Bill Clinton: “Dinner September 23, 1999 Thank you very much. If you've been following the news, you probably know I'm a little hoarse…”

“Dinner September 23, 1999 Thank you very much. If you've been following the news, you probably know I'm a little hoarse, and I know you're a little tired, so you won't have to put up with me for very long here. But I'm grateful for the chance to be here. I strongly support the NDI. I thank Ken Wollack and Paul Kirk and all the rest of you for the work you do. I thank my friend Senator Kennedy for being the embodiment of the commitment to democracy and freedom and human rights. Mrs. Kirkland, we're glad to see you here tonight, and I was honored to be at the service at Georgetown today. I want to thank you for giving this award to President Shevardnadze. He has been a friend of the United States and a friend of ours. He has stood for democracy. You heard him tell the story tonight. He's like anybody who has converted; once he converted, he was really stuck as a true believer. He has endured assassination attempts, illegal coup attempts. He has been through ethnic difficulties in his own country. He has been through pressures from the outside and problems from the inside. He has watched the economy go down and things come apart and come back together again. But once he decided he believed, he stayed hitched, and he embodies something that I think we don't think about enough. We talk a lot about what it takes to establish democracy.…”