Remarks to the Arkansas State Democratic Committee in Little Rock, Arkansas

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, July 27, 1998

Thank you very much. It's good to see you. It's wonderful to be home, I always learn something new. When Bill Bristow was giving that speech, I said to myself, "I am sitting here watching before my very eyes the broadening of the base of the Democratic Party." He now has got every math teacher in Arkansas committed forever. [Laughter]

Thank you very much, Bill. I thought that was a terrific - didn't he do a great job? Let's give him another hand. I thought that was great, really great. [Applause]

I want to thank Blanche Lincoln, Bill Bristow, Judy Smith for being here and for their candidacies; Kurt Dilday, my longtime friend; Mark Pryor. I thank Congressman Vie Snyder for the wonderful job he does in Washington every day. And in his absence - I know he had to be away at a funeral today - I want to thank Marion Berry, too. He has done a wonderful job, especially for farmers.

I thank Jimmie Lou and Gus Wingfield and Charlie Daniels and all the people who have kept the light going in the Democratic Party and State office; Judge Corbin. I'm so pleased to see many people running for office. You know, I had mixed feelings about this term limit issue when it came along, but I felt a little better when Mary Anne Salmon decided to run for the legislature, and I'm glad to see her back there.

I want to say to all of you, too, I read that article in the paper today, and I want to comment a little more about it, ask you whether my Presidency had been good or bad for the State. And the one example on the negative side they had was what happened in a recent transportation bill where even the Transportation Secretary from Arkansas could not implement the plain recommendation of the study because our neighbor from Mississippi jerked away funding for 1-69. No one pointed out in the Arkansas Democrat article that that would not have happened if we had a Democratic Congress - that would not have occurred.

I say that because, what the heck, I never get to be partisan, and it's nice to be home. [Laughter] And also because it's true. [Laughter] Let me say to all of you, I am profoundly grateful for everything you've done for me and for our family. Hillary just got back from a remarkably successful tour, the first of our millennium tours where we're trying to save the treasures of the United States as we approach the year 2000. She went - first of all, we began by trying to save the Star-Spangled Banner. And then she took a remarkable tour through a lot of our country's heritage: Thomas Edison's home, Harriet Tubman's home, George Washington's military headquarters, and then to Seneca Falls, New York, where the women's movement began 150 years ago, where the declaration. of sentiments by 68 women and 32 men who had these radical ideas, like women ought to be able to vote - [laughter] - run for office, own the clothes on their back. We've come a long way. And she asked me to tell you hello.

And I just want all of you to know, too, that I think quite often of that day in October nearly 7 years ago now, when I stood on the steps of the old State Capitol - many of you were there - and said that I wanted to build a better future for our children. And I want to quote - I wrote this down - usually when I come home I feel free to speak without notes, but I did want to write this down - nearly 7 years ago, this is really the test - "to restore the American dream, to fight for the forgotten middle class, to provide more opportunity, insist on more responsibility, and create a greater sense of community for our great country."

Now, there are some things, it seems to me, that are fairly clear and difficult to debate. And I think it's important when we evaluate the coming campaigns of Blanche Lincoln, Vic Snyder, Judy Smith, Bill Bristow, Kurt Dilday, Mark Pryor, and others to remember what America was like 7 years ago. We had high unemployment, rising crime and welfare rates, increasing social division, no clear vision driving the country at home or abroad preparing us for the 21st century. And Washington was doing what I thought it had done too much of before, and what I still hate to see: they were having increasingly harsh political debates in terms that didn't make a lick of sense to most of us who lived out here in the country.

There were the standard debates about, well, the Government is the problem; the Government is the answer. No one I knew believed either thing. I couldn't figure out anybody who believed it until they got into Washington, DC. Everybody had to be a conservative or a liberal, and if you had a different position, somehow there was something wrong with you because it required the people interpreting you to America, to think about it. And the people driving the politics of the Nation's Capital didn't like it.

But we came forward in that campaign in '91 and '92 with a set of new ideas. We had new approaches to the economy, to education, to crime, to we]fare, to the environment, to foreign policy, to the whole idea of Government. It seemed to me that the answer was that we ought to look at Government as our partner in building the American future and that the rule of Government ought to be to give the tools to solve their own problems, to build strong communities and families, and to create the conditions in which that could be possible.