Bill Clinton: “You need a doctor over there? Send a medic over there, right back there. We'll be right there. Just keep your hands held…”

“You need a doctor over there? Send a medic over there, right back there. We'll be right there. Just keep your hands held up. We've got the doctor back there, right back there. Now, remember this--in 1994, I remember them. I remember them going into all these little towns and saying, ``Why, the President voted to take your gun away, the Democrats in Congress did. That crime bill is terrible. It's not going to do anything to bring down crime.'' Well, now we know. Four years later, we have 4 years of a declining crime rate. We're halfway home in putting 100,000 police on the street. We didn't take a single hunter's rifle away from him in Washington State or my home State of Arkansas. Everybody's still going into the woods with the same weapons they had. But 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers lost their right to buy a handgun under the Brady bill. We were right; they were wrong. They were wrong about that. And we need to keep going. We should oppose their efforts to cut short the 100,000 police commitment. When you put more police officers on the street, knowing the neighbors of the people, getting to know the kids, encouraging young people to stay off drugs and out of gangs and out of trouble--when people work in partnership, they can drop the crime rate dramatically. I have been to community after community after community where people gave up on it but where the streets are now safe. And I don't want to stop until every American feels safe in their homes, on their streets, in their schools, in their places of work. We can do this. And I want you to help me build that bridge to the 21st century. Let me also say that in every election people always talk about family values. Well, our administration has tried to value families. Tipper Gore has worked for 20 years to try to create conditions in which people could raise children without having them subject to destructive influences from our larger culture. The First Lady has worked for over 20 years to try to help improve the conditions of childrearing and health care for our young children. We were the first administration in history that took on the tobacco industry and said it is illegal to sell cigarettes to young people--no more advertising, marketing, and sales to them. It is wrong. The first bill I signed was the family and medical leave law. It said simply you can't be fired if you have to take a little time off for the birth of a child or the illness of a child or a parent. Now, this is a classic example of our differences. My opponent led the fight against that law. He says today, we made a terrible mistake to pass it, that it was antibusiness. Well, if it was antibusiness, how come we got 10\1/2\ million more jobs and record numbers of new small businesses? It wasn't antibusiness. People do better at work if they know they're doing right by their kids at home. That's what I mean by a village, a bridge we can all walk across. And I'd like to see the family and medical leave law expanded just a little bit to say that people shouldn't lose their jobs either--they ought to have a little time off to go to regular conferences with their children's teachers and to be able to take their kids and their parents to the doctor when they need to go. It will make us stronger. It will be a good thing for the economy. The last thing I want to say is the Vice President and I worked very hard to prove that you could grow the economy and preserve the environment and that in the end you can't grow the economy unless you preserve the environment. I told you a few minutes ago we cleaned up a lot of toxic waste dumps. That's the good news. The bad news is 10 million American children still live within 4 miles of a toxic waste site. If you give us 4 more years, we'll get rid of the two-thirds worst ones, 500 of them, so we can say America's children are growing up next to parks like this, not next to poison. That's a big part of our bridge to the 21st century. Now, I want to ask you again, I want you to take the next 6 weeks and 5 days, go out to your friends and neighbors, without regard to their party, and say, let's have a talk about what we want America to look like in the 21st century. Let's have a talk about what we want America to look like when our children are our age. Let's have a talk about this election because we're electing the last President of the 20th century and the first President of the 21st century. And let's have a talk about how we can build that bridge big enough, wide enough, and strong enough so we can all go marching across it together to the best days America has ever had. Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.”