    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 25 (Monday, June 26, 2000)]
    [Pages 1425-1429]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at a Hillary 2000 Dinner

    June 21, 2000

        That was one of my great jokes--[inaudible]--that I intended to be
    president again next year, president of the Senate spouses' club.
    [Laughter]
        Let me say that I love coming to this magnificent home. I'm always
    so happy here. It's a happy place. I love being here. And now I'm here
    as surrogate-in-chief. Hillary is in New York tonight, and I was
    delighted to come by and have a chance to talk to you at the table.
        I would like to just say a couple of things. First of all, thank
    you. I am very grateful that I've had a chance to serve as President.
    And I'm grateful that I had a chance to get elected in a moment where I
    felt that I had some ideas that would change the country for the
    better--and only after I've had years and years and years and years of
    working seriously on these ideas so I could test them, and it turned out
    most of them worked out pretty well. And I feel good about it.
        We've still got a lot of good things going, and I think a lot of
    good things are going to happen in the next 7 months. You may have seen
    yesterday the House--the Senate passed the hate crimes legislation I've
    been pushing for 2 years. A couple of days before that, the House
    reversed itself and decided to leave my process of creating national
    monuments to protect land for all time to come alone. We're moving on a
    lot of the fronts that I hope we'll have some progress on. I think we
    will.
        The second point I'd like to make is that people come up to me all
    the time and say, ``Well, who is going to win this election or that
    election or the other''--except I always say Hillary now, but apart from
    that--and I believe that very strongly. But I think my experience has
    been that the outcome of elections are largely determined by what the
    voters believe the elections are about.
        That's what you were talking to me tonight on the New York City--
    what you think the election is about may determine more than anything
    else which candidate you vote for. And what I have been trying to hammer
    home all across the country, to all kinds of audiences--partisan
    audiences, nonpartisan audiences alike--is that this election must be
    about what we're going to do with our prosperity.
        Eight years ago when we were in deep trouble--the economy was down;
    society was divided; we had all kinds of difficulties--everybody knew
    what we had to do. We had to roll up our sleeves and get out of the
    ditch. We had to turn things around. We had to put things moving in the
    right direction. Well, now things are moving in the right direction, and
    the real question is, what do we do with it, not just the budget surplus
    but the confidence, the capacity, to deal with the challenges facing the
    country, to deal with the big opportunities out there?
        And if the American people think that is what we should do, then
    we're going to have a very good election. Because that means it's no
    longer necessary to have one of these sort of mudslinging campaigns
    where everybody tries to convince everybody else that their opponent is
    just one step above a car thief.

    [[Page 1426]]

    I mean, how many elections have we had like that? That's not necessary.
    You start with the two Presidential candidates, you go through these
    Senate races, these House races, you've got people that make a very
    presentable case for their point of view and that argue it out. And so
    we really can have an election about the future.
        And I worked as hard as I could to turn this country around, get it
    going in the right direction, and that's really what I want to have. If
    you believe that, then there are three things I want you to know--and
    don't laugh. Number one, it's a really big election. How a country deals
    with its prosperity is as important a test of its character and judgment
    as how you deal with adversity.
        There's not a person around this room tonight who cannot remember
    one instance in your life when you made a mistake, not because things
    were going so badly but because things were going so well, you thought
    there was no consequence to the failure to--[inaudible]--if you live
    long enough. Everybody knows that. So this is a big election.
        Point number two, there are real and honest differences between the
    candidates for President, for Senator, for the House, and people,
    historically, pretty well do what they say they're going to do when they
    get in office. Contrary to a popular expression that all politicians are
    a bunch of slugs and don't keep their word, by and large, they do. If
    you look at all the historical studies, they do pretty much what they
    said they were going to do.
        One of the proudest days I've had as President was in '95, when
    things looked so bleak for us, a scholar of the Presidency and the media
    named Thomas Patterson published a report and said I kept a higher
    percentage of my promises to the American people than any of the last
    five Presidents by '95, even though I'd made more, which made me feel
    very good. But most people will do most of the things they say.
        And usually when a President doesn't do it, you wind up being glad.
    For example, aren't you glad that Abraham Lincoln didn't keep his
    promise not to free the slaves? That was one of his 1860 campaign
    promises. Aren't you glad that Franklin Roosevelt didn't keep his
    promise to balance the budget in 1932, when we had 25 percent of the
    people out of work in 1933? It would have been exactly the wrong thing
    to do for him, just like it was the right thing to do for me. So
    basically, you've got a big, important election; you've got real
    differences.
        Now, here's the third thing, only the Democrats want you to know
    what the differences are. Really. The real differences. You see that in
    the way the Republicans are basically trying to make everybody forget
    they had a primary season in which they made a lot of very specific
    commitments, and they don't want to talk about them anymore.
        But I think they're honorable. I think they'll keep the commitments
    they made in the primaries. And it makes it uncomfortable for them when,
    like Mr. LaPierre, the NRA guy, says, ``Well, we'll have an office in
    the White House if Bush wins the election,'' because they want him to go
    away until after the election.
        But there are real differences, and by and large, they relate to how
    we think we ought to manage this moment of prosperity.
        And I'll just say a brief word about the Vice President. I do
    believe by now I know him as well as anybody besides his wife, maybe his
    children. He's been, by far--as a matter of historical fact, he's had by
    far a greater positive impact on the country in this job than anyone who
    has ever had this job.
        Now, I have to make full disclosure. That's a very self-serving
    statement for me because the way the job works, you've got to know what
    the President asks the Vice President to do. But I've spent a lot of
    time studying the Presidency, and I never could figure out why you would
    want a Vice President who didn't go to work every day. I never could
    figure out why the Presidents felt threatened by their Vice President--I
    didn't get all that stuff.
        I picked Al Gore because he basically was in tune with me, and we
    got along together. But he knew things I didn't know. He had experiences
    I didn't have, and he has made an absolutely incalculable contribution
    to whatever good we've accomplished in the White House. And I think he
    should be elected because I agree with his economic plan, as compared
    with the alternative, and we

    [[Page 1427]]

    need to keep the prosperity going; because I know he'll work harder to
    extend the benefits of our prosperity to other people, whether it's the
    differences they have over the minimum wage or the Patients' Bill of
    Rights or you name it. And because he understands the future. He
    understands issues like climate change and the other energy and
    environmental issues, or the Internet privacy issues, which I predict
    will be very big for all of you over the next 5 or 6 years. All of our
    medical records and all of our financial records and all of our other
    records, everything is on a computer somewhere. I think that's a big
    issue.
        I'm very pro-high technology. I've tried to do everything I could to
    create as many jobs to support a competitive environment with the
    Telecommunications Act and all. But I think these privacy issues are
    going to be big.
        So I think he's good because I like his economic plan. I think he'll
    do more to help everybody participate in our society, and I think he
    understands the future. And it's really important, because the next 8
    years are going to be different from the last 8. The issue is not
    whether we're going to change; the issue is how are we going to change.
        I wouldn't vote for anybody that said, ``Hey, I'd like to be
    President because I'll do everything Bill Clinton did.'' I wouldn't
    support a candidate--that would be wrong. Things are changing too much.
    So that's my take on that.
        Now, in Hillary's case, what I think will happen is she'll go
    through a period of time where--apparently, just looking, I saw Mr.
    Lazio had a film the other day that had me on it, saying something nice
    about him. Well, I'm not like them. If a Republican votes on something
    that I think's good, I'll brag on them. I'm not ashamed of it. I don't
    think you have to say, just because somebody is a member of the other
    party, that they're right over there with Attila the Hun.
        But I kind of--it was a gas that he would try to give the people of
    New York the impression that I'd prefer him to my wife in the Senate.
    [Laughter] Because she would have voted for my economic plan, not
    against it, and she would have voted against the contract on America,
    not for it. She wouldn't vote to shut the Government down and get rid of
    the Department of Education or get rid of the 100,000 police that
    lowered the crime rate in New York and other places. So, there, too,
    there are real differences.
        I think the big issue here on the economic front for both of them--
    and it's one that all of you need to think about because you could
    actually be better off the day after it passed with the Republican plan,
    everybody here--the day after it passed. Because basically, what they
    want to do is spend the whole projected surplus on the tax cut, for
    Social Security transition costs and extra defense costs. And what we
    want to do--even though I'm not a candidate, I strongly support this--is
    to set aside at a minimum--at an absolute rock-bottom minimum--at least
    20 percent of this projected surplus which comes then from your Medicare
    taxes, and put it in a Medicare Trust Fund, and get it away from any
    spending, and use it to continue to pay the debt down, and then we want
    to have a tax cut that's much smaller, probably about 40 percent the
    size of theirs--still substantial, but not as big as theirs--slightly
    less than half of it--and we want to invest more money in education and
    research and technology and health care and the environment.
        Now, why is ours better? Because, number one, we may not have--just
    because some economist says we're going to have $1.9 trillion over the
    next 10 years doesn't mean it's going to happen. And I'll bet you
    everybody in this room, in your heart of hearts, says, ``Gee, I hope
    that will happen, but it might not.'' You know, we might not have 4
    years like these last 7 years.
        If I tell you--this gentleman was telling me about his business in
    Buffalo; if I said, ``What's your projected revenue? Are you going to go
    out and not only spend it all, but borrow money on the basis of it, no
    matter what, with no safety net?'' you probably wouldn't do that. And so
    I think if we--I believe if you have sort of a Bush-Lazio tax plan, and
    it passed, you'd all be better off the day after because all of you can
    afford to come here tonight. But you wouldn't be better off if it led to
    a 2-percent increase in interest rates. But in 2 years, the impact it
    would have on the markets, on the overall economy, on the unemployment
    rate, you'd be worse off. And the overall economy would

    [[Page 1428]]

    be worse off, and we wouldn't have any money to do these things.
        And the way our crowd has it structured is, number one, they're
    going to save 20 percent of the money on the front end and put it into
    Medicare, as long as it materializes, which is good because when the
    baby boomers retire it's going to be hard to--[inaudible]--and we're
    going to keep paying the debt down as fast as we can, which I believe is
    good. I think since there's so much private debt, we should pay the
    public debt down and keep interest rates as low as possible. That's what
    I believe.
        And most of the people I know that have done well in this economy,
    if they have to choose between low interest rates and a growing stock
    market and a tax cut, and if it's either/or, they would choose the
    former every single time. So this is a big issue, and I think it's
    important.
        The second big cluster of issues, I'll say again: what do you
    believe our obligations are to those who haven't done as well in this
    whole thing as we have or those that have got the good jobs, but they
    have other problems.
        The biggest challenge most working families, even upper class
    working families that work for salaries, face today is how to balance
    the burden of raising their children and succeeding at work. Because in
    the United States we have less support for that than our competing
    countries do. We don't do as much to help people pay for child care. We
    don't do as much to make sure they all have affordable health insurance.
    We don't do as much to make sure the kids are all in preschool or after-
    school programs. We don't do as much to guarantee that they have family
    leave options so that if the baby is sick or the parents are sick or
    there's a newborn baby, that everybody can get pretty much what they
    need.
        Now, I think this whole cluster of family-related issues, I'll
    predict to you, will be very big over the next decade, because we're not
    all working just to have money to go spend it on things; that's not why
    people do it. They find reward from their work, and they try to run
    businesses that they're proud of, and they want to raise families
    they're proud of. And this all has to be done in the context of a
    certain value structure. And if we've got a country where, in order to
    be a success, you have to just basically walk away from your
    responsibilities as parents, we're in deep trouble here. And this is a
    challenge for every business, for everybody, and we're going to have to
    work through a lot of these issues together.
        But one of the reasons that I think Hillary ought to go to the
    Senate is that she spent 30 years working on this stuff. She knows more
    than anyone I personally know about adoption, about foster care, about
    the children's health care and emotional and nutritional and educational
    needs, about the relationship of early childhood brain development to
    whatever the Government policy is. She has lived with this stuff.
        And I was just kind of surprised when all those New York House
    Members came to see her and asked her to run for the Senate. I was
    surprised she'd even think of it. I said, ``Do you know how much this is
    going to cost you?'' She said, ``You're talking to me about money?''
    [Laughter] She laughed at me. She said, ``You, who have never cared if
    we had a nickel in the bank''--[inaudible]--and we laughed about it, you
    know, and we admitted that in the end we were kind of public service
    junkies. It's what we care about. [Laughter]
        And for 30 years she's worked for me and worked on the side. The
    whole time we were in Arkansas, she gave away lots of potential income
    every year just to do public service, because it's what she wanted to
    do. And I can just tell you that in a lot of ways she's better than I am
    on a lot of this stuff, and she knows things I don't know. And she will
    be absolutely unbelievable.
        I know there are still some people in New York who say, ``Well, why
    is she doing this, and why are they coming to New York, and why is she
    running for the Senate?'' It's not very complicated. She would prefer to
    do that than go out and get real rich. I mean, that's basically--she
    would prefer to do this work than even be a wonderful commentator and
    talk about it. Arguably, in the modern world, people who have access to
    communications can influence more people because they can just talk to a
    lot of people and convince them to go change their behavior. Not

    [[Page 1429]]

    her, man. She thinks she's supposed to show up for the job, do it in the
    old-fashioned way--bam, bam, bam. That's what she believes.
        All I can tell you is, I've been around a lot of people, and I've
    never seen anybody that I thought had the gift for public service that
    she does. And so what she's got to do is work like crazy and just keep
    meeting people in New York, and basically chip away at the people who
    are still questioning, ``Well, why is she doing this?'' And at some
    point between now and election day, a critical mass of people will have
    been reached, and they will be talking to other people, who will be
    talking to other people, who will be talking to other people.
        Did you read that little book, ``The Tipping Point?'' Have you all
    read that, how little things make big changes? At some point, we'll
    reach the tipping point in this whole issue, and it will vanish, and I
    think she'll be elected. But she can only do it if we can get our
    message out, which is why it's so important.
        So, anyway, that's my pitch. You've got a good Senator. You've got a
    good Presidential candidate. It's a big election. There are big
    differences, and I do want you to know what they are.
        Thank you very much.

     Note:  The President spoke at 10:30 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president,
    National Rifle Association; Representative Rick Lazio; and Gov. George
    W. Bush of Texas.