Bill Clinton: “in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania December 2, 1999 Thank you so much. Thank you, David, Bill, Mr. Mayor, ladies and…”

“in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania December 2, 1999 Thank you so much. Thank you, David, Bill, Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great honor for me to be here tonight. You know, I'm preparing for what it will be like a year from now when I am just a member of the Senate spouses club--[laughter]--when I have to know my place more. And I thought that there could be no better preparation than to come be the warm-up act for Ed Rendell tonight. [Laughter] Let me say, in all seriousness, I am profoundly honored to be here. I'll never forget the first time I met Mayor Rendell here in Philadelphia in 1992 when I was running for President. And we were walking down the streets of a neighborhood where he had an anticrime program going. And we shot a few baskets. We made very few, but we shot more. [Laughter] And I thought that this--I have met a kindred spirit, because not only did we agree on so many of the same philosophies on crime, on welfare, on the economy, but we agreed on how public life should be conducted. I have thought about it so many times since, but I got into the political race for President in 1991 at a time when not just Philadelphia but the whole country was facing economic distress and social division, political drift, and then kind of the whole discrediting of the enterprise of government.…”