Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much. Thank you. You know, I told Leslie, I said, ``Max is doing so well I don't need to say anything. If…”

“Thank you very much. Thank you. You know, I told Leslie, I said, ``Max is doing so well I don't need to say anything. If I say anything now, it's going to be an anticlimax.'' [Laughter] He had me halfway believing that stuff by the time he got through. [Laughter] Let me say to all of you, I am delighted to see such a large crowd. I'm sorry, apparently some people had to be turned away; I wish I could have seen them as well. I thank you for coming. I thank you for coming to see me and for coming to support your Congressman. I want to thank-- Mr. Mayor, thank you for making me feel so welcome. And I thank the whole committee that was involved in this: my longtime friend Judge Ed Miller--thank you, Judge--Molly Beth Malcolm and Willie Ray and all the others who are here on the host committee. I want to thank my friend of many years, once my law student, John Rafaelli, who has got a lot more money than I do and is putting us up in this beautiful hotel now. I thank him for that. Let me say just a couple of words. You know, I came today for two reasons. I came here to help Max, and I also went home to Hope to dedicate the birthplace that the local foundation there set up. They restored the old home that I lived in from the time I was born until I was 4 years old. And it was an interesting day. You know, it was cold and rainy, and the wind was blowing. I said, you know, I always got humbled when I came home, but this was the worst. I mean, for 5 years I've been trying to convince the American people that this global warming was for real. [Laughter] And we have the coldest March day in 100 years in Hope; I don't know how much ground I lost today on that. [Laughter] But as you might imagine, it was a very emotional day. A lot of my-- my brother and his wife and my wonderful young nephew came in from California. My stepfather was there; a lot of my kinfolks from all over southwest Arkansas and from Texas came in on my mother's and my father's side of the family. And last night, when I was coming back from a remarkable trip I had to Central America to see the victims of the hurricanes there and the associated disasters and to reaffirm the partnership that we have for the future, I sat and tried to write down a few things that I wanted to say. And I had, surprisingly, since I was 4 when I moved out of that place, a lot of memories still of that wonderful old house. And it occurred to me that in that little town where I was born and where I spent so much time in the intervening years, when I was a kid, nearly 50 years ago, there were two things that we were raised to believe in that town that I have tried to bring to this country and that I have tried to get every child in this country to believe: One is to be optimistic, to believe that you can create a life for yourself and live out your dreams. The other is to have a sense of belonging, to believe that we are part of one community in our towns, in our States, in our country, and increasingly with like-minded people all around the world, that we belong, and that because we belong we have a responsibility not only to ourselves and our loved ones but to others, and that the better our neighbors do, the better we'll do. I've tried to convince every child in this country that both those things are true. And the evidence is I may have done better out in the country than I have in Washington, DC--[laughter]--but making the effort has been a joy for me. I can say without any hesitation that much of the good things that have happened I was a part of, but certainly not solely responsible for. Many of the things which Max talked about could not have been achieved if I hadn't had strong allies in the United States Congress. And I came here for him today not simply because he is a member of my party but because we share the same values, the same convictions, the same vision for the future of the country, because he fights for you up there, because he--and he does it, I think, in three ways. Number one, on issues that are specific to this district, he speaks to me about them. Number two, he believes in things that are good for America that will have a special impact here: our efforts to lower class sizes in the early grades, our efforts to open the doors of college to all people with the tax credits and the student loans and the other initiatives of the administration. He believes that we ought to have a Patients' Bill of Rights to protect the quality of health care for people in managed care programs throughout the country. And I do, too. [Laughter] He believes in the proposal I made to save Social Security and Medicare before we spend the surplus, and I want to talk about that a little in a minute. And finally, in this last year, even though he is a very junior Member of the United States House of Representatives, he was one of the most serious, substantive, thoughtful, and effective advocates, asking all the Members of Congress to read the Constitution, read the history, and uphold their oath to protect the kind of Government that we have preserved in this country for over 220 years. For all those reasons, you should be very, very proud of your Congressman, who is a remarkable person. Now, I'm having a great time. You know, I can now go around, and I can go to fundraisers like this, and none of them are for me. [Laughter] And I love that. I love the idea that if I can stay healthy, I can spend quite a few years trying to give back to this political system and to candidates and to people that I believe in who have given me so much. I want you to know that in the 2 years I have left, what I'm going to try to do is to take advantage of the good times we have now and the optimism and the self-confidence we have to ask the American people to look at the big, unmet challenges this country still has ahead of us when we start this new century. You know, when I ran for President in 1991 and 1992, we had to get the country working again--literally, working. The unemployment rate was too high. Real wages for working people hadn't gone up in 20 years. The crime rate was going up. The welfare rolls were exploding. We had increasing social tensions between people of different racial and religious groups, manifested in civil disturbances in some of our cities. And it seemed to me that we clearly had to stop doing the same things we've been doing for the last dozen years and take a different course. And we did, and the results have been good, and Max talked about them. But now we have to say, ``Well, so now what?'' Should we just sort of, like being at school, should we call a recess and just say, ``Gee, we feel good. We're going to go out and play a while?'' I think that would be a big mistake. I think it would be a big mistake for several reasons. Number one, we've still got some unaddressed problems. Number two, there are big challenges looming ahead of us that are not right in front of us now. Number three, the world is changing very, very fast, and people get punished for sitting on their laurels. You don't hire people to be Presidents, Senators, Members of Congress, Governors, mayors, hold other positions of responsibility, to go around and smile and say how great things are. I never will forget one time in 1990 I was trying to decide whether to run for Governor again in Arkansas, and I had been Governor 4 times, and I had served 10 years. And I used to have Governor's Day at the State Fair, and I'd just sit out there in a little booth, and anybody that wanted to come by could come by and talk. And this old boy in overalls came up to me, looked to be about 70 years old, and he said, ``Bill, are you going to run for Governor again?'' And I said, ``I don't know. If I do, will you vote for me?'' He said, ``I guess so. I always have.'' ``Well,'' I said, ``aren't you sick of me after all these years?'' He said, ``No, but everybody else I know is.'' [Laughter] And I said--it's a true story. And I said, ``Well''--and I was sort of hurt, you know. I said, ``Well, don't you think I've done a good job?'' He said, ``Yes, but you also drew a paycheck every 2 weeks, didn't you?'' He said, ``That's what we hired you to do. What I want to know is what you're going to do tomorrow.'' Interesting point. Smart guy. Smart man. And so while it's important to take our time to do what I did today--to honor our past, to water our roots, to cherish the ties that bind--it's also important to realize that the fundamental obligation of life is to make the most of today and tomorrow and to always be thinking ahead. Now, let me tell you about this Social Security issue, for example. Here are the big challenges I think we face, and there are more, but I'll just say a few. Number one, we've got to figure out how to keep this economy going, because it's beginning to work for people. I mean, average people are finally beginning to get pay raises, with inflation under control, and we're beginning to get jobs to people who haven't been able to get jobs. So we've got to keep the economy going, and we've got to bring opportunity to people who haven't had it. There are still urban areas, there are still small towns, there are still rural areas, there are still Indian reservations where you couldn't prove it by the people who live there that we've got 18 million new jobs. And we've got to figure out--one of the reasons I went to Central America, one of the reasons I travel around all over the world is, a bunch of our growth comes from our ability to sell what we make to other people, and if half the world is in a recession as they are today, it's hard. I'm telling you, we've got a lot of farmers in terrible shape-- terrible shape--record low prices for commodities--but partly because we've been selling a ton of stuff to Asia and a lot of stuff to Latin America, and they can't buy, in the case of Latin America, as much as they did, and in some cases in Asia they can't buy anything they were buying before because of the economic problems. So I want to deal with that. Now, the second problem we've got is the aging of America. Now, the older I get, the more I see that as a high-class problem. [Laughter] But the truth is, the average age in America today is over 76 years. If you're in this audience tonight and you're over 60 years old, if you're still in pretty good shape, you have a life expectancy of 80 or more. Audience member. I hope so.”