Remarks at a Reception for Representative Cynthia A. McKinney in Atlanta - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, April 17, 2000

April 14, 2000

The President. Thank you. Well, first of all, I'm glad to see you. [Laughter] And I'm glad to see you in such good spirits. And I want to thank you for being here for Cynthia and thank her for giving me a chance to come here and be with you.

I think we ought to give another hand to our hosts, the Sadris, for letting us come into their beautiful home today. [Applause] Beautiful place. I appreciated Governor and Mrs. Barnes and Mayor Campbell for being here. They had to leave. And as Roy and Bill said on the way out, "We've got to go, and besides, we've heard this speech before." [Laughter]

That reminds me of something Tina Turner said once. Tina Turner is my favorite political philosopher. [Laughter] I went to a concert of hers, and she sang all of these new songs. And at the very end, she started singing "Proud Mary." It was her first hit. And the whole crowd just went nuts, you know, clapping for her. So she didn't start singing; she just waited until they quit clapping. She said, "You know, I've been singing this song for 25 years, and it gets better every time I do it." [Laughter] So I thank the rest of you for hanging around.

I want to acknowledge--in the audience we have Mayor Jack Ellis of Macon and Mayor Patsy Jo Hilliard of East Point and Representative Tyrone Brooks, thanks for being here. And my old friend and '92 cochairman, Calvin Smyre; Representative Robert Brown. And Billy McKinney is here, Cynthia's daddy. And Senator Butler, thank you for coming. And there may be other members of the legislature here we've missed. State Representative Vernon Jornes--Jones--I can read Cynthia's handwriting; she can't read mine. [Laughter]

And Dikembe, I want to thank you for coming. He came to the White House once with his whole family. And I went out to meet him. And you know, I'm not a small man. I felt like a total shrimp standing there. [Laughter] You know, all these members of the other party, they've been trying for 8 years to humiliate me. If they'd just gotten the Mutombo family standing around--[laughter]--they could have done it in a day. It would have been no problem.

Let me say to all of you, I am here basically for three reasons. One is, I wanted to thank Cynthia McKinney, in front of her constituents, for the support that she has given to our efforts to make America a better place, with a stronger economy, a stronger social fabric, greater equality and opportunity for people; an America that is truly one America across all racial, religious, and other lines that divide us. And you can see by the crowd today that that's the kind of person she's been, and that's the kind of America I've tried to build. And I thank her for that.

The second reason that I'm here is to thank all of you for the work you do here and the example you set. I was listening as the--I saw Iranian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Sikhs introduced. I was glad to see so many members of the Muslim community here. I think that I am the first President ever to consistently give messages on the Eid to the Muslim community around the world, to have Muslim Americans come into the White House and meet with us.

I look around the world--and I'll just start--the third reason I came here is to tell you what I think this election this year is about. And I feel free to say it since it's the first time in 25 years I'm not running for anything. [Laughter] And I'm okay about it most days. [Laughter] I'm okay.

But let me begin by saying this. Everybody knows what's going well today, and I won't go back over it except to just briefly say that we not only have the longest economic expansion in our history and the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the lowest poverty rate in 20 years, the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years, highest homeownership in history, the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded--we also have a sense, I think, of optimism and that we can do certain things. And as Cynthia said, we've tried to be a force for peace and freedom around the world.

But since we've got all these folks here, let me say, I think it's very interesting that in this most modern of ages, where we're thrilled that our kids are on the Internet, and they can go to school with people of different cultures and backgrounds, and we're about to decode the mysteries of the human gene--just in the next few weeks, we'll be able to announce the whole gene sequence that's been completed. And after that happens, it won't be long before we'll be able to block the genetic flaws that cause Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. We'll be able to identify certain kinds of cancers when they're--just a few cells congeal. We may even find out early in the next century what's in those black holes in the universe. It will be the most modern of ages.

No country can be isolated from it. Two years ago there were 2 million Internet users in China. Last year there were 9 million. This year there will be over 20 million. Within 2 years, there will be over 100 million, and the country will never be the same again.