Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much, Helen and Arnold. The crowd would have clapped even more for you if they'd known what you were…”

“Thank you very much, Helen and Arnold. The crowd would have clapped even more for you if they'd known what you were going to say before you said it. They were terrific, I thought. I have a great deal of admiration for them and for their companies and for this organization. I want to point out before I get into my remarks that I have two people here I'd like to acknowledge first: the Director of the Small Business Administration and one of the strongest supporters of our health care reform program, Mr. Erskine Bowles from North Carolina, who is here. And I believe a former board member of yours and the current Director of the Women's Bureau at Labor, Karen Nussbaum, is here. I believe the purpose of politics is to help the American people live up to the fullest of their God-given potential and to help them to live together in strength and harmony and to fulfill their responsibilities as well as their dreams. That obligation can be met in different ways in different times. But plainly, there are some times in the history of a nation in which that obligation can only be met by the willingness to undertake the rigors of profound change. And I believe this is such a time. The problem is that in any democracy you can only build a consensus for profound change when things have gotten pretty well off track. And by the time things have gotten pretty well off track, there are an awful lot of people who are unhappy and insecure and uncertain.…”