[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 26 (Monday, July 3, 1995)]
[Pages 1163-1170]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Fundraiser in Chicago, Illinois

June 29, 1995

    Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, thank you for your introduction, 
your support, the power of your leadership. Thank you, Bill Daley, for 
being willing to leave Chicago and come to Washington, which is prima 
facie evidence of some loss of sanity--[laughter]--to help us pass 
NAFTA. And thank you for your long friendship and your support.
    Thank you, Father Wall, for getting us off on the right start. Maybe 
we'll be a little less partisan, a little less like the Republicans 
tonight since you prayed over us to start. I thank you all for being 
here and for your support.
    When Hillary was making her remarks I was looking at her, imagining 
her here, thinking about the first time I ever came to Chicago to see my 
wife, before we were married. I believe I was in her house 3 hours 
before her father came down and said hello to me. [Laughter] It was sort 
of like running for President; you just can't get discouraged; you have 
to keep going and--[laughter]--you're laughing, but that's the truth, 
that story I'm telling. [Laughter] And I owe so much to this city and to 
this State.
    Last Saturday I was home in Arkansas, in a little town called Pine 
Bluff. I took Dr. Henry Foster back there because he was born there, he 
grew up there. And that's still a place where people judge you by what 
you do instead of what you say. And I think we'd be better off if the 
rest of America were more like that. But anyway, we went home to Pine 
Bluff. And while we were there, it turned out that in this baseball park 
four blocks from where Henry Foster was born and where he learned to 
play baseball, there was a phenomenal amateur baseball tournament going 
on with all the major amateur leagues there in a playoff. And it was on 
ESPN. And two of the players were drafted right out there to the majors. 
And I went to throw out the first pitch, since I was there. And I was 
interviewed by none other than Gary ``The Sarge'' Matthews. You all 
remember him. He took the Cubs to one of those playoffs. So he said to 
me, ``Now, come on, Mr. President, who's your favorite baseball team?'' 
I said, ``When I married my wife, I inherited two things, a wonderful 
family of in-laws and the Chicago Cubs.'' And I expect to get lots of 
mail. After I met the Daleys, I got to go to White Sox games, which made 
me feel very good about that.
    On the wall of my private little office in the White House, just off 
of the Oval Office, I have one of my most treasured pictures, a picture 
of Hillary and me on March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day, 1992, in the 
confetti in Chicago on the night that we won the Democratic primary in 
Illinois and virtually assured the nomination victory. And for all of 
that, I thank you all very, very much.

[[Page 1164]]

    Since then this administration has had a remarkable partnership with 
this State and with this city, in the ways that the mayor mentioned, 
fighting for the crime bill, bringing the Democratic Convention here, 
Chicago winning a fair and open contest to be one of the six cities in 
America to get one of our empowerment zones, to prove that we can have a 
partnership between Government and the private sector to rebuild to 
poorest parts of America and give people opportunity and free enterprise 
again in every part of the country. And I congratulate Chicago on that.
    I have strongly supported the mayor's efforts at school reform, 
something that I care desperately about. If we cannot make our schools 
work, we're going to have a very hard time prevailing in the 21st 
century with the American dream. And you know, over 90 percent of all 
the funds for education in America come from the State and local 
government. We can do some things at the national level. And our 
Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, has done a great job. But unless 
there are people at the grassroots who are committed to making the 
schools work so that children learn, they learn things they need to 
know, they are useful, they are effective, we are going to have a very 
difficult time. There is no more important battle, and I congratulate 
him on waging that battle.
    And finally, I'd like to say a word of appreciation to the city for 
being willing to work with us in good faith through Secretary Cisneros 
and the Department of Housing and Urban Development in an attempt to 
reform and really improve the Chicago public housing. We are committed 
to that. The mayor is committed to that. We are going to prove some 
things that most people in America don't think can be done. And we are 
going to do it right here in Chicago, thanks to you. And we appreciate 
you for that.
    And we are very much looking forward to being here for the 
convention. Debra DeLee is here. We've all got our feet on the ground. 
It was David Wilhelm's parting gift to his neighbor State before he left 
the Democratic Party in Washington with our strong support.
    I thank the mayor for what he said about the things that we had 
done. I just want to say one word about that. I've done a lot of things 
that were controversial in this last 2\1/2\ years. But I haven't done 
anything that I didn't think was right for America. What I'm trying to 
do is to test the outer limits of our leadership, I think. But I think 
that's important at a time of profound change. But I'm trying to learn 
the balance, you know, like the mayor said, balancing the budget in 10 
years instead of 7. I want to talk more about the other day--that in a 
minute.
    But I heard a story the other day about the limits of leadership, 
which I think about now before I do something really controversial, 
about the famous Louisiana Governor and later Senator, Huey Long, who as 
some of you know was a very great politician and was Franklin 
Roosevelt's chief rival for the affections of the Democratic Party 
before he was assassinated in the early thirties. And when Huey Long was 
a Governor, one day he was out on a country crossroads in the depths of 
the Depression where people had no money, nothing, no jobs. It was 
terrible, particularly in our part of the country.
    And he had a big crowd of people out there in the country. And he 
started giving a speech. And his whole platform was share the wealth, 
you know, nobody had very much money, and we ought to share what we had. 
So he looked at this crowd of people, these poor people and farmers in 
the country, and he said, ``You know, we have got to share the wealth.'' 
And he spotted a farmer that he knew out in the crowd. And he said, 
``Farmer Jones, if you had three Cadillacs, wouldn't you give up one of 
them so we could drive it around here in the county and pick up all the 
kids and take them to school during the week and take them to church on 
Sunday?'' He said, ``Of course I would.'' He said, ``And if you had $3 
million, wouldn't you give up a million dollars so we could put a roof 
on everybody's house and feed all the children in this country?'' He 
said, ``Of course I would.'' He said, ``And if you had three hogs----'' 
And the farmer said, ``Now, wait a minute, Governor. I've got three 
hogs.'' [Laughter] So I'm trying to learn what the limits of leadership 
are.
    This has been a good day for America. We're celebrating the trade 
agreement with Japan, which all of you were kind enough to applaud. I 
want to tell you a little about

[[Page 1165]]

it. It is different from and better than any similar trade agreement 
we've ever concluded. Most of our trade deficit in the world is with 
Japan, and 60 percent of our Japanese trade deficit is in autos and auto 
parts. We have a big surplus in auto parts in the rest of the world and 
a big deficit with them.
    This agreement will allow us to improve our position, not to 
guarantee us results, but it will give us a chance to compete and to be 
treated fairly and to create American jobs. And coincidentally, it will 
be good for Japan, because their more closed economic system has led to 
the unbelievable anomaly of their being the richest country in the world 
on paper but not in fact, because their working people are paying 40 
percent more--40 percent more--for basic consumer products than 
Americans are because their markets are closed. We lose jobs, they get 
money, but they can't do anything with it except spend more for the same 
stuff.
    This is going to be a good thing for America. But it's going to be 
good for Japan, and it's going to be good for the world. And we were 
right to be firm and strong and go to the 11th hour, because this is one 
of the kind of difficult changes we're going to have to make if the 
world is going to be as it should in the next century.
    This was also a good day for America because of the hookup of the 
Soviet--the Russian and the American space vehicles. Did you see that on 
television? And you saw them laughing and having a good time together 
and tumbling around in space. You know, it's amazing when you think 
about it, all that's happened, just from the last 5 or 6 years. That 
partnership with Russia that you saw in space today is also being 
mirrored on the ground.
    In Russia today, the Vice President is over there working with the 
Prime Minister of Russia, Mr. Chernomyrdin. They have established an 
unprecedented partnership that has helped us to work to continue to 
reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, to reduce the threat of weapons 
being stolen or smuggled or nuclear material being smuggled out of 
Russia, to try to deal with the whole raft of problems that they have 
that will help our country, to work with them to build their democracy 
and their economy in the years ahead.
    One of the things that I am proudest of is that during our 
administration, for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, 
there are no Russian missiles pointed at the people of the United States 
of America. So we're celebrating.
    And I also want to talk a little about why we're here. When the 
mayor went through the record that unemployment's down and jobs are up, 
and we passed the crime bill, and we passed more trade legislation than 
anybody in the history of the country, and we've dealt with a lot of 
important issues, we have been able to play a constructive role for 
peace in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, lots of other important 
places in the world, you might ask yourself, if that all happened, well, 
why isn't everybody happy? What happened in the '94 elections? What's 
going to happen in the '96 elections? That's what I want to talk to you 
about tonight.
    I want to talk to you about what I believe about this country and 
what I hope you believe about this country, and why we are having the 
debate that we are having in Washington, DC, today. The truth is that 
for most Americans this exciting new world toward which we are moving 
that has caught us all up is a mixed bag. It is confusing, and they are 
confused. And that's why politics seems confusing. And it's why 
sometimes our adversaries do very well, because they are great at giving 
simple answers to hard questions. They're usually wrong, but it sounds 
good. It sounds good.
    But I want you to think about what the world looks like from the 
point of view of the average American family. Let's just take the 
changes that are going on. Look at the economy. Consider this: In the 
last 2\1/2\ years, we've had 6.7 million new jobs, a big drop in the 
unemployment rate; the African-American unemployment rate has gone below 
10 percent for the first time in 20 years; we have the lowest combined 
rates of unemployment and inflation in 30 years--that's very, very 
impressive--we've had the biggest expansion of trade ever in a 2-year 
period; the deficit has been cut, using the 7-year term now favored by 
the congressional majority, by a trillion dollars over 7 years;

[[Page 1166]]

but the median income in the United States has dropped one percent.
    Now, if anybody had ever told you that jobs would go up, trade would 
go up, productivity would go up, inflation would go down, and the person 
in the middle would actually have a one-percent decline in their income, 
you wouldn't have an increase in income, it doesn't seem to compute. 
What happened? How did that happen?
    In the last 2 years, we've had more new businesses formed in '93 and 
'94 than in any 2-year period in American history; more new people have 
become millionaires in '93 and '94 than in any comparable period in 
American history. But more than half of the people of this country, 60 
percent to be exact, are working a longer work week today than they were 
10 years ago for the same or lower wages once you adjust for inflation. 
It doesn't figure.
    What caused all this? It's good news and bad news. Part of it was 
the global economy. Part of it is the information and technology 
revolution, which means fewer people can do more work. Part of it was 
wrong-headed policies in our Government. But it's happening.
    So I get letters all the time from people that say, I know that 
things are going well, but I don't feel more secure. I got a letter the 
other day from a guy that I went to grade school with, came from a very 
poor family, made himself an engineer, got a job with a Fortune 500 
company. And now, after working there for 25 years was one of three 49- 
and 50-year-old engineers who was laid off and thinks he will never 
again find another job at remotely the same income or benefits. He's 
very excited for all these good things that are happening to the 
American economy. But how does he send his kids to college?
    So, it's like a good news-bad news story. I'll give you another 
example: the technology revolution. Do you know what technology means in 
education? It means that a child in a poor mountain hamlet in the hills 
of the Arkansas Ozarks can get on the Internet and hook into a library 
in Australia to get direct information about volcanoes down there to do 
a research project. It's incredible. That's what it means.
    It means that--the technology revolution means that all of you, if 
you have a computer, can hook into the White House and get all the facts 
on the budget. We were getting 50,000 people an hour for a few hours 
after we announced our new budget. It's incredible, what it means.
    It means a lot of other things that all of you know, I'm sure. But 
let me tell you what it also means. It means that our children can get 
on the Internet, and now, without paying any money, can be exposed to 
hardcore porn. It also means that a person who's smart enough to work a 
computer, but is slightly deranged and paranoid, can hook into the right 
people and learn how to make a bomb just like the one that blew up the 
Federal building in Oklahoma City. It also means that clever radical 
groups in places like Japan can have little vials of sarin gas they can 
go into subway systems and break open and kill a lot of innocent people. 
It means that here in our own country we found radical groups 
experimenting with biological weapons, germ warfare. Technology: good 
news and bad news.
    Foreign policy: the good news is, no Russian missiles pointed at the 
United States. The good news is the cold war is over, and there's no 
serious threat to our security. The bad news is that once you strip the 
veneer of Communist control off of Russia with nothing to replace it, 
within 5 years half the banks are run by organized crime.
    Hillary and I went to the Baltic States, to Riga, Latvia, and had 
tens of thousands of people in the streets thanking us for helping to 
get the Russian troops out of there for the first time since before the 
Second World War, people weeping in the streets. We went inside to a 
meeting, and the first thing the President of the country asked us for 
was an FBI office, because now that there was no communism and no 
soldiers, they were worried that the port was going to become a center 
for drug traffickers.
    The crime problem: every major city in the country that's taken an 
aggressive stance against crime sees the crime rate going down, and 
that's the good news. But there are so many young people in this country 
that don't have strong family situations, don't have good community 
situations, that the rate of ran- 

[[Page 1167]]

dom violence among young teenagers is still going up. The rate of random 
drug use among young teenagers has started going up again, which means 
unless we figure out something to do about it, in 5 or 6 years, there's 
going to be an awful price to pay.
    So there's all these wonderful things going on, and all these 
troubling things going on. Is it surprising that people would look at 
all this and be confused and frustrated and anxiety-ridden and feel 
somewhat insecure?
    Now, let me tell you, I believe with all my heart that the United 
States is better positioned for the 21st century than any nation in the 
world. I believe that the good news--I believe that the good news 
outweighs the bad. And I believe that the future's going to be fine if 
we will face these challenges.
    But I have spent a lot of time in the last few months thinking about 
how to explain this to my fellow citizens. I ran for President for two 
reasons. I wanted to restore the American dream, because I did not want 
my child to be part of the first generation of Americans to do worse 
than their parents, because I did not want to see all these young people 
in our cities and isolated rural areas growing up in poverty with 
nothing to look forward to, and I wanted to unite the country. I wanted 
to bring us together.
    The diversity of America, the diversity of Chicago, the racial, 
religious, ethnic diversity we have in this country, unique among all 
the large countries of the world, is our meal ticket to the global 
economy if we can figure out what to do about it.
    And if you ask me to give myself a grade on the first 2\1/2\ years, 
I would say I did a very good job on the first part of that, because we 
have really worked hard on the economy and on crime and on the other 
major issues we're facing. But now, as President, I have to work harder 
on the second part: How to bring the American people together; how we 
can understand what it is we are facing.
    Because I can tell you right now in Washington--the Members of 
Congress who are here will tell you--we are debating fundamental 
questions that we thought were resolved 50, 60, 70 years ago now. All 
these changes in the economy and all these changes in the way we live 
and work have led to a sense of unsettling, and it led us to a 
composition in the Congress of people who literally are prepared to 
debate the first principles of our society. And you better be part of 
the debate if you want it to come out in the way you believe.
    I now believe our ability to restore the American dream and to get 
this country going economically, to grow the middle class and shrink the 
under class, our ability to face all these other problems, depends upon 
our ability to have some understanding about how we relate to each other 
as a community and what this country's all about. And I just want to 
give you two or three examples of the profound debates going on in 
Washington today and why I come down where I do and why I hope you will 
understand how important this election is.
    Debate number one in Washington: Are the problems we have as 
Americans primarily personal and cultural, or are they primarily 
political and economic? There are a whole lot of people in the Congress 
today who believe there's really nothing for the Government to do about 
our problems and nothing for them to do in their private capacity 
because most of our problems are personal and cultural. So if everybody 
would just wake up every day and do the right thing and stop 
misbehaving, and if people would stop putting out bad movies and CD's, 
we would have Nirvana. Everything would be fine. [Laughter]
    Now, you're laughing, but I'm serious. I am serious. There are 
people who honestly believe that. And let us give them their due. At a 
certain level, it is true. That is, there is nothing I can do for you if 
you're not prepared to do the right thing yourself. You will all concede 
that. You didn't have enough money to come to this fundraiser tonight 
because somebody just gave you something. You had to live your life in a 
certain way. So at a certain level, that is true.
    It is also true that the influence centers in our culture, whether 
it's entertainment or media or sports or you name it, have great 
influence in our society independent of politics and business and 
economics. That's also true.
    But what bothers me is that if that's all you say about it, it's 
just an excuse to walk

[[Page 1168]]

away from our common problems, and pretend we're not one country. What I 
believe is that our problems are both personal and cultural and 
political and economic. And I don't intend to use the personal and 
cultural nature of our problems as an excuse to walk away from our 
common responsibilities to do better.
    And I'll try to give you a simple example of every one. Example 
number one: the family and medical leave law. There were people who 
opposed the family and medical leave law. They said, it is wrong to 
impose any burden on the private sector at all. It will be terrible for 
them. And besides that, we are philosophically opposed to it.
    I believe that, on the personal and cultural side, if every kid in 
this country had two parents taking care of her or him and loving them 
and giving them discipline and giving them direction, we'd have about a 
third of the problems we've got in this country today. Most of them 
would be gone. I believe that.
    Now, I also believe that economically most people who are adults in 
this country have to work to make a living, whether they live alone or 
whether they're in a single-parent or a two-parent family. Therefore, 
the most important thing we can do, arguably, is to enable our fellow 
citizens to succeed as parents and to succeed as workers. Therefore, 
people ought to be able to take a little time off without losing their 
job if their child is sick or their parent is sick or a baby is born or 
something terrible happens to their family. So I supported that.
    Now, that is the kind of fundamental debate we're having. You've got 
to decide where you stand. I say it's both, both personal and economic 
and political. And I hope you believe that. But a lot of people don't.
    Let me give you another example. The mayor mentioned the crime bill. 
You know, I'm the only President--sort of, maybe this is not a 
compliment to me--but I'm the only sitting President, as opposed to 
somebody who gets out of office and does it, who has ever opposed the 
National Rifle Association in the Senate. [Applause]
    Now, I want to--I hate to say what I'm about to say now that you 
clapped. [Laughter] The truth is that I have agreed with them on many 
things. When I was a Governor, I worked with the NRA a lot. I like their 
hunter education programs. I liked the fact that they tried to help me 
resolve some very difficult problems relating to people in rural areas 
and where you could hunt and where you couldn't and all of that. I don't 
oppose everything they want. What I oppose is this world view. This is 
not about the right to keep and bear arms, not the Brady bill and not 
the assault weapons ban.
    There is one view that says, look, the crime problem is a personal 
problem. It is people doing wrong, right? Their slogan: ``Guns don't 
kill people, people do,'' right? It's a personal problem. So find the 
wrongdoer, put him in jail, and throw the key away. This is politics, 
economics aside--has nothing to do with this. This is about personal 
wrongdoing. And therefore, don't you dare inconvenience me one bit 
because of something somebody else did. I shouldn't have to wait 5 days 
to get my handgun, because I haven't done anything wrong. If I want to 
carry a TEK-9 around, I haven't done anything wrong. And who are you to 
judge me if I want to take it to target practice? That's what this is 
about. I'm not doing--just find the people who are doing wrong, and 
punish them. This is all individual. The problem is, if you talk to the 
police officers of the country, if you talk to the prosecutors and the 
former prosecutors, like the mayor, they will tell you that this is like 
all of our other problems: If we will all take some responsibility for 
it, we can make progress.
    So I have no objection, and I don't think anybody should, to saying 
to the citizens of this country, it is your responsibility to go through 
the minor inconvenience of waiting 5 days so we can keep people who have 
got no business buying guns from buying guns. It is a minor sacrifice 
for a major good. I don't have any problem telling those guys that you--
it may break your heart not to have one of these TEK-9's, but it's worth 
it to get the Uzis out of the high schools. Sacrifice a little bit for a 
greater good.
    I'll tell you--this may be an unpopular statement here--I agree with 
this decision the Supreme Court made saying that that school had the 
right to drug-test the kids who wanted to play on the sports teams. And 
I'll tell you why. Not because I think most kids

[[Page 1169]]

do drugs, they don't. Not because I think most of our kids are bad, 
they're not. They're good. But our young people are pretty smart, and 
they know this drug deal is a big problem in our country. And I think 
it's worth saying to them, ``It's a privilege to be on an athletic team. 
It's a privilege to be in music. It's a privilege to do extracurricular 
activities. This is something you ought to do for your country. Help us 
get rid of the scourge of drugs in our schools. Be willing to be tested 
as an example and to help us catch the people who are doing it. Don't 
cry about having your rights infringed, when all we're asking you to do 
is to band together and assume a little bit of responsibility and go 
through a little bit of inconvenience to move this country forward and 
help us deal with our problems.'' That's what we ought to be doing.
    And I come now to the third example, the budget. Let's give the 
Republicans credit. First, they wanted to do the balanced budget 
amendment. And it failed by a vote because a lot of people thought it 
was a dodge and because a lot of people feared that sometime we might 
need to run a deficit in a recession, and we couldn't do it. But then 
they came up with a balanced budget. And it adds up, and it's a credible 
budget.
    And I want you to know, I think they're entitled to credit for that. 
Why? Because I believe it's important to balance the budget. Now, I know 
a lot of people don't. But let me remind you, this country never--
never--had a permanent, structural deficit before 1981. Never. We ran 
rather modest deficits all during the seventies, because those of you 
who were around then will remember that we had something called 
stagflation and the economy was weak, and we needed to do it for sound 
economic reasons. But we never had a permanent, huge deficit.
    In 1981, we adopted those big tax cuts. We never really got over it. 
And then there was sort of a bipartisan agreement in Washington because 
the Democrats were not about to cut spending as much as it would take to 
balance the budget and the Republican Presidents didn't want to raise 
anybody's taxes, because it violated their ideology.
    So I got to be President 2\1/2\ years ago with the debt quadrupled 
in 12 years. And I'll tell you how severe it is: Our budget would be 
balanced today but for the interest we have to pay on the debt run up in 
the 12 years before I became President. I'll tell you how severe it is: 
Next year, interest payments on the debt will exceed the defense budget. 
You want more money for the Chicago schools? You want me to help educate 
more kids? You want me to invest in your efforts to clean up the 
environment and grow the economy? We won't have it unless we do 
something to change our spending priorities. So it matters.
    When we brought the deficit down 2 years ago, that's how we got the 
economy going again, because we drove interest rates down and we got 
this economy spurred. So it is important. But there's a right way and a 
wrong way to do it.
    What is the difference between my budget and theirs? It rests on a 
simple philosophical difference. They believe--this is honest. I'm not 
being critical; I'm telling you what they honestly believe. In the 
heart--when you strip it all away, they believe that the purpose of the 
Government is national defense, tax cuts on capital, and balance the 
budget as quick as possible, because the Government would mess up a one-
car parade. Otherwise, it's not good for anything. And we don't have any 
public responsibilities that should be manifest that way. That's what 
they believe. That's their honest conviction.
    Now, I believe that the purpose of Government is to help people make 
the most of their own lives, that's what I believe, and to meet the 
challenges of the moment, and to provide security for people who have 
done what they're supposed to do. That's what I believe.
    So our budget says, look, if you balance the budget in 10 years 
instead of 7, if you cut this tax cut by more than half and you don't 
give it to people who don't really need it and you focus the tax breaks 
on education and child rearing, the two most important jobs in our 
society, then you don't have to gut Medicare and Medicaid. You can shave 
them in a modest way without worrying about whether you're going to 
close urban hospitals or close rural hospitals or hurt elderly people 
who don't have enough money to live on as it is. And not only that, you 
don't have to cut education at all. You can

[[Page 1170]]

increase education. You can increase Head Start. You can increase 
apprenticeships for kids that don't go to college. You can increase 
student loans. You can increase our investment in technology and 
research. That is the difference.
    My belief is we should balance the budget, but we should also grow 
the economy. The purpose of balancing the budget is to raise incomes, to 
create jobs, to bring us closer together, to enable us to meet our 
challenges. So I think my budget is better. But it all rests on a 
philosophical difference. You have to decide which side of the divide 
you're on.
    I believe our Government's purpose is to help people make the most 
of their own lives. And let me just point out, there's a lot of people 
in that Congress who are there because we did that. The GI bill after 
World War II built the greatest middle class in the history of the world 
because the Government tried to help people make the most of their own 
lives. And that's the kind of thing we ought to be doing now.
    So our budget proposes a GI bill for America's workers. It proposes 
the kind of thing that they ought to be for, collapsing all the separate 
training programs of the Government, putting it in a big voucher. If you 
lose your job, you call the Government, say, ``I'm enrolling at the 
local community college.'' We send $2,600 a year for 2 years and let 
people get a re-education or retraining program to get a new job and a 
better income and a new start in life. That's the kind of thing I think 
is worth spending money on. You have to decide where you stand on that.
    These are the big, fundamental issues we're debating in Washington 
today. I believe time is on our side now. And I believe it for a couple 
of reasons. First of all, as hideous and awful and heartbreaking as the 
bomb in Oklahoma City was, it took a lot of the meanness out of this 
country. It brought us together. It made us all think about the impact 
of our words and our feelings and how we've been conducting ourselves.
    And then when Captain O'Grady survived that magnificent, terrible 6 
days in Bosnia and he was rescued, it put a little zip back in our step 
and made us realize what was best about this country. And I think our 
heads are kind of getting on straighter today as a people.
    But I want you to know, I'm going to spend the next year determined 
to continue to move the country forward economically, to continue to 
deal with all these problems we've talked about. But we've got to get 
ourselves together.
    I am telling you, this is a great country. If we can get ourselves 
together, if we can understand we have certain common responsibilities, 
if we can understand it is a phony political debate to try to say 
problems are personal and cultural as opposed to political and economic 
when they are both, if we can have a conversation with each other again 
about what it's really going to take to help people make the most of 
their own lives and give every American a chance to succeed, then we are 
going to do just fine. That is what the 1996 elections are all about.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 8:46 p.m. in the International Ballroom at 
the Chicago Hilton and Towers. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor 
Richard M. Daley of Chicago; former Special Counselor to the President 
for NAFTA William Daley; Rev. Jack Wall, pastor, Old St. Patrick's 
Church; Debra DeLee, chair, Democratic National Convention; and David 
Wilhelm, former chairman, Democratic National Committee. A tape was not 
available for verification of the content of these remarks.