[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 5 (Monday, February 6, 1995)]
[Pages 164-171]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the New England Presidential Dinner in Boston

January 31, 1995

    Thank you very much. You know, for a President who has been derided 
from time to time on the pages of the Wall Street Journal and other 
places for being too concerned with diversity, I feel that I should 
apologize tonight for giving you such an overconcentration of Irish 
blarney in the last three speakers. [Laughter] I hardly know what to 
say. And even if I do, I'll just repeat something. [Laughter]
    They were wonderful. I want to say, first to Senator Kerry, I thank 
you for your leadership and your wise counsel to me on so many things; 
for your occasional constructive criticism, which is always helpful--
[laughter]--and for always thinking about how we can reach out to people 
who aren't in this room and who have been vulnerable to the siren's song 
of the other party. We should do more of that, because we're working 
hard to represent them and to help them.
    I also want to say that when you introduced Theresa tonight I was 
sitting here thinking that next only to the President of the United 
States, you're about to become the most over-married man in the whole 
country. [Laughter] And I congratulate you both, and I wish you well and 
Godspeed.
    I want to say how elated I was to be a part of a couple of events 
for Senator Kennedy up here in the last campaign. Whatever labels you 
put on Democrats, the truth is that all elections are about two things: 
whether a majority of the people identify with you and think you're on 
their side and whether you've got a message for the future. In this last 
election, without apology, with great energy and gusto and courage, when 
all the national trends were going the other way and when no one could 
any longer seriously claim that Massachusetts was just a different 
State, Ted Kennedy told the people of this State what he stood for, what 
he had done, and most importantly of all, why he wanted another term. He 
made the election about the future and the people of Massachusetts, and 
he won. And if the Democrats will make the elections of 1996 about the 
people of the United States and the future of our country, we will win 
as well.
    I want to thank Alan and Fred and all the others on the committee. 
They're the only people I know who are more indefatigable than I am when 
it comes to trying to push our party's agenda and move this country 
forward. They're the sort of ``Energizer bunnies'' of the national 
Democratic Party, and I am grateful. [Laughter]
    I wish I could put them on television the way Mario Cuomo and Ann 
Richards were. Did you all see them on the Super Bowl? [Laughter] I 
don't know about you, but I've had three dozen bags of Doritos since 
then. [Laughter] I can hardly walk. And I want them to stay on. I mean, 
write Doritos and tell them you ate lots of those Doritos and that's the 
only way we can get equal time with the Republicans on the air waves. 
[Laughter]
    I want to thank your party chair, Joan Menard, and Reverend Charles 
Stith, my longtime friend; your secretary of state, President Bill 
Bulger; Speaker Flaherty; and Attorney General; all the others who are 
here; and a special word of thanks to your wonderful mayor, Tom Menino, 
for making me feel so welcome here today.
    You know, when Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy and I went with the 
mayor to meet with that youth council today and they had a young person 
from every part of this great city from all different ethnic 
backgrounds, and obviously different sets of personal conditions. And we 
were sitting there just having a family conversation about what these 
young people were interested in. And they kept asking me, ``Well, here's 
a problem.'' But they didn't ask me, ``What are you going to do about 
it?'' They said, ``What do you think we can do about it?'' It was 
astonishing. Over and over, ``What do you think we can do about it?'' 
And I thought to myself, if we had enough kids like this all over 
America, our country is in pretty good shape. And it's a great tribute 
to Boston and to the ethic of citizenship and service, which is vibrant 
and alive and burning here.
    I was so glad to--appreciate what Senator Dodd said about the 
national service program. I know all of you must be very proud of Eli 
Segal from Boston for the way he has

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run that program. It is a brilliant thing that is lining up 
possibilities all across our country: immunizing children in south 
Texas; rebuilding housing projects in Detroit; helping people in all the 
natural disasters in California; restocking the salmon in the Pacific 
Northwest. You cannot imagine what those young people are doing all 
across this country. And I have to tell you that if it hadn't been for 
Eli Segal I'm not sure we ever could have done it the way he conceived 
it and executed it. And the next time he comes home to Boston give him a 
pat on the back, because he's been magnificent.
    I want to thank my longtime friend Don Fowler for agreeing to join 
this team with Senator Dodd. The real reason Don came up here tonight is 
so there would be two southern rednecks book-ending all these Irish guys 
when they were talking. [Laughter]
    Don understands what part of our problems are. Everybody talks about 
change, but Clinton's ninth law of politics is, everyone is for change 
in general but against it in particular. [Laughter] Everybody is for 
lowering the deficit. The problem is when you have to lower it--that's 
what Senator Kennedy was talking about--we didn't get much help when we 
actually had to do it. It's kind of like everybody is for going to the 
dentist, but if I tell you I made you an appointment for 7:30 in the 
morning, you'd have second thoughts. [Laughter]
    So to whatever extent I bear a responsibility for some of our 
party's difficulties because I had a drill to the tooth of America for 
the last 2 years, trying to whip this thing back in shape, I regret 
that. But I don't regret the fact that we do have the economy back on 
track; we do have the deficit coming down; we do have this country in a 
position now where we can think about how to give tax relief to 
hardworking Americans and invest in education and still continue to 
bring the deficit down. I don't regret that. It was tough. It was hard. 
And I thank the people of the Congress who did it.
    You know, Don and I come from part of the country where it's been 
hard to be a Democrat for over 20 years now. And part of it is this 
whole deal, everybody is for change in general but against it in 
particular.
    One of my favorite stories from my previous life as Governor of 
Arkansas was going to the 100th birthday party of somebody with my 
junior Senator, David Pryor. We went up to this guy. We were amazed at 
what good shape he was in--astonished. I said, ``You know, you have all 
your faculties. You hear well. You see well. You speak well.'' He said, 
``Yeah.'' And I said, ``You're really just in great shape, aren't you?'' 
He said, ``I am.'' And I said, ``Boy, I bet you've seen a lot of 
changes.'' He said, ``Son, I sure have, and I've been against every one 
of them.'' [Laughter] The more you think about that, the sadder it'll 
get. But anyway, there it is. [Laughter]
    There is some of that out there. But our people also really do want 
change. They want us to stick up for the principles of the Democratic 
Party, but they also want us to reach out a hand of partnership. And as 
your President, I have to be the leader of our party and the leader of 
our country. I feel very indebted to Chris Dodd and to Don Fowler for 
being willing to put aside a lot of their other activities to take the 
time to help to rebuild and reinvigorate and revitalize our party.
    I know--I know in my bones--I can feel it, that if we can stay true 
to our principles and clarify our vision for the American people and say 
what we are doing and where we want this country to go, that the fact 
that we honestly represent and care more about the vast majority of the 
American people will manifest itself, not simply in Massachusetts but 
throughout the United States within the next 2 years. And that should be 
our common commitment and our common cause.
    The whole purpose of politics, after all, is to improve the life of 
people. Read the Declaration of Independence. As I said in the State of 
the Union, nobody's really done any better than that. We pledge our 
lives and our fortunes and our sacred honor to the idea that all of us 
are created equal and endowed by God with the rights of life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness, not a guarantee of happiness but the right 
to pursue it, the right to succeed, the right to fail.
    For 200 years, we've had to work to refine that phrase like a piece 
of steel. And we reach a certain point and we realize, oh, we've got

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a whole new set of circumstances or our understanding was painfully 
limited. That's what the Gettysburg Address was all about.
    I don't know if you read Gary Will's terrific book, ``Lincoln at 
Gettysburg,'' but he basically argues that Mr. Lincoln rewrote the 
Constitution with the Gettysburg Address by making the spirit of the 
Constitution the letter. That's what it was all about. He said: How 
could we be so dumb to have slavery and say all people are created 
equal, so from now on, that's what this means.
    And you look what happened when Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow 
Wilson tried to redefine the obligations of our National Government to 
protect the American people from the abuses of the industrial age, or 
when Franklin Roosevelt ran on a platform of limited government and 
balancing the budget but realized that he couldn't let the country go 
into the tubes, that he had to lift people's spirits and lift their 
circumstances and give them ways to work together.
    If you look at some of our most difficult times, they're the times 
of transition when we're moving from one era to another and people can't 
give you a clear road map. In the middle of the Depression, I remember 
my grandfather telling me as poor as people were, there was a certain 
happiness of spirit people felt after Roosevelt got in, and everybody 
knew that they were working together and they were going somewhere.
    I told a lot of people over the last month I'd just been astonished 
every time I go to California and I see those poor people. They've had 
an earthquake. They've had floods. They've had fires. Some of the 
happiest people I've ever met are people in those relief shelters in 
California. They get together from all walks of life. I was in one of 
those flood relief shelters the other day in northern California in a 
little unincorporated town called Rio Linda where Mr. Limbaugh had his 
first radio program. [Laughter] And I was in a little Methodist church 
talking to all these people and this old gal came up to me and put her 
arm around me, and she said, ``Mr. President, I'm a Republican, but I'm 
sure glad to see you.'' Like I was going to fall out or something. Why? 
Because they were there, they didn't care what their party was or their 
philosophy. They were there trying to do something good. And they felt 
that they were part of something bigger than themselves.
    In a period of transition like this, we're going from the cold war 
era and the industrial age to the post-cold-war era and an information 
age. We're going through enormous changes in the way work is organized 
and the way the society works. We've got all these cultural tensions in 
our country just eating people up. In times like this, people tend to be 
disoriented and out of focus. And it is difficult for them to do the 
work of citizenship and to believe that we can come together and do the 
things we ought to do. And we have to find ways to recreate in ordinary, 
normal circumstances the spirit that I see when adversity strikes 
America. That's what the mayor did by bringing those kids into that 
youth council today. And that's what we have to do as Americans.
    The Democrats need to forthrightly say, we believe, even in the 21st 
century, even in the information age, even when we trade in our 
mainframes for our PC's, there is a role for us working together as a 
people; that the market is a wonderful thing and we want it to work, but 
it won't solve all the problems; that we still need the public sector to 
expand opportunity even as it shrinks bureaucracy; to empower people to 
make the most of their own lives, no matter what their circumstances; to 
enhance our security at home and abroad.
    And we don't have all the answers because a lot of the problems are 
new. But we know that if we are guided by what I call the New Covenant, 
the idea that we will create opportunity and challenge the American 
people to be more responsible, and that's how we'll build our 
communities and restore citizenship, we can do quite well.
    It's amazing how many things I've had to do as President that I knew 
would be unpopular, like that economic plan. It wasn't unpopular in 
Massachusetts because Ted Kennedy defended his vote. And if everybody 
else had done that, they'd have found the results more satisfactory. I 
remember when--but we had to do that. We couldn't just keep ballooning 
the deficit. We'd never have gotten interest rates down in 1993. We 
would never have gotten this economy going

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again. We had to do it. And we have to continue to do things that are 
unpopular.
    It was unpopular to say that the time had come for the dictators in 
Haiti to go, but it had to be done. We had to stand up for freedom in 
our hemisphere. We couldn't deal with the consequences of walking away 
from that and the commitment we had made. We had to do it. It was 
unpopular, but it had to be done.
    And I know the surveys say that by 80 to 15, or whatever they said, 
the American people either didn't agree or didn't understand what in the 
world I'm up to in Mexico. But I want to say to you, it might be 
unpopular, but in a time of transition it's the right thing to do. 
Today, 2 weeks and a few days after the Mexican crisis presented itself, 
after meeting with the leaders of both parties in the Congress, I 
decided to commit to a loan guarantee of $20 billion, not $40 billion, 
from the Emergency Stabilization Fund, something within the control of 
the President, with the support of the leaders of Congress of both 
parties.
    We've now gotten countries, other countries through the 
International Monetary Fund, to kick in about half what we need, which 
is a good thing. But we couldn't wait for 2 more weeks of congressional 
debate. I don't blame the Congressmen for wanting to ask questions. I 
don't blame them for not wanting to vote on this. It's a hard sell. It's 
pretty hard to explain in south Boston or up in Dover, New Hampshire, 
why this is a good deal for people in New England.
    But here's the basic problem. Those folks got into a little economic 
trouble, but they didn't deserve as much as they got because a lot of 
the international financial markets today are controlled by a hundred 
thousand different forces, and when a speculative fervor starts in one 
direction, sometimes it's hard for it to stop when there's been some 
proper economic balance struck. But they've got a good democracy. They 
believe in free market economics. They buy tons of our products. They're 
our third biggest trading partner.
    Why is this in the interest of the people of New England? Well, New 
Hampshire's unemployment rate was 7.4 percent when I took office, and 
it's 3.8 percent now. And a big reason is they're exporting more. That's 
just one example.
    So our third biggest trading partner is in trouble. And they didn't 
ask us for a grant. They didn't ask us for a loan. They didn't ask us 
for a bailout. They said, ``Would you cosign this note? And by the way, 
if we get in trouble and can't pay, we've got a whole bunch of oil, and 
we'll give you some. You can sell it and put the money in the bank.'' 
That's pretty good collateral. Near as I can figure, even 10 years from 
now we'll still be burning oil. We'll be able to use it. We'll be able 
to turn it into money. It will be worth something at the bank. And they 
said, would you help? So we got a $40 billion trading arrangement. It's 
jobs for Americans, folks. Those who say, ``Well, Clinton is just 
bailing out rich investors on Wall Street; most of them will do just 
fine.'' But if we lose markets, if we lose possibilities--a lot of 
people here have built factories and shut them down. They're hard to 
start up again when you've shut them down. You've got to go through up 
and down times, but it's an important thing. It's American jobs.
    We share a vast border down there. We have problems along that 
border, illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking. This government's 
trying to help us with both. If you have an economic and a political 
collapse, we have more illegal immigration, more narcotics trafficking, 
more misery on the streets of America, more anxiety for American 
taxpayers.
    This is the right thing to do, and I was glad to take responsibility 
for it. And I know it's not popular, but in a time of change not all 
decisions which have to be made when they have to be made can possibly 
be popular. So I hope you will support it anyway. It's in the interest 
of building the future of the United States. [Applause] Thank you. Thank 
you. Thank you very much.
    So much as been said tonight; there's no much more for me to say. 
But I want to make a couple of points about what I hope to achieve this 
year in this new environment for all of our people. And I'd like to 
begin by telling you a story.
    When my last Secretary of the Treasury, Lloyd Bentsen, was at his 
last Cabinet meeting, preparing to go home to Texas after

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more than three decades of public service to a well-deserved retirement, 
with the reputation of being not only one of the wealthiest members of 
my Cabinet but one of the most conservative--a man who inspired great 
confidence all over the world for his policies and his personal 
strength--he said to us as he left, ``You know what I'm most worried 
about? Here I am in my seventies, having had the chance to work for my 
country all these years, having enjoyed all the successes America could 
bring in the private sector and the public sector. You know what I'm 
most worried about? I'm worried about the growing inequality in America 
and the fact that so many Americans are working harder and harder and 
harder and falling behind. And I don't know how we can preserve our 
country as we know it unless we can figure out a solution to this 
problem. And I wish that I had left you with one before I retired.'' 
Everybody in that Cabinet room was just almost dumbstruck. What did he 
mean? He meant that something has changed since President Kennedy said, 
``A rising tide lifts all boats.'' It doesn't.
    I'm honored by the fact that in 1994 we had the best growth in 10 
years, the best personal income growth in 10 years, the lowest combined 
rates of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. That is a very good 
thing. We should be proud of that. And the economic management and 
discipline of this administration certainly had something to do with it. 
And the dramatic improvements in productivity of American businesses and 
working people had the lion's share to do with it. And the fact that 
we're opening new trading opportunities had something to do with it. And 
the fact that our Commerce Department and others, as has been said, are 
trying to sell American products and services--it all had something to 
do with it.
    But the hard, cold fact is, people say, ``Well, why doesn't the 
administration get credit for this?'' Senator Kennedy alluded to it. 
Well, one reason is a lot of people are still working a longer work week 
than they were 15 years ago. They're spending more for the essentials of 
life, but their wages haven't kept up with inflation. Another million 
Americans in working families lost their health insurance last year, 
once again making us the only--and I reiterate--the only advanced 
country in the world with a smaller percentage of working families with 
health insurance today than had health insurance 10 years ago.
    There was even a study last week that said the average working adult 
is spending an hour a night less at sleep. So if you have less time for 
leisure, if you're not sure you can even afford a vacation, much less 
send your kids to college, and you keep reading how great the statistics 
are, and all the rest of your information you get from some more 
negative source, it's not hard to understand how people are a little 
disoriented. Plus, the fundamental fact is we are moving from one time 
to another, and we aren't there yet, in our minds and in our experience.
    Therefore, it should not be surprising, and we should not complain 
if those of us in public life sometimes become the object of resentment 
when we can't figure out how to explain in clear, unambiguous terms that 
cut through the fog of the national debate what is going on and what we 
are trying to do about it and what the people have to do about it.
    That is the great challenge we face today. But we should be 
optimistic about it. With all my heart, I believe the best days of this 
country are ahead of us. But we have to find a way for the American tide 
to lift every boat in America. We have to find a way for everybody 
willing to work hard to do well. We have to find a way to keep the 
American dream alive for everyone, to grow the middle class and shrink 
the underclass. We have to find a way to rebuild our sense of security.
    I can think of no better way to explain it than what I have been 
trying to say for 3 years now: Our job is to create more opportunity and 
to challenge the American people to assume more responsibility. We have 
tried to do that. We are now in a position where it is my judgment that 
what we need to do in this coming session of Congress is, first of all, 
to keep the recovery going; secondly, not to let the deficit explode; 
thirdly, not to permit the fever for cutting Government and cutting 
regulation undercut the fundamental social compact in this country.
    One of the reasons people are so torn up and upset is they're not 
sure what the deal

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is anymore. The harder they work, the more insecure they feel.
    So I say, you want to cut spending, to our friends in the Republican 
Party, let us have at it. We have cut $255 billion in spending. I'm 
going to send you another $140 billion in spending cuts. I am all for 
it. But let's not cut Head Start for children or the school-to-work 
program for the non-college bound kids. Let's not cut the nutrition 
programs and the food programs that keep our people alive. Let's don't 
do that. You want to cut taxes? That's all right. I'm for that. But 
let's not cut more than we can pay for. Let's not play funny numbers. 
Let's not pay for tax cuts by cutting Medicare. Let's cut spending that 
we can do without. We can do that. Let's do that.
    And more importantly, in my judgment, is let's not fool people. What 
we're trying to do is to raise incomes. A tax cut raises incomes in the 
short run. We ought to do it in a way that raises incomes in the long 
run. That's why I favor--in this education State, it ought to be 
popular--finally giving the American people a tax deduction for all 
education expenses after high school. We ought to do that. Why? Because 
that lowers taxes and raises income in the short run, but far more 
important, it raises income in the long run, and not only the incomes of 
the people claiming a tax deduction but the incomes of every single 
American because we have to do a better job of getting more education 
for everybody.
    We also ought to raise the minimum wage. Senator Kennedy is right 
about that. Now, I just want to say a word about this. I know that 
there's a conventional theory that, well, most people on the minimum 
wage are young people in middle class households going home to nice 
homes at night, and they don't need a raise. Well, the statistics show 
that about 40 percent of the gains of the minimum wage go to people in 
the middle 60 percent. But about 45 percent go to people in the lower 20 
percent of our income brackets. There's a lot of women out there raising 
children on a minimum wage, and people can't live on $4.25 an hour.
    And the other night on our television in Washington there was a 
little snippet on some people who were working in a factory in a rural 
area not very far from Washington. And a television interviewer went out 
and interviewed these ladies that were working in this operation. And 
this wonderful woman was interviewed. And he went through all the 
economic arguments against raising the minimum wage: ``They say they're 
going to, if we raise the minimum wage, take your job away and put it 
into a machine.'' And she looked at the camera, and she said, ``Honey, 
I'll take my chances.'' [Laughter] And I'll tell you what, I'll bet you 
if anybody in this room were working for $4.25 an hour, you'd take your 
chances. Let's give them the chance. What do you say? I think we ought 
to.
    I want welfare reform. I met last Saturday with Republicans and 
Democrats. Senator Kennedy was there. We talked about the welfare 
system. People that hate welfare most are the people that are trapped on 
it. I may be the only President that ever had the privilege of spending 
hours talking to people on welfare. It doesn't work.
    But what should our goal be? Should our goal be to say we are 
frustrated, we think there are a lot of deadbeats on welfare, and we 
want to punish them? Or should our goal be to say, there ought to be a 
limit to this system; we want to move people from welfare to work and we 
want people to move to the point where they can be good parents and good 
workers, and the system we have has all the wrong incentives; let's 
change them? That's what our goal ought to be.
    We can liberate people. If we're going to shrink the underclass, we 
have to reform the welfare system, but the goal of it ought to be how to 
train for a job, how to get a job, how to keep a job, and how to be a 
better parent. And that is going to be what drives me in this debate. So 
that's what I hope we'll do: go for the middle class bill of rights; 
pass the minimum wage; pass welfare reform; let's keep cutting the size 
of the Government.
    You know, if we don't do anything else--I got tickled when Senator 
Kennedy was up here talking about it--but if we don't pass another law, 
in 3 years the Federal Government will be the smallest it's been since 
John Kennedy was President of the United States because of reductions 
voted by Democrats 100 percent. And I'm proud of that.

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    We should never be the party of yesterday's Government. We should 
never be the party of undue regulation. We should never be the party of 
things that don't make sense. The average person, when they pay money in 
April, thinks that they don't get their money's worth when they send 
their check to the Federal Government. That's what they think. And too 
often they have been absolutely right. We shouldn't defend that. We 
should be in the forefront. But when we are, as we have been for the 
last 2 years, we shouldn't keep it a secret. We need to tell it. We need 
to make sure people know it.
    But I also will tell you that I have challenged the Republican 
leadership in Congress to make some move on health care. We lost another 
millions of Americans last year. The health care costs have moderated, 
thanks to what a lot of you in this room are doing who are in health 
care. But we still have serious problems with the costs going up more 
rapidly than inflation, and we still cannot continue in the face of 
plain evidence that every year we'll go on being the only successful 
country in the world to lose working people from the rolls of the health 
insured. We can't continue to walk away from this problem.
    So maybe we did bite off more than we can chew last year. But as I 
said so many times, I'm still proud of the First Lady for trying to give 
health care to everybody in this country. And I don't think we should be 
ashamed of it. So I think we've got a lot to do.
    Let me close with reminding you of this: The most important work of 
all still must be done by citizens. You know what we're doing here 
tonight? We're celebrating the right of citizens to have a say in their 
Government. That's what this fundraiser is. And most of you are 
unselfish. You know darn well if you were at one of their fundraisers, 
it probably would get you a bigger tax cut. Most of you are here because 
you believe in your country, because you want everything to go better 
for everybody, and because you know you'll do better in the long run if 
we have the discipline to bring the deficit down, to put in sensible 
economic policies, and to take care of the children of this country. 
That's why you're here. You're here because your view of your self-
interest goes beyond tomorrow or the next day. You're here because for 
whatever reason, you haven't become so disoriented in this time of 
change that you're stopping thinking about the long run. And I value 
that; I thank you for that.
    What we've got to do is to spread that to other people. The spirit I 
saw of those young children in the Mayor's Council today, we have to 
spread that to other people. We can't allow resentment to take over. I 
don't know if you saw the--I was very gratified by the results of the 
public opinion survey today about Massachusetts voters. It was in the 
press today or yesterday, whenever it was. But--[applause]--before you 
clap, let me tell the rest of it. [Laughter] But that's a fascinating 
commentary. You know, my wife took a lot of hits when she fought for 
health care, and a lot of people said, well, she's got no business doing 
that, and all that stuff you heard. And so the survey said there's a 
dramatic difference between what women and men thought, particularly 
working women thought about what she had done. Now, why is that? Why 
would there be such difference? Because we're going through a period of 
real change, and people are disoriented, and it's tough out there. And 
this so-called angry white male phenomenon--there are objective reasons 
for that. People are working harder for less, and they feel like they're 
not getting what they deserve. They worry whether they're letting their 
own families down. And it's easy to play on people's fears and 
resentments. It's easy to build up people's anger. The hard work, the 
right thing to do, what we have to do is to channel all that frustration 
and anger into something good and positive. What we have to do is to say 
what we say to our children, ``Okay, be mad. Be angry. Scream. Let off 
steam, but what are you going to do? What about tomorrow, how are you 
going to change your life? What are we going to do together?''
    That is our job, every one of our jobs. And no President, no 
Congress, no program, nothing can change what citizens can change if we 
are determined to see one another as fellow citizens instead of enemies. 
Even when we're opponents, we shouldn't be enemies.

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    So I ask you--there's enough brain power and education and 
understanding in this room to move Boston all the way to Washington. 
There's enough energy and innovation and creativity here. And I thank 
you for being here, and I thank you for supporting us. But tomorrow and 
the next day, look all your fellow citizens in the eye; when you drive 
to work and drive home, when you walk the streets, seek out people who 
are different, who have different views. Imagine what their lives are 
like.
    This is a difficult time. We're moving from one place to another. 
And we need to find our bearings. We cannot do it with division. We 
cannot do it with demonization. We cannot do it with the politics of 
destruction. We cannot do it just by giving vent to frustration. We have 
to build. Every time this country has gone through a period like this, 
every time, we are simply doing the work that has been done for 200 
years: We are redefining what we have to do so that all of us can pursue 
life, liberty, and happiness.
    We should be proud that we have the chance. We shouldn't be deterred 
by momentary adversity. If we keep our eyes on the prize, which is the 
human potential of every single American, we're going to do just fine.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 8:56 p.m. at the Park Plaza Hotel. In his 
remarks, he referred to Alan Leventhal and Fred Seigel, fundraisers, 
Democratic National Committee; Joan Menard, chair, Massachusetts 
Democratic Party; Rev. Charles Stith, who gave the invocation; Secretary 
of State Bill Gawin of Massachusetts; William Bulger, president, 
Massachusetts State Senate; Charles Flaherty, speaker, Massachusetts 
House of Representatives; Mayor Tom Menino of Boston, MA; Mario Cuomo, 
former Governor of New York; and Ann Richards, former Governor of Texas.