[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 50 (Monday, December 15, 1997)]
[Pages 2028-2030]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Miami

December 11, 1997

    Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Buddy, for giving me the 
chance to come here today to get your campaign kicked off and to repay 
in some small way the great obligation of friendship I feel for you 
for--as I said today at Buddy's fundraiser--for being for me in late 
1991, before the Florida straw poll, before anything happened, and when 
only my mother felt I could be elected President. Buddy was there. And 
I'm glad to be here for him tonight. Mayor, thank you so much for what 
you said and for the vigor and youth and energy of your leadership and 
the enormous promise of your future. I've loved being with you today, 
and I wish you well. And I cannot thank Chris and Irene enough. I was 
looking at this--you know, I knew farmers back in Arkansas that didn't 
have ponds this big--[laughter]--to feed hundreds of head of cattle. I 
am so--I love this place, and you've made us all feel so much at home. 
And at the end of a very long day, it's wonderful to be here. I'd like 
to thank Governor Romer and Alan Solomont and Dan Dutko for coming down 
for the Democratic Party. I would like to thank not only Chris but also 
Gene Prescott and Mitch Berger for helping us tonight.
    Some of you were at the other place, and I'll try not to give the 
same speech twice--although I am reminded of--maybe that's what I should 
do. One night I was at a concert by Tina Turner, one of my favorite 
political philosophers. [Laughter] And Tina Turner--it was about 10 
years ago; she was just making her big comeback, you know, after she 
told a story about how Ike did her wrong and everything. She had all 
these new songs and she had that great saxophone player who was a 
bodybuilder and has chains all over his body. If you're a Tina Turner 
fan, you've probably seen him. So anyway, so we had the concert and she 
sings all these new songs and they're all real good. And then at the end 
of the concert, the band starts playing the introductory bars to ``Proud 
Mary,'' which was her first hit. So she moves up to the microphone, and 
the crowd

goes nuts. And they start screaming and cheering and she backs off and then 
she taunts them again and moves up and the crowd screams again. And she 
goes up to the microphone and says, ``You know something, I've been singing 
this song for 25 years, but it gets better every time I do it.'' [Laughter] 
So maybe I should just give the same talk. [Laughter]

    Let me say, in 1991, when I decided to leave a job I loved and a 
State I loved and embark on the Presidency, I did it because I was 
afraid our country was moving into a new century and a new era without a 
strategy that would make everybody be a part of America and that in the 
end would not have America be as strong as it ought to be. I felt that 
the political debate in Washington was stale and often irrelevant and 
too infused with an impulse to personal destruction. There's still a lot 
of that there, by the way--[laughter]--one reason I kind of hate to go 
back tonight.
    But the main thing I thought was that we were just thinking in 
yesterday's framework. And I still believe that's what was wrong. And so 
I went to the Democrats in the primary process, and I said, ``Look, I 
want to do something different. I don't want us to abandon our values, 
but I want us to take a new direction based on the time we're living in 
and in the time toward which we're going--a global economy, a global 
society, an information and technology revolution. All the patterns of 
how we live and work and relate to each other and the rest of the world 
is subject to change. I want us to focus on the future, not the past; on 
doing things that help everybody, not just a few people; and on 
promoting unity, not division. There's enough division in this country. 
And I want the Government to be neither the savior, nor sit on the 
sidelines, but instead to focus on a clear mission which is to create 
the conditions and give people the tools to make the most of their own 
lives.'' And that's what we've been doing for 5 or 6 years now--5 years 
really, since I've been President, and the results have been pretty 
satisfactory.

[[Page 2029]]

    And I think when the issue is whether you should support the 
Democratic Party or whether you should support Buddy MacKay or whether 
you should keep helping me and our crowd do what we're trying to do, you 
just need to know that everything that I do and everything I try to see 
that our party stands for, I try to make sure that we're thinking of 
everyone, not just a few; that we're promoting unity, not just division; 
and we're committed to the future, not the past.
    There's still a lot out there to do. I'm glad we've got the lowest 
unemployment rate and the lowest crime rates in 24 years and the biggest 
drop in welfare in history and a gazillion other impressive things I 
could say. We still have to prove that we can grow the economy and do 
what it takes to preserve the planet. We still have to prove that we can 
provide for our parents, in terms of health care and retirement, save 
for our own retirement, and preserve Social Security and Medicare in a 
way that doesn't bankrupt our children.
    You know, I'm the oldest of the baby boomers, and I'm increasingly 
mindful of that. I guess I'm what you call near-elderly. [Laughter] And 
when our crowd retires and we all get into the ranks of the retired, 
those of us who get there have a life expectancy up in the eighties 
somewhere. And there will be only a little more than two people working 
for every one of us that's retired. We have a moral obligation now, 
while I'm still in office, to try to figure out how to preserve Social 
Security and how to preserve Medicare, indeed, how to make sure other 
people who don't have access to retirement that's sufficient to support 
their lifestyle can save more for their own retirement and afford to 
keep getting health care in a way that doesn't bankrupt our kids. Now, 
can we do that? Of course we can. But we have to do it. We still can't 
say with a straight face that every American child without regard to 
their race, their income, or their station in life has access to world-
class education. And until we can, we can't secure the future of this 
country.
    Those are just three big issues. If you look around the world, 
there's a lot of fear in America apparently about expanding trade. I 
think it's a mistake--a third of growth comes from selling more things 
to other people. If we've got 4 percent of the world's people and 20 
percent of the world's wealth, we can't keep our income unless we sell 
something to the other 96 percent. On the other hand, you have to be 
sympathetic to American workers who figure that more and more and more 
what they say, feel, or think doesn't matter, that their whole pattern 
of existence can be wiped away in an instant by people who aren't 
accountable to anybody and not loyal to any country. That's the sort of 
negative of an emerging global economy. So what do we have to do? We 
have to find a way to get the benefits of trade and preserve the social 
compact. We can't protect people from economic change, because economic 
change is bringing a

lot of benefit to a lot of people. But when people lose and they're still 
good people and they're willing to show up for work in the morning, we need 
to move more quickly to help them get the training they need, the skills 
they need, the future they need.

    So there's plenty left to do. And that's why you're here, and that's 
why I believe the Democrats are the right party to do it, as I said at 
the earlier event. The two seminal decisions that were taken in 1993 and 
1994 that have had a big impact on this country every day since was, 
first, the economic plan, which got no Republican votes, which had 
reduced the deficit by 92 percent by the time we adopted the balanced 
budget law; and second, the crime bill, which was bitterly opposed by 
the Republicans because the NRA didn't like it because we had the Brady 
bill, the assault weapons ban, 100,000 more police, and preventive 
programs for kids.
    But those are the strategies that are working in community after 
community after community throughout the country to lower the crime 
rate. In the work we're doing with the Republicans when we work 
together, I think our party makes a unique contribution. Both caucuses 
voted for the balanced budget. It was a remarkable document. The 
Republicans had a slightly higher percentage of House Members voting for 
it than the Democrats did. The Democrats had a higher percentage of 
Senators voting for the balanced budget than the Republicans did. But 
over two-thirds of both voted for it.

[[Page 2030]]

    What did we give to that? First of all, we gave them 92 percent of 
the work. It's a lot easier to balance the budget and spend more money 
if you're almost home. But secondly, we said, now is the time to provide 
health insurance to the children of working parents who can't afford it. 
And they said, okay, and we did it. And we said, now is the time to give 
parents tax credits, not only for their children at home but for the 
cost of college tuition for all 4 years and graduate school and for 
people who lose their own jobs or are underemployed and have to come 
back. So we make a difference. And if you look at those challenges out 
there, they matter.
    The last point I want to make is this--I said this before at the 
other thing, and I want to say this to you--I have taken a lot of good-
natured ribbing and sometimes outright criticism by commentators for 
being a notoriously personal President, for being interested in 
individuals that I know and telling a lot of stories and seeing politics 
with a very human and highly individualized face, even if I'm just 
working a crowd. I have vivid memories of people I have

met in crowds all my life and the stories they've told.

    But the truth is, a nation is nothing much more or less than the sum 
of its stories. There was a report on one of the television networks the 
other night, a wonderful report about the State of Tennessee reviving 
the art of storytelling. Did any of you see that? They actually are now 
having an annual storytelling contest in Tennessee and bringing in all 
of these people out from the hills and these rural areas and letting 
people tell their stories and letting other people listen to them.
    Mayor Penelas told me the story of his parents tonight--told me how 
much it meant to his mother to come to the Inauguration. He said that 
tonight would be her birthday if she were still with us, talked to me 
about his father. I don't know about you, but I think he does a better 
job as mayor every day because he respects his parents' roots, his 
parents' values, loves them when they're here and when they're gone, and 
they're part of the story of his life.
    Every one of you has got a story to tell. That's what I try to tell 
people that work for me in the White House: Don't forget, every person 
you ever come in contact with has got a story. It deserves to be 
respected, and you can learn something from it. This country is still 
around here after 220 years plus because people got a chance to live 
their dreams, and the stories got better generation after generation. 
And it will be here 220 years from now if we do our job to form a more 
perfect Union, to pull us closer together, and to meet the challenges of 
tomorrow. That is the job of every generation of Americans, but it 
begins by appreciating the absolute integrity of every person's life and 
every person's right to dream and giving everybody that chance at the 
brass ring. That's why I'm still a Democrat and why I expect to die one 
and why I hope between now and then I can convert a lot of others.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:45 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Chris and Irene Korge. A tape was 
not available for verification of the content of these remarks.