[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[September 23, 2000]
[Pages 1910-1914]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Luncheon in Palo Alto
September 23, 2000

    First of all, thank you for talking a few seconds longer so I 
could--[laughter]--could almost finish my Indian meal. I want to thank 
the Doctors Mahal and 
their children for opening their home. Thank you, Vish. Thank you, Dinesh. Thank you, 
Joel Hyatt.
    You know, for a long time, Joel Hyatt was the 
first legal entrepreneur in America. He had this sort of legal services 
for the masses. He

[[Page 1911]]

was advertising before it was fashionable. Hillary and I used to look at 
Joel's ad on television. She said, ``You know, he was behind us at Yale 
Law School, but he's way ahead of us in income.'' [Laughter] So I'm very 
proud of him and grateful for his service to the party.
    I would also like to thank all of those who provided this wonderful 
meal and the people who served it today. It's really quite a wonderful 
occasion for me. Back when I was a civilian and had a private life, I 
used to spend a lot of time in Indian restaurants, starting from--I fell 
in love with them when I was in England living for 2 years, where most 
of the impoverished college students like me ate Indian food at least 
four times a week. [Laughter] We figured if we couldn't be full, at 
least we would be warm, and we loved it. [Laughter]
    I want to thank you for supporting our party, and I want to make 
just a few brief observations, if I might. First of all, the primary 
thing I have tried to do as President is to turn the country around and 
make the systems of our country work so that Americans have the tools 
and the conditions to make the most of their own lives.
    If you look at the Indian-American community in this country, if you 
look at the phenomenal success just here in Northern California, the 
industry and enterprise and imagination of people will carry communities 
and countries a long way if governments aren't getting in the way but 
instead are offering a hand up. And that's basically what we've tried to 
do.
    I'm very grateful for the partnership that I formed way back in late 
1991 with a number of people in Silicon Valley who helped me to adopt 
good--both macroeconomic policies and to do better by the high-tech 
community and the information technology revolution in general. And I am 
very grateful for that.
    I also appreciate the kind words many of you said about the opening 
that my administration and I have made to India and the restoration of 
harmonious and good relationships which were, as I said at our table, 
understandably a little out of kilter during the cold war when India had 
to relate to the Soviet Union because of the tensions between India and 
China, but for more than a decade now have made absolutely no sense at 
all. So we are working hard on a partnership that I believe will be one 
of the most important relationships that the United States has for many, 
many decades to come.
    In a larger sense, your presence here--I met one person who came 
through the line and said, ``I can't believe it. I've been here one 
month, and I'm meeting the President.'' [Laughter] And I think that is 
adequate testimony to the increasing importance of mobility and openness 
in our global society, increasing interconnectedness, and therefore, 
increasing the importance of networks. Now, some people believe that 
networks will replace nation-states. I don't believe that, because there 
will still be plenty of work to be done by both. But I do believe that 
global networks will become more and more important.
    There is a book I've been talking quite a bit about lately that--the 
author actually wrote me a letter last week and thanked me. But I 
haven't asked for any royalties or anything. [Laughter] The title of the 
book is ``Non Zero,'' written by a man named Robert Wright, who wrote a 
fine earlier book called, ``The Moral Animal.''
    But the argument of ``Non Zero'' is that even when human history 
seems to be regressing, in the Dark Ages, for example, in the early part 
of the last millennium, basically, there is a long process of increasing 
interdependence which has reached its apotheosis in our time; and that 
the more interdependent people become, the more they are compelled to 
treat each other in better and better ways, because the more you are 
interdependent with others, the more your victories require other people 
to have victories, as well.
    So the title is a reference to game theory, but that--in a zero-sum 
game, in order for one person to win, someone else has to lose. In a 
non-zero-sum game, in order for one person to win, you have to find a 
way for others to win as well. And he basically argues that the present 
stage of economic, political, and social development is the latest and 
by far the most advanced example of the growth of interdependence.
    And that's also, by the way, been at the heart of a lot of what I've 
tried to do in racial, religious, and ethnic reconciliation. I think the 
trick is not to get people to give up their identities but to take great 
pride in their identities, their ethnic and their religious convictions, 
but to recognize, at least in this lifetime, the ultimate primacy of our 
common humanity and a way of reaching across divides so--not so that we 
can

[[Page 1912]]

give up our differences but so that we can celebrate them and still find 
a way to work together and move forward.
    That's another reason I think that it's very important that you be 
involved in the political life of your Nation. When Secretary and Mrs. Mineta and I 
were riding over here, I told him that I believed that it was imperative 
for the next administration to do more to get Indian-Americans and 
others who come here from other countries involved not just in the 
political process but in the governmental process in appointed positions 
at high levels, in more boards and commissions and more advisory 
committees, working on more projects, because you really are making the 
world of the new millennium.
    One of the things that I used to say earlier in the year, when our 
electoral prospects didn't look as good as they do now, when I would 
assure people that I thought that the Vice President would prevail, is that the question is not whether we're 
going to change. Anybody in a governmental position who advanced the 
proposition that things are going so well we shouldn't change, I 
wouldn't vote for that person.
    If there had been a candidate this year running, saying, ``Vote for 
me. Bill Clinton's a great President, and we don't need to change 
anything,'' I would vote against that person, because the underlying 
circumstances of life are changing so much that's not an option.
    The real issue is not whether but how. Are we going to change in a 
way that enables us to take advantage of a unique moment in human 
history? Are we going to meet the big challenges this country faces? Are 
we going to continue to successfully integrate all the different groups 
of immigrants that are coming into our country? Are we going to have a 
policy with regard to other nations that recognizes that their 
challenges are our challenges?
    We actually had--Vice President Gore and I had some people in the 
other party making fun of us not very long ago when we said that AIDS 
was a security challenge. But it is. When you look at democratic African 
countries with infection rates hovering around 40 percent in their 
military, when you look at countries we've worked hard to stabilize as 
free societies that within just a few years will have more people in 
their sixties than in their thirties, when you look at wars that have 
been propagated and the children that have been turned into soldiers and 
what that's doing to the fabric of society and how the epidemic feeds 
that, we have to have a broader notion of what is in our security 
interests.
    First, it's about more than military; it's about nonmilitary causes, 
as well. And secondly, it's about a lot of things that have to do with 
health and education and well-being.
    Climate change, if we don't do something about it, will become a 
national security concern because more and more land will become 
unarable, and people will fight more and more over that which is. More 
and more countries will have water supply problems.
    We're working very hard to finish up the peace agreement in the 
Middle East, and one of the things you never hear anybody talk about is 
the importance of these nations reconciling so that we can meet the 
coming water challenge in what is perhaps the second most arid part of 
the world.
    So I wanted to be here not only to thank you for what you have done 
and thank you for what you are doing but to tell you that to me, your 
support for our administration and for what we're doing in this election 
season is a stellar example of what I think America needs to be doing 
more of.
    When I ran for President in 1992, I had a more systematic outreach 
to all sorts of immigrant groups than anyone ever had. And I did it 
because I believed that you were important to America's place in the 
world as well as to America's economic growth and social health. I still 
believe that more strongly.
    So I would just like to leave you with this. There are huge 
differences between the two parties in America. There are some 
similarities, and that's good. We've stabilized our country over many 
years because we've managed to have two parties that could be broadly 
representative. But in the last decade, as you know, we had a much more 
stark ideological difference and a challenge that had to be met.
    And essentially, our party now is a modern political party with a 
modern economic philosophy that is pro-growth, pro-high tech, pro-
immigration, pro-education, but believes that the most important 
solutions are community-oriented solutions, the ones where everybody 
wins.
    We believe that everyone deserves a chance, that everyone counts, 
and that we all do better when we help each other. And when you strip

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it all away, that really is the fundamental difference here. That 
explains the difference in our position on a Patients' Bill of Rights 
and theirs; our position on a drug benefit for seniors who don't have it 
now and theirs; our position on raising the minimum wage and theirs; our 
position on tax cuts so that everybody can afford 4 years of college for 
their children and theirs; a whole range of issues. And thank goodness, 
the last 8 years have given us some evidence that if you do all this 
within the framework of fiscal prudence and a sensitivity to the 
economic opportunity areas of American society, it turns out that good 
social policy is good economic policy as well.
    So I came here, I guess, finally more than anything else, just to 
say thank you. This is an interesting election for me. It's the first 
time in 26 years I haven't been a candidate. [Laughter] My party has a 
new leader. My family has a new 
candidate. [Laughter] And I tell 
everyone who will listen, my new official title is not Commander in 
Chief but Cheerleader in Chief. [Laughter] And I'm enjoying it 
immensely.
    I think that Hillary will be 
elected in New York if we can keep getting--building her support, and I 
think that we're going to do very well in these Senate races. I think 
we'll do very well in the House races. But we have to win the White 
House because of the stark differences on economics, the environment, 
crime, education, health care. On all these issues, there are real 
differences.
    And I hope that if we do win, and I believe we will, that you will 
intensify your involvement. I hope you'll continue to support the 
fundraisers, but I want to see more Indian-Americans in the Government, 
on the boards, on the commissions, coming to us with specific ideas that 
ought to be broadly spread, because we have only scratched the surface 
of the public benefits of the information revolution.
    And I'll just close with this. I went to Flint, Michigan, a couple 
of days ago, which was the home of a lot of the early automobile 
factories. They still have 7, but they only have 35,000 people working 
in the car plants there as opposed to 90,000 people at their height.
    After the Second World War, an enormous number of people, both 
African-Americans and European-Americans from my home State, couldn't 
make a living on the farm anymore, and they moved to Flint or to Detroit 
or to other towns in Michigan where they got jobs in the auto industry, 
and they became good, middle class citizens.
    So when I ran for President, everybody from my home State, it seemed 
like, moved to Chicago or Michigan. I won big victories in Illinois and 
Michigan, and the gentlemen who were running against me never did figure 
out why. It's because half the people who live there were born in 
Arkansas--[laughter]--because they literally couldn't make a living, so 
they went up there.
    Now, Flint's gone through this enormous economic restructuring, but 
I went there because they have one of these community computer centers 
we're setting up, like the ones I saw in the little village of Nayla, 
for example, in Rajasthan when I was in India. But they have--in Flint--
I went there for a specific reason. They had a particular emphasis on 
the power of the Internet and new software technology to empower the 
disabled, and we had this great disability rally.
    But before, I went through--and I looked at the technology there and 
saw how people who were deaf could use it, people who were blind could 
use it, and I also used this laser technology that is fully activated 
and operated by one's eyes. And it's very important for people who are 
completely paralyzed or for people who are suffering from Lou Gehrig's 
disease, where eventually, you lose all momentum, movement in your body 
except for your eyes.
    The people there in Flint, Michigan, every week get an E-mail from a 
guy with Lou Gehrig's disease in North Carolina who is a friend of mine. 
And we were friends in the 1980's, and he was a young, handsome, 
vigorous man. And we worked on education and economic development in the 
South, and he was tragically stricken with Lou Gehrig's disease. He's 
had no movement for some time now.
    In the next month or two, he will publish a book that he wrote with 
his eyes, thanks to the Internet. Maybe even more important, he can talk 
with his wife and children. And I've mastered the technology enough so 
that I've turned on lights and turned them off, I turned on the tape 
deck to listen to music and turn it off. And I finally got ``good 
morning'' down--[laughter]--but I could see how, with a couple of days' 
effort, particularly if you couldn't move your head, which is the 
primary thing that throws it out of whack--it was an amazing thing.

[[Page 1914]]

    Stephen Hawking, the famous British physicist--and a lot of you may 
have read his books--is a friend of mine. And he has lived longer with 
Lou Gehrig's disease than any person ever recorded, as far as we know, 
any person in history. And he has lived longer because he has just this 
movement in two fingers. But he can operate a machine that has thousands 
and thousands of words in it, and he's memorized the order of all of 
them. And he came to the White House and delivered a speech on the 
future of time and space for Hillary in one of our Millennial Evenings 
that he wrote himself, put into his machine, and then pulled out with a 
voice box. And he is alive today because he can share what he can think 
and feel and know with other people.
    So that is the other thing I would like to say about this. I'm glad 
all this money has been made here. I'm glad that our country has added 
all this wealth. I hope we can do a better job by bringing these kinds 
of opportunities to poor areas and poor people who have been left behind 
in our country and in other countries.
    But fundamentally, the wealth itself is not an end. It's a means to 
an end. And what really matters to people is their life story. Norm and 
Danny and I were talking about that on the way in. That's one thing I 
learned as a young boy from my relatives who had no money but were very 
wise. They said, ``Just remember, there is not much difference 
separating the very successful from people that have had a lot of bad 
breaks in life. And everybody's got a story. And people should be able 
to live their story. They should be able to dream and live their 
story.''
    And one of the things that I am thrilled about is that this 
information revolution and what's happening with the Internet has the 
potential to lift more people more quickly out of poverty, adversity, 
and disability than any development in all of human history by a good 
long stretch.
    But it will be very important for the United States to lead the way 
and very important--this is another big difference between the two 
parties. One of my greatest regrets is that the United States is--we 
have never succeeded in winning a big debate about what our 
responsibilities are in the rest of the world and how fulfilling them 
helps us. If we help a poor country become a middle class country and a 
trading partner, it helps us. It's also the morally right thing to do.
    So that is another argument, I would hope, for all of you staying 
very actively involved. We need to imagine what all these technologies 
can do and all of these new ideas that you're coming up with and all of 
these new companies you start, what it can do, not simply to pile wealth 
upon wealth but to do it by continuing to advance society, by continuing 
to find those non-zero-sum solutions so that we all win.
    If we become what we ought to become, if we make the most of this 
truly magic moment, I'm convinced that it will be in no small measure 
because people like you played a full part in it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:36 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to luncheon hosts Anomol and Surjit Mahal; Vish 
Akella, event chair, who introduced the President; Dinesh Sastry, board 
member, Democratic Leadership 2000; Joel Hyatt, finance chair, 
Democratic National Committee; and Secretary Mineta's wife, Danaelia.