Remarks at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Nebraska - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Dec 11, 2000

December 8, 2000

Thank you very much. Didn't Casey do a good job? [Applause] She was great. I'd like to thank Chancellor Johnston for her kind remarks and the honorary degree. And thank you, President Smith, and members of the board of trustees, to both the students and the other members.

Thank you, Governor, for your welcome. And I thank the other State officials who are here. I am especially grateful that my longtime friend and former colleague as Governor, your retiring Senator, Bob Kerrey, flew down here with me today. Thank you, Bob, for your service, along with our former Nebraska Congressman, Peter Hoagland. Thank you for coming with me. I congratulate Ben Nelson on his election to the United States Senate. Governor Morrison, thank you for being here today.

And I want to say a special word of thanks to my great friend, your former Senator, Jim Exon, who persuaded me to come here and to come to Kearney--he said--should be here.

When I came in here and I looked at this crowd, one of my staff members joked that we had found a building in Nebraska that would hold every single Democrat--[laughter]--and a few charitable Republicans, to boot. [Laughter]

Let me say, I'm glad that I finally made it to Nebraska. There were a lot of signs outside that said, you saved the best till last. [Laughter] And I saw the patriotism and the spirit of the people, all the children holding the American flags. It was very, very moving, coming in. All the schools were let out, and there were hundreds and hundreds of people along the way. And it made us a little bit late, and for that, I'm sorry. But I did actually stop, and we got out and shook hands with one group of schoolchildren there just to thank them for being in the cold. So I thank them for that.

I was also reminded at the airport that we are literally in the heartland of America. A gentleman at the airport gave me a sweatshirt that had a little map of Nebraska with Kearney, and it had a line and it said, "1,300 miles to New York and 1,300 miles to San Francisco."

Most Americans have probably forgotten this, but back in the 1870's, there was actually talk of relocating our Nation's Capital away from Washington, DC, to a more central location. And a local publisher in this community, named Moses Henry Sydenham, launched a national campaign to nominate Kearney for the Nation's Capital. He promised to rename it "New Washington" and to use the real estate profits to pay off the national debt. [Laughter]

Critics of his proposal asked him what in the world he would do with all those big, fancy buildings in old Washington. He said it was simple. He would turn them into asylums. [Laughter] Well, history took a different course, except for that part about turning those buildings into asylums. [Laughter] I have occupied one for the last 8 years.

And we are finally paying off the national debt, which is good. [Applause] Thank you. But since half of Washington is in Kearney today, maybe we should think again about moving the Capital. I rather like it here. [Laughter]

I want to say again, I thank the people of this community for a wonderful welcome, and all of you in the university community especially. I also want to say again how impressed I was by what Casey had to say. Because I came here today not just to keep my promise to visit Nebraska but to keep working on something at the very end of my term I have been trying for 8 years to do, which is to persuade ordinary, hard-working American citizens in the heartland of America that you should be concerned about what goes on beyond our Nation's borders and what our role in the rest of the world is, because the world is growing smaller and smaller and more interdependent. Every Nebraska farmer knows that. And indeed, when Senator Kerrey and I visited the units of the Nebraska Air National Guard out there, we asked them where the guardsmen were. We found out that you have some Nebraska guardsman now still in Kosovo. So we are personally affected by it.

But I don't think I have still--people say I'm a pretty good talker, but I still don't think I've persuaded the American people by big majorities that you really ought to care a lot about foreign policy, about our relationship to the rest of the world, about what we're doing. And the reason is, in an interdependent world, we are all directly affected by what goes on beyond our borders--sure, in economics, but in other ways, as well-- and by what we decide to do or not do about it.

This is an immensely patriotic community. That's one thing Bob Kerrey kept saying over and over again, "Look at all those people holding the flag. These people love their country." But what we have to do is be wise patriots. This country is still around after 224 years because our Founders not only loved our country; they were smart. They were smart enough to figure out how to give us a system that, as we have seen in the last few weeks, can survive just about anything. [Laughter]

And I want to ask you again today, just give me a few minutes to make the case in the heartland about why there is no longer a clear, bright line dividing America's domestic concerns and America's foreign policy concerns and why every American who wants to be a good citizen, who wants to vote in every election, should know more about the rest of the world and have a clearer idea about what we're supposed to be doing out there and how it affects how you live in Kearney. Because I think it is profoundly important.