[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 8 (Monday, February 28, 2000)]
[Pages 356-358]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception Honoring Representative Maxine Waters

February 22, 2000

    Thank you. When Maxine said, you know, she looked at me like that, 
and I said what I said--[laughter]--I looked at Sidney, and I said, 
``Does she ever look at you that way?'' [Laughter] He said, ``After 30 
years, what do you think?'' [Laughter]
    Let me say, first of all, on the way over here with Minyon Moore, my 
political director, and Lynn Cutler, from the White House, I told 
Minyon--she said, ``You know, you're not running for anything, and 
you're still out doing these things.'' I said, ``Let me tell you 
something. Maxine gets mad at me, but she was with me from the get-go in 
1991, and she was with me on June 2, 1992, in California, after the 
California primary, when I was nominated and all the press wrote that I 
was actually the third choice of the country, Ross Perot was going to be 
the next President.'' And that was just between June and November. 
Caution: don't predict too much about this year--remember that. 
[Laughter]
    So we've had this wonderful relationship. It has been full, rich, 
and honest. [Laughter] And I have loved it. I told Maxine, one time she 
was mad at me, I said, ``You know, Sidney is an Ambassador, and he 
doesn't talk to me that way.'' [Laughter] And she said, ``Well, he's a 
diplomat. I'm a politician.'' [Laughter] I've got 11 months. If I keep 
plugging, I'm finally going to win one of these arguments. [Laughter] 
I'm really working on it.
    I want to thank my great friends Eleanor Holmes Norton and Elijah 
Cummings for being here. And Ron Dellums, we're glad to see you, and 
thank you for the copy of your book. It's at your local bookstores--
[laughter]--I recommend you buying this book. I figure I might as well 
turn this into a two-fer tonight. [Laughter]
    And let me say to all of you who are here who have been my friends 
over these years, I thank you very much. I'm honored to be here. I thank 
you for supporting Maxine, and I thank her for supporting others. I 
think we're all here because she's so feisty and full of conviction, and 
because as the years go by she seems to get healthier and more 
beautiful--[laughter]--and more full of energy. She and Sidney, both of 
them look better than they did the first time I saw them, and that's 
saying something. [Laughter] And I thought they looked pretty good then.
    But we need to remember, in times where all of us have been 
fortunate enough to come to a place like this, an event like this, that 
we got here by working hard and by working together on good ideas based 
on our shared values. And now is not the time to stop doing that. Now is 
not the time to relax or to become diverted.
    The other day I said--some of you were at the White House, I think, 
the other day when we celebrated Black History Month, and I read my 
radio address. But I want to say that when we celebrated, this month, 
the longest economic expansion in our history, I went back--and I was 
curious, so I said, I wondered when the longest expansion in our history 
was before we got to this month and ours took over. And it was, 
interestingly enough, between 1961 and 1969. And those of you who were 
of age then will remember that.
    I graduated from high school in 1964. Our country had gone through 
the terrible trauma of President Kennedy's assassination. We had

[[Page 357]]

rallied behind President Johnson. I thought then, and I believe now, he 
did a magnificent job of unifying the country and saying we had to take 
up the unfinished agenda of America. And he began to push that civil 
rights legislation through Congress.
    And we really believed--my group of young people did, when I went 
out into the world as a high school senior graduate in '64--we had low 
unemployment, high growth, low inflation, the Congress dealing in a 
legal way with the civil rights challenge, and the country was 
militarily strong, and we thought we could prevail in the cold war. And 
we thought everything was going to be just fine.
    A couple of years later, in southern California, we had riots in the 
streets. A couple years later, I graduated from college--2 days after 
Bobby Kennedy was murdered, 2 months after Martin Luther King was 
murdered, 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run for 
President anymore, just a few months before Richard Nixon was elected 
President on the first sort of divide-and-conquer theme of modern 
politics called the silent majority. You remember that? If there's a 
silent majority, there's got to be a loud minority, and it's us versus 
them. And just shortly after that we lost that economic expansion.
    What's all that got to do with this? Eleven months from now I'll be 
a citizen again. I'm talking to you as a citizen now. I have waited over 
30 years for my country to be in a position to build the future of our 
dreams for our children. We had a chance in the early sixties, but we 
couldn't manage. The cold war turned hot in Vietnam; the political 
system breaking down over civil rights at home; and we lost our economic 
prosperity and our social progress and our political cohesion. And I 
have waited--as a citizen, not a politician--for 30 years for America to 
have that chance again.
    And it's easier for us now because of the struggles many of you have 
undertaken over the last 30 years, because the cold war is over. And we 
will never forgive ourselves if we don't take this chance to build the 
future of our dreams; say, what are those big issues out there?
    Okay, we've got the largest number of kids we ever had in our 
schools, and they're the most racially, ethnically, religiously diverse. 
How are we going to give them all a world-class education?
    Okay, we've got the crime rate going down, got people like Maxine 
turning these kids away from gangs toward better lives. How can we now 
make all our streets safe and America the safest big country in the 
world?
    Okay, we're going to double the number of people over 65 in 30 
years. I hope to be one of them. [Laughter] How are we going to take 
care of them without bankrupting their children and their children's 
ability to raise their grandchildren?
    Okay, we've got the best economy we've ever had, but what about all 
the people and places--the urban neighborhoods, the Indian reservations, 
the poor rural areas--that haven't been caught up in this?
    Okay, we've got former welfare recipients making a living on eBay. 
What about the people that haven't bridged the digital divide? A lot of 
you talked to me about that last night--tonight, I mean.
    And you can add your own list. We proved we could grow the economy 
and clean up the environment, but we're still burning up the atmosphere. 
How are we going to turn this climate change thing around and still keep 
giving people a chance to make a living?
    There are big questions out there. But unlike the 1960's, we are not 
as torn by internal crisis or external threat--not that there are no 
crises, not that there is no threat, but they're not of the same 
dimension. And we all--all of us who lived through that ought to be 
humble enough to know that we have a chance--and for us, a second 
chance--to do something that comes along maybe once in a lifetime for a 
great country.
    I feel that in these 7 years, you know, I've worked and worked and 
worked to kind of turn the country around economically, to move things 
in the right direction socially, to try to pull us back together 
politically, to try to be a force for peace around the world, and 
integrate us with the rest of the world. Maxine mentioned Africa, and I 
appreciate that.

[[Page 358]]

    But I think now, like, America is ready, you know, to do these big 
things. And so tonight I speak to you not--mostly not just as President 
but as someone who remembers what it was like to be 18 years old in 
1964; to weep over a lost President, believing things could be made 
right and then to watch everything come apart.
    We've waited a long time. Maxine, Elijah, Eleanor--they're going to 
carry this banner. It matters what happens in this Presidential race. It 
matters what happens in these congressional races. It matters whether we 
count everybody in the census. It matters who gets elected in the 
Governors' races. And it matters whether we say, ``Hey, we do remember. 
We've not taking this for granted. We're not being arrogant; we're not 
being self-satisfied. We know we've got a second chance. And we're going 
to make the most of it.''
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:19 p.m. in the Salon B Room at the Four 
Seasons Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Representative Waters' 
husband, Ambassador to the Bahamas Sidney
Williams, and former Representative Ronald V. Dellums. Representative 
Waters was a candiate for reelection in California's 35th Congressional 
District.