THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________________For Immediate Release
September 11, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT NEW YORK SENATE 2000 RECEPTION
Private Residence
New York, New York
7:43 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Well, if I were showing good judgment, I would say
nothing after that. (Laughter.) First, let me thank our host and hostess
for making us feel so welcome in this beautiful, beautiful place.
I would like to thank all of you for the contributions you have made
to America in these last years that I've been privileged to serve as
President. Because I sometimes think that most of what I did was to get
the stumbling blocks out of your way. You did the rest -- every one of
you, each in your own way.
One of the things that bothers me as I travel around the world today
is, I see everywhere I go, in the poorest village in Africa, I can sit with
children for 10 minutes, and I see the light of intelligence in people's
eyes. I see the energy, the belief, the hope. And I realize that so many
times, people like me in positions of responsibility just mess it up for
them, if people play games with power and create illusions in the minds of
people about false values, and all of a sudden, all these brilliant
children grow up and there's nothing for them to do, there's no education
for them to get, and no dreams for them to fulfill.
And so, if I've had anything to do with what any of you have achieved
in the last eight years, I've just tried to make sure that we were doing
the right thing so that you would be able to do what you do so well.
And I have to tell you, I think America is profoundly indebted to all
of its immigrant people, and there are many people who came here from other
countries not from India here in this room tonight, and I thank them as
well.
But I think I should say a special word of appreciation to the Indian
community in the United States which, of all of our more than 200 ethnic
and religious groups, ranks first in education and in income; a great
tribute to your efforts and to your values. (Applause.)
I loved my trip to India. And when Hillary and Chelsea came home,
they told me that if I didn't go to another country before I left the
presidency, I had to go to India. So I did. (Applause.) As you know, I
visited more briefly the rest of the Subcontinent. I regret that I was not
more help to you in the cause of peace, but I will keep trying.
(Applause.)
I had to confess to a reporter the other day -- I say this out of
deference to my good friends, John and Margo Catsimatidis who are here, who
have more than a passing interest in Greece and the relationships between
Greece and Turkey and the problems in Cyprus. I do believe when I leave
office, I will have made progress on every problem I tackled around the
world except, so far, I can't say I moved the ball forward on the Indian
subcontinent or in Cyprus; but I have tried, and I will keep trying. I
promise you that. (Applause.)
I just want to say a couple of words about this election and about
Hillary in particular. So many of you were kind to say things when you
went through the line and you wished I could run for a third term and all
of that. But this is a country of citizens, and this has always been a
country in which the citizens were the most important people.
When Harry Truman went home to Missouri after an enormously important
period in our country's history, when he basically organized our world to
deal with the Cold War, he said that he was resuming his most important
title, that of citizen. And so, now that my party has a new leader and my
family has a new candidate -- (laughter) -- I suppose my official title
should be Cheerleader-In-Chief instead of Commander-In-Chief. (Laughter
and applause.)
But I will say this because I think all of you who have enjoyed great
success in our country will identify with it. If you work hard, you also
have to work smart. Ideas have consequences. If you have a bad idea, it
doesn't matter how hard you work with it, you still won't get good
consequences out of it. And the important thing that I think that has been
at the core of all my concern about this election is that I think it is
easier for a free people to make a mistake when times are good than when
times are bad.
The American people took a chance on me and Hillary and Al and Tipper
Gore in 1992, but it wasn't much of a chance, because we were in trouble,
and everybody knew we had to change and try something new. So they gave us
a chance. But we changed the economic policy, the education policy, the
health care policy, the environmental policy, the criminal justice policy
and big parts of the foreign policy of our country.
You now have had a test run. And so, yes, I feel especially strongly,
obviously, about Hillary. But the thing that matters to me as an American
is that we keep changing, but that we keep changing in the direction in
which we are going. Because we still have big challenges out there. There
are still too many children living in poverty in this country when they
should not be. There are still too many children that don't have
excellence of education that they should have. There is still inadequate
preparation for the aging of America when the so-called baby boom
generation retires. And under present estimates, there will only be about
two people working for every one person retired and on our Social Security
system.
We must not let the aging of America impose a burden on our children
and their ability to raise our grandchildren. So we have these big
challenges. We also, as Americans, have not fully recognized the extent to
which we are interdependent with the rest of the world. We should be doing
more to develop the capacity of Indians within India and other peoples
around the world, and building trading and other ties with people and
working with people more. That's why I came up here and spent three days
last week at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations, meeting with
leaders from all over the world, doing my best to try to create the
impression that America does not wish to dominate the world, but to work
with it so that we can all win together.
There is a very interesting book out today called "Nonzero," by an
American writer named Robert Wright. But it might have had some roots in
Oriental philosophy. The basic argument of the book, the "Nonzero" book
is, that as societies grow more advanced and complex, people inevitably
grow more interdependent, both within nations and across national
boundaries.
And, therefore, notwithstanding the terrible things that happened in
the 20th century and the world wars and the oppression of the
dictatorships, the world essentially has continued to grow more
interdependent, which means that wisdom dictates that we look for more and
more human interaction where everyone wins, which are not, in the parlance
of game theories, zero-sum solutions, but win-win solutions, where we look
for nonzero solutions.
The reason that I think it is important for Hillary to be in the
Senate is that for 30 years, staring with the welfare of children and their
families, with the need for people to balance work and child-rearing with
the understanding that the most important work of any society is raising
children well, she has spent a lifetime looking for solutions in which
everyone comes out better.
Now, the book is not naive, and neither am I. There is a race for
president; one person will win and one person will lose. There's a race
for this Senate seat; one will win and one will lose. But we should vote
for the person who will make us all win more, who realizes that we all do
better when we help each other and when everyone has a chance. And for all
the advances in this country, we can't yet say that is the truth.
One of the things that upsets me from time to time is when some of our
critics -- and I say it because, regrettably, she's inherited most of my
enemies -- (laughter) -- and probably maybe she's made one or two on her
own, but not many -- (laughter) -- they'll say, well, she wouldn't be up
here running for the Senate if she weren't the First Lady. The truth is
that if she hadn't been married to me and spent 30 years trying to help
other people and do things for other people, she might have been doing this
20 years ago.
So I want you to understand that, yes, I'm biased, but New York could
not pick a person who is better suited for the genuine challenges that our
state, our nation and our world face in the new millennium than Hillary.
And I thank you. (Applause.)
END
7:53 P.M. EDT
President and First Lady | Vice President and Mrs. Gore
Record of Progress | The Briefing Room
Gateway to Government | Contacting the White House | White House for Kids
White House History | White House Tours | Help
Privacy Statement