Remarks at a Reception for Representative James E. Clyburn in Columbia, South Carolina

Well, it's certainly a relief, after this long trip I just took from Washington to India and Bangladesh and Pakistan and Switzerland, to be with such a laid-back crowd tonight. [Laughter] I'll tell you, I don't know how many people said to me tonight, "You must be so tired." If I had been tired, I'd be so pumped after this, I may not sleep for 3 more days. [Laughter] I want to thank you all for the wonderful welcome. I want to thank the young people who performed for us tonight, and I want to thank all of you who brought your children tonight, to remind us of why we're really all here.

I want to say to you, Bishop, Mrs. Adams, I am honored to be here with you. We've been friends a long time, since before I was President, and I've heard you give a lot of talks, and you get better every time you do it. [Laughter] I want to thank the first AME bishop I ever knew, Bishop Fred James, who is out here, my longtime friend. Thank you very much, my good friend.

Dr. Waddell, thank you for having us here at Allen University. I want to say a special word of appreciation to Dick Harpootlian, who—he and Pam, they did have me down here 8 years ago, and I had a wonderful time, and he's been a great chairman of this party. I want to thank Don Fowler for his leadership of the Democratic National Committee, for being here with me tonight.

I thank Bob and Beth Coble. And I'm glad to see that Mayor Riley made it upstate a little tonight. We're glad to see you, too; thank you. And thank you, Bob, for coming out to the airport to meet me and always making me feel so welcome in Columbia.

I want to thank some of my old friends who are here: Dwight Drake, whom I've known now more than 20 years; and thank you, McKinley Washington, for being one of my cochairs in 1992 when even my mother wasn't sure I could be elected President. I want to thank Inez Tenenbaum and Jim Lander for being here. And I want to thank Governor Bob McNair; thank you for being here. And Governor John West, also my friend of more than 20 years, thank you for being here.

I want to say, I might have been the happiest non-South Carolinian in the entire United States of America when Jim Hodges was elected Governor in 1998. When he filed, Erskine Bowles and his wife, Crandal, told me that he would be elected. And I got so used to Republicans winning down here, I have to admit I was a Doubting Thomas. But they turned out to be right, and it's been good for South Carolina. And he and Rachel have really brought dignity and direction to the Governor's office.

And let me say that I am so delighted to be here for Jim Clyburn. You know, when the Governor was building Jim up, I was sitting there talking to Emily, and she said, "You know, I'm going to have to talk to Jim after this introduction. He might get to believing all that stuff." [Laughter]

I have to tell you that even though he told that golf joke, I still like Jim Clyburn. [Laughter] And I respect him. And I wish all of you could see him operate in Washington, and I say that in a complimentary way. But he has such a good, reassuring way of doing his business.

When the freshman class in 1992—you know, he was elected when I was, so we went there together, but unlike me, he's not term-limited, so he can stay—he goes in 1992, and the freshman class of that year elected him the class president. First thing he did was to propose sharing his term with Representative Eva Clayton from North Carolina, to pay homage to the fact that it was the year of the woman. That's the kind of thing that he does that is genuine and generous and also smart. [Laughter] This guy didn't fall off the truck yesterday. [Laughter].

He's got a way of standing up for what he believes in and still working to build consensus. That's how he became the unanimous choice to head the Congressional Black Caucus. And he's even trying to use his ability to build consensus to resolve this bitter debate over the Confederate flag.

You know, I know everybody expects me to say something about that. I just want to say this: I was, a couple of Sundays ago, I went to Selma, Alabama, for the 35th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. And my mother-in-law said it was the best talk I ever gave. And I told her, it's because I'd been waiting all my life to give it. I was there with John Lewis and Hosea Williams and Mrs. King and Reverend Jackson, and Dick Gregory came back. Hosea Williams got up out of his wheelchair; we walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge together. And I said then all I have to say about this, that as long as the waving symbol of one American's pride is the shameful symbol of another American's pain, we still have bridges to cross in our country, and we'd better go on and get across them.

I very much agree with what Governor Hodges said when he said there is a new South Carolina. And I began to see it when I came here in 1991 and 1992 and in all the times since. I saw it when Jim Clyburn was elected. I saw it when Jim Hodges was elected. I saw it in the dialog you've had on issues of racial and religious tolerance. I see it in the commitment you're made to education. I see it in the ratification of the leadership Jim has given on everything from supporting the vital mission of historically black colleges and universities to maintaining affirmative action to promoting economic development for all his constituents.

He is one of the sponsors, as he said, of my new markets initiative. It's a simple little idea, really. We've been sitting around thinking about, for months, how can we keep this economic growth going without inflation, number one; and number two, how can we do something to get the benefits of this economic recovery to the people and places that have been left behind?

We may have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, but there's still some people left behind. In my State, and I'll bet you in this State, there are still some counties with unemployment rates that are twice the national average. In the Mississippi Delta, where I come from, or in the Rio Grande Valley or in some of the inner-city neighborhoods from New York to Los Angeles, there are still people and places that have been left behind.

Jim and I were talking tonight coming in here about the trip we took and how he went with me and we both saw Mount Rushmore for the first time at night when they turn the lights on. It was one of the most breathtaking experiences I think either one of us have ever had. And almost in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, there is the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the home of the Lakota Sioux, the tribe of Crazy Horse, where the unemployment rate is 73 percent.

So we were thinking, well, guess what? It would be not only good to give people who are dying to work and aren't part of this deal yet a chance to do it, it would not only be the morally right thing to do, it would be good economics, because if you make new businesses and new employees and new taxpayers at the same time you're making new consumers, it's by definition noninflationary growth.

So our idea with this new markets initiative is pretty simple. It is that we ought to give American investors with money the same incentives to invest in poor areas in America we give you to invest in poor areas in Latin America or Africa or Asia or any other place around the world. So I thank Jim for his leadership there, for the work he's done for the South Carolina Heritage Corridor or the—something that he really believes in that I thought was great.

I signed the bill that he sponsored to protect the airline whistle-blowers. If you ride the airplanes a lot, you'll appreciate that. [Laughter] And he said that Vice President Gore signed the bill—I mean, voted for the bill, cast the tie-breaking vote that passed the '93 Budget Act, which began all this marvelous expansion. That's true. But so did he, because we didn't have a vote to spare in either place, because we couldn't get any Republicans to help us. So thank you, Jim Clyburn, for bringing the America economy back and for sticking with us.

I would like to say a word of greeting to you from three people who aren't here. The first is the best Secretary of Education this country ever had, Dick Riley, who is in China tonight.

The second is Vice President Gore. We were together yesterday when we hosted the President of Egypt. And I used to complain, because he'd get to do things like this. When I was— before, whenever I was running or being President, they've never let me come to State party events. They'd always say, "Well, you know, Al gets to do that." And it really used to steam me. [Laughter] So I told him yesterday, I said, "You know where I'm going tomorrow night? I'm going to South Carolina. Eat your heart out." [Laughter] And he said, "Well, tell them not to forget me." So I did. And you shouldn't. You shouldn't.

And I thank you for the wonderful round of applause you gave to Hillary when the bishop mentioned that I'm trying to get into the Senate spouses club. [Laughter] She's in California tonight, and I'm flying back, and we're going to spend tomorrow in New York together. But I'm very proud of her for what she's done as First Lady and for doing what she's doing now, and I thank you for that.

I want to say just a couple of words seriously, and then I'll let you go. You've been patient, and I know you're probably tired. But I don't get to come here very much, and Jim said, "Just give them a whole dose tonight, will you?"

I got tickled, you know, when the bishop said—he talked about how mad the Republicans got at me all the time. I was glad he told me why. [Laughter] You know, I always thought I was a pretty nice fellow. I've been sitting around here for 7 1/2 years trying to figure out— he reminded me of the story—you know about the story about this guy's walking along the edge of the Grand Canyon, just an ordinary guy, a good guy, and he—looking over the side, and he slips off. And he's hurtling down to his certain demise. And he looks out on the edge of the Canyon, and he sees this little plant, and he grabs onto it, and it breaks his fall. And he just sighs relief. Then, all of a sudden, the roots of the plant start slowly coming out of the side of the cavern. He looks up in the sky, and he says, "God, why me? I am a good man. I work hard. I pay my taxes. I take care of my kids. I contribute to my community. I have done everything in the world I'm supposed to do. Why me?" And this thunderous voice comes out of the sky and says, "Son, just something about you I don't like." [Laughter] Well, I've had a few days like that in Washington. [Laughter] But now that the bishop explained it to me, you know, I feel better about it.

And I thank you for what you said about my knowing the lyrics to "Lift Every Voice and Sing." A couple years ago when I was in a— Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning author, said that I had become America's first black President. [Laughter] And you know, Chris Tucker is making a movie in which he plays the first black President. So he came to the White House, and I sat him down at my desk, and he was feeling pretty good. And I said, "Eat your heart out. You're second." [Laughter] "Toni Morrison told me so."

Then the next week, a man named Miguel Loisel, who is a great friend of mine from Puerto Rico, introduced me, and he said I had a Latino soul. And then I went to Turkey, and I went to see all these earthquake victims, and I picked up this little baby. And the baby squeezed me on my nose real hard, and it was in every newspaper in Turkey—this kid squeezing my nose. And so the headline said that "He's a Turk." [Laughter] And I thought to myself, I'll never be able to go home to Ireland if this keeps up. What am I going to do? [Laughter]

But I want to say a couple of things seriously about that. I think it is so interesting that at this time of unparalleled prosperity and at a time when, because of the nature of the economy we're living in, we can, if we're smart, bring technology and science and wealth to people and places that have never had it before. I was in a little village in India a week ago, a little village in a country where the per capita income is $450 a year. And in this little village, I met with the city government, representing all the different tribes and castes, women as well as men, in a society that never had such a thing before, people elected, governing together.

And then I met with this women's dairy cooperative, and I watched these women, poor village women in India, every transaction they have now recorded in a computer that they get a receipt from and they can operate. And then I went into the little municipal building in this remote village in India, and I saw they had a computer there with a screen that you could work if you could speak English or Hindi or if you were virtually illiterate, because of the way the software was constructed. And I saw a woman come in there who just had a baby. And on this computer, she was able to get all of the kinds of instructions of what she should do with her child the first few months of life, and then she printed it out and took it home with her, stuff that would be unheard of in a society like that just a few years ago.

And all these things that are out there. In the next few years, you'll be able to drive a car that gets 80 miles a gallon. And if we can crack the chemical barrier to converting agricultural products, not just corn, maybe rice hulls, other kinds of waste products, into fuel, you may be able to get the equivalent of 500 miles per gallon of gasoline in no time at all.

We're going to release in the next several weeks the whole sequencing of the human genome, 3 billion elements, 80,000 segments. And within a few years, they will figure out how to prevent older people from getting Alzheimer's, how to cure cancer, how to find it when it's just a few cells, no metastasis. They'll be able to give young mothers sort of a roadmap of their baby's lives when they leave from the hospital. So if the little baby girl has one of the genes that's a high predictor of breast cancer, they'll be able to say, "Well, if you do these 10 things, you can reduce the risk by two-thirds or more." All these things are going to happen in this very modern world.

When I became President, there were 50 sites—50—on the World Wide Web. Today, there are 50 million—7 years. I've got a cousin in Arkansas that plays chess once a week with a guy in Australia—amazing. And don't you think it's interesting that all over the world, in the face of all this opportunity and all these modern things, that the biggest problems of the world are the oldest problems of human nature? Man, this flag controversy here, you shouldn't be surprised by how tough this has been. Why are the Catholics and Protestants still fussing in Northern Ireland? Why did the Orthodox Christians run the Albanian Muslims out of Kosovo, a million of them? Why did 800,000 people in Rwanda get killed in a tribal war in 100 days with no guns, practically? They were almost all hacked to death. And I could go on and on and on. Why can't we make peace in the Middle East? Obviously, if they would all quit fighting and figure out how to divide up the land and go to work on economics and education—both the Jews and the Arabs of the Middle East have a history of success in areas that are most rewarded in this economy.

I just came from the Indian subcontinent where India and Pakistan are two of the poorest countries in the world, but they've got to have nuclear weapons and increase their defense budgets by 20 percent so they can argue about Kashmir. And you come to America, we've got 200 ethnic groups in this country, and the Indians and the Pakistanis in this country—of the 200 ethnic groups in this country—rank in the top 5 in education and per capita income. If they could just let it go, there's nothing they couldn't do.

Now, I think the South has got something to teach the rest of the country and to help our country teach the rest of the world. We've got to let this go. And if we can—and I know, you know, you say, "Well, it's easy for you to say, but look, everybody's got a beef in life."

I'll tell you, one of the most meaningful conversations I ever had in my life was with Nelson Mandela, who has been a wonderful friend to me and to Hillary and especially to our daughter. And I remember one time, you know, after I got to know him, I said, "You know, Mr. President, you're a very great man with a great spirit and all that, but you're also a shrewd politician," kind of like what I was saying about Jim. You know, he is a good guy, but the stuff he does makes sense, too. And I said, "That was pretty smart of you to have your jailers come to the Inauguration and all of that, but let me ask you something." I said, "Didn't you really hate them for what they did?" He said, "Oh, yeah, I hated them for a long time." He said, "I stayed alive on hate for 12 years. I broke rocks every day, and I stayed alive on hate." And he said, "They took a lot away from me. They took me away from my wife, and it subsequently destroyed my marriage. They took me away from seeing my children grow up. They abused me mentally and physically. And one day," he said, "I realized they could take it all except my mind and my heart." He said, "Those things I would have to give to them, and I simply decided not to give them away."

And so—so I said to him, I said, "Well, what about when you were getting out of prison?" I said, "The day you got out of prison in 1990, it was Sunday morning, and I got my daughter up early in the morning, and I took her down to the kitchen, and I turned on the television, and she was just a little girl then, and I sat her up on the kitchen counter. And I said, 'Chelsea, I want you to watch this. This is one of the most important things you'll ever see in your life."'

And I said, "I watched you walk down that dirt road to freedom." I said, "Now, when you were walking down there, and you realized how long you had been in their prison, didn't you hate them then? Didn't you feel some hatred?" He said, "Yes, I did a little bit." He said, "I felt that." And he said, "Frankly, I was kind of afraid, too, because I hadn't been free in so long." But he said, "As I felt the anger rising up, I thought to myself, 'They have already had you for 27 years. And if you keep hating them, they'll have you again.' And I said, 'I want to be free.' And so I let it go. I let it go."

And you know, that's what I tried to tell the Kosovar Albanians and the Serbs and the other minorities that I met with in Kosovo recently. I said, "Look, you know, I brought you guys home, but I can't make you behave now that you're here. And you do have a gripe. You've seen murder and slaughter, and you were all uprooted. And then the others, they have their gripes because, in retaliation, things have been done to them." I said, "What you've got to understand is that everybody in life has got a beef, a real one. Some of them are truly horrible, but you've just got to let it go."

Now, what's the point of all this? If God came to me tonight and he said, "I'm not going to give you 8 years. You've just got one more day, and then you've got to check out. And I'm no genie. I'm not giving you three wishes. I'll just give you one." I would not wish for all these programs that I talked about in the State of the Union. I would just wish simply for us to be one America, because if we could work together, the rest of it would take care of itself. It would take care of itself.

And I'll leave you with this thought. When we celebrated, last month, America being in the longest economic expansion in history, I felt very humble. I felt so grateful that what we had done had made a contribution, and it had worked, and that it had been my great good fortune to be President at this time, see 21 million people get jobs and all of that.

And so I got interested in when the last longest expansion in American history was. Do you know when it was? Nineteen sixty-one to 1969. Now, here's the point I want to make. All the southerners of a certain age can identify with this. Every veteran from the Vietnam war can identify with this. Everybody who opposed the Vietnam war can identify with this.

Nineteen sixty-four, up until that time the most prosperous year in American history, I graduated from high school. My President was Lyndon Johnson. I was heartbroken when President Kennedy was killed, like most Americans were. But Johnson had taken over this country and pulled us together. He was a southerner with a passionate commitment to civil rights. And in 1964, this country had low inflation, high growth, low unemployment. And everybody thought it was going to go on forever, I'm telling you. We thought, moreover, that the civil rights problems would be solved in the Congress and in the courts, not in the streets. We thought we would win the cold war as a matter of course. And if anybody told you that we would become mired in Vietnam and divided, no one would have believed it—1964—and we were just all kind of relaxed about it.

Two years later, we had riots in the streets. Two years later, I was graduating from college. The day I graduated from college was 2 days after Robert Kennedy was killed, 2 months after Martin Luther King was killed, and 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run for President anymore because this country was split right down the middle over the war in Vietnam. And then our cities started burning after Dr. King was killed. And we had a Presidential election based on what the winner, Mr. Nixon, called the Silent Majority.

Now, that was one of those "us" versus "them" elections, the kind of stuff I saw in the Republican primary down here. You know what the—the Silent Majority means if you're not with them, you're in the loud minority. That's what I was; I was in the loud minority. But it was "us" versus "them."

Now, we southerners are well-schooled in this sort of politics, aren't we? We were raised with it. But the point I want to make to you is, people thought they could just indulge themselves in those few good years in the 1960's. It was going to go on forever. And within 2, 3, 4 years, it was gone. Poof.

So we had our "us" versus "them" election in 1968. Within a few months, the economic recovery was over. And the country went through all those divisive elections, all of that economic turmoil, all that social division.

And look, I want you to listen to this. I'm not going to be President anymore, after this election. I'm telling you this as an American citizen and as a southerner. I have waited 35 years for my country to again be in the position to build the future of our dreams for our children. And we dare not blow this opportunity. We will never have it again.

So I tell you, yes, I want Vice President Gore to be elected, not just for personal reasons but because I know that he backed me on every tough, controversial, momentarily unpopular decision I had to make, because he understands the future and he can lead us there. And we need somebody who understands the future and can lead us there.

This is not a sloganeering election. We can't let people be casual with their votes. We need people who care, who work, who have the kind of intensity about what they do that Jim Clyburn does. I'm telling you, we cannot afford to be relaxed just because times are good. I came of age when times were good, and I saw it go away in the flash of an eye.

I want you all to think about that. I don't want you to be down. I want you to be up. I don't want you to be sober about it. But every grownup in this audience has lived long enough to be able to remember some time in your life when you got in trouble not because times were tough but because they were going along so well you thought you didn't really have to concentrate or be responsible.

And this country has got the chance of a lifetime to build the future of our dreams for the kids in this audience. We need to support people like the people that are bringing the Democratic Party back in South Carolina. And we need, most important of all, to keep centered and keep in our heart a burning sense of humility and gratitude that America is so blessed at this moment in history that we can rear back and do what we always wanted to do.

This is a moment for making tomorrows, not for just thinking about today. You go out, stick with these folks, and help them make tomorrow.

Thank you, and God bless you.