Remarks at the Democratic Governors Association dinner

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 12, 1996

Thank you. Thank you for that wonderful welcome. Governor Caperton, thank you for that wonderful introduction. When he started all that business about Jefferson and Truman, I turned around to the guy next to me, I said, "Who's he introducing now?" [Laughter] I'm very grateful to you for your friendship. Thank you, Governor Dean and Governor Carnahan, the immediate past chairman; and all of my fellow Governors; and my colleagues, former Governors who are here tonight; to all the officers of the DGA and those of you who work so hard for them, Mark Weiner, Katie Whelan, and the other members of the staff; and most of all to all of you who have come here to support them. I thank you for being here, and I thank you for your support for the Democratic Governors.

If tonight's dinner and its success is any indication, after the 1996 election, there will be more than 19 people standing up on this stage. And let me just say, while there will be a great deal of focus in this election year on the President's race, as there should be, there will be a great deal of focus in this election year on the races for Congress, as there should be. And I hope and believe we will make some real progress there.

Remember that no matter what happens, there is an inexorable move to push more basic jobs of the public back to the State level. And if that is so, it matters more than ever before who is the Governor of each and every American State. And I can tell you, given the responsibilities the Governors will have for the foreseeable future, it is more important than ever before that we elect good Democratic Governors to the statehouses all across this country.

It was so cold in Washington for these last 2 weeks, I had to have a break last weekend, so I went to New Hampshire. [Laughter] Well anyway, I got outside the Beltway. For those of you who live here, you'll be happy to know that I not only got a good dose of old-fashioned American values, I saw in action the fine art of snow removal, and I - [Laughter]

To be fair to the people here in Washington, DC, who have that responsibility, Washington is still viewed by many people as sort of a Southern city. I mean, we have a half inch snow, they close every school within 50 miles. [Laughter] And the kids like it, but it's not so great for the economy.

Let me tell you, I also saw some very encouraging signs in New Hampshire that have more to do with what I want to visit with you about tonight. When I went back to New Hampshire, a place where I made 75 scheduled appearances between January the 1st and February the 18th, 1992, and countless unscheduled ones, I was profoundly moved to see the number of people who would still come out to an event where you just tried to talk sense and deal with the real challenges before the American people, people who did not want a 30-second sound bite and were tired of negative ads.

We had an event in New Hampshire surrounding the administration's community policing initiative, showing what happens when people in a neighborhood that had been riddled by crime and drugs and gangs decided to take their streets back and had some help from community policemen who had a little office in the neighborhood and rode bicycles and knew the schoolchildren by their names. We saw people telling us that they could walk the streets at night again for the first time in years, and they didn't worry about the safety of their children anymore. And they knew that there was a connection between what we do in Washington and what happens on their streets, in their neighborhoods, and in the lives of their children.

We saw a great State school-to-work program where we got all these people together, and they understood that you didn't have to have a big Government program to have the National Government play a helping hand in bringing employers and schools together so that young people could understand that in the world we're living in there can no longer be an artificial division between the world of work and the world of learning and that they had to be brought together.

I visited a fine company that, among other things, makes some defense equipment we use on Marine One, my helicopter, and other aircraft in the United States military fleet, and works on civilian communications satellites, bringing young women into this business so that they would understand that engineering is not just a job for boys but girls could aspire to be engineers, as well.

I went to a school in Concord, New Hampshire, that is on the site of a church where in 1788 the delegates from New Hampshire became the decisive ninth State to ratify the Constitution of the United States and to make this one United States of America. And on that very spot, this school, which now has an overwhelmingly moderate- to low-income student body, an elementary school - an elementary school was, along with all the other school rooms in the city of Concord, hooked up to the Internet. They showed me how they were putting out a newspaper, these fifth and sixth graders; they were selling ads for the newspaper; they wrote the editorials and the news stories, that it was so popular they had converted it from a school newspaper to a community newspaper, and they were circulating it in the entire area of their city from which they had any students, and they now had gotten themselves a home page on the Web for their elementary newspaper. And I saw how businesspeople had loaned them or given them computer equipment so that even the poorest kids could take something home at night and work with their parents and show them what they were doing - partnerships, solving problems, meeting the demands of today and tomorrow.