[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 38 (Monday, September 26, 1994)]
[Pages 1818-1823]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Senate Campaign Committee Dinner

September 21, 1994

    Thank you so much, Senator Graham, Senator Mitchell, Secretary and 
Mrs. Bentsen, Members of the Congress, my fellow Democrats and my fellow 
Americans.
    I couldn't help thinking, as I listened to George Mitchell talk, 
that he is always so cool, calm, collected, and still intense and 
eloquent. He always seems to have such a great sense of balance. He did 
make one huge mistake this year: People wanted to see a resumption of 
baseball and a cessation of the Senate, and he got it in reverse. 
[Laughter]
    I want to thank Senator Graham first for his leadership of the DSCC 
and his long friendship to me, his long personal friendship to me. We 
used to sit near each other in the Governors' Association, and both of 
us sometimes think that's the best job we ever had. And I have loved 
working with him. I admire him immensely. I have a lot to be grateful to 
him for on a very personal basis, but especially I thank him tonight for 
his support, steadfast and longstanding, for our attempts to end the 
human rights violations and restore democracy in Haiti. I thank you, 
Senator Graham, for that.
    I'd like to say a few words about Haiti tonight, and then go back to 
my remarks. I think just as Americans, you ought to know

[[Page 1819]]

where we are and what happens next. We had a good day there. Our troops 
are carrying out their mission. To date, we now have 8,500 American 
troops in Haiti. All of them have entered peacefully. They have not shot 
at any Haitians. No one has shot at them. They are about the business of 
bringing back human rights and peace and decency and restoring 
democracy.
    Of course, this is only the second day of the mission. The situation 
will not change immediately. But today was a better day than yesterday; 
yesterday was better than the one before. We are making steady progress.
    The habits of violence which are so deeply ingrained there will not 
be shed overnight. But in the coming weeks we will be working to stop 
the violence, to begin the process of reconciliation, to say no to 
revenge and yes to peace, in the words of President Aristide. We will 
finally have accomplished a mission that began 3 years ago under the 
previous administration, to restore democracy and to have the de facto 
military leaders step down no later than October 15th.
    Haiti is really evidence of the kinds of problems that are gripping 
the world at the aftermath of the cold war. An example of one of the 
challenges we face as we move from a world in which all the rules of 
activity as a society were clear and the one in which we have to take a 
new direction. I want to talk a little about that tonight, but I'd like 
to begin by saying a special word of thanks to George Mitchell for the 
leadership that he has given to the United States Senate and to our 
administration over the last nearly 2 years now.
    Before I ran for President, I hadn't had the opportunity to spend a 
lot of time in Maine. And after I became President, I didn't need to 
spend a lot of time in Maine because George Mitchell brought one or two 
people from Maine to the White House every time he showed up. [Laughter] 
I was the most surprised person in the world when he told me he wasn't 
running for reelection. And when I finished crying and got up off the 
floor--[laughter]--I said, ``Well, George, you're the only guy in the 
Congress that never comes to the White House without bringing somebody 
from your home State.'' I said, ``You have literally brought enough 
people to the White House just since I've been President to secure 
reelection for the next 18 years.'' [Laughter] And he said ``Well, I 
didn't know, but,'' he said, ``I would have done it anyway.''
    I cannot imagine how we could have done what we have done--and I'll 
talk a little about that in a moment--if it hadn't been for George 
Mitchell. I cannot tell you what it means to have somebody you work with 
who always understands every issue, who always knows where the votes 
are, who always has a good sense of what can and can't be done, who will 
always tell you respectfully when he thinks you're all wet, and then 
will go out and fight like crazy to win every time against all odds. He 
is a good, honest, and brave man, and I will miss him terribly. But he 
has earned whatever future he chooses for himself.
    Senator Mitchell talked about what it was like to be a Democrat. And 
I guess, you know, I saw that poll today that said 53 percent of the 
American people thought we needed another party, and most people don't 
identify with the parties, and young people don't identify with the 
parties. I guess I'm an anachronism. I'm a Democrat by heritage, 
instinct, and conviction. I was raised until I was four by a grandfather 
whose politics were forged in the Great Depression. I had to have a new 
outfit every Easter because I still remember my grandfather telling me 
about how he couldn't afford an Easter dress for my mother that cost a 
dollar in the 1930's, in the middle of the Depression.
    But I always thought the main thing about the Democratic Party was 
that we had constant values and the capacity to change with the times. 
Our country has been astonishing because we have kept this Constitution 
that the Founders crafted; amended it, really, a fairly small number of 
times; held absolutely fast to its fundamental principles; and still 
proved ourselves capable of changing over more than two centuries, 
showing the kind of flexibility and dynamism that guarantees the 
existence of a society. So has our party. It is the oldest political 
party in all of democracy anywhere.
    Our principles are pretty much what they were when they were first 
articulated by Thomas Jefferson, with the obligation of gov- 

[[Page 1820]]

ernment to help do affirmative good, as articulated by Andrew Jackson. 
But we have always been able to change. Now, for a while people thought 
we couldn't. And for a while the American people seemed to have made a 
decision that they would leave the Democrats permanently in control of 
Congress and give the White House to the Republicans so the Republicans 
could tell them what they wanted to hear and the Democrats could do the 
work they wanted to have done and keep the Republicans from actually 
doing what they threatened to do. [Laughter]
    The problem is, that worked fine except when we actually had to 
change. And in 1992, there was a sense out there among the American 
people that we were not making the changes we needed to adapt to the 
changes in the world, to take this country into the 21st century, to 
guarantee a future for our children that would enable all of our kids to 
live up to the fullest of their God-given potential and guarantee that 
America would be the greatest country in the world well into the next 
century.
    I ran for this job because I could see that, sitting out in the 
middle of the country where I was. I also had very little illusion about 
how the politics at the national level in this country had been often 
paralyzed because it had become so abstract, so rhetorical, and so 
subject to distortion, so totally divorced from the real life 
experiences of real Americans, that change had become very difficult, 
indeed. And so we embarked on that great journey in which I said what I 
would like to do is to change the Democratic Party's direction a little 
bit, not its values but its direction. Why? Because in the post-cold-war 
world, we can't have a Government that sits on the sideline and shouts 
at people. That's what the Republicans wanted to do. But the deficit is 
so big and the private sector is so important, we can't have a 
Government that actually solves all people's problems as we once thought 
it could under President Roosevelt. We have to have a new idea of 
partnership and empowerment, of opportunity and responsibility. And we 
have to rebuild this country from the grassroots up. And so we began.
    In the last 12 years, our respectful opponents talked about the 
balanced budget amendment, bad-mouthed Government, told everybody how 
terrible spending was, went home and issued press releases about the 
money they'd gotten for their States or their districts, quadrupled the 
national debt, cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and raised payroll 
taxes on the middle class. We reduced our investment in the future and 
exploded our debt at the same time. And we were getting more and more 
polarized. It seemed to me simple enough to say that if we wanted to 
make it into the 21st century and guarantee that tomorrow for our kids, 
we had to move America forward, and we had to bring America back 
together. And somehow we had to divorce this enormous gulf between the 
word wars of Washington and the real-life experience of Main Street all 
over America.
    If you look at what we've done in the last 20 months, I think we've 
done an amazing job of moving the country forward. And we're having a 
terrible time of reducing the gap between where we are here and Main 
Street America because the obstacles are so profound. So let's talk 
tonight about that, because that's what this election ought to be about. 
And I'm here tonight to tell you that if we have the courage of our 
conviction, if we will listen to people, and if we will explain to them 
the difference between what is said here and what is done, these 
elections can be our friends, not theirs.
    If I had told you 20 months ago that by Labor Day we would have 
passed an economic plan that cut spending by now over $300 billion, 
eliminated 100 Government programs, increased investment in education 
and training from Head Start to apprenticeship programs to college 
loans, that we would reduce the deficit 3 years in a row for the first 
time since Truman was President, reduce the size of the Federal 
Government to its lowest level since Kennedy was President, provoke an 
economic regrowth that would generate now almost 4.5 million new jobs, 
make 20 million young people eligible to refinance their college loans 
at lower interest rates at longer repayment terms, pass a national 
service program that in its first year would have more kids in a 
domestic peace corps than the Peace Corps did in its biggest year, break 
the gridlock on the Brady bill,

[[Page 1821]]

family leave, motor voter, the crime bill, finance the crime bill 
totally by reducing the size of the Federal Government, and pass a crime 
bill that would have the support of every single law enforcement 
association in the entire United States of America--if I had told you 
that, and for good measure said that in a year and a half we would 
expand trade by more than any period in our history in 35 years, that 
for the first time in over two decades we'd actually have a policy to 
rebuild automobiles, airplanes, and ships and their international 
competitiveness, that we would have worked with Russia to get all the 
nuclear weapons out of all the other states of the former Soviet Union, 
that all the Russian troops would be gone for the first time since World 
War II from Eastern Europe and the Baltics, that we'd be actively 
involved in peace in the Middle East with two-thirds of the job done, 
actively involved in peace in Northern Ireland, actively involved in 
helping the election process in South Africa--if I had told all that, 
I'd say, ``What do you think about that?'' You'd say, ``Well, that 
sounds pretty good, Bill, but you won't get that done.'' But we did, and 
that ought to be what we're running on out there.
    I ask you, if we have a good economy, if we face the challenges of 
trade and crime, if we have reached out to families who are trying to 
keep their families together and raise their kids with the family leave 
bill and by giving 15 million working families tax cuts--we've put on 
the table a welfare reform program that is both compassionate and 
tough--why would anyone think there will be any problem? Because a lot 
of people don't know what has happened, number one. And number two--I 
don't know if you want to clap about that or not, it's partly our fault. 
A lot people don't know what has happened, number one. And number two, 
in addition to the jobs problem in America, we've got an income problem 
because as we go into the global economy, more and more people are 
working harder for static wages.
    We're all happy there's no inflation with this economic revival. 
What that means among other things is, most people's wages aren't going 
up because they're set in a competitive global economy. And number 
three, the other guys aren't near as good as doers as we are, but they 
are better talkers, especially when they're saying no, as George 
Mitchell said. And they've got a whole talking apparatus here; they 
built it up over the last 12 years. And now that they have no 
responsibility in the executive branch, they've got a lot more free time 
to talk--[laughter]--and to find a thousand different ways to say no. 
One of them was quoted in the newspaper the other day, saying, ``Now 
we've killed health care, let's just don't get our fingerprints on it.''
    So why is it that if for the first time in 9 years the annual 
meeting of the international panel of economic experts said America has 
the most productive economy in the world; for the first time in a decade 
we have 8 months of manufacturing job growth in a row; we have a 1.5 
percent drop in the unemployment rate, a 20 percent drop in the minority 
unemployment rate; why is it that more than half the people say the 
country's going in the wrong direction? First of all, they do not know 
these things. That's why George Mitchell gave his little economic sermon 
up here. They do not know. And secondly, they are still profoundly 
concerned that maybe, if all this happened, it won't make a difference. 
They've been told for so long that Government can't do anything but mess 
up a one-car parade, it's hard to imagine that what we do here can make 
a difference. But it does. It does.
    Every time I leave this place and go out into the country, I meet 
somebody who has a job that wouldn't have one if it weren't for the 
policies of our administration; I meet somebody with an opportunity to 
pay his or her way to college; I see a parent with a child in Head 
Start; I see a family that's benefited from the family leave program; I 
see whole industries--shipbuilding, airplanes--moving forward because of 
the efforts we have made to strengthen this economy. It makes a 
difference.
    And what we have to do is to make this election our friend. We have 
to go home and say, ``Look, you know, we've done a lot of stuff up 
there. You may not have liked it all, but we're finally getting 
something done.''
    I'll tell you something else, one of Clinton's nine laws of 
politics: Everybody is for change in general, but they're scared of it

[[Page 1822]]

in particular. [Laughter] It always happens. It always happens. Five 
hundred years ago Machiavelli said, ``There is nothing so difficult in 
all of human affairs than to change the established order of things.'' 
Why? Because those who will be disadvantaged by the change know it and 
fight you like crazy. And those who will benefit are uncertain of the 
result until they finally see it. Woe unto you if you have to run for 
reelection in the interim. [Laughter] Machiavelli didn't say that, I 
sort of added that one. [Laughter]
    But I want you to understand what we're up against. But it is not 
right, and it is not rational. The American people are not by nature 
pessimistic people. Let's face it, we do have some problems. We're still 
the most violent country on Earth, but we passed the crime bill. We're 
going to lower the crime rate. We've given the communities of this 
country the tools to deal with it. We do have too many kids who are born 
where there was never a marriage and there was never an intact family, 
but we're trying to do something about it.
    We do have many communities where there was no economic recovery, 
but we have tried to do some things about that with the empowerment 
zones, the community development banks, and other things. We have real 
problems. But consider this, every one of you, whatever it is you do for 
a living, how could you function if every day you showed up for work, 
two-thirds of the people in your place of business were in a deep funk 
and thought nothing good has happened? That's what they're asking today. 
Could you get anything done if two-thirds of the people you work with 
said, ``Our business is going in the wrong direction. Nothing good's 
going to happen. Nothing can happen.''?
    How did the American people get in this fix? Well, the election is 
something we have to use to work them out it. You can analyze it nine 
ways from Sunday, but no one can repeal the facts. The facts are, they 
said we would bankrupt the economy, when all we tried to do was to cut 
spending, ask the wealthiest of Americans, including a lot of you in 
this room--and thanks for sticking with us--to pay a little more taxes 
so that we could give a break to 15 million families that had not gotten 
a pay raise in forever and a day and were hovering above the poverty 
line. And we said we didn't want them to go into welfare; we wanted them 
to stay right there and raise their children and go to work everyday.
    We put another 200,000 kids in Head Start. We did these things. We 
must talk about them. They matter. People must know. These elections can 
be our friend.
    Now, in every election you have to be relevant. If you're not, even 
if you're right, you're beat. But if you are relevant and all you do 
with your relevance is play on the resentments and the fears of the 
people, you can win the election and harm the country terribly. They are 
out there with all their pie-in-the-sky schemes and all their no-saying 
and now a lot of their denial about what they did and didn't do when 
they were up here. We have a record.
    And if I had told you 20 months ago we could amass this record, you 
would have said, hallelujah. What you never imagined was what could 
happen to that record and those actions between the time it happened 
here and the time it got to them out there in the country, and all the 
static in between. Heck, half the time I watch the evening news, I 
wouldn't be for me, either. [Laughter]
    But let me tell you something. I'm trying to get you to laugh about 
this because if you can get people to laugh about it and listen, we can 
do very well here. Three times in this century has the President's party 
not lost seats in one or both Houses. Only one time in this century has 
the President's party actually gained seats in both Houses at mid-term. 
But we have a record here, and they got the rhetoric. And they had 12 
years to build up an apparatus of no-saying and bad-mouthing and 
positioning, and they are brilliant at it. Give them their due. They are 
good at it. But we're not bad at it when we can clear our heads.
    So you have raised this money tonight so our people can get on 
television and get on the radio and be in the newspapers and travel in 
their States and tell the truth.
    You know, it was never going to be easy. Everybody can talk about a 
balanced budget amendment. You start bringing down the deficit, and you 
actually have to make decisions. That gives people a headache. Every- 

[[Page 1823]]

body could talk about doing something about crime, but if you really 
looked at it, it required some difficult choices. Everybody could talk 
about expanding trade, and everybody could talk about reducing the 
deficit and still spending more on children. But when you really got 
down to doing it, it required some decisions.
    Meanwhile, we had to go through the static between here and where 
all of you live. And I'm telling you, the American people are smart, and 
they are fair, and they do not like being pessimistic. And we can use 
this election like the sunshine breaking through the clouds. And I want 
every one of you to go out there and not just think about winning and 
not just think about how crazy it is to have the politics of resentment 
and all this sort of name-calling and division and agitation dominating 
our people; don't even think about it in personal terms.
    Just remember why we came here, every one of us. This is the 
greatest country in human history. We have won two World Wars and a cold 
war in this century. We are going through a period of change, and every 
time we do as a country--we're just like people going through changes--
we're in a period of insecurity and uncertainty. And it is for the 
Democrats to lead the way out and to take the licks to do it. That's 
what Harry Truman and the other people did after World War II. That's 
what gave us the rebuilding of the American economy at home, the growth 
of the middle class, NATO and the cold-war edifice abroad, and 
rebuilding Germany and Japan in a worldwide trading system. It's what 
gave us the last 50 years without a war that threatened our very 
existence. And now we have to do the same thing for the people who will 
live in the next century. We can do this. We can do it. We can do it.
    I'll just close with this. You tell people this wherever you're 
from: If things are going so bad in this country, why is it that after 
800 years of fighting between the Irish and the English, the people of 
Northern Ireland would still like the United States involved, along with 
Great Britain and Ireland in trying to work through this? John Hume is 
here tonight in the United States, the symbol of peace and hope and 
decency. Where are you, John? Stand up. [Applause]
    If things are so bad here, why did the people of South Africa want 
the United States to go there and help them ensure that their election 
was free and fair and honest and nonviolent? Why did the people in the 
Middle East want to come here to sign their peace agreement and want us 
involved in what they are doing? Why, even at the tensest moments of our 
negotiations down in Haiti, did the de facto leaders say, ``Well, if the 
President is determined to do this and the world community is determined 
to do this, at least we want the Americans here. We trust them.''?
    I'll tell you why: Because this is a good country which is changing 
as it has always changed. We have problems. But in order to have the 
energy to face our problems and overcome them, we have to have the 
necessary attitude that says we are doing some things right, we are 
going in the right direction, and the last thing we need to do is to go 
back to the politics of resentment and rhetoric and diversion and 
division. Go out there and fight for the future, and you will all win in 
November.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 9:25 p.m. at the Washington Sheraton Hotel. 
In his remarks, he referred to Beryl Ann Bentsen, wife of Secretary of 
the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen, and John Hume, Member of Parliament from 
Northern Ireland.