Remarks in Daytona Beach, Florida

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 28, 1996

Good morning, Daytona Beach, good morning! It is great to be here. Thank you very much for turning out in such large numbers, for your enthusiasm. We've got the Seminoles and the Gators together on something - that's great. Thank you. Congratulations on your great seasons.

Mayor Asher, I am delighted to be back in Daytona Beach, and I must say I thought it was beautiful when I was here 4 years ago. We spent the night, and we started out one of our bus trips here. But this beautiful downtown area is even more beautiful this year. Congratulations. I'm glad to be here.

I want to thank the people who appeared on the pre-program before we came: our congressional candidate, George Stuart; Ted Doran, Janet Bokum, Susanne Kosmas - Janet Bollum, let me say it right - and Susanne Kosmas, who are running for the legislature.

I want to thank those who came with me here: Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson and Attorney General Bob Butterworth; I want to thank your wonderful Congresswoman, Corrine Brown, one of the most energetic people that I have ever worked with; your great Senator, Bob Graham, who served with me as Governor and is one of the most intelligent and gifted and far-sighted public servants I have ever worked with. Thank you, Bob Graham, for being here with me.

And thank you, Governor Lawton Chiles, for so many things, but for proving that we can work together to make Florida and America a better place in so many ways. Thank you, sir, for your leadership.

I want to say more about the other two folks that are up here with me in a moment, but let me just say to Brian DeMarco, thank you, sir, for taking the time out of a different and busy career as a football player to stand up for the responsibility that all fathers have to pay child support for their children if they're not supporting them directly. You could be doing a lot of other things with your time, and you've set a great role model, a great example for America. And I thank you and the other athletes that are doing that.

And thank you, Ana Armstrong. Before I came out here I met with Ana and three other young women who are working and educating themselves off of welfare so that they could succeed as parents and in the work force - Lizette Riveria, Karen Watson, and Joyce Meinert - along with Marcia Bush and Gerald Frisby, who work with them. And I want to talk more about them in a moment, but I just wanted to thank them for the work they have done.

I'd also like to thank the people who provided our music today: Time, the Mark Hobson Band, and the Bethune-Cookman College Gospel Choir and Concert Chorale - thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I came here to Florida less than 2 weeks from the election which will elect the last President of the 20th century and the first President of the 21st century. It is your choice. You have to decide whether we're going to build a bridge to the future or try to build a bridge to the past. You have to decide whether to tell the American people they have to get into that future on their own, or whether that bridge is going to be big enough and wide enough for all of us to walk across together. You have to decide whether we're going to say to folks, "You're on your own," or whether we're going to say, "Yes, it does take a village to raise our children and build our future."

Four years ago I came to Daytona Beach amid a time of high unemployment, rising frustration, and increasing division. Compared to 4 years ago we are better off, and we are on the right track to that 21st century. The unemployment rate in Florida has dropped to an 8-year low. We have 10 1/2 million new jobs, a 15-year high in homeownership. We have declining crime rates for 4 years in a row and almost 2 million people fewer on welfare than there were when I took the oath of office. We are moving in the right direction.

Now it is for you to decide what path we will take to the 21st century. I want to ask all of you - there are a lot of young people in this audience today, and I thank you for coming. There are a lot of parents who brought their children here today and their grandchildren; I thank you for doing that. And I ask all of you when you go home tonight to take a little time in a quiet moment before you go to bed and see if you can answer this question: What do you want your country to look like when we start the 21st century, and what do you want your country to be like when your children are your age?

For me, it is a simple but profound issue, and it's a question as your President I deal with every day. I know what I want for America. I want us to start that new century with the American dream alive and well for every person responsible enough to work for it. I want us to keep leading the world for peace and freedom and prosperity. And I want us, amidst all our diversity, to be coming together, not to be torn apart. I want us to have families where people can succeed in raising their children and at work, I want us to live in harmony with our natural environment. And I want us to live in harmony with each other. I do not want America to be torn apart by the racial, the religious, the ethnic, the tribal hatreds that are consuming so much of the rest of the world. That is what I want for America.