[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[September 16, 2000]
[Pages 1853-1856]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Dinner
September 16, 2000

    Thank you very much, Chairman Clyburn; 
dinner chair Eddie Bernice Johnson, my 
friend of 28 years--and didn't she give a great introduction to the Vice 
President? You better go on the road, girl. 
[Laughter] Our foundation chair, Eva Clayton, 
and all the members and former members of the CBC, especially to my 
friend Bill Clay. We wish you well and 
Godspeed on your retirement, and I thank you for 8 years of our good 
partnership.
    To Mrs. Coretta Scott King and all 
the distinguished citizens in the audience, but especially to the two 
whom I had the great honor to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 
Marian Wright Edelman and Reverend 
Jesse Jackson, thank you for being here with 
us tonight.
    I thank Lou Stokes and Phylicia 
Rashad and want to join in congratulating 
the award winners, my friend Arthur Eve, whose 
son did such a good job working for the Clinton/
Gore administration; Kenneth Hill; Rodney 
Carroll, who has been great on our Welfare to 
Work program; Tom Joyner, who lets me jaw on his 
radio program from time to time. Even I never got an eight-page spread 
in Ebony; I don't know about that. [Laughter]
    To Tavis Smiley and to the family of our 
friend LeBaron Taylor; Bill Kennard, and 
Ambassador Sisulu, thank you for what you said 
about our friend Nelson Mandela. I thank 
General Reno and Secretary Slater and Secretary Herman and 
Deputy Attorney General Holder

[[Page 1854]]

and our SBA Director, Aida Alvarez, and all the 
people from our White House team who are here, and from the entire 
administration.
    I thought the Vice President gave a 
great speech, and I'm looking forward to getting rid of that trouble 
adjective at the beginning of his title in just a couple of months now.
    Now, there was nothing subliminal about that. We Democrats don't 
have subliminal advertising. [Laughter] I also want to thank Senator 
Lieberman, who has been a friend since 
Hillary and I met him 30 years ago when he was running for the State 
Senate in New Haven. And I can tell you that if he is the Vice President 
of this country, you will be very, very proud of him. He has done a 
great job, and he has been a great friend of mine.
    I want to bring you a warm welcome from Hillary. She wishes she could be here tonight, but she's 
otherwise occupied. They sent the one in our family who is not running 
for office this year to speak to you tonight.
    I've been honored to be at every one of these dinners since I became 
President. Tonight I came mostly to listen and to clap and to say 
thanks. Thank you for your friendship, your leadership, and your 
support. Thank you for giving me the chance, John Lewis, to walk with you in Selma this year. Thank you, for 
those of you who went back to Africa with me when we went to Nigeria and 
Tanzania. Thank you for working with me to reach out to the people of 
Africa and the Caribbean to try to build their countries through trade.
    Thank you, for those of you who helped me to relieve the debt of the 
poor countries and to increase our fight against AIDS and TB and malaria 
around the world.
    The Vice President said that there are so many people who could say 
that the CBC covered their back. Covered their back? [Laughter] When 
they took a torch to me and lit the fire, you brought the buckets and 
poured the water on it. And I thank you. Thank you.
    But mostly, I want to thank you for taking our Nation to higher 
ground, for standing with Al Gore and me in our simple but profound 
mission to make sure that everyone counts and everyone has a chance, to 
make sure that we act as if we all do better when we help each other.
    I can't thank you enough for your role in all the good things that 
have happened in the last 8 years. It's all been recited. I guess what I 
would like for you to know is that there are a lot of days when I just 
felt like the troubadour, but other people had to play in the orchestra 
and even write the songs. And nothing--nothing good that I have achieved 
would have been possible without the Congressional Black Caucus, our 
other friends in Congress, and especially Vice President Al Gore. And I thank you all for that.
    I just want to say two serious things about the future tonight. The 
first is that when Al Gore says you ain't seen nothin' yet, I agree with 
him. We've spent a lot of time in the last 8 years just trying to turn 
this country around and get it together and get it moving in the right 
direction. And now, for the first time in our lifetime, we have both 
prosperity and the absence of serious internal crisis and external 
threat.
    We actually can build the future of our dreams for our kids. We 
could get rid of child poverty. We could give every child in America the 
chance at a world-class education for the first time. We could open the 
doors of college to all. We could take Social Security and Medicare out 
there beyond the life of the baby boomers and add that prescription drug 
benefit.
    We could do a lot of things with these unbelievable discoveries in 
science and technology. But we have to make a decision. And so the 
second point I want to make is, sometimes it's harder to make a good 
decision in good times than bad times. I know the people took a chance 
on me in 1992, but give me a break. The country was in a ditch; it 
wasn't that much of a chance. [Laughter]
    I mean, you know, they--I don't know how many voters went into the 
polling place and thought, ``You know, I don't know if I want to vote 
for that guy. He's a Governor. President Bush said he was the Governor 
of a small southern State, and I don't even know where that place is on 
the map, and he looks too young, and everybody says he's terrible.'' But 
we had to change.
    Now things are going well, and people are comfortable and confident, 
and we have options. So it's up to you to make sure that people ask the 
right question and answer it in this election season, that we say we 
cannot afford to pass up the chance of a lifetime, maybe the chance of a 
half a century, to build the future of our dreams for our children.

[[Page 1855]]

    And there is a lot at stake. You've heard it all tonight, just 
about, how we're fighting for strong schools and modern classrooms and a 
higher minimum wage and all the other things. I would like to mention 
one other thing that hasn't been talked about. We ought to be fighting 
for an end to delay and discrimination against highly qualified minority 
candidates for the Federal courts.
    This administration has named 62 African-American judges, 3 times 
the number of the previous two administrations combined, with the 
highest ratings from the ABA in 40 years. Yet, we know, in spite of 
that, that women and minority candidates are still much more likely to 
be delayed or denied.
    So even though this is a nonprofit organization, I can ask you to 
remember Judge Ronnie White, the first 
African-American on the Missouri Supreme Court, denied on the party-line 
vote. The fourth circuit, with the largest African-American population 
in the country, never had an African-American judge. Last year I told 
you I nominated James Wynn, a 
distinguished judge from North Carolina. After 400 days, with his senior 
Senator still standing in the courthouse door, the Senate hasn't found 
one day to give Judge Wynn even a hearing.
    This year I nominated Roger Gregory of 
Virginia, the first man in his family to finish high school, a teacher 
at Virginia State University, where his mother once worked as a maid, a 
highly respected litigator with the support of his Republican and his 
Democratic Senator from Virginia. But so far, we're still waiting for 
him to get a hearing. And then there's Kathleen McCree Lewis in Michigan and others all across this 
country.
    So once again, I ask the Senate to do the right thing and quit 
closing the door on people who are qualified to serve.
    Now, they say I can't ask you to vote for anybody, but I will say 
this. If you want no more delay and denial of justice, it would help if 
you had Al Gore and Joe 
Lieberman and Senators like the First 
Lady.
    If you want a Tax Code that helps working families with child care, 
long-term care, and access to college education, it would help if you 
had Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and Charlie Rangel as 
the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
    If you want strong civil rights and equal rights laws and you want 
them enforced, it would really help if you had Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and you 
made John Conyers the chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee.
    If you want the intelligence policy of this country to reflect 
genuine intelligence--[laughter]--it would help if you had Al Gore and Joe Lieberman 
and Julian Dixon as the chairman of the 
Intelligence Committee.
    But I will say again, sometimes it is harder to make good decisions 
in good times than bad times. Sometimes it's easier to think of some 
little thing you've got to quibble about. Remember the African proverb: 
``Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.'' My friends, we've got to 
be skillful sailors.
    I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Toni Morrison once said I 
was the first black President this country ever had. [Laughter] And I 
would rather have that than a Nobel Prize, and I'll tell you why. 
Because somewhere, in the deep and lost threads of my own memory, are 
the roots of understanding of what you have known. Somewhere, there was 
a deep longing to share the fate of the people who had been left out and 
left behind, sometimes brutalized, and too often ignored or forgotten.
    I don't exactly know who all I have to thank for that. But I'm quite 
sure I don't deserve any credit for it, because whatever I did, I really 
felt I had no other choice.
    I want you to remember that I had a partner that felt the same way, 
that I believe he will be one of the great Presidents this country ever 
had, and that for the rest of my days, no matter what--no matter what--I 
will always be there for you.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:33 p.m. at the Washington Convention 
Center. In his remarks, he referred to Representative James E. Clyburn, 
chair, Congressional Black Caucus; former Representative Louis Stokes 
and actress Phylicia Rashad, dinner masters of ceremony; Representatives 
Eva M. Clayton, chair, and William (Bill) Clay and Julian C. Dixon, 
board members, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation; Coretta Scott 
King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; New York State Deputy 
Assembly Speaker Arthur O. Eve and his son, former Special Assistant to 
the President for Political Affairs Eric V. Eve; Kenneth Hill, executive 
director, Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program, Inc.; Rodney 
Carroll, chief operating officer, Welfare to Work

[[Page 1856]]

Partnership; morning radio show host Tom Joyner; talk show host Tavis 
Smiley; Ambassador Sheila Sisulu and former President Nelson Mandela of 
South Africa; and author Toni Morrison.