[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[August 5, 2000]
[Pages 1564-1570]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at a Dinner for Gubernatorial Candidate Lieutenant Governor
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend of
Maryland in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts
August 5, 2000
Well, thank you very much. I've had a wonderful time. When I saw
what a big crowd it was, I thought I had come to the wrong place. I
thought you were just having a family reunion. [Laughter] I wanted to
come here for a long time, and I'm honored to be here for Kathleen. I
have said--every time I go to Maryland I say she is the finest
Lieutenant Governor in America by a long stretch, but it is clearly
true.
You heard Mark say this, but I came here not only because of my
friendship for her and so many members of her family but because she did
make Maryland the first State in the country to require community
service for graduation from high school. That meant something to me. And
she and Governor Glendening were out
there on the frontlines fighting for gun safety legislation when the NRA
was trying to beat their brains out and beat our brains out, and I
haven't succeeded in Congress yet, but they did succeed in Maryland in
passing sweeping gun safety legislation. And she deserves a lot of
credit for it.
And I can say so much else about her, but I admire her so much. And
she and her husband and her kids, they're the kind of family that we
ought to lift up in America. And I look forward to her elevation, and
who knows, maybe someday I'll be knocking on doors for her when she's
running for national office. I'd like to do that.
Now, let me say--Ethel, you may have to
put me up tonight--[laughter]--and if so, that would tickle me, because
Ethel's been sending me these raunchy Valentine cards for years.
[Laughter] And I'm completely in love with her, and I keep trying to get
some tabloid to write something sleazy about it, and I haven't been able
to so far. [Laughter]
But the reason you may have to put me up tonight is, on the way out,
Hillary said, ``You're going to this fundraiser for Kathleen tonight.''
I said, ``Yes.'' And she said, ``And last week you went to one for
Patrick.'' I said, ``Yes.'' She said,
``And a couple of weeks ago you went to one for Teddy.'' She said, ``But it's your wife that's running for Senator
from New York in 90 days''--[laughter]--``where it costs $30 million-
plus to run.'' She said, ``Maybe they'll just put you up tonight.''
[Laughter] And then she said she was glad I was going and wished she
[[Page 1565]]
could be here. But I thank you--thank you, Ethel, for being my friend all these years.
I want to thank Joe Kennedy. I
miss him so much in the Congress, and I was reminded of how much I
missed him when I saw him up here speaking tonight. And I'd say
Mark has a good future, wouldn't you?
[Applause] He did a great job over here.
When Ted and Vicki were taking me through the house tonight with
Ethel, or all the houses, and Sarge and Eunice and
Pat went with us, and Sarge told me in a
couple of weeks he was going to be 85 years old, I thought, ``Well,
Mark, you've got another 40 years to run for
office. You don't have to even be in a hurry. It's great.'' [Laughter]
Let me just say one word, too, if I might, about Senator
Kennedy. He has been so good to me and to
Hillary and to our family and so wonderful to work with. And when we
suffered the terrible disappointment of losing the Congress in the 1994
elections, you know, a lot of people wanted to quit. Some people did
quit, because the Democrats had been the majority for quite a long
while, except for a 6-year interruption in the Senate. And the thing
that I liked most about Ted Kennedy is that he doesn't understand the
meaning of the word quit.
You know, he was sort of like me. I woke up the next day, and I
said, ``Boy, we got a terrible licking. We've got to figure out why it
happened and go take it back and keep working for the things we believe
in, and in the meanwhile, we could certainly stop them from doing what
they're trying to do.'' And Ted thought it
was a pretty good fight.
I cannot tell you what an inspiration he has been not only to me but to people in the Congress,
just reminding them that nobody's got a right to be in the majority;
nobody's got a right to be in office. But we do if we have the office, a
responsibility--we have a responsibility to get up every day and make
something good happen. And that's what he does. And I should tell you, I
have said many times that there would be no way in the world any well-
informed historian could make a list of the 10 greatest United States
Senators from the beginning of the Republic in the 18th century without
putting Ted Kennedy's name on it. That's absolutely true.
I also want to thank my old friend Brendan Byrne, the former Governor of New Jersey, for being here
tonight. And two of my former Ambassadors, Tom Siebert, who was my Ambassador to Sweden, and Elizabeth
Bagley, who represented us in Portugal,
are here tonight. I thank them for being here. The chairman of our
Democratic Convention in L.A., Terry McAuliffe, is here tonight. He's probably the one who has really
been copying your license number down. [Laughter]
Let me also say that I first came to this place--not to this
compound; I've never been here before--but I first came here 32 years
ago with my college roommate. And I nearly drowned, actually, swimming
off the waters here. It was just a year after then-Senator Robert
Kennedy had filled in for his brother at a meeting that my class at
Georgetown sponsored, along with a Massachusetts club. And my roommate,
Tommy Caplan, got him to come. And he came with
me tonight, and I think that's pretty sweet that after 32 years we're
still bumming around together. So I want to thank him for coming.
Now, I want to stop walking down memory lane for just a minute and
tell you that I believe that Kathleen represents the best of what I want
for the future. I'm really proud of my wife for running for the Senate
seat once held by Robert Kennedy in New York. I am glad that there are
devoted people who still believe public service is noble and worthy and
worth spending your life on. And I'm always tickled when the people who
run against them think they can't beat them head up, so they just try to
breed personal resentment against them, as if public service were some
sort of possession. Well, for some of them it might be, but for us, it's
an opportunity to serve.
And all the memories that are piled high here, from President
Kennedy and Senator Kennedy and Ambassador Joe Kennedy before, all the
memories that are embodied in the wonderful pictures I saw in the house,
and the sacrifice of their older brother in World War II, and all the
things that this farflung network of younger people have done, really
make a case for the primacy of citizenship.
What's that got to do with anything? Well, the Republicans just had
their convention. We're about to have ours. Kathleen wants to run for
Governor. A lot of the other young people here are going to run for
things, themselves. Some of you may run who aren't even related to the
Kennedys. [Laughter] And what I would like
[[Page 1566]]
to say to you is that what happens this year will have a lot to do with
the world in which you grow, in which you raise your children, and if
you're fortunate enough to be elected, the world in which you serve.
I have done everything I could do for 7\1/2\ years to turn our
country around. We were in a time of economic distress, social division,
political decline in 1992. And we not only have the strongest economy in
our history, but this is a more just nation. We have the lowest minority
unemployment we ever recorded, the lowest female unemployment in 40
years, the lowest single-parent household poverty rate in 46 years, a
lower crime rate, the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years--it's a more just
society--the lowest child poverty rate in a generation.
But the issue is, what are we going to do about it? I was pleased
that the Republicans said one thing at their convention I really like.
They did acknowledge these were good times. [Laughter] And it was both
perceptive and generous of them to do that. [Laughter] But of course,
they differed about what caused it. I noticed it was a totally different
take than they had back when Mr. Reagan was in office. And they differed
about what we ought to do with it. That's good. That's what makes
America a great and thriving democracy.
But what I want to say to you is that what you're about to do this
year as citizens--and this election is every bit as important as the
election in 1992. In fact, it may be more important. Why? Because you
didn't have to be a genius in 1992 to know that the country was in the
ditch, and if we were going to get out of it we had to change. But it
takes some real thought and analysis and kind of hooking your brain in
with your heart to feel your way and think your way through what we
should do with this phenomenal time we're living in.
And one of the things that has concerned me, as President and as a
citizen and as someone who is not on the ballot this year, is all the
stories I read saying that people think the economy's gone along so well
that it doesn't really much matter what happens in this election, or
stories I read that say that there's really not much difference in the
public's mind between the two candidates.
What I would like to say to you is, there are three things you need
to remember about this election: one is, it is profoundly important; two
is, there are huge differences; three is, only the Democrats want you to
know what they are. What does that tell you about who to vote for?
If you see the reports in the paper today, finally a kind of a
reassessment of the convention that was just adjourned, and interviewing
all these undecided voters and they said, ``It was really nice. It was
very appealing and all, but where are the specifics?'' There's a reason
they weren't there, because they can't do that--not and win. [Laughter]
And the object is to win. So I say to all of you, if you believe in the
spirit of public service and the piling high of sacrifice that is
embodied by this magnificent piece of history that Ethel's made it
possible for us to share tonight, you've got to go out and do your part
in this election. I can tell you, it would be a lot easier for Kathleen
to be Governor if Al Gore is President. It
will be a lot easier if Dick Gephardt is
Speaker. If Tom Daschle is the majority
leader, it will be easier.
And let me just say, just very briefly, you have got to tell the
people you know who are not here tonight--every one of you has friends
who are not as political as you are. I hope you do. Otherwise, you'd all
go nuts if everybody were like us. [Laughter] Every one of you do. What
are you going to tell them about this election? The first thing I want
you to tell them is, it is a really big election. What a country does
with an unprecedented moment of prosperity may be a bigger test of its
character than what you do in adversity.
There's not a person in this audience tonight over 30 who hasn't
made at least one mistake in life, at a time--not because it was so
tough but because things were going so well you thought there was just
no penalty to the failure to concentrate. Isn't that right? Everybody--
if you're over 30, that's happened to you. Now, that's all I'm worried
about in this election. If we get that out of the way, the rest of it's
fine.
What are the differences? What does it matter? Let me just mention
two or three. I think this is a moment for laying before the American
people the great challenges and great opportunities of the 21st century.
I think we ought to say this is not a time for complacency. Who knows
when we'll have times this good again. We have to think about the long
term and do the big things.
[[Page 1567]]
We have to deal with the aging of America. We have to deal with the
fact that we've got the largest and most diverse group of schoolchildren
we've ever had. We have to deal with our opportunities to spread this
economy to people in places who have been left behind in our prosperity.
We have to deal with environmental challenges. We have to deal with the
challenges, as well as the opportunities, presented to us by the
revolution in information technology and in biomedical sciences. We have
to fulfill our responsibilities around the world to help people deal
with the challenges of AIDS, of malaria, of TB, of crushing debt in the
poorest countries in the world. We have to deal with new security
threats. There's a whole world out there. We should be thinking big,
big, big, big.
Now, let me just deal with two or three things. The economy, one of
the reasons I think Al Gore ought to be
President and Hillary ought to be in
the Senate and Ted ought to be a committee
chairman again is that we didn't quadruple the debt of this country in
12 years, and we got rid of the deficit in 6, and we're going to have
$400 billion of the debt paid down, and we still have the lowest average
tax burden on average families we've had in 35 years, and we've doubled
investment in education.
Now, it's a good economic strategy. But the American people have got
a big choice to make here--huge. And they don't understand yet how
different the two strategies are. Our strategy is, let's modernize what
got us this far; let's keep paying down the debt, keep investing in
education and science and technology and health care and the
environment; give the American people a tax cut we can afford. In other
words, do those things and then have a tax cut with the rest, and help
people send their kids to college, pay for long-term care for the
elderly and the disabled, increase tax benefits for lower income people
with lots of kids, help people save for retirement, moderate the
marriage penalty but don't, for goodness sakes, go back to the bad old
days of big deficits and high interest rates.
Now, it took me a while to say that. Their plan is so much easier,
and it sounds better at first. They say, ``Hey, we've got this big
surplus. It's your money. We're going to give it back to you.'' Doesn't
take very long to say, and it sounds so good. Well, there's a few
problems with it. The first problem is, they don't save any money for
their promises. If they do what they say they're going to do on Social
Security, that will cost a trillion dollars. If they do what they say
they're going to do on defense, that will cost another $200 or $300
billion. And then there will be emergencies along the way.
But forget about all that. Their tax program alone would take away
the entire projected surplus. The big problem with their economic policy
is, it's a projected surplus. You know, did you ever get one of those
letters in the mail from Ed McMahon and the Publishers Clearing House?
[Laughter] ``You may have won $10 million.'' That's a projected surplus.
[Laughter]
You can use this, and you don't have to give me credit. [Laughter]
You've got to clarify the choices. So tell people, say, ``When you got
that letter, if you went out the next day and spent the $10 million, you
should support them. Otherwise, you had better stick with us and keep
this economy going.'' [Laughter]
Now, let me tell you. We got an economic study last week that said
that the Vice President's plan, as opposed
to the Republican plan, which would keep paying the debt down, would
keep interest rates at least--at least--one percent lower over a decade.
Do you know what that's worth to you in tax cuts effectively? It means
$250 billion less in home mortgage payments, $30 billion less in car
payments, and $15 billion less in student loan payments. Never mind
lower business loans and all that. This is a huge deal.
Let me give you another example. It's very important to Kathleen and
to the whole Kennedy family and that affects the Governors big-time
because it will have a big impact on the crime rate. Gun safety--what's
our position? Our position is, I was right to sign the Brady bill, and
the previous Republican administration was wrong to veto it. And since
then, 500,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers haven't been able to get
handguns.
Now, you know what they said to me when I signed the Brady bill--the
``againners,'' the ones that were against it? They said, ``This bill
will do no good because all the real crooks buy their guns at gun shows
or urban flea markets, so this won't do any good.'' Well, it turned out
they were wrong. We've got a half million people that couldn't get guns.
So now, we want to close the loophole and apply to gun shows and
urban flea markets and put child trigger locks on and stop these large
[[Page 1568]]
capacity ammunition clips from being imported into America and getting
around our assault weapons ban. And the same crowd that once said that's
where the criminals got their guns, they don't want us to do that now.
So our position is--and let me just faithfully repeat the Vice
President's position--close the gun show
loophole, mandate child trigger locks, ban large capacity ammunition
clips, and establish a photo ID licensing system for people that want to
buy handguns so they have to pass a background check and show they can
use the gun safety. Now, that's his position.
Their position is, more concealed weapons, even in houses of
worship. Now, it's not like there's no evidence here. This is like the
economy. That's the last point I should have made on the economy. It's
not like you don't have any evidence. We tried it their way for 12
years. We've tried it our way for 8 years. Just ask your friends to make
a judgment on the evidence.
The same thing is true on crime. Crime has gone down for 8 years in
a row. Gun crime is down 35 percent. Listen, this is a huge issue. There
are people's lives on the line based on who the American people think is
right here.
And I could go through every--I just want to mention one more,
because it's really important to me, and Senator Kennedy talked a lot
about it, and Kathleen did. If God came to me tonight when I laid my
head down and said, ``This is the last night of your life, and you're
not going to be able to finish your term, but I will give you one wish
for America,'' I would not wish to continue the prosperity. I wouldn't
wish for zero crime rate. I would wish for us finally to be one America,
to be undivided by race, by gender, by income, by sexual orientation, by
all these things.
Because, you know, we all find in our personal lives and our public
lives that most of life's greatest wounds are self-inflicted. America
can solve any problem. We can meet any challenge. We can overcome any
mistake, except the poison in the human heart. So I've worked hard for
that. That's why Ted and I are trying to raise the minimum wage again.
That's why I want to broaden the family and medical leave law. That's
why we did have that event for people who are mentally retarded, but
fully able to do so much, on the White House lawn. That's why I'm for
the hate crimes legislation and the employment nondiscrimination
legislation and all the civil rights initiatives we've undertaken.
And you know, we're just different there. We're for the hate crimes
bill, and their leadership's against it in Washington because gays are
protected. We're for the ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act'', and
they're not. And we want to raise the minimum wage, and they don't. And
I could just give you lots and lots of examples.
And you know, we really do believe that the people that served this
dinner tonight ought to have as much of a chance to send their kids to
college of those of us who ate it. That's what we believe. That's what
we believe. So I ask you to think about that. And I want to make one
last point.
Kathleen introduced my longtime friend Dr. Craig Venter there, who has done so much to break through the
barriers of ignorance on the human genome. There's one other thing I
think you ought to think about in this election. It is very important
that people be elected to important positions who understand the future.
I used to joke that before Craig and the
people from NIH came to the White House the other day for us to announce
that the sequencing--the first rough sequencing of the human genome had
been completed--I had to read for a year to understand what I was going
to say for those 15 minutes. [Laughter]
But you know, there are a lot of issues that have to be faced. How
are we going to deal with all the implications when young mothers get to
bring a little gene card home with their babies? What would Ethel's life
have been like? How would it have been different? How much more hope and
less worry would there have been? And would there have been more worry,
if when every one of those little Kennedy tots she brought home from the
hospital, had been a little gene card there that said, ``Okay, this is
the things that--now, Kathleen, this is the things that are likely to
happen to her that are good, and the things that are likely to happen to
her that are bad''? That's going to happen. And some people will want to
use that information to deny people employment or a pay raise or a
promotion or health insurance. I think we ought to have somebody in the
White House that understands all that. And I think it's important.
Al Gore--I noticed the Republicans made
fun of him on whether he invented the Internet
[[Page 1569]]
or not--which, by the way, if you read the New Republic, you'll see it's
a totally bum rap, like a lot of the things they lay on him. But I'll
tell you this. He sponsored legislation years and years ago when the
Internet was the private province of a handful of physicists to make it
broadly available to all people. And then in 1996, when we passed the
telecommunications law, the Vice President said, ``We can't do this
unless we have an E-rate that guarantees that every single school and
hospital in America can afford to hook up to the Internet so all of our
kids can get a world-class education.'' I think we ought to have
somebody that understands that in the White House--all these things, and
what they matter.
So when you leave here tonight, another thing you'll remember most
is seeing Ethel and Ted and all this younger generation, thinking that
Mark and Kathleen have such enormous potential.
But it's important that you do your job now. And it's important that we
not sit on our laurels over the last 8 years.
Look, I'm grateful that I got a chance to serve as President. I
listened to a lot of those guys at the convention. It sounded to me like
they thought we had interrupted the ordinary flow of things when I got
elected. [Laughter] I remember it being struck in '92 how they really
thought there would never be anybody in our party elected President
again. They kept referring to me as the Governor of a small southern
State. [Laughter] And I was so naive, I thought it was a compliment.
[Laughter] And I still do.
Listen to me now. I still do. Nobody is entitled to any of these
jobs. If my life had taken one or two different turns I'd be home doing
real estate deeds in some law office right now. So I don't feel like a
lot of them do. I'm grateful for every day that I had here. I am very
grateful. And I don't think--I don't believe--I don't think anybody's
entitled to serve. But I think that before anyone serves, the people
have to make sure they know what they're doing. Now, you hear me
tonight, and you can go out and tell people this. Tell people what the
economic differences are. Tell them what the law enforcement differences
are. Tell them what the environmental, the educational, the health care
differences are. Tell them what the differences are in terms of what
kind of national community we're going to be. Talk to them about these
future issues. Climate change is very real, folks. I know it's cool
tonight, and it's nice. If we don't do something, within 20 or 30 years
the Everglades and the sugarcane fields in Louisiana will start
flooding. The polar ice cap's already breaking up at an alarming rate.
It's a big deal. I think we ought to have somebody in the White House
that understands it.
And I tell you, I've just tried to have a talk tonight. I haven't
given much of a speech. But I know this: Things can get away from you.
Ted said in a wistful way when he was talking tonight that--he didn't
say it exactly this way, but I will say it exactly this way--before we
broke the record for the longest period of economic expansion in
history, the last longest economic expansion in history was between 1961
and 1969--the Kennedy-Johnson years. And I graduated from high school in
1964, and I thought, just like, apparently, a lot of voters today
thought--thought, ``Man, you couldn't mess this economy up with a stick
of dynamite.''
Unemployment was low; inflation was low; growth was high--no
problem. I thought all the civil rights problems were going to be solved
in the courts or in the Congress. I didn't dream Vietnam would get out
of hand. I never dreamed we would have riots in the streets or that
people I literally adored could be killed. But it all happened in 4
short years. And then, the last longest economic expansion in history
was history.
You need to nourish and cherish this moment. I have waited for 35
years for my country to be once again in the position to build the
future of our dreams for our children. I am grateful that this family
has given so much to that end. But in the end, we rise or fall on the
good judgment and the good service of the people. Do not blow this
election. The best is still out there.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 8:50 p.m. at a private residence. In his
remarks, he referred to Gov. Parris Glendening of Maryland; J. Craig
Venter, president and chief scientific officer, Celera Genomics Corp.;
Ed McMahon, Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes spokesperson;
Lieutenant Governor Townsend's husband, David; daughters Kate, Kerry,
Meaghan, and Maeve; cousin, Mark Shriver; mother, Ethel Kennedy; uncles
Sargent
[[Page 1570]]
Shriver and Senator Edward M. (Teddy) Kennedy, and his wife, Vicki;
brother Joseph P. Kennedy III; and aunts Eunice Kennedy Shriver and
Patricia Kennedy.