Remarks at a dinner honoring Kathleen Brown in San Francisco, California

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 31, 1994

October 22, 1994

The President. Thank you so much. I'm just curious, can you hear me in the back of the room? [Applause] Good.

I was listening to Kathleen give that speech--

Audience members: Louder, louder.

The President. I know, there's something wrong with the sound system, isn't there. Can someone turn the sound up? There's something wrong with it.

Well, I'm sorry, you'll just have to listen. [Laughter]

I was thinking when Kathleen was speaking that I was glad that she didn't run against me in 1992. And then I was thinking when she was speaking, we will now know what happened when Mrs. Wilson gets a lot of write-in votes from Modesto on election day.

You know, I really looked forward to this, to coming out to California and giving you a progress report, talking about what this election is all about. I care a lot about this Governor's race. I used to be a Governor. In some ways it was the best job I ever had. At least I had an easier time defending myself. [Laughter] The truth is, I wouldn't trade this for anything.

But if you will bear with me, even in this festive atmosphere, I want to talk tonight pretty seriously to you about what is at stake in these national elections, including Senator Feinstein's race and the congressional races, and then why what is at stake here in California is just like that and why even though it's a different issue and a different race what is underlying the contest is the same and why you have to make the same decision. And I want to do it because, after all, for the next 2 weeks and some odd days, you need to spend more time talking to the people who aren't in this room than the people who are if you want to make a difference in this election.

When I was elected President, thanks in no small measure to the overwhelming support of the people of the State of California, I went to Washington determined to do everything I could to rebuild the American dream and to bring the American people together, to make sure that we move into the next century able to compete and win, to make sure that our children are not the first generation to do worse than their parents, to make sure that all this incredible diversity we have in America was the engine of our strength and unity, not the instrument of our undoing. That is why I wanted to be President. And I went there hoping, because I was determined to take our Democratic Party in a different direction, that the Republicans would at least meet me halfway or, would you believe, 5 percent? [Laughter]

Well, we've been there 21 months. And here are the facts: We have made a real start in making the Government work for ordinary Americans, in bringing the economy back, and making the world more peaceful and more secure for Americans to live and to grow and to flourish in. And in this election we do not pretend that there is nothing left to be done. We ask only that the American people look at what has been done, look at what our opponents have done, look at what they offer for the future. We ask them not to go back to the dark days of trickle-down economics and divisive social policy but to go forward into the 21st century with confidence.

I got tickled, the Republican House leader, Mr. Gingrich, in a rare moment of candor the other day said that his whole--that their whole mission in life, all of them, the Republicans in Washington, the leaders, was to make sure Americans thought I was the enemy of normal people. Well, you know, the truth is he's done a pretty good job of that in some place or two. [Laughter] I thought to myself, now, what does that mean? I understand it partly because I grew up in the South like a lot of you who are immigrants to California from that part of America. And I mean, I was raised on that kind of politics. If you couldn't think of anything to be for and you wanted to get in, just demonize your opponent. And if people are mad and angry and upset about something else, maybe they could just transfer all that onto the election. And just like a kid in a snit on a playground, if you make a decision when you're mad, normally you don't know what you're doing. So you run the risk of being for that which you're against and being against that what you're really for.

Now, that's the risk in the California Governor's race, that's the risk in the California Senate race, and that's the risk in these Congress races all over the country. If you can get people all mad and then transfer their anger and frustration to somebody with a "D" beside their name and make them the enemy, then you wind up doing that which you would not do if you were thinking.

It reminds me--you know, one of the primary jobs of any parent is to try to raise their children not to make important decisions when they're just stomp-down furious. And in my part of the country--you know, I was born in a little town in south Arkansas about 20 miles from the Louisiana border. And I don't know how many of you have ever been down there, but there are a lot of Cajuns in Louisiana who literally came from Acadia before and populated the State. And they developed a special way of speaking and even a sort of a hybrid language and an incredible body of humor. And when I was a young man I used to make a habit of collecting these Cajun jokes. But I remember one which illustrates what we are in danger of seeing happening in this election if we don't turn it around and get people to thinking and not just feeling anger. A story about these two Cajun fellows named Renee and Jacques. And Jacques walks down the street, and he meets his friend, Jean. And Jean says, "Jacques, I always see in your pocket your $5 cigars. And they ain't there today. Why ain't they there anymore?" And he said, "You know, that no-good Renee, every time he sees me, he says, 'Hey, Jacques, how you doing?' He hits me in the pocket. He ruins my $5 cigars." He said, "Yes, I understand that, but how come you replace the cigars with dynamite?" He said, "Don't you know the next time he does that, you'll get killed?" He said, "Yeah, I know that, but I'll blow his hand off, too." [Laughter] You think about that. That's what's going on here. That's what's going on here.