Remarks to employees at Gateway, Inc., in Santry, Ireland

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 7, 1998

Thank you for the wonderful welcome, the waving flag, the terrific shirts. I want one of those shirts before I leave. At least shirts have not become virtual, you can actually have one of them. [Laughter]

I want to say to the Taoiseach how very grateful I am for his leadership and friendship. But I must say that I was somewhat ambivalent when we were up here giving our virtual signatures. Do you have any idea how much time I spend every day signing my name? I'm going to feel utterly useless if I can't do that anymore. [Laughter] By the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions; you just sign your name. [Laughter] You may find you can get away with virtual Presidents, virtual Prime Ministers, virtual everything. just stick a little card in and get the predictable response.

I want to congratulate Baltimore Technologies on making this possible, as well. And Ted Waitt, let me thank you for the tour of this wonderful facility. As an American I have to do one little chauvinist thing. I asked Ted - I saw the Gateway - do you see the Gateway boxes over there and the Gateway logo, and I got a Gateway golf bag before I came in, and it was black and white like this. So I said, "Where did this logo come from?" And he said, "It's spots on a cow." He said, "We started in South Dakota and Iowa and people said, 'How can there be a computer company in the farmland of America?'" And now there is one in the farmland of America that happens to be in Ireland.

But it's a wonderful story that shows the point I want to make later, which is that there is no monopoly on brain power anywhere. There have always been intelligent people everywhere, in the most underinvested and poorest parts of the world. Today on the streets of the poorest neighborhoods in the most crowded country in the world - which is probably India, in the cities - there are brilliant people who need a chance.

And technology, if we handle it right, will be one of the great liberating and equalizing forces in all of human history, because it proves that unlike previous economic waves, you could be on a small farm in Iowa or South Dakota or you could be in a country like Ireland, long underinvested in by outsiders, and all of a sudden open the whole world up. And you can prove that people you can find on any street corner can master the skills of tomorrow. So this is a very happy day.

I want to thank the other officials from the Irish Government, Minister Harney and Minister O'Rourke and others. I thank my great Commerce Secretary, Bill Daley, for being here, and Jim Lyons, who heads my economic initiatives for Ireland, and Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, who has done a magnificent job for us and will soon be going home after having played a major role in getting the peace process started, and we thank her.

I thank you all personally for the warm reception you gave George Mitchell, because you have no idea how much grief he gave me for giving him this job. [Laughter] You all voted for the agreement now, and everything is basically going in the right direction, but it was like pulling fingernails for 3 years; everybody arguing over every word, every phrase, every semicolon, you know? In the middle of that, George Mitchell was not all that happy that I had asked him to undertake this duty.

But when you stood up and you clapped for him today, for the first time since I named him, he looked at me and said thank you. So thank you again; you made my day. [Applause] Thank you.

I'd also like to thank your former Prime Minister and Taoiseach, John Bruton, who's here and who also worked with us on the peace process. Thank you, John, for coming; it's delightful to see you. And I would like you to know that there are a dozen Members of the United States Congress here, from both parties, showing that we have reached across our own divide to support peace and prosperity in Ireland. And I thank all the Members of Congress, and I'd like to ask them to stand up, just so you'll see how many there are here. Thank you very much.

I know that none of the Irish here will be surprised when I tell you that a recent poll of American intellectuals decided that the best English language novel of the 20th century was a book set in Dublin, written by an Irishman, in Trieste, and Zurich, and first published in New York and Paris - a metaphor of the world in which we now live. James Joyce's "Ulysses" was the product of many cultures, but it remains a deeply Irish work.

Some of you will remember that near the beginning of the book, Joyce wrote, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Much of Irish history, of course, is rich and warm and wonderful, but we all know it has its nightmarish aspects. They are the ones from Which Ireland is now awakening, thanks to those who work for peace and thanks to those who bring prosperity.

Much of Ireland's new history, of course, will be shaped by the Good Friday peace agreement. You all, from your response to Senator Mitchell, are knowledgeable of it and proud of it, and I thank you for voting for it in such overwhelming numbers in the Republic.