Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Give the Vice President a hand. [Applause] You know, if he keeps practicing, he's going to get good at this.…”

“Thank you. Give the Vice President a hand. [Applause] You know, if he keeps practicing, he's going to get good at this. [Laughter] I'd forgotten we did half of that stuff. [Laughter] Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President, for your remarks and for the historically unprecedented partnership that we have enjoyed. I was sitting there thinking as Al Gore was talking that when I asked him to join the ticket back in the summer of--or the late spring of 1992, it violated all convention. We were the same age. We were from the same part of the country. We both spoke without an accent. [Laughter] It didn't make any sense. It violated all the conventional ideas. The thing that I thought made sense about it was that I believed we needed to change the country, we needed to change the direction and the way politics works in Washington, we needed to change the way the Federal Government was organized, and we needed to change in some ways not the values or the aspirations but the approach of our own party. And so I thought I would do something unconventional and pick someone I thought could be the best possible full partner. And that's what we've done. And I hope that, frankly, it will be a model for future administrations of both parties, because it seems to me rather foolish to not make the most of the incredible potential that you now know the office of the Vice President has because of the way that Vice President Gore has filled it. He's headed our reinventing Government program.…”