Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 4, 1999

September 24, 1999

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, you can see I'm a little hoarse tonight. I lost my voice coming back from New Zealand; then I got it back today, and I'm losing it again. It's 10 o'clock on Friday night, and you've heard me give this speech before. [Laughter]

I'll never forget, once I went to hear Tina Turner, that great political philosopher - [laughter] - in a concert, and she sang all of her new songs since she made her comeback, about 10 years ago. And then at the end she started singing "Proud Mary," which was her first hit 25 years ago. And everybody went nuts - 25 years ago or 10 years ago - everybody went nuts. And they were clapping, and she walked up to the microphone and she said, "I've been singing this song for 25 years. And it gets better every time I sing it." [Laughter]

So I won't keep you long. But let me join the Vice President in thanking Bob and Arlene, Bob and Clarice for hosting this dinner. I always love to come back to this beautiful home; I've been coming here for years. I would never tire of it. I thank Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend for being here, for being our friend, and for being, I believe, by any measure, the finest Lieutenant Governor in the United States - for her ideas and her actions. [Applause] Thank you.

I thank Joe Andrew, Roy Romer, Beth Dozoretz, Andy Tobias, my good friend Mayor Archer, all the officials of the Democratic Party. And most of all, I thank you.

Now I want to give a brief but, maybe, unconventional speech here. I want to sort of unpack where we are, what the Vice President said, what Bob and Bob said - all the nice things they said about our record and all that - what it really means for where we are and where we're going, because that's what matters.

When I asked Al Gore to become my Vice Presidential partner, we put out a book called, "Putting People First." And a lot of experts said we were crazy. They said, "This whole thing is crazy; these two guys are the same age" - I look 100 years older than him now. [Laughter] They said, "These two guys are the same age; they come from States that border each other; they more or less think alike; this is nuts. Why are they doing this?"

Then we put out this book. And as evidence of the sort of cynicism of the political process, people said, "Now this is really nuts. Here they put out this book; they've given all these specific commitments to the American people; and, you know how politics is, they're not going to do any of this. Then this book will be used to beat them over the head with."

You never hear about our book, do you? Do you know why? Because a respected scholar of the Presidency says we have kept a higher percentage of our commitments than the last five administrations, even though we have given far more than any. Now why is that? And not because - is it because we're more honest than they were? No. It's because we thought through what we believed, and analyzed where we thought the country was; and said, okay, if this is true then, therefore, we have to do these things.

We've got to get rid of this deficit; we've got to expand America's business; we've got to bring opportunity to people who don't have it; we've got to invest in education. We had ideas. And we were following on 12 years of the Reagan/Bush era, which was premised on two great ideas. One was that the Government was the problem - you remember all those speeches - America's in trouble because the Government is the problem - 1980.

The second was the interesting proposition that we would balance the budget and grow the economy forever if we just cut taxes and increased spending. Shall I say it again? [Laughter] That's what they thought. So we didn't believe that. We just said, let's go back to arithmetic and get America ready for the modern world. And it worked, and you've talked about that.

Now, in 1998 - I want to talk about a little more arithmetic - we won seats in the Congress in the midterm elections for the first time since 1822, in the sixth year of a Presidency, because people like you gave us enough money to get our message across, even though we were outspent $100 million. Doesn't matter how much money they have, if you've got enough. [Laughter] Right? We had enough.

We need your help now. And what I want to say to you is, that's all that matters now. We've got to have enough. Because when young people come up to me and say, "I'm interested in politics, Mr. President. What should I do, and how should I do it?" I always say, "Well, if you run, try to make sure that on election day, everyone who votes against you knows exactly what they're doing."

And if you think about it, that's what democracy should be. If everybody knows what they're doing, and you lose, you can't gripe. You are making sure, with your contributions, that when people vote, they'll know what they're doing.

The other thing I want to tell you is, you should be of good cheer. You should be optimistic. You should be confident. Why? Because we've got a good record. You just heard we've got good plans for the future. And because most Americans aren't thinking about this yet, and all the pundits that want you to believe it's all over are the same crowd that have buried me 9 or 10 times already. [Laughter] You should be of good cheer.