[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 9 (Monday, March 6, 2000)]
[Pages 401-405]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Democratic Governors' Association Dinner

February 28, 2000

    Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm 
welcome. Thank you for this wonderful book. Governor Patton, Mrs. 
Patton, Governor Davis, Governor O'Bannon; to B.J. Thornberry, and all 
the officers of the DGA; and especially my great friend Mark Weiner. I 
want to acknowledge also the presence--Mark Weiner did a good job 
tonight, and all the rest of you did, raising this money. I thank you 
for that.
    I want to acknowledge the presence in this audience of the man who 
was the executive director of the DGA when I was a member, my good 
friend Chuck Dolan. I thank you for being here and for all you did for 
us. And all my colleagues--I know there are five or six Governors out 
there who are former Governors with whom I served--thank you for being 
here.
    I want to acknowledge the Governors who are retiring. Governor 
Rossello, thank you for everything you've done. And Governor Carper and 
Governor Carnahan are going to be Members of the United States Senate, 
and that will be a good thing for the Senate, a bad thing for the 
Governors.
    I want to say a special work of thanks to the man who nominated me 
to be vice chairman of the DGA in 1979, Governor Jim Hunt, one of the 
finest people I ever met in my life. Thank you, Jim Hunt, for what you 
did.
    You know, I will treasure this book. I have a first edition of 
``Profiles in Courage,'' but not one signed by John Kennedy. Hillary 
says that the reason I admire John Kennedy so much is he's the only 
person to ever serve as President whose handwriting was even harder to 
read than mine. [Laughter] But I can recognize the signature, and I 
thank you.
    President Kennedy once said, ``The party which, in its drive for 
unity, discipline, and success, ever decides to exclude new ideas, 
independent conduct, or insurgent members is in danger.'' Well, thanks 
to the Democratic Governors, to your new ideas, your independent 
conduct, and your willingness always to try to do better and to be 
different, the Democratic Party is in no danger. We're stronger tonight 
than we have been in many, many years, thanks to you.
    As President, I have been deeply indebted to my service as Governor. 
It has stood me in good stead. And I have been deeply indebted to so 
many of you for the friendship, the advice, the counsel you have given 
me, and to so many who were members of this organization with me who 
continue all during these years to call with a helpful word or sometimes 
just a word of friendship and support.

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    Thanks to our partnership and the hard work of the American people, 
our country is in good shape at the dawn of the new millennium. We have 
21 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the 
lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest crime rates in 25 years, 
the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest Hispanic- and African-
American unemployment rate ever, and the longest economic expansion in 
history. We are well-positioned for this new century.
    And I am very proud that there is in this country, embodied in the 
service of the Democratic Governors, a new Democratic Party, committed 
to new ideas and the old principles of opportunity for all, 
responsibility from all, and a community of all Americans. I am proud of 
what we have done together.
    But you came here tonight because we're raising money for the 
elections of 2000. And as dearly as I loved every single word Paul 
Patton said, and I'll treasure it for a lifetime, and he'll never be 
able to get away from it because, everywhere I go, the White House 
Communications Agency captures things on film--I've got a movie, a color 
movie of Paul Patton, and the next time he gets mad at me, I'm going to 
play it for him. [Laughter] I will treasure everything he said for a 
lifetime. As much as I treasure and as much as I have loved being 
President, elections are about the future. And in this election season, 
those of you who are running and those of you who are serving and not 
running must be very active in defining the choices for the future.
    Last night at the dinner at the White House, I reminded all the 
Governors that we are now in the longest economic expansion in history, 
and it's easy to feel comfortable and confident, maybe even a little 
complacent. But the last time we had the longest economic expansion in 
history was in the decade of the 1960's, between 1961 and 1969.
    In 1964, when I graduated from high school, America was still 
profoundly sad about the loss of President Kennedy, but very optimistic 
and very united behind President Johnson; absolutely convinced we'd just 
have high economic growth with low inflation from now on; absolutely 
convinced that we would solve the civil rights challenges of our age 
through the Congress; absolutely convinced that we would prevail in the 
cold war as a united nation.
    Within 2 years, we had riots in the streets, and the country was 
divided. Within 4 years, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been 
killed, Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run for reelection. The country 
was split right in two. We had a Presidential election which for the 
first time in a long time was about the politics of division. You 
remember the election of 1968? Vote with the Silent Majority. And it was 
us and them. If you weren't in the Silent Majority, presumably, you were 
in the loud minority. I know; I was one of them.
    And in just a few months, we lost the longest economic expansion in 
history. And we've had decades of us and them elections and us and them 
politics in Washington, DC. I ran for President because when I was a 
Governor, I could not have survived practicing politics the way it was 
done here very day, and I was sick and tired of people all caught up in 
the Washington political game, deaf to the voices of the people like 
those in Appalachia that Paul Patton introduced me to.
    On that hot day in Hazard, Kentucky, which I'll never forget because 
it was so hot, I saw people like the people I grew up with. They don't 
want much from us. They get up every day and go to work, and they obey 
the law, and they pay their taxes. All they want us to do is to work as 
hard at our job as they work at theirs and to pay attention to what 
their concerns are and to think about how their children are going to do 
better.
    And I came to Washington determined to do that. I am profoundly 
indebted to every Governor who served with me, who helped me, and to all 
of you since. But what I want you to remember is elections are about the 
future and so is governance. And don't you dare be complacent about 
this. I have waited for 35 years for my country to be in shape again to 
build the future of our dreams for our children. Our party can lead the 
country to do that. We're going in the right direction. We have the 
right ideas. We have the right values. And you have to lead to make sure 
it happens.

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    And you have to be willing to do things that may not grab the 
headlines all the time. We have to take what Theodore Roosevelt said at 
the dawn of the century: ``A growing country with a young spirit should 
always take the long look ahead.'' Today some of you came in to see me, 
including Governor Carper and former Governor Dukakis who is here 
tonight, to talk about my Amtrak budget. Well, that's not a headline 
grabber, but it's important to the future that America have a high-speed 
rail system that guarantees our energy security and our safety and our 
strength. It's part of our long look ahead.
    It's part of our long look ahead that we recognize that we've got 
the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years. That is the good news. 
The challenge is that nearly every family in nearly every income group 
is having some difficulty balancing the burdens of raising their 
children and succeeding at work, and whenever this country has to make a 
choice--any family--we lose.
    And we have to do more to help people to succeed at home and at 
work. We have to do more to bring economic opportunity to the people and 
places that have been left behind. If we can't bring free enterprise to 
Appalachia, to the Mississippi Delta, to the inner cities, and to the 
Indian reservations of this country now, we'll never get around to it. 
And the Democrats ought to lead the way. Everybody deserves a chance to 
work who is willing to do so.
    Jim Hunt said something today I want to emphasize. We started out 
together in 1979, and we all wanted--especially in the South, where we 
knew we had to do it--we all wanted to make education better. But we 
really didn't know how to do it, especially with all the kids from all 
the different backgrounds, the different economic and racial and 
religious and ethnic backgrounds, with all their different burdens that 
they carried from home to school.
    But we don't have an excuse anymore. Now, we know what works. We 
know how to turn around failing schools. We know all our kids can learn. 
And we know how to invest in it. We know how to demand high standards. 
We know what to do. We in the Democratic Party have to lead America to 
excellence in education for every single child in this country, across 
all the lines that divide us.
    When I became President, there were a lot of people that never 
thought the crime rate would go down again. But we know how to do it. We 
know you've got to put more police on the street, people who are trusted 
by folks in a community, who work with them, who know how to prevent 
crime as well as catch criminals. And we know--even in the South, we 
know--we've got to do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals 
and away from children. We know what works. The Democratic Party ought 
to lead the country to making this the safest big country in the world. 
We owe that to our children.
    We know that, in the digital economy the Governors came here to talk 
about, you do not have to weaken the environment to improve the economy. 
In fact, we know that we can improve the environment and the economy at 
the same time. There is a $1 trillion market in the world today for 
environmental technologies that avoid the worst consequences of global 
warming and clean up local air and water systems and preserve the land--
$1 trillion market. We know that. And a lot of our friends in the other 
party don't know that yet. The Democratic Party ought to lead the way to 
a 21st century economy that proves we can have the strongest economy in 
history and the cleanest environment in history. We ought to lead the 
way to that sort of future.
    And we know, even those of you that come, as I do, from a landlocked 
State in the middle of the country, that there is no more artificial 
dividing line between foreign policy and domestic policy. We know that 
our welfare is tied to the welfare of people all around the world. 
That's why I've worked so hard for peace in every region of the world 
and why I've worked to expand trade and why I believe we ought to take 
advantage of an agreement that finally opens China's markets to us, the 
way our markets have been open to China for decades now; why I believe 
we ought to continue to work to rid the world of weapons of mass 
destruction, chemical and biological terrorism; why we ought to adopt 
the test ban treaty--even though the Senate voted against it last year--
because we

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have got to make a safer world if we want our kids to live on safer 
streets and have a safer future in every State in the United States of 
America.
    And, finally--you know, I get apprehensive when people start giving 
me gifts, even one like this that I treasure. That's the kind of thing 
that they ought to do for you when you're not around anymore. I have to 
pinch myself; I'm still alive, I'm still here. [Laughter] I hope to be a 
useful citizen when I'm no longer living in the White House. But if the 
good Lord came to me tonight and said, ``I'm sorry, you can't finish 
your term. You're out of here tomorrow morning. And I'll only give you 
one wish. I'm not a genie; you get one wish, not three,'' I would set 
aside everything I just said to you and pray that America could find a 
way to overcome the profoundly ingrained tendency of people everywhere 
to distrust people who are different from them by race, by religion, 
people who were gay, all these things that are different.
    Why? You've been here talking about the Internet economy. I've got a 
cousin in Arkansas who plays chess once a week with a guy in Australia 
over the Internet. People are being drawn together as never before. I 
was in poor villages in Africa where the school buildings had maps that 
still had the Soviet Union on it. But because they're getting computer 
hookups, pretty soon they'll just be able to print out maps that are 
new, and those poor little kids in those little villages will be able to 
learn the same geography our kids do in our finest schools.
    We are being drawn together as never before, and yet we are 
bedeviled by the oldest problems of humankind. Sunday I'm going to Selma 
to be with Governor Siegelman and the veterans of the Selma march 35 
years ago. For me, particularly because I'm from the South, it is a 
signal honor. And we will celebrate all the great things that have 
happened in the last 35 years to bring us together.
    I see Governor Barnes out there from Georgia. He went in on a great 
vote that carried in two African-Americans to statewide elected office 
in Georgia, and there are things like that happening all over America. 
Governor Locke out there--the first Chinese-American Governor our 
country ever had. Governor Cayetano from Hawaii--a Philippine-American. 
But it is still true that even in America--we had kids at a Jewish 
community center in California, little kids shot at just because they 
were Jewish. A Filipino postal worker killed just because he was Asian 
and worked for the Federal Government. All those fine people killed in 
the middle of the country by that man who said he belonged to a church 
that didn't believe in God but did believe in white supremacy. Matthew 
Shepard stretched out on a rack in Wyoming.
    Now, most of the news in America is good. But I am telling you, 
we're a smart people. You can't keep us down no matter what, as long as 
we've got our heads on straight. But the Democratic Party ought to take 
the lead in reminding us that one of the things that we have learned as 
we've unlocked the mysteries of the human gene is that we are 
genetically 99.9 percent the same and that the differences among 
individuals within racial groups are different--are greater than the 
differences from group to group.
    Whether we like it or not, we're all in this boat together. And 
those of you who have been in the Oval Office know that I keep on the 
table there a moon rock that Neil Armstrong gave me on the 30th 
anniversary of the landing on the Moon. It's a lava rock that is 3.6 
billion years old. And whenever anybody gets all hot and lathered up in 
the Oval Office in a meeting and they act like the whole world is about 
to come down, I say, ``Time out. See that rock? It's 3.6 billion years 
old. Now, we're all just passing through. Chill out.'' [Laughter]
    But even though we're all just passing through, every minute, every 
hour, every day is precious. So I ask you all, apart from everything you 
do on all these issues I mentioned, model that, model one America. 
Remind people that if you believe everybody counts and everybody ought 
to have a chance, then you've got to believe we're all better off when 
we help each other instead of looking down on one another.
    That's another thing the Democratic Party has stood for. We lost a 
lot of Presidential elections because we stood for it, but we're coming 
back now because we stand for it. You've got 13 seats up in 2000 and 36 
up

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in 2002. I'm going to help you with the 13, and when I'm just a citizen, 
I'll help you with the 36 if you want me to. But we will never have a 
national Democratic Party that's as strong as it ought to be until we 
have a majority of the governorships again, and until we can prove, 
where people live, that we care about them, that we can produce for 
them, that we reflect their fondest hopes and deepest values. You can do 
that.
    You have helped me to help America. You have immeasurably enriched 
my life. You've been good to me and Hillary and Al and Tipper. And for 
all that, I am profoundly grateful. I will treasure this book for the 
rest of my days and my friendships and, seriously, what Paul Patton 
said. But America is always about tomorrow. So be proud of what we've 
done, but keep your eye on tomorrow and lead the American people where 
we ought to go.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:17 p.m. at Union Station. In his remarks, 
he referred to Gov. Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, chair, Gov. Gray Davis 
of California, vice chair, B.J. Thornberry, executive director, and Mark 
Weiner, treasurer, Democratic Governors' Association; Governor Patton's 
wife, Judi; Governors Frank O'Bannon of Indiana, Pedro Rossello of 
Puerto Rico, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Mel Carnahan of Missouri, 
James B. Hunt, Jr., of North Carolina, Don Siegelman of Alabama, Roy 
Barnes of Georgia, Gary Locke of Washington, and Benjamin J. Cayetano of 
Hawaii; former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts; and astronaut 
Neil Armstrong.