-
https://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/files/original/67521e4abe51c5176a5ab9b73502ecb8.pdf
bebaab262497466f7ed10e16e169c1ce
PDF Text
Text
FOIA Number:
2008-0699-F
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker.by the William J. Clinton
Presidential Library Staff.
Collection/Record Group:
Clinton Presidential Records
Subgroup/Office of Origin:
Speechwriting
Series/Staff Member:
Carter Wilkie
L
Subseries:
.'.~ '.
.,
...
OAIID Number:
4273
FolderiD:
Folder Title:
Inaugural Address Briefing Book [4]
Stack:
Row:
Section:
Shelf:
Position:
s
91
5
8
3
-------
-------------
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
�••
BILL BRADLEY
NEW JERSEY
ilnittd ~tatts ~matt
WASHINGTON. DC 205 10-300 1
SPBBCB BY S~R BILL BRADLEY ON
'l'BB RODNBJ KING YBRDICT
Thursday, April 30, 1992
•
Mr. President, what we have seen in the Simi Valley is a
travesty of justice. The story is familiar. March 3, 1991
Rodney King speeding, driving while intoxicated, clearly
wrong - was stopped by several police officers. He was
kicked and hit with batons fifty-six times in eighty-one
seconds. When one of the officers arrived at the hospital he
bregged that he had "hit a hcmer." w~ we~~ not just told
this. We were not told about Rodney King being hit fifty-six
times in eighty-one seconds; it was on video •
Just as we saw the missiles over Baghdad, or the murders
in Tiananmen Square, so we saw the four police officers
beating Rodney King. It was clear r.••":. Fifty-six times in
eighty-one seconds. Fifty-six times in eighty-one seconds.
Pow.
Pow.
Pow.
Pow.
Pow.
Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
Pew. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
That's what the American people saw on video tape.
Fifty-six times in eighty-one seconds and what did the
defense do? The defense, on a thinly veiled attempt to play
on racial stereotypes and racial fears, called King a bear, a
bull and a gorilla. The worst, the worst of the dehumanizing
descriptions of black Americans that have fueled hatred, fear
and discrimination throughout our history.
•
The defense strategy was to deny what we all saw with
our own eyes. · In the words of· today's Washington Post, •the
defense lawyers portrayed their clients as a part of the thin
blue line that stands between law abiding citizens and the
jungle of Los Angeles."
Mr. President, jurors were asked to yield to this fear.
Jurors were asked to deny Rodney King's humanity - to deny
they saw what they saw. It was the ultimate attempt at
delusion. Delusion born in a society that doesn't talk
honestly about race. The ultimate attempt at delusion born
�•
2
in a society that fails to see that its salvation lies in
overcoming racism and not yielding to racism.
The verdict - not guilty. During the last twelve hours,
I don't know about everyone else in this body, but I've had a
few things happen to me. Let me share just a couple.
A young black male walked up to me today and said, "I
hope you are going to say something. It could be me next
time. It wasn't like they didn't have any evidence."
A non-black female says: "I guess I've become immune to
such injustices, and that really saddens me. I have become
so used to seeing the side I consider to be 'right' lose that
events like this no longer seem to surprise me."
A young man interviewed on TV last night says: "If I
went to a grocery store and stole a twinkie and I was on
videotape, I'd.be in jail for six months. But if I were
beaten up on the street by four white cops, they'd get off.
~C'"':'e's the justice?"
•
A female black lawyer said: "People should not be afraid
of the people who are supposed to protect them. But they
are."
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. Imagine if
an all-black jury acquitted ·a black policeman, several black ·
police officers, who had beaten a white person to a pulp-fifty-six times in eighty-one seconds on videotape. Imagine
what weuld be said then, and you could imagine a little bit,
I believe, how African Americans feel today.
Now no justice can come from injustice. Racism breeds
racism. Violence begets violence. So the image of white
police officers beating a black man lying prone on the ground
dissolves into the image of a black crowd dragging a white
driver from a vehicle and kicking him to death. That
violence only further exacerbates the tragedy of thousands of
lives of those who live in an area. wracked by drugs and gang
violence and poverty and despair.
•
A state of emergency has been declared in South Central
Los Angeles. · All violence .must be condemned. But the
emergency is national. I've said before on this floor that
slavery was our original sin and race remains our unresolved
dilemma. That dilemma becomes a state of emergency when our_
carefully constructed systems--governmental, . 'judicial,
social--break down in the face of the racial reality of our
society. And the reality is, sad to say, it was easier for
an all-white jury to put themselves in the shoes of a white
police officer than to put themselves in the position of
Rodney King. After all, the jury didn't live in the city.
The jury has not been the target of ugly racial epithets or
�•••
3
discrimination. The jury has never been pulled over by a
policeman s~ply because they were black.
Once again, we're forced to confront the division in our
society. In 1820, Thomas Jefferson described the emotions
raging around the slavery issue as "a warning bell in the
night." Our nation ignored that warning, and it cost us a
.civil war, which took the most American lives of any war
we've ever had. In the 1960s, James Baldwin, in the midst of
great _racial advances in civil rights, said, "Beware The Fire
Next Time."
In the last twenty-four hours, another warning bell has
rung and other fires have burned. If we as a nation continue
to ignore the racial reality ~f our times, tip-toe around it,
demagogue it, or flee from it, we're going to pay an enormous
price. What we need now, at this exact time, is hope and
accountability. Accountability for the conduct of the police
officers, and hope that the system of justice can work.
•
With that in mind, ~ call on the Attorney General to
file criminal civil rights charges against the police
officers. If a crime is done and the system doesn't work,
that's what the civil rights laws are for.
Next, I call on President Bush to go to Los Angeles and
to the cODDDunity and meet with the residents to show his
concern, if the residents believe it will be helpful.
Finally, all of us--all of us--have to fight for a
political system that will guarantee that the voiceless will
have a voice more powerful than violence.
Emment Till, an African American, young man, was killed
in Mississippi one summer while visiting relatives because he
said, "Bye, baby" to a white woman in a store. After she
lost her son, Bmment Till's mother said, "When something
happened to Negroes in the South, I said that's their
business, not mine. How I know how wrong I was. The murder
of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us,
anywhere in the world, had better be the business of all of
us.•
rfj
What happened in the courtroom in Simi Valley last night
is the business of all of us. And_ we better start speaking
candidly, and we'd better do something about the physical
conditions in our cities and the absence of meaning in
increasingly larger numbers of lives of citizens in our
cities and the violence. Or the fire the next time is going
to engulf all of us.
�•
BILL BRADLEY
NEW JERSEY
iinittd £'tatts
~matt
WASHINGTON, DC 20510-3001
SPEECH BY SENATOR BILL BRADLEY
ON RACE AND THE AMERICAN CITY
Thursday, March 26, 1992
The campaign season should be a time for candor and
truth as well as a t~e for partisan charges. And nowhere is
this more needed than in the consideration of the issue of
race and the American city. I come to the floor today to
offer a few thoughts on that subject:
•
Slavery was our original sin, just as race remains our
unresolved dilemma. The future of American cities is
inextricably bound to the issue of race and ethnicity. By
the year 2000, only 57 percent of the people entering the
work force in America will be.native-born whites. That means
that the economic future of the children of white Americans
will increasingly depend on the talents of nonwhite
Americans. If we allow them to fail because of our
penny-pinching or timidity about straight talk, America will
become a second-rate power. If they succeed, America and all
Americans will be enriched. As a nation, we will find common
ground together and move ahead, or each of us will be
diminished.
Mr. President, I grew up in a small town located on the
banks of the Mississippi River. It was a multiracial,
multiethnic factory town in which most of the people were
Democrats. My father was the local banker and a nominal
Republican. The town had one stoplight, and there were 96 in
my high school graduating class. The Big City, St. Louis,
Missouri, was something we were not.
I left that small midwestern town and went to college in
Hew Jersey in another small town, s·pending ·most of my time in
an even smaller small town, the campus, except to travel to
places like Philadelphia, New York, or Providence to play
basketball. I graduated, spent two years in England in a
slightly larger college town, and went to Hew York, where for
the first time I lived in a big city.
r·J
The city for me was always about race as much as it was
about class or power or fashion. Maybe that was because I
was a professional basketball player in New York and was
working in a kind of black world. This was before I had any
real knowledge of the welfare system, the courts and prisons,
the nature of an urban economy, or the sociology of
neighborhoods. But if I paid attention, I saw the city
through the eyes of my black teammates as well as through my
own.
�••
2
Above all, the city to me was never just what I heard my
white liberal friends say it was. In their world, people of
color were all victims. But while my teammates had been
victimized, their experience and their perception of the
experience of black Americans could not be reducible to
victimization. To many, what the label of victimization
implied was an insult to their dignity and discipline,
strength and potential.
Life in cities was full of more complexity and more hope
than the media or the politicians would admit, and part of
getting beyond color was not only attacking the sources of
inequity but also refusing to make race an excuse for failing
to pass judgment about self-destructive behavior. Without a
community, there could be no commonly held standards, and
without some commonly held standards, there could be no
community. The question is whether in our cities we can
build a set of commonly accepted rules that enhances
individuality and life chances but also provides the glue and
the tolerance to prevent us from going for each other's
throats.
•
But remember, urban American is not only divided by a
line with blacks on one side and whites on another.
Increasingly, it is a mixture of other races, languages, and
religions, as new immigrants arrive in search of economic
promise and freedom from state control. Just think, over
four and a half million Latinos and nearly 5 million Asian
Pacifies have arrived in America since 1970. In New Jersey,
school children come from families that speak 120 different
languages at home. In Atlanta, managers of some low-income
apartment complexes that were virtually once all-black now
need to speak fluent Spanish. In Detroit, it's a city that
has absorbed some 200,000 people of Middle Eastern descent.
And in San Jose, California, you see in the phone book that
families with the Vietnamese surname Nguyen outnumber the
Joneses by nearly 50 percent. In Houston, one Korean
immigrant restaurant owner oversees Hispanic immigrant
employees who prepare Chinese-style.food for a predominantly
black clientele.
Even though our American future depends on finding
common ground, many white Americans resist relinquishing the
sense of entitlement skin color has given them throughout our
national history. They lack an understanding of the emerging
dynamics of •one world, • even in the United States, because
to them nonwhites always have been •the other." On top of
tha~, people of different races·often don't listen to each
other on the subject of race. It's as if we're all experts,
locked into our narrow views and preferring to be wrong
rather than risk changing those views. Black Americans ask
of Asian Americans, "What's the problem? You're doing well
economically." Black Americans believe that Latinos often
�I
3
fail to find common ground with their historic struggle, and
some Latino Americans agree, questioning whether the black
civil rights model is the only path to progress. White
Americans continue to harbor absurd stereotypes about all
people of color. Black Americans take white criticism of
individual acts as an attempt to stigmatize all black
Americans. We seem to be more interested in defending our
racial territory than recognizing we could be enriched by
another race's perspective.
In politics for the last 25 years, silence or distortion
has shaped the issue of race and urban America. Both
political parties have contributed to the problem.
Republicans have played the race card in a divisive way to
get votes -- remember Willie Horton -- and Democrats have
suffocated discussion of self-destructive behavior among the
minority population in a cloak of silence and denial. The
result is that yet another generation has been lost. We
cannot afford to wait longer. It is time for candor, time
for truth, and time for action.
•
•
Mr. President, America's cities are poorer, sicker, less
educated, and more violent than at any time in my lifetime.
The physical problems are obvious: old housing stock,
deteriorated schools, aging infrastructure, a diminished
manufacturing base, a health care system short of doctors
that fails to immunize against measles, much less educate
about AIDS. The jobs have disappeared. The neighborhoods
have been gutted. A genuine depression has hit cities, with
unemployment in some areas at the levels of the 1930s. Yet,
just as Americans found solidarity then in the midst of
trauma and just as imaginative leadership moved us through
the darkest days of the Depression, so today the physical
conditions of our cities can be altered. What it takes is
collective will, greater accountability, and sufficient
resources.
What is less obvious in urban America is the crisis of
meaning. Without meaning, there can be no hope; without hope
there can be no struggle; without struggle there can be no
personal better.ment. Absence of meaning derived from overt
and subtle attacks from racist quarters over many years and
furthered by an increasing pessimism about the possibility of
justice offers a context for chaos and irresponsibility.
Development of meaning starts from the very beginning of
life. Yet, over 40 percent of all births in the 20 largest
cities of America are to women living alone. Among black
women, out-of-wedlock births are over &5 percent. While many
single women do heroic jobs in raising kids, there are
millions of others who get caught in a life undertow that
drowns both them and their children. Many of these children
live in a world without love and without a father or any
other male supportive figure besides the drug dealer, the
pimp, or the gang leader. They are thrown out on the street
�••
4
early without any frame of reference except survival. They
have no historical awareness of the civil rights movement,
much less of the power of American democracy. I remember a
substitute teacher in New York once told me about students
who read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and wanted to know
why the teacher assigned a book about Malcolm Ten.
To say to kids who have no connection to religion, no
family outside a gang, no sense of place outside the
territory, no imagination beyond the. cadence of rap or the
violence of TV, that government is on their side rings
hollow. Their contact with government has not empowered but
diminished them. To them, government at best is incompetent
-- look at the schools, the streets, the welfare department
-- and at worst corrupt -- the cops and building inspectors
on the take, the white collar criminal who gets nothing but a
suspended sentence, the local politician with gross personal
behavior. And replacing a corrupt white mayor with a corrupt
black mayor won't make the difference.
•
In such a world, calls to "just say no" to drugs or to
•study hard" for 16 years so you can get an $18,000 a year
job are laughable. Instead of desires rooted in the values
of commitment and service to community as expressed through
black churches and mosques, desires, like commodities, became
rooted in the immediate gratification of the moment. TV
bombards these kids with messages of conspicuous consumption,
and they "want it now. " They become trapped in the
quicksands of American materialism. The market sells images
of sex, violence, and drugs, regardless of their corrosive
effects on hard work and caring -- values for.merly handed
down from an older generation. And with no awareness of how
to change their world through political action and no
reservoirs of real self-knowledge, they are are buffeted by
the winds of violence and narcissism.
The physical conditions of American cities and the
absense of meaning in more and more lives come together at
the barrel of a gun. If you were to select the one thing
that has changed in cities since the 1960s, it would be
fear. Fear covers the streets like a sheet of ice. Everyday
the newspaper tells of another murder. Both the number of
murders and violent crimes has doubled in the 20 largest
cities since 1968. Ninety percent of all violence is
committed by males, and they are its predominant victims.
Indeed, murder is the highest cause of death for young, black
males. In 1968, there were 394,000 security guards in this
country. Today it's a growth industry with nearly 700,000
guards.
•
For African Americans in cities, the.violence isn't
new. You don't have to see "Boyz N the Hood" to confir.m it;
just visit public housing projects where mothers send their
kids to school dodging bullets, talk with young girls whose
�•
5
rapes go uninvestigated, listen to elderly residents express
their constant fear of violation, and remember the story of a
former drug dealer who once told me he quit only after he
found his partner shot, with his brains oozing onto the
pavement.
But, Mr. President, what is new is the fear of random
violence among whites. No place in the city seems safe.
Walking the streets seems to be a form of Russian roulette.
At core, it is a fear of young black men. The movie "Grand
Canyon" captures the feeling. It sends the message that if
you're white and you get off the main road into the wrong
territory, you're a target because you're white. You're a
target for death, not just robbery. And if you stay on the
main road, you still might be shot for no apparent reason.
Guns in the hands of the unstable, the angry, the resentful
are used. As the kid in "Grand Canyon" says, "You .respect me
only because I have a gun."
•
•
Never mind that in a society insufficiently colorblind
all black men have to answer for the white fear of violence
from a few black men. Never mind that Asian Americans fear
both black and white Americans, or that in Miami or Los
Angeles, some of the most feared gangs are Latinos and
Chinese. Never mind that the ultimate racism was whites
ignoring the violence when it wasn't in their neighborhoods,
or that black Americans have always feared certain white
neighborhoods. Never mind all that.
There are two phenomena here. There is white fear, and
there is the appearance of black emboldenment. Today, many
whites responding to a more violent reality, heightened by
sensational news stories, see young black men traveling in
groups, cruising the city, looking for trouble, and they are
frightened. Many white Americans, whether fairly or
unfairly, seem to be saying of some young black males, "You
litter the street and deface the subway, and no one, black or
white, says stop. You cut school, threaten a teacher, 'dis'
a social worker, and no one, white or black, says stop. You
snatch a purse, you crash a concert, break a telephone box,
and no one, white or black, says stop. You rob a store, rape
a jogger, shoot a tourist, and when they catch you, if they
catch you, you cry racism. And nobody, white or black, says
stop.•
·
It makes no difference whether this white rap is the
exact and total reality of our cities. It is what millions
of white Americans feel is true. In a kind of.ironic flip of
fate, the fear of brutal white repression felt for decades in
the black community and the seething anger it generated now
appear to be mirrored in the fear whites have of random
attack from blacks and the growing anger it fuels. The white
disdain grows when a frightened white politician convenes a
commission to investigate the charges of racism, and the
�••
6
anger swells when well-known black spokespersons fill the
evening news with threats and bombast.
Mr. President, what most politicians want to avoid is
the need to confront the reality that causes the fear. They
don't want to put themselves at risk by speaking candidly
about violence to both blacks and whites and saying the same
things to both groups. Essentially, they're indifferent to·
the black self-destruction. And violence only hardens their
indifference -- not only to the perpetrator, but to all
African Americans.
Physically, more white Americans leave the city -- from
1970 to 1990, over 4 million white Americans moved out of our
big cities. Psychologically, white Americans put walls up to
the increasingly desperate plight of those, both black and
white, who can't leave -- those Americans who are stuck
trying to raise kids in a war zone, holding jobs in a third
world economy, establishing a sense of community in a desert
where there is no water of hope and where everyone is out for
themselves.
I
Now it's not that there isn't racism, you understand.
It's alive and well. It's not that police brutality doesn't
exist. It does. It's not that police departments give
residents a feeling of security. Few do.
But, when politicians don't talk about the reality that
everyone knows exists, they cannot lead us out of our current
crisis. Institutions are no better than the people who run
them. Because very few people of different races make real
'contact or have real conversations with each other -- when
was the last time you had a conversation about race with a
person of a different race -- the white vigilante groups and
the black TV spokesperson educate the uneducated about race.
The result is that the divide among races in our cities
deepens with white Americans more and more unwilling to spend
the money to ameliorate the physical conditions or to see why
the absence of meaning in the lives of many urban children
threatens the future of their own children.
'
•
'
Yet even in this atmosphere of disintegration, the power
of the human spirit comes through. Heroic families do
overcome the odds, sometimes working four jobs to send their
kids to college. Churches are peopled by the faithful who do
practice the power of love. Local neighborhood leaders have
turned around a local school, organized a health clinic,
rehabilitated blocks of housing. These islands of courage
and dedication still offer the possibility of local renewal,
just as our system of government offers and makes possible
national rebirth •
�•
7
So, Mr. President, the future of urban America will take
one of three paths: abandonment, encirclement, or
conversion.
Abandonment means recognizing that with the billions of
investment in the national highway system which led to
suburbia, corporate parks, and the malling of America and
with communications technology advancing so fast that the
economic advantages of urban proximity are being replaced by
the computer screen, in those circumstances the city has
outlived its usefulness. Like the small town whose industry
leaves, the city will wither and disappear. Like empires of
ancient days, the self-destruction has reached a point of no
return and will crumble from within, giving way to a new and
different for.m of social arrangements. "Massive investment
in urban America would be throwing money away," the argument
goes, "and to try to prevent the decline will be futile."
•
Encirclement means that people in cities will live in
enclaves. The racial and ethnic walls will go higher. The
class lines will be manned by ever increasing security forces
and communal life will disappear. What will replace it are
deeper divisions with politics amounting to splitting up a
shrinking economic pie into ever smaller ethnic, racial, and
religious slices. It will be a kind of clockwork orange
society in which the rich will pay for·their security; the
middle class will continue to flee as they confront violence;
and the poor -- the poor will be preyed upon at will or will
join the ar.my of violent predators. What will be lost for
everyone will be freedom, civility, and the chance to build a
common future.
Conversion means winning over all segments of urban life
to a new politics of change, empower.ment, and common effort.
Conversion is as different from the politics of dependency as
it is from the politics of greed. Its optimism relates to
the belief that every person can realize his or her potential
in an atmosphere of nurturing liberty. Its morality is
grounded in the conviction that each of us has an obligation
to another human being simply because that person is another
human being.
•
There will not be •a charismatic leader" here but many
"leaders of awareness• who champion integrity and humility
over self-promotion and c01111118nd performances. Answers won't
come from an elite who has determined in advance what the new
society will look like. Instead, the future will be shaped
by the voices from inside the tur.moil of urban America, as
well as by those who claim to see a bigger picture.
Conversion requires listening to the disaffected as well as
the powerful. Empowerment requires seizing the moment. The
core of conversion begins with a recognition that all of us
advance together or each of us is diminished; that American
diversity is not our weakness but our strength; that we will
�••
8
never be able to lead the world by example until we've come
to terms with each other and overcome the blight of racial
division on our history.
The first concrete step is to bring an end to violence,
intervene early in a child's life, reduce child abuse,
establish some rules, remain unintimidated, and involve the
community in its own salvation. As a young man in dredlocks
said at one of my recent town meetings, "What we need is for
people to care enough about themselves, so that they won't
hurt anybody else." That is the essence of community
policing -- getting a community to respect itself enough to
cooperate and support the police so that together security is
assured. And our schools can no longer allow the 5 to 10
percent of kids who don't want to learn to destroy the
possibility of learning for the 90 to 95 percent who do want
to learn. In addition, we need gun control, draconian
punishment for drug kingpins, mandatory sentences for cr~es
committed with guns, and reinvestment of some defense budget
savings into city police departments, schools, and
hospitals.
•
•
The second step is to bolster families in urban
America. That effort begins with the recognition that the
most important year in a child's life is the first.
Fifteen-month houses must be established for women seven
months pregnant who want to live the first year of their life
as a mother in a residential setting. Young fathers would be
encouraged to participate too. Fifteen-month houses would
reduce parental neglect and violence by teaching teenage
mothers how to parent. Fifteen-month houses, by offering a
program of cognitive stimulation, would prepare a child for a
lifetime of learning. These 15-month houses need to be
combined with full funding for Head Start and the WIC
program, more generous tax treatment of children, one-year
parental leave, tough child support enforcement, and welfare
reform that encourages marriage, work, and assumption of
responsibility, instead of more children you can't afford.
But there is also a hard truth here. No institution can
replace the nurturing of a loving family. The most important
example in a child's life is the parent, not celebrities,
however virtuous or talented they might be. You might want
to play golf like Nancy Lopez or play basketball like Michael
Jordan or skate like Kristi Yamaguchi or display the wit of
Bill Cosby, but you should want to be like your father or
your mother. And .in a world where there are few involved
fathers, mom has a big burden. There are no shortcuts here,
only life led daily •
The third step is to create jobs for those who can work
jobs that will last in an economy that is growing. It is
only through individual empowerment that we can guarantee
long-term economic growth. Without growth, scapegoats will
�•
9
be sought and racial tensions will heighten. Without growth,
hopes will languish. So how do we get growth? Enterprise
zones, full funding of jobs corps, more investment in
low-income housing. Yes. Helping to finance small
businesses and providing technical assistance in management.
Yes. Investment in urban infrastructure such as ports,
roads, and mass transit will become a source of jobs and
training for urban residents at the same time it builds part
of the foundation for private investment. Yes. Allowing
pension funds to make some investments in real estate and
assessing a very low capital gains tax on the sale of assets
that have generated 500 urban jobs for 10 years will attract
more investment. Yes.
But no targeted program can overcome the drag of a
sluggish national economy. Reducing the deficit, consuming
more wisely, increasing public investment in health and
education, and avoiding protectionism all are essential for
long-term growth. Combined with assuring economic
opportunity for all, long-term growth can save American
cities while taking all Americans to the higher economic
ground.
•
•
Finally, the political process holds the ultimate key .
It has failed to address our urban prospects because
politicians feel accountable mainly to those who vote, and
urban America has voted in declining numbers. So politicians
have ignored them. Voter registration and active
participation remain the critical empowerment link. The
history of American democracy is a history of broadening the
vote: when the Constitution was adopted, the only Americans
who had the vote were white males with property. Then, in
the 1830s, it was extended to white males without property,
in the 1860s to black males, not until the 1920s to women,
and finally, in the 1950s to '70s, to young people age
.
18-21. Yet today, if one third of the voting-age population
in America woke up on election day and wanted to vote, they
would not be allowed to vote because they are not
registered. Again what is needed here is not so much
charismatic leadership but day-to-day leadership, truthful
leadership, dedicated to real and lasting change. Leadership
that has the power within the community by virtue of the
community knowing the life of the spokesperson. That is
leadership that can get things done, and in the end, for
change to come, decisions have to be made, work has to get
done, and same group of individuals has to accept collective
responsibility for making change happen.
Steven Vincent Benet once said about American diversity:
•All of these you are/ and each is partly you/ and none of
them is false/ and none is wholly true. " Another way of
saying out of many, one. He was describing America. Whether
the metaphor is the melting pot or a tossed salad, when you
become an American citizen you profess a creed. You forswear
�••
10
allegiance to a foreign power; you embark on a journey of
development in liberty. For those who came generations ago
there is a need to reaffir.m principles -- liberty, equality,
democracy -- principles that have always eluded complete
fulfillment. The American city is where all these ideas and
cultures have always clashed -- sometimes violently. But
all, even those brought here in chattel slavery and
subsequently freed, are not African or Italian or Polish or
or Irish or Japanese. They're Americans.
•
•
What we lose when racial or ethnic self-consciousness
dominates are tolerance, curiosity, civility -- precisely the
qualities we need to allow us to live side by side in mutual
respect. The fundamental challenge is to understand the
suffering of others as well as to share in their joy. To
sacrifice that sensitivity on the altar of racial chauvinism
is to lose our future. And we will lose it unless urgency
infor.ms our action, passing the buck stops, scapegoating
fails, and excuses disappear. The American city needs
physical rejuvenation, economic opportunity, and moral
direction, but above all what it needs is the same thing
every small town needs: the willingness to treat another
person of any race with the respect you show for a brother or
sister with the belief that together you'll build a better
world than you would have ever done alone, a better world in
which all Americans stand on common ground .
�BILL BRADLEY
N£\1\o JERS£¥
•
iinitcd tStatcs
~mate
WASHINGTON. DC 2051 0-30C ~
SPEECH BY SENATOR BILL BRADLEY AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
ON RACE AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN AMERICA
July 16, 1991·
;
~
\
•
What compels me to speak today is the state of race
relations in America which every day exacts terrible costs on
whites, on blacks, on all races, and on the nation. Let us
begin by stating what is often unstated. Our destiny - both
black and white - is boUOd together; the coal and iron of
American steel. Each race, its strength inseparable from the
well-being of the nation. Each race, in need of the other's
contribution to create a common whole.
All races must learn to speak candidly with each other.
By the year 2000, .. only 57% of people- entering the work force
will be native-born whites. White Americans have to
understand that their children's standard of living is
inextricably bound to the future of millions of non-white
children who will pour into the work force in the next
decades. To guide them toward achievement will make America
a richer, more successful society. To allow them to
self-destruct because of penny-pinching or timidity about
straight talk will make America a second-rate power. Black
Americans have to believe that acauisition of skills will
serve as an entry into society not because they have acquired
a veneer of whiteness but because they are able. Blackness
doesn't compromise ability nor does ability compromise
blackness. Both blacks and whites have to create and
celebrate the common ground that binds us together as
Americans and human beings.
Today, the legal barriers that prevented blacks from
participating as full citizens have come down. Many notable
African Americans have walked through those open doors and up
the steps to the corporate boardrooms, city halls, to the
statehouse and to Presidential cabinets. Many more millions
of African Americans live ordinary 'lives in an extraordinary
way in cities, towns, and far.ms across America.
Hard-working, law-abiding families fighting to build a life
for their kids; robust churches peopled by individuals of
faith and commitment; educators willing to discipline and
teach.
•
Yet 43% of black children are born in oovertv. The
black infant mortality rate and the black ~nemploY.ment rate
are twice those of white Americans .
�••
•
•
Page 2
And forming the backdrop for the urban neighborhoods
where the poorest, most unstable families live is the daily
violence. The number of'black children who have been
murdered in America has gone up by 50% since 1984. In
Washington, D.C. and many other American cities the leading
cause of death among young black men is murder. That
violence, and the fear of it, shape perceptions in both the
white and black communities. For example, if you're white
you know what you think when you pass three young black men
on a street at night. If you're black you know the toll that
the violence takes on black families both coming and going more college age black males are in prison than in a
college. Communities cannot develop if these trends continue
nor can the potential of our cities be realized behind
barricades patrolled by private security guards. Crime and
violence cause poverty.
Visit a public housing project in one of our big
cities .. See the walls pockmarked by bullet holes. Smell the
stench of garbage uncollected and basements full of
decomposing rats. Hear the gunshots of drug gangs vying for
control of territory that the community needs for its
commercial and social life but that the police don't help
them preserve - territory that bankers redlined long ago .
.
Listen, as I have, over the last few years across
America to the stories of families trying to make it in the
middle of this horror. Listen, in Elizabeth, N.J., to
residents of public housing describe how the drug dealers
prey on the joblessness and misery of all the residents but
especially the young. Listen, in Chicago to project mothers,
their children dodging bullets on the way to school,
threatened with the murder of a younger son unless an older
son joins the gang. Listen, in Newark, N.J., to a
grandmother, who, when asked what she wanted more than
anything else said, "a lock that works." Listen, in
Brooklyn, N.Y., to a former cocaine dealer gone straight
saying that his brother lying inert in a crack stupor in
front of me on the floor of his Mother's meager apartment was
going to be killed within a year by dealers who wanted their
money. ·.. Listen, in Camden and Paterson, N.J., to doctors tell
about crack children having crack children, alone - the
fathers in prison or in an early grave - falling deeper and
deeper into hopelessness • Cry out in anguish and cry out in
anger about this kind of life in America today. And weep for
all of us that allow it to continue.
But, go beyond tears of pity and guilt. Face the moral
paradox. How can we achieve a good life for ourselves and
our children if the cost of that good life is ignoring the
misery of our neighbors? The answer has been to erect
walls .
�•
Page 3
The wall of pride: we're better and deserve what we
have. The wall of ignore the problem and it will go away.
The wall of blaming the symptoms. The. wall of ,liberal guilt
that rationalizes and distances us from the fact that people
are actually being murdered. The wall of innocence: we have
nothing against black people, we didn't know. The wall of
brute force, used to oppress and separate. And finally the
Willie Horton wall of demonization that says they're not like
us.
All of these walls we've constructed have stunted our
national growth and character and made us less able to lead
the world by our living values. A maze we've seemed to lock
ourselves into and are dangerously close to forgetting the
way out. Put simply, there can be no normal life for blacks
or whites in urban America or effective help for the ghetto
poor until the violence stops.
•
Our failure to improve these conditions is inseparable
from the fact that we no longer speak honestly about race in
America. The debate about affirmative action is ultimately a
debate about empowerment, past debts and what each of us
thinks we owe another human being. But it does not directly
affect the daily lives of families struggling against
violence. They worry about survival not college admissions.
At the same time, we have to admit that neither Republicans
nor Democrats have come up with good answers to these
horrible conditions. As they say in my urban town meetings,
"Very few politicians really care, or else things would
already have changed."
Liberals have failed to emphasize hard work,
self-reliance, and individual responsibility. Clearly, there
are thousands of individuals, like Clarence Thomas, who have
exercised individual strength and perseverance to overcome
the obstacles of racial and economic oppression. But he also
benefited from passage of civil rights laws which broke down
the legal barriers of the past. The odds of overcoming a
prejudiced attitude are better because your individuality is
guaranteed by law .. Individual responsibility also is a
challenge to our humanity as much as.to our ambition. White
Americans make decisions each day - who they hire or fire or
who their children play with - which ripple into the tide of
American race relations.
•
At the same time, conservatives have failed to use the
power of government for the common good. Even in the face of
rampant violence in urban ghettos, conservatives refuse to
act. Clearly, the collective will of the nation, when
channeled through legislation can be an indispensable
resource in the war against injustice and poverty. But it is
also true that government should be held accountable for
results. Bureaucrats who fail should be fired. Government
success should be measured in problems solved and in
�••
Page 4
conditions bettered. Teachers should teach. Nurses should
give comfort and welfare workers should listen. Governmen~
service is more than just a job.
People, black and white, are individuals no~
of a racial creed. There is no African
American, there are African Americans, each a dis~inct
individual with a different view and attitude.
represen~atives
Yet, Americans often see race first and the individual
second. That means each individual assumes all the costs of
racial stereotypes with none of the benefits of American
individuality. As long as any white American looks at black
Americans and associates color with violence, sloth, or
sexual license, then all black Americans carry the burden of
some black Americans. That is unfair. As long as any black
American looks at white Americans and associates color with
oppression, paternalism, and dominance all white Americans
wear the racist exploiter label of some white Americans.
That is unfair.
•
It is ludicrous to say that all female black Americans
are welfare queens, yet Ronald Reagan for a generation tried
to etch that stereotype in the minds of his corporate,
country club, and political audiences. It is ludicrous to
say that all African Americans are Willie Hortons. Yet the
Willie Horton ad was an attempt to demonize all black
America. If you don't believe me, ask any African American
who tries to hail a cab late at night in an American city.
It is just as ludicrous to say all white Americans are
Archie Bunkers, yet some self-appointed black spokespersons
make a living preaching racial hate and make a mockery of the
values of civil rights leaders (both black and white) who
risked their lives to end segrega~ion.
Most of us don't confront the realities of race in
America today. Ronald Reagan;s welfare queen distorts
reality. George Bush's rapist-murderer panders to those in
the electorate who can't see the individual for his color.
Both cling to old relationships and-old at~itudes of
inferiority and superiority, scapegoats and stereotypes. The
result makes seeing the other· race's perspective, much less
the individual behind the color, more and more unlikely.
In the face of these problems, I challenged President
Bush last week, on the Senate floor, to lead us by example
and to tell us how he has worked through the issue of race in
his own life.
~
•
I asked President Bush to help us alleviate five doubts
about him: His record, from 1964 to the present. His choice
to play the politics of race while economic inequality
�•
Page 5
increases. His inconsistent words.
convictions.
His leadership.
And his
There has been no response.
The President's silence, however, will not muffle the
gunshots of rising racial violence in our cities. Silence
will not provide the candor necessary to overcome the
obstacles to brotherhood. Silence will not heal the division
among our races. Silence will not move our glacial
collective humanity one inch forward.
I, for one, feel compelled to speak - to speak from my
own experience, and from my heart.
I grew up in a small town of 3,492, tucked between two
limestone bluffs on the banks of the Mississippi River. It
was a multi-racial, multi-ethnic company town in which most
of the people worked in the glass factory and were
Democrats. The town had one stoplight and there were about
96 in my high school class, which integrated only in the 9th
grade.
•
My father, who never finished high school, was the local
banker and a nominal Republican. To him a reliable customer
wasn't black or white but one who paid off his loan. He used
to say that his proudest moment was that, throughout the
Depression, he never foreclosed on a single home.
Growing up, I sang in the church choir that was
conducted by my mother. I played Little League and American
Legion baseball, with black and white friends. I was a Boy
Scout and I was the tallest French horn player in the high
school marching band -- or perhaps any marching band
anywhere.
My mother wanted me to be a success; my father wanted me
to be a gentleman; neither wanted me to be a politician.
I left that small town and went to college in New Jersey
and then England, but after that -- for a long time -- I
never thought of politics. I was a ·professional basketball
player for the New York Knicks. From September to May for
ten years, I traveled across America with the team. It was
not a high school or college team. We were professionals.
Basketball was our work that we did every day - together.
•
Each teammate had a different set of friends in every
town. But, day in and day out, we lived together, ate
together, rode buses together, talked together, laughed
together, and of course, played together. During those
years, my dominant teammates were Willis Reed, Dick Barnett,
Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere, and Earl Monroe. We created
one of the first basketball teams to capture the imagination
�••
Page 6
of a national TV audience and we won the hearts of New Jersey
and New York. It was an extraordinary group of human beings.
I wish I had $100 for every time in the last 20 years
that someone - usually a white person - asked me what it was
like to play on the Knicks and travel with my teammates.
"What was it like?" I'd ask, "What do you mean?"
"Well, you know, guys who came from such different
backgrounds and had such,different interests than yours."
"You mean that most of them were black?
living in a kind of black world?" I'd ask.
That I was
"Well, yes!" they'd finally admit, "What was it like on
that team?"
"Listen," I'd say, "traveling with my teammates on the
road in America was one of the mos~ enlightening experiences
of my life."
•
And it was. Besides learning about the warmth of
friendship, the inspiration of personal histories, the
powerful role of family in each of their lives and the
strength of each's individuality, I better understand
distrust and suspicion. I understand the meaning of certain
looks and certain codes. I understand what it is to be in
racial situations for which you have no frame of reference.
I understand the tension of always being on guard, of never
totally relaxing. I understand the pain of racial arrogance
directed my way. I understand the loneliness of being white
in a black world. And I understand how much I will never
know about what it is to'be black in America.
I worried about all of that for a while, but then I
forgot it. Because I'd known for a long time that no one was
just black or just white. We were all just human, which
meant we were neither as virtuous as we might hope nor as
flawed as we might think. The essence of humanity is
treating ~ach other with respect. Some of us won't be able
to do that with words because we're prisoners of the words
themselves. Others will be able to do it with words but
never deeds. If we say "African American" but think
something else, where are we?; if we say "white brother" but
think something else, where are we?
·
People of good faith need to find common ground - and
I'm not talking partisan politics. I'm talking about the
human hear~.
•
It was William Faulkner who said that man is immortal
"because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion,
sacrifice, and endurance." Politics at its best touches
these things, but only rarely does it penetrate to the depths
�•
Page 7
necessary to confront the turbulence in each of our hearts;
rarely does it celebrate our "courage," our "honor," our
"hope." We need a politics that does not divide us or demean
us but helps us escape the easy evasions, see the truth, and
prevail in our humanity.
President Lyndon B. Johnson did that when he signed the
1964 Civil Rights Bill, a bill whose passage I witnessed in
the Senate chamber as a student intern. The bill ended
separate restrooms and drinking fountains for black and white
Americans. It ended the dirty motels that blacks often had
to stay in because whites excluded them from "whites only"
motels. It ended the "whites only" restaurants and the buses
that reserved the back for blacks.
LBJ knew Texas. He grew up poor in the Depression. He
saw politicians lose because they got too close to blacks.
He understood the politics of race, and still he chose to
provide moral leadership.
•
In the Senate.race in Texas that same year George Bush,
the son of Eastern wealtn who came to Texas to make his own
fortune, ran for office as a Republican. He lost but in the
course of the campaign he opposed the Civil Rights Bill being
debated in Washington. The Civil Rights Bill I saw passed. in
the Senate. The Civil Rights Bill that Lyndon Johnson was to
sign into law. Of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, candidate Bush
said it "violates the constitutional rights of all people."
I still have never heard President Bush say why he believes
that. I have never heard him express regret or explain why
he opposed the most significant widening of opportunity for
black America in the 20th century.
An enlightening and courageous response to today's
condition does not begin and end with the legal solution that
was the beginning in 1964. Today's solution must begin by
accepting that the burning heart of the crisis of race in
America is our individual and collective failure to address
the problems of race in our own lives - and the failure of
our leaders to address openly, and with moral courage the
problems of race and poverty in our .nation.
•
It is a failure when we compare the ideals of our nation
with the reality in our atreets. It is· a failure when we
compare the hopes of the privileged with the dying dreams of
the disadvantaged. It is a failure when we compare our
increasingly larger unskilled population with the labor
needs of a growing economy. It is a failure to work through
our own individual and national feelings about· ·race. And
until we correct these failures of attitude and inaction, we
will no~ understand the meaning of race in America. This is
hard to do for me, for you, for all of us, but it's not
impossible. In fact-.by turning our failures into successes
we will be regenerating America, improving the standard of
�••
Page 8
living for all Americans and preparing ourselves for a new
kind of American leadership in the world.
While no one program, or set of programs, can solve the
problems of race and poverty in this nation, we, as a people,
with the leadership of our President, can take steps toward a
solution. I propose four steps.
First, remove the remaining legal barriers to equality
of opportunity. In the 9ontext of our current debate, this
means restoring those civil rights that were removed by
recent Supreme Court decisions. A 1991 Civil Rights Act will
take us a long way in that direction. That will be done when
the President orders his staff to stop looking at this issue
as a political ad and to start seeing its relevance to our
ability to win the global economic race.
•
Second, restore and revitalize a healthy, growing
economy for all Americans. A rising tide does lift all
boats. We must begin.to invest today for a better future for
our children. This will mean lowering interest rates to
encourage investment. This will mean tax relief for families
with children. And this will mean difficult budget cuts in
some areas in order to finance increased expenditures for
programs - like Head Start and WIC that work - and for
programs that will increase our productivity - programs in
education, job training, health, and infrastructure.
Third, replace the politics of violence with the
politics of public safety and intervene directly and
massively against poverty, drugs, and violence. And by "we"
I mean all concerned voices, especially those black and brown
voices trapped within the swirling storm. Instead of
politicians using Willie Horton to profit politically from
people's fears or outbidding each other in a contest for the
most draconian punishment, we need ideas to increase life
chances, and timetables for action, for change and for
results.
Being tough .is necessary. I don't have much tolerance
for those who make millions off the .destruction of a
generation. That's why we need the death penalty for drug
kingpins who murder, tough sentences for drug-related crimes
committed with a gun, and gun control that establishes a
waiting period and a background check. But these measures
alone are no guarantee of safety in your neighborhood. It's
more difficult. The violence we fear seems to erupt anywhere
and for no apparent cause. The violence we fear is the
violence of the predator who kills not for money or with a
plan but at r~ndom, for fun and with malice.
•
So what we need is more police, yes. The ratio of
felonies to police has increased dangerously. But, better
police too, and tougher laws. In many cities there are few
�•
•
Page 9
places where people don't have to be vigilant. The concern is
constant and pervasive. Yet, police often act as if they were
an occupying army, fearful of an enemy population, responding
from their cars to emergency calls. And while they have good
reason to be alert, they make arrests only to have the
arrested back on the streets shortly after or if they go to
jail, replaced by another predator who feels emboldened or
desperate or both. The result: no improvement in safety for
the majority.
The politics of public safety implies police, armed with
a popular mandate, out in the community building partnerships
with the law abiding majorities. Together they will help to
prevent crime in all neighborhoods of a city. They will
identify the indigenous resources that can form the critical
base of self-help and intelligence upon which government and
police assistance can be leveraged. The politics of public
safety succeeds only if citizens feel more secure. Surely if
a President cared about these problems he could direct his
administration to come up with sharper ideas and the
resources to help government agencies and local police
~plement them.
If we a~e serious about reducing violence
and improving safety we can do no less .
Fourth, and most importantly, begin an honest dialogue
about race in America by clearing away the phony issues that
can never bring us together. I ask President Bush to promise
never again to use race in a way that divides us.
Communicating in code words and symbols to deliver the old
shameful message should cease. Race-baiting should be
banished from our politics.
And then, I ask every American to become a part of the
dialogue that lifts this discussion to the higher ground.
Beginning with ourselves, each of us must address our own
personal understanding or misunderstanding of race. Ask
yourself, when was the last time you had a conversation about
race with someone of a different race? Ask yourself what
values are shared by all races? And begin to ask our leaders
how they have confronted their own understanding or
misunderstandings about race in their own real lives -- not
just their political careers.
•
I commit myself to work as hard as I can for as long as
it takes on each of these four steps. All of them will
require concerted action and leadership wherever we can find
it. Only one can be achieved by words: the last, the quest
for an honest dialogue. But without it all the others. could
misfire - not solving the problems, or worse, being
manipulated by those who would keep us from ou= better
selves .
The other day a press person said his magazine was doing
a story on racial integration - is it dying, is it changing,
�••
10
is it less relevant, does it hold the same appeal as it did,
is America moving beyond it or away from it, is it a means or
an end. I believe that integration and race and civil rights
are central to our American future. They are not merely
programmatic issues. They are not political trends. They
are fundamental questions of attitude and action, questions
of individual moral courage and the moral leadership of our
nation. James Baldwin, returning from France in 1957 and
counseling his nephew in 1957 not to be afraid during the
civil-rights demonstrations of the early 1960s, concludes
with this:
•
I said that it was intended that you
should perish in the ghetto, perish by
never being allowed to go behind the
white man's definitions, by never being
allowed to spell your proper name. You
have, and many of us have, defeated this
intention~ and, by a terrible law, a
terrible paradox, those innocents who
believed that your imprisonment made them
safe are losing their grasp of reality •
But these men are your brothers - your
lost, younger brothers. And if the word
integration means anything, this is what
it means: that we, with love, shall
force our brothers to see themselves as
they are, to cease fleeing from reality
and begin to change it. For this is your
home, my friend, do not be driven from
it~ great men have done great things
here, and will again, and we can make
America what America must become •
•
---------
---------
�BILLBRADLEY
NEW JERSEY
•
tinittd
~tatts ~matt
WASHINGTON, DC 205 10-3001
PLQQR STATKenprt' BY SBIIUOR BILL BRADLEY
OR RACE
.llfD CIVIL RIGB'l'S
JULY 10. 1991
This is an open letter to President Bush. I hope he'll
hear it and I hope the American people will listen, too. I
hope this letter will put the issue of race relations in a
broader context than simply the Supreme Court nomination of
Clarence Thomas. I offer this letter recognizing that when a
black or white American speaks about race one necessarily
speaks for someone else of a different race. That is awkward
and subject to misinterpretation. But silence is worse.
Dear Mr. President, in 1988 you used the Willie Horton
ad to divide white and black voters and appeal to fear. Now,
based on your remarks about the 1991 Civil Rights Bill, you
have begun to do the same thing again. Mr. President, we
implore you -- don't go down that path again. It's not good
for the country. We can ~o better.
•
Racial tension is too dangerous to exploit and too
important to ignore. America yearns for straight talk about
race, but instead we get code words and a grasping after an
early advantage in the 1992 election. Continued progress in
race relations requires moral leadership and a clear sighted
understanding of our national self-interest. And that must
start with our President.
Th~re is a place and a time for politics.
The Willie
Horton ad in your 1988 campaign will be played and analyzed
by political pundits for years to come.
There is a place and time for leadership. The place for
leadership is here - for our people, uncertain and divided
once again on the issue of race. And the time for leadership
is now.
•
So, llr. President, tell us how you have worked through
the issue of race in your own life. I don't mean
speechwriter abstractions about equality or liberty but your
own life experiences. When.did you realize there was a
difference between the lives of black people and the lives of
white people in America? Where did you ever experience or
see discrimination? Bow did you feel? What did you do?
What images remain in your memory? Tell us more about how
you grappled with the moral imperatives embodied in race
relations and how you clarified the moral ambiguities that
necessarily are a part of the attitude of every American who
·has ..given it any thought -- any thought at all.
Do you believe silence will muffle the gunshots of
rising racial violence in our cities? Do you believe that
�.•
Page 2
brotherhood will be destroyed by candor about the obstacles
to its realization? Do you believe ignoring the division
between the races will heal it? If you truly want it healed,
why don't you &pel\~ some of your political capital
represented by your 10• approval ratings and try to move our
glacial collective humanity one inch forward.
Mr. President, you say you're against discrimination.
Why not make a morally unambiguous statement and then back it
up with action? At west Point you said you "will strike at
discrimdnation wherever it exists". Row will you do that and
when? Why not try to change the racist attitudes of some
Americans - even if they voted for you - so that all
Americans can realize our ideals?
Mr. President, if.these concerns are wrong, please
dispel them. Please explain the following bases for our
doubt.
•
Doubt one -- your record. Back in 1964 you ran for the
Senate and you opposed the Civil Rights Act of that year.
Why?
I remember that summer. I was a student intern in
Washington, D.C. , between my junior and senior years in
college and I was in this Senate chamber that hot summer
night when the bill passed. I remember the roll call. I
remember thinking, "America is a better place because of this
bill. All Americans --white or black-- are better off." I
remember the presidential election that summer too, when
Senator Goldwater made the Civil Rights Act an issue in his
campaign. I came to Washington that summer as a Republican.
I left as a Democrat.
Why did · jou oppose that bill? Why did you say that the
1964 Civil Rights Act, in your words, "violates the
constitutional·~ights of all people?"
Remember how America
functionc in many parts of our country before it passed?
Separate restroom& and drinking fountains for black and
white, blacks turned away from hotels, restaurants, movies.
Did you believe that black Americans should eat at the
kitchen steps of restaurants, not in the dining room? Whose
constitutional rights ware being violated there?
Were you just opposing the Civil Rights Bill for
political purposes? Were you just using race to qat votes?
•
Did you ever change your mind and regret your opposition
to the Civil Rights Act? If so, when? Did you aver express
your regret publicly? What is your raqrat?
··When you say today that you're against discrimination, I
don't know what you mean because you have never repudiated or
explained your past opposition to the most basic widening of
�•
Page 3
opportunity for black Americans in the 20th century, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It sounds 1i~e you're trying to have it both ways -- lip
service to equality and political maneuvering against it.
What does your record mean?
What have you stood for?
Doubt two - Bconamic reality. Mr. President, over the
last 11 years of Republican rule the poor and the middle
class in America have not fared wall. The average middle
income family earned $31,000 in 1977 and $31,000 in 1990. No
improvement. During the same time period, the richest 1t of
American families want from earning $280,000 in 1977 to
$549,000 in 1990. Row, how could that have happened? How
could the majority of voters have supported governments whose
primary achievement was to make the rich richer? The answer
lies in the strategy and tactics of recent political
campaigns.
•
•
Just as middle class America began to see their economic
interests clearly and to come home to the Democratic party,
Republicans ~terjected race into campaigns, to play on new
fears and old prejudices, to drive a .wedge through the middle
class, to pry off a large enough portion to win.
Xr. President, moat Americana recognize that in economic
policy Republicans usually try to reward the rich, and
Democrats usually don't. I accept that as part of the lore
and debate and rhythm of American politics. What I can't
accept, because it eats at the core of our society, is
inflami~g racial tension to perpetuate power and then using
that power to reward the rich and ignore the poor. It is a
reasonable ~rgument over means to say more for the weal thy is
a price we pay to •lift all .boats•. It is a cynical
manipulation to send messages to white working people that
they have mora ·in common with the wealthy than with the black
worker nazt to thaaa on the line, taking the same physical
risks and struggling to make ends meet with the same pay.
Xr. President, I detest anyone who uses that tactic -whether it is a Democrat like George Wallace or a Republican
like David Duke. The irony is that moat of the people who
voted for George Wallace or David Duke or George Bush because
of race haven't benefited economically fram the last decade.
·xany of them are worse off. Many have lost jobs, health
insurance, -pension benefita. Many more can't buy a house or
pay property taxes or hope to send their child-to college.
The people who have benefitted come from the wealthiest class
in America. So, Mr. President, put bluntly, why ahouldn' t we
doubt your cOJIIIDitment to racial justice and fair play when we
see ·who has benefitted moat fram the power that has been
acquired through sowing the seeds of racial division?
�•
Page 4
Doubt three - Your inconsistent words. We Americans
hold a special trust on the issue of race. We fought one of
the bloodiest wars in history over it - brother against
brother, state age.1nst state, American against .American. Our
communities and our schools and our hearts have been torn by
the issue. We have come too far, Mr. President. We do not
need to be torn further. Most Americans who have absorbed
our history know the wisdom of Zora Neale Hurston's words
that, "Race.is an explosive on the tongues of men." Race is
most especially an explosive on the tongue of the
President •••• or his men.
We have come too far. we need to be led not
manipulated. We need leadership that will summon the best in
us not the worst. We have come too far to deserve what you
are doing now to our cammon trust in each other.
Yet you have tried to turn the Willie Horton code of
1988 into the quotas code of 1992. You have said that's not
what you're doing but as you said at West Point, "You can't
put a sign on a pig and say it's a horse."
•
Why do you say one thing with your statement against
discrimination and another with your opposition to American
businesses working with civil rights groups to get a civil
rights bill most Americans could be proud of? Are you
sending mixed signals or giving a big wink to a pocket of the
electorate?
We measure our leader by what he says and by what he
does. If both what he says and what he does are destruct!ve
of racial harmony, we must conclude that he wants to destroy
racial ·JUu:mony. If what he says and what he does are
different, ~en what he does is more important. If he says
different things at different times that are mutually
contradictory, then we conclude he's trying to pull the wool
over someone'& ·eyes.
-
-
Mr. President, you need to be clearer, so that people on
all sides understand where you are, . what you believe and how
you propose to make your beliefs a ·reality. Until then, you
must understand that an increasing number of Americans will
assume your convictions about issues of race and
discrimination are no deeper than a water spider's footprint.
•
Doubt four - Your leadership. ·aacial politics has an
unseamly history in A1Darica. Por only about five decades of
the last 220 years have our politicians actively tried to
heal racial wounds. Slavery blighted our ideals for nearly a
century. Then a burst of hope from 1865 to 1876. Then
nearly another century of exploitation and inhumanity
including harsh and discriminatory treatment of Hispanics and
many other immigrant groups. Then from 1945 to 1980, another
�•
Page 5
burst of ·hope. Much was accomplished in this last period.
But all of us dee~ in our hearts know there's more to do.
Demagogues - .~th white and black - seek to deepen
divisions. Misconceptions grow. Pears accelerate •
.OUtlandish egos thrive on the misery of others.
•
•
Both races have to learn to speak candidly with each
other. By the year 2000, only 57' of people entering the
work force will be native born whites. White-Americans have
to understand that their children's standard of living is
inextricably bound to the future of millions of non-white
children who will pour into the workforce in the next
decades. To guide them toward achievement will make America
a richer, more successful society. To allow them to
self-destruct because of penny-pinching or timidity about
straight talk will make America a second rate power. Black
Americans have to believe that acquisition of skills will
serve as an entry into society not because they have acquired
a veneer of whiteness but because they are able. Blackness
doesn't compromise ability nor does ability compromise
blackness. Both blacks and whites have to create and
celebrate the common ground that binds us together as
Americans and human beings.
To do that we must reach out in trust to each other. By
ignoring the poverty in our cities, white Americans deny
reality as much as black Americans whose sense of group
identity often denies the individuality that they themselves
know is God's gift to every baby. There is much to say to
each other about rage and patience, about opportunity and
obligation, about fear and courage, about guilt and honor.
The more· Americans can see beyond someone's skin to his heart
and mind, the easier it will be for us to reveal our true
feelings and.to admit our failures as well as celebrate our
strengths. The more Americans are honest about the level of
distrust they hold for each other, the easier it will be to
gat beyond tbosa feelings and forge a new ralatJ.onship
without racial overtones. Both black and white Americans
na8d to recognize that what's important is not whether the
commending officer is black or white but how good a leader he
or aha is. That's true in war and it's equally true in
peace.
Above all, we need to establish a social order in which
individuals of all races to assume personal responsibility.
In a contest that's fair a chance is all someone needs. In a
contest that's fair the gripes and excuses of losers don't
carry much weight •
So individual responsibility is essential. And so is
facing reality clearly. Crime often causes poverty. Racism
exists, and so do horrible living conditions_in our cities.
�•
Page 6
To accept any of this as natural or necessary or unchangeable
is to insure that it will continue •
..
The most ~~ant voice in that national dialogue is
yours, Mr. President. You can set us against each other or
you can bring us together. You can reason with us and help
us overcome deep-rooted stereotypes or you can speak in
mutually contradictory sound bites and leave us at each
other's throats. You can risk being pilloried by demagogues
and losing a few points in the polls, or you can simply
ignore the issue, using it only for political purposes. You
can push the buttons which you think give you an election or
you can challenge a nation's moral conscience.
•
The irony here is that as a Democrat, I am urging the
Republican President to do what will serve his own party's
longter.m political interests. Why do I do it? Because I
believe that race-baiting should be banished from politics.
Because I believe communicating in code words and symbols to
deliver an old shameful message should cease. There should
be no more Willie Borton ads. Mr. President, will you
promise not to use race again as you so shamelessly did in
1988? If you will not promise your country this, why not?
Doubt five - Your convictions. Mr. President, as Vice
President to Ronald Reagan you were a loyal lieutenant. To
my knowledge you never expressed public opposition to
anything that happened in race relations in the Reagan
years. You acquiesced in giving control of the civil rights
agenda to elements of the Republican party whose southern
strategy was to attract those voters who wanted to turn the
clock back on race relations.
The
Re~gan
Justice Department tried to give government
tax subsidies to schools that practice racial discrimination
as a matter of policy. And you went along. They were
reluctant to push the Voting Rights Act renewal -- and you
want alo~. _They vetoed the 1988 Civil Rights Restoration
Act -- and you went along. Por eight years there was an
assault on American civility and fair play and you went
along. On what issue would you haV& spoken out? Was your
role as Vice President more important than any conviction?
Obviously, the issue of race wasn't one of them. Martin
Luther King, Jr. wrote from his jail cell in Birmingham, •we
will have to repent in this generation not merely for the
vitriolic words and actions of bad people but for the
appalling silence of good people.•
·
•
Mr. President, you saw ·black .America fall into a deeper
and deeper decline during the Reagan years. Prom 1984 to
1988, the nWIIber of black children murdered in America
increased by 50 percent. Today, 43 percent of black children
are born in poverty. And since 1984 black life expectancy
has declined - the first decline for any segment of Alllerica
�•
Page 7
in our hi·story. Yet in the face of these unprecedented
developments, you said and did nothing. Why did you g~
along?
In 1989, when you took over you promised it would be
different. But it hasn't been. The rhetoric has been softer
at times, but the problem is the same. At Hampton College, a
predominantly black school, you recently promised •adequate
funding• fo~ Head Start, but three out of four eligible
children are still turned away. Do you believe what you
say? What is more important than getting a generation of
kids on the right education track? I'm all for the important
work of the Thousand Points of Light Foundation but for it to
really succeed a President and his government must be the
beacon.
•
Maybe you have no idea what to do about kids killing
kids in our cities and people sleeping on the streets. Maybe
out of wedlock births are outside your experience and not of
importance to you. · Maybe you really have concluded that
urban enterprise zones and the HOPE program are a sufficient
urban poverty strategy. Maybe families to you don't include
white and black families living in cities, struggling to make
ends meet against the same high odds, which you refuse to
reduce. Maybe you just don't understand. Maybe, maybe,
maybe.
·
·
Who knows? We rarely hear your voice. At West Point,
you exhorted .America to be colorblind. But without doing
something about inequity and poverty the call for
colorblindness is denial and arrogance. Mr. President, you
have to create a context in which a colorblind society might
eventually evolve. Right now you are neither similar to the
stern fathe~_administering bad news and discipline to his
children, nor the wise father helping his children come to
ter.ms with emotions they don't understand or prejudices they
can't conquer. ·· And you are certainly not the leader laying
out the plan.and investing the political capital to change
conditions.
So xr. PJ:esidant, ay concern is not just the 1991 Civil
Rights .Act or the fate of Clarence Thomas. Your Civil Rights
BJ.ll, the Democrats' Civil Rights Bill, the Danforth Civil
Riqhts Bill all say pretty much the same thing to business:
pay attention to your hiring practices 1 . make an effort to
find minorities who can do the job because it is in the
national interest for pluralism to truly work. There is no
reason we can't find lanquage that 60 Senators can support.
•
But you, or those working for you - don't appear to want .
a compromise. Not yet. Businessmen wanted a compromise and
your·White House pressured them to back off talks. Senator
Danforth wants a compromise - but he hasn't gotten much
encouragement. Some Senators, Republicans, want to be
•'
.:
�•
•
Page 8
responsible but they say you're not dealing in good faith.
Your operatives apparently don't want to lose a political
issue - not yet.
Mr. President'~ as you and your men dawdle in race
politics consider these facts& We will never win the global
economic race if we have to carry the burden of an
increasingly larger unskilled population. We will never lead
the world by the ezample of our living values if we can't
eradicate the •reservation• mentality many whites hold about
our cities. We will never understand the problems of our
cities - the factories closed, the housing filled with rats,
the hospitala losing doctors, the schools pock marked with
bullet holes, the middle class moved away - until a white
person can point out the epidemic of minority illegitimacy,
drug addition and hamodides without being charged a racist.
We will never solve the problem of our cities until we
intervene massively and directly to change the physical
condi tiona of poverty and depravation. But you can still win
elections by playing on the insecurities our people feel
about their jobs, their homes, their children, and their
future. And so our greatest doubt about you is this: is
winning elections more important to you than unifying the
country to address the problems of race and poverty that
beset us •
Mr. President, this is a cry from my heart, so don't
charge me with playing politics. I'm asking you to take the
issue of race out of partisan politics and put it on a moral
plane where healing can take place.
I believe the only way it will happen is for you to look
into yourself and tell all of us what you plan to do about
the issues o.~ race and poverty in this country. Tell us why
our legitimate doubts about your convictions are wrong. Tell
us how you propose to make us the example of a pluralist
democracy whose· economy and spirit takes everyone to the
higher cp:gund. Tell us what the plan of action is for us to
realize our ideals.
Tell each of us what we can c:Jo.
we can do it.
Tell us why you think
Tell us why we must do it. Tell us, Mr. President, lead
us, put yourself on the line. Now. Now •
•
�•
Barbara Jordan
Keynote Address
Democratic National Convention
July 13, 1992
"Change: From What to What?"
At this time; at this place; at this event sixteen years ago - I presented a keynote address. I thank you for the
return engagement and with modesty would remind you that we WQD the presidency in November, 1976. Why not 1992?
It is possible to win. It is possible but you must believe that we can and will do it. I will talk with you for the next
few minutes about some of the changes which are necessary for victory. I have entitled my remarks - "Change: From
What to What?"
Change has become the wstchwoid of this year's e!ectioneering. Candidates ccntend with each other, arguing,
debating - which of them is the authentic agent of change. Such jostling acquires substance when we comprehend the
public mind. There appears to be a general apprehension about the future which undermines our confidence in ourselves
and each other. The American idea that tomorrow will be better than today has become de-stabilized by a stubborn,
sluggish economy. Jobs lost have become permanent unemployment rather than cyclical unemployment. Public policy
makers are held in low regard. Mistrust abounds. Given such an environment, is it not understandable that the prevailing
issue of this political season is identifying the catalyst for change that is required. I see that catalyst as: the Democratic
Party and its nominee for President.
A
We are not strangers to change. We calmed the national unrest in the wake of the Watergate abuses and we,
WThe Democratic Party, can seize this moment. We know what needs to be done and how to do it. We have been the
instrument of change in policies which impact education, human rights, civil rights, economic and social opportunity and
the environment. These are policies firmly imbedded in the soul of our party. We will do nothing to erode our essence.
However, some things need to change. The Democratic Party is alive and well. It will change in order to faithfully serve
the present and the future, but it will not die.
Change: From What to What? We will change from a party with a reputation of tax and spend to one of
investment and growth. A growth economy is a must. We can expand the economy and at the same time sustain and
even improve our environment. When the economy is growing and we are treating our air, water and soil kindly, .ill of us
prosper. We all benefit from economic expansion. I certainly do not mean the thinly disguised racism and elitism of some
kind of trickle down economics. I mean an economy where a young black woman or man from the Fifth Ward in Houston
or south-central Los Angeles, or a young person in the colonias of the lower Rio Grande valley, can attend public schools
and learn the skills that will enable her or him to prosper. We must have an economy that does not force the migrant
worker's child to miss school in order to earn less than the minimum wage just so the family can have one meal a day.
That is the moral bankruptcy that trickle down economics is all about. We can change the direction of America's
economic engine and become proud and competitive again. The American dream is not dead. True, it is gasping for
breath but it is not dead. However, there is no time to waste because the American Dream is slipping away from too
many. It is slipping away from too many black and brown mothers and their children; from the homeless of every color
and sex; from the immigrants living in communities without water and sewer systems. The American Dream is slipping
away from the workers whose jobs are no longer there because we are better at building war equipment that sits in
warehouses than we are at building decent housing; from the workers on indefinite layoffs while their chief executive
.fficers are making bonuses that are more than the worker will take home in 10 or 20 or 30 years .
.______ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
-
----~-----------~-
�2
•
We need to change the decaying inner cities into places where hope lives. We should answer Rodney King's
haunting question,"can we all get along?" with a resounding "YES." We must profoundly change from the deleterious
environment of the Eighties, characterized by greed, selfishness, mega-mergers and debt overhang to one characterized
by devotion to the public interest and tolerance. And yes, love.
We are one, we Americans, and we reject any intruder who seeks to divide us by race or class. We honor cultural
identity. However, separatism is not allowed. Separatism is not the American way. And we should not permit ideas like
political correctness to become some fad that could reverse our hard-won achievements in civil rights and human rights.
Xenophobia, has no place in the Democratic Party. We seek to unite people not divide them and we reject both white
racism and black racism. This party will not tolerate bigotry under any guise. America's strength is rooted in its diversity.
Our history bears witness to that statement. E Pluribus Unum was a good motto in the early days of our country and it is a
good motto today. From the many, one. It still identifies us- because we are Americans.
We must frankly acknowledge our complicity in the creation of the unconscionable budget deficit and recognize
that to seriously address it will put entitlements at risk. The idea of justice between generations mandates such
acknowledgment and more. The baby boomers and their progeny have a right to a secure future. We must be willing to
sacrifice for growth- provided there is equity in sacrifice. Equity means all will sacrifice- equally. That includes the
retiree living on a fixed income, the day laborer, the corporate executive, the college professor, the Member of
Congress ... all means all.
One overdue change already underway is the number of women challenging the councils of political power
dominated by white-male policy makers. That horizon is limitless. What we see today is simply a dress rehearsal for the
day and time we meet in convention to nominate... Madame President. This country can ill afford to continue to function
ausing less than half of its human resources, brain power and kinetic energy. Our 19th century visitor from France, de
WTocqueville, observed in his work Qemocracy in America, "If I were asked to what singular substance do I mainly attribute
the prosperity and growing strength of the American people, I should reply: To the superiority of their women." The 20th
century will not close without our presence being keenly felt
We must leave this convention with a determination to convince the American people to trust us, the Democrats,
to govern again. That is not an easy task, but it is a doable one.
Public apprehension and fears about the future have provided fertile ground for a chorus of cynics. Their refrain is
that it makes no difference who is elected President. Advocates of that point of view perpetuate a fraud. It does make a
difference who is President. A Democratic President would appoint a Supreme Court Justice who would protect liberty not
burden it. A Democratic President would promote those policies and programs which help us help ourselves: such
as ... health care and job training.
Character has become an agenda item this political season. A well-reasoned examination of the question of
character reveals more emotionalism than fact. James Madison warned us of the perils of acting out of passion rather
than reason. When reason prevails, we prevail. As William Allen White, the late editor of the Emporia, Kansas Gazette,
said, "Reason never has failed man. Only fear and oppression have made the wrecks in the world." It is reason and not
passion which should guide our decisions. The question persists: Who can best lead this country at this moment in our
history?
•
I close by quoting from Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural address to a people longing for change from the
despair of the great depression. That was 1933, he said: "In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness
d vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory." Given the
ingredients of today's national environment, maybe... just maybe, we Americans are poised for a second "Rendezvous with
Destiny."
�12 .. 23 .. 92
···-·
16:52
PE+VPE TRANS OFC
~·-·
•
@002 .. 015
:'l Gr1P..E..SS TO TH.E. PEOl)LE- Of FOR.T COLI...<NS~ COLOR.d.J)O
SE."Al'OR ALBERT GORE
OCTOBEr( 31, 1992
·~··::rA!.-!K
THAr·rR. YDO
YOU.
:~0
WOW!
WHAT A WELCOME!
MUCH. WELL. THAl\TK Y<.}U. THANK YOU.
~'THREE
[C8AN1$ OF
•:::OLL~~'-l'S.
(TEUNDEROUS APPLAUSE)
MORE DAYS.'') THANK YOU.
YOO ARE THE GREATEST. THANK YOU VERY
THANK YOU, FORT
~fUCH.
I \VA!.ff TO THANK MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE, TIM WIRTH. WE HAVE
\VORKED TOGETHER FOR MANY YEARS.
P.~.. RTI.fEi~S 0~~
•
MORE THAN THAT, WE Hr'\VE BEF.N
A JOURNEY TO EXPLORE WAYS OUR COUNTRY CAN l,EAD THe
FI-FOR.'r TO SAVE THE. GLOBAL ENVIROl'-t'?viE!'.I'T. I RF.SPECT TJM V/1RTH; I ENJOY
•,-.rORK1NG '::.·1 rn H.TM; HE. IS A GREAT SENATOR. THANK YOU FOR SENDING HIM
TG THE :)'ENATE. T:i\·J
rs MY CLOSEST FPJE~D IN THE SENATE,
AND I V•lA.S REAL
iJ:\PPY THAT HE WAS ABLE "10 COME HERE AND INTRODUCE ME ON THiS VERY
.A.NP TO (KiVERI'lOR ROY
I~OMER,·
HAPPY BIRTHDAY. FlRST OF ALL. I HAD
TO ({':ME B.A.CK 1"0 CELEBRATE GOVERNOR ROMER. 'S BIRTHDAY; AND HE DOES
A. \<JQr~;I).~.R.FUL JOB; VERY CLOSE TO BILL CLINTON, A~"D BOTH GOVER.!'JOR
CtJNTOi~
AND I X:\ VE THE HIGHEST REGARD FOR ROY ROMER.
A!,iD Tl) MY
l!~··iL!."E.D
•
~;TAT?.S
r
LONGT~ME
SENATOR FROM COLORADO. BEN -
I
~;\'l~·!'~~::·
BEN ALSO HAD
"T!C'AL
JPD•"·E?~,..f'E""",.l.!'
1\T
nRE· 'IDEl"ffi' /'~A L RACE FOL!T.I~ "EARS
.,
\.l ··' ') .. " •
4 "'"HE
l
. )."
1
('I'
.:•. ·' ' ••
, ....,.,J..... . . . . ·' .........
, , ··-\~(-:
..... 'CO.I')
It" •. ~l
.!,:~.r),
FRJ.END, BEN NlGHTHORSE CAMPBELL~ THE NEXT
.I'<J
.....
•
!
•
•
"li'OU TO KNOVv', AND rM ALWAYS GOING TO REMEMBER THAT.
�PE+vPE TRANS OFC
•
~ (1(1.3 .. 015
BUT \.V.E'VS WOR'f.::F.!) TOGETHER ON A LOT OF ISSUES.
AND, LADIES ,4,NC' GENTLEMEN: I WANT TO ASK YOU TO GO THE D.:TR.'\
J-.!TLE FOR AN 1N!.)lV!!:JUAL 'VI'HO IS DYNAMIC, HAS
VISION~
GREAT IDEAS, AND
T!\.t5MEhTDOTJS COM!,·f1TMENT TO THE PEOPLE OF Tii'JS CONGRESSIONAL
DrSTRlCT, WJl'H \'OUR H"'".t:l.P, THE NEXT CONGRESSMAN FROM COLORADO: TOM
REDDER. 1'1-!A.NK. YOU. TOM.
t '.,\'.1\}o'"l' TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE OTHER CANDIDATES WHO ARE HERE:
BILL. STF.:.FF!S, STATE REPRESENTATIVE PEGGY REEVES,
))AVID MOP.GAN . GUY KEU.Y
A~"'D
BER~TIE
STROM AND
TIM DISNeY, JANET DUVALL AND DWAYNE
COI..F..S; LET'S GIVE THEM ALL A HAND.
•
AND, AND t.Br'S ELEcr THEM ALL WHILE WE'RE AT IT; THEY'RE GREAT
J. \VANT TO ALSO '!'HANK CHAR MCDANIEL,
CANDIDATES!
LAR.f.ME~
COU!'iTY DEMOCRATS.
.llfATJT~FUL
BECKY WILLIAMS, 'y\'HQ DID SUCH A
JOB ON '!'HE NATIONAL ANTHEM, ;\ND CASEY CROPS, THE BAND
DIRECTOR, AND UtE BAND.
Tf.RRf.!=jC.
A.L~D
CHAIR OF THE
1~HANK
LET'S HEAR IT FOR !.diS BAND.
THEY ARE
YOU.
TO :DA V"E HENDRIX, THE
SUPERI~'"TENDENT
KJRKPATi?iCK. THE MAYOR OF FORT COLLINS, AND
OF SCHOOLS, TO SUSAN
1~0
DR. KAREN DIXON, THE
PRiNCIPAL OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH SCHOOL, WHO DOES A GREAT JOB. THIS
JS A -- TffiS
'!~;
A
RES:t3A~CH .~.ND
•
$CH.OcJt,
?~ND
FOR P.Ri!\G
WONDl~itF'UL
HIGH SCHOOL.
l KNOW, HAVING DOI\.1; SOME
HAVLNG HEARD FROM TIM AND TOM AND BEN, YOUR HIGH
l!\'DEED THIS SCHOOL DISTRiCT P.AS A NATIONAL REPUTATION
~_)NE
Of )TiE BEST l.N THE COUNTRY. 1"H.AT'S SO:t\IIETHlNG TO BE
�PE+VPE TRANS OFC
•
@OO.J :(liS
r•RCUIJ O:F. A.ND I \VAS THINKlKG ABOUT THE CHALLENGE THAT DR. KAREN
Di)~(lN
H.\S FACED IN THE LAST FEW DAYS.
! \.V.·\S REMINDED. Rf::AL!.Y OF A STORY FROM M.'t HOME STAT.E. OF
·rc.l·;;..:ESSEE, A!;OUT THE-- IS THERE A TEN".NE.~SEEAN HEP..E?
~-GOOD,
GOOD! A
VOLUN'ff..F.F.? ALl.. RIGHT!
THiS STORY IS A30T.IT A GAME WARDEN WHO WAS GUARDING THE
F..N'TR.t;CE
ANI~
EXIT
~0
A GAME PRESER\'E. AND ONE
BVENL~G.
A GOY CAME
OUT !N A PICKUP TRUCK, W1TH THE B.'\CK OF THE PICKUP TRUCK JUST FILLED
WITH FtSH. A:-ID THE GAME WARDE..'\f SAID) "HOW IN THE WORLD DID YOU
CATCH ALL THOSE FlSH7 Til ERE MUST BE A THOUSAND IN THERE. AND THE
•
GUY SAJD, ''WELL, IF YOU WANNA COME V/lTii. ME TOMORROW MORN1NG. I"LL
JUST SB'OW YOU."
SO "!"HE NEXT l\·SORN1NG WHEN TIIE GUY DROVE BACK THROUGH. THE
t!AME WARDEN 1'0CK. OFF AND v,rf:.NT W1TH HIM AND GOT IN HJS BOAT, A..."''D
0~.iT
1N THE MIDDLE OF
·rz.re LAKE THEY SHUT OFF THE MOTOR A~'D TP...E GAME
WARDEN STARTED :PUTTING HiS HOOKS AND \VEIGHTS ON, M'n HE LOOKED
OVER. OVER AT THE GUY WlTH THE PI.CKUP TRUCK AND NOTICED THAT T:.AE
GT.l Y DiDN'T H.ol\ VE
A~'!
ROD AND REEL.
A.ND HF.. SAfD, "HOW ARE YOtJ GONNA CATCH FISH WITHOUT ANY ROD
AND l~EEL?'' A:ND THE GUY REACH.F..D INTO HIS COAT AN:o GOT OUT A STICK OF
DYNA~·~':I'S
•
t-.1'·IT.> LIT IT AND Tl-iREVi IT OUT If\.'TO THE LAKE AND IT W£'N"T
"f'L00?--1." _t.,:,_;-1) rN JUST A FEW Ml.NU'TBS FISH STARTED FLOATING UP TO THE.
SOP..FACf.
AI'n.:; HE TOOK O'UT A NET .FROM
UNDERNEAT~ THE
SEAT AND
�PE+VPE TRANS OFC
•
l@l.lf.15:f.Jl5
$1'.13. RTED SCOOE'lNG THOSE FISH r?-iTO THE BOAT.
THE CA.ME \"iARDE.l'\1 GOT VERY UPSET AND SAID. "YOU CAN'T DO THAT.
-::'H.-s.T·~
A(;A:!i'·:;·.c;T FFDE.Rt\L REGl!LA TlONS, Al'\'0 \VH.EN WE GET TO SHORE,
GONNA F.A.'/E TO ARP.EST YOU.''
!.'i}~"'!·.;y
..1.ND
.LiYN,4.lviT!'.€.
\.VARDE~~
AND THE GVY LO<)KED AT .HiM K!ND OF
r·n:. l~.EACHED It-rro HIS COAT AND HE GOT OUT ANOTHER S11CK OF
A.~D
HE UT THE
FU~E
AND HE HAND.ED IT RIGHT TO THE GAME
.J\.1'-.':D HE SATD," ARE GONI\A TALK OR FJSH'!h
A~'D
flSH!0f"'.
r~i
! Y.r'A'!\7 YOU TO KNOW THAT I'M HERE TONIGHT TO DO SOM'c
Al'\D I WA.NT TO-- I WANT TO SAY THAT 'FOR TWELVE YEARS THE
.\MER'lCAN PEOl->LE HAVE J3E'EN CAUGHT IN THE SAME KIND OF NO-WIN
••
~i.!TUr\TiON
THAT GAME WARDEN \VAS IN, ViHERE THERE DON'T SEE-M TO BE
ANY GOOD CHOICES. 'BUT THIS Til\liE, LADIES AND GE.iVI'LEJ'.1EN, WE'VE GOT A
.REA.~.
i)?TfON·. WE'VE GOT A \VAY TO CHOOSE A BRIGHT FUTURE.
\VF. CAN HAVE THE CHANGE TH'AT \\=E REALLY WANT. BUT SERIOUSLY,
l t-d\'1 SO GLAD TO BE BACK HERE \\TTH YOU IN FORT COLLINS.
AND I AM
GRA\'EFUL F.OR ALL OF YOU BEf.NO WILLING TO COME HERE TO HEAR l\ffi THiS
EVEN.i.NG. I WOULDN'T HAVE EXPECTED ANYTHu"JG .ELSE. THIS PLACE WAS
:;ou~:~ED
BY ~...tSN A!\lJ)
H.AZ.~.R.tiOUS
WOMB~
WHO CROSSED THE PLAINS AND TRAVERSED
J.,iOlrNTAINS AND Bl?AVED HARDSHTPS THAT WE CAN SCARCELY
fMAGJN!;:, EV't THOSE PIONEER DAYS HAVE LONG SlNCE PASSED) AND YET THE
SPlJ?J.i' OF FORT COLLlNS IS VERY STR.ONC. THIS IS THE CITY FOR THE FUTURE.
•
ThiS .iS 1"H.G C~TY \~liTH A C0~1!Tl'.iE~·T TO BUILDING A VERY BRIGHT FlJTURE.
�PE+\"PE TRANS OFC
•
141006:015
1 ·~,...
vcrr
• S 1J
r l••...:> C
. . C) VERc:D
"T 1"1
,.. .r•y E .~
"-R'1•. 11;~
~-~R'
• .J.... "t'>...l..,.l.
.. "v, Tl-ir
....•::. .O"'VJ(···r:
..:. ... ··'· .,1...n11A1' n·
or..
. ..,
r'l.
THIS
Y!:Al~,
SFfj~K,
I !\3AY SAY.
W!~.
HAVB REEN GETflNG A NUM"BER OF .BOMBS, SO TO
VERBAJ.., AND OTI-!Ei<\l.1ISE . HURLED AT US. SOME. DlSTORTIONS, SOME
H.·\LF-'IT,VTI1S, DESIGNED NOT REALLY FOR PH'r.'SICAL HARM, BUT TO Dl$RUPT)
·~:o
C.\.ST DDlJBT. ANO. THO~!E BOM.B$ HAVEN'T GONE OFF, EITHER AND NEXT
T\.7;::$DA Y, WITH YOUR HEtP, THEY'LL BE RENDERED
JUST A.Fl""ER ! LEF1' HFJU:
MOR.~'C'{G
•
SEVERA~
HARMLE.~S
ALSO.
DAYS AGO, I TllRNED ON The
TEi.EVlStON, AND THERE WAS A VERBAL BOMB. I WAS BEING CALLED
A BOZO. I WAS BEING CAttED CRAzy, AND I WAS BEING CALLED "OZONE
~..1AN."
\\'ELL, MY FIRST TilOUGS'f WAS THAT TO BE·· I SA\V ANOTHER ON'£--
ISAW ANOTHEH ON"F.. EARLIER TODAY THAT SAJD, .. WE LIKE THE OZO:I\12 MAN,
SOT THE TOXIC :MAN.
N
l LIKE THAT ONE. I LIKE THAT ONE.
BUT RE.-\LLY) \\'HF.N YOU THINK ABOUT .1T, TO BE NAM·ED ··ozONE MAN"
BY THE "ENVIRO!\TMf:.!{"f AL PRE$1DENT" IS REALLY AN HONOR! I DID -- 1 DID
WO.RRY, TH01JGH, 'I'HAT WHEN HE CALLED ME A C:RAZY BOZO THAT HE MIGh-r
HAVB
BE~'l
OUT IN THE SUN TOO LONG. BUT 'r'OU KNOW, BILL CLINTON --
EX:CGSE ME?
[CRO'·ND MEl\:fBERS: HE C\N'T HELP IT ... J
r KNF.'I..V WP. WBJlE GO:N"NA HA.VE F(JN TON!GHT.
•
::ir\ Y TF..~T
I'VE HEARD BILL CLINTON
-· AP..OUT THF. V./ORO CRAZY - THAT ONE DEFl~'1TION OF THE WORD
CRAZY JS l}·G1NG ·.:He S.t"tvfE TRTNG OVER AND OVER AND· OVER AGAIN AND
�PE+VPE TRANS OFC
•
.:.::•....,.,.,.-.,_I>.,...
,. . ; ~-~t.. :~ J:·.·,.: .:'!.,_
:i)·)t;:-;!'rT ;;
.~ ·r.·"t""["Y)-"!..1'""'
..._.!A .•·r.··c!lr.!:'·l~!
~;,Ff.;·-1
KI'·:EP ·.tt:C.Y iNG
rr A!..;n JT
\ ";. , 1.'
•... '!''J..•~;;.·v
·.-;.:. (~\ jN;-r
-~ 1
..
~•:'::r
~ .. C ., ·r
..... ~ J."'~
TJ ft~.F~.E J-..rAY P.E
•l•cr\'\' ~_,l,s
Ul<.E TRICKLE DOWN
. . ' 't
'r.lt:<":.tn
••. ~,.
.v.~o~ ...
•·.J.)
'l ·r· .
r: t•('t ,
,{~""'..'
,....
~ .1
.-.HA1'
'""'EFIN:!'fJON
l
u '. J ...
ECONr.~~.-f.!CS
DO
r·,~ "t·"A
... .... ~ ...... .
z·r· ·Ot:E"K
J.
·- "
1;..--..rour
THI&.."
'rV.
J..
.)'
1
~
4.¥
'·r
HALLl·'~~J"EEN
• IY'~
•
EX 0 E~·~·r
'
.,.
I'l\A
J 'l
CR A z1,
.
'......
A DIFF"ERE"I'"r'
•
.
'v. 1
--ln~"'J.
. .~ NOT SU"'E
.1'. •
PEOPLE GOiNG OUT TO TRY TO SCARE PEOPLE AT THEIR.
THAT \VOULD BE SCARY.
WE'VE·· WE'VE HAD THB TfHCKS \VITHOlJT THE '7RE.ATS, AND
~JJE'RE
--BUT, IN
f;';t'El'IT, l. \'.'A.N'TTO TELL YOUTRAT I'M REALLY GLAD THAT YOU GAVE ME
.l-, SECC~ND CUANCE TO COME HERE.
•
,.,....
IS KlND OF CR.A.Z.Y? WE
,\ ,-.J J... Iq.. .r•.
h ·:o.,,.}
.""\
~"'I L
"f"RON'!' ~)('JORS FS SA 1"1~0 .'"FOUR MORE YEARS."
A~Y
or.·
DOF.SN'T V/OR.R.
."'.hi'1~
.L~''V·
(
......~,
S~)ME
r~·v
141 oo; . 01s
NEXT'
TU:E$DrA~Y,
AND IN RETURN, WITH YOUR SUPPORT,
BJ.LL CLINTON Al'-.'D I ARE GONNA OFFER TffiS COUNTRY A
S.ECONJ) CHANGE TO RENEW THE MARCH TOWARD INCREASED OPPORTUNJTY
AND . ~. HBTIER, BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR TiiJS CCIUNTR ~-.
SE'RJ'OU:;l..Y, THE -- l, i DO WAJ\1! TO SAY SOMETHING SERIOUS ABOUT THE
\NA )'
'r.~~R
CA:·1PAIGN THIS YEAR H ..~s BEEN PLAYED OUT.
KEFP.R.RED TO E.A.RLIER WAS NOT REALLY
Jr·~··n::~'-:'"DY.!D
I~c...:...I.L Y:
11\.l"ENDED~
THE DEVICE I
I DON'T THINK, WAS
T:) HT.l~~T SOMEONE. IT WAS LI\JTENDt.D TO DlSRUPT. AND I THINK,
THAT SOME OF 11IE THINGS V/E'VE HEARD AND SEEN IN THE
CA:r!PA1GH HAVE NOT BEEN INTENDED TO HURT OUR COUNTRY. THAT HAS
JU ~T .'J.F..EN A SIDP. EFI.. EC'T THA1" THEY DIDN'T TH!N.K THROUGH. AND \VE HAVE
p,.-\.1J ' • .l_\p::_;:;C\JLT SERlES OF EVENTS DURJNG THE CAMPAIGN, WITH: THE
•
~.. ::-iD.ST'.t.?.i:~MrK5D.
·suT \VS CAN CRF..ATE A NEW TO.NE IN
AJ~RTCAN
�16:56
12·'2.):92
•
~";o[ME.:..N· o:~
PE+VPE TRANS OFC
.R DSMOCRACY: TO D1VfDE US AS A NATION INTO D!FFERE.i"'tT
\.;:H:OCPS ANL TC:
l··.iARCH
~ 008 .. 015
'f(.t\VAf'.~~;
T~:Y
'fO S1DET.f\Al:.;K THr;: COURSE OF AMERlCA INrO THE
OPPOR'fUNlTY HAS BEEN
GREATER
ALMOST HALTED
ENTl.RELY.
FOf<. QL,nE SOME
·n~·IE,
P!\OPSPERlT":t' :F03. '•NOR}(.ING
OUR COUNTI<.Y HAS STAGNATED iTS GROWING
A~·fERICANS,
SLOw"BD DO\VN AND CRIPPLED.
ADDJ110NAT.. t...l!itiONS HA VB lJE.EN CONDEMMNED TO A LIFE OF WORKING A LOT
•
HARDER FOi<
A
LOT LESS MONEY .
WELL, -fP. .•"..T 1S THE TRUTH. \¥E HAVE GOT TO CHANGE ALL THAT. AND
LET
M~ A!~S~_ii?.S
YO'tl THAT 1'-T.EXT WF..EKr THE kETREAT AND PESSIMISM OF
TODA.'( 'N.(LL BE DlSPLACED BY THE RENEWAL OF HOPE FOR TOJ.,·lOR.ROW AND
.,.\
... E
J ri
r\-m
:'lr·.c···:~,,.P~
r.t.,vJ,..,.,
.• ~..1('"-~
•. 11'~ (\f
'J
o.,.•l. ...
1"1••·""'"""II
'fO\uARD
A s-cTfER
F1''rft1Rt:;
.,..;;-.(.;
'\
J;;
_
• &..J
-·
i AY.' $1.7~:;; TH.~T T~i:ERt; MJGHT BE SOME \VHO
CAME HERE TONGHT WITH
A SUGHTFSf:.UNG OF APPREHENSION, PROVOKED BY THE RATHER TRIVIAL AND
U~OLATE EV~.NT
G:\~'HER~·:\!G,
-:,::;,:r..
l Ri.FE?.Rf;;.D TO, BUT YOU CAME, AND SO DID L
1N A RE.o\L. SENSE,
.B:--:·rnn~ ~.·A~'i.PA!GN.
• r
-1·
...L.',.. .••.. 1··· ... ,..... ~=!
.. J.·.t·... L....·.t'.;.
~~OW ~YMBOLfZES
AND TIDS
THE DEE-PER .CVLE.A..""·i1NG OF
!T SPE.i1KS IN RATHER V1VlD TERMS OF THE CHOICE
·cl:'r'1-'l·c.-:-.i".
......... '
~.:,.,
...
'r- ... R
1:"1:'.....
A.,.'~"'-'
!'T"'.. HC'T.>·E)_ ~
...
A
c't'
•rcr.w
••• tl.
..,..,E
t:> ...1''"~E"'~T
wJ;. ·l'~ A
�16:56
12:2.3:92
•
c.:.TTZ1.'ir·
.a • • .. ;....~ J "• •.'1
PE+VPE TRANS OFC
~~ ..r·,,"Y:J~ (~trr,
.....
.,., .1 '· .....
'-~
<.
. .~·r,rD
. ""!
•r•t,;c
~ r ",.,
'L-;,"P"~=""fA'f10."J
1:,/~ """""'..
J.
r)c
•· t
A
.""\.
@009:(115
BP.1.J1v.
''HTER Fu·rr·-·F.
"'
.J.l<-. ~ .. . . r\
CrJNF!<ONT A!'n::· OVERCOME OUR PROBLEMS AND GIVE OUR NATION A ~.ECOND
::JtA:•:iCE TO .MOV:: FOR\VARL> TO THE
·;.:or~T
FU1UR~
'IVE D'ESERVE IN AMERICA, IN
COU..n.;:s, ;·,\1) ALL OVER THrS COUNTRY. AND \\'E C.A.N DOlT!
P.U..
(}VFJ.~.
THIS WOR!..O: THE
U~"'TE.D
STATES OF AMERICA lS KNO\VN AS
T'Hr. PLhCE v,':t-~ERE THE HOPE. FOR HUMAi'..:Kl!~D HAS A SECOND CHANCE. HERE~
11'! THE UNITED STATES. BUT JT'S UP TO US 1'0 BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO THE
PROl\H:.E OF
.~.MERICA.
AND WREN WE HAVE AN OPPOURTUNITY TO CONFRON1
THE 'NAY VV"'ErV& LOST OUR PATH, WHEN V{B HAVE A CHANCE TO TAKE STOCK
!.o,~·lD
REGROUP AND RBNE\V OURSELVES, JT lS A PRECIO\JS OPPORTUNITY.
:-))!'.fET!.i·!E tJSE 'f:.LECT10NS TO TAKE STOCK OF WHERE WE ARE, WHO Vl.E ARE,
'J/l:f.EitE '..V'E.'RE GOrNG
A~D
HOW WE WANT TO GET THERE.
!T'S AN
OP.POP.t'TNr:-\· FOR tiS TO HOLD iJP A MIRROR Al'\1) DISCERN \\'HAT IT IS WE SEE
!N OUR (f.; N RFFI..f.CTiON. WHAT DOFS AMERICA SEE NOW IN THE MIRROR Ti·HS
r1'...5CTKn·r
evr;:.
:~. ?P.OV~D!NG
TJS1 CAN .Vv"E DO BETTER'! DO \VE \VANT MORE FOR
CB!~.D~!SN AND 1vlORE FOR OUR
1""\.VENTY·:~·ffNf.::
1l•·".
r''-::tr-.\''D·
,./ ,.
.
ARE WE SATISFIED 'hTiH A
?ERCf:.NT DRO.POD1: RATE IN AMERICA?
N0 1J
j,
•
.AR.F. '1\'l: t-;A T!SJ7·t.ED \VIT.H THB
•
Fli'TPRE?
/.EAD:tRSHF' 1"'J CONFRONT !1"'?
R.t\.GlNG EPIDEMIC OF A!DS Ai'fD NO
ARE \Vf:, SATISl=IEO \VITH TWO Mli!LON
�16:5i
..
i~.E.~ L CO:"n'":
PE+VPE TRANS OFC
~0l(l:(lt5
n·1, iE~.J· t t>l'l'HE 'Jv'HJTE HOUSE TO CONFROI-f'f THE ENVI ROl':i'.fSNTA.l..
CP.lSIS"r AF~~:. \\'E SJ: .. Tl~FJED WITH TE~ MlLLrON AMERICANS UNF:.MPLOYEJ) \.':1T.H
TENS OF
.t:~.~r.. U():~S
SATJFSY!l"~D
MOR.S WORKlNG HARDER FOR MORE MONEY?
ARE WE
\VJTci THE DROP FROM BElNG NUMBER ONE IN WAGES TO BE!NG
!'fC:M.T3E[< TE!Il\TEEN 3N
·~V,\GES?
ARE. \VE SATISF1ED WITH WHAT. ·"vE SEE:>
WE CAN--
(CROWD: NO!]
'NE C 1\N DO B.STTER. :BUT
n· JS A. CHOICE BET'.:\'EE.."'t THE FEAR OF EVEN
TRYlNG '1"0 D'..) :3ETI'ER AND THE HOPE THAT IF WE GO ABOUT IT IN THE RlGIIT
•
Vl A r, lf \VE ·r .\KE STOCK O:F \VRO WE ARE AND THEN WORK TOGETHER TO GET
\VHERS WE W,\J'-rf TO J?.E, WE 00 HAVE THE OPPORTI!NIT'Y AS WE RAVE ALWAYS.
HAD THF. 0Pf'()RTDN1TY L'l THE UNITED STATES TO MOVE FORWARD. TiiAT IS
REA!.I.Y V..1:3'AT Ti-DS ELECTION JS ALL A.SOUT.
~MI)NL~ ~ 0~ (..OJ~
~~- .fiT- Go\..1,..•.).} ~ _.
W::icr: !.:~ !-"T. COLLINS, PEOPLE STARTED REACHING INTO THEm. HEARTS
.Al~D !~~EAC!·H:"JO
JOJNED
VCK.E~~
~ l.l\c£" $le'
/Ill !.L ~
OUT TO THEIR NEIGHBORS. AND YOU HAVEjQlNED HANDS AND
TO UEL.PIEH A CLEAR MESSAGE AROUT YOUR
YOUR COM?·ilTM.ENT TO EACH OTriER.
/
-
COOI\·i~0~1TY
AND
YOU HAVE A SPECIAL GlfT JN THIS
co="n.,.~UNiTY. TRE.ASURSIT. HONO.RIT. 'l'EACH 11'TO YOUR C:!-ULDREN SO THEY
CAN
~·ASS
r:
ON T() THEIR CHILDREN.
REME.MBE.R ALWAYS THAT .IT IS A
$(JUf{CF. OF !i. ri?..ENGTH, TOLERANCE, T.JN"'DE.RSTA:N'UING, COMPASS TON AND HOPE.
E\."Eii. ~tf~·HNG THAT 'N'E SHOULD SEE IN OURSELVES iN THIS LARGER
•
C(l:~i:•.!U!-.:iT::'
\.\'E C.'\ t.l.. AM}i.RJCA. IF ONLY WE COTJLD SEE THP.T IN OVRSELVF.S
�."2J:92
•
16:5i
PE+vPE TRANS OFC
1@011.'015
AS A HAT!ON.
·..,;,T. ',l,.'(JN'T 1F V-/E"RE STJLI.. UP AGAINST MORE OF THE SAME, TiRED OLD
.,,...
~ .....
.,..c. ~''1-tJ
".#•.)L.. ...a.'..
...•.u.:,J
·' .1:~
U~:
,.l.. ..r..~4.t:
,~
•· ~/E
~.'""\1
,.
Cii'·
) , ..1
l.~E ~ ~~o.:
"'Pl.RJTED
CY'T
... r n'1''1·\~·o
A""'
1...,I;..
~
j".,.'-·
·'""'
~,. 6
1 o·vr'!"'\J"rG
.; ...
!"f
l':& .. r~,'\C-S
A>-iD EOL!.:~ING GS BACK WS WoN·T
J...,o
u: VIE
DON'T F!~"D THE COT.1P...AGE TO
CHANGE, lF '-VE D(.lN'T :'-'.LLOY'..' OURSELVES TO HOPE AGAIN, IF \VE DON"T HAVE
.FAITH IN OUR
FOr~
O"'l/~·.;
DREAMS AS AMERiCANS.
SILL CUNTON Atffi 'ME, T;HAT'S WHAT THIS ELECfiON !S AI..L ABOUT .
.R'SS'iORI~G
HO~E.
REN:E.WlNG FAITH, Fil',"DING THE COURAGE TO CHANGE. AND
Cl!ART.ING A NE\-V COURSE TOWARD A BRIGHTER FUTURE. CAN WE ·BFUNG TO
OlJR NATION THE SAME S.ENSE OP
COLLrNS?
WU~L
COI'vi.MU~'lTY
THAT .EXJSTS HERE 1N FORT
YOU HET..P US TO RESTORE THAT HOPE TN AMERICA:'
'SILL ~t..I.!'-!!ON .1\.ND 1 CANNOT DO IT ALONE.
THAT'S W"'rlY WE ARE
RE•\C!UN'G or.JT 10 MEN AND"WOMEN ALL OVER THIS COUNTRY.
ABO~.JT POUT.iCS.
IT'S NOT
l1"S NOT ABOUT PAR11SAN SHTP. IT'S NOT ABOUT POWER OR
1:-ER.SO.!'!AL /"L.\.fBiTIO~.
IT J'SN'T ABOUT CHOOSING ONE PARTY OR ANOTHER.
!'!"~:
ABOOT OUR FUTURE. l'T'S ABOUT YOUR FliTURE. IT'S ABOUT THE QUALiTY
(IF
YOUH LIVES TODAY AND YOUR DREAMS FOR YOUR CHJLDREN IN THE
TOMORRO'.VS THAT' V.;ll.L COME.
\VE'VE. HAD ENOUGH O.F A GOVER~''MEI'I"T THAT FAlLS THE PEOPLE IT IS
•
SH?PC·~·:J~D
TO SERVE; '!HAT TELLS US\\-"£ ARE NOT CAPABLE OF CHOOSING OUR
DP..EA:·.~S.
··~.-:;r::·vs
A
HAD ENOUGH OF PAYING MORE AND GETTING LESS, OF AN
or-.H'i1.S T'R_A.TJON THAT S.E.EMS DJ::AF TO EV.E.RYONE EXCEPT THE VERY RICH
AND VER'r'
.~::.;:uVlU?.:GJ~J.;.
A:f'.:'"D VER'x' POWERFUL. lT'S TIM.E FOR A CHANG:S; r.T'S
�•
-·,·r
n::· ,_
.·· .,
!.., ..:.,:.
.cl).•,
r._·.·.···
~
... , .,~• U
,.,l
.,. ~'I>•. ~l.,
·or•T>c ·n..·r:··
-·'1' l'I'J ' -E TO CH" ,. ...... E
ANJ) IF 'VE
A<:"· A. N!\.~,-rzo tJ
,:. .IJY;
.1..:-l:;. c.• \,J~.:.l'.ra\.;
,
.• :·\l'i£1 ~. n.~
~ "'n•~
REACH E~TCi 0(..fR HE.-\Rl$ ANJ) I<.F.ACH OUT TO ONE ANOTHER ACROSS THE
:D.f\.''l:)!J)~$
t'l-IAT NO.,f..l SEPARATE US, THEN WE ".,\''!LL CHANGE.
.A..,"..!.S.~...iC..!t
WILL ONCE
1\G.'\l~
BE A NATION OF BOLD DREAl'.iS AND GREAT
H(;}'P. -· !-1 :.,rhT10N COM2v.UTIED TO ALL OF OUR PHOPLE, NOT JUST THE
.PO'.\''fRFlTL --A NATION WORKING TOWARD A FUTURE THAT HONORS lTS PAST,
LEA!U\"S FROM lTS PRESENT, AND MOVES FOR'iV ARD CONFIDP.NTLY WITH THE
\.'I.S!ON OF 1:--:IE WORLD VIE WANT TO SEE.
r~UT
VIE .MUST tii':uERTA.KE AS A NATION, TOGe"THER, THE TASK OF
HF.ALI.:'!G OUR COUNTRY:.... HEALING THE
LiFTiNG UP THE BEST IN
DIVlSlO~S TH.~T
NOW SEPARATE USs
AMeRIC.~.
'\VE Ill'. \I"E BEEN KNOCKED OFF COURSE. OUR DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN
DiSR~]?'I'ED.
r:-.! ORDER
TO RESTORE THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA IN ALL OF OUR
COM . . .11_1F!TlE.~, \.VE MUST HAVE LEADERSHIP CAPABLE OF RISING TO THAT
CHALL2NGE.
\fr\C'i.AV HAVHL WHO WAS TAKEN FROM TBE DARKEST PRISONS OF
CZI7CHOSLOVAK!.A UNDER THE COM}fUNlST RULE, SO RECENTLY LIFTED FROZI-1
TJ-!~.T :"~.\TlONl ;~1'-t'"D
MADE ITS PRESIDENT.
Ai\I'D HE SAID IN HTS ELOQUENT
'lrVP..iTlNGS PRO.M HiS PRISON CELL, THAT LSADE11S CALL FORTH FROM THE
PEOf'L.E
THRY
UN.\\\':;~~;:EN!2D.
~\!'m ~:~E$1:..-\l~.
•
FO.RTH.
LEAD,
POTENTIALS
THAT
MAY
OTHER\VISE
REMAIN
ANf> !i; LEADERS CALL FORTH DIVISION AND HATRED. DEr---"'AL.
THeiN THOSE QlJt\.L!"S1ES
.U{;') POTl?.r-.nv~r..s
WILL BE BROUGHT
�PE+YPE TRANS OFC
•
r.n CONTRAST,
.if ()tJR LEADE."'.S CALL FOR HOPE, TOGJ:."'THER.N'ESS,
1 u· ..;:.( ·-l-'(IO'rH Tll.lrro QT~R LAND JN·ro OliR HE'·\l_)"C"S IN~"'O
v r.l'"
.l .t.r.:Pl.'n-c:. cn(1
..L ......
.. \.,;\,,.1..,.
..
..
V
,
. -.
-"· '.l .. .,
1
7~
'T ·-f"u'")
·'-'•'L ..f\...
OU~~
Ia! Ot.'J:OI5
~
L~
~..,
.U.'"f
.1
NAT!ON.
OUR
CA?vi?AiG~·J
EAS CA!J.ED FOR CHANGE. BUT
TH$ SAKE OF CHAN(1.2.
OF Tf-!E. PA.ST
DECAr.~E.
\.\r.!·.~
rr
IS NOT CHANGE FOR
C/,Ll .. FOR CHANGE FROM TH8 OBVIOUS FAILlJRES
CHANGE FROM A COUNTRY lN ECONOMIC TROUBLE.
CHAI.'IGE F.ROM INCRE.L\.SINGLY BITTER DIVlSlONS BETWEEN CLASSES
RACF.S: CHANGE FROM. A SCHOOL SYSTEM THAT IS UNABLE TO
PR.EPAP~
A~"D
OUR
CHlLDREN FOR THE CHALLENGES OF A SVIIFTLY ADVANCING SOCI.ETY Al\TD
GL(.>BP.L. C~VIClZAT.iON, THE CHANGE \VE OFFER IS ALSO A RETURN-- A RETITRN
TO THE FGUNDING PRiNCiPLES FO AMERICA, WIDCH AB.RAHAM LINCOLN
DF:.SCF-:JBED \VflEN HE
~fAKE
SA~D
THAT THE O,BJE.CT OF OUR NA110NAL UFE IS TO
STJRE 1'"'HAT NO PERSON JS BOUND TO A FIXED POSITION IN UFE, THAT
EVERY PERSON SHOULD HAVE A. CHANCE TO ADVANCE THEMSELVES AND
LF.A.VF. 13EH:.ND EVEN
\~'E c.~.N
GRE.'-~ TER !'OSSIBILlT~~S
FOR THElR CHILDREN.
DO THAT AS A !'JA.TlON. WE HAVE THAT CAPACITY. BUT WE
MUST OVERCO!'.H:! THE OBSTACLF.:S THAT STAND lN OUR PATH.
Bf:".FOR~
HE .on:.n~ FRANKLIN ROOSE'-'ELT WROT.E THAT THE ONLY LIMIT TO OUR
REAUZA T10N OF
Tr~J:1\i,
•
THE. DAY
TOr.~tOR..i<OW
WILL BE OUR DOUBTS O.F TODAY. HE WAS RtGHT
AND HIS 'WOl<DS REMAIN LQUAJ...T.:i TRUE TODAY. NEAR 'fHE END OF
T:-1\S Cl.Mf'i\f(!N, H.A V!NG
O:)UNT.~Y.
:C:
TRAV.EL~D
THROUGH EVERY SECTION OF THIS
HA \.i £COME TO H.a. V£ ~·HE GREATI!ST CONFIDENCE lN OUR NATION,
�t'.t::+ \· t'E TRANS OFC
•
Yr •\ 1 ~~~
U.~·.
_:-;.:
\\'E .!:.P..E. J·, LL .RE."-£:1 Y TO MEET CHJR .RF..SPONSJS!LITrES, IF WE MEASURE
l'KL' ON"L.Y iN
lf'
C.~ LL)
~.7/!"HI
~(Il-l: 015
\V~3
T.H~ P~IBLiC
SENSE, B'UT AS PRJVATE CITIZENS TO
f:ECOf?.NfZE 11{,.\1' F.P.EE..DOM IS NOT
LICENSED~
rriE
AND THAT UBERTY
FOR CERTAIN Qll ALITIE.S OF SELF~REST~AH'n~ AND CHARACTER THAT GO
SS ~ F;-GOV GPJ·.:MEN1', 'lHEN ViE CAN RETURN THIS NATION TO THE SERVICE
OF :\LL OUR .PEOPt:e~ A,l\;D WE C..A.N BUiLD A FUTURE FOR FRESDO~f, WHOSE.
'Gf<lGHT PReSPECTS VfiLL J..1AKE US ALL PROUD TO HAVE PLAYED A PART IN
CRF tt'f!~-s i\ LEGACY FOR FDU'f.URE GENER4\TlONS, EQUAL TO THAT WHICH We
I<.ECE;VED FRGM OUR ANCfSTORS. OUR CAMPAIGN OFFERS THAT C.P..ANCE TO
\J,iORK WITH US, TO RF..NEW OUR .MAGNIFJCE..I\7 COtJNTRY, AND TO PROVE
\VESAWlN A DISTA.a"~TI..AND, 1NTH£NATIONOFCIDNA, WH.6•.THAPPENED
\=\'I-£1:!..; ':,"()Ui-!G f-'!.~.(1!-'.LE DECIDED TO REACH OUT FOR THE PROMISE OF A:tvfERlCA.
TO T'.RY I'\.J SECUR.E FREEDOM IN THEIR NATlON, THEY BUILT A STATIJE OF
LlBERT':i. AND THF..N, IN AN E)G.R:\ORDl!'~ARY MOMENT, ONB YOUNG PERSON
HX!ND -l HE COUKAGE TO STAND IN FRON'T OF A R.O\V OF TEN TANKS. WE MUST
!·,;ry,.v f.I!-[D
·;-rn~
· ":r> ·-·r··;··
.:> .. t:.~.l-·,
rl.:'1! .
:~~FAi~~
•
COtlR.<\GE TO STAND IN FRO?\'! OF TANKS MADE NOT OF IRON
~·:..r:,..
."v
J
Tl""'
·,.1
''I'A'~r
oJ
.
•'~'-'
1
I'~
xrr
l'~ ·~RC
..
l;.,.t
Ql-:·
1 "r"Hc
.1.
r.:... ''''Nl'"'1SJI..r
..... .< L C
l"'l, THE oc···PAIR
· .......,)
~, "r"HE
:
Tf1 ~ tsJ V!SJO!'!. THE DE.i''JP.L TH:A.T NO'N PREVENfS US FROM CONTINlHNG
�~015.'1)15
....
.. ·
•
· CC'l"!V.GF. THEN,
~.VB
MUST T.:tLK.
~.vrrH
O!'JE ANOTHER ABOUT HOVl WE CAN
H1WTiTRE TH.l·.·r COUHAGE, A~D COi\:f!',ilT!'.!.EN"T TO FREEDOM AND THB FUTURE
THAT v,;t; KNC.!\1;;· T.HJ..•::. NATION CAN H..\ \'E IN ALL THE
:.·10HAT.Iv!.~.
/·.MI;RiC;,\..
YO~; ~v.'J.SH
TO
(jANC.Hl ONCE SAlD YOU MtJST HECOME THE CHANGE
THB Ct!ANGt-: 'i''OlJ \\'ANT TO SEE Il': FORT COLLINS AND IN THE
WA?·."T TO
T~l!J'-:1<
OF
T'O SEE lN THE WORLD. BY COMING HERE THIS 'f:.VE!";1NG, YCHJ ARE
B.SCO~·AlN(i
~
CO~-fMlJ!'.iTlES
J~;K
YOU TN THE REJI.·!AlNlNG THREE DAYS DEFORE TUESDAY
.A.SOIJT 1 HE OLT"fCOME OF THE CHOICE THAT WILL BE MADE. \"v"HAT
\\jLL OUR N.~TiON'S CHOICE BE? \\"HAT WILL COLORADO'S CHOICE BE? IT IS A
•
CH<'.)!CE £;ETVIl:.-:.zsN THE .fUTURE AND THE PAST, BETVv'EEN CHANGE Al\1) THE
STi~.TUS
QUC:: RET\VE.EN HOPE AND FEAR.
I HOPE THAT YOU WJ.LL JO!N ':VITH BTLL CUNTON .1\.J'\ID ME IN AN EFFORT
TO ~Er~cru:.'-~0R J'.'i\TION AND MAKe lT A NATf.ON OF HOi')EAND FROGRESS A..'ri.JD
THA~iK
YGU VBRY .M\JCH. TI!Al't"X YOl!, FORT COLLlNS! THANK YOU!
(\".'!LD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
•
�.. :. ·:.
·
. ...
.
,, .
. ~~: . ..
•
•Change Is On the Way•
Pl'esidentia/ Acceptance Speech
President-Elect Bill C6nton
Old State House
Little Rock, AR
November 3, 1992
·My fellow Americans on this day, with high hopes and brave hearts and
massive numbers, the American people have voted to make a new beginning.
•
This election is a clarion call for our country to face the challenges of the end
of the Cold War and beginning of the next century, to restore growth· to our country
and opportunity to our people, to empo"¥er our own people so that they can take
more responsibility for their own lives, to face problems too long ignored, from AIDS
to the environment, to the conversion of our economy from a defense to a domestic
economic giant.
And perhaps most important of all, to bring our people together as never before
so that our diversity can be a source of strength in a world that is ever smaller, where
everyone counts and everyone is a part of America's family.
'
I want to begin this night by thanking my family: my wife, without whom I
would not be here tonight and who I believe will be one of the greatest first ladies in
the history of this republic.
And I also want to say a special word of thanks to our daughter for putting up
with our absence, for supporting our effort, for being brave in the face of adversity,
and for reminding us every day about what this election is really all about.
I want to thank my mother, my brother, my stepfather, my mother-in-law and
father-in-law, my brothers-in-law, and my sister-in-law, who carried this campaign
across this country and stuck up for me when others were trying to put it down. I
love them and I thank them.
•
*
I want to thank the people of this wonderful small state. nme after time, when
this campaign was about to be counted out, the Arkansas travelers exploded out of
this state around the country to tell people the truth about what we had done here
National Campaign Headauarters • PO. Box 615 • Little Rock. Arkansas 72203 • Telephone 15011 372·1992 • FAX (501) 372·2292
Paia ,.,, 0y tna Clin!oniGora "92 Cclrmllnae
P"ntea on Recvc1eo Pacer
...
12aE!iiJP•
�•
together, how we had pulled together, what we believed in and what we could do as
a nation.
I have the best staff and cabinet you can imagine, and they kept this state
together. And even when we weren't here, we continued to lead the country in job
growth, in keeping taxes and spending down, and in pulling the people of Arkansas
together to show what we could do if the nation pulled together and moved forward,
too.
I want to thank the people who were in that infamous group, the FOBs, the
Friends of Bili and the Friends of Hillary. No person who ever sought this office was
more aided by the friends of a lifetime, and I will never forget you.
I want to thank the people in the New Democratic Party, headed by our.
chairman Ron Brown, the new members of Congress, the new .blood, the new
direction that we are giving.
And finally I want to thank the members of my brilliant, aggressive,
unconventional but always winning campaign staff. They were '!_nbelievable. And
they have earned this.
•
I want to say, if I might, a special word of thanks to_ two people who lost
their lives in the course of this campaign without whom we might not be here tonight,
our friends Paul Tully and Vic Razor, our prayers are with them. They're looking down
on us tonight and they're awful happy.
Not very long ago I received a telephone call from President Bush. It was
a generous and forthcoming telephone call, of real congratulations and an offer to
work with me in keeping our democracy running in an effective and important
transition. I want all of you to join with me tonight in expressing our gratitude to
President Bush for his lifetime of public service, for the effort he made from the time
he was a young soldier in World War II, to helping to bring about an end to the Cold
War, to our victory in the Gulf War, to the grace with which he conceded the results
of this election tonight in the finest American tradition. Let's give Mr. Bush
and his family a hand.
I heard tonight Mr. Perot's remarks, and his offer to work with us. I say
to you, of all the things that he said, I think perhaps the most important that we
understand here in the heartland of Arkansas is the need to reform the political
system, to reduce the influence of special interests and give more influence back to
the kind of people that are in this crowd tonight by the tens of thousands. And I will
work with him to do that.
•
And, finally, let me say how profoundly indebted I am tonight--beyond the
2
.-
··1
�... ·
~-~·
folks at home, l!eyond the wonderful people that worked in this administration, the
lieutenant governor and others, to keep our government going, beyond all the others
I have to say a special word of thanks to my magnificent running mate, Senator AI
Gore and his family.
I wa~t to tell you that AI and Tipper, Hillary and /, have become friends~
I admire them for what they stand for; they're enjoyable to be with, they believe in
our country. AI Gore is a man of almost unparalleled combination of intelligence,
commitment, compassion and concern to the people of this country, to our obligations
to preserve .f!ur environment, to our duty to promote freedom and peace in the world.
And together we're going to do our best to give you a new partnership for a new
America.
I want to thank A/'s children, his brother-in-Jaw, and his wonderful parents•.
They made about as many votes in some states as we did. I think we carried every
state that Senator and Mrs. Gore campaigned in. Their percentage was the best of
all.
•
I want to say that we have established a partnership in this campaign that
we will continue into this new administration. For if we have learned anything in the
world today, it is that we can accomplish more by teamwork, by working together,
by bringing out the best in all the people that we seek--and we will seek the best and
most able and most committed people throughout this country to be a part of our
team.
We will ask the Democrats who believe in our cause to come forward, but we
will look, too, among the ranks of independents and Republicans who are willing to
roll up their sleeves, be a part of a new partnership, and get on with the business of
dealing with this nation's problems.
I remind you again tonight, my fellow Americans, that this victory was more
than a victory of party, it was a victory for the people who work hard and play by the
rules, a victory for the people who feel/eft out and left behind and want to do better,
a victory for the people who are ready to compete and win in the global economy but
who need a government that offers a hand up not a hand-out.
That is what we offer, and that is what tomorrow we will begin to work to
provide to all of you.
Today, the steelworker and the stenographer, the teacher and the nurse, had
as much power in the mystery of our democracy as the president, the billionaire, and
the governor. You all spoke with equal voices for change.
And tomorrow we will try to give you that•
•
3
�•
You can trust us to wake up every day remembering the people we saw in the
bus trips, the people we saw in the town meetings, the people we touched at the
rallies, the people who had never voted before, the people who hadn't voted in 20
years, the people who'd never voted for a Democrat, the people who had given up
hope, all of them together saying we want our future back. And I intend to help give
it to you.
I say to all of those who voted for us, this was a remarkable coalition for
change. Many of you had to put aside this or that personal ambition to be a part of
a broad, deep commitment to change this country. I ask you to keep that commitment
as we move from election to governing. We need more than ever for those of you
who said let's put. the public interest over personal interest to keep it right there for
four years so we can turn this country around.
I say to all those who voted for Mr. Bush or Mr. Perot, thos~ who voted
for the president, those who voted for Ross Perot, I know you love your country, too.
I ask you to listen to the voice of your leaders; I ask you to join with us in creating a
re-United States, a united country, with a new sense of patriotism to face the
challenges of this new time. We need your help, too, and we will do our best to
deserve it.
•
When we seek to offer young people the opportunity to borrow the money they
need to go to college and the challenge to pay it back through national service, when
we challenge the insurance companies, the drug companies, the providers and the
consumers, the government to give us a new health care system, when we offer
those on welfare new opportunity in the challenge to move to work, when we ask
companies to take the incentives we offer to put American people to work and export
American products not American jobs--all of this is a part of a new patriotism to lift
our people up and enable all of us to live up to the fullest of our potential.
I accept tonight the responsibility that you have given me to be the leader of
this, the greatest country in human history.
I accept it with a full heart and a joyous spirit, but I ask you to be Americans
again, too, to be interested not just in getting but in giving, not just in placing blame
but now in assuming responsibility, not just in looking out for yourselves but in
looking out for others, too. In this very place, one year and one month ago today, I
said we need more than new laws, new promises or new programs. We need a new
spirit of community, a sense that we're all in this together.
•
If we have no sense of community, the American dream- will continue to wither.
Our destiny is bound up with the destiny of every American. We're all in this
together, and we will rise or fall together. That has been my message to the
American people for the past thirteen months and it will be my message for the next
4
...
'
�,,,
•
.... - .
.. f").·
.
~~-·.
~•
_...
..
_-_·.'.:;_/ :,·: ~:.;: .
..
. :
·--
.HiW~":~~··. .. · · :'""'"; ·3'·' :. ·
·t"~:c·;.:·;-_:·.- -,- .- _.'-.-_:_:·_.·-;·~-.c:
. ...... ,.;.
, :. · • ,
..., • ••
·~'"~~!~~S.~·~
.
Togethei we can. do !f~.-·: Together we can make· .the- i:ountry that we love
everything it was iniiant io be: I still beDeve in a place caJitid Hope. God
bless America. - thank
all.' . .
.
.-. -
you
.,.···
::-.-~·
···:..
..,..... ,'......·_....
·.
._:..;;.:.·
'
·· .. ·.~:~-; .·.
..
-·
•.'
•
--~·
.. "-- .
•
5
...
�American Foreign Policy and the Democratic Ideal
Remarks by Governor Bill Clinton
Pabst Theatre
Milwaukee, WI
October 1, 1992
Thank you very, very much. Thank you very much. I want to thank Carol
Bauman and the Institute of World Affairs for hosting us here. I want to say how
delighted I am to be in this magnificent theater and this wonderful city. I want to say
a special word of thanks to the mayor of Milwaukee, John Norquist for this
outstanding work to bring together representatives of all racial and ethnic groups, and
to promote the preservation of the cultures of this great American city.
I also want to say a special word of homage to George Kennan, a native of this
city, for the work that he did, and has done, over the entire 20th century to support
freedom and democracy.
And finally, I would just like to thank all of you who have come here. I'm not
exactly sure what the number is, but I am sure there are representatives of at least
35 different racial and ethnic groups in this audience today, representing not only the
future of democracy in America, but the future of democracy in the world.
I want to talk today about an idea that is at the heart of this campaign, and at
the center of my vision for our country and the world, an idea that generations of
people around the world have fought and died for, and lived by -- an American idea
called democracy.
I know we may have more immediate problems on our minds. But even at a
time when America's needs here at home are crying for attention, we cannot forget
that the person we elect to lead America will also be the protector of our interests~
and the champions of our values around the world.
Democracy has always been our nation's perfecting impulse. It transformed us
from a nation of slavery to a land of civil rights; from a land of male suffrage to a land
of universal suffrage. And now it is transforming the entire world.
National Campaign Headquarters • P.O. Box 615 • Little Rock, Arkansas 72203 • Telephone (501) 372·1992 • FAX (501) 372·2292
Paid lor by the Clinton/Gore '92 Committee
/
�•
Many of you here in this audience have taken part in this democratic revolution.
Your contributions to the nation have been matched by your devotion to the cause of
freedom abroad. Here at home you have built schools, research institutions, and
libraries that have preserved your cultures, your values, and your faith.
You have raised your children to be proud of their heritage. As the freedom
movements in your homelands have gained strength, you have marched and
organized. And as the voice of John Paul II gave that movement inspiration, so you
gave your moral and your financial support to Solidarnosc in Poland. You helped keep
RUKH alive in Ukraine, Sajudis in Lithuania, and the pro-democracy movement in
China, as the freedom-loving people in each of those nations rose up to challenge
communist orthodoxy.
You stood behind those in this hemisphere and in Africa who fought to gain and
preserve their freedom. You have been stalwart in your support for our democratic
ally, Israel.
Your passionate commitment to democracy has helped carry the torch of
freedom both here and abroad.
•
Many factors contributed to the downfall of the Soviet empire. But the decisive
blow was clearly delivered by the peoples imprisoned within it.
Some Americans, especially within this election season, are tempted to
overstate their role in ending the Cold War. But still it would be wrong, and
dangerous, for Americans to underestimate the part that our country did play in the
victory that was won. It would be wrong, because there is still great work to be
done.
The Cold War is won, but democracy's victory is far from assured. It could be
dangerous, for the world is still full of perils and of nations that could easily drift
toward violence.
If this work is left half-finished, then we, our children, and multitudes abroad
who now stand at the threshold of a new life, will suffer a crushing disappointment,
and live in a more dangerous world.
,.
One of the reasons that I'm running for president is that I believe Americans
must help see that this work continues. We cannot turn away now and rest on our
laurels. Our national interests oblige us to join in building a just, enduring and
ever-more democratic peace in the world.
i
2
�This is not the first time that our nation, victorious in a foreign struggle, has
faced such challenges. In the aftermath of Wor.ld War I, Woodrow Wilson argued that
we had to make the world a safer place, and that it should be made more democratic.
But the isolationists prevailed. And it took the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt,
and the sacrifices of the American people in the Second World War to protect the
world's democracies from the aggression that followed from our isolationism after
World War I.
After World War II, it fell to Harry Truman to shape a postwar world. We led
in the creation of the United Nations, and aid to Greece and Turkey; in the Marshall
Plan, and the policy of containment. And this time America joined behind a
pro-democracy foreign policy.
Throughout the Cold War our nation's leaders carried on this tradition of
supporting democracy around the world. From the gates of the Berlin Wall, John
Kennedy reaffirmed America's commitment to liberty around the world. Senator
Henry Jackson gave strength and hope to those seeking to escape tyranny behind the
Iron Curtain. President Jimmy Carter challenged dictators of the left and the right
when finally he put human rights on America's. and the world's agenda.
But to be fair, Republicans also played a very important part in sustaining a
bipartisan pro-democracy policy. From Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who was such
a model of putting country ahead of party, that tradition spanned the decades after
World War II, from President Eisenhower, who sustained the NATO alliance through
some of the darkest days of the Cold War, to President Reagan who spoke out against
communist aggression.
A pro-democracy foreign policy is neither liberal nor conservative; neither
Democrat nor Republican; it is a deep American tradition.
And this is so for good reason. For no foreign policy can long succeed if it does
not reflect the enduring values of the American people. We do not stand behind the
cause of democracy simply because of the goodness of our hearts. The fact is,
democracy abroad also protects our own concrete economic and security interests
here at home.
Democratic countries do not go to war with one another. They don't sponsor
terrorism~ or threaten one another with weapor:ts of mass destruction.
•
Precisely because they are more likely to respect civil liberties, property rights,
and the rule of law within their own borders, democracies provide the best
foundations on which to build international order. Democracies make more reliable
partners in diplomacy and trade, and in protecting the global environment, something
3
3
�•
we must do more of in the years ahead.
It is no accident that in those countries where the environment has been most
devastated, human suffering is the most severe; where there is freedom of expression
and economic pursuit, there is also determination to use natural resources more
wisely.
Our task then is to stand up for democracy as it remakes the world. That
challenge will have its costs and its burdens. But it need not divert us from the
pressing need for economic, educational and social reconstruction here at home.
Indeed, I have argued repeatedly from the beginning of this campaign that
America cannot be strong abroad unless we rebuild our strength here at home.
As Admiral William Crowe, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under
Presidents Reagan and Bush, said recently, in endorsing my candidacy, the world
needs a strong America, but American strength must begin here at home, facing our
problems here at home, making progress on those problems here at home.
But we cannot choose between international engagement and domestic
reconstruction. They are two sides of the same coin. Our economy is increasingly
tied to the global economy. Our access to energy supplies, export markets, new
scientific developments, and even our ability to create a healthier planet, all of these
things require our active engagement in the world.
And there are still other reasons why we cannot retreat to a fortress America.
The collapse of Soviet communism has not onlY. brought new democratic forces onto
the world stage, it has also unleashed some darker undercurrents: civil war, ethnic
hatred, intolerance, and the spread of dangerous military technologies.
There is the risk that the pendulum could swing back against democracy, freedom and
the hope for peace in many places in this world.
In the face of these opportunities and these dangers, we must have a President
who can conduct both a domestic policy and a foreign policy.
Franklin Roosevelt fought the great depression, when 25 percent of our people
were out of work, and in places like my home state, one-half the people were in
abject poverty. But he fought the great depression and the rise of fascism at the
same time.
Harry Truman carried out the fair deal at home, the Gl bill, a new housing
program, and economic reconstruction, and at the same time moved to contain
communist aggression in Eastern Europe and Korea.
4
�They would have laughed, these presidents, at the idea of conducting foreign
affairs in the first term, and then switching to domestic affairs in the second.
In saying this, I do not in any way belittle President Bush's accomplishments
abroad, from putting together the international coalition and war effort against Iraq,
after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, to his success in getting the Middle East peace
talks moving. Indeed, I have supported those efforts.
But no American foreign policy can succeed if it neglects our domestic needs.
And no American foreign policy can succeed if it slights our commitment to
democracy.
The president often takes a lot of credit for communism's downfall, but fails to
recognize that the global democratic revolution actually gave freedom its birth. He
simply does not seem at home in the mainstream pro-democracy tradition of American
foreign policy. He shows little regard for the idea that we must have a principled and
coherent American purpose in international affairs--something he calls "the vision
thing."
Instead, President Bush seems too often to prefer a foreign policy that
embraces stability at the expense of freedom; a foreign policy built more on personal
relationships with foreign leaders than on consideration of how those leaders acquired
and maintained their power.
It is almost as if this administration were nostalgic for a world of times past,
when foreign policy was the exclusive preserve of a few aristocrats.
This approach to foreign policy is sometimes described as "power politics," to
distinguish it from what some contend is sentimentalism and idealism of a
pro-democracy foreign policy.
But in a world where freedom, not tyranny, is on the march, the cynical
calculus of pure power politics simply does not compute. It is ill-suited to a new era
in which ideas and information are broadcast around the globe before ambassadors
can read their cables.
Simple reliance on old balance-of-power strategies cannot bring the same
practical success as a foreign policy that draws more generously from American
democratic experience and ideals, and lights fires in the hearts of millions of freedomloving people around the world.
,.
Let there be no mistake, this world is still a dangerous place. Military power
still matters. And I am committed to maintaining a strong and ready defense. I will
use that strength where necessary to defend our vital interests. But power must be
5
�-
accompanied by clear purpose.
Mr. Bush's ambivalence about supporting democracy, his eagerness to defend
potentates and dictators, has shown itself time and again. It has been a disservice
not only to our democratic values, but also to our national interest. For in the long
run, I believe that Mr. Bush's neglect of our democratic ideals abroad could do as
much harm as our neglect of our economic needs at home.
Let us look at the record.
administration's foreign policy.
It reflects an unmistakable pattern in the Bush
Fearing attacks by isolationists in his own party, President Bush was reluctant
to offer Boris Yeltsin, Russia's freely-elected president, a helping hand. It took a
chorus of complaints, culminating with the prodding of another Republican, Richard
Nixon, to move him into action on the Russian aid package.
•
;,;~;.~
·· ..
Just weeks before the attempted coup in Moscow, President Bush travelled to
Ukraine. There he lectured a people subjected to genocidal starvation in the Stalin
era, warning that their aspirations for independence constituted, and I quote, a
suicidal nationalism. A few months later the people of Ukraine voted by a huge margin
for the immediate and total dissolution of the Soviet Union .
For over 40 years, the United States refused to recognize Soviet claims to the
Baltic nations--Li~huania, Latvia, and Estonia. But when at long last, the moment of
Baltic independence came, President Bush suddenly became a reluctant bridegroom.
The United States was 37th among the world's nations to extend diplomatic
recognition to these countries. We should have been first.
A year ago last June, Mr. Bush sent his secretary of state to Belgrade, where
in the name of stability, he urged the members of the dying Yugoslav federation to
resist dissolution. This would have required· the peoples of Bosnia, Croatia and
Slovenia, to knuckle under to Europe's last communist strongman.
When, instead, these new republics asserted their independence, the
emboldened Milosevic regime launched the bloodiest war in Europe in over 40 years.
When I argued that the United States, in cooperation with international
community efforts, should be prepared to use military force to help the U.N. relief
effort in Bosnia, Mr. Bush's spokesman quickly denounced me as reckless. Yet a few
days later the administration adopted the very same position.
.•
While the administration goes back and forth, more lives are being lost and the
situation grows more desperate by the day.
6
�••
i
In the Middle East, I supported the President when it became necessary to evict
Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and I support his decision now to provide air cover to
Saddam's Kurdish and Shiite opponents in the north and the south of Iraq.
But I am angered by the administration's appeasement of Saddam Hussein
before the war, and disappointed by its callous disregard for democratic principles
after the war. Just this week another friend of freedom, my running mate, Senator
Gore, laid out in precise and devastating detail the errors of this administration in
dealing with Saddam Hussein.
President Bush showered government-backed grain credits and high technology
on a regime that had used poison gas on its own people. After the war, Mr. Bush
encouraged the Iraqi people to revolt against Saddam Hussein but then abandoned
them.
The administration has sometimes treated the conflict between Israel and the
Arab states as just another quarrel between religions and nations rather than one in
which the survival of a democratic ally, Israel, has been at stake.
...
'~:·,~:~..:
I support strongly the peace talks that are underway, and if elected, I will
continue, without interruption, America's role in them. I also believe that America's
policy in the Middle East should be guided by a vision of the region in which Israel and
our Arab partners are secure in their peace, and where the practices and principles of
personal liberty and governmental accountability are spreading.
For example, I believe we can and must work with others to build a more
democratic and more free Lebanon.
This pat1:ern continues in other parts of the world. In South Africa, Republican
administrations had to be prodded by a bipartisan coalition in the Congress to abandon
their failed policy of constructive engagement, and to impose sanctions on the
apartheid regime in Pretoria.
President Bush has been slow to place America's support behind the fledgling
democratic movements in other democratic nations, or to distance ourselves from
corrupt and dictatorial leaders elsewhere in Africa. We should encourage and nurture
the stirrings for democratic reform that are surfacing all across Africa, from the birth
of an independent Namibia, to the pressure for. democratic reforms in Kenya.
In Central and South America, the democratic revolution has won the first
round, but our efforts to strengthen the fragile democracies in this hemisphere are still .
directed too much toward the central government and the wealthy.
••
We should do more to support those struggling to establish grassroots
'...
7
1
�•
\
democracy in South America and to strengthen the courageous small entrepreneurs
who are burdened by corruption and bloated bureaucracy.
We have a particular democratic responsibility in our own hemisphere to help
end the cycle of violence in Haiti; to help restore democracy to Peru, even as it
struggles to end the murderous violence of the Shining Path. And to help Cuba's
repressive regime join its communist cousins, to borrow a phrase, in the dustbin of
history.
There is no more striking example of Mr. Bush's indifference toward democracy
than his policy toward China. None of us will ever forget the images of the millions
of Chinese people demonstrating peacefully for democracy; the solitary young man
staring down a tank; or the students raising a model of our Statute of Liberty in
Tiananmen Square.
Neither will we ever forget the horror of seeing hundreds of innocent people
mowed down for their belief in freedom.
But instead of allying himself with the democratic movement in China, Mr. Bush
sent secret emissaries to raise a toast to those who crushed it .
•
~-
The stakes in China's future are very high-- for the course taken by that great
nation will help shape the future of Asia and the world. Three years after the
Tiananmen Square tragedy, the tremors of change continue to shake China. We do
not want China to fall apart, to descend into chaos or go back into isolation. But
rather, we want to use our relationship and influence to work with the Chinese for a
peaceful transition to democracy and the spread of free markets.
Today, however, we must ask ourselves, what has the president's China policy
really achieved? The Chinese leadership still sells missiles and nuclear technology to
Middle Eastern dictators who threaten us and our friends.
They still arrest and hold in prison leaders of the pro-democracy movement.
They restrict American access to their markets, while our trade deficit with China will
reach $15 billion this year. The Chinese now have the second biggest trade surplus
of any nation in the world.
Just a few days ago, President Bush vetoed legislation, passed with bipartisan
congressional majorities, that would have placed conditions on Most Favored Nation
trade status for China's state-owned enterprises. And just today the Senate failed,
by a vote of 59 to 40, to override that veto.
.•
But 59 senators, Republicans and Democrats, believe that we have a right to
ask a country that has a $15 billion trade surplus with us not only not to export goods
~
8
�made with prison labor, but to observe basic human rights while building market
strength.
I will say again, I do not want to isolate China. There is much to admire in the
phenomenal progress that has been made there. But I do believe our nation has a
higher purpose than to coddle dictators and to stand aside from the global movement
toward democracy.
For the greatest strength that America can count on in today's world is not our
personal relationship with foreign leaders. Individual leaders come and go --even in
the United States, I hope. It is the powerful appeal of our democratic values and our
enduring political institutions for people around the world that make us special.
This does not mean we can embark on reckless crusades, or that we can force
every ideal, including the promotion of democracy, on other people.
Our actions must be tempered with prudence and common sense. We know
that ballot boxes alone do not solve every world problem, and that some countries and
cultures are many steps away from democratic institutions.
We know there may be times when other security needs or economic interests,
even in the aftermath of the bipolar Cold War world, will diverge from our
commitment to democracy and human rights. .
We know we cannot support every group's hopes for self determination. We
know that the dissolution of old and repressive empires will often be complex, and
contentious.
Moreover, we know there will always be those in the world who pursue their
goals through force and violence. But they should know that a Clinton administration
will maintain the military strength we need to defend our people, our vital interests,
and our values.
They should also know that the danger that we will get carried away with our
ideals does not loom large. That has not been our problem in the last four years.
The real danger is that in this time of wrenching, sweeping change, under
President Bush, we will cling to tired and outdated notions that do not work, and
cannot inspire.
Even within our budgetary constraints, we can contribute a great deal to help
democracy take root around the world. But while the new democracies will need
financial assistance from the international community 1 they also need our help in
learning how democracy and free institutions work; about freedom's institutions, its
9
q
�i.
culture, its values; and yes, about its problems..
As president, I will reorganize and redirect our foreign assistance programs. I
believe we should stress not only sustainable development but also the development
of skills, of values, and the institutions of free society. But I do not believe in this
difficult time we should spend American foreign aid dollars, as the Bush administration
has done, to subsidize American companies to shut down plants in the United States
and move them overseas.
I do not believe we should use taxpayer dollars, as this administration has done,
to pay for advertisements to entice people to shut down their plants in America, and
take advantage of 57-cent-an-hour labor in other countries.
I do not believe we should have one more year in which we spend more federal
tax dollars training workers in another region of the world than we train people who
lose their jobs here at home. I do not believe that. That not only does not make
sense; it is absolutely wrong.
But I will support the establishment of a Democracy Corps, which could provide
teams of experienced Americans in local centers throughout the former Soviet Union,
to help grassroots leaders overcome bottlenecks to democratic development. We will
renew our support for institutions like the bipartisan National Endowment for
Democracy, and its partners in business, labor, and political leadership.
We will revive the s'pirit of the Peace Corps, offering, young people the
opportunity to take part in the central political experience of their time. We will rely
on America's voluntary organizations to help in the development of independent, civic
and service sectors in the new democracies.
My administration will work in partnership with business and professional
leaders, trade unionists, environmentalists, representatives of state and local
government and other skilled practitioners of our own democratic life. We will enlist
the untapped skills of the many immigrants andtheir descendants in cities like
Milwaukee, Chicago and Cleveland, who came to our shores to escape oppression and
to build America--to help build democracies in the countries from which they came.
I
One of the most effective things we can do in international affairs is what is
called public diplomacy. This covers a multitude of our government's activities such
as radio broadcasting that allows us to speak to peoples of foreign lands directly.
When Lech Walesa was asked if Radio Free· Europe gave birth to the Solidarity
movement he said, "Would there be an earth without the sun."
•
We should build on the success of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty and
expand our successful surrogate broadcasting by bringing news and information to the
10
/D
�•
despotisms that remain in Asia, in China, in Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Burma .
The President's opposition to Asian Democracy Radio is further evidence that
he still thinks it's more important to talk to dictators than to their oppressed subjects.
Finally, building democracy is not a job for America alone. We will strengthen
the United Nations and seek more support from our democratic allies in Europe and
Japan in strengthening the world's new democracies. We all have a stake in the
democratic revolution.
America's purpose in the world is not simply to be another great power in
history. As the flow of resources and information and people's causes and people
cause this old world to shrink, we have a particular contribution to make to the march
of human progress. I call on us to set an example of how a nation of many peoples
can harvest strength from diversity.
It calls on us to give back to a contentious world some of the lessons we
have learned during our own democratic voyage. It calls on us, also my fellow
Americans, to deal with the increasingly racial and ethnic tensions here at home in a
spirit of humility and generosity -- reaching out to one another and binding up our own
nation's wounds.
·•
For we have learned here in America, and we relearn every day that democracy
is not always easy and tidy. We have learned that it is a process of trial and error -that it suffers from all the imperfections known to humankind. But it is als.o the only
system we know that can produce wisdom out of disagreement, and peace out of our
warring hours. America's power, prosperity and sense of justice may be providential.
But they are not accidental. For those blessings flow from the world's greatest
peaceful experiment in making one out of many, our motto, E Pluribus Unum.
The force of democracy's magnetism is reflected in the stories still told around
holiday dinner tables today. The story of the young couple who abandoned Havana
for the promise and safety and opportunity in the United States. The stories sprinkled
with Yiddish of the family from Minsk who fled to the land of religious freedom. The
story hardly known of forced exodus from Africa, and a slow exodus from slavery and
hardship to liberty. The stories still told in Polish of the farmers who left the old
country for the rich and limitless land of our own midwest.
In this election, let us join together to ensure that our American epic can offer
meaning and guidance to freedom loving people around the world. Let us seize this
historic moment to help expand democracy's embrace. And let. us act toward the
world in a manner worthy of our heritage, our ideals and our name.
Thank you very much.
11
II
�• i.
-·
•
THEVALUESOFAM~CA
REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CUNTON
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
SOUTH BEND, IN
SEPI8MBER11,1992
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we know that in this room at least our
supporters can win the cheering contest.
I would hope that in this great university we could also prevail in the civility
contest.
•
I hope if my opponent or his running inate shows up at this great university
during this campaign that you will go there and quietly express your support for me,
but I will hope you will let them speak and have their say.
I want to say a special word of thanks to all those who have come here to be
with me today, to Governor and Mrs. Bayh, who are good friends of Hillary's and
mine; to Mayor Flynn. Father Malloy was entirely too modest. He did not tell you that
he and Mayor Flynn were great college basketball players together. Mayor Flynn
played at Providence, another good Catholic university. And Mayor Rynn is still a
great athlete. AI Gore went out jogging with him the other day and he called me out
of breath saying that the mayor had made him run for 95 minutes in the city of
Boston.
I want to thank Mayor Kernan and Congressman Roemer for being here. I also
want to note the presence in the audience of Congresswoman Jill Long and
Congressman Jim Jantz. They are both here.
•
You have so many young people in politics here that it makes me feel like I am
learly in the tradition of Cicero, who said that of one thing he was certain-old age
begins at 46. I want to thank my good friend, Senator Wofford for coming and all the
others who are here. And I want to thank Father Malloy and the Notre Dame family
for giving me the opportunity to come here to help Notre Dame celebrate its 150th
1
National Camoaign Headauaners • ?0. 9ox 615 • Lir!te Rock. Arkansas 72203 • Teleonone :5011· 372·1992 • ~AX (501) 372·2292
TZ~·
.·,
�•
birthday •
I know it's traditional for presidential candidates to stand up and tell you that
they sprang from humble beginnings, even that they were born in log cabins they built
themselves. But today I would like to turn that around, for Notre Dame literally.
sprang from humble beginnings, from a log cabin 150 years ago, when Father Edward
Soren took over a log cabin on the snow covered lakeshore and dared to call it a
university.
He came from France but it must have been something out of the American
ground that gave him the inspiration to dream dreams so that thousands upon
thousands of young people could share his vision. Out of the vision came one of the .
greatest universities of this nation, in service to its students, to country and to God.
•
I'm especially proud to be here with those of you who participate in the Center
for the Homeless, those who have participated·in the Alumni Service:Projects, those
who hav~ participated in the Center for Social Concerns. Service is truly a way of life ·
here at Notre Dame. I'm proud to be here because of the national leadership exhibited
by the Notre Dame family. Your former president, Father Hesburgh, served with
Hillary, my wife, on the Grant Commissions-Grant Foundations Commission--on the .American Family, Work and Citizenship. And they dealt with issues which have
deeply concerned all of us for many years. Father Hesburgh and Hillary and the other
commissioners issued a highly acclaimed: report, entitled,· "Youth in America's
Future-the Forgotten Half," which I believe detailed for the first time the sharp
decline in earnings among young people with no education after high school and laid
out a practical agenda to offer them hope, an agenda which is now deeply embedded
in my presidential campaign.
A former Notre Dame law professor, Harris Wofford, here on this platform is
now a United States Senator from Pennsylvania. In the best tradition of Catholic
social responsibility, he is leading the fight for health care for all Americans, work for
those without it, and national service for young people.
Your football coach, Lou Holtz, spent a lot of years at Arkansas before he came
here. I want to tell you a story about that. In his first season he took our team to the
Orange Bowl against what was then the number one ranked team in America. But
shortly before the game, he suspended three of the team's leading offensive players
for serious misconduct. He was attacked and pilloried in the press. He was even
sued.
•
And as a young attorney general, it became my duty to defend him. Against
overwhelming odds, Arkansas won the football game, but more important, Lou Holtz ·
taught our state that high standards and values come before victory on the playing
field •
2
�•
I'm also proud to be here because I have personally benefitted from Catholic
education and from my state's tradition of religious tolerance. In 1928 Governor AI
Smith of New York, the first Catholic to be nominated for president, picked as his
running mate. Senator.Joe T. Robinson from Arkansas.
They lost the election to Herbert Hoover and in part, to anti-Catholic prejudice.
But they carried my home state.
In 1960, John Kennedy was the first Catholic to be elected president. And
many Americans, especially in my part of the country said that no Catholic should_be
elected president because of their views. But John Kennedy carried Arkansas.
If elected, I will be the first president to graduate from a Catholic college,
Georgetown t)niversity.
\
And long before that, I learned a lot about life in the second and third grades
at St. John's School in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
•
On a hot summer afternoon, 29 summers ago, I m~t President Kennedy in the
Rose Garden of the White House as a 16 year old delegate to American Legion Boy's
Nation. That afternoon turned me toward public service. After President Kennedy
was killed, another Southerner, Lyndon Johnson, succeeded to the presidency with
the promise to enact John Kennedy's program to get America moving again, and to
bring.America together.
Because I wanted to be in public service, watch the Great Society unfold, and
get a first class education, I enrolled in Georgetown University, the nation's oldest
Jesuit college. I wondered when I went there whether I would be out of place, a
Southern Baptist who had rarely been far from home.
Thankfully, both the students and the faculty there held to the scriptural
commandment to befriend the stranger in their midst. And together, we found much
common ground that Baptists and Catholics could walk together. And in the end, I
felt completely at home in the Catholic tradition of Georgetown.
I was then, and I remain today, deeply drawn to the Catholic social mission, to
the idea that, as President Kennedy said, here on earth God's work must truly be our
own. I have seen it in the work that Catholic politicians like Mayor Flynn of Boston,
and Senator Wofford, whom I admire, have done.
I love the Catholic understanding of history and tradition, and how they shape
us in our lives. And I love all the vigorous arguments. How I love those arguments.
•
1 know that all of you here at Notre Dame will take from this wonderful place
3
�•
those same blessings: good friends, great and caring teachers, a strong sense of your
place in history and your mission in the world, and a devotion to a lifetime of learning
through honest debates and open, inquiring minds. .Both Baptists and Catholics in different ways are rooted in the spiritual richness ·
of America's working people-people who know the pain of poverty and the bite of
discrimination, people for whom life is a daily struggle in which they must sweat and
sacrifice for themselves and their families, for whom life is made worthwhile not only
through hard work and self-reliance but through opening their hearts to God and their
hands to their neighbors.
Each of our faiths teaches that nobody makes it alone. Ben Franklin once said,
we'll hang together or assuredly we'll hang separately. That is the heart of the
Judea-Christian understanding of what it means to be a member of the human
society. Rabbi Hillel said 2,000 years ago, "If I am not for myself, ~ho will be for
me? If I am only for myself, who am I?'"
·
Today America has wandered far from the lessons of our faiths and our history.
Most people are working harder for less money. We are becoming a nation of greater
poverty and much, much greater economic inequality. ~nd that is straining the ties .·
that bind us.
·
•
Today I want to talk about the America I see and seek·, but most of all, about
the values behind that vision of America.
I want an America that values the freedom and the dignity of the individual.
All of us must respect the reflection of God's image in every man and woman. And
so, we must value their freedom, -not just their political freedom, but their freedom
of conscience in matters of family and philosophy and faith.
I am grateful that I was born in a country where my faith can be powerful
because it is a voluntary offering of a free and joyous spirit. As that great American
Baptist, Roger Williams, understood so well, without the freedom to say no, the word
..yes" is meaningless.
Here in our country more people believe in God, more people go to church or
temple, and more people put religion at the center of their lives than in any other
advanced society on Earth. And that is a tribute to the genius and the courage of the
American experiment that our government can be the protector of the freedom of
every faith because it is the exclusive property of none.
•
That is the promise of the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of religion
and separation of church and state, guarantees that my Southern Baptist Church
traditionally has supported strongly. Our freedom of conscience depends upon mutual
4
�•
respect. Each of us must never forget that, as John Kennedy reminded the Baptist
ministers in Houston in 1960, when intolerance is turned loose, "today I may be the
victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society
is ripped. •
President Kennedy was right. · To preserve our social fabric, we must always
appreciate the wonderful diversity of the American tapestry. That is why, like so
many Americans I have been appalled to hear the voices of intolerance raised in recent
weeks-voices that have proclaimed that some families aren't real families, that some
Americans aren't real Americans, and one even said that what this country needs is
a "religious war." Well, America does not need a religious war. It need-s a
reaffirmation of the values that for most of us are rooted in our religious faith.
Uke most Americans, I go to church on Sunday, and until I lost my voice early
in this campaign, I sang in my ·choir. My faith is a source of pride to 11,1e, but far, far ·
more important, it is a source of humility, because it teaches that n-one of us is a
stranger to sin and to weakness. It is a source of hope because it teaches that each ·
of us is capable of redemption. And it is a source of challenge because it teaches that
·we must all strive to live according to our beliefs.
•
We all have the right to wear our religion on our s-leeves, but we should also
hold it in our hearts and live it in our lives .
And if we are to truly practice what we preach, then Americans of every faith
and viewpoint should look for ways to come together to promote the common good.
That requires a much greater respect for honest diversity than we are hearing today.
It wasn't so long ago that some American voices suggested that Catholics
weren't real Americans and invited the equivalent of religious wars against them. As
Mario Cuomo said in his brilliant speech here at Notre Dame in 1984, ..1 protect my
right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to believe as a Jew, a Protestant or a
non-believer, or anything else you choose."
We know, as Governor Cuomo said, that the price of seeking to force our
beliefs on others is that they might someday force theirs on us. This freedom is the
fundamental strength in our unique experiment in government.
I want an America with those convictions to have a renewed sense of
community, an America that is coming together, not coming apart. I want to bring
back the American spirit that says we're all in this together, and we're going to rise
or fall together.
•
It is that spirit that built America from tfle barn raisings on the old frontier, to
the immigrant mutual aid societies in the great cities, to the churches that have helped
5
..
�•
generations of African-Americans make a way out of no way .
It is a spirit that draws upon our judea-Christian tradition. Everything in the
Old Testament concerns not isolated individuals, but a people, a community. The
books of law govern them. The books of history recounted their wanderings, their·
troubles and their triumphs. And the prophets are the great poetic voice that recalled
them again and again to the meaning of being the people of God.
In the Christian tradition, that emphasis on community continues, since the
Acts, the Gospels and the Epistles all come from early Christian communities •. and
recount to us their problems, their failures, their strengths, but, above all, their unity.
Echoing down the ages is the simple but powerful truth that no grace of God
was ever given me for me alone. To the terrible question of Cain - • Am I my ·.
brother's keeper?• -the' only possible answer for us is God's thund~rous yes.
·
•
As I've traveled across this country, I've spoken with people whose daily
experience testifies that a new sense of community is not just a moral imperative, but
a practical necessity. People whose lives have been broken, even though they are
doing the best that they can. And these people live everywhere. Crime and drugs are.·
hitting our suburbs, as well as our cities. Layoff.s are hitting middle managers, as well
as assembly workers. And corporate bottom.lines are suffering because our children's
test scores are declining •
We are learning anew the wisdom of Martin Luther King who wrote in his Letter
from the Birmingham Jail: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied to a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere."
When I think of how I want to help change America during the next four years,
I want, most of all, to restore the link between rights and responsibilities, between
opportunities and obligations. The social contract that defines what we owe to one
another, to our communities and to our country, as well as what we are entitled to
for ourselves.
The American community should speak in a clear and certain voice that some
things are wrong. On any day, at any time, in any place, violence is wrong, bigotry
is wrong, abandoning children is wrong. But our religious traditions teach of more than
thou-shalt-nots. In our role as citizens, we should not
·
see ourselves only as our brothers' and sisters' Jceepers, but also as our brothers' and
sisters' helpers.
•
If we truly believe, as almost everyone says, no matter what they believe on
certain issues, that children are God's most precious creation, then surely we owe
6
�•
every child born in the United States the opportunity to make the most of his or her
God-given potential.
I want .an America. that offers every child a healthy start in life, decent
schoofing, a chance to go to college or job training worthy of the name, not only
because that's essential for our common economic success, but because providing
opportunities is how we fulfill our obligations to each other and the moral principles
we honor.
Any community worthy of the name would do more than just tell its young
people to say no to crime and drugs. It would give them something to say yes to: the
opportunity for education and jobs and the sense of connectedness to society. Yes,
we must insist that parents do right by their children, and that young people do right
by their communities. But our American community must also do right by them, by
offering them the opportunities that support families and children in do{ng a good job ··
with the lives they have.
We must move beyond the false choice between individual and social
responsibility, because, now more than ever, we need both.
•
If I could select a watchword for America, it would be the title of the recent
Pastoral Letter of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, ~'Putting Children and
Families First."
In the letter they offer the counsel of common sense and common decency, and
I quote: '"no government can love a child, and no policy can substitute for a family's
care. But government can either support or undermine families.'" There has been an
unfortunate, unnecessary and unreal polarization in discussions in how best to help
families.
'"The undeniable fact, • the letter says, '"is that our children's future is shaped
both by the values of their parents and the policies of our nation."
I want an America that does more than talk about family values. I want an
America that values families.
I want an America that values families by recognizing that parents have the
right to take time off from their jobs when a baby's born or someone's sick.
An America that values families by freeing fathers and mothers from the fear
that they won't be able to take a sick child to the doctor.
•
An America that values families by helping every parent enjoy the dignity of a
job that puts bread on the table, buys shoes for the .children, and holds the household
7
....
�•
together in mutual support.
An America that honors and rewards work and. family not just in words but in
deeds.
I want to see us share the values expressed in the Bishops' Pastoral Letter on
the Economy, that • every institution and every economic decision in our society must
be judged by whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the person. • And for
everyone who can work, human dignity is first and foremost the opportunity and the
obligation to support oneself and to contribute to society.
When I talk about training workers today for jobs of tomorrow, when I talk ..
about helping people move from welfare rolls to payrolls, when I talk about rebuilding
America, I'm not just talking about economic policies. I'm talking about our moral
obligation to help every one of our brothers and sisters enjoy the dignity of useful and.
productive working lives.
·
•
And if there is a dignity in all work, there must be dignity for every worker.
We've got to make sure that no one who works a full week and who has children at
home is condemned to a life of poverty. We've got to make sure that our families are
assured a real family wage. If people work and have chiidren, surely we should lift
them above the poverty line •
I want to lead an America that fulfills its obligations to the future by upholding
the traditional value of stewardship over the Earth.
When I was growing up, we were taught that soils and streams were not ours
to waste, but a gift from God that we simply hold in trust for generations yet to be
born. And I selected AI Gore for Vice President for many reasons, but one was his
understanding of this -his understanding of the obligations of this stewardship stated
so eloquently in his book, ~~Earth in the Balance." We must be our planet's caretaker.
Finally, I want an America where service is a way of life, as it is here at Notre
Dame. I want Americans to learn in their own way the lesson that you've learned
from Catholic social teaching, that our individual rights flow from our essential dignity
as creatures of God, but that each of us reaches our fullness as human beings by
being of service to our fellow men and women. Any of us who have traveled this land
have seen these teachings embodied in Catholic social programs.
I think of schools where young people are called not only to academic
achievement but to volunteer work in hospitals and nursing homes, tutoring programs
and homeless shelters, as a fundamental component of education.
•
I have in mind parishes where family values are not simply evoked but actively
8
�•
guided and supported, where young people are offered preparation for opportunities
for adoption and sensitive counsel on how best to fulfill their parental duties as their
children's first teachers.
And I see the work of Catholic relief services, the Campaign for Human··
Development, the National Catholic Rural Conference and so many other agencies, all
deeply rooted in community service. Talking about service, here at Notre Dame is the
classic case of preaching to the choir.
Your Center for the Homeless, your Alumni Summer Service Projects, your
Center for Social Concerns- all are shining examples of the spirit of service that I
want to see in every college and every high school and every community all across.
America.
I want an America where every young person and every not s9 young person
understands what Marian Wright Edelman, the president of the Children's Defense
Fund tries to teach us when she says, "Service is the rent we pay for living."
•
Throughout this campaign, I've talked about my plan to open the doors of
college to every American. To offer every person in thi~ country the opportunity to.·
borrow the money to go to college and then require thein to pay it back either as a
small percentage of their paycheck after they go to work or, even better, by going
back home and serving their communities. ·
·
And frankly, I'd much rather see everyone whether they're rich or poor or
middle class pay back that debt by going home and working for two years in a Peace
Corps here in America, to rebuild America. Just think of it. Think of it.
Millions of energetic young men and women serving their country by teaching
the. children, policing the streets, caring for the sick, working with the elderly or
people with disabilities, building homes for the homeless, helping children to stay off
drugs and out of gangs-giving us all a new sense of hope and real limitless
possibilities.
•
I've offered this plan to help more young people go to college. But I've also
offered it because I want America to send a message that our society values and
honors service to community, just as Harry Truman's Gl bill honored the service of my
father's generation, who fought and won World War II, just as the Peace Corps, which
President Kennedy created with the help of your former president, Father Hesburgh
and Senator Wofford, sent that message to my generation. Just as millions of
Americans from all backgrounds and every walk of life are waiting for a summons to
service and to citizenship, not just for young people that are going on to college but ·
for young people in our high schools and people 'of all ages who want to do something
for their communities and for their country •
.. -·- :. . .: .. ..:...··.-·
9
... · - .
--
...
-·
...
�•
And I would just give you two examples of the kind of thing that I hope will
become a hallmark of America in the next few years. Recendy I took a trip to Rorida
which was heartbreaking and heart lifting. ·1 went down to Rorida City after the
hurricane to a predominandy African-American community that was almoSt wiped out.
And as I walked down the street with the mayor,- we came across a man who came
all the way from Michigan with two of his friends with a truckload of food and ·
supplies for the folks in Rorida.
·
The gendemen was a genuine American ethnic-burly and muscular and heavyset and so proud of himself he could split. AQd he was standing there next to an .
African-American woman whose home had been devastated by the storm. She looked
at him and he looked at her and she said, "You know, it was nearly worth losing my
home to find out how well we can work together, but it's too bad it took a hurricane
to prove it."
And let me tell you one other story. Hillary and I and the Gores were in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa at the Quaker Oats factory having a big rally. And I was working my
way through the crowd and I noticed there was a young white woman there holding
an African-American child. And I went up to the lady and I looked at this beautiful
little girl, who came out and got in my arms and I was holding_her, and I sa.id, "Whose
baby is this?" And she said, "That's my baby, and my baby· has AIDS."
And I said, "Where did you find this child?'" And she said, "i adopted this child
~another state." She said," You know, Governor, I respect this debate that's going
on in our country about life, but how I wish we would all reach out and try to help the
children who are living."
We Americans are brilliant at doing right by each other at a time of crisis. All
across this country, however, we must know ~e are in a quieter crisis of a fraying
society and a declining economy, of an educational system unequal to the task of
global competition, of an environment slowly coming apart at critical places.
But most of all, a crisis of communitY, a spiritual crisis that calls upon each of
us to remember and to act upon our obligations to one another. The purpose of
community, the purpose of our government, the purpose of our leaders should be to
call us to pursue our common values and the common good, not simply in the
moment of extreme crisis but every day in our lives, starting right now, today.
That is the leadership I seek to offer America, and that is the America I hope
to be able to lead.
Thank you very much •
•
10
-~--
�••
Remarks by Governor Bill Clinton
National Bar Association Dinner
St. Louis, MO
July 31, 1992
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Well, I don't know if she succeeded in making that introduction nonpartisan, but it
certainly was intimidating. I thought you were going to charge me a fee just to sit
here and talk.
•
I want to say that I appreciate that very eloquent introduction. It will pass any
standard your network has placed. And if they don't like it, I'll give you a job when
I'm elected •
I have to tell you, I promised I wouldn't do that. That's the only job I've offered. And
I'm a lawyer. I've always got an escape-hatch that's contingent.
I want to say to President Mcfale, who has been my friend for some years now, and
to President elect, Allen Webster, and to all of you, how delighted I am to be back
with the National Bar Association.
Four years ago, when I was in a very different position in life, you invited me to come
before your convention in Washington, D.C. Many of you were there, I think. That
was a wonderful night for me.
After the banquet was over, I stayed around. I had been there for two or three hours
just shaking hands and talking to people. And I hope that some of you who were
there then, whom I met, will make your way up here before I leave so that we can at
least say hello again. And then I had the pleasure of hosting this organization's Board
of Governors at the Governor's Mansion in 1989. Many of you were there then. I've
already seem a lot of the folks who were there. That was a wonderful night for me.
••
So I am no stranger to this group. You may know too, that many members of my
1
- - - -
--------------
------------
�•
Administration are members of this group: Rodney Slater, Cassandra Wilkins, who's
out here, Carol Willis, Judge Richard Mays, whom I appointed to the Arkansas
Supreme Court in 1980, who's here with me. And many others from my state of
Arkansas are here. I haven't appointed them all but I tried. And I'm very proud of all
of them and their presence here.
I know too, that a lot of your former presidents and leaders of this organization are
at least natives of my state. I can't help but mention one of your former members,
Jackie [Scropshire], who passed away this year, who was the first African American
to graduate from the law school at the University at Arkansas. We named Law Day
after him this year, by Governor's Proclamation. And I would like to note his passing
here because he was a very important part of our legal history.
I'd also like to compliment you this year on making a coalition with the National
Hispanic Bar Association, The Asian Pacific Bar Association, The Native American Bar
Association, The National Association of Women Lawyers. And I want to thank you
for giving awards to Judge Keat and Ben Hooks. I wish I could have listened to them
speak all night long.
I'm glad Judge [Keat] introduced my law classmate, Eric [Clay]. At least one of us
is still making an honest living. I want to say a special word of thanks to Benjamin
Hooks for the life that he's lived and the example that he's set--not just for African
Americans, but for all Americans who believe in the cause of justice and freedom.
He has been an inspiration to me for as long as I have known about him. And I thank
him for that.
I promised that when I came here I wouldn't tell any lawyer jokes. And I won't. I can
tell you this: Law school changed my life. It taught me what was really important.
It taught me what to look up to. That's when I met Hillary.
And I can also tell you something you already know which is that there are real
choices to be made and real consequences to be had from the outcome of this
election.
I have tried to stake out a positive plan for America's future, from the very beginning.
Last October, when I entered this race, I said it was not enough to merely criticize the
opposition. You had to offer an alternative vision for the future and a plan.
Last year--not this year--last year, I gave three major addresses at my Alma Mater,
Georgetown University, outlining what I would do if I was given the opportunity to
serve as president.
·
•
I put out a plan in New Hampshire and modified it a few weeks ago. I tried to give
2
�•
the American people something they could sink their teeth into.
It is highly unusual, I think, for a challenger to be more detailed about the future than
the incumbent who has access to more information. But I have been governor a long
time. I've been through a lot of elections. And I know if you want to get something
done, it's best to talk about it during the election, so you can later tell the legislative
branch that's what you got elected to do. And that's what I have tried to do.
I also think the American people are crying for an honest debate. And so tonight, let
me lay out some of the issues that I think are most pertinent to you as members of
this organization and as Americans.
First, if Bill Clinton and AI Gore are elected in November, I can and I will pledge you
a federal judiciary that looks like America, feels like America, and that understands the
pain and promise of America.
·
•
You all heard or saw, surely, the comments of Judge [Higginbotham] to the effect that
of the last 115 Americans appointed to the federal appellate bench, only two of them
were African Americans. I need hardly remind you that President Jimmy Carter
appointed more African-Americans to the federal bench than all the presidents of the
United States combined, before and since. And that is the legacy of the New South
that I would like to top .
I want to consult with you on the appointments of federal judges. I want to consult
with you and the organizations who are here in coalition with you on the
appointments of federal judges--Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans,
women lawyers. And I want to tell you this: I will be uncompromising in my
commitment to excellence in these appointments. I don't want anybody conducting
any hearings on my appointments wondering if they're really qualified to be federal
judges or appellate judges or Supreme Court judges. But I have news for this
administration. There are really qualified African Americans, Hispanic-Americans,
Native-Americans, Asian-Americans who can serve in any position in the land.
We need an administration that will heal and unify this country and that will establish
conditions through which we can move forward. And in the great resolutions of the
issues of today, the federal bench should feel like America.
We can and we will give you an administration that enforces the Voting Rights Act,
believes in equal opportunity and acts like it, and works to make opportunity a reality
for all Americans. I would sign--not veto--the Motor Voter Bill because I think we
ought to make it easy to vote and let an American have his or her say.
•
I can and I will support a plan to invest in this country. To invest in our communities,
our cities, our suburbs, our rural areas. To invest to create jobs. To give the private
3
�•
sector more incentives to invest if they're creating jobs but fewer incentives to cut
short term deals and move jobs overseas.
I will promote an administration grounded in the principles of community and respect
and not division and blame. We have had quite enough of that.
Just think. The other day, this administration's chief budget officer went up to
Capitol Hill and was asked his analysis of why we were having the worst three years
of economic performance in the last 50 years--coming at the end of more than a
decade in which the American people have been working harder for less money and
he said, "Well, it's the fault of the bankers. They don't lend enough money. And the
fault of the Federal Reserve. They didn't bring interest rates down quickly enough.
And the fault of Saddam Hussein. He invaded Kuwait." We got somebody else to
pay for that. I don't what that has to do with our economy. But he said that. "And
the fault of the Congress. They won't do what the President wants."
And the Chairman of the House Budget Committee said, "Do you accept any
responsibility f~r this country? Just any? How about 5 percent? Or would you
believe 4 or 3-1/2? No. They would not.
•
Where would this country be if Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said the
buck stops somewhere else? That's what we're living through today, folks .
Let me tell you this. I don't promise you miracles. I don't have the answer to all the
. problems. But I know trickle-down economics and special interest politics and
blinding ourselves to the reality. of the global economy competition we face are not
getting us where we need to go. So, if I become your president, I will assume
responsibility--what works and all; the good and the bad. And do my best not to work
miracles but to make progress. And that is what I think you expect of your elected
officials.
But I cannot do it alone. The presidency is a bully pulpit, as Theodore Roosevelt said.
And much of the presidency, as Harry Truman once said, consists of trying to talk
other people into doing what they ought to be doing anyway. But the preacher can't
save no souls if there's nobody in the church helping.
And so tonight I come here asking you for some help.
Many of you will remember that President Kennedy once called upon a gathering of
America's lawyers to form a network of attorneys to work on behalf of plaintiffs in
civil rights cases throughout the country. Many responded and made dramatic
contributions in the struggle for equal justice.
·
••
Now America needs to restore that old spirit of partnership; of optimism; of renewed
4
�•
dedication to common efforts.
We need an army of devoted visionaries--healing leaders throughout this nation who
are willing to work in their communities to end the long years of denial and neglect
and divisiveness and blame--to give the American people their country back.
And so I want to ask each of you as lawyers and as community leaders, people who
have already shown your concern for the condition of all our citizens, to reach out as
Americans to help us to build a common future.
In too many elections we are asked to make choices which one American political
writer has labeled as false. Many of us don't vote. Many of us become cynical
because we think we have to make choices that seem to be foolish.
•
I want an America where you can be pro-business and pro-labor because we treat
working people decently and make money doing it. I want an America where you can
have both excellence and opportunity in education. I want an America where we can
preserve the environment and promote economic growth. And I know it can be done
if we were just a little more farsighted than we are now. I want an America where
you can be for civil rights and for civil justice. An America in which communities and
citizens are safe from crime and safe for the Rodney Kings of America too. That is
the kind of America that I think we all want .
In my plan, I support a lot of the initiatives this organization has historically
advocated, initiatives that will not only create opportunities by investing in new jobs
for the 21st century, but by also giving all people access to training--apprenticeship
training of two years after high school for every high school graduate who doesn't go
on to college, to restore the dignity to blue collar work. We need to ensure access
to a college education for all Americans.
I have recommended that we take the best of two great American ideas, the Gl Bill
after World War II and the Peace Corps under President Kennedy, to create a great
National Trust Fund. Let any American borrow the money to go to college and pay
it back either as a small percentage of their income after they go to work. Or even
better, by giving two years of service here at home in a Domestic Peace Corps. Just
think of it--if every American college graduate did that--if every American college
graduate went home to Detroit or St. Louis; to Chicago or Little Rock; to Los Angeles
or Atlanta or some small place and said, "For two years I will be trained and I will
serve as a teacher, as a police officer, as a nurse, working with troubled children;
working to rebuild the cities and help kids to stay out of trouble and to build a better
life, and to connect themselves to the future we want them to be a part of."
•
We could revolutionize our approach to the problems of America by dealing with the
problems of America as they always have to be dealt with--through people. It would
5
�•
be the best money we ever spent.
Our plan calls for making that available through the National Service Corps and
through servicemen and women who will be mustered out of the service as defense
spending is cut. Those people will be given the opportunity to earn military retirement
by serving for a few years in the police forces here at home.
We want to give 100,000 more police officers of all races and both genders back to
the cities of this country so that every city can have a community policing program
where friends and neighbors and police officers work together to prevent crime from
happening--not just to catch criminals and not just to deal in alien neighborhoods with
situations that lead you to the kind of thing that happened to Rodney King.
Community policing is the answer. You know that--and we should be supporting it.
We ought to have initiatives that focus on prevention in every way---health care
prevention. We've got to stop being the only major country in the world that doesn't
provide a basic package of affordable health care to all people, and control health care
costs.
•
But in order to be able to afford this we must focus on prevention. Health education
in the schools, including education to prevent unwanted pregnancies and to keep kids
safe from AIDS and other diseases--aggressive programs--clinics in the cities and in
the rural areas to provide basic primary and preventive care.
Most people get health care in this country today even when they don't have health
insurance. When do they get it? When it's too late; too expensive; at the emergency
room. They're lying on cots, in the hallways--many of them. Tonight as we speak,
it is costing this country a fortune and undermining the health care of America.
Prevention. Focus on that.
And the same thing should be done in the area of crime. How many young people get
into trouble with the law once or twice and nothing happens to them 1 They are
assigned to some poor probation officer who has 300 or 400 cases and can't pay
them any attention. And finally they get in trouble and get sent to the penitentiary
where they cost you $30,000 a year and learn how to be first class criminals.
How much better off we would be if we had a community oriented system of
punishment that included discipline and community service work and drug treatment
and education, all in one place in the community so that we can connect people
before they are too far gone; before they cost society and when they can still
contribute to society and have the life God meant for them to have. Prevention.
That is the sort of thing we ought to be working on.
And you say, "What does all of this have to do with the economic recovery?" Plenty.
6
�•
All those billions of dollars we're spending on imprisonment could be spent on
education and job development. We are 13th in the world In wages and No. 1 in the
world in the percentage of adults behind bars. Wouldn't you like to reverse the
number in the next eight years? I would.
When you spend 30% more on health care than any other country in the world, most
of it going to insurance companies and administrative bureaucracies--that's money
you're not spending to send kids to college or to train workers to work or to invest
in new jobs. It's one of the reasons we lose manufacturing jobs. That's got plenty
to do with it.
When you don't educate children or you don't do the kind of work that keeps them
healthy and strong and safe, then they wind up costing money when they could be
making money. Everybody in this country, whether we like it or not, is tied to
everybody else--and it's time we started acting like it.
•
One thing is abundantly clear. The governing idea of this administration is that we
should only have a national government that keeps taxes as low as possible on the
wealthiest Americans and on the largest corporations and raises taxes on the middle
class and on small business, explodes the deficit and gets out of the way .
They think everything will be fine. Well, everything is not fine.
What works in the world we're living in?
Look at the countries where the job growth is higher; where the wages are higher;
where the poverty is lower. They don't work harder than we do. We're working
harder than we did twenty years ago, as a people.
They are better educated, better organized and better led. They do not accept these
divisions that we take for granted in our society. They have government, education,
business and labor all on the same side working to create opportunity for everyone.
We had better that lesson in this global economy or we will never get out of the fix
we're in. That is the fundamental choice before you and all Americans in this election
this year.
It is a choice that you feel all the more keenly because you know that racial minorities
in this country are more likely to be poor, more likely to be unemployed, and, more
tragically, more likely to be working and still poor.
•
At the beginning of this decade, 12% of the work force in America was living in
poverty. At the end of the last decade, 18% of the working people in America were
living in poverty--because we do not have a high-wage, high-growth strategy to
7
�•
develop the capacities of all our people and to help them to win in this global
economy. I'm telling you that Is what we have to do.
We have to have the future opening up for our children, not closing in on us. You're
always going to have more racial tensions and divisions in society when people think
they are divided and competing for a shrinking pie.
If every one of us in this room were the same color and the doors were locked and
there wasn't any more food coming in here, next week we would all be fighting over
what was left. Wouldn't we? That is a big part of the problem in this country. We
have no strategy to make tomorrow better than today.
The other thing of course, is what you stood up for in the beginning. Even after all
these years and all the civil rights fights and all the battles that led Judge Keat to the
Court of Appeals and led led Ben Hooks to head the NAACP, there are still people in
America who think there is more in it for them if they divide us by race than if they
unite us by humanity. They are wrong but they think that.
In the city of Los Angeles, in Los Angeles County alone where the riots occurred,
there are members of 146 different racial and ethnic groups in that county. Not just
blacks and Hispanics and Koreans and whites that you saw; but 146 different racial
and ethnic groups.
We are moving into a global economy. Your children and grandchildren may never
have to worry as I did, growing up, about a bomb exploding and taking the world
away.
Our problems now are inside us--in our spirits, in our country, in our organization and
in our education. And one of the big decisions we have to make is whether or not
this diversity, which you celebrated here tonight, in which Judge Keat urged you
never to forget--is going to be a source of our strength or the instrument of our
undoing.
Are we stronger and better because we are different? Are we going to be foolish and
preoccupied and determined to aggravate those differences in a way that permits no
one to live up to the fullest of his or her God-given capacities?
•
So I say to you tonight. I can be president with your help. But you still have to be
Americans--in every community and in every way, no matter who is president. There
has to be somebody there who believes in these things we talked about--who believes
you can have excellence and equity in the schools-who believes you can be probusiness and pro-labor--who believes that you can find a way to have civil order and
civil justice--who understands the necessity to always be changing this country--to try
new things, like community policing and community-based punishment, and
8
�•
apprenticeships for the kids who don't go to college •
This country has been around for 200 years because we've always had a shining set
of ideas and a big vision--and because when we had to we could always recreate
ourselves.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that blistering Declaration of Independence knowing that we
weren't living by its ideas. He said, "I tremble to think that God is just when I think
of slavery. n Jefferson said that.
Abraham Lincoln went into the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation and
gave the Gettysburg Address in an attempt to rewrite the Constitution to set forth a
vision of equality.
Franklin Roosevelt lifted a nation, from the confines of his wheelchair, to believe that
together we could come out of a Great Depression and win a great war. Whenever
we had to do it, we recreated ourselves. This country has remained forever young.
Today we stand on the threshold of a new creation. If we fail to do it, our country
will continue to sink in economic decline and social disorder.
•
If we say we're going to rebuild America and reunite America, we're going to take a
different direction. Then I believe that the children of this nation will have the
brightest life any generation of Americans has ever known. It is for us to make that
decision.
In the next 95 days the American people will come to grips with their responsibilities.
But if we prevail in this election, I will still need every one of you in every way that
you can to use everything that you have learned--to bring your wisdom and your
compassion and caring to bear on the human problems of America--so that together
we can lift this country to the destiny it was meant to have. Thank you.
9
�f'
•
FOR PRESIDENT COMMITTEE
A VIS;IOH POR AIERXCA: A HEW · COVENAH'l'
GCJYElUfOR B::rt..L CLDrl'OH
DEHO~XC ~~XOHAL COHVEHTXOH
HD ~ou cxn
7/16/92
Governor Richards, Chairman Brown, Mayor Dinkins, our qreat host,
and my fellow Americans.
I am so proud of Al Gore. He said he came here toniqht because he
always wanted to do the warmup for Elvis.
Well, I . ran for
President this year for one reason and one reason only: . I wanted
to come back to this convention center and finish that sceech I
stareed four years aqo.
•
Well, last niqht Mario Cuomo taught us how a real nominating speech
should be given. He also made it clear why we have to.steer our
ship of state on a new course.
•
Toniqht I want to talk with you about my hope for the future, my
faith in the American people, and my ·vision of the kind of country
we can build, together.
I salute the qood men who were my companions on the campaiqn trail:
Tom Harkin, Bob Kerrey, Oouq Wilder, Jerry Brown and Paul Tsongas.
one sentence in the platform we built says it all:
"The most
important family policy, urban policy, labor policy, minority
policy and foreiqn policy America can have is an expandinq,
entrepreneurial economy of high-wage, high-skill jobs."
And so, in the name of all the people who do the work, pay the
taxes, raise the kids and play by the rules, in the name of the
hard-working Americans who make up our forqotten middle class, I
accept your nomination for President of the United States.
I am a product of that middle class.
will be forgotten no more.
And when I am President you
We meet at a special moment in history, you and I. The Cold War is
over; sovie~ Communism has collapsed; and our values -- freedom,
democracy, individual rights and free enterprise--they have
triumphed all aro\md the world. And yet just as we have won.the
Cold War abroad, we are losing the battles for economic opportunity
and social justice here at home.
Now that we have changed the
world, it's time to change America.
·.I
'
have netots fo:: t:he forces of greed and the defenders of the status
quo:
your time has come--and gone.
It's time for a change in
· America.
i
National Camcmqn l-4e~owt:s•:;!··, • P.O. Box 615 • !.Jttle Rock. Arkansas 72203 • Teleohone 15011 372·1992 • FAX 1501) Jn·2292
. . . . . " '. Cl·-···,. . . . .
~
�••
Tonight ten million of our fellow Americans are out of work. Tens
of millions more work harder for lower pay.
The i,.,~.l'!ltbent
President says unemployment always goes .up a .L.i~·=~~ .:.·e!·~::2 a
recovery begins. But unemployment only has to go •:.;; t:y c:-~~ ::tore
person before a real recovery can begin. And, Mr. Presiden~, you
are that man.
This election is about putting power back in ~ hands and pu~ting
governmen~ back on ~ side.
It's about putting people first.
You know, I've said that all across the country, and someone always
comes back at me, as a young man did just this week at the Henry
Street Settlement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He said,
"That sounds good, Bill. But you're a politician. Why should I
trust you?"
Tonight, as plainly as I can, I want to tell you who I .am, what I
believe, and where I want to lead America.
I never met my father. He was killed in a car wreck on a rainy road
three months before I was born, driving home from Chicago to
Arkansas to see my mother.
••
After that, my mother had to support us.
So we lived with my
grandparents while she went back to Louisiana to study nursing •
I can still see her clearly tonight through the eyes of a threeyear-old: kneeling at the railroad station and weeping as she put
me back on the train to Arkansas with my grandmother. She endured
her pain because she knew her sacrifice was the only way she could
support me and give me a better life.
My mother taught me. She taught me about family and hard work and
sacrifice. She held steady through tragedy after tragedy. And she
held our family, my brother and I, together through tough times.
As a child, I watched her go off to work each day at a time when it
wasn't always easy to be a working mother.
As an adult, I've watched her fight off breast cancer. And again
she has taught me a lesson in courage.
And always, always she
taught me to fight.
That's why I'll fight to create high-paying jobs so that parents
can afford to raise their children today.
That's why I'm so
committed to making sure every American gets the health care that
saved my mother's life, and that women's health care gets the same
attention as men's. That's why I'll fight to make sure women in
this country receive respect and dignity -- whether they work in
the home, out of the home, or both. You want to know where I get
my fighting spirit? It all started with my mother .
. • Thank you, Mother.
I love you.
�•
When I think about opportunity fer all Americans, I t!:::!.nk ;:tbout my
grandfather.
He ran a country store in cur little town of Hope. There were no
food stamps back then, so when his customers -- whether they were
white or black, who worked hard and did the best the? ~~ould, came
in with no money--well, he gave them food anyway --just made a note
of it. So did I. Before I was big enough to see over the counter,
I learned from him to lock up to people other folks looked down on.
My grandfather just had a qrade-schocl education.
But in that
country store he taught me mere about equality in the eyes of the
Lord than all my professors at Gecrqetown; more about the intrinsic
worth of every individual than all the philosophers at Oxford; and
he tauqht me more about the need for equal justice than all the
jurists at Yale Law School.
If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I
have to bringinq people together without regard to race, it all
started with my grandfather.
•
I learned a lot from another person, toe. ~ person who for more
than 20 years has worked hard to help our children--paying the
price of time to make sure our schools don't fail them. Someone
who traveled our state for a year, studying, learning, listening,
going to PTA meetings, school board meetings, town hall meetings,
putting together a package of school reforms recognized around the
nation, and doing it all while building a distinguished legal
career and being a wonderful loving mother.
That person is my wife.
Hillary tauqht me. She taught me that all children can learn, and
that each of us has a duty to help them do it. So if you want to
know why I care so much about our children and our future; it all
started with Hillary. I love you.
Frankly, I'm fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the
rest of us about "family values." our families have values. But
cur government doesn't.
I want an America where "family values" live in our actions, not
just in our speeches--an America that includes every family, every
traditional family and every extended family, every two-parent
family, every single-parent family, and every foster family--every
family.
~·
I do want to say something to the fathers in this country who have
chosen to abandon their children by neglecting to pay their child
support: take responsibility for your children or we will force
you to do so. Because governments don't raise children; parents
do. And you should.
..3
�•
And I want to say something to every child in America ton~ght who
is out there trying to qrow up without a father cr. a v.othe~:
I ~ how you feel. You're special, too. · You mat7~r to A~~=:~~.
And don't ever let anybody tell you you can't becc::u~ wha"t:ave.:· ;·ju
want to be. And if other politicians. make you feel like you're not
a part of their family, come on and be part of ours.
The thing that makes me angriest about what's gone wrong l~ che
last 12 years is that our government has lost touch with our
values, while our politicians continue to shout about them. I'm
tired of it.
I was raised to believe its that the American Dream was built on
rewarding hard work. But we have seen the folks in Washington turn
the American ethic on its head. For too long, those who play by
the rules and keep the faith have gotten the shaft, and those who
cut corners and cut deals have been rewarded. People are working ·
harder than ever, spending less time with their children, working
nights and weekends at their jobs instead of gong to PTA and Little
League or Scouts, and their incomes are still going down. Their
taxes are going up, and the costs of health care, housing and
education are going through the roof. Meanwhile, more and more of
our best people are falling into poverty -- .even when they work
forty hours a week.
•
our people are pleading for change, ·but government is in the way •
It has been hijacked by privileged, private interests.
It has
forgotten who really pays the bills around here -- it's taking more
of your money and giving you less in return.
We have got to go beyond the brain-dead politics in Washington, and
give our people the kind of government they deserve: a government
that works for them.
A President -- a President ought to be a powerful force for
progress. But right now I know how President Lincoln felt when
General McClellan wouldn't attack in the Civil War. He asked him,
"If you're not going to use your army, may I borrow it?"
And so
I say, George Bush, if you won't use your power to help America,
step aside. I will.
our country is falling behind. The President is caught in the grip
of a failed economic theory. We have gone from first to thirteenth
in the world in wages since Reagan and Bush have been in office.
Four years ago, candidate Bush said America is a special place, not
just "another pleasant country on the U.N roll call, between
Albania and Zimbabwe." Now, under President Bush, America has an
unpleasant economy stuck somewhere between Germany and Sri Lanka.
And for most Americans, Mr. President, life's a lot less kind and
a lot less gentle than it was before your Administration took
office.
i. •
our country has fallen so far, so fast that just a few months ago
the Japanese Prime Minister actually said he felt "sympathy" for
�•
the United States. Sympathy. When I am your President, the rest
of the world will not look down on us with pity, but U? t" u~ ,,;ith
respect again.
What is George Bush doing about our economic problems? Now, four
years ago he promised us fifteen million new jobs by this time.
And he's over fourteen million short. Al Gore and I can do bet1:er.
He has raised taxes on the people driving pick-up trucks, and
lowered taxes on people riding in limousines. We can do better.
He promised to balance the budget, but he hasn't even tried. In
fact, the budgets he has submitted have nearly doubled the debt.
Even worse, he wasted billions and reduced our investment in
education and jobs. We can do better.
So if you are sick and tired of a government that.doesn't work to
create jobs; if you're sick and tired of a tax system that's
stacked.against you; if you're sick and tired of exploding debt and
reduced investments in our future -- or if, like the great civil
rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer, you're just plain old sick and
tired of being sick and tired -- then join us, work with us, win
with us. And we can make our country the country it was meant to
be.
•
Now, George Bush talks a good game. But he has· no game plan to
rebuild America from the cities to the suburbs to the countryside
so that we can compete and win again in the global economy. I do.
He won't take on the big insurance companies and the bureaucracies
to control health costs and give us affordable health care for all
Americans. But I will.
He won't even implement the
on AIDS. But I will.
recommendations of his own Commission
He won't streamline the federal government, and change the way it
works; cut a hundred thousand bureaucrats, and put a hundred
thousand new police officers on the streets of American cities.
But I will.
He has never balanced a government budget.
times.
But I have, eleven
He won't break the stranglehold the special interests have on our
elections and the lobbyists have on our government. But I will.
He won't give mothers and fathers the simple chance to take some
time off from work when a baby is born or a parent is sick. But I
will.
We're losing our family farms at a rapid rate, and he has no
commitment to keep family farms in the family. But I do.
�--~
\
Ke's talked a lot about drugs, but he hasn't helped peo~le an the
front line to wage that war on drugs and crime. aut r ~ill.
Ke won't take the lead in protecting the enviroimte~": .::.:::•1 c::-eat:ing
new jobs in environmental technology. But I will.
You know what else?
He doesn't have Al Gore and
~.:
d ='"·
Just in case -- just in case you didn't notice, that's Gore with an
E on the end.
And George Bush -- George Bush won't quarantee a woman's right to
choose. I will. Listen, hear me now: I am not pro-abortion. I
am pro-choice strongly.
I believe this difficult and painful
decision should be left to the women of America. I hope the right
to privacy can be protected, and we will never again have to
discuss this issue on political platforms. But ~ am old enough to
remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade. And I do not want to
return .to the time when we made criminals of women and their
doctors.
Jobs. Education. Kealth care. These are not just commitments from
my lips. They are the work of my life.
•
Our priorities must be clear: we will put our pe.ople first again.
But priorities without a clear plan of action are just empty words •
To turn our rhetoric into reality we've got to change the way
government does business -- fundamentally.
Until we do, we'll
continue to pour billions of dollars down the drain.
The Republicans have campaigned against big government for a
generation. But have you noticed? They've ~this big government
for a generation. And they haven't changed a thing. They don't
want to fix government. They still want to campaign against it,
and that's all.
aut, my fellow Democrats, it's time for us to realize that we've
got some changing to do too. There is not a program in government
for every problem.
And if we want to use government to help
people, we've got to make it work again.
Because we are committed in this convention and in this platform to
making these changes, we are, as Democrats, in the words that Ross
Perot himself spoke today, a revitalized Democratic party. I am
well aware that all those millions of people who rallied to Ross
Perot's cause wanted to be in an army of patriots for change.
Tonight I say to them:
join us and together we will revitalize
America.
•
Now, I don't have all the answers.
But I do know the old ways
don't work.
Trickle down economics has sure failed.
And big
bureaucracies, both private and public, they've failed, too.
That's why we need a new approach to government--a government that
.,
�...... ·.... ~.\-
~·
offers more empowerment and less entitlement, more choices for
younq people in the schools they attend, in the public scho:-:1~ they
attend, and more choices for the elderly and for peopla ·.. ith
disabilities and the lonq-term care they receive--a gover:-.lllant: -:bat
is leaner, not meaner. A qovernment that expands opportunity, not
bureaucracy--a qovernment that understands that jobs must coma from
qrowth in a vibrant and vital system of free ente~prtse. I call
this approach a New Covenant -- a s·olemn aqreement. between the
people and their qovernment -- based not simply on what each of us
can take but on what all of us must qive to our nation.
We offer our people a new choice based on old values. We offer
opportunity. We demand responsibility. · We will build an American
community aqain.
The choice we offer is not conservative or
liberal.
In many ways it's not even Republican or Democratic,
It's different. It's new. And it will work.
It will work because it is rooted in the vision and the values of
the Ame~ican people. Of all the thinqs Georqe Bush has ever said
that I disaqree with, perhaps the thinq that bothers me most: is how
he derides and deqrades the American tradition of seeinq -- and
seekinq -- a better future. He mocks it as "the vision thinq."
aut remember just what the Scripture says: · "Where there is no
vision the people perish."
•
I hope -- I .hope nobody in this great hall toniqht or in our
beloved country has to qo throuqh tomorrow without a vision.
I
hope no one ever tries to raise a child without a vision. I hope
nobody ever starts a business or plants a crop in the qround
without a vision--for where there is no vision the people perish.
one of the reasons we have so many children in so much trouble in
so many places in this nation is because they have seen so little
opportunity, so little responsibility, and so little loving, caring
community that they literally cannot imaqine the life we are
callinq them to lead. And so I say aqain, where there is no vision
America will perish.
What is the vision of our New Covenant?
America with millions of new jobs in dozens of new industries
movinq confidently toward the 21st Century. An America that says
to entrepreneurs and business people:
We will qive you more
incentives and more opportunity than ever before to develop the
skills of your workers and create American jobs and American wealth
in the new qlobal economy. But you must do your part; you must be
responsible. American companies must act like American companies
aqain -- exportinq products, not jobs.
That's what this New
Covenant is all about.
An
America in which the doors of colleqe are thrown open once aqain.
to the sons and dauqhters of stenographers and steelworkers. We'll
say: Everybody can borrow the money to qo to colleqe. But you
must do your part. You must pay it back
from your paychecks, or
An
7
.,
�...
------'
.. ... , .. :.... :, .,:_,;. :........... :\
,._,
better yet, by going back home and serving your communJ.t:ies. J'ust ·
think of it.
Think of it; millions. of .enerqetic ycunq mP.n and
women, serving their country by policinq the streecs. or t:ea<:::-~ir.q
the children or caring for the sick, or working with :ne eldc:.rl'l or.
people with disabilities, or helping young people to stay off drugs
and out of gangs, giving us all a sense of new hop9 and limitless
possibilities. That's what this New Covenant is a~l ~b~u~.
An America in which health care is a right, not a privilege.
In
which we say to all of our people: Your qovernment has the couraqe.
-- finally -- to take on the health care profiteers and make health
care affordable for every family.
But you must do your part:
preventive care, prenatal care, childhood immunization; saving·
lives, saving money, saving families from heartbreak. That's what
the New Covenant is all about.
An America in which middle class incomes-- not middle·class taxes
-- are going up. An America, yes, in which the wealthiest few -- .
those making over $200,000 a year -- are asked to pay their fair
share.
An America in which the rich are not soaked -- but the
middle class is not drowned either. Responsibility starts at the
top; that's what the New Covenant is all about.
America where we end welfare as we know it.
We will say to
those on welfare: you will have and you deserve the opportunity
throuqh training and education, through child care and medical
coverage, to liberate yourself. But then, when you can, you must
work, because welfare should be a second chance, not a way of life.
That's what the New Covenant is all about.
An
America with the world's strongest defense; ready and willing to
use force, when necessary.
An America at the forefront of the
global effort to preserve and protect our common environment -- and
promoting global growth. An America that will not coddle tyrants,
from Baghdad to Beijing. An America that champions the cause of
freedom and democracy, from Eastern Europe to Southern Africa, and
in our own hemisphere in Haiti and CUba.
An
The end of the Cold War permits us to reduce defense spending while
still maintaining the strongest defense in the world. But we must
plow back every dollar of defense cuts into building American jobs
right here at home.
I know well that the world needs a-strong
America, but we have learned that strength begins at home.
But the ·New covenant is about more than opportunities and
responsibilities for you and your families.
It's also about our
common community.
Tonight every one of you knows deep in your
heart that we are too divided.
It is time to heal America. And so we must say to every American:
look beyond the stereotypes that blind us.
We need each other.
All of us, we need each other. We don't have a person to waste.
And yet, for too long, politicians have told the most of us that
are doing all right that what's really wrong with America is the
i
�.
•
moral responsibility to make it so •
That future entered Dri life the · niqht our dauq.h:~.-~ C:e.lssa ·was
born.. As I stood in that. delivery ro0111, I was ovet:=:O::e with the .
thouqht that God had qiven me a blessinq my own father never knew:
the chance to hold my chi.ld in my arms.·
·
Somewhere at this very mement, another child is hcrn in America.
Let it be our cause to qive that child a happy home, a healthy
family, a hopeful future. Let it be our .cause to see that child
reach the fullest of her God-qiven abilities. Let it. be our cause
that she qrow up stronq and secure, braced by her challenqes, but
never, never struqqlinq alone; with family and friends and a faith
that in America, no one is left out; no one is left behind.
Let it be our cause that when she is able, she qives somethinq back
to her children, her community, and. her country. And let it be our
cause to qive her a country ~at's cominq toqether, and movinq
ahead -- a country ·of boundless hopes and endless dreams; a country
that once again lifts up its people, and inspires the wor.ld.
Let that be our cause and our commitment and our New Covenant.
•
I end toniqht where it all beqan for me:
place called Hope •
I still believe in a
•
10
..·,,
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Carter Wilkie
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of Speechwriting
Carter Wilkie
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-1995
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36420" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431955" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2008-0699-F
Description
An account of the resource
Carter Wilkie served as a White House speechwriter for the first two years of the first Clinton Administration. This collection contains materials found within Carter Wilkie’s speechwriting files. These materials, primarily dating to 1993 and 1994, regard quotations from President Clinton’s political career, the First 100 Days of the Clinton Administration, and President Clinton’s 1994 State of the Union Address.
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Office of Records Management
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
41 folders in 3 boxes
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Inaugural Address Briefing Book [4]
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of Speechwriting
Carter Wilkie
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2008-0699-F
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Box 2
<a href="http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/2008/2008-0699-F.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431955" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Adobe Acrobat Document
Medium
The material or physical carrier of the resource.
Reproduction-Reference
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
12/29/2014
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
42-t-7431955-20080699F-002-010-2014
7431955