[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 30 (Monday, August 2, 1993)]
[Pages 1439-1443]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the American Legion Boys Nation

 July 24, 1993

    The President. I told the Vice President what I was about to do, and 
he wanted to come out and say hello to you. But he has another meeting; 
he's trying to pass our economic plan, so he has to go. He just wanted 
to say hello. So I'm going to let him come up here and say a few words 
to you, so he can go back to work while I have a good time with you.
    The Vice President. Thanks very much. I know this is a very exciting 
day for all of you. And I want to wish you well. And if there is anyone 
here who had in the back of his mind any notion at all of going into 
public service or politics, I only have one word of advice. If you can 
manage somehow to get a picture of you shaking hands with President 
Clinton here today, it might come in handy later on. [Laughter]
    The President. Thank you very much, and welcome. I want to 
acknowledge the presence here of the national commander of the American 
Legion, Roger Munson; and the national chaplain, James Wagner; the 
executive director, John Sommer; and the director of activities, Jack 
Mercier, who was at Boys

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Nation 30 years ago when I was here--he started I think 31 years ago; 
George Blume, the legislative director; and a number of people here from 
my time of involvement, including one Member of Congress, a Republican 
from Minnesota, Congressman Jim Ramstad. Where are you? Stand up there. 
I think all of you know that we're also having a 30-year reunion here 
this weekend, those of us who were here with me. And the organizer of 
that was Judge Pete Johnson from Alabama. Pete, where are you? Stand up 
over there. Gary Sammons, the chair of the National Americanism 
Commission, is here, the policymaking body that oversees Boys Nation. He 
was a Michigan Boys Stater in 1963. And I'm just curious. Would all the 
people who are here from our reunion class of '63 please stand up. See, 
they look pretty good, don't they? None the worse for wear. [Applause] 
Thank you.
    Let me say to all of them, we're going to have this ceremony, I'm 
going to take pictures with the young men who are here as delegates, and 
then afterward I hope all of you here for the reunion will hang around a 
little and we'll have a chance to visit, too.
    For those of you who are here, I say welcome, and those of you who 
were here 30 years ago, I say welcome back. All of us share a common 
bond. We owe a great deal of gratitude to the American Legion for the 
exceptional chance they have given us and so many others over the last 
many, many years to learn so much about the responsibilities as well as 
the rights we have as American citizens.
    Three decades to the day have passed since my group and I were here 
in the Rose Garden to meet President Kennedy. But I think that all of us 
probably remember exactly how we felt then. It was a very different time 
for America. There was virtually no cynicism. None of us had any doubt 
that our country could solve its problems, meet its challenges, bridge 
its gaps. Nor did we have any doubt that our President, our Congress, 
the people whom we elected, could faithfully and fully represent us in 
meeting the great challenges of that day.
    One of the most important moments at Boys Nation is the debate about 
resolutions. And 30 years ago when we were here, believe it or not, we 
always assumed that President Kennedy would be running for reelection, 
that Senator Goldwater would probably be his opponent, although there 
was a lot of turmoil within the Republican Party at that time about who 
the nominee would be, and that the great issue would be civil rights. 
Our Boys Nation group passed a resolution against racial discrimination. 
Many of us had grown up in segregated societies. We understood the pain, 
the cost, the incredible waste in human potential that that had caused. 
And so we voted for it.
    I was very proud to be one of the southerners that voted for it, and 
I think that two others that I remember were my two colleagues from 
Louisiana. I think they're both here today, and they both voted for it. 
I remember clearly the discussions we had late at night in the dorms 
discussing it.
    The Nation's Governors had just met that week, and they broke up 
their resolution conference so they wouldn't have to deal with civil 
rights. So when we showed up here, President Kennedy said that we had 
shown more initiative than the Nation's Governors. Now, we loved it, but 
the Governors didn't like it very much. And it got him in a lot of hot 
water with them.
    Sixteen weeks later, President Kennedy was taken from us before he 
was able to fulfill his commitments in civil rights. But when President 
Johnson and the civil rights movement carried it through, it was the 
greatest domestic achievement of my lifetime, and it helped to make 
possible so many good things for so many people over the last 30 years, 
even though, to be sure, the work is nowhere near over.
    Most of you now attending Boys Nation were born in 1976, the 
bicentennial year of our independence. And you will live your entire 
lives in the third century of America's life. I think about that often 
because my daughter will soon be your age, and everything that we are 
working on that really matters is designed as much to help you and your 
tomorrows as to improve the lives of Americans today.
    We have a covenant with you which requires us to make some very 
tough choices. We have some of the same problems we had in 1963 but some 
very different ones as well. From the time we became a nation until

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1980, we had amassed over that entire life of this country a national 
debt of only $1 trillion. As a percentage of our income, it seemed to be 
quite manageable, and we were still free to invest in those things we 
ought to invest in. In the last 12 years, partly because of misguided 
policies, partly because of gridlock, partly because of people trying to 
outbid one another, we have gone from $1 trillion to $4 trillion in 
national debt. The estimated annual deficit when I took office was well 
over $300 billion, although we've gotten it down some this year. And 
clearly, we have unmet needs that we don't have the money to invest in.
    As compared with many other nations, just for example, we spend too 
little money on new technologies for the 21st century which will shape 
the jobs that you and your colleagues will have. We spend too little 
money on the continued education and training of our work force. We have 
all kinds of other challenges occasioned by the builddown of the 
reduction in defense spending. We owe it to the people who worked hard 
to help us win the cold war not to leave them out in the cold, and yet 
we don't have all the funds we need to spend on that. And yet, we have 
this enormous debt. It is a terrible dilemma for this country.
    We have whole sections of America where unemployment is too high and 
poverty is too high and the major source of income is drugs and the 
major organizations that works in society are gangs. We have to change 
all that. But we have to also free ourselves economically of the 
paralysis that this enormous annual deficit and the accumulated debt 
impose. And so we are trying to do that here for you as well as for your 
parents and your grandparents.
    In your lifetime, communism, the great threat of my childhood, has 
been defeated. I can still remember going to high school assemblies and 
junior high school assemblies and sitting there being given instructions 
about how to find the nearest bomb shelter and what we would do if a 
nuclear war occurred. I can still remember hearing people speak about 
what communism was like in the Soviet Union and how there would be a 
lifelong struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of 
communism. Well, in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, it was a stunning 
reaffirmation of America's commitment to freedom and democracy and to 
free market economics and the right of individuals to seek their own way 
as long as they didn't hurt their communities. That is an incredible 
achievement. In all probability, you will be able to raise your children 
without any threat of the annihilation of this society or this globe on 
which we live.
    On the other hand, as we have learned from every source of wisdom 
beginning with the Scriptures, there will never be an end to problems, 
never be an end to challenges. It is part of human nature that as new 
opportunities develop, new problems do, too. We have to do something 
about our debt here. We have to invest. We have to compete. We have to 
create opportunities for your future. We also have to recognize that the 
world remains a dangerous place, and there are people running 
governments who desperately want to develop weapons of mass destruction 
and have very little concern what is done in retaliation to their own 
citizens. That is a deeply troubling thing. We still face the threat of 
terrorism from people who honestly believe that the best way to achieve 
their political objectives is to kill, even if they kill innocent 
people. And we still have the terrible, terrible burden of knowing that 
in spite of all the progress we have made, there are millions of 
Americans who do not have the chance to grow up to live to their God-
given potential. And until that happens, we will never be as secure, as 
strong, as full as we need to be.
    We are trying, among other things in this administration, to make 
people believe again that their collective efforts can make a 
difference. Until the American people can overcome their cynicism and 
believe that if they act, it can matter, it is going to be very 
difficult for us to solve the problems of this country. I believe that 
every Member of Congress, without regard to party, would admit that the 
National Government has a responsibility to set up a framework within 
which opportunity can be seized, but that many of our problems have to 
be dealt with person to person, family to family, school to school, job 
to job, community to community, at the grassroots level. We have to 
create a climate

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in which people are challenged to take responsibility for themselves, 
their families, and their communities; given as many opportunities to do 
so as possible. But the nature of the problems we have today require the 
concerted action of millions of Americans.
    The good news about that is that all of you can make a difference. 
That's why I have worked so hard since becoming President to create this 
program of national service, which would open the doors of college 
education on better terms to millions of Americans and then give 
hundreds of thousands of them--hundreds of thousands of people like you, 
I hope--the opportunity to pay all or a portion of their college loans 
back with work for their country, in their communities or in other 
communities here at home, rebuilding America from the grassroots up and 
doing it either before, during, or after college. This national service 
program can make a fundamental difference to the way we view ourselves 
and our country. It can make more and more people have the same kind of 
enthusiasm I saw on your face when the Vice President and I walked in 
here today. We know you're connected to America. We need to connect 
everyone else to America, as well.
    Right now there's a little bit of political maneuvering going on in 
the Congress about national service. It's sad to me because we have good 
Republican and Democratic support for this bill. And I earnestly hope 
that this whole idea will be saved from becoming a political football. 
It is too important to America. It has nothing to do with partisan 
politics and everything to do with giving people a chance to serve their 
country and, in so doing, to help to build a belief in their country 
again.
    People my age remember President Kennedy starting the Peace Corps. 
Our fathers and mothers remember when President Roosevelt launched the 
Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression and gave people 
a chance to build their way out of that depression. In my State I could 
take you to community after community after community where there are 
still CCC projects that older people today point to with pride, their 
hearts swelling, because they, with their own hands, at a time when 25 
percent of the American people were unemployed, were given a chance to 
rebuild their country. We just had a big reunion out in California of 
the Peace Corps volunteers, and I have named a former Peace Corps 
volunteer to be the first ex-Peace Corps person to run the Peace Corps. 
They are swelling with pride to this day for what they did 25 and 30 
years ago. And so it will be with national service if we can do it.
    I want to say one last thing to all of you. Thomas Jefferson, whose 
memorial is right back over there and was built 50 years ago this year, 
was fond of saying that the Earth belongs to the living in trust; that 
all of us have to balance our lives between doing what is good for us 
today and what is good for our country, our families, our friends, and 
our children and grandchildren tomorrow. That means that for all the 
opportunities you will have, and you young men will have more than most 
Americans, you have an immense responsibility to give something back to 
your country. One day you will understand that even more clearly than 
you do today, although I wish that Americans twice your age understood 
it as well as you clearly do at this moment.
    Regardless of what you do, remember this: It is not enough in life 
to have feelings. It is not enough in life to have convictions. You must 
act on them. You must act on them. You must move. You must do. You must 
make things happen. That is surely the ultimate lesson of Boys State and 
Boys Nation. We were given a system by the Founding Fathers which 
permitted people in every generation of Americans to the end of time to 
join together and to act, to deal with the challenges, seize the 
opportunities, and beat back the problems of the day. That is the legacy 
that you have been given. And that is the responsibility that you must 
assume.
    I can tell you that, to me, it seems only yesterday that I was your 
age, standing here. It doesn't take long to live a life. But it can be 
very rewarding if you have convictions, if you believe in your feelings, 
and if you act.
    I wish you well, and God bless you. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you. 
Thank you very much.
    I'd like now to ask Roger Munson to come forward, and ask the rest 
of you to sit down. It won't be much longer. I know it's hot out

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here. When Girls Nation was here a couple of days ago, it wasn't so 
warm. But it's still a nice day.

[At this point, Arkansas delegates Traftin Thompson and James Welch 
presented the President with a 1963 photograph of himself with President 
Kennedy.]

    I think now we're going to take the pictures over here. Is that 
right? No, we're going to do--we've done that. Oh, they're coming to 
speak? One of the things that happens to you when you become President 
is you sometimes don't get good instructions. [Laughter] Then you just 
have to fall on the sword.
    Who am I supposed to introduce? Pete, are you coming up here? And 
Jeff Keyes, is he here? Come on.
    Let me say, I saw Pete again during the course of the Presidential 
campaign. And until that happened, I had one Boys Nation person who went 
to Georgetown with me who was in my class; the two guys from Louisiana, 
one who went to Georgetown with me, one who went to law school with me, 
those two guys I had stayed in close touch with; and one other person 
who was a delegate from Virginia who I stayed in touch with over the 
years. Now, when I ran for President, I met so many of them again.
    And I wanted to make one other point. It wasn't in my notes, but I'd 
be remiss if I didn't. It is a very great thing to be given the chance 
to serve this country as President. But it is a very great mistake to 
think that that is the thing that counts the most in America. The thing 
that counts the most in America is the contributions that are made by 
all Americans who work hard, play by the rules, raise their children 
well, make their communities stronger. And I was so terribly impressed 
by learning about the life stories of the other people with whom I was 
here, the struggles that they'd had, the tragedies they'd faced, the 
triumphs that they had created. And I want you to remember that, too. 
Each of you has to serve, and each of you can serve, and each of you can 
make a difference. And the collective efforts we make are far more 
important than the individual achievements of any person.

Note: The President spoke at 11:11 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. Following his remarks, 1963 Boys Nation delegate Jeff Keyes 
presented him with a plaque and a second photograph with President 
Kennedy. A tape was not available for verification of the content of 
these remarks.