[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 26 (Monday, July 3, 2000)]
[Pages 1469-1472]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a California State Democratic Party Reception
in Los Angeles, California

June 23, 2000

    The President.  Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, before I start my 
speech, there's one other thing I want to say. There's somebody else 
here I want to introduce, and I want to ask to come up here.
    When we nominated Al Gore--we haven't formally, yet, but when he got 
through the primaries--he's the only candidate in our party's history in 
a contested primary, including me, who went all the way through the 
primaries and didn't lose a single one. And I want to bring up Bill 
Daley's partner, Donna Brazile, our campaign manager for the Gore 
campaign. Come on up here, Donna. Thank you.
    I thank Joe Andrew for his leadership. And I want to thank Terry 
McAuliffe for coming in here to help us get this convention financed and 
get it off to a good foot. It sounds strange, but I'm grateful to Bill 
Daley for leaving my Cabinet--[laughter]--because he's going to lead the 
Vice President to victory. So I thank them all.
    I want to say a couple of things about--first, I thank Art for 
reminding you that I kept my word--[laughter]--and I'm glad to be here. 
In 1995 a Presidential scholar named Thomas Patterson surveyed all the 
campaign commitments made by the last five Presidents and said by '95, I 
had already kept a higher percentage of my commitments than my five 
predecessors. And we've got a higher percentage now, thanks to you, and 
I thank you for that.
    I would like to say just a few things to you. First, I am grateful 
that we are having this convention which will be, as you know, my 
farewell convention as President, in the State of California.
    Audience members.  Boo-o-o!
    The President.  I'm not going to shrivel up. I'll be around. 
[Laughter] But listen, I'm grateful that we're having this in California 
because so much of the texture of my campaign in '92--the energy, the 
ideals, the passion--was borne out of the inspiration I received from 
the pain and the faith, from the longing and the idealism that I saw in 
California in 1992, when we had a terrible economy, a profoundly divided 
society, and a level of political rhetoric that was making it worse.
    And I asked you to give me a chance to turn it around. And starting 
with the California Democrats, you did. And you didn't give up on me. 
The day after I won the Democratic primary in California, they said, 
``How dumb are they? Clinton is in third place in the polls.'' There 
were all these people talking about the polls. They remember it. In 
June, I was in third place, at 25 percent. I've been buried more times 
than the undertaker's old suit. [Laughter] But you didn't quit because 
you had this idea that we could do something together to make a 
difference.

[[Page 1470]]

    And then, after I got in, California had earthquakes, fires, 
floods--[laughter]--everything but the lotus arrived for you. [Laughter] 
And we just kept plugging away and didn't give up. And now, we had to 
rebuild a freeway, rebuild Cal State, Northridge. We had to do a lot of 
things, but I did try to help. And I appreciate that.
    So 7\1/2\ years later, thanks to your work and your faith and the 
support I got from the people of California, along with Al Gore and our 
whole team, we've got the longest economic expansion in history and the 
highest homeownership in history and over 22 million new jobs and the 
lowest Hispanic- and African-American unemployment rate ever recorded 
and a 20-year low in poverty, a 25-year low in crime, a 32-year low in 
the welfare rolls. The air is cleaner. The water is cleaner. The food is 
safer. We set aside more land to be protected in history in the lower 48 
States than anybody but the two Roosevelts. And we had the most diverse 
administration, the most diverse appointments to the courts in history, 
and we've been a force for peace and freedom and decency around the 
world. I'm proud of what we did in Kosovo--that caused me to have to 
miss my last chance at you. It made a difference. We stood up against 
ethnic cleansing.
    Now, I'm grateful for the chance you gave me to serve and to do 
that. What do you want to do with that? That's the big issue in this 
election. In 1992 we knew what the deal was. I mean, the economy was in 
the ditch; California was in trouble; all the golden era seemed to be 
washed away. We knew what we had to do. We had to turn this country 
around. We had to prove it would work again. We had to pull people 
together. We had to move forward. It turned out it worked.
    Now, the big question now is, what are we going to do with our 
prosperity? And what I want to say to you is a couple of things. Number 
one, I appreciate your support for me, but I didn't do it alone. Al Gore 
has done more good for more people as the Vice President than anybody 
that ever held that position, ever, by far. By far.
    When no--not one--Republican would vote for our economic plan, he 
cast the tie-breaking vote. When we knew 6 years ago we had to do 
something to close the digital divide, we came here in California, began 
to wire the schools. At the time, only 16 percent of our schools were 
connected to the Internet; today, 95 percent are--only 3 percent of our 
classrooms connected; today, 75 percent are. He did that. He led our 
empowerment zone program, which has brought opportunity to poor areas. 
He managed a lot of our foreign policies. He cast the tie-breaking vote 
in the Senate on whether we would try to close the gun show loophole, 
and have child trigger locks. No Vice President in the history of this 
country ever had such a big impact in the Office of Vice President. A 
lot of them went on to be great Presidents--Teddy Roosevelt, Harry 
Truman, Lyndon Johnson--but none of them had any impact as Vice 
President remotely approximating what this man has done. He is the best 
qualified person to run for President in my lifetime.
    Now, the second thing I want to say is, we could have been 
compassionate and caring and hard working and eloquent. And if our ideas 
had been wrong, we still wouldn't be in very good shape. Now, we have 
tested our ideas. They said--the other side, our friends in the 
Republican Party--when we presented our economic plan, it would wreak 
havoc; it would cause a disaster; the deficit would go up; the economy 
would be in the tank. That's what they said. If you will notice, they're 
not running their quotes about my economic policy in this election. 
[Laughter]
    Then when I was advocating the Brady bill and the assault weapons 
ban and the 100,000 police they said, ``Oh, these cops won't do any 
good,'' and, ``This law won't keep any guns out of the hands of 
criminals.'' And now we've had a 35 percent drop in gun crime and a 25-
year low in crime and a 30-year low in homicide, and you don't hear them 
criticizing our crime policy publicly anymore. I don't know why they're 
not publicizing their positions on all these issues.
    And every time we tried to have cleaner air, cleaner water, set 
aside more land, you know, it was a ``land grabber;'' it was going to 
``break up the economy.'' And now you don't hear that.
    So the second thing I want to say to you is this. This is a real 
important election. It's just as important as '92 and '96 were. What

[[Page 1471]]

a country does with its prosperity is just as stern a test, if not a 
sterner one, of our character and our judgment as what we do in times of 
distress.
    In my lifetime we have never had a chance like this. The last 
longest economic expansion we had in American history was in the 1960's. 
When I graduated from high school in 1964, I thought it was going to go 
on forever. I didn't think anybody could mess it up. [Laughter] I 
thought--I did. And I was optimistic. Lyndon Johnson was my President. I 
thought all these civil rights problems were going to be solved in the 
courts and the Congress, not in the streets. I didn't believe we'd get 
all mired down in Vietnam.
    Four years later, when I graduated from college, it was 2 days after 
Robert Kennedy was killed here, 2 months after Martin Luther King was 
killed, 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he couldn't run for President 
because the country was too divided. And just a few months later, the 
longest economic expansion in American history was history. Nothing 
lasts forever, folks. We're going to be judged by what we do with what 
we have built over the last 8 years. That's what this election is about.
    Now, I will remind you, there are differences between us and the 
Republicans--the second point I want to make. [Laughter] But they 
matter. What I'm saying is--and it's not like we hadn't had a test run 
here. [Laughter]
    So the three points are: It's an important election; there are real 
differences; the third point you've got to remember is, only the 
Democrats want you to know what the differences are. [Laughter] Why is 
that? Because we've had a test run here. They want to talk about how the 
economy is so prosperous, and we've got this big projected surplus so we 
can spend it all on a tax cut and on their plans to partially privatize 
Social Security and build a missile defense system and that kind of 
stuff. We can just spend it all.
    Well, I would like to remind you that that word is ``projected.'' Al 
Gore says, ``No, no. Let's save at least 20 percent by taking your 
Medicare taxes and walling it off and using it to pay down the debt and 
protect it for Medicare, because it may not materialize. And we don't 
want to go back to the bad old days of deficits and high interest rates 
and putting California's economy at risk and America's economy at 
risk.''
    Now, it's not like we hadn't had a test. We did it their way for 12 
years and our way for 8 years, and our way works better. People need to 
understand that.
    Now, look at crime. They tried to abolish my program to put 100,000 
police on the street. They opposed the Brady bill. They opposed the 
assault weapons ban. They won't close the gun show loophole. Now they're 
trying not to do the 50,000 more police that I want. And it's not like 
we hadn't had a test. We tried it their way for 12 years and our way for 
8 years. Our way works better. Crime goes down more.
    And they say if they get in they will reverse my order for 43 
million roadless acres in the national forests. The Audubon Society says 
it's the most significant conservation move in the last 50 years. Al 
Gore says, ``I'll keep it, but I'll do better. I'll build on it.'' And 
they say all this stuff we're trying to do to clean up the air and the 
water is just terrible for the economy. I tell you what, if I was trying 
to hurt the economy with my environmental policies, I've done a poor job 
of it. [Laughter]
    So they say they won't be so tough on this clean air, clean water, 
safe food, all this environmental stuff. Now wait a minute. We tried it 
their way for 12 years and our way for 8 years, and we proved you can 
make the economy very strong and make the environment cleaner at the 
same time. It's not like we hadn't had a test.
    So I want you to tell people this: It's an important election; 
elections are about the future; there are real differences. We want you 
to know what the differences are.
    And I want to make this last point. It's also important that we have 
a leader who understands the future. Al Gore understands the 
implications of the information technology revolution. He understands 
the implications of the foreign policy changes happening all around the 
world that will affect our children's lives. He understands the 
challenges that ordinary families face in this new economy. He and 
Tipper Gore were holding an annual family conference in Nashville, 
Tennessee, even before I named him to be

[[Page 1472]]

Vice President. And so much of the things that we have done, from family 
and medical leave to parity for mental health in health insurance 
policies, are things that came out of the work he and Tipper did.
    So people ask me--I say, ``I'm for Vice President Gore because he'll 
keep the prosperity going, because he'll do more to spread it to people 
and places left behind and to help all American families, and because he 
understands the future and can lead us there. I am for the Democrats in 
the Senate and the House races.'' And you're going to give us, by the 
way, four or five new ones out here in California alone. And I'm for 
them. And I have a special interest in one in New York, as you know. 
[Laughter] But I'm for them because we've had a test run here.
    And if you listen to this rhetoric in the campaign, you know the 
Republicans never talk about their primaries. They're hoping you'll 
forget that and have amnesia. [Laughter] And all the commitments they 
made, and all the things they said, and they really don't want to talk 
about, they want this to be a blur. They want you to think that nobody 
could mess up this economy. Take your tax cut and run.
    And it's kind of like a--they kind of want you to say, ``Well, their 
fraternity had it for 8 years. Give it to ours for a while.'' [Laughter] 
Let me tell you something, this is about people's lives, folks. This is 
about our children's future. You've got to go out and tell people in 
California and beyond California, because we've been here a lot. I've 
been here more than any President ever had. [Laughter] You know what's 
going to--you live this, and you have--here in California, you have a 
searing memory of what it was like in 1992. You remember what it was 
like.
    So you need to reach out across the country. And in this convention 
and after the convention, you need to say to the American people, ``Hey, 
we don't want a negative campaign. We want a positive campaign. We don't 
want to say anything bad about our opponents, personally. We want to 
assume that they're honorable, and therefore, they will do exactly what 
they say.'' [Laughter] But we don't want them to be too selective with 
you in pointing out our honest differences. So we want this to be a 
campaign in which we honestly expose our differences, and we measure 
those differences against the experience we have had.
    And then we say to people--you've got to make this about the future. 
We may never have a time like this in our lifetime, and we owe it to the 
children in this room and throughout this country to build them the 
future of our dreams. We can do that.
    And if we make that the issue, then Al Gore and his new running mate 
will be elected, my favorite candidate for the Senate and a lot more 
will be elected, and Dick Gephardt will be the Speaker of the House. And 
we will get what we should get because we have delivered for the 
American people.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

 Note:  The President spoke at 6:45 p.m. in the Century Room at the 
Century Plaza Hotel & Spa. In his remarks, he referred to William M. 
Daley, general chair, and Donna L. Brazile, campaign manager, Gore 2000; 
Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, Democratic National Committee; Terence 
McAuliffe, chair, Democratic National Convention Committee 2000; and Art 
Torres, chair, State Democratic Party. This item was not received in 
time for publication in the appropriate issue.