[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 30 (Monday, July 27, 1998)]
[Pages 1419-1426]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Arkansas State Democratic Committee in Little Rock, 
Arkansas

July 18, 1998

    Thank you very much. It's good to see you. It's wonderful to be 
home. I always learn something new. When Bill Bristow was giving that 
speech, I said to myself, ``I am sitting here watching before my very 
eyes the broadening of the base of the Democratic Party.'' He now has 
got every math teacher in Arkansas committed forever. [Laughter]
    Thank you very much, Bill. I thought that was a terrific--didn't he 
do a great job? Let's give him another hand. I thought that was great, 
really great. [Applause]
    I want to thank Blanche Lincoln, Bill Bristow, Judy Smith for being 
here and for their candidacies; Kurt Dilday, my longtime friend; Mark 
Pryor. I thank Congressman Vic Snyder for the wonderful job he does in 
Washington every day. And in his absence--I know he had to be away at a 
funeral today--I want to thank Marion Berry, too. He has done a 
wonderful job, especially for farmers.
    I thank Jimmie Lou and Gus Wingfield and Charlie Daniels and all the 
people who have kept the light going in the Democratic Party and State 
office; Judge Corbin. I'm so pleased to see many people running for 
office. You know, I had mixed feelings about this term limit issue when 
it came along, but I felt a little better when Mary Anne Salmon decided 
to run for the legislature, and I'm glad to see her back there.
    I want to say to all of you, too, I read that article in the paper 
today, and I want to comment a little more about it, ask you whether my 
Presidency had been good or bad for the State. And the one example on 
the negative side they had was what happened in a recent transportation 
bill where even the Transportation Secretary from Arkansas could not 
implement the plain recommendation of the study because our neighbor 
from Mississippi jerked away funding for I-69. No one pointed out in the 
Arkansas Democrat article that that would not have happened if we had a 
Democratic Congress--that would not have occurred.
    I say that because, what the heck, I never get to be partisan, and 
it's nice to be home. [Laughter] And also because it's true. [Laughter] 
Let me say to all of you, I am profoundly grateful for everything you've 
done for me and for our family. Hillary just got back from a remarkably 
successful tour, the first of our millennium tours where we're trying to 
save the treasures of the United States as we approach the year 2000. 
She went--first of all, we began by trying to save the Star-Spangled 
Banner. And then she took a remarkable tour through a lot of our 
country's heritage: Thomas Edison's home, Harriet Tubman's home, George 
Washington's military headquarters, and then to Seneca Falls, New York, 
where the women's movement began 150 years ago, where the declaration of 
sentiments by 68 women and 32 men who had these radical ideas, like 
women ought to be able to vote--[laughter]--run for office, own the 
clothes on their back. We've come a long way. And she asked me to tell 
you hello.
    And I just want all of you to know, too, that I think quite often of 
that day in October nearly 7 years ago now, when I stood on the steps of 
the old State Capitol--many of you were there--and said that I wanted to 
build a better future for our children. And I want to quote--I wrote 
this down--usually when I come home I feel free to speak without notes, 
but I did want to write this down--nearly 7 years ago, this is really 
the test--``to restore the American dream, to fight for the forgotten 
middle class, to provide more

[[Page 1420]]

opportunity, insist on more responsibility, and create a greater sense 
of community for our great country.''
    Now, there are some things, it seems to me, that are fairly clear 
and difficult to debate. And I think it's important when we evaluate the 
coming campaigns of Blanche Lincoln, Vic Snyder, Judy Smith, Bill 
Bristow, Kurt Dilday, Mark Pryor, and others to remember what America 
was like 7 years ago. We had high unemployment, rising crime and welfare 
rates, increasing social division, no clear vision driving the country 
at home or abroad preparing us for the 21st century. And Washington was 
doing what I thought it had done too much of before, and what I still 
hate to see: they were having increasingly harsh political debates in 
terms that didn't make a lick of sense to most of us who lived out here 
in the country.
    There were the standard debates about, well, the Government is the 
problem; the Government is the answer. No one I knew believed either 
thing. I couldn't figure out anybody who believed it until they got into 
Washington, DC. Everybody had to be a conservative or a liberal, and if 
you had a different position, somehow there was something wrong with you 
because it required the people interpreting you to America, to think 
about it. And the people driving the politics of the Nation's Capital 
didn't like it.
    But we came forward in that campaign in '91 and '92 with a set of 
new ideas. We had new approaches to the economy, to education, to crime, 
to welfare, to the environment, to foreign policy, to the whole idea of 
Government. It seemed to me that the answer was that we ought to look at 
Government as our partner in building the American future and that the 
rule of Government ought to be to give the tools to solve their own 
problems, to build strong communities and families, and to create the 
conditions in which that could be possible.
    No one thought Government could solve all the problems, but to 
pretend that by getting out of the way, we'd all be better off would be 
to violate the very insight of the Founding Fathers, who said they 
formed a Government in the first place because we could not do alone 
some of the things that were necessary for America to pursue life, 
liberty, and happiness.
    And now, we've had a few years to evaluate the results. So when 
people ask you, ``Has it made a difference?''--let me ask you this: If 
on Inauguration Day in 1993, someone that had told you that within 5\1/
2\ years America would have 16 million new jobs and the lowest 
unemployment rate in 28 years, the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the 
lowest welfare rolls in 29 years, the first balanced budget and surplus 
in 29 years, the lowest inflation rate in 32 years, the highest 
homeownership in history with the smallest Government in 35 years, would 
you have said, ``I will accept that and be glad for the next 5 years for 
what's going on in America?'' [Applause]
    And along the way, with the HOPE scholarships, the tax credits for 
college, the reformed student loan program, 300,000 more work-study 
positions, we can literally say we've opened the doors to college to 
anybody who's willing to work for it.
    We have the highest childhood immunization rates in history. We've 
added 5 million children to the ranks of the health insured--we're in 
the process of doing that. We protected the pensions of millions and 
millions of Americans and made it easier for people working for small 
business or for themselves to take out pensions and to get health 
insurance; 12\1/2\ or 13 million people have taken time off from their 
job without getting fired when a baby was born or a parent was sick 
because of the family and medical leave bill. We raised the minimum wage 
and are trying to do it again to try to help people on the lower end of 
the economic ladder who are working hard. And we gave a big tax cut in 
1993, worth about $1,000 a year today, to working families with incomes 
under $30,000.
    We have 1,000 colleges in America involved in sending their students 
into our schools to make sure all of our kids can read well by the time 
they get out of the third grade. We have 100,000 young people now--just 
at 100,000--who served in the AmeriCorps program, working all over 
America, including in Arkansas. And I see kids from Arkansas all over 
America when I travel around, helping to solve the problems of this 
country at the grassroots level and

[[Page 1421]]

earning money for college. Our country is a better, stronger, more 
united place than it was in 1992. You helped to make it possible, and 
you ought to be proud of it.
    But here's the main point I want to make today, in behalf of Blanche 
and Bill and all our other candidates up here, in behalf of the record 
that Vic Snyder has already begun to establish and the efforts that 
Marion Berry is making. You've been awful good to me, and you made me 
feel great as a person when I came in. And I appreciate being given some 
responsibility for the good things that have happened. And I think there 
is a connection between what we have done and what has occurred, even 
though, as always, the American people themselves deserve most of the 
credit, as is always true in a free society. But the changes we made, 
the decisions we made had consequences.
    The point I want to make to you as Democrats in Arkansas, thinking 
about your State, these elections, and your country's future, is it's 
not just important to get the right people; it matters if you're doing 
the right things. If you say, all that matters is that you have the 
right people, then every election is a new story, and people can say, 
``Oh well, Bill Clinton gave a speech,'' or ``this, that, or the other 
thing'' or, ``He was a pretty good leader; he could take a lot of 
heat.'' You may have seen, by the way, the other day in Florida, 
Sylvester Stallone gave me the gloves, the boxing gloves he used in 
``Rocky''--[laughter]--and I said it was a good thing, because I proved 
I could take a punch for the last 6 years, and I was ready to deliver a 
few now. I thought it was a good idea. [Laughter]
    What I want you to focus on today, because it really matters to the 
case you're going to make here between now and November, is two things 
are important: You have to get good people, but you have to do the right 
things. These things happen because we've done the right things, and 
there are honest, principled disagreements at home and in Washington 
about the right things.
    We've got the lowest crime rate in 25 years. And they're still 
trying to stop my efforts to put 100,000 police on the street. I mean, 
it's unbelievable. We have proved what works in education, and yet, 
they're still saying no to smaller classes, no to better school 
buildings, no to so many of our efforts to improve the education of our 
children.
    We have proved we can grow the economy and improve the environment. 
And they're still trying to weaken our efforts to protect the 
environment, even though, I might have said, while all this economic 
good news is occurring; the water is cleaner; the air is cleaner; the 
food is safer; we have more toxic waste dumps cleaned up in 4 years, our 
first 4 years, than they did in 12; and we set aside more land in 
perpetuity than any administrations except Franklin and Theodore 
Roosevelt. So we've proved you could do that, but there's still an 
assault on the environment.
    And all this rhetoric about how perfectly terrible Government is--
well, when they had control of it, it was bigger than it is now but not 
as good.
    This is real important. If you want to go out and make an argument 
for why Bill Bristow or any Democrat should be Governor, for what 
Attorney General Mark Pryor would do working with like-minded Democrats, 
for why it would make a difference if Judy Smith were in Congress, and 
for why one Republican from Arkansas is more than enough in the United 
States Senate, you've got to know what you're talking about. You have to 
understand that there are really consequences. I'm telling you it makes 
a difference.
    We're not in this old debate anymore. It's the real world now. 
People need to see things unfolding as they are. Not all this are you 
anti-Government or pro-Government? Are you liberal or conservative? What 
do you stand for? Or what is your education policy? What is your health 
care policy? Are you for the health care bill of rights, or not? Do you 
believe that everybody in an HMO ought to have the right to an emergency 
room service if they need it, ought to have a right to a specialist if 
they need it?
    You've been seeing all the press we're getting in Washington on 
that. We're bringing in all of these people; we're talking about the 
horror stories, all the doctors pleading and pleading and pleading with 
the insurance companies, do this procedure, that procedure, the other 
procedure. They take 90 days

[[Page 1422]]

or 180 days. The time the procedure gets approved, it's too late, and 
the people die.
    We had a woman who spends her life working in a medical office, 
calling, trying to get authorization for procedures. She broke down and 
cried at this hearing I had the other day, this meeting, saying, ``I'm 
just so sick and tired of telling people that they can't have the health 
care my doctor is begging to give them.''
    We had a hearing in Washington last week. We had two brave 
Republicans show up with all the Democrats in the House and several in 
the Senate, saying we're for a Patients' Bill of Rights. And one of 
these Republicans was a doctor. And I said, ``You know, we Democrats, 
now, what we're trying to do, we want to put progress over partisanship. 
We welcome anybody to come who agrees with our ideas.'' And this brave 
doctor from Iowa stood up there and said that--he had been introduced as 
a doctor who in his spare time would go to Central America and help 
children with cleft palates and fix them, so they wouldn't be disfigured 
for life. And then he showed a picture of such a child, and the whole 
room gasps. And he said, ``This child is not from Central America. This 
child is from the United States of America, and this child was denied 
coverage for fixing his cleft palate on the theory that it was cosmetic 
surgery.'' And then he showed another picture where the kid got fixed 
anyway and how good-looking the child was, and everybody cheered; we all 
felt good.
    Now, the fact is that the Democrats up there are for a strong 
Patients' Bill of Rights, and the leadership of the other party are 
opposing it. The fact is the Democrats are for giving the States and the 
Governors and the legislatures and the teachers help for smaller 
classes, for better school buildings, for more charter schools, for 
greater investments of all kinds. And by and large, our whole agenda is 
being opposed by the leaders of the other party.
    The fact is, our party is in Washington working hard to prove that 
we can grow the economy and preserve the environment. After this summer, 
don't you believe the climate is warming up? [Laughter] Don't you think 
Al Gore was right after all? [Applause] We now have ways of measuring 
temperature changes for over 500 years. The 5 hottest years in history, 
the 1990's--in over 500 years, the 5 hottest years in history--1997, the 
hottest year. This is going to be hotter.
    I did my radio address today on things we're trying to do to help 
farmers. We have this bizarre situation in America now where worldwide 
bumper crops and financial weakness in Asia, and for many of our 
farmers, heat or flood or pestilence have created this crazy condition 
where prices are low because there are big supplies and fewer buyers, 
and they don't have much of a crop anyway. North Dakota, farm income 
down 90 percent from last year--90 percent.
    And so we're doing what we can to, first of all, purchase a lot more 
food and give it to countries where people are hungry. Secondly, I 
presented to Congress a number of other ideas to immediately release 
hundreds of million of dollars that would raise farm income.
    But anyway, we're having this big discussion up there. Now, we 
either are going to do these things or we're not. But in a larger sense, 
I want to make the point that the climate is changing. When I was in 
China recently I spoke to the American Chamber of Commerce--this is not 
the Democratic Party--the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. 
[Laughter] And I got two spontaneous ovations. One was when I talked 
about climate change and how we had to work with the Chinese to see them 
grow their economy without using energy in the same way we did; 
otherwise, we could burn up the atmosphere, and it would be hard for us 
to breathe, which is already a big problem over there.
    Now, I'm telling you, if you look at what's happening to the 
climate, if you look at what happened in Florida--you saw all those 
fires in Florida. Florida had the wettest winter, the driest spring in 
history. Then June in Florida was hotter than any July and August. And 
if you've ever been to Florida in July and August, that's saying 
something--the hottest month ever. Things are changing.
    Now, we can put our heads in the sand, or we can say we're going to 
figure out how Americans solve this problem. The leaders of the other 
party, in one of their committees they have voted to deny me the right 
to use

[[Page 1423]]

any funds, even to have seminars about this problem and talk to the 
American people about it.
    You know, I never will forget the day some young person who worked 
for me said, ``Denial is not just a river in Egypt.'' [Laughter] And 
there are lots of examples like this--in health care, in education, in 
the environment, in economic policy.
    In economic policy--yes, we've got a good economy. There are still 
towns in the delta that need help. There are still neighborhoods in our 
cities that need help. There are still Native American reservations out 
West that need help. We've got a whole agenda that says we ought to 
bring the benefits of this economic moment of golden prosperity to 
everybody in America and give everybody a chance to be a part of it. And 
so far it has not been embraced in Congress by the leaders of the other 
party.
    So I ask you about all this. What is this, a nightclub? [Laughter] I 
will now sing ``Danny Boy,'' and you will applaud at the right time. 
[Laughter] Somebody leaned against the wall there last night. Somebody 
was up too late last night over there by the wall, they just leaned 
against the wall and nodded out. [Laughter]
    We're laughing; we're having a good time, but I want you to be 
serious between now and November. I have tried to put progress over 
partisanship. All of you know me. You know I work with anybody who wants 
to work with me. And you get it, what's going on, and I can tell by the 
way you clapped before at the appropriate moment. [Laughter]
    But let me tell you, in the end what matters is what happens in the 
lives of the American people. The Democrats will be rewarded if we do 
the right things, if we have the right consequences, and if we convince 
people that it's not just a matter of name-calling and labeling, but 
whether you have the right ideas.
    I want you to think about it. We've got new leadership in the party. 
I thank Vaughn McQuary and all the other folks that are coming in here 
and trying to get this thing up and going. And I like to see your 
enthusiasm; I'm glad you're here in such large numbers. But if somebody 
asks you why you're a Democrat, why you support the President, why we've 
succeeded in the last 5\1/2\ years, what we would do if given the 
Governor's office and the attorney general's office, you need to have 
answers. And you need to be able to tell people in ways that are not 
hateful or small or mean spirited. We don't need to respond to them in 
kind, as they have to us. We need to remember our scriptural lessons.
    We need instead to lift our visions and lift the vision of the 
people and talk to them about what we're going to do. While I was 
listening to Bill Bristow talk--you know, we can do a lot in Washington 
to help education. But the constitution of almost every State in the 
Union makes it clear that education is the primary responsibility of the 
States and the communities and the schools.
    Now, let me ask you something. No one here, I take it, would dispute 
the proposition that we have the finest system of higher education in 
the world in America. No one disputes that. Otherwise, why do people 
come here from all over the world every year to get into it? And no one 
would seriously assert that America's elementary and secondary schools 
are the finest in the world--but they could be, and in points they are, 
and from time to time they manifest that.
    You look over the horizon and you ask yourself, what are the big 
challenges of the future? The first thing that comes to mind is we've 
got to prove we can have the finest elementary and secondary education 
for all our kids without regard to their income, their background, their 
race, or their region in the world.
    Now, if you believe that, then every time you're in the coffee shop, 
every time you're on the street, every time you're talking to somebody, 
you have to say to them, ``You cannot make these decisions in November. 
You cannot cast a vote for Governor; you cannot cast a vote for 
Congress; you cannot cast a vote for the Senate; you cannot make these 
decisions without asking yourself, who's got the best ideas for 
education; who's best for my children or my grandchildren; what's 
Arkansas going to look like 50 years from now?'' You know this is true.
    In the Congress--let me give you another example--a huge issue--I'm 
the oldest of the baby boomers, and if present rates of

[[Page 1424]]

birth, immigration, and retirement continue, by the time all of us get 
retired, there will only be about two Americans working for every person 
drawing Social Security. Unless we make some changes and start to make 
them now, by the time this happens, we will have an unsustainable 
situation in which we will either have to have a huge cut in the Social 
Security benefits of retirees, or a huge increase in the taxes on our 
kids, thereby undermining their ability to raise our grandchildren.
    Every baby boomer I know is determined to avoid both these 
consequences. Now, are there ways we can do it? You bet there are. But 
we have to start now, which is why I have said, let's don't spend any of 
this surplus, even on stuff Democrats like. Let's don't give any tax 
cuts, even tax cuts Democrats like, until we save Social Security for 
the 21st century. That's important.
    Believe me, this is a huge issue. Some of their leaders are saying, 
``Well, now they estimate we'll have a $63 billion surplus this year, 
and that means the surpluses out in the years ahead are going to be even 
bigger than we thought. And we can't use all that money. We need a big 
tax cut now.'' And, oh, it just happens to be right here before the 
election.
    Well, I know it's right here before the election, but let me remind 
you, man, we've been waiting for 29 years for a balanced budget. 
[Laughter] It took me 5\1/2\ years to get it done because there was a 
$290 billion deficit when we got up there. And we won't have a balanced 
budget or a surplus officially until the new fiscal year starts on 
October 1st, after we close our books at midnight on September 30th. It 
looks to me like, after 29 years of being in the red, after the years of 
1981 to 1993 when we quadrupled the debt of the country in 12 years, it 
looks to me like we could wait just one year until we figured out how to 
save Social Security and stop assuming that we were going to have a 
surplus that hadn't even materialized yet. I'd just like to see the bank 
account just for a day or two. Wouldn't you? [Applause]
    Now, if you believe that, that's an important idea. You need to know 
if you believe that. And you need to tell your friends and neighbors who 
aren't as political as you are or maybe not even Democrats--and maybe 
they're independents, maybe they're Republicans, but they're thinking 
about this--look, you got to think about this. This is not just where 
you go in and vote the way you normally do. We're in a time of enormous 
change. We didn't just elect the right people in 1992; we began to do 
the right things. And it is profoundly important that we do the right 
things in the future: saving Social Security and Medicare for the 21st 
century; making education the best in the world; proving we can grow the 
economy and preserve the environment; taking care of our health care 
system so that we don't keep ferreting people out and we, instead, keep 
bringing people in.
    And let me just mention one other thing, that Arkansas people I 
think understand more, partly because we have so many farmers here. One 
of the biggest problems we've got now, looming ahead, is our trade 
deficit's gotten real big. Now, why has our trade deficit gotten real 
big? Because the economic crisis in Asia, primarily. What's happened? 
Well, when the people you're doing business with run out of money, one 
of the things that they do is mark down the things that are selling you 
so it's cheaper, and they hope you buy more of it. And they still don't 
have any money to buy what you've been selling them.
    Now, I have been trying for 6 months--now, this is a hard one, 
except for people in agriculture who understand it--I've been trying for 
6 months to get the Congress just to pay America's fair share to the 
International Monetary Fund. And there are a lot of politicians up there 
making those election year speeches, saying, ``Oh, man, this is just a 
big bailout to the foreigners, and why should we be doing this?''
    We contributed, along with other nations, to this fund to stabilize 
and reform economies when they get in trouble. Why should we do it? 
Well, 30 percent of the growth that you just applauded for when I came 
in and I started reeling off all those statistics came because we were 
selling more of our stuff to other countries. We have 4 percent of the 
world's people in America; we have 20 percent of the world's income. If 
we want to keep doing better, we've got to sell something to the other 
96 percent. And we have

[[Page 1425]]

to expect them to keep doing better, too; otherwise, they not only won't 
want to, they won't be able to buy more of our things.
    That's what this International Monetary Fund issue is about in 
Washington, DC. If we want our neighbors to buy our products, they've 
got to have the money to do it. And when they get in trouble because 
they're developing their societies and their economic systems, this 
whole fund was set up not as a bailout, not as a gift, not as a welfare 
program, but as an instrument to force reform and revitalization.
    These are things worth debating. You know, there's a big debate here 
in Arkansas because of what some of the elected officials said about 
whether I should have gone to China. I take it there's not as much 
debate now as there was before I went. And I hope there's not. But let 
me ask you--so we've got to decide that. This matters.
    You look all over the world. We've got people that differ with us. 
They have different religious systems, different political systems, 
different cultural values. We have to decide when we deal with them and 
when we don't. Now, if people do things we really think are terrible, 
should we have economic sanctions? I think we should. But look what 
happened when I put economic sanctions on India and Pakistan. We pointed 
out, well, we don't like it if it's on food. And we say, well, we don't 
like it if it's on food because you shouldn't punish people when they're 
eating. But we also don't like it because it hurts our farm income in a 
bad year. So we want a mixed approach, where we kept trying to reach out 
and work with people.
    China has got 1.2 billion people. They're going to have a lot to do 
with how your children and grandchildren live. And we ought to try to 
get along with them and work with them and build a common future with 
them if we can. And we ought to have a way of expressing our honest 
disagreements when we have to. And you can only do both of those things 
if you're dealing with people. This is worth debating.
    The last point I want to make is this--something a long way from 
Arkansas usually is my foreign policy job--a lot of the challenges I 
face. But you just look around the world at the things I've dealt with 
since you sent me to Washington. Last week three little Irish-Catholic 
boys, killed in a firebomb in Northern Ireland because they're still 
fighting over religious battles that have roots that are 600 years old. 
In Kosovo, a place a lot of Americans still have a little trouble 
finding on a map, we're worried about a new destabilizing war breaking 
out because the Albanians and the Serbs can't get along--the same thing 
that happened in Bosnia. In the Middle East, we still have trouble 
because we can't get people to take just one more step to bring the 
Arabs and the Jews, the Israelis, together. But we're working on it.
    When Hillary and I went to Africa, we went to Rwanda, where two 
different tribal peoples, that most Americans aren't even aware exist in 
a country that has been coherent for hundreds of years, got in a fight, 
and 900,000 people or so died in a matter of 100 days. Why? Because as 
we know from our own painful civil rights history, getting people to be 
pitted against each other because of their differences is deeply 
ingrained in the human psyche and easy to bring up and very often 
profitable for people who seek power.
    And if you contrast that with what we are trying to achieve in 
America today, where we're a more and more diverse country, from more 
and more different backgrounds, in a world that is getting smaller and 
smaller because of technology, this country's best days are clearly 
still ahead. But we have to do the right things as well as elect the 
right people. And it's time the American people and the people of our 
State actually had to think about that. What are the right things to do 
in education in Arkansas? What are the right things to do in health 
care? What are the right things to do in economic policy? What is the 
right policy in building one community, one State, and one Nation, 
across all the lines that divide us?
    I have tried to give the Democratic Party new ideas based on old 
values. I have tried to persuade the American people that the 
consequences that are good that are coming today are due to them, but 
also due to the fact that in Washington we have done the right things.
    Now, this is a very important election. It's important for that 
little child there and all the kids in this State. And it's very 
important

[[Page 1426]]

that the citizens of our State not do what people so often do when times 
are good, which is just relax and say, ``Just leave everything more or 
less the way it is,'' because when times are good but changing rapidly, 
you have to use the good times and the confidence people have to deal 
with the underlying challenges, and because, as all of us who are older 
here know, no conditions last forever. If we can't use these good times 
to deal with our long-term challenges, when will we ever do it?
    So I ask you--I'm glad to see you; I've had a good time; I've 
enjoyed the jibes and the cheering and the yelling. But I want you to 
keep clearly in mind that we have a future to build for these children. 
You've got a State to build and a country to build. And the reason we're 
in the shape we're in today is because we had good ideas that we 
implemented that had good consequences. And the reason that I will be a 
member of this party until the day I die is that more often than not, we 
have been the instrument in this century and in my lifetime in 
fulfilling the vision that the Founding Fathers gave us to always deepen 
our freedom and always perfect our Union.
    So I want you to help me. I want you to elect these people. I want 
you to work. And I want you to go out there and literally grab your 
friends and neighbors by the shoulder and say, ``Let's talk about this. 
Don't go through this election in a fog. Don't say, `Oh, everything is 
fine; let's just keep on going the way we're going.' '' Think about 
where we are as a State and Nation. And think about where we were in 
1992, and I think you'll have quite a good case to make.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:05 a.m. in the auditorium at the Embassy 
Suites Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Arkansas gubernatorial 
candidate Bill Bristow; senatorial candidate Blanche Lambert Lincoln; 
Judy Smith, candidate for Arkansas' Fourth Congressional District; Kurt 
Dilday, candidate for Lt. Gov.; Mark Pryor, State attorney general 
candidate; Jimmie Lou Fisher, State treasurer; Gus Wingfield, State 
auditor; Charlie Daniels, State land commissioner; Arkansas Supreme 
Court Associate Justice Donald L. Corbin; Mary Anne Salmon, executive 
director, Clinton Arkansas Office; and Vaughn McQuary, chair, Democratic 
Party of Arkansas.