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

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, April 17, 2000

Number five, we ought to make America the safest big country in the world. You know, Georgia and my home State of Arkansas are States with a strong hunting culture. But there's no excuse for not doing a background check every time somebody buys a handgun. There's no excuse.

The law we've had has kept half a million felons, fugitives, and stalkers from getting handguns, and we got gun crime down 35 percent to a 30-year low in the last 7 years. But we can make America the safest big country in the world if we work at it.

Number six, we ought to prove we can improve our environment and the world's and grow the economy. If we don't do that, we will never get out--50 years from now, the children of the children in this audience will be living on a planet that will be much more difficult to navigate if we do not meet the environmental challenges of our time. And we don't have to mess up the economy to do it.

Number seven, we ought to keep in the lead in science and technology.

Number eight, we ought to do more to be good citizens in the world. I've been trying to pass a bill to buy more products from Africa and our neighbors in the Caribbean Basin. We can afford it in America, and a little bit of effort here does a phenomenal amount of good there.

And I want to relieve the debts of the world's poorest nations. I want to head a global effort to develop vaccines for AIDS and malaria and TB. It could save millions of lives.

You know what the number one killer in poor countries still is?

Audience member. I believe it's malaria, no?

The President. No.

Audience member. What is it?

The President. Well, malaria is the second. It's basically problems related to the absence of clean water. Still, problems related, including total dehydration, which kills a lot of kids.

I think we ought to do these things. I think we ought to keep trying to help people solve their racial and ethnic and religious problems. I think it is worth it. I also believe we ought to bring China into the world's trading system, because if we don't, they'll think we're isolating them, and there's a greater likelihood of a war there.

I just finished reading President Woodrow Wilson's private secretary's memoirs of the end of World War I, and how the Congress ran off and left him and they stiffed all of our opponents, and how it made World War II inevitable. Somebody asked me the other day, "What have you learned about foreign policy since you've been President?" And I said, "I've learned it's a whole lot more like life than I thought it was." What do I mean by that? That people everywhere, across all different cultures are far more likely to respond to the outstretched hand than they are to respond to the clenched fist.

Now, there are some people who do things that I think require us to clench our fist. When Mr. Milosevic did what he did in Bosnia and Kosovo, we clenched our fist. But on the whole, we ought to encourage the positive developments around the world and try to help people get together. I think this is important.