Remarks at a New Mexico Coordinated Campaign Victory 2000 Reception in Santa Fe - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 2, 2000

September 25, 2000

Thank you very much. First, ladies and gentlemen, let me just thank you for coming here. I want to thank our hosts. And thank you, Diane, and thank you, Bill Sisneros, the Santa Fe Democratic chair.

I thank all the tribal leaders who are here. I thank your predecessor, Earl Potter, who is here tonight. Thank you very much. I'm glad to see you.

I want to thank Congressman Udall. He's done a great job. He's really fun to work with, and as you can see, he's sort of a high-energy person. [Laughter] And he has this idea which, there for a few years in Washington, I was afraid was getting altogether too rare. He actually thinks he's supposed to go back to Washington and get something done for you, instead of just--[laughter]--and he's really, really good, and you should be very proud of him. I like him very much.

I want to thank my friend of more than 30 years John Kelly, for running for Congress and for his service as United States attorney. And I urge you to do what you can to help him. We're just six seats short of being in the majority. And it makes a huge difference. I'll just give you an example.

Today, before I came here, I went over to a shelter for battered women and troubled children and families. And we're in this big struggle to get the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized, which ought to be an absolute laydown. And we clearly have a bipartisan majority in both Houses for this legislation.

But the leadership, for reasons I don't quite understand, has not scheduled it for a vote, and it's supposed to run out Friday night. If we had six more seats, it would have been reauthorized months and months ago. So I say to you, it's a big issue for all the New Mexico-specific reasons and also because your Nation needs it, I think, very clearly.

I'd like to say more than anything else a word of thanks to a number of people. First, on behalf of Hillary and Al and Tipper Gore, I want to thank the people of New Mexico for sticking with us for two elections and giving us your electoral vote.

And I want to say even more, thank you for how much I've learned about America and specific parts of America, from the people of New Mexico; from our friends the Sikhs, many of who were at the Indian Prime Minister's dinner the other night; from most especially the tribal leaders and those whom they represent. I was at the, you know, on the Shiprock Reservation not very long ago. And I think I'm the only American President ever to go to two Native American reservations, and I know I am the first President since James Monroe in the 1820's to invite all of the tribal leaders back to Washington to meet with me.

And I've had liaison in the White House to the Native American community since the first day I became President. And I can't begin to tell you what it's meant to me to try to work with you to meet the common challenges we face and try to help solve some longstanding problems and try to change the whole nature of the relationship between the United States and the Native American tribes.

I want to thank Tom Udall for what he said about me and my friends. You know, I have to say for my friends, I may be the only President in the entire history of the country who was literally elected because of my friends. [Laughter] I mean, I had the lowest net worth of any President since Harry Truman when I got elected. And as my predecessor never tired of telling the American people, I was just the Governor of a small southern State. [Laughter] And when I ran, I was so naive, I thought it was a compliment. [Laughter] You know something? I still do.

And if Bruce and Alice and John Pound really thought I was going to be President in 1988, they were--that's 75 percent of the people in the country who felt that way, my mother being the other. [Laughter] But it's worked out pretty well for America.

And that's just the last thing I want to tell you. I hope you're proud of our party and proud of where we've come, compared to where we were, and proud of the fact that, if you listened to the debate, half the time they sound like us now. [Laughter] Or they kind of want to sound like us. Like they can't possibly admit that they're going to blow a hole in the deficit again, because being for a balanced budget and getting rid of this debt is now the thing to do. And I could go through a lot of other issues.

But what I'd like to remind you of is that ideas have consequences. I think sometimes we forget that in politics. We just kind of like the way it feels: Somebody looks good, sounds good, got a few good moves, gets through a press conference all right. Ideas have consequences, just like they do in every other aspect of your life.

We changed the economic policy, the crime policy, the welfare policy, the education policy, the health policy, the environmental policy, and the foreign policy of the United States. Did we make some mistakes along the way? Of course we did. Not everything turned out just the way we intended in every policy. But if you look back at every single one of those areas, we're stronger today and different than we were then.