Bill Clinton: “Joan, I mean--I'm sorry. I heard you. I want to talk to you now a minute about the stories I asked you. I had all these…”

“Joan, I mean--I'm sorry. I heard you. I want to talk to you now a minute about the stories I asked you. I had all these notes; I'm not going to use them. I want you to think about it. You know, in this great debate we're having here, much more is at stake than whether I become President or Senator Dole does. What is really at stake here is what our country will look like when we start into that new century in a new millennium. It's what our Nation will look like when these children are their parents' age and when their children are their parents' age. And there are these two different views about how we should go forward. The one view is that the Government is basically the problem in America and you are the solution and you know better than the Government how to do everything. And that makes a lot of sense, except that this is a democracy. The Government is you. It belongs to you. The other view at one time might have been that most of our problems had to be solved by Government, but we've abandoned that long ago. I wanted to break out of this old debate when I became President and ask Americans to look to the future with common sense and a compassionate heart, to create a future in which there is opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and in which we all have a role to play and a place in this mosaic of America's community. And to me, what we need is a Government that is smaller and less bureaucratic. And we have, by the way, reduced the size of the Government and the burden of its regulations by more than our friends on the other side did in the 12 years they had to do it. But the difference is, I believe that the Government should be smaller and less bureaucratic, but there are some things that we can do together better than we can do them alone. Sometimes we do them in our work units. Sometimes we do them in our religious institutions. Sometimes we do them in our organizations, our clubs, our charities, our nonprofits. Sometimes we do them in city and county government. Sometimes we do them in the State government. But there are some things that we do better together as a nation; we do. And that's the difference. I think this is a better country because we made a national commitment to low-cost student loans that are even better and more affordable than they were before. That is not something you could have done on your own. I believe this is a better country because we gave people like Karoline Smith a chance to move from welfare to education to work, to succeed at home as a parent and in the workplace. I think that's a national obligation. I think we're better. I think this is a better country because we took action to protect Yellowstone National Park from a gold mine, because I signed a bill just this morning before I flew out here to continue our work to recover and preserve the Florida Everglades, because a few days ago I followed in the steps of Theodore Roosevelt and took Executive action to protect the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. I believe it's a better country because of that. I believe this is a better country because we have invested more in research, because in the last 4 years we have uncovered two of the genes which cause breast cancer among women and which may permit us not only to cure it but to prevent it in the future. That's something we had to do together, and we did it together. I believe we're a better country because of the money we put into research in dealing with drugs to help deal with HIV and AIDS, and the life expectancy has more than doubled in just 4 years. We are a better country because of that. We are a better country because of that. Many of you just heard at the Democratic Convention in Chicago Christopher Reeve's moving address calling for a recommitment to medical research. About the same time, for the very first time ever, a laboratory animal whose spine had been completely severed had movement in its lower limbs because of nerve transplants to the spine from other parts of the body. This is a better country. And if we can do that for people, it will be a much better country. And you can't do that by yourself; we have to do that together. We're a better country because of that. So this election is whether we're going to build a bridge to the future that we can all walk across together, or we're all going to try to build our separate little bridges. This election is whether we are better off saying you're on your own and anybody you elect to office immediately becomes your enemy and a big part of the problem, or whether you think my wife was right, it does take a village to build a country and bring us together and go forward. It is true, as Tom Strickland said, that we're better off than we were 4 years ago. And I'm grateful for the chance to have been a part of that. You deserve a lot of the credit. Our role was to create the conditions and give you the tools to make the most of your own lives. But we do have more jobs, lower unemployment, much higher incomes-- average income finally going up for the first time in a decade, about $1,600 after inflation in the last 2 years alone for middle class people. I'm especially proud that last year we had the biggest drop in inequality among all classes of people who are working for a living in 27 years, the biggest drop in child poverty in 20 years, and the lowest poverty rate among American senior citizens ever recorded. I'm proud of that. We're moving in the right direction. I'm proud that the crime rate has gone down for 4 years in a row. And I know and you know that most of the credit goes to the people who are out there on the street, the police officers, the others in the criminal justice system, the citizens of this country, and I might add also, the teachers, the parents, the community leaders who are trying to keep our kids out of trouble in the first place. I'm proud of that. But we had 30 years of evidence. In 30 years before I became President, the violent crime rate tripled; the police forces of this country increased by only 10 percent. We were right to say this is something we should do together as a nation to put 100,000 more police on the street, to pass the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban to make this a safer country. It was the right thing to do; we're a stronger, better country because of it. Now, I know when we did some of these things, a lot of people thought it was wrong in Colorado. And a lot of people thought it was wrong in my native State of Arkansas, where half the people have a hunting or a fishing license or both--actually, more than half. And they were all told--I got all these calls in Washington from people who still call me Bill, or worse--[laughter]--from home saying, ``They say you're going to take my guns away.'' I said, ``I'll tell you what, I'll buy you a new rifle if you miss a single hunting season because of the Brady bill or the assault weapons ban.'' Well, it's been 2 years, and you heard the statistics: tens of thousands of felons, fugitives, and stalkers lost their handguns. We didn't take any hunting rifles away; we took weapons away. And now people who beat up their spouses and their children can't buy handguns either. And I think we're a better country because of it. I think we're a better country because of it. So I ask you to think about the future. Think what happened--I think most everybody instinctively knows that it's right--look what happened in the last couple of weeks when your voices began to be heard in Washington; then an agenda that I had been advocating for 2 years all of the sudden became popular. We said you can't lose your health insurance anymore just because you changed jobs or somebody in your family's been sick. We said insurance companies can't force hospitals to kick women and their newborn babies out of the hospital after a day. We're finally going to help families that have--families that need some help with mental health coverage to get that. We are finally going for the--we did something else that I'm particularly proud of for the very first time in history. Audience member. Let me hear it. [Laughter]”