Remarks at a Democratic National Committee dinner in Columbus, Ohio

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, April 1, 1996

Thank you very much. I'll tell you, I've been around John Glenn a lot - that's the best darn speech I ever heard him give. [Laughter] Let me see if I can remember that, "You don't make America stronger by taking Big Bird away from 5-year-olds, school lunches away from 10-year-olds, summer jobs away from 15-year-olds, or student loans away from 20-year-olds." That's a pretty good line. That's a good line.

I want to thank our National Chairman, Don Fowler, for his tireless work and for being here, and your remarkable State Party Chair, David Leland, for this incredible event. I thank you, sir, and all who worked on it. I thank all the distinguished officials that are up here on the dais with me, and especially my colleagues, Congressman Sherrod Brown, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, and Congressman Tom Sawyer. Thank you for your fine work.

I have, I understand, two friends out in the audience, former colleagues, your former Attorney General Lee Fisher and your former Governor Dick Celeste, hello to you wherever you are and thank you for being here. Ladies and gentlemen, Ted Strickland, is he here? Where are you, Ted? Thank you.

I want to thank the remarkable Central State University marching band, thank you very much for playing. I'd like to thank the others who performed before I came out here, America's Pride and Darla's Dancers and Madeline Reberra, thank you all.

I have a very great deal to be thankful to Ohio for, as it has been pointed out. The votes of Ohio on June 2, 1992, made me the nominee of the Democratic Party. The votes of the Ohio delegation in New York City in June of 1992, or July of 1992, officially made me the nominee of the Democratic Party. On Election Night in 1992 in November, Ohio put the Clinton-Gore ticket over the top, and we thank you for that.

More recently, I want to thank especially the people of Dayton for hosting the Bosnian peace talks and giving the United States a chance to play a role in settling the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II, promoting peace, saving lives, and thereby avoiding a war which our young people might be drawn into. I thank you for hosting those peace talks.

Let me say, having been traveling around the country now for the last couple of weeks, if anybody in this room had anything to do with settling the GM strike, there's 150,000 people that want to thank you, too, all across America for the chance to go back to work.

Ladies and gentlemen, most of what needs to be said to the Democrats of Ohio has already been said here tonight. I have a lot of gratitude in my heart. I want to thank all of the people from Ohio who now serve or who have served in our administration and all of you who have helped us to move this country forward.

But I want you to understand clearly, without any reservation, that this election represents a turning point in American history. In 1992, the real question was whether we would just sort of continue to drift along or whether we would change the course of America. In 1996, the decision will be between two very different paths of change. There is no status quo option.

And when I ran for President in 1992, I told you that my vision for America was a country in which every person, without regard to their region, their income, their race could have a chance to live up to the fullest of their God-given abilities, to share in the American dream if they were willing to work for it; an America that led the world for peace and freedom and prosperity and security; and an America where we valued and respected each other so that we came together around our basic values of work and family and community, instead of being divided by the cheap, short-term, divisive tactics that many have used in the other party to divide the American people at every election season. That's the America I want, an America coming together and moving forward and meeting the challenges of the future.

And my message to you is that the record that Senator Glenn talked about is not a record to sit on, it's a record to build on, because what has happened is - for all the progress we have made, you know America still has many challenges, and I think every American understands at some level, maybe just instinctively, that this is not a normal time, that we are going through a period of very profound economic and social change. I believe and I said all over America that our Nation today is changing economically more than it has at any time in a century, since people moved in Ohio from the farm to small towns and cities, since they moved from making a living primarily in agriculture to making a living primarily out of manufacturing.

Today the American people and people all over the world are moving from an economy that is based on their national markets to one based on world markets. They're moving whether they work in the factory, on the farm, or in offices from an economy where mind is more and more important and muscle is less and less important. They're moving into economy where work forces are being radically restructured because the little digital chip means that you can communicate more information more quickly with fewer people than anyone would have imagined even 10 years ago.