[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 40 (Monday, October 9, 2000)]
[Pages 2317-2320]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Dinner for Hillary Clinton

October 4, 2000

    Thank you. You are doing nothing to disabuse people of their 
stereotypes about Irish politicians--[laughter]--nothing. I want to 
thank Ted and Vicki for letting us come to this beautiful place, and 
thank you all for being here for Hillary.
    The things that Ted says are so brazen, it's almost hard to get up 
and talk after him. [Laughter] I mean, you've got to go some to have 
more of that whatever that is than I do. [Laughter] He makes Terry 
McAuliffe look repressed. [Laughter] I'm having a good time, actually, 
going out and campaigning for other people. Now, 6 years ago, I went to 
Massachusetts to campaign for Senator Kennedy. It was more fun then, 
because it was quite bracing. He actually had a race then, and 
Massachusetts was the only place I was still popular. [Laughter] So we 
needed each other. It was wonderful. [Laughter] It was great.
    I'd like to begin by once again thanking Senator Kennedy for 8 years 
of support, advice, friendship, prodding, and stunning production, for 
being one of those people that didn't go in a hole and feel sorry for 
himself when we went from being in the majority to the minority in the 
Senate but just got up the next day and tried to figure out a new 
strategy to get done what we needed to get done and to stop those things 
from being done that we oppose. There is nobody like him in the 
Congress, nobody.
    When I was a young man, one day in the summer of 1966, I received a 
call from a man named Lee Williams, who was then the administrative 
assistant to Senator Bill Fulbright. And he said, ``How would you like a 
job working on the staff of the Foreign Relations Committee?'' I was an 
undergraduate at Georgetown. And I, frankly--as it turned out, it was 
just a few months before I discovered that my father had cancer, and we 
were going to be in terrible financial straights, and if I hadn't gotten 
this job, I couldn't finish college, it turned out.
    So he offered me a job. He said, ``Are you interested in a job?'' I 
said, ``Sure I am.'' I had slept about 2 hours the night before. You 
know, I was 19 years old. I thought I was going to live forever. And he 
said, ``Well, you can have a part-time job for $3,500 a year, or you can 
have a full-time job for $5,000 a year.'' I said, ``I'd like two part-
time jobs''--[laughter]--which I thought wasn't bad for 2 hours sleep. 
So he laughed, and he said--this was a Friday morning--he said, ``You're 
just the guy I'm looking for; be here Monday.''
    So I packed my bags, and I went to Washington. And I was not quite 
20 years old, and I was just full of awe for everything. And there were 
some truly great figures in the United States Senate then, people who 
argued about civil rights and argued about foreign policy, including the 
war in Vietnam, and argued about what we ought to do to help the poor 
and how we were going to deal with the great issues of the day. And it 
made a searing impression on me.
    Those 2 years I worked in the Senate, in my last 2 years at 
Georgetown, I watched the Foreign Relations Committee hold those great 
hearings on Vietnam, on whether there

[[Page 2318]]

was a domino theory, what China's future was going to be. And I watched, 
obviously, a President that I admired very much, President Johnson, try 
to push through legislation I believed in and kept getting in deeper and 
deeper trouble over Vietnam. I learned a lot about America and American 
politics.
    And I saw the young and handsome Senator Edward Kennedy inspiring 
all these young people, along with his brother Robert, to public service 
in those years. It's a long time since then. And I want you to know, I 
asked him a question at dinner, and everybody around the table heard it. 
I said, ``Are you as idealistic today about our country and our system 
as you were when you entered the Senate, shortly after your brother was 
elected President?'' He said, ``More.'' That's why he's one of the 8 or 
10 greatest Senators in the history of our country.
    And by the way, I said, ``Me, too.'' I feel I will leave office more 
idealistic than I was the moment I took my hand off the Bible from 
taking the oath of office on January 20, 1993. I will. I feel that way 
about our country. Just look at the last 8 years. We've got a lot of 
evidence that our challenges as a people yield to intelligent, sustained 
effort in the same way that all other challenges of life do.
    So that brings me to how come you're here and why he threw this 
party for us. When Hillary--I'll never forget this--the last thing in 
the world I expected to be doing about a year and a half ago was this. 
[Laughter] I mean, I thought, we were talking about what a great last 
year we were going to have; we were going to take all these trips 
together; we were going to do all this stuff and how great it would be. 
And then Senator Moynihan announced that he wasn't going to run. I can't 
remember exactly when that was. And then a few days later, Charlie 
Rangel and, I don't know, several other House Members, called Hillary 
and said, ``You really ought to think about doing this.'' They knew that 
we were going to move to New York when we left, I think, and so they 
said that.
    She said, ``Bill, this is crazy.'' I said, ``I don't know; you want 
to do it?'' She said, ``I don't know.'' So she went up and started 
looking around and talking to people, and she came back, and she said, 
``I think I'd like to do this. Do you think I should?'' I said, ``I'll 
give you the same advice I give young people fresh out of college that 
ask me this. If you can stand to lose--can you stand to lose? If the 
answer to that's yes, then you go to question two. Do you have a reason 
for wanting the job that's bigger than the fact that you'd like the 
title, something that relates to the people you want to represent and 
not to just the fact that it would be nice to be a Senator? If the 
answer to that's yes, then the third question is, are you prepared to 
pay the price it takes to win?''
    I said, ``You've got to understand. This means that all those trips 
we were going to take we're not going to take. All those relaxing 
weekends we were going to have at Camp David, just sitting around with 
our friends and watching movies, we ain't going to have them.'' And I 
went through a lot of other things. I said, ``Now, if the answer is 
you're not paralyzed by the thought of defeat; you have a reason for 
wanting the job that's bigger than the fact that you'd like to have it, 
that relates to the people you want to represent; and you're prepared to 
do what it takes to win, then I think you should do it.'' I think she 
wanted me to say yes or no. [Laughter] So about a day or so later, she 
said, ``Okay, I want to do it. So here we go.''
    I'd just like to say a couple things. First of all, on a purely 
personal note, for 30 years, all she's done is helped other people, 
mostly me. But she also served on the board of the Legal Services 
Corporation, under President Carter, and she started the legal services 
clinic at the law school, when she and I were teaching at the law 
school, almost 30 years ago. Her first job was with what was then called 
the Washington Research Project, now known as the Children's Defense 
Fund, when we got out of law school. Then she went on the board of that. 
Then she helped me get elected attorney general and Governor. And then 
when I got elected Governor, she founded something called the Arkansas 
Advocates for Families and Children and built the State's first neonatal 
level three nursery so we could keep these tiny little infants alive. 
And now in our little State, that children's hospital is the seventh 
largest children's hospital in America.
    And for 30 years, I just watched her do stuff for other people--
mostly me, but also

[[Page 2319]]

for other people. And this is the first time she ever asked anybody to 
help her. So I'm trying to do my part. And I'll never get even; I'll 
never get caught up. But I really appreciate it, because what I want you 
to know is--you heard that debate last night, so we'll start with that. 
I thought the Vice President did a really good job, and I was really 
proud of him. I hope that over the course of these three debates--I 
think we made a good start last night--that the American people will see 
two leaders representing two parties, that show genuine respect for one 
another but have clear differences. And I hope that these debates will 
clarify those differences, so people will know what the choices are. And 
I think we made a big start last night. And I think Mr. Lehrer deserves 
a lot of credit, because he had a little flexibility there, and they 
spent at least 3\1/2\ minutes on every topic, instead of 90 seconds on 
this, and we'll go to 90 seconds on that, 90 seconds on the other thing. 
So we're doing that.
    But I was happy when she decided to do this, because I think it's 
important that we have people in the Senate who understand these big 
issues and understand the big choices and who are capable of clarifying 
them, number one.
    Number two, one thing I've learned watching Ted is that he's 
effective because he's both dogged and flexible, because he has both 
passion and organizing ability. He stays with stuff. And I personally 
have never worked with anybody that had the same combination of 
intellectual ability and passionate commitment and organizing ability 
and doggedness that Hillary does. And I think she's really well-suited 
for this kind of job. And I know how much she cares about this stuff.
    I say this all the time, but I'm not running for anything. I don't 
have to say this. I really do believe when Al Gore says, ``You ain't 
seen nothing yet,'' that may be a campaign slogan, but I happen to 
believe it's true. I feel like we've just sort of set the banquet table 
in the last 8 years, but we haven't served the meal yet. It takes time 
to turn a country around. I mean, this country was in a--I know people 
took a big chance on me 8 years ago, but it wasn't that big a chance, 
because the country was in a ditch, and we had to change. [Laughter]
    I've often wondered, late at night, how many people strolled into 
the voting place and said, ``God, I just don't know if I can vote for 
this guy. He's just Governor of this small southern State, and he looks 
like he's 30 years old, and they said terrible things about him, but, 
oh, heck, what the heck, I'll give it to him.''
    So now it's different, and things are going well. And the last bad 
social indicator we had began to bend when we learned a couple days ago 
that last year, for the first time in a dozen years, we had 1.7 million 
fewer people without health insurance, thanks to the Children's Health 
Insurance Program that we fought so hard for in 1997. But we have still 
a long way to go.
    So we got things moving in the right direction, and the real 
question is, what are we going to do with this? Are we going to sort of 
splurge it away, saunter through it, wait for it to come to an end, or 
build an edifice? You know, build the future of our dreams for our kids. 
That's what this is all about.
    The reason I wanted Hillary to run, once she answered yes to the 
three questions, is that we need every good hand we can, every stout 
heart we can, every good mind we can, and everybody with a steel will we 
can, determined not to squander but instead to make the most of this 
moment. And we need every voice we can, bringing clarity to the choice, 
so the American people, whatever they decide, it's always got to be all 
right with those of us that are in the arena. I mean, they usually get 
it right. Otherwise, we wouldn't be around here after 224 years. America 
would be on the trash heap of history. So you've got to believe in the 
system. Every time people get enough information and enough time, with 
the right argument, they nearly always get it right. Otherwise we 
wouldn't still be here, still rocking along, still building a more 
perfect Union.
    So we need people with talent. And I can just tell you, I know I'm 
biased, but I've known hundreds of people who do this stuff, and I've 
never known any citizen activist who had remotely the combination of 
qualities that would make a great Senator that she does. That's what I 
really believe. I always--

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I remember when we were going together. I said, ``This is terrible. I'm 
going home to Arkansas, and I'm going to try to run for office, and I 
feel terrible that you're going to do this, because you ought to be 
doing it, too.'' The only thing that anybody can say anymore, after all 
I've been through, that makes me mad, is when somebody suggests that the 
only reason she can do this is that she's my wife and First Lady. If she 
hadn't been my wife and First Lady, she could have done it 25 years ago. 
Now, that's the truth.
    So, thanks. We're in a hard fight. We're a little ahead. I think 
she's going to win. I think the Vice President and Senator Lieberman are 
going to win. But I think the big problem is making people understand, 
number one, this is a gift, this moment--countries just get a moment 
like this once every 50 years or so--and number two, understanding what 
the nature of the choice and the consequences are. I am absolutely 
convinced, if people get the feeling this is a really important election 
and then have a pretty clear idea of what the choices are and what the 
consequences are, we're going to do great.
    Clarity is our friend; cloudiness is our foe. And you helped us 
tonight by making sure that she'll be able to hold up her end of the 
deal in New York. I just want to urge you to keep doing whatever you can 
and not just financially, I mean really just talking to people. People 
have got to understand, this is a big deal. I mean, I feel that we spent 
so much time just trying to get all the things going in the right 
direction and get the country coming together and giving people a sense 
of possibility again, and I think people have that. They have this. Why 
do you think the issues are so important?
    One reason Al Gore got such great ratings out of the speech at the 
convention, and it lasted more than Governor Bush's did, is it was more 
specific. I once said to him, I said, ``the Presidency--the election for 
President is the world's greatest job interview. And sometimes people 
forget that. You're asking people to hire you. And unlike a lot of other 
jobs, you get to both interview for the job, and tell people at the same 
time what you think the job is. And it changes over time.''
    So that's what we're doing. You've done a good thing here, helping 
Hillary tonight. She won't let you down. And we need every great soul we 
can get in the Senate. You're doing a good thing by helping our side in 
this election. You've just got to make sure that we have--that people 
really understand and care about it.
    I've lived long enough now to see tragedy change things. I've seen 
Senator Kennedy go through tragedy after tragedy and keep serving, but 
the times that he had to serve in changed. He's going to have the best 
time to be a Senator that he's had since the first term he was in the 
Senate, if we win the White House, if we pick up some Senate seats, we 
pick up some House seats. It will be the best time you've had since you 
started.
    And you have to wait a long time when things go bad to make them 
just right again. And so I say to you, not in a maudlin way, that this 
is a gift. We have been given a gift. If I had any role in it, I'm 
grateful. I did the best I could, and I've got a few more cards to play 
before I'm done. But you've got to make sure you do this election right, 
because it may be 50 years before we get another chance. We've got to do 
it right.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:22 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his 
wife, Vicki; Terence McAuliffe, chair, 2000 Democratic National 
Convention; and Jim Lehrer, who moderated the first Presidential debate.