Remarks at an Arkansas Civic Leaders Luncheon in Little Rock, Arkansas - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 13, 2000

November 5, 2000

Thank you very much. I'm really glad to see you. [Laughter] I bring you greetings from Hillary and our all-grown-up daughter, who are otherwise occupied in New York today. And she's doing very well, and I'm proud of her. I think she's going to win on Tuesday.

I want to talk today about today and tomorrow. Nostalgia will have to wait. I do want to thank people that are up here on this stage for their friendship. I thank Mark Pryor for taking on this campaign and for getting involved in public life in our State, carrying on his great family tradition while his daddy becomes an ivy league egghead. [Laughter] You notice, I was the only one who was dumb enough to do that before I ran for office; David waited until afterward.

I want to thank Vic Snyder, who has been a great friend and supporter of mine in Congress and a great Representative for this district. It's been my honor to vote for him every time he's been on the ballot.

I want to thank James Lee Witt and Rodney Slater. They have represented our State so well in the Cabinet. They have represented our country. They have done superb jobs, and I'm very proud of them.

We have a few other Arkansans in the crowd. I can't see everybody because the lights are real bright. But I saw Ken Smith and Jim Bob Baker out there. They've also done very well by our administration and there may be others. But I'm really--and Janis Kearney, I think, is here, who--she keeps up with what I do every day, and some day when I want to write my memoirs, I'll be able to read what Janis said I did and so when you read the book, it may be what she said instead of me because I can't remember anything anymore. [Laughter]

But I want to thank all the people who are here. I want to thank Carroll Willis who has been down here working and who has been at the Democratic Party all these years and has done such a great job. And I want to thank my buddy Dale Bumpers. I finally got over being mad at him for leaving the Senate. [Laughter] You know, Dale and Dave and I couldn't quite calibrate our respective schedules and biological clocks so we could go out together. But I sort of envision a remake of the "Three Amigos" movie, where we just get on horses and ride out of Washington and thank hallelujah we survived it all.

Look, I want to talk about this election a little bit. Arkansas is close. Polls say we're a couple points behind. The people in this room could carry this State for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, if you want to bad enough. And I just want to say a few things. I appreciate what's been said, but our public life is always about tomorrow and, yet, yesterday is an indicator of tomorrow.

As near as I can see, the case that the other guys are making is, "Well, the economy is better; crime is down; welfare is down; the environment is better; education is improving; more people than ever are going on to college; we've got a decline in the number of people without health insurance for the first time in 12 years. So what we need to do is bag all those policies and do something entirely different. And among other things, now that we've got this surplus, I'm going to give it all back to you right now, and then some." Now, as nearly as I can see, that's the campaign. And I don't think people understand that. Because, as Vic would say, they run these ads on prescription drugs, and I'll say more about that and the Patients' Bill of Rights and all that. Why is that? Because they know that they've got a lot at stake in this election.

They know there are big differences, and they know that the voters understand what the differences are and what the consequences are that Al Gore and Joe Lieberman will be elected and the Democrats will win the House and the Senate. Therefore, there has to be a lot of muddying of the water. And it's a lot easier to muddy things up than it is to clarify them.

Plus which, I think a lot of people kind of have forgotten what it was like 8 years ago. And sometimes it's harder to make a good decision in good times than it is in bad times. There are younger voters that will be voting in this Presidential election that don't even remember what it was like 8 years ago; even if they tried to think about it, they would have no memory of it.

So here's what I would like you to say to people for the next 3 days. The people in this room can carry this State for Al Gore if you want to bad enough. And this State could literally determine the outcome of the election. There are about 15 to 20 States that are literally within 3 points one way or the other. And no one knows what's going to happen, but what will happen is, the people that want it bad enough will win. That's what's going to happen.

Now, you know they want it bad enough because they don't like what we've done on issues where the majority of the people agree with us, and you know that they'll show up because they have been out a long time. So you've just got to decide whether you think this is worth fighting for; because if you do, we'll win.