    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 4 (Monday, January 27, 1997)]
    [Pages 66-72]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks to a Democratic National Committee Meeting

    January 21, 1997

        Thank you. Please be seated. Thank you. You know, maybe the Vice
    President should stay up all night more often. [Laughter] He's on a roll
    today.
        I received on Saturday, a day early, very courteously from the New
    York Times, a copy of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, just preceding
    the day of the Inauguration, and it had a lot of nice things in it--an
    article about whether I believed in anything. [Laughter] The conclusion
    was accurate: that I believed in civil rights and that I believed that
    Government can do good things for people that they can't do on their
    own.
        But far more important, the Sunday crossword puzzle had as its theme
    ``Inauguration,'' with several very clever clues like ``Movie about
    Presidential aspirations;'' ``Hope Dreams,'' instead of ``Hoop Dreams.''
    You get it? But the most important clue in the whole thing was
    ``Mathematical rules governing the Vice President's macarena.'' And the
    answer was ``Al-Gore-rhythms.'' [Laughter] And it struck me that a major
    part of the history of this time will be the ``Al-Gore-rhythms'' that
    have reverberated across America.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I come here more than anything else to thank
    you, to thank our outgoing leaders and our incoming leaders, to thank
    the members of the Democratic National Committee and all those whom you

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    represent who are active in our party, who were there in that vast crowd
    yesterday along the parade route and even more of them who were back
    home just watching and cheering on television.
        I was asked many times yesterday how it felt the second time around.
    And I always said, ``Better. It feels better.'' Better because America
    is better than it was 4 years ago. And you should feel a great deal of
    pride in that.
        Just before I left to come over here, one of my staff members told
    me that Newsweek is about to issue the book it puts out every 4 years on
    the Presidential election, and the title this year is ``Back From the
    Dead.'' [Laughter] Well, I have some mixed feelings about that, because
    I always felt the pulse. [Laughter] But for your role in bringing us
    back from whatever it was we were in right after 1994's election, I
    thank you, and I hope you'll always be very proud of it.
        I want to say a special word of thanks, as the Vice President did,
    to Senator Chris Dodd for going all across this country and for being a
    powerful and eloquent voice and for proving that politics can be noble
    and can be fun and that we need not be ashamed of being Democrats or
    being involved in the American political system. I want to thank Don
    Fowler, who has toiled in our vineyards for decades, for being willing
    to leave his comfortable and encouraging surroundings and come up here
    and live in what is not always the most hospitable climate for 2 years
    to fight this battle.
        Their efforts resulted not only in the first Democrat to be
    reelected in 60 years but to gains in the House and to gains in the
    statehouses across the country. We celebrate the election of the first
    Asian-American Governor in the history of America and the first woman
    Governor of New Hampshire in the history of America; one million small
    donors now, one million ordinary citizens sending in their money to
    support the Democratic Party; and a real revival of State parties
    throughout the country, a revival, which, I might add, we must continue
    and strengthen and build upon.
        I want to thank the Democrats who helped in our Inaugural: Terry
    McAuliffe, Ann Jordan, Craig Smith, and Deb Willhite. And a special word
    of thanks to the man who oversaw it all, whom you honored earlier here
    today, Harold Ickes, for this Inauguration, for two brilliant national
    conventions, for the beginning of an organization in New York, which
    after 5 years of effort produced 1.6 million votes in plurality for the
    Clinton/Gore ticket in 1996.
        I would like to say a special word of thanks, and I can't enumerate
    them all, but I would be remiss if I did not say a special word of
    thanks to the American labor movement for the support it has given to
    our efforts and to our progress. And a special word of thanks for their
    role in one of the still untold stories of the last 4 years--the
    teachers of this country for the advances we continue to make in
    investment and opportunity for education in the last 4 years.
        I want to thank Roy Romer and Steve Grossman for their willingness
    to come into this great party and to build it and to go forward. Roy
    Romer and I have been friends for a very long time now. I think it would
    be no offense to any of our colleagues if I would say that, at least
    when I left the governorship in 1992--I think it was true then; I think
    it is true now--there is no Governor in America more respected or who
    has accomplished more than Roy Romer, not a single one in either party.
        Today, he is recognized as being the person who knows the most about
    education and our national drive toward having high standards. He has
    proved in Colorado that you can be for restoring the environment and
    growing the economy. He has proved that you can care about families and
    children and do things that will help them along their way in life. He
    is an unreconstructed, clear reformer and a brilliant consensus builder
    and a great, strong voice, and I thank him for his willingness to do
    this.
        I want to thank my friend Steve Grossman who has labored in our
    vineyard. He's been a State party chair and active in our finance
    operations. He's been a success in business and a success in running
    AIPAC. I told him if he could get everybody in AIPAC to get along, he
    could certainly get everybody in the Democratic Committee to get along.
    [Laughter]

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        He took the reins of the Massachusetts Party in 1991 and '92 after
    the '90 elections when they were at a low ebb and began the process of
    rebuilding, which led in 1996 to the first all-Democratic delegation for
    Congress in Massachusetts since 1872 and, just as an aside, a 62 percent
    vote for the Clinton/Gore ticket in the election.
        Yesterday I said that I wanted us to build a land of new promise in
    America in the next century, with a new kind of Government, a new sense
    of responsibility, and a new spirit of community at home, in the world,
    and in our dealings with each other. I called for a spirit of
    reconciliation, and I think, to me, as much as anything else it means we
    have to give each other the benefit of the doubt.
        I thank Reverend Jackson for his moving comments on the legacy of
    Martin Luther King in our church service yesterday. One person told me
    this morning that the spirit of reconciliation may have been represented
    more vividly yesterday than anything else by the fact that we had
    Christians and Jews and Muslims in the same house of worship, and we had
    white Pentecostals and African-Americans singing the same song and
    finding the same soul yesterday.
        What I'd like to take a few minutes to do, because there is always
    some question about this, before we look forward to the future, I want
    you to be proud of the legacy you have made, and I want you to
    understand very clearly what it is in the last 4 years. Over the last 30
    years, until the last two elections, our friends in the Republican Party
    were moving toward a dominance of the Presidency in the national
    political debate, and there were positive elements in their message.
    They stood for a strong defense. They stood for a strong economy rooted
    in free enterprise. They said that they would stand for the basic values
    of our country. But they also divided us in certain ways that at least
    we Democrats do not agree with. Beginning nearly 30 years ago, they
    began to subtly use, and then sometimes not so subtly use, rhetoric to
    divide our people one from another, first on race, and then later there
    were divisions based on religion and politics, which made it much more
    difficult for us to come together.
        Then, starting in 1981, they advanced two other elements. One was
    supply-side economics; we Democrats called it trickle-down. And the
    argument was that there really is a Santa Claus, that the deficits don't
    matter, and that they'll go away anyway with supply-side economics if we
    just cut taxes, particularly for people in upper incomes. And in
    addition to that there was the clear, explicit, expressed argument that
    Government is the problem with America.
        Now, I would argue to you that in the last 4 years, part of the
    historic legacy of our administration and our Democrats in Congress and
    in America is that we ended the illusion of supply-side economics, not
    until it had quadrupled our national debt, tripled our annual deficit,
    but early enough to stop it from causing permanent disaster. And we
    ended the notion that Government is the problem. It was very powerful
    rhetorically, but the American people never knew what it meant until the
    other party won the Congress in 1995 and had the Government shut down
    twice over the battle of the budget. But make no mistake, our view
    prevailed, and you should be proud of it.
        And we have not ended, but we have at least eased this notion that
    we can advance our country by becoming divided one against the other.
    People know that as they become evermore multiracial, multiethnic,
    multireligious, that is a recipe for destruction. In fairness, I think
    the awful tragedy of Oklahoma City had a lot to do with our coming of
    age. We realized that we could not love our country and hate our
    Government, that the people who work for our Government were our
    neighbors and friends, they had children, too, in their child care
    centers while their mothers and fathers went to work every day.
        But I think the fact that the Democratic Party was a clear and
    constant voice for reconciliation and for not permitting our racial or
    our religious or our political differences to consume us has made this
    country a better place and has dramatically changed the political debate
    forever as we look toward the future. That is a part of your legacy, and
    you should be proud of it.
        I also want to tell you that there are at least six things that are
    a part of our positive legacy that I think we should go forward with.

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    They must be the basis of our mobilizing our State parties, of
    recruiting good, new candidates, of getting people to show up when you
    have these meetings back home, and of making people proud to be
    Democrats and of making people believe that they ought to send a small
    check to the Democratic Party on a regular basis. If they don't want big
    money and organized money to dominate the process, they have to give the
    little money. And they must do that for positive reasons.
        Let's be candid. One of the most interesting things that happened in
    the last year was we had a huge upsurge of giving among ordinary
    Democrats when we were standing against the budget and reversing supply-
    side economics and reversing the idea that Government was the problem.
    And after the battles had been won against the negative forces, there
    weren't so many people that thought they needed to send the small checks
    again. They said, ``Well, President Clinton and Vice President Gore are
    going to get reelected.'' But the question is, what are we going to do?
    So you need to know what the positive legacy of the last 4 years is so
    you will be ennobled and emboldened about what we can accomplish in the
    next 4.
        One, we replaced supply-side economics with invest-and-grow
    economics, reducing the deficit, investing more in education and science
    and technology, standing for free and fair trade around the world. And
    that's what produced the largest number of jobs in any 4-year term in
    history, record small businesses, and declining inequality among working
    people for the first time in 20 years. That's a part of your legacy, and
    you should be proud of it.
        Number two, we reversed the expansion of social problems which
    people thought were inevitable. The crime rate has dropped now in all 4
    years. The crime bill is working. The welfare rolls have had their
    biggest reduction in history as people have moved from welfare to work.
    People are dying to go to work if the jobs are out there for them, if
    the training is out there for them, and if there is a system there to
    move people through. And that indicates what we have to do in the years
    ahead. Child support collection is up 50 percent. You should be proud of
    these things.
        Just 4 years ago, most people thought the crime rate was going to go
    on forever. Now we can visualize a time when our children can walk
    safely from home to school, to play in the park across the street and
    not fear that somebody will come up to them and try to shoot them or
    sell them dope. We can do that now because that is what we have done in
    the last 4 years. We've turned these things around. That is a huge
    surpassing achievement, part of your legacy, and you should be proud of
    it.
        We Democrats have restored the primacy of family and community to
    our social policies. That's what the Family and Medical Leave Act was
    all about. That's what the earned-income tax credit, which is now giving
    tax reductions to people with incomes up to $30,000 a year who have
    children in their home, was all about. That's what our reforms in
    retirement--we secured the retirement of 40 million people, made it
    easier for people in small business to get retirement. That's what it
    was all about, putting family and community in the center of our social
    concern. That's what the Vice President and Henry Cisneros were doing
    with the empowerment zone initiative, trying to let people and
    communities all across America seize control of their situation and make
    it better. That's what we were doing with the V-chip. That's what we
    were doing in trying to protect our children against tobacco
    advertisements. That's what we were doing with the zero tolerance for
    guns and drugs in schools, putting family and community back at the
    center of our concern, so that now no one thinks of family values as
    being the Government is the problem, the Government is the enemy.
        Now, the question is, what can we do together to build strong
    families and strong communities. That's part of our legacy, and you
    ought to be proud of it.
        The fourth thing we did, again I say, was not only to stand against
    the forces of division but to say that community is a good thing, that
    we'll be better off in the future in the global society if we can all
    work together and learn together and build new ties that bind us
    together--we'll be better off. You can see that in what we did with
    affirmative action. Mend it, yes, but don't end it until it's not needed
    anymore. You can see it with what

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    we did with immigration. Protect the borders, yes. People are in the
    criminal justice system, send them home. Be tough on the workplace.
    Don't let people go in and take jobs away from American workers because
    their employers want to bring in people to work for slave wages. But
    don't denigrate the immigrants who have made this country a great land.
    Except for the Native Americans, we're all from somewhere else.
        You can see it in our response to the church burnings. You can see
    it in response to what we did with the Religious Freedom Restoration
    Act, trying to liberate people from the notion that there was never a
    time when they could express their religious convictions in a public
    forum. You can see it in what was done here after Oklahoma City or in
    response to the militias. We are affirmatively building an American
    community. It is part of the legacy of this administration and this
    party, and you should be proud of it. You can see it in the way we've
    reasserted the role of America's leadership around the world, and yes,
    you can see it in the way we have resolved in the fight over Government.
        I was curious to see how people commented about that. Government is
    not the problem. Government is not the solution. We have to be the
    solution. Government is the instrument by which we give each other the
    tools to make the most of our own lives, which means that we have
    downsized the Government with the Vice President's reinventing
    Government initiative. But there are times when the Government should do
    more, more on family leave, more on helping people succeed at home and
    at work, more in opening the doors of college education to everyone,
    more in investing in early childhood education. And we can't rest until
    the people who are still shut out of the health care system, especially
    the children of poor working people, have access to it.
        Now, you have to make this legacy apparent to the folks back home.
    And in order to do it, we have got to end the divisions in thinking in
    our mind. We all talk about how the so-called bipolar world is over--
    freedom versus communism--but the bipolar mind is still holding us back.
    We think you can balance the budget and invest in the future. We think
    we cannot only protect but improve the environment and grow the economy.
    We think we can be strong at home, and in order to do it we have to be
    strong abroad and vice versa. We don't believe that every issue has to
    go into a Democrat or a Republican or a liberal or a conservative box.
        I think you can make a compelling case that balancing the budget in
    a proper way is a very liberal thing to do because otherwise we'll never
    have the political support in this country or the money to invest in the
    future of the people that are otherwise left out.
        I think you can make a case that educating--investing in the
    education of our children and providing families decent health care when
    the kids are young is a very conservative thing to do, because otherwise
    you cannot conserve the basic strength and security and values of the
    country over the long run.
        We're in a period of change. We've got to stop this. Who ever said
    the Republicans should own crime? I never met a Democrat who was happy
    to have his child mugged. Who ever said the Republicans own welfare
    reform? Those of us who've known people on welfare know how bad they
    want to get off. You have to help change the way people think about
    these things. And to do that, you have to help build a positive future.
        Now, in the State of the Union Message, I will be talking more about
    the specific things that I want to do in the future. But I want to talk
    today about this whole issue of campaign finance reform for two reasons.
    One is campaign finance reform. Elections are too expensive, and they
    take too much money, and it takes too much time to raise the money, and
    it always raises questions.
        But there's a bigger problem, which is the more that elections
    become the province of very expensive ad wars, the less people are
    likely to participate. I think the Democrats ought to be on record not
    only for campaign finance reform, but we need to find ways, Mr.
    Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairs, all the new officers here--we've got to find
    ways to encourage affirmatively the increase of participation of people
    at the polls.
        Reverend Jackson's spent his whole life going around and registering
    people to vote. If young voters had voted in 1996 in the same

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    percentages they did in 1992, the election would have been even more
    dramatic in the outcome and the congressional results would have been
    different. We have to lift the participation of people. And we need to
    see campaign finance reform not only as restoring the trust of citizens
    in their Government but as one step of increasing the participation of
    people in our common affairs. You cannot have a national community if
    half the community doesn't show up. Everybody's got to be there.
        But we, the Democrats, have to continue to be and intensify our
    efforts for campaign finance reform, and it has to be a bipartisan
    solution. Today Senator John McCain and Senator Russ Feingold and
    Representative Chris Shays and Marty Meehan, in the House and the
    Senate, a Democrat, a Republican, are introducing their bipartisan
    campaign finance reform legislation. It is tough. It is balanced. It is
    credible. It should become the law of the land. We know from
    experience--I went through this for 4 years--that all you have to do to
    kill campaign finance reform is just not do it. Nobody ever wants a vote
    up on the tote board, ``I killed this bill'', so they just keep letting
    it die in the Senate with the filibuster.
        Delay will mean the death of reform one more time if it happens. So
    I ask Members of Congress in both parties to act now. While the public
    is watching, while the momentum is building, act now; don't delay.
    You've got a good bill. You've got a good forum. Resolve the differences
    and go forward.
        I also ask that we not wait. Today, let us resume our call to our
    friends in the Republican Party. Together, let's stop accepting soft
    money, even before the reform becomes law. If you will do it, we will do
    it. We have offered our hand, time and again. Why not just say yes?
        Today, as a first step, the Democratic Party has announced several
    changes unilaterally in the way we raise money. I thank the DNC for
    agreeing with the position that we took in the campaign not to accept
    contributions from noncitizens and foreign-owned businesses and for
    taking other steps to limit contributions that may otherwise raise
    questions about the integrity of the process. These are sound and
    necessary first steps in the reforms we need. We should go forward from
    there and take the next step.
        Now, let me say again, let's be realistic about this. There have
    been problems with this all along the way. But there's a great deal of
    interest in this in the press, and in the spirit of reconciliation let
    me say that we need to be candid about this. On the other side, our
    friends may not think that they have any interest in campaign finance
    reform. Why should they? They raise more money. They raise more foreign
    money. They raise more money in big contributions, and we take all the
    heat. It's a free ride.
        Secondly, let's be candid. Once you're in office, whether you're a
    Democrat or a Republican, if you've done a good job and you've got
    friends out there and they can relate to you, you at least know that
    maybe even if it's bad for your party or bad for your country, maybe you
    can protect yourself if some wave of hysteria comes along that threatens
    to wash you away, and at least if you can raise the money, you can have
    your own case heard. I say that to make this point: We hear a lot in
    America about the cynicism that exists between the public and the
    politicians or how cynical the press are about politicians. The problem
    with cynicism is that it always eventually becomes a two-way street. You
    cannot end cynicism unless all parties involved are willing to give each
    other the benefit of the doubt.
        And so I ask now for an honest, open effort to pass this bill. And I
    ask for an honest, open understanding that the Supreme Court decision
    allowing all of these third-party expenditures will complicate our task.
    But we can make it better if we will suspend our cynicism and instead
    put our energies into getting something done for America. Will you help
    us do that? Will all of you help us do that? Stand up if you believe in
    it. Stand up if you'll fight for it. We can do this, and I want you to
    help.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:14 p.m. at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
    In his remarks, he referred to Terence McAuliffe and Ann Dibble Jordan,
    cochairs, and Craig Smith and Debbie Willhite, co-executive directors,
    Presidential Inaugural Committee. A portion of these remarks

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    could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.