[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 19 (Monday, May 15, 2000)]
[Pages 1041-1044]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception for Senator Mary L. Landrieu

May 9, 2000

    I think that young is a relative term. [Laughter] I've decided that 
young is anybody today younger than I am. [Laughter]
    Let me say, I want to thank Jim and Ann for having us in their 
beautiful, beautiful home. I love this place. I always love to come 
here. And I want to thank Mary and Frank and little Connor, who I knew 
even before he was here. And I want to thank all of you for being here 
for Mary. A lot of you must feel old, you come--you do all these things 
over and over again. So I thank you on behalf of Senator Landrieu and 
Senator Daschle and Senator Lieberman and Senator Breaux and Senator 
Lincoln and Senator Edwards. And Congressman Jefferson, thank you for 
being there for us.
    I can't help but tell you, we did this great event for China today, 
where President Ford and President Carter came, and Henry Kissinger 
came. And he always sounds like God with a German accent. [Laughter] 
Maybe God has a German accent, for all I know. [Laughter] And Jim 
Baker--and they all gave great talks. And we talked, and I looked out 
there, and I realized that there are all these former Secretaries of 
State, Secretaries of the Treasury, National Security Advisers, chairmen 
of the Foreign Relations Committee of the House and Senate, Chairmen of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was the most--Trade Ambassadors--the most 
astonishing group of Americans.
    And Gerald Ford got up and started talking about a vote he cast in 
1949 for trade with China that was joined in by John Kennedy, Richard 
Nixon, Carl Albert, and Albert Gore, Sr. And I realized that I was there 
with people that represented the last 50 years of American history. And 
then I realized there was one person there that represented the whole 
20th century, Mike Mansfield, who is 97 or 98 now. Didn't tell the truth 
about his age when he was 15 and talked his way into the Marines in 
World War I. And then he came home and studied Asian-Pacific affairs, 
became a professor at Montana, became a Congressman, a Senator, 
President Kennedy's Senate majority leader, a post he held for about 14 
years, I think, a long time anyway. Then President Carter appointed him 
Ambassador to Japan.
    And when Mary said I was young, it reminded me of a story. Shortly 
after I became President, when my mentor, Senator Fullbright, was still 
alive--he was 87 and Mike Mansfield was 91, and they had lunch together 
one day. And the next day Senator Fullbright came to see me. He was 
hitting us all up at the time, and he was still in great shape then. And 
Mike Mansfield looked at him and said, ``Now, Bill, how old are you 
again?'' He said, ``I'm 87.'' And Mansfield said, ``Oh, to be 87 
again.'' [Laughter] So this youth, you know, it's a relative thing.
    I will be very brief. First of all, I first met Mary Landrieu when 
she was a very young State representative. And I was a young Governor, 
and neither one of us looked our age. And she still looks younger than 
she is, and I now look more than my age. [Laughter] But I thought she 
was great when I first met her. I always loved her daddy, from the time 
I worked with President Carter and his administration when I was 
Attorney General in my home State. And I've known her a long time. And I 
thought when she ran for the Senate that if she could be elected, she 
would be uncommonly effective.
    Senator Breaux worked hard for her; Congressman Jefferson did; Mayor 
Morial of New Orleans did; and I certainly did. And it all worked out 
pretty well, and she has exceeded even my very high expectations.
    I think sometime in the next day or two, the House of 
Representatives is going to pass a House version of this bill that she 
and others have been working on for a long time, to create a permanent 
conservation fund that could literally change the face of hundreds

[[Page 1042]]

of American communities and give us a permanent conservation legacy in 
America, the likes of which we have never had before. That's quite an 
achievement for a first-term Senator. Now, we have to do it, but--
[applause].
    She is also, as you heard, supporting the administration's 
initiative to get permanent normal trade relations with China. And we 
had that meeting today, and there's no point in me repeating what Gerald 
Ford and Jimmy Carter and all the others said, but I will tell you this. 
This is the most important national security vote we will make this 
year.
    A lot of you here agree with this issue because you understand the 
economics of it. And as I pointed out today, most of the people who are 
against this are against it out of their frustration or their anxiety 
about globalization, generally, or their frustration because China keeps 
doing things they don't like in human rights, or they don't like the way 
the World Trade Organization operates or some other reason. It has 
nothing to do with whether or not this is or is not in our economic 
interests or our national security interests.
    But this is an easy vote for a Democrat to say no to. And that's 
another reason I'm here, because Mary Landrieu says yes, because it is a 
significantly important vote. And we will be paying the price for a 
decade if we fail to adopt this. And we could start paying the price 
within a matter of months. It is a profoundly important issue to the 
world that our children and grandchildren will live in. And so I'm here 
for that reason.
    And the third thing I want to say is that Mary and a lot of her 
colleagues have supported our efforts to raise education standards. One 
of the things that bothered me when I ran for President was that people, 
even people who were supporting me, they wanted to vote for change. They 
thought I had a lot of energy, but a lot of them, frankly, didn't 
believe we'd make any difference. They had been so disappointed for so 
long and heard so much political hot air that they didn't think we could 
make a difference. They didn't think things could be better.
    And--welcome, Senate Robb. Thank you for being here. You'll forgive 
me for being impertinent. If you hadn't given him a contribution, I hope 
you'll give him one, too. [Laughter] If ever a person deserved to be 
reelected, he does. And he's going to be, and you might as well help him 
because he needs your help.
    Well, anyway, the thing that bothered me, even in my campaign there 
were people who thought, well, I like old Clinton's ideas, but you know, 
we can't really turn this deficit around or make much of a difference in 
the economy or reduce the welfare rolls or--you know, I heard it all.
    And now, you know what's happened. We've gone from deficit to 
surplus. When I leave office, we will have paid off $355 billion of the 
national debt. And I'm very proud of that. And we'll have the longest 
economic expansion in history and the lowest unemployment in over 30 
years, but also the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment 
ever recorded, the lowest female unemployment in 40 years, welfare rolls 
half the size they were when I took office, and 8 years of declining 
crime.
    Now, what's the point here? We don't have an excuse not to do our 
best anymore, because we know that our common challenges are like all 
other problems: They do yield to intelligent effort.
    And the reason education is so important--I took this education tour 
last week, and I don't want to bore you with the whole thing, but I'll 
just give you three examples. I went to the first charter school in the 
country, which is a public school set up outside the normal rules and 
regulations to serve a specific population or to pursue a specific 
education mission. And if they do well, they can stay in business. If 
they're not, they're supposed to have their charter jerked. That's the 
whole idea, that they're super accountable.
    Now, they haven't all worked well. We've had problems with one or 
two here. But you should know that when I ran for President, there was 
one; today there are 1,700. Mary's voted to help me create more. 
Overall, they've done better than average schools, and they're vastly 
oversubscribed. People want to get into them.
    And I visited this school in St. Paul, Minnesota, where there are 
over 100 kids who

[[Page 1043]]

have had terrible problems in their lives, terrible problems in school. 
They were all in school. None of them were dropping out. There were no 
violence problems, no drug problems, no nothing. They were showing up 
every day and learning, and they felt like they had a home. And they 
were performing at a high level.
    I went to Columbus, Ohio, to a school in a very poor neighborhood, 
where they--in Columbus, they've got 55 of these 100,000 teachers we got 
out. And we've been attacked by the Republicans. We got attacked by 
their nominee for President. They say we're trying to micromanage the 
school system. The people met me, everybody from the superintendent on 
down, to thank me for the fact that we were giving them teachers and the 
money had to go for teachers in the early grades. They've gone from 25 
average class size down to 15.
    And in this one school, in a very poor neighborhood, in one year 
they went from 10 percent of the kids reading at or above grade level to 
45 percent, 10 percent of the kids doing math at or about grade level to 
33 percent, 10 percent of the kids doing science at or above grade level 
to 30 percent--in one year. And they have two of those teachers.
    And then I went to Owensboro, Kentucky. Four years ago the Congress 
required the States--first we required the States to set up school 
standards. Then we required the States to identify schools that weren't 
making it and to come up with a strategy to fix them. Kentucky got out 
there early. Four years ago they identified 170 failing schools. Within 
2 years, 91 percent were off the failure list.
    This school I visited had two-thirds of its children eligible for 
the free or reduced school lunch program. And they had one of those 
teachers we required to lower class size in the early grades. Listen to 
this. In 4 years, here's what they did--two-thirds of the kids on free 
or reduced lunch. They went from 12 percent to 57 percent reading at or 
above grade level. They went from 5 percent to 70 percent doing math at 
or above grade level. They went from 0 to 64 percent doing science at or 
above grade level. They ranked 18th in the entire State of Kentucky in 
academic achievement. Ten of the 20 best grade schools in Kentucky now 
have over half the kids eligible for free or reduced lunch. Race and 
income are not destiny. And we can also turn the schools around and give 
everybody excellence in education in this country. And that's another 
thing that brought me here tonight.
    Now, this is the last thing I want to say. You want to know how this 
Presidential election is going to come out, how these races for the 
Senate and House are going to come out? It depends upon what people 
think the election is about. Whatever they decide the question is will 
determine the answer.
    What do you think it's about? You don't remember anything else I 
say, you remember this. I think it should be about, what are we going to 
do with this moment of promise? I think the answer to the question 
should be: We're going to meet the big challenges and seize the big 
opportunities. How are we going to do it? We're going to do it not by 
doing just what I've done but by changing in the direction we're moving 
and not taking a U-turn on economic policy, on education policy, on any 
of these other policies.
    So what do you think the election is about? Do you really believe 
it's about making the most of this moment? What does that mean? It means 
taking on the big challenges and opportunities. How should we do it? We 
ought to keep changing in the direction that brought us here.
    Now if people believe that, then Al Gore will be elected President. 
We'll pick up seats in the Senate. We'll win the House back. And within 
no time at all, the Democrats will be rewarded by the American people 
for the good governance they have brought. That is really the issue.
    But to do it, we have to keep meeting the challenges every day. We 
can't duck the hard votes, like this China vote. We've got to show up, 
be counted, and deliver for the American people.
    I hope you will share this with people. Somebody asks you why you 
came here tonight, tell them you love Mary Landrieu, just like I do; you 
think she's done a great job; but you don't want to see America blow the 
most terrific opportunity we have had in my lifetime to prove we can 
build the future of

[[Page 1044]]

our dreams for our children. And we've got to have people like her to do 
it.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

 Note:  The President spoke at 7:45 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to reception hosts James and Ann Free; Senator 
Landrieu's husband, Frank Snellings, and their son, Connor; former 
Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker III; Mayor Marc 
H. Morial of New Orleans, LA; and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.