Remarks to the Democratic Leadership Council in Hyde Park, New York - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 29, 2000

And one of the things that really has meant the most to me, of all the things I've read--and I've read a lot a stuff, I just as soon not have in the last 8 years--[laughter]--was Patterson said that by 1995, our administration had already kept a higher percentage of its commitments to the American people than the previous five Presidents. And we had made more commitments.

And the point I want to make today to emphasize the importance of what it is you're about to do is that the reason that was possible is, I had thought a lot about that--what I would do. And I had thought with many of you--with Bruce and Will and Rob and the whole DLC crowd, and a lot of you that were going to these meetings back in the eighties and the nineties--so that when I announced for President, I did it not because I wanted to get out of what I was doing--I was actually happier than I had ever been with my work as Governor and with my situation at home in Arkansas--but because I thought something needed to be done, and I had thought a lot about it. And this New Orleans Declaration bad a lot to do with it.

So the first thing I want to say to you is, you cannot possibly overestimate the importance of what you're here to do if you do it in all seriousness.

Let's just look at New Orleans. We met in New Orleans in 1990. As Al said, the times were different. The economy was bad; the deficit was high; the debt had exploded; all the social conditions were worsening. And Washington seemed to be stuck in a kind of ideological trench warfare, where the Republicans said that Government was the problem, and we said that it was the solution. And we always had to have a false choice: You had to choose the economy or the environment; you had to choose impoverishment or entitlement; you had to choose business or labor.

And most of us, many of the DLC people--this is one of the reasons the DLC succeeded, by the way--is that we had people who were in politics in Washington and out in the country, and a lot of our people in Washington spent a lot of time in the country, and we realized that no one else in the world thought about things or experienced things in the way the Washington media and political establishment talked about issues and that we didn't agree with all these false choices.

And so in New Orleans 10 years ago we set out to say and to outline what we believed ought to be done. Our approach came to be known as the Third Way. But basically, it was rooted in common sense, a common devotion to our party's oldest values, and a common vision of the new era in which we were living.

In 1992 the American people gave us a chance to put our ideas into action. And we have done our best to do that, working across party lines where possible, and where bitter partisanship forced it, going alone.

In New Orleans--let's just look at some of the things we said in New Orleans, as against some of the things that Al has already mentioned. This is what the New Orleans Declaration said: We believe the Democratic Party's fundamental mission is to expand opportunity, not Government; that economic growth is a prerequisite for expanding opportunity for everyone; and that the way to build America's economic security is to invest in the skills and ingenuity of our people and to expand trade, not restrict it.