Remarks at a Tribute to Senator Hillary Clinton in New York City

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 15, 2001

January 7,2001

The President. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. First, let me say what a wonderful thing it is for Hillary and Chelsea and me to be here with Al and Tipper and with all of you.

I want to be brief today because this is Hillary's day, and it's also a day when she very much wanted the Vice President and Mrs. Gore to come here and receive from you the hind of welcome that I knew you'd give them and that they deserved. I'm so proud of them.

You know, I'm kind of tickled about living in New York. I feel the way Garrison Keillor does about Lake Wobegon. [Laughter] I was up here listening to that great church choir, and then our friends Jessye Norman and Toni Morrison and Billy Joel, and how magnificent they were. Then we got the score in the ball game, and I thought, here I am in New York, where all the artists, writers, and athletic teams are above average--[laughter]--and all the voters get their votes counted. [Laughter]

So I thank you. I thank Judith Hope for her strong leadership. I thank Charlie Rangel for 8 years of wonderful partnership. I thank Chuck Schumer for taking me into his home in 1992, when I was running the first time, with his wonderful wife; and then for taking me through Queens, letting me see people and places I might never have otherwise seen, and for running in 1998, which everybody thought would be a bad year. It turned out to be a pretty good one, thanks to Chuck Schumer's guts and drive, and he is great.

I'm looking forward--I hate it that I've got to wait 2 more years, but I'm looking forward to Charlie Rangel being the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. When that happens, you mark my words, it'll be the best show in America off Broadway. [Laughter]

I do want to say just very briefly a serious word of appreciation to the Vice President and to Mrs. Gore. I thank her for, from the time of the first bus ride that, as Al said, we took here, keeping the rest of us in a good humor, always seeing the glass as half full, always caring about our families as well as our politics, and always sticking up for people who others had forgotten, whether they were people with mental illnesses or homeless people or others, reminding me always that I had to be their President, too. I am grateful to her.

And as I've said many times, and as has already been said here today, there's no question that in the history of the Republic, no person has had such a positive impact on the American people from the Office of Vice President that Al Gore has had. It's not even close--not even close.

I told somebody, he had more influence and did more things--whether it was manage our technology policy, our environmental policy, giving all the poor schools the opportunity to hook up to the Internet, helping to supervise our reorganization of the space program, trying to do something about all the terrible congestion at the airports, dealing with big chunks of our foreign policy--nobody ever ver had so much responsibility before. was showing up for work every day, too. [Laughter] I'm really proud of him in ways that you will never know.

He has shown us all, in the last 2 months, under circumstances which have never before existed in our country--and I p ray to Cod never will again--how we should all behave as Americans and patriots. I honor him for my friendship, for his advice, for his leadership, for what he's done for America for 8 years, but in the last 8 weeks, he's shown us the strength of character that very few of us could emulate if we were in the same circumstances.

Now, I would also like to thank the people of New York who helped Hillary to win this race. She did, as Chuck Schumer said, win it the old-fashioned way: She earned it. But she wouldn't have earned it if you hadn't helped her, if you had shut her out and shut her down and turned away from her. I'd like to thank the people who helped her on Long Island, where the going was toughest. I'd like to thank the people who helped her in upstate New York and proved it wasn't so Republican, after all.

I'd like to thank those of you who had me to your counties in upstate New York. I had a lot of fun being there, and I hope we all did some good together. I want to thank the people in this magnificent city for how good you have been to Hillary and to all of us. I want to thank you for making Chelsea feel welcome. She did a pretty good job for her mother, too, up here campaigning, I think--made a lot of votes, I think.

And I want to thank you for making it possible for me to give my wife good advice about how to run in New York. Everybody said how mean it was going to be. Do you remember what you did to me in the Democratic primary here in 1992? [Laughter] I said, "Hillary, look, these people are really good, but they just want to see how bad you can take a beating." [Laughter] "And they will beat you up and beat up you and beat you up and take off your shoes and make you walk on coals"--[laughter]--"make you lie down on a bed of pins and needles. But if you just keep smiling, they'll know you got it, and they will come."