Remarks at a Democratic National Committee dinner in Miami: December 11, 1997

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Dec 22, 1997

Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, Mrs. Penelas, Lieutenant Governor MacKay, and to Chris and Gene and Mitch Berger - I thank all three of them for all the work they did to make this night a sterling success.

I thank Governor Romer and Dan Dutko and Alan Solomont for the work that the DNC has done. And about the only thing harder than being President on a regular basis is trying to do a stand-up comedy routine at a fundraiser. And I thought they were both great, so let's give them another hand. I thought they were great. [Applause]

You know, I have a lot of friends in this crowd tonight. Many of you have been with me for a long time. And today I had two immensely satisfying experiences. First, I went out on a Coast Guard cutter and met with a number of people in the Coast Guard who are working to protect the borders of our country here off the coast of southern Florida. In the last year they have had a 1,000 percent increase in the number of arrests and a 300 percent increase in the volume of drug confiscations because of their efforts. And I just went to encourage them and to thank them. And then we had, earlier today, a marvelous kick-off fundraiser for Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay's campaign for Governor. And many of you said something to me about that.

I want to thank you for being here for the Democratic Party. I want to thank you for being here for the people of south Florida, for the people of Miami-Dade County. This State has been extraordinarily good to me. My first real victory, when I started running for President, was in the Florida Democratic Convention straw poll in December of 1991. I will never forget that.

And we came very close to carrying Florida in 1992. And I strongly felt that we could and would carry it in 1996 because of the opportunity that so many of you gave me to work with you - for sensible immigration policies, for sensible policies toward our neighbors in this hemisphere, for sensible policies on crime and drugs and housing and economic growth, for sensible partnerships for the State of Florida, and one of the most important things we've done since I've been President, for an aggressive effort to save the Florida Everglades. Thank you all for the opportunities you have given me.

If you look at Florida, which in so many ways represents where America is going, with all of its opportunities and its challenges, a State full of people who are older - well, we're all getting older, and life expectancies are going up. And I don't know about you, but with every passing day I like that more and more. I think that's a fine idea. [Laughter] Florida, a State where people from all over the world are living here. We're all getting more diverse all over America; a State with high-tech employment and with people who are dying to work who don't have much education; a State with a lot of innovative partnerships to solve problems like crime and drugs, and on occasion, too much crime and drugs; a State with enormous economic growth and a passionate commitment to the environment, with a profound challenge about how to save this often fragile environment and maintain the adequacy of a clean water supply, and the strength of your commitment to clean air, and the strength of your commitment to basically preserving the ecostructure that makes everybody else get in a car or get in an airplane and come to Florida.

So you ought to be on the forefront of the Democratic Party of the 21st century. You know, we started my campaign for President in '96, and they said, "Well, what does the map look like?" And I said, "I'll tell you one thing; it looks like Florida will be in our camp this time. And that's my priority." And let me say, I was the only guy in the meeting who thought that. [Laughter] But I spent a lot of time here; I knew what kind of people were leading Florida into the 21st century. I knew what the challenges were; I knew what the opportunities were; I knew what the passionate commitment to going forward together was.

And I never will forget this - we had our first campaign meeting - I said, "Look, don't tell me we can't win Florida." They said "Nobody has won it in 20 years, and President Carter came from a State that bordered Florida." I said, "Everybody in this room raise your hands who has been there the most times." I won that. I'd been to Florida more than any of the people who were advising me. And I said, "We're going to target Florida, we're going to win Florida. And what's going to happen is, early on election night they're going to have one of those funny little maps that are on television and Florida is going to blink on and off, on and off, on and off and the whole country will go nuts and say the election is over." And that's exactly what happened, and I thank you for that. It was a great day.

Now, what is it that we're trying to do? First, why are you here? What is the purpose of politics? What is politics? Does it deserve a good name or a bad name? The people who give it a bad name ought to think a long time. The reason this country is around here, after 220 years plus, as the oldest consistent democracy in human history, is because of politics. Politics is how free people work together to work their will and make their decisions and reach their principled compromise. And the framework within which it works is the system that has taken us from the Constitutional Convention to this moment. And I say to you, I think the purpose of it still is to preserve the liberty and the integrity of the American people and to give the American people a framework in which they can work together to meet the challenges of each new age so that we increase opportunity and so that we have a responsible citizenry and so that we continue to come together as a community.