Remarks at a Dinner for Representative William J. Jefferson in New Orleans

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 4, 1999

September 27, 1999

The President. Thank you very much. First of all, like everyone else, I want to thank the Davises for having us in this magnificent home. And thank you for the tour through all the art and all the books and all the history of your life. It was fascinating. And I didn't steal any books or artwork. [Laughter] And I can't afford the discount price, either. [Laughter] But it's really wonderful, and we thank you for having us here.

Q. What about the golf -

The President. I'm getting there. [Laughter] I want to thank the mayor for making me so welcome in New Orleans and tell you that he has done a truly magnificent job. New Orleans has had one of the biggest drops in violent crime of any major city in America under his leadership. And I applaud him for that.

I would like to thank Sheriff Harry Lee, who is back there, for many things - being my friend for a long time. But you should know that he came with a group of people from Louisiana to the White House and stayed 2 days this week and provided good cajun cooking for the annual congressional picnic, with all the families there - and the annual press picnic. And while he is a strong supporter of mine, he did not taint the food of any of the Members of Congress of the other party - [laughter] - or any of the hostile press members. [Laughter] He was totally generous to everybody.

I want to thank the people who came from out of town here - Tommy Boggs, my good friend; and my friend Mack McLarty, the former Chief of Staff and Special Envoy to the Americas. We're all glad to be in New Orleans tonight, and we only wish we didn't have to go home.

And I thank Bill for running for Governor. I didn't thank him in the beginning because I didn't want him to leave the Congress. You know, whenever you run for an office like this and you run against an incumbent and times are good, you wonder and worry. But I have seen, myself, a marked movement in the polls and enough to justify your investment here tonight.

So I just want to make some substantive points that have nothing to do with politics. First of all - they have to do with policy more and people - and, incidentally, a political campaign.

First of all, my handicap on my home course is a 12. [Laughter] And that's what it is and that's what I play, even - [laughter] - unless I play a strange course from long tees, and sometimes I play to a 14. But otherwise, I normally play to a 12, and that's about what I shoot.

Secondly, I do most of my music in my music room. Hillary built me a music room on the third floor of the White House, in a little end room. And I have saxophones there from all over the world, from China, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, two magnificent horns from Germany, two from France, three from Japan, and goodness knows where else. Then I've got a bunch of American horns. And I play a 1935 Selmer, and I have a 1915 Buescher soprano saxophone. So I've been into this a long time, and that's where I play, because it's so far away I can't hurt anybody else's ears. [Laughter] So I don't take it on that plane with me when I go. And I do have one at Camp David. And if you have any other questions, I'll try to answer them. [Laughter]

But let me make some points very quickly - and I want you to know why I'm here tonight. Bill Jefferson started with me in 1991, when I was running for President - and nobody but my mother thought I could win - well, my wife did; no one else, those two. And we did it because we thought that the country couldn't go on the way it was, with this sort of gridlock in Washington where 12 years of the previous administrations had quadrupled the national debt, and they basically had reached an accommodation with Congress where every year we would embody President Reagan's idea that if you cut revenues and increased spending, you would balance the budget. It defied basic arithmetic; it didn't work in 1981, and it didn't work in 1991. And in between we quadrupled the national debt, and we got big, big increases in interest rates and high unemployment. The unemployment rate in Louisiana when I took office was about 7 1/2 percent, I think, and it's 4.2 percent today.

So we said - we had been involved with this sort of new Democratic movement. And we thought the Democratic Party had to prove that you could be pro-business and pro-labor; that you could be for equality and education and for high standards; that you could be for growing the economy and improving the environment; that you could be for respecting individuals and people of all different races and ethnic groups and religious groups, and still believe that what binds us together as Americans is more important than what divides us.

In other words, we felt that American politics had fallen into this sort of liberal/conservative, right/left, business/labor, environment/economy. Everything was one way or the other, and nobody was ever getting anything done, and the country was getting deeper in the ditch. And our social divisions were deepening.