[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[January 8, 2001]
[Pages 2858-2860]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Democratic National Committee Staff
January 8, 2001

    Well, first of all, I want to say to all of you, I'm sorry I kept 
you waiting, but I promised you I was going to work until the last day, 
and that's what I'm doing. [Laughter]
    I spent a little time today working on the Middle East, and a little 
time today rededicating the AFL-CIO building and rededicating myself to 
their issues and their cause and to not letting the progress they've 
made in the last 8 years be reversed, and a number of other things.
    I have my Chief of Staff, John Podesta, 
and Maria Echaveste and my Political 
Director, Minyon Moore, Lynn Cutler--a lot of people

[[Page 2859]]

came over from the White House. They love you guys. They wanted to be 
here with me.
    I want to thank my friend Ed Rendell, 
who even went to the point of shooting baskets with me in a neighborhood 
in Philadelphia in '92, to make sure I could get plenty of votes and win 
Pennsylvania.
    For all the trips that we made together, I want to thank the 
indefatigable Joe Andrew for leaving his 
home in Indiana and coming here and working so hard. I want to thank 
Dennis Archer and Loretta Sanchez, who aren't here; and Senator Torricelli and Representative Kennedy, who worked with me and gave me the opportunity to do a 
gazillion events--[laughter]--Martin Frost and 
Paul Patton and my dear friend State Senator 
Mike Miller from Maryland.
    Thank you, Rob; thank you to all the staff members. I also want to 
express my appreciation for those of you who are here day-in and day-
out. I think it was Joe who said some of you go back to President 
Carter's administration.
    One person who has been here a long time, who passed away today, is 
Elber Suggs, and I want to say how grateful I am. I know a lot of you 
knew him. He not only was a longtime employee of the DNC, but he was a 
longtime member of the UAW. So he was a two-fer in more ways than one. 
And I know that we all send our prayers and thoughts to his family, and 
our gratitude for all he did for the DNC and for the causes we believe 
in.
    I wanted to come by before I left office to thank you for what you 
did in this election. You know, I tell everybody as I'm sort of 
dwindling into irrelevancy--[laughter]--the only way I can really get 
any big headlines is to say what I really think about--[laughter]. But I 
think I'll show some restraint tonight, since I'm preaching to the 
saved.
    But I want to thank you for what you did in the year 2000. It was an 
election in which a lot of forces were arrayed against us and a lot of 
money was spent. We had to work hard to raise a lot. And all of you in 
these various organizations, you gave me the opportunity to do 169 
different phone messages and radio spots at the end of the campaign. And 
on the day before and the day of the election, I did 66 radio 
interviews. So for all of you who were personally responsible for 
practically working me into an early grave--[laughter]--I want to thank 
you, because that's what we all hired on to do.
    And when you're in this sort of struggle, you want to leave it all 
out there on the floor; you don't want to wonder, when it's all said and 
done, if there's just one more thing you could have done, one more phone 
call you could have made. I believe you've done everything you could do, 
and I'm proud of you and grateful to you.
    One other thing I want to say is that I think that the dividing line 
between politics and policy is not very clear. And most people say that 
in a pejorative way. I say it in a proud way. This is a political system 
we live in. The framers of the Constitution expected it to be and didn't 
think politics was a bad word. They thought it was a good word, and so 
do I. I am proud that I have spent my life in the American political 
system.
    So even though you have to worry about recruiting candidates and 
raising money and getting the talking points out there and answering the 
charges and doing all the things you have to do, the sort of nitty-
gritty work of political life, you should never forget that it bears a 
direct relationship to the way the American people live.
    Our friend Terry McAuliffe buried his 
father a few days ago, and I went to Syracuse to the funeral. He was a 
great friend of mine. He was the treasurer of the Onondaga Democratic 
Party for 27 years. And at 83, he was putting out yard signs for Hillary 
in this Senate race, because he knew that there was a direct connection 
between putting up the yard signs and the kind of economy and kind of 
life the people in the community in which he had spent his life would 
have. And you should never lose sight of that.
    When you go home tonight and people ask you for the rest of your 
life, why did you do this--[laughter]--tell them, well, there are 22.5 
million reasons in the people who have jobs that didn't have them when 
we took over 8 years ago. There are roughly 25 million reasons in the 
people who have taken advantage of the family and medical leave law, 
which was vetoed when the other party had the White House.
    There are 600,000 reasons in the people who had a criminal record 
and couldn't get handguns--and lots of people are alive because of 
that--because we passed the Brady bill. There are over 10 million 
reasons in the people who have taken advantage of the HOPE scholarship 
tax credit and the other college tax reductions

[[Page 2860]]

and benefits that have been increased under this administration. There 
are $8 billion worth of savings to college students in the direct 
college loan program. Ninety percent of the kids in this country under 2 
are immunized against serious diseases for the first time in history. 
And you did that.
    The air's cleaner. The water's cleaner. The food's safer. More land 
has been set aside. Bruce Babbitt says by the time we finish, we'll 
finally eclipse Teddy Roosevelt's record, that stood for 100 years, in 
preserving land and natural resources for all time to come. You were a 
part of that. Don't ever forget that.
    Why? Because if I hadn't won those two elections with Al Gore and if 
we hadn't had help in the Senate and the House and we hadn't had 
Governors and mayors and others willing to stick up for us, none of it 
would have happened.
    Last year, we had the biggest drop in child poverty in a generation, 
the lowest poverty rate overall in 20 years. Last year, people in the 
lowest 20 percent of the working people in this country had the biggest 
percentage increase in their income of any group of Americans. This was 
a recovery that didn't just help wealthy people. It made more 
millionaires and more billionaires, but it also let more people work 
their way in the middle class, too. You did that, and you should be 
proud of that.
    We mended affirmative action instead of throwing it away, because of 
politics, because of what you did, because we had enough people in the 
Congress who would support me to do that.
    I could go on and on and on. But you just remember: Every single 
decision that advanced the cause of the American people for the last 8 
years grew out of a political decision made by voters on election day 
all across this country. And this country is going to be just fine, as 
long as we get all the votes counted. [Laughter] And don't you ever 
forget it.
    The other thing I want to tell you is that you can't be discouraged 
when you lose. My Chief of Staff, Mr. Podesta, celebrated his 52d birthday today. It looks good on him. 
He's more than 2 years younger than I am. [Laughter] We met in a Senate 
campaign in 1970, which we lost. And those of us who are about our age, 
we went for the longest time--we thought we'd never win anything. 
[Laughter] And we finally won the White House in 1976, and we didn't 
hold it.
    But you know, when you look back, Jimmy Carter looks pretty good in 
the light of history. And the campaign for human rights and the campaign 
for a sensible energy policy, the things that he stood for, it looks 
awful good in the light of history. And the life that he's made since 
then, which would not have been possible if he hadn't been elected 
President in the first place, looks awfully good in the light of 
history.
    So I want you to feel good about it, and I don't want you to be 
discouraged because we didn't win every fight we were in. And I don't 
want you to be cynical because of the decision of the Supreme Court. I 
want you to be invigorated. I want you to look ahead to the races 2 
years from now, to the races next year for Governor.
    And I want you to remember, in this country, nobody gets a 
guarantee; you just get a chance. That's what an election is; it's a 
chance. But there are people all over this country that wouldn't have a 
chance if you hadn't been here, doing what you've done, the last 8 
years.
    And I hope when you are as old as I am or even older, you will look 
back on this period and be very, very proud, and remember those numbers 
I gave you tonight. Those people in this country, all kinds of people of 
all races, all religions, all backgrounds, have a more decent, a more 
united, a more forward-looking country because you stood here and did 
your job these 8 years.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:25 p.m. at the Democratic National 
Committee headquarters. In his remarks, he referred to Edward G. 
Rendell, general chair, Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, Mayor Dennis 
W. Archer of Detroit, MI, and Representative Loretta Sanchez, general 
cochairs, and Rob Engel, executive director, Democratic National 
Committee; Senator Robert G. Torricelli, former chairman, Democratic 
Senatorial Campaign Committee; Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy and 
Martin Frost, former chairmen, Democratic Congressional Campaign 
Committee; Gov. Paul Patton of Kentucky, chairman, Democratic Governors' 
Association; Maryland State Senate President Thomas V. (Mike) Miller, 
Jr.; and Democratic fundraiser Terry McAuliffe, and his late father, 
Jack McAuliffe.