[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 40 (Monday, October 11, 1999)]
[Pages 1905-1910]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception and Dinner in 
Brentwood Park, California

October 2, 1999

    Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I've already been to the 
ANGLE dinner tonight. We had a wonderful time. I've looked forward to 
coming to Rob and

[[Page 1906]]

Michelle's place; they've been so great to me and to Hillary all these 
years. But it's 2 o'clock on my body clock--[laughter]--and I'm reduced 
to being Gray Davis' straight man. [Laughter] I mean, it's humiliating 
enough to think about leaving office, you know--[laughter]--trading in 
``Hail to The Chief'' for a rap. [Laughter]
    I mean, if President Reagan could be an actor and become a 
President, if Michael Douglas is your next choice, maybe I could become 
an actor. [Laughter] And I've got a good pension; I can work cheap, 
which is unusual around here. [Laughter]
    I told Mel Brooks when I met him, that I was so thrilled. I mean, I 
got to see Carl and meet Mel and tell him I've read ``The 2000 Year Old 
Man'' book and gotten all my laughs. I have a videotape of ``Blazing 
Saddles,'' and I watch it every 6 months whether I need to or not. 
[Laughter] I told him, you know, all the Republicans, they've been 
fighting over what to do about Pat Buchanan now that he's got this 
interesting interpretation of World War II. [Laughter] And I suggested 
that Mel might put him in a remake of ``The Producers.'' That would be a 
good thing to do with Pat Buchanan. [Laughter]
    Let me say very briefly that the problem with all these events is 
that at some point, I know we're all preaching to the saved, but there 
are a few points I would like to make. I want to thank Rob and Michele 
and Alan and Cindy for cohosting this, and all the cochairs who put this 
together. I want to thank the Governor and Sharon and Attorney General 
Lockyer, Speaker Villaraigosa, and
Kathleen Connell and the assemblywoman who is here--congratulations on 
your legislation being signed today. I want to thank my longtime friend 
and former colleague Governor Romer, and Beth Dozoretz, our finance 
chair of the Democratic Party, and all of you who came here.
    You know why you're here, but I would like to just make a couple of 
points very quickly about what we're facing, what the stakes are, why 
this is important. When I came to California in 1991, this State was in 
terrible shape economically, and there was an awful lot of social 
tension. We even had a civil disorder here. And the politics of America 
were dominated by the continuing attempts of the Republicans, 
nationally, basically to demonize the Democrats after the fashion that 
Gray Davis described. And Washington seemed to be basically in this sort 
of death grip of repeating the same old fight over and over again.
    I had this idea that no one else in America thought like they 
behaved in Washington--unfortunately, it is still largely true--
[laughter]--and that we needed a unifying theory of our national 
politics, one that would bring people together; that would increase 
opportunity for every responsible citizen; that would say to every 
person, without regard to their race or gender or sexual orientation or 
their religion, you can be part of our America if you're willing to do 
your part; and that unless we did that we could never fulfill our 
responsibilities around the world or maximize people's opportunities 
here at home.
    But it was just an argument. I mean, I said, look, you know, we can 
help labor and business; we can improve the economy and actually make 
the environment cleaner, not worse. We can expand trade and put a more 
human face on the global economy. We can prevent crime and still punish 
people, who do really bad things, more severely. We can have a unifying 
theory. We've got to get out of this either/or business and dividing the 
electorate up into wedges and hope you get the biggest piece of the pie. 
But it was just an argument, because there was no evidence because 
they'd had the White House a long time.
    And except for the 4-year Carter interregnum, they'd had it since 
1968, with various incarnations of the same social politics of division, 
and then Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush brought in the supply-side economics, 
which defied arithmetic and quadrupled the debt in 12 years. [Laughter]
    And there were periods when we had a good economy, but I used to 
have a senior Senator named Dale Bumpers who had a great line about 
supply-side economics. He said, ``If you'll let me write $2 billion 
worth of hot checks, I'll show you a good time, too.'' [Laughter]
    Anyway, so I said, ``Look, this may give you a headache, but we've 
got to get rid of this debt. We've got to bring the deficit

[[Page 1907]]

down, eventually get rid of it, turn it around, and we've got to do it 
in a way that continues to invest in our future.'' I tried to find 
unifying ways of getting people to think about how we could all win and 
all go forward. But it was just an argument.
    And then the American people gave Al Gore and me a chance to serve, 
led by the electoral votes of California. And in '96, things were 
rocking along pretty well, so you gave us another chance to serve, and 
we got an even bigger vote in California.
    But it's not an argument anymore. The evidence is in. And that's 
what makes the present struggle in Washington and the reported political 
strength of our adversaries so interesting, because the evidence is in. 
We have the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, the lowest welfare 
rates in 32 years, the lowest crime rates in 26 years, the lowest 
poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest African-American poverty rate ever 
before, the first back-to-back budget surpluses in 42 years, the highest 
home ownership in history, the longest peacetime expansion in history. 
This is not about argument; it's about evidence.
    Now, I say that not to say, ``Boy, I did a great job.'' Because I 
don't believe--I'm very touched if somebody comes up to me and says, 
``Gosh, I wish you could run again.'' You know how politicians are. You 
hear one person, you're convinced they're 50 million calling. [Laughter]
    I say that to make this point--not a personal one. I feel privileged 
to have been able to serve. I'm grateful. If my life ended tomorrow, I'd 
be way ahead. But if we had done the wrong things, we would not have 
gotten those results. The reason I'm here for the Democratic Party--I 
can't run for anything else--I'm here because I think we did the right 
things. And I want us to keep doing the right things, and I want America 
to keep doing the right things.
    The other guys will say, ``Well, we ought to make a change.'' And 
guess what? I agree with that. I wouldn't vote for anybody who said, 
whose campaign was, ``I think Bill Clinton's the greatest thing since 
sliced bread; vote for me, and I'll do what he did.'' [Laughter] I would 
vote against that person. We're not around here after over 200 years for 
any reason other than we kept true to our principles, but we were always 
reinventing ourselves, always seizing new vistas.
    The issue is, what are we going to do now? I've asked the Congress 
and the country to take this huge moment of opportunity to deal with the 
consequences of the baby boomers retiring; to save Social Security and 
Medicare; to deal with the consequences of the largest and most diverse 
student population in history, being in our schools; to bring genuine 
excellence to our schools; to deal with the consequences of the fact 
that there's still a lot of people, believe it or not, who aren't a part 
of this marvelous economy of ours.
    If you go to the Mississippi Delta or to Appalachia or to the Indian 
reservations or to many of our inner-city neighborhoods, there are 
people and places where there is no free enterprise. And I've offered a 
plan for that to give people like you the same incentives to invest in 
poor communities in America that we give you to invest in poor 
communities overseas. I think we ought to work to make Internet access 
as universal as telephone access is. It will make a huge impact in the 
poor areas of our country.
    You know, I learned in northern California last night that there are 
20,000 Americans making a living on eBay. Not people who work for eBay, 
not people who work for the company, people who--including a lot of 
people who used to be on welfare--people who make a living trading on 
eBay. Just think what we could do in America if access to the Internet 
were as universal as access to the telephone.
    So I want us to do something about that. I want to think about the 
economy of the next generation. I want us to--we're paying the debt down 
now. If I'd run for President, if I had come here in '92 and said, 
``Vote for me; I'll balance the budget, run a surplus, and start paying 
down the debt,'' you would have said, ``He is such a nice young man, but 
he's totally deluded.'' [Laughter] ``Let's see if we can't get him a 
good psychiatrist to see and vote for someone else.'' If I had told you, 
``Vote for me, we'll have 19\1/2\ million jobs, in 6\1/2\ years, we'll 
be paying the debt down,'' you would have thought I was crazy.
    But we can pay this debt down. And the Democrats, as the progressive 
party, should

[[Page 1908]]

be for our plan to pay the debt down over the next 15 years so that 
we're out of debt for the first time since 1835 when Andrew Jackson was 
President. Why? Because in a global economy, money is fungible and 
crosses international borders quickly. And if we don't owe anything as a 
government, all the money you have to borrow, and people like you, will 
be cheaper. That means there will be lower cost business loans, more 
businesses, more jobs, higher incomes; families can send their kids to 
college cheaper; they can finance homes cheaper; and when our friends 
around the world get in trouble, the way the Asians did over the last 
couple of years, they can get the money they need for less. This is a 
huge deal.
    Now, those are just some of the things. Let me just mention a couple 
of other things. I believe, as strongly as I can tell you, that the 
environment will be an even bigger issue in the next 20 years than it 
has in the last 20. And I believe that the United States will either 
lead the way or block the way toward a solution to this problem of 
global warming. Global warming occurs when we burn things that put 
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere--primarily, coal and oil.
    It used to be that you couldn't grow a modern economy and get a 
whole people rich unless you burned a lot of coal and oil. That is not 
true anymore. That's a big idea that's no longer true. Just outside Los 
Angeles, in San Bernardino, there's a working class, low income housing 
development that our administration built with the homebuilders with a 
view toward energy conservation, and we promised these low income 
working people, if they bought those homes, their utility bills would go 
down an average of 40 percent. So far, the average is down 60 percent. 
Why? Better windows, better lights, better insulation. It is not rocket 
science.
    One of the Japanese car manufacturers will offer a car in the United 
States next year that will get 70 miles to the gallon, that will run on 
a composite of electricity and gasoline: Turn it on with electricity, 
get up to 30 miles an hour, automatically kicks into gasoline; you break 
down, it automatically kicks back into electricity. These are just two 
simple examples.
    There's a new book out I commend to you by Paul Hawken and Amory and 
Hunter Lovins called, ``Natural Capitalism.'' And if you read it, you 
will be convinced that whatever you're doing and however well you're 
doing it, you could make a lot of money on the side by getting into 
alternative sources of energy and energy conservation. This is a huge 
deal.
    What do all these ideas have in common? They are things that bring 
us together instead of driving us apart. We ought to do--Gray Davis did 
a good thing on gun control, but we can make America so the crime rate's 
the lowest it's been in 26 years. We ought to make America the safest 
big country in the world. If we're the most prosperous big country in 
the world, if we're the freest big country in the world, we ought to be 
the safest big country in the world. Why aren't we? Because we don't do 
enough to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people, because we 
don't do enough to give kids positive things to do, because we don't do 
enough to get mental health care in a preventive way to people who need 
it. We can make America the safest big country in the world. But to do 
it, we have to have a unifying theory.
    We can't continue to believe that if we jail more people than 
anybody else on Earth and that's all we have to do because that'll get 
us by the next election, that that's enough. Now, I am a Democrat by 
heritage, instinct, and conviction. But we have proved that the ideas we 
have will give us a stronger economy, a safer country, a more 
constructive role in the world, a fair and more decent society, and a 
cleaner environment. We've proved that.
    But there are these huge challenges out here. And I'll just close 
with this. I've spent a lot of my time as your President trying to stop 
people from killing each other because they hated each other over their 
racial or regional or tribal differences, whether it was the Kosovar 
Albanians or the Bosnian Muslims or the continuing conflict in the 
Middle East, in Northern Ireland, or trying to help African nations 
build their own ability to stop future Rwandas.
    And when you put that--we look at that and we think, oh, that's so 
horrible, and just look what happened in America in the last

[[Page 1909]]

few weeks. Here is Los Angeles, you had the shooting at the Jewish 
school, and then the same guy apparently murders a Filipino postal 
worker. Then, there is a guy out in the Middle West in Illinois and 
Indiana who says he belongs to a church that doesn't believe in God but 
does believe in white supremacy, so he kills a black former basketball 
coach and a young Korean coming out of his church--a church where he did 
believe in God--and a number of others. Then you have--this is the year 
anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death, and you had that African-
American man literally dragged to death and torn apart in Texas. And I 
could go on and on.
    Don't you think it's interesting that we are living in the time of 
greatest technological advance in history? You know, if you think about 
it, the Internet is probably more significant, in terms of its long-term 
impact on the change in the nature of communication, maybe even than the 
printing press. Just think about it; it's the fastest growing--do you 
know there were only 50 webpages in the entire world when I became 
President? In the whole world. The Internet was the providence of 
theoretical physicists when I took office.
    So every day all we do is think about all this modernity and all 
this great technology and all this stuff going on, and yet, all of our 
dreams for our children are threatened by our vulnerability to the most 
primitive of human weaknesses: the fear, the hatred, the dehumanization 
of the other people who are different from us. Interesting, isn't it?
    So we're going into this new millennium where we're going to all 
have 500 channels on our television, and we're all going to be able to 
shop on the Internet, and all of our kids will live to be 150 because 
they will get a little genome map--at least our grandchildren, at my 
age. And they're looking at this world which should be the most 
brilliant, wonderful, interesting, exciting time in all of history, and 
from the Middle East to Northern Ireland to the Balkans to Africa to our 
own mean streets, we are all fighting the most primitive of human 
weaknesses.
    And if you look at every issue I mentioned, the position my party 
has taken since I've been privileged to be President is different from 
the position being advocated by the other party. And the consequences 
for our country are enormous in these coming elections for Congress, for 
Senate, for the White House. Look at the difference Gray Davis has made 
here with these legislative leaders, that are here with him, in the last 
year in California. You've gone--in 11 months only you've gone--leading 
the country on the cutting edge of these important issues.
    And if you think about what kind of world you want for your 
children, just remember what I told you. I'm glad we've got a good 
economy. I've worked hard for it, and I'm grateful that I've had a good 
team and enough insight and a great country behind me that we got these 
results. And I'm glad we've made progress on the environment, on giving 
children health care and immunizing, all of the things we've done.
    But I'm telling you, it won't amount to a hill of beans unless we 
figure out how to get along together. It won't amount to a hill of beans 
unless we figure out how to develop a more unifying understanding of our 
relationship to one another, our relationship to the future, our 
relationship to the Earth. And if--when you strip it all away, I belong 
to a party that believes in the fundamental unity of our common 
humanity. And we are struggling for the direction of America. We're the 
party that enjoys power and is willing to divide people to get it.
    The money you invested to come here tonight, I'm going to do my best 
to see is well spent. I won't be on the ballot in 2000, but as long as I 
have breath and strength to do it, I will fight for the things that I 
believe in to make this country what it ought to be.
    And you just remember this when you leave here: We were just making 
an argument in 1992. It's not an argument anymore. The evidence is in. 
And all of us ought to be willing to fight to take the next steps for 
our children's future in a millennium that should contain America's 
greatest days.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:10 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, the President referred to film director Rob Reiner and his 
wife, Michelle, dinner hosts, and Alan Horn, president, Warner Brothers 
Studios, and his wife, Cindy, dinner cohosts; Gov. Gray Davis of 
California and

[[Page 1910]]

his wife, Sharon; actor Michael Douglas; comic actors Mel Brooks and 
Carl Reiner; Patrick Buchanan, author of ``A Republic, Not An Empire''; 
State Attorney General Bill Lockyer; State Assembly Speaker Antonio R. 
Villaraigosa; State Controller Kathleen Connell; State Assemblywoman 
Shelia Kuehl; and Roy Romer, former general chair, Democratic National 
Committee. The President also referred to ANGLE, Access Now for Gay and 
Lesbian Equality.