Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Iowa, are you ready to build that bridge to the 21st century tomorrow?…”

“Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Iowa, are you ready to build that bridge to the 21st century tomorrow? [Applause] Let me begin by thanking those who have joined us to entertain us tonight and to keep our spirits high: the Iowa City High School Marching Band, the All-City Flag and Drum Corps, the Coe College Concert Band. Thank you all very much. Thank you. I want to thank those people who are here, too numerous to name, who have been so important to me, to Hillary, to our administration and our efforts. I want to commend to you our candidates for Congress back here. I've gotten to know them. I was together with them in Indianola not very long ago. I believe that Leonard Boswell and Donna Smith and Bob Rush will do a good job for you, and I hope you will help them to win tomorrow as well. You know, I have had two incredibly memorable experiences in Cedar Rapids, and they reflect a lot of what I have tried to do as President. Not very long ago I was here to dedicate the National Czech and Slovak Museum. And I brought with me, as you remember, the President of the Czech Republic and the President of Slovakia. And we had a wonderful day here--a little cold, but we had a great day. [Laughter] And we celebrated this mystery that is America, that we can meld together people from different ethnic groups and different religions and dif- ferent races and different tribes and different views and still hold our country together and grow stronger. And as we look around the world at the heartbreak of Bosnia; at the continuing heartbreak in Northern Ireland, where my people are still fighting over what happened 300 or 600 years ago; at the heartbreak of the Holy Land in the Middle East, the home of the world's three great monotheistic religions; as we look on our television news now at the heartbreak of these hundreds of thousands of refugees driven out of their refugee camps because people are still fighting tribal wars, even though no one has enough to get along on and if they'd work together it would be so much better--I thought to myself that cold day in Cedar Rapids, how fortunate we are that we live under a Constitution and a system where all of us are created equal, accorded equal status, and given the chance to live up to our God-given abilities. And I will always remember Cedar Rapids for that. The other thing I remember is a rally I had here in 1992 at the Quaker Oats factory. I met a remarkable woman in that factory who had led the work of the people there in recycling paper and promoting a clean environment while growing the economy. I met a child with an unusual physical problem, abnormality from birth, who was otherwise a beautiful child. And it was before I became President. I looked at that child, and I saw how much that child's mother loved him. And I picked him and held him, and I said to myself, if I win this race for President, I will never rest until we have done everything we can in medical research to make as many people in America whole as possible. It is a part of our common obligation. And then I remember seeing a woman, whom I later got to know quite well--she may be here tonight--a white woman holding an African-American baby. And it was interesting because we were being demonstrated against, kind of like you're being treated to at the last of this campaign. There were people holding signs on both sides of the abortion issue, and they were shouting at one another. And this woman was just standing there quietly in the crowd, holding this child of another race. And I said, ``Where did you get this baby?'' And she said, ``This is my baby. This baby was born HIV-positive, and no one would take this child in Florida, so I adopted this child. I'm doing the very best I can.'' She was already raising another couple of kids on her own. And she said, ``I don't mind those people having that debate back there, but if we're really going to be pro-life and pro-child, I wish they'd all come along with me and adopt some of these kids. We need to build a better life.'' And not very long ago I had the honor of signing the minimum wage bill, which Senator Harkin talked about, which also did some wonderful things for small business--made it easier for small-business people to take out pensions on themselves and their employees and for the employees to take the pension from job to job, and made it easier for self-employed people to buy their own health insurance and gave them more tax relief for doing it. But that bill had another little-known provision which I'm particularly proud of. And on the day I signed that bill I thought of that woman holding that child, because that bill gives a $5,000 tax credit to Americans who will adopt children who need a home. Now, I say that to make this point: To me that is what our public service is all about. To me that is what our public life is all about. And I think it is amazing that in so many elections in the 11th hour, with an avalanche of funds and emotions, people can be asked to suspend their convictions about issue after issue after issue after issue, based on a concerted attempt to convince the voters that somehow their opponent is some sort of an alien to their values. And I wanted to be in Iowa on the last night of my last campaign in my entire life--I wanted to be in Iowa because, first of all, because it's a tight race and I want to carry the State--I mean, let's be honest--[laughter]--but also because this State is a place where I always feel at home, and I always have from the very first day I crossed the border and came here, and because I always felt that a people who had brought in enough crops and seen enough droughts and seen enough floods--you know, after that flood you all had before, you had everything but a plague of locusts visited on you there--[laughter]-- that had seen all of life's ups and downs, all the rational and irrational things that can happen to you, and still were bound together and working together and producing the kind of schools Iowa is producing, producing the kind of economy Iowa was producing--I always felt that here you could talk sense to people and people could look at you in the eye and tell whether you were worth supporting and worth believing in. And I always love coming here. And I want to say to you tonight, I would not presume to tell anyone in Iowa for whom to vote in any other race. I went home to Arkansas to campaign with some of my friends on Saturday, and there was a big article in the paper. It said, ``President's visit mixed blessing,'' and then it had every single time a President had come to Arkansas to try to get people to vote for somebody, and they had always voted for the other person. So I told the people, I said, ``This is no surprise to me. You didn't let me tell you who to vote for when I was just a Governor.'' [Laughter] So I wouldn't say that. But I want you to know three things I know about Tom Harkin and about Ruth and their family. And you make up your own mind about what you're going to do with that information between now and tomorrow, in terms of whether you could go home tonight and still call somebody and change a vote. You know, when you leave tonight, most people won't be in bed, even in Iowa. [Laughter] Most people are not going to be in bed. You could still do some good tonight, and I want you to think about it. The first thing I want you to know is this, I spent a lot of time with Tom and Ruth Harkin when nobody else was looking, when there were no cameras around, no reporters around, no speech to give, no one to impress, no gain from anything. They are good people. They love their children, they love their country, and they love this State. And I want to say, I understand--I don't normally get involved in local advertising campaigns, but I understand that Senator Harkin's opponent has actually run an ad against Ruth. They got that--you know, they started on Hillary, and now they're down to the Senate spouses. [Laughter] I wish they'd just pick on us. But anyway, saying that Ruth Harkin really wasn't qualified for the job I gave her; she only got it because she was Tom's wife. If you believe that, I've got some land way out in the ocean I'd like to sell you. [Laughter] Let me tell you something, folks, one thing I knew I had to do for you is to deliver on the economy. I knew that. And I made up my mind I was going to do some things that had never been done before. I was not going to appoint just someone who was a politician who had supported me at the Department of Commerce, I was going to appoint somebody I though would be good. I was not going to appoint someone that I thought would be a good political appointment but someone who could really produce in the trade office. I was going to appoint somebody who was not just a political appointment but someone who had actually created small businesses at the Small Business Administration. And at Ruth Harkin's job, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, I was going to appoint somebody I thought could help create jobs in America by getting opportunities for us overseas. Now, I know what that ad says, but let me tell you, like so many of their ads against us, they have a huge problem with something called the evidence--the evidence--the evidence. [Laughter] She, Ruth Harkin, in spite of the fact that she's married to Tom, has the finest record of achievement of any person who has ever held that position in the Federal Government of the United States of America. And there are more Americans working, more businesses profiting and our economy is stronger because I appointed her. And I'm glad I did, and I'd do it again tomorrow. Now, I'll tell you something else. I'm for Tom Harkin because he'll fight. I know; I've been on the other side of a fight with him, you know, once before. [Laughter] He'll fight. And if he's for you and he believes it's right and he thinks that Iowa needs something, if he has to stand all by himself in a whirlwind, he will stand right there until he is blown away. He will not walk away from you and from our country. The other night we were on the campaign plane, you know, and you practically get silly, you're so tired, on these campaign planes. You can just imagine how it is, you know, how exhausted you get. And your conversation wanders off into all kinds of things; it's amazing. And this was before we scheduled to come here tonight. And we were having a talk about politicians and people in public office and who they were and how they were and everything. And somebody looked at me and said, ``If you were in a desperate situation with enemies closing in on all sides and you were all by yourself and you had to pick one person who would stand there and fight with you to the very end, who would you pick?'' And I did not miss a breath; I said, ``Tom Harkin of Iowa. Tom Harkin of Iowa.'' You need to think a long time in Iowa before you trade in a man that gave you the Americans with Disabilities Act, a man that has fought for medical research, a man that has fought for education, a man that has fought for farmers, a man that has fought for this country. You need to think a long time before you trade in someone like that for a person who marched to the beat of the Speaker Gingrich's army in 1995 and threatened to send this country back after all the progress we've made. The second thing I want to say is, Tom Harkin fought for us when it counted. When the Republicans won the Congress in 1994 with their contract on America--how many times has Mr. Lightfoot talked about the contract on America in this campaign? How many times have they told you what a wonderful thing it was and how they pushed it? How many times have they bragged on cutting Head Start and cutting college loans and paralyzing our ability to implement environmental protection? How many times have they bragged on stripping a 30-year guarantee of quality medical care through the Medicaid programs to middle class families who have family members with disabilities, to elderly people in nursing homes, to getting rid of the quality standards--even the standards--of guaranteed quality in our nursing homes, to taking the quality of care, the guarantee of care away from newborn babies just because they're poor? Have they talked about that very much in this campaign? Audience members. No-o-o!”