Bill Clinton: “Thank you, Mrs. Bailey, for the wonderful introduction and for the wonderful life you have lived. I want to thank all…”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bailey, for the wonderful introduction and for the wonderful life you have lived. I want to thank all the mothers who are here for doing such a good job with their sons and daughters, helping them to achieve a full measure of ambition. I want to thank the Vice President and Mrs. Gore for being wonderful examples of good parents. And I want to thank my wonderful wife for being the best mother I have ever known, as well as for taking on this often thankless but terribly important job. You know, since Tipper was kind enough to mention my mother--I was sitting here thinking, I know some of these mothers here. Rosa DeLauro's mother campaigned with me in New Haven, and Rosa said, ``You need to get my mother to go with you. She's worth a lot more votes than I am.'' [Laughter] So I watched all the people along the way being too intimidated to say no, they wouldn't vote for me. [Laughter] Sure enough, we carried it. On Mother's Day we tend to think of the wonderful and warm and kind and loving and sacrificial things our mothers do. You heard Hillary say that, like most families, mothers make the health care decisions and prod everybody else to do it. But you know, very often mothers are also the most practical members of the family and the most hard-headed and the most insistent that we face up to our responsibilities.…”