Remarks at a Democratic National Committee dinner in East Hampton, New York

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 10, 1998

First of all, I thank Bruce and Claude for their wonderful hospitality in this magnificent home and the terrific dinner. Our compliments to all the - the chef and the people in the kitchen. I thank Alan and Susan for dreaming up this weekend and all of you who have come to be a part of it.

We've had a great time tonight. Since Bruce asked me if I would go in there when we're having coffee in the other room and answer questions, I will spare you any extended remarks. I want to ask you to think about something. I am - we're here for the Democrat Committee, and I'm very grateful to Steve Grossman and to Len Barrack and to Fran Katz and all the other people. But I was born a Democrat because I was a Depression era - my parents were and my grandparents. My grandfather, who raised me until I was 4, thought he was going to Franklin Roosevelt when he died.

But I was determined in 1991 and 1992 to be faithful to the traditional values of our country and our party, but to modernize our party and to bring a new set of ideas to the debate in Washington, which I thought, frankly, was stale and divisive and dominated by the people in the other party who thought they had an entitlement to the White House. Some days, I think they still do. [Laughter] And I thought the White House belonged to all the rest of you and everybody else in the country and was the instrument of ideas consistent with our democracy to keep our country moving forward.

Now, Hillary is leading this Millennium Project, which was referred to earlier. And you probably saw that they started - Hillary and Ralph Lauren started by saving the StarSpangled Banner the other day. And then she went to Fort McHenry, and then to Thomas Edison's home, and then to Harriet Tubman's home, and then to George Washington's Revolutionary War headquarters in New York.

But the theme of the Millennium Project is: "honoring the past and imagining the future." So I think about that all the time. Tom said that McKinley was the last President to come here, for example - it must be true. [Laughter] Now, McKinley was an interesting fellow, but I'll tell you the interesting - McKinley was elected President in 1896 and reelected in 1900. Now, between 1868, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley were elected President. You know what they had in common? They were all generals in the Union Army from Ohio.

If you got to be a general in the Union Army, and you were from Ohio, you had about a 50 percent chance of being President in that period of time. [Laughter] That's a rather interesting bit of our history. [Laughter] So tell that tomorrow when they tell you McKinley was the last President. I care a lot about this country's history. I've spent a lot of time reading it, studying it, trying to feel it in the White House, in every room, in the life of every predecessor I have had and their families. And I think it's very important when you imagine the future that we do it in a way that is consistent with the history of this country.

So I will say that I think the most important things about American history can he found in the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which - and manifest in every changing time, this country has always been about at least three things: widening the circle of opportunity for responsible citizens, deepening the meaning of freedom in each succeeding generation, and strengthening the bonds of our Union.

The reason I'm a Democrat in 1998, apart from the fact that I was born and raised one and believed in the civil rights movement and the things that were dominant in my childhood, is that I think we more clearly represent the last of those ideas. I think we believe that Union is very important. I think we believe that part of the Declaration of Independence that we are dedicated to the permanent mission of forming a more perfect Union because there are some things that we want to achieve for ourselves, our families, and our future that we cannot achieve alone or in isolated groups.

And I say that because I think that we've, for the last couple of decades, seen a real assault on Government and on the idea that we do have sort of mutual ties and bonds and responsibilities to one another that enhance our own lives. And I believe that very strongly.

So as we look ahead, I think - I will just tell you what I think some of the great challenges of tomorrow are. I think, first of all, it will be the period of greatest possibility in all human history, and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we mess it up. It will be an age of breathtaking biological advances. It will be an age of breathtaking technological advances. It will be an age where we will be able to relate to people around the world through the device of the Internet - the fastest growing social organism in history, I might add - in ways that our parents could never imagine, probably in ways that most of us could never imagine.

But we have some big challenges at home and abroad. And I will just mention them and stop, and you ask yourself: If you're trying to imagine the future, what do you think the big challenges are? Now, let me just mention what I think they are.