Bill Clinton: “Well, let me begin by thanking you for the wonderful welcome, thanking you for being here for Mary. Tony and Kristine, I…”

“Well, let me begin by thanking you for the wonderful welcome, thanking you for being here for Mary. Tony and Kristine, I have now been in your home and Slam Jam's. [Laughter] And I like them both very much. Thank you so much for opening your home to a few of your friends today. It is a wonderful act of generosity. I'd like to thank all the candidates who are here. They've all been introduced, but I thank them for coming. I thank Mayor Coyne and David Leland and Mayor Starr and--Mayor Coyne, thank you for being here. I would like to say also a special word of appreciation to David Leland and the work that he has done with the Ohio Democratic Party. I think it's one of the best State Democratic Parties in the entire United States, and I thank you. And I thank all of these legislators and others who are here who are a part of that. I'd like to thank Tony and Kristine for having their family here; and I'd like to thank Mary for having her mother, her husband, her kids--her whole family here. This has turned out to be a family affair. I'd also like to say a special word of thanks--I always try to do this when I come to Ohio. You know, the press said that I would be the nominee of the Democratic Party when I won the Ohio primary in 1992. And then at the Democratic Convention in New York, Ohio's votes put me over the top officially. And then on election night in 1992, all the experts didn't predict that I was a winner until Ohio flashed on the screen for the Clinton-Gore ticket. And I thank you for that. And then in 1996, our margin of victory here was more than tripled over 1992. And I thank you for that. It took a lot of heartache away from me on election day, so I thank you for all that. As Tony has already said, I would like to say a special word of appreciation to the family of Tom Coury for continuing to sponsor and support this event, for the love they had for him. And I would like to say a special word of appreciation for the feeling he had for the First Lady. We talked about that a little tonight. She is down in Uruguay, having the second of her Vital Voices conferences. That's a group that she's organized all over the world--starting, I might add for the Irish here, in Northern Ireland--to organize women committed to peace and to economic development and to good family-supportive policies. So I wish she could be here. But I would like to thank Robert, Thomas, Traci, Teri, and Robert for being here and for what the Courys have meant in their support of me. And thank you for supporting Mary today. Yes, give them a hand again. That's good. [Applause] I want you to know why I came here today. I am here to support Mary Boyle for the Senate. I'm here to support her because she's got an outstanding record in public service, because she has good values and good positions on the issues; you just heard them. I came here because I like her, I have confidence in her, and because if enough of you help her, she can win this election in November and make a big difference to the future of the United States. Ohio in so many ways is so representative of America. And it's important that you understand that a Senator from Ohio, in a very profound sense, can represent America and the best in America and can have a profound impact on the future of this country, simply by doing what's best for you. John Glenn called me night before last, just to tell me to hang in there and expressed his support and friendship. We've had a wonderful relationship. But he called me also one more time to thank me for letting him go up in that spaceship--[laughter]--because he was going down to Florida to complete his last training. First of all, he told me he was too old to be in the Senate, and then he asked me if he could go into space. [Laughter] When he said that, I didn't think we could get anybody to run for the Senate. I thought everybody would be mortally terrified. [Laughter] But when I think about that--you should think about what kind of person you want to replace John Glenn, because he not only represented you, America looked to him--and not just because he went up in space early but because of what he represented after he came down. And I think you need to think about that. You know, when I ran for President in 1992, except for President Carter's term, we hadn't had much success at electing Presidents since 1968. And I said to the American people and to the people of Ohio, ``Look, I'd like to take a different approach to the country's problems. I'd like to put an end to a lot of this partisan bickering in Washington and the shouting back and forth.'' And I believe that a lot of what we're hearing about National Government is just flat wrong. I don't believe that you can help business by hurting labor. I think a good economic policy is pro-business and pro-labor. I don't believe you can grow the economy by destroying the environment. Over the long-run, that's a loser. I think we have to prove that we can improve the environment as we grow the economy. I don't believe that you can just jail your way out of the crime problem. Sure, people should be punished, but the best policy is to keep kids out of trouble in the first place with a sensible prevention policy. I don't believe people on welfare who can work should be on welfare. I think they ought to have to work. But I don't think when they go to work their children ought to be punished by losing their nutrition and their health care benefits. If you took a totally nonpolitical poll of families and you asked them what they were really worried about--working people with children--most people would tell you, even in upper income levels, that what they really worry about is how to properly balance their job at work and their job at home, which is still the most important job in America, raising your kids. Most everybody would tell you that. So I said, ``If you vote for me, I'll try to reform the welfare system to make people work who ought to work, but I'm not going to make them sacrifice their responsibilities to their kids. There's got to be a way to balance these two things.'' And that's what we've done. I said there was a way to bring the deficit down and continue to invest in education, in health care, in research, in making this country strong. I felt that America could be more active than we had been in promoting peace and freedom and prosperity around the world. And the American people gave me and Al Gore and Hillary and our whole team a chance to see whether we were right or not. And when we celebrated a couple of days ago the first balanced budget in 29 years, the biggest surplus in the history of the country, the biggest surplus as a percentage of our economy since the 1950's, it came at a time when we also had the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years, the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the smallest percentage of people on welfare in 29 years, the lowest inflation rate in 32 years, with the smallest Federal Government in 35 years, and the highest homeownership in the history of the country. I am proud that we were able to work together to achieve those results for the United States. Now, let me tell you why this election is important. It's important for two reasons. First of all, we've got to decide what to do with this moment. That's the big issue. And let me say, I can't thank you enough, a lot of you who came by and said hello to me earlier, for the very kind, personal things you said to me and, through me, to my wife. But I want you to understand something very clearly. If I had to do it all over again, every day, I would do it in a heartbeat, to see America where it is today as compared to 6 years ago. I want you to understand, too, that we all have to live with the consequences of our mistakes in life. Most of us don't have to live with it in quite such a public way. [Laughter] But nobody gets out of this life for free--nobody does. And so that's not the real point. The other thing I want you to understand is that, in this election, all this adversity is not our enemy. The adversity is our friend. The mayor and Mary and I were just walking on the street not very long ago. We talked to a lot of people that couldn't afford to be here today, but they might vote now because they understand that there are big issues at stake. Adversity is not our enemy. Adversity is our friend. Complacency is our enemy. If you listen to people talk on the other side about why they're going to do well in these congressional elections, they'll tell you--I mean, privately--they tell me, ``Oh, we're going to do very well, Mr. President, in these midterms because we have so much more money than you do, than you Democrats, and because they're midterm elections and the people that came out and voted for you for President in 1996, a lot of them won't show up in 1998 because it's not a Presidential election.'' The people that were good enough to serve you here at this event today, they've got a lot of hassles in their life. A lot of them have to worry about child care. A lot of them have to worry about transportation. They've got a lot of things on their mind. And the other guys say, just bluntly, you know, those people--working people on modest incomes, younger people with kids to deal with, along with their jobs, minorities who may live in inner cities that are too far away from the polling place to walk, and not have transportation--don't worry, they won't show up. Adversity is our friend, because it will focus us on what is at issue here. And what is at issue here is, what are we going to do with this moment of prosperity? That's why this Senate seat is so important to Ohio and to the country. And I want you to think about it just a minute. Yes, we're doing well. I said all that; I just told you. We're doing very well. I'm grateful for that. I had some role in it, and so did you. When Mary Boyle said we produced the surplus, she was not wrong. You paid the money into the IRS. And you got up and went to work every day. And a lot of you created a lot of those new jobs. I didn't do that; we did that. My goal in Washington was to have the policies that would establish the conditions and give you the tools so that you could do the job. That's the way America works. Now, I'm also gratified--and you just look around this crowd today, we have here at least Arab-Americans, Irish-Americans, African- Americans, and Lord knows what else--[laughter]--Ukrainians, Slovenians. [Laughter] What? Audience member. One Ukrainian.”