpens our vision and makes us a stronger nation.
I have nominated two highly qualified candidates for the fourth
circuit--that includes where we are now, the State of Maryland. The
fourth circuit has the largest African-American population of any of our
circuits, and remarkably, there has never been an African-American
jurist on the fourth circuit. We've got a chance to right that wrong.
Two weeks ago I nominated Roger Gregory
of Virginia. He is a Richmond lawyer of immense talent and experience.
Almost a year ago, I nominated Judge Wynn
for a North Carolina seat on the circuit, and he's not the first
African-American from North Carolina I nominated. Now, Senator
Helms won't let these people get confirmed. He
says we don't need any more judges on the fourth circuit.
Maybe, that's what he thinks. But I think
it's interesting that for over 7 years now, he has stopped my attempts
to integrate the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Republican
majority has made no move to change the tide that turned the policies.
This is outrageous--the circuit court with the highest percentage of
African-Americans in the country, not one single judge on the Court of
Appeals.
Now, a lot of women don't do much better. We have excellent
nominees--Elena Kagan; Helene White; Bonnie Campbell,
former attorney general of Iowa, up there--no movement.
Another travesty of justice is taking place in Texas, and I want to
talk about this. I nominated a man named Enrique Moreno to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He grew up in
El Paso and graduated from Harvard Law School. The State judges in Texas
said he was one of the three best trial lawyers out there in far west
Texas. The ABA, the American Bar Association, unanimously gave him its
top rating. But the two Republican Senators from Texas, they say he's not qualified. And
the leader of the Republican Party in Texas--
who, I think, talked here a couple days ago--[laughter]--stone cold
silence. Nobody says, ``Give this guy a hearing.''
Why don't they want to give these people a hearing and vote? Because
they don't want him on the court, but they don't want you to know they
don't want him on the court.
[[Page 1423]]
The face of injustice is not compassion; it is indifference or
worse. For the integrity of our courts and the strength of our
Constitution, I ask the Republicans to give these people a vote. Vote
them down if you don't want them on; go out and tell people. At least
they voted Judge White down. They're having
a hard time explaining it in Missouri, but at least they did it.
This is not right, folks. You know, the judges I've appointed, yes,
they're the most diverse judges in history. But they also have the
highest ratings from the ABA in 40 years. And no one says that they're
ideological extremists. Therefore, I conclude that the people that don't
want them on the court want people who are ideological purists.
But you've got to have--a judge needs somebody that's felt the
fabric of ordinary life, that's got a good mind for stuff in the books
and a lot of common sense, that can understand what happens to people,
that can be fair to everybody that comes before him. I'd be ashamed if
one of my judges discriminated against someone before them because they
were members of the other political party or a different religion or had
strong views. I would be outraged. I just want people who will be just
and fair. But I don't want people denied their chance to serve because
of their race or their politics. It's not right. Now, you need to think
about that, because it's an important part of the next 4 years.
I just want to make one last point in closing. You all heard the
Vice President's speech. I thought it was
brilliant and impassioned, and I can't make a better case. But I want
you to remember four things about him. I don't want you to forget this--
``the President told me four things about Al Gore.''
Number one, he is by far the most
influential and active Vice President in this history of the country.
We've had a lot of Vice Presidents. A lot of Vice Presidents made great
Presidents--Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon
Johnson--but we've never had a Vice President that did so much good as
Vice President as Al Gore--never, not ever in the history of the
country.
Second, for the reasons I said earlier, when none of you wanted to
contract away your projected income for the next 10 years, he is the most likely, by far, to keep our
prosperity going and to spread it to people left behind.
Thirdly, you can see from his
leadership with the empowerment zones, to connect all of our schools to
the Internet, to his work with the science and technology issues and the
environment issues, this is a guy who understands the future. And the
future is coming on us in a hurry.
I'm glad we've decoded the human genome, but I don't want anybody
denied a job or health insurance because of their genetic map. I love
the Internet, and I think the Internet can move more people out of
poverty more quickly than ever before. But I don't want anybody to be
able to get your financial or health care record just because they're on
somebody's computer somewhere unless you say okay.
You need someone in the White House who understands the future. So,
he's the most qualified person we've ever
had because he's the best Vice President. He'll keep the prosperity
going. He understands the future.
And the fourth and most important thing for your point of view is,
he really does want to take us all along
for the ride, and I want a President that wants to take us all along for
the ride.
Thank you. Thank you. Let me just say this one last thing. After
January, I won't be President, but I'll still--wait a minute--
[laughter]--hey, everything comes to an end. [Laughter] But I have loved
every day of it. It has been an honor to fight, an honor to work. And
for the rest of the time the good Lord gives me on this Earth, I'll be
with you. I'll work with you.
But you just remember this. The arena that counts today on the
question of what we're going to do with our prosperity is what we do
today to elect tomorrow's leaders. You've got to lead the country in
this. You've got to make sure we choose and choose wisely. Believe me,
in spite of all that's happened, the best is still out there. Go get it.
I love you. Godspeed. Thank you.
Note: The President spoke at 10:55 a.m. at the Baltimore Convention
Center. In his remarks, he referred to Julian Bond, chairman, Kweisi
Mfume, president and chief executive officer, Myrlie Evers-Williams,
former chairwoman, Benjamin Hooks, former executive director, Elaine
Jones, Legal Defense and Education Fund director-counsel, and Rev.
Wendell Anthony, Detroit branch president, NAACP; Mayor Martin J.
[[Page 1424]]
O'Malley of Baltimore; Mayor John F. Street of Philadelphia, PA; Orson
Porter, Mid-Western Political Director, White House Office of Political
Affairs; Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush of Texas;
Richard Moe, president, National Trust for Historic Preservation; civil
rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson; Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin
Luther King, Jr.; Gov. Mel Carnahan of Missouri; and family nurse
practitioner Doug Bouldin.