Bill Clinton: “You know, I'm rethinking my position about wanting everybody to have a cell phone in this country. [Laughter] He's a…”

“You know, I'm rethinking my position about wanting everybody to have a cell phone in this country. [Laughter] He's a good guy. Don't worry about it. But anyway, so we made this argument, you know, and you guys took a chance. And New York really stood behind us, gave us a chance to serve. But it's not an argument anymore. Those of you who've been with us 6\1/2\ years, when you go out to discuss citizenship and issues and the future, say, ``Look, whatever you want to say about that crowd, there are certain things that you can't dispute. We now have the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years, the lowest crime rates in 26 years, the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years, the longest peacetime expansion in history, and 19\1/2\ million new jobs.'' You can't argue; that happened. And every time--every time--every time we did something that tried to reconcile our economic objectives with our other objectives--whether it was family and medical leave or vetoing the first two welfare bills because they didn't have guaranteed food and medicine coverage for poor children and enough money for child care or trying to clean up the air and the water or saying that the system we had for taking care of little kids and immunizing them--we were nuts, and we were determined to reach 90 percent immunization, which we did, by the way--all of these things-- people would say--or raising the minimum wage or you name it--that was always going to be something that would hurt the economy. It turned out that that was wrong, that putting things together made all of our efforts reinforce one another. I feel even more strongly about that when it comes to putting people together. One of the things I've spent an enormous amount of time doing in the last 2 years is trying to make sure America is Y2K ready. I've even got these little things that look like beanie babies that are Y2K bugs I have around just to remind me that we don't want there to be one. You know, to most people, that's about adjusting a computer. But if you think about it, there is a lot more than mechanics involved in being ready for the new millennium, and a lot more than economics involved in being a successful country. When I signed the Executive order to prohibit discrimination in the Federal work force based on sexual orientation, I thought I was helping us to come together. I think ENDA will help us to come together. I think the fact that we have gay and lesbian Americans, like Jim Hormel and over 200 other openly gay and lesbian people, serving in appointed positions in our Government throughout the administration, doing normal jobs--I got so tickled when you were reading--you know, if you look at our people and what they do, they do real jobs. They're out there showing up. And every time they come in contact with somebody, they destroy another stereotype. They rob people of another attack. You know, when we were in that awful battle that I waged and didn't win over the military service issue, there was a national survey run which showed that the most significant factor tilting people in favor of the so-called gays in the military policy was whether they consciously were aware that they had known a gay person. And those who said they were consciously aware that they had had a personal relationship, contact with a gay person were two to one in favor of the policy. Now, I say that because I believe that our whole society is like all of us are individually. We've got these scales always tilting back and forth between the forces of hope and the forces of fear. And what people do not know, they more easily fear. What they fear, they can easily hate. And what they hate, they quickly dehumanize. And it is a slippery slope. So I say to you, this hate crimes legislation is important. People say, ``Well, you know, the killers of James Byrd got the death penalty in Texas, and maybe you don't need it.'' But we do need it, because there are 8,000 reported hate crimes in 1997 alone, about one an hour. And people need to focus on it. When those kids got shot at the Jewish community center school, and then that Filipino postalworker got murdered, and then the former basketball coach of Northwestern and the young Korean Christian walking out of his church got shot in the heartland of Illinois and Indiana. And all of those things happened. And all of you know that we are now observing the one-year anniversary of the death of young Matthew Shepard, and I want to say I am honored beyond words that his mother, Judy, is with us tonight. And I'd like to ask her to stand. I thanked her tonight before I came out for her continuing work. And she looked at me, and she said, ``I'm just a mom.'' But when I was in Los Angeles last week, speaking to the ANGLE group, a young person came up to me and said that I had given her more legitimacy and sense of security and self-worth than she had gotten in her own family. And I said to this child--I want you to know, because this is the point I'm trying to make; I'm not bragging on me, here. I'm here to make this point about our country. I said, ``You've got to be patient with them. They're afraid. You've got to stay with them. They're scared.'' And it is amazing to me. I have spent so much time as President, on the one hand trying to maximize your access to the wonders of the modern world--you know, we're hooking up all the classrooms to the Internet; we got this E-rate, so that the poor schools can reach across the digital divide and all the kids can work computers in every classroom in America; we have passed the Telecommunications Act, and we've got over 300,000 new high-tech jobs just in a couple of years; and we're trying to invest in a new generation Internet; and we're about to break the human genome code, and when we do that, when mothers bring their children home from the hospital after giving birth, they'll have little genetic maps that may, some people believe literally, may help to raise life expectancy for children born early in the next century to as much as 100 years. And you know, it's all so exciting. But it is profoundly sobering to consider that at the time of greatest technological change in all of human history, we are most bedeviled at home and around the world by the most primitive of human failings, the fear of the other. Think about what I have done as your President, how much time I've spent trying to help the Nation heal up from all these school shootings or what happened in Oklahoma City and the hate crimes I mentioned. And then think about the parallels we have--they're all individual instances; I recognize that. But think about the parallels in terms of the failings of the human heart and mind with the ongoing problems in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Bosnia and Kosovo, in Northern Ireland, in the tribal slaughters of Rwanda and other places in Africa, where people really can't believe they matter unless they have somebody to look down on that they can dehumanize and justify killing. So that's how their life counts when we ought to be trying to tell people that they should be excited by the differences between people, secure in the knowledge that our common humanity is more important than all the differences that we have. And somehow we have to do this. And words alone won't do it. And laws are important, but laws alone won't do it, either. And we've got to go out and confront our neighbors, including our own families. We've got to ask people to listen as well as to talk. And we have to help people to get beyond their fears. You know, when I go and give speeches to political groups, I tell them that I want America to continue to change, that I myself would not vote for anyone who ran for President saying, ``Vote for me. I'll do just what Bill Clinton did. He did a good job,'' because things are changing. And I talk about meeting the challenge of the aging of America and reforming Social Security and Medicare and meeting the challenge of the children of America, the largest and most diverse group ever, and giving them all a world-class education and meeting the challenge of a 21st century economy by putting a human face on globalization and trade by investing in the markets of America that had been left behind in the poor areas, by giving everybody access to the Internet so we can fully bridge the divide and by paying the country's debt off. I talk about these things. I talk about meeting the challenge of global warming. And it's mostly modern stuff looking to the future, and it's all profoundly important. But if you look at the journey of a country to find its true spirit, the most important thing is that we try to be one America that is a force for the common humanity of the world. It was, I think, a very human feeling that led the Congress finally to work with us to dramatically increase funding for all elements of the AIDS fight, so that now we have continued reductions in AIDS-related deaths and a commitment to genuinely find a cure and a vaccine. I think it was a human thing. We've still got a long way to go. You know we do. And we pick our targets when we, as a country, when we're defensive. I was outraged this week when the first African-American ever to serve on the State Supreme Court of Missouri was voted down after having been handily voted out of the Judicial Committee of the Senate with the Republicans voting for him. They voted him down on the floor of the Senate by misrepresenting his record on capital punishment so that the Republican Senator from the home State would have an issue to run against the Governor on relating to commuting the sentences to life without parole for those who murdered other people. So who cares about the symbolism of the first African-American judge ever on the Missouri Supreme Court? You know, not many people, African- Americans, are going to vote for this guy anyway. ``Throw him to the wolves. Destroy his career. Distort his record. Who cares? I need a political issue.'' And we all have to be afraid of that, of objectifying others for short- term gain. On the other hand, look at the number of people now who are in the Government, in all forms of our economic and social life. There's a reason the President is here, besides my heart. It is the right thing to do, and you have been heard. You have been heard. You have been heard. There is a reason the Senator is here. There is a reason Al Gore came here last year, apart from his passionate conviction about the moral propriety of being here and the right thing to do. We now know that because you are willing to work and speak and stand, we can move the body politic in the right direction. People are fundamentally good, but they're paralyzed when they're scared. And in spite of all these issues that I go around advocating, that I passionately believe in, if I were told that I was going to have to leave this old world in 72 hours and I could just do one thing for America and that was it and I just had to pick one thing, I would try to leave one America. Because if we were together, if we were willing to have all of our differences be differences of opinion and not to be afraid of one another and never to dehumanize one another, we would be not only a better country here; our influence for good abroad would be exponentially greater even than it is today. We would have a chance to give our children the millennium that they deserve. So I say again, the most important thing I want to say to you is thank you. I'm proud of what we've done together. I wish we could have done better. I hope we can do more. But never forget, you deserve most of the credit. And you will get more as you fight harder but also as you are human to people who do not see you. You must--you've got to believe in this great country, that this is fundamentally a good country, that Alexis de Tocqueville was right when he said, ``America is great because America is good.'' But you know, we've done a lot of things that were pretty lousy, starting with slavery, as Thomas Jefferson said. So we all are always in the process of learning to be better, of learning how our attitudes and our actions are in conflict with what we believe. Life is a constant struggle, therefore, for true integrity, for integrating your mind and your body and your spirit. And so is the life of a nation. I am indebted to you because I happened to be President and to seek this job at a time when you were raising these issues, and you gave me a chance to make a contribution. You made me a better President; you made me a better person. Don't give up, and don't you ever turn dark. Don't do it. We can still make the America of our dreams. Thank you, and God bless you.”