    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 25 (Monday, June 26, 2000)]
    [Pages 1421-1425]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at an Irish-American Democrats Dinner Honoring Terence McAuliffe

    June 21, 2000

        Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, let me say,
    I had to rush over here from another event, and I didn't

    [[Page 1422]]

    have time to go change my tie. [Laughter] I thank you for letting me
    come anyway.
        Thank you, Stella, for everything you said and for everything you've
    done these last 4 years. Thank you, Chris Dodd, for being willing to
    take the chairmanship of the Democratic Party when they said our party
    and its President were dead as a doornail, and we proved that we had a
    little Irish left. [Laughter] And you've been great, and I'll never be
    able to thank you enough.
        We have some other people here I want to acknowledge: the best
    Secretary of Education in the history of this country, Dick Riley is
    here; Congressman Joe Crowley from Queens. Congressman Jim Maloney from
    Connecticut is here, I think. Where are you, Jim? [Applause] Lieutenant
    Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend from Maryland.
        Let me say--I'm going to do a little pander here--I'll be bad fooled
    if someday we're not out here campaigning for her on the national
    ticket.
        And now we come to the would-be, want-to-be Irish--[laughter]--and
    some very good friends of Ireland, Senator Chuck Robb of Virginia. I've
    said this every place I could, but one of the things the Irish admire
    are people of conscience who do what they think is right against all the
    odds. I could make you a very compelling case that based on his
    constituency and the people arrayed against him, that Chuck Robb is the
    bravest person in the United States Senate. He needs your help to be
    reelected, and I want you to help him.
        Congressman Donald Payne from New Jersey, a true friend of ours,
    thank you. And Representative Sheila Jackson Lee from Houston is here.
    Our present Democratic chair and the former mayor of Philadelphia, Ed
    Rendell. The first time he ran for mayor he spent half his advertising
    money trying to convince people he was Irish. [Laughter]
        Then we have, I see John Raffaelli back there, the Italian-Irish--
    [laughter]--Tim Chorba over there; Rashid Chaudary the Pakistani-Irish--
    [laughter]. I'm saying this for a point. I'm getting to McAuliffe here
    in a minute. [Laughter] I want to say three things very briefly.
        First of all, I want to thank you. Thank you for giving me the
    chance to serve as President. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for
    helping us to make America's role in the Irish peace process a
    constructive one and to do the things that have been done here in the
    United States. It's been an unbelievable experience. We've still got a
    lot to do, and it's also been a lot of fun. And it wouldn't have been
    any of that if I hadn't had the support of the American Irish, and we
    hadn't been involved, as we've had the chance to be, in the Irish peace
    process. It's been a wonderful experience, and I'm very grateful to you.
        The second thing I want to say to you is that the President may get
    all the blame when things go wrong, but he also gets the credit when
    things go right. And very often a lot of other people are involved,
    without whom none of that would have happened. And I want to mention two
    people in particular because they both need your help.
        One is, when I took all that flack for getting involved in the Irish
    peace process, and I was being ridiculed by the members of the other
    party--Secretary Baker, a man I actually like quite a lot, did call it
    ``Gullible's Travel.'' None of the elitists really thought I ought to do
    it. But all us blue-collar rednecks thought it was a pretty good idea.
        But I want you to know that it was tough. And there was a huge part
    of the permanent Government that thought I had taken leave of my senses.
    And I want you to know that Al Gore stood with me in that. And you need
    to know that.
        The second thing I want to say is that I'm especially proud of the
    work that my wife did in Northern Ireland with the Vital Voices, the
    women, the Protestant and Catholic women. And they need your help, and
    they deserve it.
        And I want to say one other thing about the peace process. One of
    the reasons that I wanted to do this, quite apart from my Irish roots
    where the Cassidy family goes back to Fermanagh--[inaudible]--and
    they've given me a little water color of the 18th century farmhouse.
    It's the oldest house we can find that has any ties to anybody that's
    kin to me that at least will admit it. [Laughter] When

    [[Page 1423]]

    I got elected President, I had all these relatives turn up, you know.
    [Laughter] It was kind of weird.
        I did get a letter, you should know, though, from an 88-year-old
    woman in northern Louisiana who explained to me--and she sent an
    identical letter to the other person--how I was the 12th cousin of the
    great mystery writer from Mississippi, John Grisham. And my mother's
    parents were Cassidy and Grisham. And of all the people--and I wrote
    John a letter, and he's a wonderful guy, used to be a Democratic
    legislator in Mississippi, which was almost an oxymoron for a while, but
    we're coming back. [Laughter] And I told him that I was delighted, not
    only because I liked his books but because of all the relatives that had
    turned up, he was the only one who had any money. [Laughter] So I liked
    that.
        But I felt, in addition to wanting to do this, that if we could make
    it work, this old, old conflict, with its legendary, sometimes romantic,
    often horrible ramifications, that the United States could then go to
    other places in the world and make the same argument--that if the Irish
    could do it, you could do it.
        You might be interested to know, you might remember that not very
    long ago, around last Christmas, I went to Kosovo, after the war was
    over. And we're still having a lot of trouble there, but the wounds are
    fresher there. And I got everybody in the room, the leaders of all the
    various sects--the various Kosovar Albanian groups and the Serbian
    groups and the minority groups there--there are several other ethnic
    minorities there--and we're sitting around a little table and metal
    chairs in this little airport room. And I said, ``Look, let me tell you
    something. I've been working for all these years on the Irish peace
    process.'' And I said, ``Here's the deal they've agreed to: the
    principle of consent, majority rule, minority rights, shared
    decisionmaking, shared benefits, and ties to their neighbors that they
    have ethnic and religious ties to.''
        I said, ``Now, you can have that deal today, or you can air all your
    grievances and whine and beat the table and walk away and refuse to talk
    to each other and keep letting people die around the edges. And 20 years
    from now somebody else will be sitting in metal chairs like this, making
    the deal. And the deal will be majority rule, minority rights, shared
    decisionmaking, shared benefits, and ties with your neighbors. You can
    do it now, or you can do it later. But you look at what the Irish did--
    that's what you're going to have to do. You can do it now, or later. I'd
    advise you to do it now, while the rest of the world still cares a whole
    lot about you.''
        If this hadn't happened in Ireland, I could not have made that
    speech. And you need to know that.
        Now, the next thing I want to tell you is, I realize I'm preaching
    to the saved here, and I don't need to give you a campaign speech for Al
    Gore or for our candidates for the Senate or the House. But I want to
    tell you, I worked as hard as I could to deal with the big problems of
    this country, to turn the country around, to get it going in the right
    direction. Nothing lasts forever. If you've ever been through bad times,
    you thank God for that. But when you have good times, you really have to
    cherish them and make the most of them.
        This country has the chance of a lifetime now to build the future of
    our dreams for these children. People ask me all the time, who do you
    think is going to win the election? And my answer is, it depends on what
    the people think the election is about. Often, the answer depends upon
    the question you ask. And what this election ought to be about is how
    are we going to make the most of this moment of promise for all the
    people of this country? How are we going to fulfill our responsibilities
    to people around the world, to build the kind of world we want our
    children to live in? How are we going to deal with these big things?
        So, I'm for Al Gore because he's by far the most effective Vice
    President in the history of the country. He's done more good and had
    more impact in that job by far than anybody who ever had it. Because he
    will keep the prosperity going, because he wants to spread it to people
    who haven't been part of it, and because he understands the future and
    knows how to get us there--so I'm for him.

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        But the things I want you to remember about this election are these:
    It's real important. There are profound differences between our
    candidates. And number three, only the Democrats want you to know what
    those differences are.
        You watch these guys campaigning; you'd think they'd never even had
    a primary and made those commitments. Like all of this just sprung--and
    it's flattering, and I suppose we should be happy about it, but you need
    to go out there and tell people about that. We're for a Patients' Bill
    of Rights, and they're not. We believe that everybody on Medicare ought
    to have access to prescription drugs they can afford, and they don't.
    We're for an increase in the minimum wage, and they aren't. And I could
    go on and on.
        But this is very important. Look, we don't have to run these
    elections the way some of these sort of tormented elections have been
    run in the last 20 years, where each candidate was trying to convince
    the people that their opponent was just one notch above a car thief. I
    mean, this doesn't have to be a negative campaign. Nobody has to be
    smeared. You can say, ``Look, we've got honorable people from the top to
    the bottom on both sides. All we have to do is assume they mean what
    they say, see what they've said, see what they've done, compare where
    they are and where they want to go. Let the American people make up
    their mind.'' It ought to be a serious election, but a decent one. But
    don't pretend there are no differences, and don't let anybody tell you
    when you point out the difference that that's a negative campaign.
        Because there are people here who want the voters to believe there
    are no real consequences to which way they vote. And that is not true.
    I've done everything I could do to turn this country around, to keep it
    going. I'm going to do everything I can in the next 7 months I have. But
    you've got to do your job and give the election back to the people, but
    tell them there are real consequences and real differences, and they
    need to face up to what they are and vote--[inaudible].
        Now, what's all this got to do with Terry? A lot. [Laughter] A lot.
    I told somebody the other day, I think there's a real difference in
    whether somebody who's done well in this country and made some money,
    got a world of friends and contacts, is out there raising money to get
    himself another tax cut, or to try to get the people who work in this
    hotel an increase in their wages, or give them a tax break so their kids
    can go to college, or trying to make sure all working people can afford
    to give their children health insurance.
        And in the system we have, I wouldn't still be here doing what I'm
    doing if he didn't do what he's done. You'd be amazed how many
    conversations we have where we're just talking about the issues. Well,
    how are you doing with the Middle East peace process? Are you going to
    get that Patients' Bill of Rights or not? So the first thing I want you
    to know is this guy believes in what we're doing. If he didn't, he could
    be over there in the other party and he'd be making more money, out of
    raising all this money, than he's going to do because of me and what
    he's doing for the Vice President.
        The second thing I want you to know is that he and I have one thing
    in common that maybe shows that we both need help. [Laughter] But we're
    crazy enough to think that this is fun and that we're lucky to be doing
    this. I can just tell you from my point of view, one or two little other
    breaks in life and I'd still be home doing deeds and real estate
    transfers, you know. [Laughter] People say, ``Oh, hasn't it been
    horrible?'' I say, ``Are you kidding? I could be home writing deeds.''
    [Laughter]
        You need to know--McAuliffe goes out to L.A., and they say we're
    having trouble financing the convention. He's there 3 hours and total
    strangers are walking up to him on the street throwing money at him. I
    mean, it's unbelievable. [Laughter] Why? Because he's having a good
    time, obviously doing what he believes.
        It is a great gift to be able to make people believe that they can
    do something important and enjoy it at the same time. It is a great gift
    to make people believe that they have something unique that they can
    contribute. It is the true mark of leadership, since none of us is
    indispensable--me included--none of us have the whole truth, and all of
    us have something to give. He is better at making people understand that
    than any human being I have ever known.

    [[Page 1425]]

        And Stella was up here bragging about how he had intelligence and
    energy and charm. And I thought, where's the blarney part? [Laughter]
    But I'm telling you, I know this guy. I know him well. And he's kind of
    hot right now because he's raising all this money and having a good time
    doing it. But what you need to know is, he believes in what he raised it
    for. He believes in what we've done here these last 8 years. And he
    knows that we couldn't have done it if he hadn't done what he did.
        And he's given in unique ways thousands of us a chance to be a part
    of changing America for the better. And I think that's something that
    his wife and his children and his family and his friends ought to be
    very, very proud of. Because this is a better country today because of
    Terry McAuliffe.
        Thank you very much.

     Note:  The President spoke at 8:15 p.m. in the Rooftop Ballroom at the
    Washington Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Stella O'Leary,
    president, Irish-American Democrats; John D. Raffaelli, partner,
    Washington Group; former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore Timothy A. Chorba;
    and Rashid Chaudary, president, Raani Corporation.