[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 17 (Monday, May 3, 1999)]
[Pages 736-741]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks in a Discussion Entitled ``The Third Way: Progressive Governance
for the 21st Century''
April 25, 1999
[Moderator Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council,
opened the discussion.]
President Clinton. Thank you very much. I'd like to begin just by
expressing my profound gratitude to Al From, and to all the people at
the Democratic Leadership Council for having the passion and the
patience to work at this for years and years and years.
I, too, want to thank Hillary and the hearty band within the White
House who keep us focused on the big ideas and values that got us here
in the first place. And I'd like to say a special word of thanks to my
friend and aide Sidney Blumenthal, for the work that he's done in trying
to put this meeting together.
I would also like to just very briefly say how very much I admire
the people who are here with me at this table today, how much I have
learned from them, how much I look forward to working with them at every
opportunity.
Wim Kok, from The Netherlands, actually was doing all this before we
were. He just didn't know that--he didn't have anybody like Al From who
could put a good label on it. [Laughter] But he was doing it, for years
and years and years. Tony Blair has made me long for a parliamentary
system. [Laughter] Gerhard Schroeder had to wait even longer than I
did--[laughter]--and was also a distinguished Governor. And Massimo
D'Alema has proved that you--I think--I'll make you a prediction here--I
think he is already proving that even in Italy, where governments tend
to be like the flavor of the month for ice cream, that the right sort of
politics can have a sustained long-term impact on some of the most
wonderful people in the world. So I'm honored to be here with all of
them.
I'd like to thank my friend and ally, Congressman Cal Dooley, who is
out there; the
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Secretary of Transportation, Rodney Slater; the Secretary of the Army,
Louis Caldera, who helped me in so many ways. And we're going to hear
afterward from Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Governor and
Democratic Party Chairman Roy Romer; Mayor Wellington Webb of Denver;
and Commissioner Michael Thurmond. I thank them.
All of you know we've just finished a 3-day NATO conference,
celebrating the 50th anniversary of NATO, bringing in new members,
celebrating an astonishing partnership with over 40 countries, including
the countries of southeastern Europe, all except for Serbia, and the
countries of central Asia in this amazing new group which, itself, is
full of Third Way questions.
At our last luncheon, one of the members made a crack that we had
five members of the last Politburo of the Soviet Union sitting around
our table today. And another one said, ``Yes, and a lot of the rest of
us should have been on the Politburo, but we weren't.'' [Laughter] And
it was a picture of how much the world has changed.
What gives rise to this kind of politics, when the old order is
destroyed or when the realities of daily life or popular dreams can no
longer be accommodated by a given set of political arrangements through
a political debate? We see that in southeastern Europe today, with the
crisis in Kosovo, where the old choices between state stability and
being consumed by ethnic hatreds, and what we're arguing for is a new
integration based on the embrace of difference, not the oppression of
it.
I would like to just pose a couple of questions and then let our
panelists take off. You heard Al From say that basically our lodestars
have always been in the United States the concept of opportunity,
responsibility, and community. We've worked on this for years. We tried
to think of simpler and more complex ways to say what we stand for, but
we've never done any better than that.
So I think I will just leave it there. But let me say, what could
that mean in the present time? What is giving rise to all these people's
elections? Why is this happening everywhere? It's not some blind
coincidence. I believe it is because the social arrangements, which were
developed within countries, and the international arrangements among
them, which grew up from the Great Depression through the Second World
War and then the cold war, are no longer adequate to meet the challenges
of the day.
And most of the parties of the right made a living by beating us in
elections by saying how bad we were. And whatever--we were always for
more Government, and they were for less of it. And if you thought it
was, by definition, bad, then less is always better than more.
So they had quite a run in the 1980's. And then it became readily
apparent that that didn't really solve any problems. And that there were
serious questions that demanded serious answers. So I will just pose
three, and then let our panelists go in whatever order they would like.
I seems to me that the great question that any political party that
purports to represent ordinary citizens must answer is: How do you make
the most of the economic possibilities of the global information economy
and still preserve the social contract? What can governments do to help
make sure that every responsible citizen has a chance to succeed in the
global economy? And how can we discharge our responsibilities, as the
leaders of wealthy countries, to put a human face on the global economy
so that in other countries, as well, no one who's willing to work is
left behind?
The second question I'd like to ask is, what is the nature of the
social contract now, and how is it different from what it used to be?
What does it mean? Are there entitlements that we should still have?
Beyond entitlements, what are the empowerment issues of the social
contract? What is the role of the private sector and the relationship of
the government to it?
And finally, what do we mean by the concept of community? Who's in,
who's out? And how can we create a concept of both national and
international community that is a more powerful magnet drawing people
together than the awful magnets pulling them apart, rooted in racial and
ethnic and religious difference throughout the world?
And I will leave with that. It is a cruel irony that in this world
we're entering, that
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we have always celebrated in our dreams as a place of unbelievable
technological explosion, unbelievable scientific advance, unbelievable
advances in health care, and using computer technology to empower people
in small African and Latin American villages, for example, to learn
things--would be dominated by the most primitive hatreds in all of human
history, those rooted in our basic fear of people who are different from
us. How can we construct a community in which those forces pulling us
together are more powerful than those tearing us apart?
There are hundreds of questions we debate all the time, but just
about every question we debate falls within one of those three
categories. And so having set it up like that, we have no agenda, and
I'll just turn it over to our friends.
Mr. Blair, would you like to go first?
[At this point, Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom, Prime
Minister Wim Kok of The Netherlands, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of
Germany, and Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema of Italy presented their
opening remarks.]
President Clinton. I should say that the Prime Minister is a good
friend of the man who is now the most famous Italian in America, Roberto
Benigni. And after his performance at the Academy Awards, you have both
affection and respect. [Laughter]
I would just like to try to comment on a couple of things, to maybe
make the conversation somewhat more specific and sort of segue into the
participation of our other American leaders here.
If you look at this whole Third Way challenge, in America, for the
Democratic Party it meant we had to prove we could manage the economy in
an intelligent way and then deal with the whole question of social
justice. And in our country those questions basically meant three
things. One is what to do about the poor and how to have a welfare
system that empowered people who could take care of themselves but also
took care of people who could not take care of themselves--first
question.
The second question, how to deal with the fact that we had
phenomenal economic growth but increasing inequality. That inequality
had been increasing for quite a long time, partly because of Government
policies, partly because the new economy gives such a wage premium to
education and skills.
And the third question, to my mind, in many ways the most important,
how can this country with all of its phenomenal success and low
unemployment--the lowest unemployment in 30 years--and now, finally,
rising wages again, how can we strike the right balance, a better
balance between work and family--give families the support they need to
raise their children, take care of their parents, have the time they
need, have the child care, the health care they need, and still maintain
the economic dynamism? What is the right balance?
Now, for Europe, it goes the other way. I wish Prime Minister Jospin
were here from France. Very interesting--France has had economic growth
averaging over 3 percent for the last 3 or 4 years, but their
unemployment rate hasn't gone below 11 percent, I think--something like
that. Any way, still in double digits. And we know from our own
experience that when unemployment--I mean, when growth can be sustained
above 2\1/2\ percent in an industrial society, normally the unemployment
will go down until it bottoms out at around, at least around 6 percent,
even without going over 3 percent.
So the European question is, how do you get growth manifested in
jobs and not give up your social solidarity? In America the question is,
how do we keep all this growth--we love it--and get a little more
stability for families and make sure we have done what we should for the
poorest of our communities and our people and try to make sure that
Americans who do work and carry the load in this country have a chance
to have more of the growth in terms of their personal wealth and well-
being. So to some extent we are crossing.
Now, I mention that to just give you a couple of specific examples.
Gerhard Schroeder mentioned the German job training system. We sort of
copied a lot of elements of that and tried to amend it for America in
setting up our school-to-work program in 1993, because the Germans do
the best job of moving people from--who do not go on to university for 4
years--moving most people into the
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workplace with modern skills so they can claim a higher wage.
And in our country, we have--John Sweeney, the head of the American
labor movement--the labor apprenticeship programs. A lot of the labor
training programs do a good job of that, but as a society, we don't do
as good a job of that. So we're trying to improve that.
Another interesting example--how do you deal with the fact that more
and more people are working at home, more and more people are working in
flexible work environments? You're going to have more and more part-time
jobs. How is that consistent with maintaining a kind of social safety
net? I would argue that The Netherlands have done the best job of that.
Wim Kok's country has the highest percentage of voluntary part-time
workers in all of Europe; that is they choose to do so. And they've
worked out an agreement, which maybe he would like to talk about, so
that even the part-time workers earn, on a pro rata basis, their
vacation--annual vacation rights, and have retirement and health care
and other things. They have the social protections. And there it makes
them more willing when necessary to take part-time work. This is a big
deal.
When I became President in America, there were 3 million people
making a living primarily out of their own home, for example. When I was
reelected, there were 12 million. Now there are 20 million, in only 2
years. So this economy is going to, if you will, atomize a lot. It's
going to get a lot more diverse, and kaleidoscopic. So we'll have a lot
of challenges to face in having the proper sense of social safety net.
And then, as I said, the most important thing is getting it right
between work and family, since I think we would all admit that the most
important job of any society is raising children as well as possible,
something we are even more burdened with in the moment, that conviction.
So I just throw those ideas out. These are things that are going on
in other countries, something that we're battling with here constantly.
And I wonder if any of you would like to comment on that.
[Prime Minister Kok and Chancellor Schroeder offered comments.]
President Clinton. Let me just say very briefly, I think when we
meet in Germany in the next few weeks with the G-8, I hope we will
ratify a number of changes to the global financial system that I believe
will be adopted by the international financial institutions and other
bodies that will avoid having another financial crisis like the one we
saw in Asia that we have all worked so hard to keep from spreading to
Latin America and elsewhere.
And it really is a classic Third Way problem, because what happened
was, in the last 50 years after World War II when the so-called Bretton
Woods instruments were developed, the IMF, the World Bank, and others
designed to promote global trade and global investment, with the
explosion of technology and the explosion of trade, more and more money
had to move around the world.
And then as always happens, there came an independent market in
money, unrelated to the trade and investment. So that now every year,
every day, there will be about $1.5 trillion in trade per day in goods
and services, and the amount of money that moves--excuse me, $1.5
trillion a day in trade and money, which is roughly 15 times the daily
volume of trade in goods and services. And that's the basic problem. So
we don't have a framework that has the right incentives to keep that
from getting out of hand and collapsing economies, protecting people
from their own foolishness, as well as from the foolishness of
investors.
But I think we can make some changes and keep the growth going, and
get rid of the problems, which is obviously the kind of balance we've
been striving for.
Anybody else?
[Prime Minister D'Alema and Prime Minister Blair made remarks. Mr. From
then introduced Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend of Maryland; former
Governor Roy Romer of Colorado; Mayor Wellington Webb of Denver, CO; and
Labor Commissioner Michael L. Thurmond of Georgia, who each made brief
remarks.]
President Clinton. Well, let me say, first of all, I want to thank
all four of them for speaking here today and for the work they do. And
they're all friends of mine and I was
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sitting here feeling like--sort of like a proud father or something. I'm
so proud of my friendship of many years with Governor Romer; and Mayor
Webb, who did so much to help me become President; Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend. We're glad your mother is here. Ethel, welcome. There is no
Lieutenant Governor in America who has had remotely the impact that she
has had on the lives of her constituents. It's a stunning thing in many
ways. And I think Mr. Thurmond can speak for himself. [Laughter] But I'm
really proud of him, as well.
You see--the reason--let me just say, one of the reasons that I so
much love the DLC and I was so proud of hearing them talk is that for
most of us, including those of us at this table, the stories you just
heard--that's why we got in politics. And then when you become a leader
of a country and you're arguing about what's in some bill or what is the
debate before the Parliament or the Congress or--if you're not careful,
the debate gets very abstract and very frozen and very wooden and very
meaningless to the people that put you in this position in the first
place.
And the further you get away from your constituency--and I think
sometimes our friends in the press almost contribute to this in a way,
because they have difficulties, too. You know, they have to write a
complicated subject, and they've got to get a headline out of it. Or
they have to figure out how to take an issue that's going on, and how to
put it into 15 seconds on the evening news.
But what you just heard is the ultimate test of whether ideas and
our values and our work amount to a hill of beans. It's whether it
changes the lives of people in concrete, positive ways. And so, I just
want to thank them and those whom they represent. And I'd like to give
my fellow panelists here the chance to make any comments or ask
questions they'd like of those who just spoke.
Tony, do you want to start?
[Prime Minister Blair and Prime Minister Kok made remarks.]
President Clinton. I just want to comment on one thing, because a
lot of you talked about at what level something should be done. We're
having a huge Third Way debate here in this country that has many
different manifestations related to how the Federal Government should
give money to local governments in various areas. And it's very
interesting. By and large, the Republicans will say--and they really
believe this--that since we can't run law enforcement, for example, we
should just set aside how much money we want to give and give it to
local government and say, ``Go enforce the law. They'll lower crime.''
And the old motto would have been we would have passed a law which would
have had 15 different programs, each with a different subcommittee
chairman's name on it and said, ``Go spend the money in this way.''
Now, what I'm trying to do is to say, ``Okay, we shouldn't tell you
how to do things, but you have told us what works.'' Therefore, we
should stop giving money for things that don't work and start giving
money for things that do. So we say, ``If community police works, that's
what we should do.'' If Kathleen's program works on testing parolees,
which by the way, I'm trying to get enough money out of Congress to do
that nationwide, just what she said. She's proved it's worked, right? So
we don't tell them whether they should contract with people to do the
drug testing or what they should do or exactly how they should do it.
But I think we should say, ``Look, in Maryland, this works. Therefore,
we'll give you the money if you do this. But we're not going to just
give you the money, and you decide whether you want to waste it or
not.''
And that's the debate we're having. You know, because we're not
trying to micromanage local government, but we are trying to take things
that work and say, ``Okay, if they work in Denver, or if they work in
Georgia, if they work someplace else, we need to stop funding things
that don't work, start funding things that do. But we're not going to
tell you how to do it. You figure out how, but this is a thing that
works, and so do it.''
And it's a big debate. And I urge you all to watch it this year.
It'll play itself out in three or four different areas. And we may not
win them all. But I think it's a very important debate to have, because
it will be about the nature of the Federal responsibility in a lot of
areas in the years ahead.
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Would anyone else like to talk before we adjourn? Gerhard, do you
want to say anything else? Massimo?
[Chancellor Schroeder and Prime Minister D'Alema made remarks.]
President Clinton. Thank you. Yes, I'm not sure I would even have
you here, Massimo, if I were running for reelection. [Laughter]
No, no, I'll tell you a serious story. Hillary and I went to Italy
over a decade ago, and we were in northern Italy, and I met these
Italian Communists who were anti-Soviet Union, pro-NATO, and pro-free
enterprise. And I thought to myself, I've got to be very careful about
what words mean, anymore. It was amazing. [Laughter]
Let me introduce three more people who came here and are just as
tired as our panelists are, and they sat through this whole thing. I'd
like to thank Cherie Blair, Rita Kok, and Doris Schroeder Koepf for
being here. Thank you all for coming, and being a part of this.
And let me say, I'm sure you all know that this was a very difficult
but profoundly important 3-day meeting we had of NATO. And all these
leaders, I think, must be quite exhausted. We have worked very hard and
tried to do the right thing on every front. But they cared enough about
these ideas and the worldwide movement to try to achieve what we have
worked on and believe in, in common, that they came here to be with us.
And I think we owe them all a very great debt of gratitude, and we thank
them.
[Mr. From thanked the participants and closed the discussion.]
Note: The discussion entitled ``The Third Way: Progressive Governance
for the 21st Century,'' began at 5:21 p.m. at the National Press Club
Building. In his remarks, he referred to former Assistant to the
President Sidney Blumenthal; Prime Minister Lionel Jospin of France;
John J. Sweeney, president, AFL-CIO; Ethel Kennedy, mother of Lt. Gov.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; Cherie Blair, wife of Prime Minister Blair;
Rita Kok, wife of Prime Minister Kok; and Doris Schroeder, wife of
Chancellor Schroeder. The transcript made available by the Office of the
Press Secretary also included the remarks of the other participants.