THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Skaneateles, New York)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release September 2, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT HILLARY 2000 RECEPTION
Private Residence
Cazenovia, New York
5:30 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. I want to
thank Christine and Patty and Les, and Sandy and Sarah, and everyone else
who had anything to do with this event. But especially, I thank our host
for welcoming us to this beautiful, beautiful home, and we should give them
a big hand, I think. (Applause.)
Thank you, Kelly. And the Madrigals were great. Let's give them
another hand. And thank you, Kelly. You were great. Thank you.
(Applause.)
Well, we have had a great day. We just came from the State Fair, and
there were tens of thousands of people. And after the other candidate for
the Senate refused to eat a sausage sandwich there, this one did not.
(Applause.) Let's get right down to the basic issues in this election.
(Laughter.)
Let me say, I want to be very brief because I want Hillary to make the
speech, but I want to just make a couple of points. First of all, we are
very grateful to the people of New York State for being so good to us and
to Al and Tipper Gore these last eight years. New York has always been
there for us. And I hope that you feel that America is better than it was
eight years ago, and that it's worked out pretty well for us. (Applause.)
The second point I would like to make is an abbreviated version of
what I said in Los Angeles at the Democratic Convention. This country is
in very good shape. But how a country uses its prosperity is just as stern
a test of its judgment, its values, and its vision as how you deal with
adversity. And I'm old enough to know now that we may never have another
time like this in our lifetime. And in my lifetime, we have never had a
time like this before, when we have at once so much prosperity and so
little internal stress and external threat.
So we really have a chance to do some things we've never done before,
including bring economic opportunity to places in upstate New York that
aren't part of our prosperity yet. (Applause.) Including giving all of
our children a world-class education. (Applause.) Including dealing with
our long-term challenges from the aging of America, the long-term
environmental challenges of the country.
I want Hillary to talk about all of this, but I tell you, how
elections come out -- I've been involved with them since I was -- the first
election I ever worked in I was eight years old, passing out cards at the
polling place for my uncle who was running for state legislature. They had
two-year terms, and his wife made him quit after one term because she
didn't like politics very much. (Laughter.) But the lesson did not spread
to our branch of the family. (Laughter.)
But I'll tell you what I've learned in all that long time -- the
winner is often determined by what the people believe the election is
about. And I can tell you that for 30 years, from the first time I ever
met Hillary, the first thing she ever talked about to me -- the welfare of
children, and how families cope with work and having kids and succeeded in
both ways. I've watched her for 30 years work on foster care, on
adoptions, on health care for kids.
And during the period when I was governor, because of the adversity we
faced in our home then in Arkansas, she went on a bunch of big corporation
boards; she went out working on how to find -- get jobs into places that
had been left behind. And when I ran for President, as governor, the whole
thing had turned around, in no small measure because of a lot of the work
she had done in the rural areas and the small towns, in the left-behind
areas of our state.
So I'll tell you two things. If you want somebody that understands
how to try to create economic opportunity in places that have been left
behind, and if you want somebody that has spent a whole lifetime, always
sticking up for kids, for families, and for the proposition that every
child matters, she's the best person in America New York could send to the
U.S. Senate.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END
5:37 P.M. EDT
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