Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Luncheon in Palo Alto - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 2, 2000

September 23, 2000

First of all, thank you for talking a few seconds longer so I could--[laughter]--could almost finish my Indian meal. I want to thank the Doctors Mahal and their children for opening their home. Thank you, Vish. Thank you, Dinesh. Thank you, Joel Hyatt.

You know, for a long time, Joel Hyatt was the first legal entrepreneur in America. He had this sort of legal services for the masses. He was advertising before it was fashionable. Hillary and I used to look at Joel's ad on television. She said, "You know, he was behind us at Yale Law School, but he's way ahead of us in income." [Laughter] So I'm very proud of him and grateful for his service to the party.

I would also like to thank all of those who provided this wonderful meal and the people who served it today. It's really quite a wonderful occasion for me. Back when I was a civilian and had a private life, I used to spend a lot of time in Indian restaurants, staffing from--I fell in love with them when I was in England living for 2 years, where most of the impoverished college students like me ate Indian food at least four times a week. [Laughter] We figured if we couldn't be full, at least we would be warm, and we loved it. [Laughter]

I want to thank you for supporting our party, and I want to make just a few brief observations, if I might. First of all, the primary thing I have tried to do as President is to turn the country around and make the systems of our country work so that Americans have the tools and the conditions to make the most of their own lives.

If you look at the Indian-American community in this country, if you look at the phenomenal success just here in Northern California, the industry and enterprise and imagination of people will carry communities and countries a long way if governments aren't getting in the way but instead are offering a hand up. And that's basically what we've tried to do.

I'm very grateful for the partnership that I formed way back in late 1991 with a number of people in Silicon Valley who helped me to adopt good--both macroeconomic policies and to do better by the high-tech community and the information technology revolution in general. And I am very grateful for that.

I also appreciate the kind words many of you said about the opening that my administration and I have made to India and the restoration of harmonious and good relationships which were, as I said at our table, understandably a little out of kilter during the cold war when India had to relate to the Soviet Union because of the tensions between India and China, but for more than a decade now have made absolutely no sense at all. So we are working hard on a partnership that I believe will be one of the most important relationships that the United States has for many, many decades to come.

In a larger sense, your presence here--I met one person who came through the line and said, "I can't believe it. I've been here one month, and I'm meeting the President." [Laughter] And I think that is adequate testimony to the increasing importance of mobility and openness in our global society, increasing interconnectedness, and therefore, increasing the importance of networks. Now, some people believe that networks will replace nation-states. I don't believe that, because there will still be plenty of work to be done by both. But I do believe that global networks will become more and more important.

There is a book I've been talking quite a bit about lately that--the author actually wrote me a letter last week and thanked me. But I haven't asked for any royalties or anything. [Laughter] The title of the book is "Non Zero," written by a man named Robert Wright, who wrote a fine earlier book called, "The Moral Animal."

But the argument of "Non Zero" is that even when human history seems to be regressing, in the Dark Ages, for example, in the early part of the last millennium, basically, there is a long process of increasing interdependence which has reached its apotheosis in our time; and that the more interdependent people become, the more they are compelled to treat each other in better and better ways, because the more you are interdependent with others, the more your victories require other people to have victories, as well.

So the title is a reference to game theory, but that--in a zero-sum game, in order for one person to win, someone else has to lose. In a non-zero-sum game, in order for one person to win, you have to find a way for others to win as well. And he basically argues that the present stage of economic, political, and social development is the latest and by far the most advanced example of the growth of interdependence.

And that's also, by the way, been at the heart of a lot of what I've tried to do in racial, religious, and ethnic reconciliation. I think the trick is not to get people to give up their identities but to take great pride in their identities, their ethnic and their religious convictions, but to recognize, at least in this lifetime, the ultimate primacy of our common humanity and a way of reaching across divides so--not so that we can give up our differences but so that we can celebrate them and still find a way to work together and move forward.