    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 47 (Monday, November 29, 1999)]
    [Pages 2424-2429]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at a Dinner for the Conference on Progressive Governance for the
    21st Century in Florence, Italy

    November 20, 1999

        Thank you very much. Professor Dorsen, Dean Sexton, President Oliva,
    to my fellow leaders, and especially to our hosts, Prime Minister and
    Mrs. D'Alema. Let me say a

    [[Page 2425]]

    special word of appreciation to my good friend Romano Prodi for the very
    good outline he has given us of the challenges facing not only the
    nations of Europe but the United States and all other economies more or
    less positioned as we are.
        The hour is late, and what I think I would like to do is to briefly
    comment on why we're here and what exactly are the elements of
    progressive governance in the 21st century--what do we have consensus
    on, and what are the outstanding challenges facing us?--without going
    into any detail, in the hopes that that's what will be discussed
    tomorrow.
        First of all, I think it's worth noting that it's entirely fitting
    that we're meeting here at this beautiful villa in this great city where
    the Italian Renaissance saw its greatest flowering, because we know
    instinctively that we now have a chance at the turn of the millennium to
    shape another extraordinary period of human progress and creativity.
        There are many parallels to the Renaissance era in this time. For at
    the dawn of the Renaissance, Italy was a place of great economic ferment
    and change, rapidly expanding trade, new forms of banking and finance,
    new technologies and new wealth, more education, vibrant culture,
    broader horizons. Today, we have the Internet, the global economy,
    exploding diversity within and across national lines, the simultaneous
    emergence of global cultural movements, breathtaking scientific advances
    in everything from the human genome to discoveries about black holes in
    the universe.
        We have, in addition, a much greater opportunity to spread the
    benefits of this renaissance more broadly than it could have been spread
    500 years ago. But there are also profound problems among and within
    nations. Making the most of our possibilities, giving all people a
    chance to seize them, minimizing the dangers to our dreams, requires us
    to go beyond the competing models of industrial age politics. That's why
    we're here. We think ideas matter. We think it's a great challenge to
    marry our conceptions of social justice and equal opportunity with our
    commitment to globalization. We think we will have to find what has
    often been called a Third Way--a way that requires governments to
    empower people with tools and conditions necessary for individuals,
    families, communities, and nations to make the most of their human
    potential.
        In the United States, we have proceeded for the last 7 years under a
    rubric of opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and a community
    of all Americans. We have also recognized something that I think is
    implicit in the whole concept of the European Union, which is that it is
    no longer possible, easily, to divide domestic from global political
    concerns. There is no longer a clear dividing line between foreign and
    domestic policy. And, therefore, it is important that every nation and
    that all like-minded people have a vision of the kind of world we're
    trying to build in the 21st century and what it will take to build that
    world.
        I think there is an emerging consensus which you heard in Romano
    Prodi's remarks about what works and what challenges remain. There is
    also a clearer consensus that no one has all the answers.
        So let me briefly give you an outline of what I hope we will discuss
    tomorrow and in the months and years ahead. First, I think there is an
    economic consensus that market economics, fiscal discipline, expanded
    trade, and investment in people and emerging technologies is good
    economics. In the United States, it has given us an unparalleled
    economic expansion, the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest
    inflation rate in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the
    lowest unemployment among our women in the work force in 46 years, the
    lowest poverty rates in 20 years, and the first back-to-back surpluses
    in our budget in over 40 years. But there are problems. I will get to
    them.
        On social questions, I think there is an emerging consensus that we
    should favor equal opportunity, inclusion of all citizens in our
    community, and an insistence upon personal responsibility. In addition
    to low welfare rolls through welfare reform in the United States, it has
    given us the lowest crime rate in 25 years and unprecedented
    opportunities for women, racial minorities, and gays to serve in public
    life and to be a part of public discourse.
        We have also worked particularly hard to reconcile the competing
    religious concerns of our increasing diverse communities of

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    faith in the United States. The challenges to this economic and social
    policy are, it seems to me, as follows--and this is where we have to
    close the gap.
        Number one--what Mr. Prodi talked about quite a lot--the aging of
    all of our societies. In the next 30 years, the number of people over 65
    in our county will double. I hope to be one of them. [Laughter] Now this
    is a high-class problem. In all the advanced economies, anyone who lives
    to be 65 today has a life expectancy of 82. Within a decade, the
    discoveries in the human genome project will lead every young mother--
    including Mrs. Blair--[laughter]--within a matter of years, young
    mothers will go home from the hospital with their babies with a little
    genomic map. And it will tell these mothers and the fathers of the
    children what kinds of things they can do to maximize the health, the
    welfare, and the life expectancy of their children. Many of our best
    experts believe that within a decade, children born in advanced
    societies will have a life expectancy of 100 years. Now, this is a
    terrific thing; but in the short run, it means that within 30 years,
    more or less, all of our societies will have only two people working for
    every one person retired--challenge number one.
        Challenge number two, in spite of unprecedented economic prosperity
    in many places, there are still people and places that have been left
    behind. I'll give you the most stark example.
        In America, we have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, 4.1
    percent. On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the home
    of the Lakota Sioux, the unemployment rate is 73 percent. And in many of
    our inner cities, in many of our rural areas, this recovery simply has
    not reached because of the lack of educational level of the people or
    because of the digital divide or because of the absence of a conducive
    investment environment. But every advanced society that seeks social
    justice and equal opportunity cannot simply rest on economic success in
    the absence of giving all people the chance to succeed.
        Number three, there has, by and large, in all of our societies with
    heavy reliance on the market, been an increase in income inequality. I'm
    happy to say it is moderating in the United States. In countries that
    have chosen to make sure that did not happen, very often there have been
    quite high levels of unemployment, which people also find unacceptable
    and which is another form of social inequality.
        The next problem, with more and more people in the work force, both
    women and men, and more and more children being raised in homes that are
    either single-parent homes or two-parent homes where both the parents
    work, it is absolutely imperative that we strike the right balance
    between work and family. In this case, I think virtually every European
    country has done a better job than the United States in providing
    adequate family leave policies, adequate child care policies, adequate
    supports.
        But let me just put it in this way. If most parents are going to
    work, either because they have to or they want to, then every society
    must strive for the proper balance, because if you have to choose
    between succeeding at home and succeeding at work, then you are defeated
    before you begin. The most important job of any society is raising
    children; it dwarfs in significance any other work. On the other hand--
    [applause]--yes, you may clap for that, I appreciate that. It does.
        So if people at work are worried about the children at home or in
    child care, they're not going to be so productive at work. That means
    that either the economy or the social fabric will suffer. It is a
    profoundly important issue that will only grow more significant in the
    years ahead.
        The next big issue, I believe, is the balancing of economic growth
    and environmental protection. And because of the problem of global
    warming, we will have to prove not only that we can maintain the quality
    of the environment, but that we can actually improve it while we grow
    the economy. I want to say a little more about that later, but it's a
    very important issue.
        Finally, I would like to put another issue on the table. There is a
    political problem with achieving this vision, and I'll give you just
    three examples involving all of us here. In order to pursue this
    economic and social vision, if you start from a position of economic
    difficulty and you believe that fiscal discipline

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    is a part of your proposal that is necessary, then you're going to have
    upfront pain for long-term gain. And the question is, will we be able to
    develop a progressive governance that will be able to sustain enough
    support from the people to get to the gaining part? Because everybody
    likes to talk about sacrifice but no one likes to experience it.
    Everyone likes to talk about change, but we always want someone else to
    go first. And I have seen it. In our country, I was elected in 1992, and
    in 1993 I implemented my economic program, and in 1994 the public had
    not felt the benefits of it, and that's one of the big reasons we got a
    Congress of the other party.
        Chancellor Schroeder is facing the same sort of challenges.
    President Cardoso is facing the same sort of challenges. So it's all
    very well for us to come here when--as in my case--that things are
    rocking along well in our country and the public is supporting us. But I
    think it's important that we acknowledge, if we believe in these ideas
    they will often have to be pursued when they are controversial in the
    knowledge that these difficult changes have to be made in order to have
    results over the long term.
        And so one of the things I hope we'll be able to frankly discuss is
    how we can develop and sustain political support for like-minded people
    in all countries who are determined to pursue this approach that we all
    know works and has to be pursued in order to create the kind of future
    we want for our children and grandchildren.
        Now let me just say a word about global politics. I believe there's
    an emerging consensus that it's good for the world to promote peace and
    prosperity and freedom and security through expanded trade; through debt
    relief for the poorest nations; through policies that advance human
    rights and democracies; through policies in the developing countries
    that expand the rights and opportunities of women and their daughters;
    through policies that stand against terrorism, against the proliferation
    of weapons of mass destruction; and against the spread of ethnic,
    racial, and religious hatred.
        What are the specific challenges to this consensus? I'll just
    mention a few. How do you place a human face on the global economy?
    We're going to have a WTO ministerial in Washington State in a few days.
    There will be 10 times as many people demonstrating outside the hall as
    there will be inside. And I understand more than half of them may not
    even be from the United States.
        I personally think this is a good thing. Why? Because the truth is
    that ordinary people all over the world are not so sure about the
    globalization of the economy. They're not so sure they're going to
    benefit from trade. They want to see if there can be a human face on the
    global economy, if we can raise labor standards for ordinary people, if
    we can continue to improve the quality of life, including the quality of
    the environment. And if we believe--we, who say we believe in social
    justice and the market economy, really want to push it, we have to prove
    that the globalization of the economy can really work for real people.
    And it's a huge challenge.
        Number two, we have to deal with the fact that about half the world
    still lives on less than $2 a day, so for most of them, most of this
    discussion tonight is entirely academic, which is why debt relief is so
    important. We have to deal with the fact that while we talk about having
    smaller, more entrepreneurial government, the truth is that in a lot of
    poor countries, they don't have any government at all with any real,
    fundamental capacity to do the things that have to be done. Even in a
    lot of more developed countries, they have found themselves blindsided
    by the financial crisis that struck in 1997.
        So we have to acknowledge while we, who say we are developing a
    Third Way--and in our case, we've been able to do it with the smallest
    Federal Government in 37 years--we have to acknowledge the fact that
    some countries need more government. They need capacity. They need the
    ability to battle disease and run financial systems and solve problems,
    and that it is fanciful to talk about a lot of this until you can
    basically deal with malaria, deal with AIDS.
        You look at Africa, for example, AIDS consuming many African
    countries. But Uganda has had the biggest drop in the AIDS rates of any
    country in the world because of the capacity of the Government to deal
    with the problem. And I think we have to forthrightly deal with that.

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        Let me just mention a couple of other issues a little closer to
    home. We're going to have to deal with the conflict between science and
    economics and social values. Example: the conflict between the United
    States and Europe over genetically modified seeds and the growing and
    selling of food; the conflict between Britain and France over the sale
    of beef.
        Listen, this is hot stuff now, but you can see that there's going to
    be a lot more of this. And we have to find a way to manage this if we're
    going to be in a global society with a global economy, where there are
    honest differences and real fears. We have to find a way to manage this
    that has integrity and that generates trust among ordinary people.
        Another problem that I think is quite important is, all of us will
    have to decide how we're going to cooperate and when we separate in an
    interdependent world. I think, for example, our Congress did a very good
    thing to finally pay our U.N. dues and to enable the United States to
    participate in the global debt relief movement. And I think they made a
    mistake to defeat the Comprehensive
    Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. But every one of us will have to deal with
    these kinds of questions, because there will always be domestic
    pressures operating against responsible interdependence and cooperation.
        And finally, I'll mention two other things. I believe that the
    biggest problems to our security in the 21st century and to this whole
    modern form of governance will probably come not from rogue states or
    from people with competing views of the world in governments, but from
    the enemies of the nation-state, from terrorists and drug runners and
    organized criminals who, I predict, will increasingly work together and
    increasingly use the same things that are fueling our prosperity: open
    borders, the Internet, the miniaturization of all sophisticated
    technology, which will manifest itself in smaller and more powerful and
    more dangerous weapons. And we have to find ways to cooperate to deal
    with the enemies of the nations-state if we expect progressive
    governments to succeed.
        The last and most important point of all, I believe, is this. I
    think the supreme irony of our time, as we talk about a new
    renaissance--by the way, that would make New York University the
    successor of de'Medici--[laughter]--I think--consider this--the supreme
    irony of this time is that we are sitting around talking about finding
    out the secrets of the black holes in the universe, unlocking the
    mysteries of the human gene, having unprecedented growth, and dealing
    with what I consider to be very high-class problems--finding the right
    balance between unemployment and social justice, dealing with the aging
    of society--isn't it interesting to you that in this most modern of
    ages, the biggest problem of human societies is the most primitive of
    all social difficulties: the fear of people who are different from us.
    That, after all, is what is at the root of what Prime Minister Blair has
    struggled with in Northern Ireland, at the root of all the problems in
    the Balkans, at the root of the tribal wars in Africa, at the root of
    the still unresolved, though hopefully progressing problems in the
    Middle East.
        A few weeks ago, Hillary invited two men to the White House for a
    conversation about the new millennium. One was one of the founders of
    the Internet, the other was one of our principal scientists unlocking
    the mysteries of the human genome, and they talked together--it was
    fabulous, because these guys said, number one, we would not know
    anything about the gene if it were not for the computer revolution
    because we couldn't have done the complex sequencing. And then the
    scientist said, now that they had done all this complex sequencing, the
    most stunning conclusion they had drawn is that all human beings were
    99.9 percent the same genetically, and that the differences of
    individuals in any given ethnic group, genetically, were greater than
    the genetic differences of one ethnic group to another.
        So if you had 100 West Africans and 100 Italians and 100 Mexicans
    and 100 Norwegians, the differences of the individuals within the groups
    would be greater than the composite genetic profile differences of one
    group to another.
        Now, this is in an age where 800,000 people were slaughtered by
    machetes in 90 days in Rwanda a few years ago, when a quarter of a
    million Bosnians lost their lives and 2\1/2\ million more were made
    refugees.

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        So that's the last point I would like to make. We need a little
    humility here. What we really need to be struggling for is not all the
    answers, but a unifying vision that makes the most of all these wonders
    and relishes all this diversity which makes life more interesting, but
    proceeds on the fundamental fact that the most important thing is what
    it has always been: our common humanity, which imposes on us certain
    responsibilities about how we live, how we treat others who are less
    fortunate, how we empower everyone to have a chance to live up to his or
    her God-given potential.
        If you ask me one thing we could do, it would not be all the modern
    ideas. If I had to leave tonight and never have another thing to say
    about public life, I would say if we could find a way to enshrine a
    reverence for our common humanity, the rest would work out just fine.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:43 p.m. in an outdoor tent at the Villa
    La Pietra. In his remarks, he referred to Oliva L. Jay, president, New
    York University; Norman Dorsen, professor, and John Sexton, dean, New
    York University School of Law; Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema of Italy
    and his wife, Linda; Romano Prodi, President, European Union; Chancellor
    Gerhard Schroeder of Germany; President Fernando Cardoso of Brazil;
    Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom and his wife, Cherie;
    Vinton G. Cerf, senior vice president for Internet architecture and
    technology, MCI WorldCom; and Eric Lander, director, Whitehead,
    Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research.