Remarks at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 30, 1995

October20, 1995

The President. I like to see a Democratic crowd just a little rowdy. I like to see a meeting in Iowa where we don't have to bus people in to raise a crowd.

I want to thank your State chair, Mike Peterson, for inviting me here, and give my regards to your attorney general, Tom Miller, to Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald, to your Secretary of Agriculture Dale Cochran; the Senate President Leonard Boswell, the Majority Leader Wally Horn, your House Minority Leader Dave Schraeder. And to all the other Iowans who are here. And I want to say a special word of thanks to the Iowans who have been a part of our administration: Ruth Harkin, the President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Bonnie Campbell who does a wonderful job running our violence against women office; Joel Hern at HUD, Rich Running and Dave O'Brien at Labor; John Miller at FEMA; all these Iowans are doing a great job to serve the United States in the National Government, and I thank them very much.

You know, 4 years ago I was here in the middle of the beginning of the Presidential process. I made a courtesy call because I knew I wouldn't do very well in the Iowa caucuses. [Laughter] I hope that it works out differently this time. I had the great honor of coming here to speak to your legislature, and then to come back to Ames for the rural conference. And I was very glad to do that.

I didn't exactly enjoy it, but I was deeply moved by what I saw when I came here during the floods. And I think there is something quite remarkable about this State. And you're going to have a very important role in the direction of the country for many, many years to come. I came here because I wanted to see the Democratic Party alive and well, and I wanted to speak to what I believe we have to stand for, clearly, unambiguously, and proudly, and how I believe we can reach out to others to broaden our ranks and deepen our resolve.

I think we have to think first and foremost about the young people here. I'm glad to see all these students who are here. I just spoke to somewhere between 900 and 1,000 of them in the basement. As an old musician, let me tell you that even though I wasn't in the room, I very much enjoyed the Carroll High School Jazz Band, they did a great job. I thank them for that.

I want to say a special word of thanks and admiration to Senator Harkin for his friendship, his leadership, and for what he said tonight. What he said was wise and good and true. I want you to keep him in the Senate; we need him. We need him. America needs him.

You know, Tom Harkin was for balancing the budget when the other guys were still running up the debt. He was for doing it in a way that honors our values and our interests. He worked with me to reduce the deficit but to increase our investment in education in technology, in research, especially in medical research. He fought for the proposition that we do have certain obligations to one another in this country. That's what the Americans with Disabilities Act is really all about, bringing out the best in everyone so that we'll all be stronger.

He has always been a leader in our fight against crime. And the Vice President and the Attorney General will be coming into Iowa for a violence prevention conference on Monday morning. And I honor him for having led the fight to remind us that we not only have to be strong in dealing with crime, we have to be aggressive in preventing crime. That's one of the many lessons that the majority in Congress seems to have forgotten, that Tom Harkin has not.

The last thing I wanted to say about the other guys in my introduction is that I was proud to see Senator Harkin invite independents and Republicans to our cause. If you think about the sharp differences in values being expressed in Washington today, we would be historically accurate to call this the Jefferson-Jackson-Abraham Lincoln-Theodore Roosevelt dinner. They were all on our side, compared to what is going on today in Washington, DC.

My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight with a simple and straightforward message. You know we live in a very great country, on the edge of a new era, a new century, a new millennium, a time of great change. We are moving from an industrial age into an information and technology-driven age where even agriculture and industry will be driven by information and technology. We are moving from the cold war to a global village where all of us will be more closely in contact, more closely bound up. We'll have common possibilities and common vulnerabilities as we see every day with terrorism around the world and here at home.

This is a time of enormous potential, and your country is on the move. There is no nation in the world remotely as well-positioned to enable its people to fulfill their dreams and to lead the world toward peace and freedom and prosperity as the United States. But we must be true to our values, and we must have a clear vision of that future.

I ran for President in 1992 for the same reason Tom Harkin did. We thought our country was going in the wrong direction, without a clear sense of vision. I said that if I were honored by the American people with the Presidency, I would try to do the following things: I would try to restore the American dream for all our people and make sure we went into the next century as the most powerful country in the world, the greatest force for peace and freedom and prosperity by having an economic policy that produced jobs and growth, that expanded the middle class and shrinks the under class; by giving us a modern Government that is smaller, less bureaucratic, more entrepreneurial but can still fulfill our fundamental responsibilities to one another; by making sure that America was still the leading nation in the world in a positive sense; and most important of all, by being true to old-fashioned American values in this very new age, of responsibility and opportunity for all, of valuing work, yes, but understanding that families count, too, and we have to help them to stay strong and be together, and of a sense of community which means that we are stronger when we work together. We're going forward or backward together, and that means we have obligations to one another. It isn't popular in Washington to talk about that today, but it is true. We have obligations to our parents when they need us and to our poor children when, through no fault of their own, they need a hand up in life. We have obligations to those who are disabled or who otherwise need a helping hand who are willing to do their part. We have obligations to take off our own blinders and the chains on our own spirit, which is why I was so proud to see all those people in Washington saying in that march, "I intend to take greater responsibility for myself, for my family, and for my community, but I want to reach out to you to ask you to work with me to make America a better place."