[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 50 (Monday, December 15, 1997)]
[Pages 2021-2024]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Luncheon for Gubernatorial Candidate Buddy MacKay in Miami

December 11, 1997

    The President. Thank you very much. You all calm down now; we don't 
want to be too rowdy. [Laughter] You've got to save some of this for the 
spring and the summer and the fall, so that on election day you have 
maximum enthusiasm and energy for Buddy MacKay for Governor. I want you 
to do that.
    Let me say, I am very honored to be here today. I want to thank so 
many people, but let me first say that Representative Kendrick Meek made 
such a good speech I thought the rest of us were going to be 
superfluous. Repetition is important, and he did it in a beautiful and 
eloquent way. And I thank him for his--for representing Florida's future 
so well.
    I thank Attorney General Bob Butterworth for being my friend and for 
being with me for a long time and for his strong support of Lieutenant 
Governor MacKay. I thank Lawton Chiles for his great leadership of the 
State of Florida. He has done a wonderful, wonderful job. And he has 
helped me to be a better President, as well as to do a better job for 
the people of Florida. I will never forget it. And he showed us all 4 
years ago how to win a tough election, and I haven't forgotten, Buddy 
MacKay hasn't forgotten, and all of you haven't forgotten. Let's bring 
our lessons to the table and push this thing forward next November. We 
can do it.
    Thank you, Jim Pugh, and all the others who worked so hard to make 
this a success. And thank all of you for giving your contributions to 
Buddy MacKay. It is not easy to run a campaign, and they are not 
inexpensive. And normally our side is running against people who have 
more money than we do. But the important thing is not whether they have 
more, it's just whether we have enough. If our side has enough to get 
our message out, we'll be all right. And you've taken a major step in 
that direction today, and we are profoundly grateful to you.
    Let me just take a couple of minutes of your time to tell you what I 
think this election is about and why I am here almost a year before. 
First of all, Florida is important to

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America. It's not only one of the biggest States in America, it 
represents every good thing that is going on as we hurtle into the 21st 
century and presents almost

all the challenges our country faces as we move into the 21st century. Just 
think about it. You have a booming economy and you have a gorgeous 
environment and you have the conflict between the two. How are you going to 
preserve your natural resources? Can we restore the Everglades? Will there 
be enough water here 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 years from now?

    Then you have a wonderfully diverse culture with people coming from 
every country in our hemisphere and increasingly from all over the 
world. And you have some of the conflicts that that occasions. We have 
people living together and working together; we also have the challenges 
of crime and welfare. We have a place that people come to because they 
feel better and they feel healthier. And I can tell you, even though I 
didn't get here until after 2 o'clock last night, it still felt good 
when I got off the airplane after having stood in the snow in New York 
yesterday. So people come here because they feel good and they feel 
healthy, but you've got a whole lot of kids that don't have health 
insurance.
    So you have the challenges and the joys and the opportunities of 
21st century America writ large. It matters to America what happens in 
Florida. It matters to America whether Florida can meet its challenges 
and move forward together. That's the first thing.
    The second thing I want to say is that what the previous speakers 
said about the leadership Florida has enjoyed under the Chiles-MacKay 
team was not just political luncheon rhetoric. This State is in better 
shape than it was 8 years ago. It has been very, very well led. And you 
should be very proud of that, and it matters who has these jobs.
    It's also true that Lawton, as he said, and Buddy have had a 
remarkable partnership. And I did study up on the details a little when 
Al Gore and I took office, and the thing I liked the best was what 
Lawton said about--he got to do the good stuff and the Lieutenant 
Governor got to do the bad stuff. I've tried to implement that at every 
turn in Washington--[laughter]--with mixed levels of success, I might 
add. But I've done my very best.
    I do think, you know, that it's clear that the Vice President has 
had more influence and a wider range of activity by far than any Vice 
President in history, in no small measure because I believe that's the 
way we ought to work. We ought to make maximum use of the talents of all 
of the people who can serve. And I saw when I looked at Lawton Chiles 
and Buddy MacKay that it could work, and so I am indebted in that way as 
well.
    Finally, let me say, just on a personal note, I'm here because in 
1991, when I started to run for President and only my mother thought I 
had a chance to win--[laughter]--Buddy MacKay stood up and stood by me 
in the straw poll in Florida and stayed with me in the darkest hours of 
my campaign. And when all the experts said that Bill Clinton is dead, he 
will be a minor footnote in history, we have to get somebody--in every 
election--he's the one we got out this time--Buddy MacKay said, ``I 
don't think so. I think I'll stay right there.'' And so I'm staying 
right here. I feel very good being here with my friend.
    There's something to be said for that. You ask, what do you want in 
a Governor? You want charisma, you want eloquence, you want somebody 
that's worked a lifetime and produced something for you. One thing you 
want is somebody who will stick right there, just pure old-fashioned 
personal strength of conviction. And all I know is I have no doubt that 
if any one of you or your beloved State were in trouble, he'd be the 
last guy to abandon ship. And that's important. I know it because I have 
seen it, and it matters in a leader of a State or a nation.
    Now, anybody can rock along with you when the times are good or when 
the circumstances are comfortable or when there's just another nice 
little media event to do. It's quite another thing to stand there when 
the times are tough but the stakes are high. And you should be very 
proud of that.
    Now, let me ask you this: What do you want in a Governor? What do 
you want? What do you want for your State? If I were to make the 
argument, I would say first of all, what we do works. And at some point, 
no matter how good our friends in the Republican Party are with their 
rhetoric, with their attacks, with their characterization,

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sometimes, sooner or later, results should be rewarded.
    You know, when I ran for President, remember what this country was 
going--we had high unemployment, stagnation, drift, division. And they 
had been telling us for 12 years that the Government was the problem and 
they were going to get it out of our lives. Meanwhile, they had 
quadrupled the national debt, and the deficit was $290 billion a year. 
Crime was up; they didn't like it. Welfare was up; they didn't like it. 
They just didn't do anything about it.
    And we said, consistent with, as the previous speakers have said, 
what we've tried to do with the Democratic Leadership Council, look,

we don't think Government is the solution, but we don't think it's the 
problem either. We think it should be a partner. We don't believe 
Government can do everything, but neither do we want Government to go AWOL 
and sit on the sidelines. We believe the job of Government is to create the 
condition and give people the tools to solve their own problems, fulfill 
their own dreams, and make their communities in this country what it ought 
to be. That's what we stood for. And we said, look, we're going to have to 
do some things differently. If we want to restore the economy, rebuild the 
middle class, reclaim the future for our children, we have to do some 
things differently. We have to have different policies, policies that favor 
the future over the past, policies that help not just a few, and policies 
that unite us instead of policies that divide us for short-term political 
gain.

    And so we have worked at that. And we have worked in partnership 
with your leaders here. And you heard Bob Butterworth say what the 
results were. We had a $290 billion deficit the day I took office; it 
was $22 billion this year. Ninety-two percent of the work was done by a 
Democratic economic plan before the last balanced budget passed. The 
lowest unemployment and the lowest crime rates in 24 years, and all we 
did on crime--does the Federal Government have anything to do with the 
crime rate? It depends on whether it's a good partner.
    I'd heard all this talk all these years, but I was living out there 
in America like you. So I said, we're going to pass a crime bill that 
is, in effect, written by local prosecutors and police officers and 
community workers trying to save our kids. And that's why we said, let's 
put 100,000 police on the street; let's take the assault weapons off the 
street; let's stop selling handguns to people with criminal records; and 
let's give our kids something to say yes to when they get out of school 
in the afternoon. And it's worked. It's worked.
    In this last balanced budget bill, we got the biggest increase in 
investment for child health since 1965; it will help to insure 5 million 
people. But it will be done at the State level. Which Governor do you 
trust more to insure the largest number of people over the next 5, 6 
years?
    In this balanced budget bill, we've got the largest new investment 
in education since 1965 and a commitment to set higher standards and a 
commitment to accountability. And we opened the doors of college wider 
than we had in 50 years, since the GI bill

passed. But the work of implementing these things has to be done at the 
State level. Who do you trust to stand up for opportunity and excellence 
and accountability in education and giving Florida the kind of schools you 
need for the 21st century? Buddy.

    There are high stakes here. We have a good record; we have gotten 
results; we have done it by working together. Our theory of Government 
was right, and theirs was wrong. And you can see it in the evidence. But 
the most important thing is, look at Florida's future. You have to 
reconcile education opportunity as well as excellence in standards. You 
have to figure out how to continue to grow this economy, but you have 
got to stick up for the integrity of the Florida environment. Why have 
all these people moved here in the first place? Who do you trust to 
protect the environment of Florida for the 21st century?
    Audience members. Buddy!
    The President. So there are three issues: the environment, the 
economy, education and health care for children. And I can give you lots 
more. It is the nature of what we are trying to do in Washington to have 
a lot of this work actually done at the State and local level. If there 
is a partnership--and I'm trying to do what you want me to do, to set

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the direction for the country but not to try to direct the country, to 
set the direction, and then let people in their local communities solve 
their own problems--then the Governors of this country become more 
important than ever before.
    So Florida is in better shape than it was. The ideas that we've 
espoused have been proved right. And he is the person you can best trust 
to deal with the challenges of the future. That sounds like a pretty 
good case to me, and if you go out there and make it for a year, I don't 
care what other arguments are made, I don't care how much money is 
brought into play against him, I don't care what other national 
political currents are supposed to be bearing down on Florida and who is 
trying to get this electoral bloc or that one--just ask the people of 
Florida to vote for their children and their future and forget about the 
politics, and Buddy MacKay will be the next Governor of Florida.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:27 p.m. at the Radisson Mart Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to State Representative Kendrick Meek; Gov. 
Lawton Chiles of Florida; and Jim Pugh, general chairman, MacKay 
Campaign for Governor.