REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA JULY 27, 1992 Thank you. Thank you so much. I came here today worried about how I could follow John Jacobs last night. Now I can't even follow my own introduction. I can't believe I got introduced by a saxophone player. Bird (Charlie Parker) still lives, Train (John Coltrane) still rules, and besides that, for all of our jazz enthusiasts, Lester Young will always be the pres. You've got to be over forty to get that one. Ladies and gentlemen, I am deeply honored to be here today. I meant what I said about John Jacobs speech last night. I have read it in its entirety. And I feel like he hit a grand slam home run last night, and now I have to be the lead-off batter in the next inning. I want to associate myself with his remarks. The Urban League has been a rich source of support to everything I have tried to do, and most recently, in this Presidential campaign, because of the brilliant leadership of Ron Brown, who worked, not only to rebuild our Democratic party after 1988, but on our great convention. And because of the wonderful job that Vernon Jordan did me, as the leader of my Vice-Presidential selection process with Warren Christopher and Madeleine Kunin. I think that as a test of the first decision of the nominee for President in compared with my adversary, I did OK. I'd also like to thank my fellow Arkansans who are here, who represent the Urban League, for the partnerships that we have had over the years -- to improve our children's lives, to reduce poverty, to increase opportunity, to improve education. I noticed the other side in the inevitable way has developed one of their negative campaign tactics, which they say, they're going to say that I am the failed governor of a small state. That's their new slogan. And they run their little surrogates out every day to say that. Well, ask them. You know, this fellow is amazing in Washington. He wants to blame me for everything that's happened in Arkansas, and not take responsibility for anything that happened in the United States of America for the last four years. To all of you I say, we're proud of what we've done at home. A lot of you here have roots in my state. You know that, from its beginning, it's always been one of the poorest places in America. If you know anything about farming, you know that in 1980, the rural areas of America had an even steeper decline in income than the urban areas, and I think we, at least, can say in our state, we have moved in the right direction, which is something you cannot say about the nation as a whole. We're proud of our partnership, and we're going to keep working together, because that's what works -- working together. For eighty-two years the Urban League has been a leader in the fight for civil and equal rights, and for economic empowerment and political empowerment. It has helped paved the way for opportunity for millions of Americans. As John Jacobs said last night, the historic mission of the Urban League, and the cause we're fighting for in this election, is not simply to fight racism and end discrimination, though if you join with me, we will certainly do that. It is not simply to close the opportunity gaps in our schools, in our factories, in our communities, though if you join with me, we will certainly continue to do that. It is not even simply to rebuild our cities, and bring new hope to urban life, though if you join with me, we will continue to do that. Your mission and our challenge today are even bigger. For more than eighty years, the Urban League has stood, not only for making life better for American cities and those who live in them, but for expanding the American dream to every person in this country. And if you join with me, that is what we must do in 1992 and in the next four years. The great French observer Alexis de Tocqueville came here in the 1830's to learn about democracy. He found, even then, much to admire -- pride in individual work, a devotion to the work ethic, a government that then promoted the common good. But even then our young country struggled to make good on its promise. de Tocqueville expressed one very troubling sentiment. He said, and I quote, "The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the union arrives from the presence of a black population upon its territory." He didn't know if we could overcome our ignorance about each other, and our prejudice toward each other, and our fear of each other. In other words, in 1830, he didn't know if we could change. But as John Jacobs said last evening, sometimes we get so hung up on what needs to be done that we've forgotten what already has been done. Until we find the strength in what we have done, it is hard to find the courage to meet the challenges of tomorrow. Alexis de Tocqueville looked at America before we lived through the Civil War; before Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address or signed the Emancipation Proclamation; before the Constitution was expanded to grant full citizenship to all Americans; before the birth of groups like the Urban League, who fight to empower all of our people; before Franklin Roosevelt from his wheelchair lifted up the spirits of America and put our country back to work; before the United States stood firm in World War II, and then afterwards, spread economic and political freedom throughout the world leading a coalition against tyranny until the Cold War finished with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of Communism in Eastern Europe, and the end of the Soviet Union itself; and before the civil rights movement transformed the face of America. In 1830, de Tocqueville didn't know if we could change. Yet we did, and we changed the world in the process, and we proved that we are the most remarkable nation in the history of mankind. And yet a century and a half later, we are still dogged with the same doubt that gripped de Tocqueville. Even our own people, and certainly people around the world, now doubt that we can change. Having won the Cold War, it is commonplace conversation all around the world among informed people that America is losing the peace. Or it is literally true that most American families are working harder than they did twenty years for lower wages than they did ten years ago. It is literally true that our economy is growing at an anemic pace, in the last couple of years, at roughly one-third and one- fourth the German and the Japanese rates. It is true that as wealthy as we are, we are only twenty-first in infant mortality. A dozen countries have adult workers that read better than we do. We have fallen from first to thirteenth in the world in wages. And we're still number one in the percentage of our adults in prison. And so, as people work harder for less, as the number of poor people explode, as the number of working poor people accelerate even beyond the number of the non-working poor, as we see fresh evidence of our divisions by race, ethnicity, and income, many look upon our diversity and wonder whether it will be the instrument of our undoing rather than the source of our renewal. And our own people are often so dispirited that they do not participate in elections, say that it doesn't matter, have no faith in the dialogue in which we are engaged, and wonder whether we can change. I come here this morning with a simple message, not only from my heart, but from the experience of my lifetime. We have changed before, and I believe we are ready to change again. I see the stirrings of hope in the astonishing crowds that are coming out to see Al Gore and me as we went across the country in our bus ride. We came in the dark to a little town of Vandalia, Illinois where there were over twelve thousand people crowding the court house square. And we stood in front of the old state capitol where Abraham Lincoln stood as a state legislator, and I said to them in that little community, Abraham Lincoln gave his life for the Union, for the proposition that all people were created equal, for the notion that we could create a new America, and he would turn over in his grave if he saw what had happened to the Republican party in our age and time. I saw it when fifteen thousand people were in the streets of Seattle; well over twenty-five thousand in St. Louis; ten thousand people in Ontario, California in the inland empire, the so-called home of the Reagan Democrats in California. They were there, they were there because they believe in change. I have seen it because the crowds that come are not all true believers. They come not just to see me, but because they want to hope, and believe, and change again. Many tell me they are Republicans, many say they were for Ross Perot, many say that they are Independent. They are the elements that make up America. But the most encouraging thing came to me, not in a big crowd, but in a small group. The day before yesterday, I was in Spokane, Washington. And before we went out to speak to a crowd of four or five thousand that filled the city park, I met with a group of eighteen Americans -- African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, Jewish-Americans, Republicans, Independents, people for Perot -- I don't see how they got so many categories into eighteen different people. We had a lot of twofers and threefers in that category. We covered all our bases. And these people were selected last Thursday, to get together and read the economic plan I had put out, and then to meet with me to ask questions. Just eighteen Americans, people that weren't politically active, and we did it in front of the press corps where they asked the questions. And I could tell that these people had really come together, they were bonding even though they thought they had so little in common. So after we had our conversation, which was exhilarating, in which they asked me all kinds of things from all kinds of directions, I asked two or three of them, I said, "What was the most remarkable thing about this experience for you seemed to like each other?" And they were all so exuberant about having had the chance to meet each other. And I said, "What surprised you most about this?" And the three people I asked all said the same thing. They said, "We had so much more in common than we thought we would." A Republican businesswoman said, "I've never voted for a Democrat before." But she said, "I am plagued by the thought that exploding poverty among working people, especially, is going to break the free enterprise system to which I have devoted my entire life." People ask me questions that people don't expect to come out of them, if all you have is pre-conception, I'm telling you the conditions are there to change this country, and give the government back to the people, and make it work again, and meet the challenges of this day and time. I want a new day for America. I want a new day for America because I know if we don't change the present approach, we will continue to suffer decline. And because I know that we have within us the intelligence, the character, the knowledge, and the resources to revitalize America. The central fact of our time is that we are now caught up in a global economy. A global economy in which opportunity is determined, not by things that used to shape our economy, but by what is inside our heads, what we are capable of learning, the natural resources God has given us, and then how we invest our money and our efforts here at home. Because production can be moved around the world, the world can change in an instant. And any public official that promises you the way things used to be should be run out the door. Nobody can make things the way they used to be. The challenge to get our country moving again is to hook our country into the future, and make change our friend not our enemy. How can we make change our friend, and not our enemy? When people work harder for less money than they were making ten years ago, they are playing by their rules, they are doing the right thing, but change is their enemy. When people live in abject dependence, because they cannot break out of the cycle of poverty, even though they are dying to work and be independent, change is not their friend, change is their enemy. When businesspeople work as hard as they can, and still fall further and further behind, change is not their friend, change is their enemy. What we have to focus on today, all of us, and this is what gives us the opportunity to unite, is that we need a new direction for America to make change our friend. The first thing we'll have to do is to stop denying our problems and dividing our people. Deep in their hearts, people long to believe that hearts have been broken before. I have laid out the most detailed, aggressive plan I have ever seen in my lifetime from a Presidential candidate. I am deeply devoted to it, but I don't believe in using phrases like, "Read my lips," because who knows what the future holds. I have seen a President promise a kinder, gentler nation, and then practice a meaner, harsher politics. I have heard the promise of a new harmony, a greater tolerance, and then seen it manifested in a bitter fight against civil rights legislation. I have heard a promise that this administration would listen to the quiet people other don't. And then I watched the President veto the Motor Voter registration bill, which would enable more quiet people to have a loud voice on election day. I have seen the quiet people crushed under the burden of economic policies that favor the very rich at the expense of the middle class, and the working poor, and the broad public interest of America. Having said all that, let's tell the truth. Change is hard. Change is not easy. In 1992, we have a chance to do what the Urban League has been fighting to do since its inception, to make economic empowerment and opportunity the number one civil rights issue in this country. But to do it, we've got to fight for change. To change the direction of the last dozen years, we need a plan to rebuild this country. You understand this only too well. You call your plan a Marshall Plan for America, to increase growth and productivity here at home. And I can tell you I am very impressed with it. I know that John Jacobs has been in touch with one of our congressmen, Ray Thornton, who has been working on what he calls a Marshall Plan to rebuild America. I didn't call my plan by that name, but it has much in common with yours. I come here today to open a dialogue, to tell you what I believe should be done, and then to offer to work with you on your plan and mine to make one plan to make America great again. Your plan and my plan, let us be clear, do not involve liberal versus conservative, left versus right, big government versus less government. That's the load of bull we've been paralyzed with for too long. Your plan and my plan are about new ideas versus old ideas, the future versus the past, helping the many versus the few, making change our friend versus making change our enemy, having a government that is leaner and more effective, that invests more and consumes less, that builds people's hopes instead of playing to their fears. That is what we must do. Your plan, also like mine, calls for investing more money in our people, but also requiring higher standards. And I want to emphasize that, because our adversaries in this election, in their eagerness to prove that they did nothing wrong by reducing investment, will say, "All they want to do is tax-and-spend." Remember what John Jacobs said last night, I'm going to read this. Does this sound like a tax-and-spend liberal to you? "In the 1990's we need to recognize that our very existence as a people is on the line in a new challenging world that is being born. We need to ensure the continuous development of African- Americans as a self-confident people, whose effective efforts can change our lives and our nation. And we must begin with our children. If Japan, Korea, and Taiwan can take people raped by poverty and devastated by war, and mow them into economic powerhouses in one generation, than a committed, dedicated African-American community can help its children to do the same." Now, I want them to hear this in Washington. I want to say one other thing. Am I reading this as well as you did? This is important. I want the heartland of America to hear this. This is not about tax-and-spend. This is about progress or sink. Listen to this. "What will it take for our children to develop into outstanding twenty-first century citizens? Let me suggest four basic criteria. Every African-American child should graduate from high school with the ability to do calculus, should be fluent in a foreign language, should be able to research, organize, and write a twenty-five page essay on a challenging topic, and should live by strict, high, ethical standards. That's what it will take to make it in the twenty-first century, not just for African- Americans, but for all of America's people." Now, give him another hand. Do it. Now, those are goals worth fighting for. And when people in this election try to put on yesterday's broken record that sticks at the same old place in the song, "Tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, tax-and- spend, tax-and-spend," and then the negative handlers, they push the arm a little further and it sticks again, it goes, "Liberal, liberal, liberal," you say, "We got standards, we got values, and we're going to change. And get of our way with all that stuff that's holding us back, and dragging us down and dividing us." When they recant those things, like mantras, they're chanting, say, "I don't want to hear that. We just had the three worst years of economic performance since the Depression. I don't want to hear that, when we're dropping in wages and increasing in poverty. I don't want to hear attacks on new ideas and new approaches, when we're sinking in the rough of the status quo." You know sometimes you've got to change just to survive. Change is the law of life. Change is necessary to preserve our basic values. Change today is the order, not just for people who think of themselves as liberal, that is open and reaching out and inclusive, but for people who think of themselves as conservative. How can you preserve the basic values? How can you conserve the fabric of your life if you do not have the courage to change, when what you're doing is tearing the heart out of your country? That is what we have to tell the American people. My plan puts fifty billion dollars a year in private and public investment back into this economy, creates a million jobs each year in direct jobs, provides affordable health care for all Americans for a change, excellence in education, safer streets, and stronger families by putting the American people first again, and putting government back on the side of average American families. My plan says let's take every dollar by which we reduce defense, and instead of just squandering it in the dark hole of the budget deficit, re-invest every last red cent in building jobs here at home to build an economy for the twenty-first century. There are, in this state alone, hundreds of thousands of defense workers now out of work. People who have won the Cold War, and now have been left out in the cold. High-wage workers, skilled workers, people who made the California dream a magnet that drove millions of people across the continent, out of the dust bowl of Oklahoma and the farm fields of Arkansas and Mississippi, looking for jobs in California, and now idled because there was nothing found for the defense workers to do. When they took bids on a new high-speed rail network in Los Angeles County, with all these high-skilled workers out of work, did they get a bid from a company that was building trains with old defense workers? No. Nobody was doing that, they had to look to Germany and Japan. Why aren't the defense workers building the national security of the future by building the national economy, building high-speed rail, and roads, and bridges, and water systems, and sewer systems, and recycling systems? And why aren't those jobs in the inner cities where people can be put back to work, and given the opportunity to go forward? That's what we ought to be about. That's about tomorrow. That's not about liberal or conservative. It's about the future. And what about education? We need opportunity, we need investment, we need standards. I worked hard to develop the national education goals. And I have watched how our education President has embraced those goals, and then told us why they should be in the position of grading the rest of us with little responsibility to contribute to the effort we are making. And now they want to point the finger instead, and say we did not do well enough. In 1980, the federal government was contributing about ten percent of the cost of public education, down to about six percent now. Think what a difference that would make in California today, just that. Think what it means to the poor states, like the delta states. Think what it means to the inner cities. Think what it means to the school districts who suffer from the savage inequalities that the great American writer Jonathan Kozel chronicled in his book. I believe in high standards in education. I believe in accountability. I believe in standards for teachers, and standards for students, and standards for schools. I want to see a national exam system that's not a fraud, that really means something, that tells you whether your kids are learning what they're supposed to know. I believe that we ought to do what John Jacobs said. I think every child needs to understand, not just arithmetic, but advanced mathematical concepts, and needs to be able to read, write, and think, and solve problems. Because we live in a world in which it's not so important what you know, as what you can continue to learn. We live in a world where the average eighteen- year-old will literally change the nature of work eight times in a lifetime. Even if you stay with the same company, the world economy will force changes in the nature of work. Being a bank teller today is not even what it used to be. Is it? Working in most factories today isn't what it used to be. So we have to continue to re-educate people. It breaks my heart to see all these high-wage factory workers out of work, although we know mechanization will have to continue to be done. We've got to modernize plant and equipment if we want to pay higher wages here than people make south of the border, or halfway around the world. Which means, you've got to keep creating new jobs, which means people have to know new things. Well, you can't do that if you've got a vast sea of poor kids, and you don't even get them off to a head start so that everybody's starting at the same line when education begins. We can't do that if we ignore the plain lessons that so many of our children come from poor families, under-educated families, that they need their parents involved as their children's first teachers. They need smaller classes, they need elementary counselors. We've got to do it right at the beginning. If we can give the kids the capacity to keep learning, we can move forward. It's all very well to hold people to high standards, but they've got to be able to jump. And that involves doing it right at the beginning. Then let me say, I like all this values talk except that it's coming from people who are telling us what we ought to do and making excuses for what they haven't done. I believe with John, that there are certain basic values that we ought to impart through our school systems: respect for self, respect for family, respect for others, respect for community, respect for our natural environment, the obligation to honor truth over falsehood, the obligation to serve the larger community. There are lots of things that we need to be imparting through the schools. That's why I want more partnerships with the private sector, and more opportunities for kids to work with people who have succeeded. That's why I know that Los Angeles can be rebuilt, if there are enough caring, successful adults that will support projects like the L.A. Conservation Corps, and other things that give children the chance to see the nature of work working, to see connections with people, and imagine the future we want them to live. I don't have any problem promoting good values, but the government ought to live by what it says, instead of having worse values than the families they're lecturing. And if we know people are going to have to do eight different things in their lifetime, then a high school education is not enough. I think you were telling me, no, not you, you were telling me that you served on the Grant Commission. In 1987, my wife, William Julius Wilson from Chicago, Dr. Watson and others served on a commission to look at what happened to the forgotten half of young Americans who don't go to college. We are the only advanced nation that does not have a system for guaranteeing all of them at least two years of further training. Result? Look at the 1990 census report. Younger workers with a high school diploma only, or who dropped out of high school, had their earnings going just like this, dropping like a rock in a well. Younger people who got two years of further education beyond high school in apprenticeship programs, community colleges, vo-tech schools, or who went on to college, their earnings go up. I say we need a system in this country to restore the dignity of work by giving every high school graduate two years of further education or training in apprenticeship programs. And we need to adopt the national trust fund I have recommended, to offer every American the chance to walk through the doors of a college. Everyone, without regard to income, borrow the money to go to college, everyone, and then pay it back, either as a small percentage of their own income after they go to work, or even better, by solving America's problems. I want to combine two of the best ideas this country ever had, the G.I. Bill, after World War II, the Peace Corps, under President Kennedy. We sent young people all across the world, let's send them back home. Let them work for two years as teachers, police officers, nurses, in a drug program, solving the problems of our cities, rebuilding America, and educating a whole generation of Americans. We can do that. We can do that. It would be the best money we ever spent. And we need some special initiatives for our very poor areas in our cities. I know Secretary Kemp is coming here, and he's got some pretty good ideas. Trouble is, they only dust them off when there's a riot or some other problem. He's out there working all by himself, and never even makes the newspapers until something goes wrong. And then the President discovers him and brings him up front again. (TAPE SKIPS) ...these areas, and until we do, we're not going to turn them around. There's not enough government money in the world to fix the problems, if the private sector is not committed to liberating the potential of the people who are trapped in poverty and the lack of opportunity. You know that as well as I do. But we have to make some specific changes in the laws. Let me just give you an example. There are lots of manufacturing enterprises that could be put into our inner cities again for relatively low skilled and low educated workers. But because we don't control health care costs, and because we don't provide an investment tax credit for new plant and equipment, and because we don't have the incentives we should have for continuous training of our work force, we make it very hard for our workers, in real need, to be competitive with very low wages overseas, where they don't have to worry about health care costs or environmental investments, and the cost of doing business is better. So I say, we need a national plan to make America a manufacturing power again, as well as specific incentives to work in our inner cities. We also need to understand that most new jobs are created by small businesses in units of under fifty, and that means a banking system that makes loans in the inner city again, for poor people who can do their work. The president of the American Banking Association this year is a country banker from my home state, who works in the Mississippi delta, the poorest part of America. And he said to me, "I realize now, Bill, most of our lending officers have no idea how to judge a loan to a poor person. They don't know how to do it." And he said, "I want to work with you, and we can retrain and redirect the energies of our banking system." We can have banks cool their resources and create community banks like the South Shore Development Bank in Chicago. We can have people that understand that poor people are good loan risks, if you know what you are doing, and there's a market out there that's going to waste because we don't have enough businesses in the inner cities that are owned by the people who live there. And we've got to do a better job of that. We've got to do a better job, too, of making our cities safer places. It's a big myth that most people in our cities don't want safety. It's also a big myth that you can't do anything about crime and drugs on the street. New York City, the first time in thirty-six years has a decline in all major areas of crime, because Lee Brown, the police chief instituted community policing. Houston, Texas, fifteen percent in the crime rate in one year, because they put six hundred fifty-five more policemen on the streets working in community policing. I walked on a street in Philadelphia and played basketball in a park with kids, where kids were, a couple of years ago, terrified to walk into the park, because of community policing and rapid prosecution of serious drug dealers. We can do this. One of the things that my plan to rebuild America does is to provide a hundred thousand more police officers, not to be enemies of their neighbors, but the friends of their neighbors to walk the same streets every day to work to prevent crime, not just to catch criminals, and safer streets through community policing. Finally, let me say something about family values. I kind of liked what you said about that last night, too. How in the world anybody in America can use family values to divide us is beyond me, but I can see it coming right down the tracks. That's their wedge issue, family values, welfare. They got it, the message is, "Oh my gosh, don't." If we knew every family story in this room today, it would break the heart and lift the spirit of America at the same time. I will say again, most of our families have good values, and they're a lot better than the governments today. What does it say about family values when, in my bus trip, we were in Columbus, Ohio, and I met a single mother with seven children, which she bore in wedlock. She had a fifty thousand dollar a year job supporting her seven children, and she had to quit that job and go on welfare, because one of those kids was sick, and she couldn't get any health insurance. So the only way she could take care of one kid was to give up a fifty thousand dollar job just to get Medicaid. What does that say of the family values of America? I met a beautiful young African-American woman in her early twenties, big, tall, attractive, articulate woman, just got a college degree, had to stay on welfare, dying to go to work, because she had a child with spina bifida. And the only way that child could be taken care of is if she stayed dependent, instead of independent, because of the way our government system works in this country. Because we're the only nation with an advanced economy that's refused to provide a basic package of affordable health care to all Americans. What does it say about family values, when we still have a welfare system that encourages some people to stay on welfare, not because the benefits are high -- the benefits have dropped more than wages have in the last twenty years -- but because they have children, and they can't afford child care or medical coverage for their kids. So they can't get the training they need. I say to you, we ought to end welfare as we know it. It ought to be a second chance, not a way of life. But to do it, you have to liberate people. You have to educate them, and train them, and liberate their kids. Then you can require them to take jobs. That would be good family values, help people to succeed as workers and as parents. And what about the fact that there are a million more poor children in this country than there were ten years ago. One million. And most of them are living in families where the parents work. What does it say about our tax system? That in the 1980's we lowered taxes on the wealthiest Americans, while their incomes exploded, and we raised taxes on the rest of Americans, while their incomes declined. So that now there are millions of Americans who get up every day, work forty hours a week, and do their best to raise their children, and their still in poverty. I say the tax system ought to lift those people out of poverty. If you're working hard and playing by the rules, you ought to be taken out of poverty. What does it say about family values? That we have a system of child support, which for millions of Americans is a cruel joke. Where you go to court and you get your order, and then somebody crosses a state line or finds a lenient judge, and the kid never gets a dime. And where it is not confined by income and certainly not by race. Where the problems in the system are just as prevalent among the middle class and the upper middle class, as they are among the poor. Why don't we have a system that says the government doesn't raise children, people do. And parents are going to have to help, whether they're home or not. And we're going to have a system to do that. You can't cross the line and beat the deal. Oh, I think we know about family values. But let's be honest with one another. I had the privilege of spending some time in a two- parent household, and some time in a single-parent household. I never knew what it meant to be a foster child, but I sure knew what it meant to have an extended family. In the early years, I would have had a hard time making it with my single mother, if it hadn't been for my grandparents, and my uncles, and my aunts, and my great uncles, and my great aunts, and my cousins so distant I couldn't count them. A lot of you know what I'm talking about, don't you? So, tell them we know about family values. And we think our government ought to value families. Help families. Help families on welfare to liberate themselves. Help the working poor with a tax system that lifts them above poverty. Pass the Family and Medical Leave Act, and don't veto it this time. Understand that child care, and medical coverage for children, and Head Start, and programs to help parents become their children's first teachers. These are not programs and expenditures of tax dollars. These are ways to help parents be better parents, kids be better kids, families be stronger families. Other nations of the world all make it easier for people to raise their children in dignity than we do, all the other advanced nations. And one of the reasons a lot of these economies are growing faster than ours, is that they understand they do not have a person to waste, and they are sickened when they see how we squander the human potential of America. We let people wind up in jail, when they ought to be on the assembly line, or in the offices leading this country into the twenty-first century. And let me say, finally, we've got to do this together. Together, our diversity can be a source of our strength. A hundred fifty different racial and ethnic groups in America, in a world in which the global economy gets smaller and more inter-related every day, that should be a resource. But we have to recognize that we have differences and we are different. But at the bottom, we want the same things for our children and our future. Many of the feelings that I have about civil rights come from my southern heritage. I grew up in the segregated south with grandparents who believed in integration, not because they had a fancy education and had read all the books, but because they had personally experienced with African-Americans as people. And they knew what was going on was wrong. I lived to see my daughter in a new south, a public school student in the Little Rock public schools, which are two-third black and one-third white. A student who learned what Martin Luther King wanted her to do, to judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. I watched her do algebra, play volleyball, dance ballet, argue politics, and dream dreams with children of both races. And I can tell you that's how America ought to work. Everything I have tried to do as a governor, whether it was a minority business loan program; or an aggressive effort to empower the parents of poor children to be successful teachers and get their kids off to a good start; to investing millions of dollars in isolated rural communities where people, literally, often have no sewage system or running water; toward trying to lift the vision of our state; all of it has been designed to let all of us live together, and judge each other by the content of our character, not by the color of our skin; and all of us to live up to the fullest of our God-given potential. There is nothing else to politics but that. Politics is about making tomorrow better than today, and about making us all feel that we are a part of a larger community in which we matter to each other; in which all of us are better off because each of us is there. That is the purpose of our common political life throughout two hundred years as Americans. But every generation, we are challenged to change, to meet the challenges of the time, so that we can preserve that. That is the liberal mission of America, and that is the conservative mission of America. To make progress and to bind ourselves together. If you vote for Al Gore and Bill Clinton, we won't solve these problems overnight, we didn't get into this mess overnight. We don't have all of the answers, no one does. But we know the old ways don't work. We know that trickle-down economics doesn't work. We know that investment economics, and putting people first, and putting government, and business, and labor, and education all on the same side competing for opportunity in the world does work. We know that America works best when our economy looks like a diamond, to use my friend Ray Marshall's shape. When we have the possibility of the great middle class to move up the ladder and do better, but knowing they'll be OK, if they just work hard and stay where they are. When the poor can look up and see a bigger group ahead of them, and they know that by their own efforts, they can get there. But more and more and more, our diamond is becoming a triangle. What we have to do is to recover the diamond. What we have to do is to recover hope. What we have to do is to do it together. The challenge of this time is very great, my fellow Americans. But I ask you, can we say, in good conscience, that our challenges are greater than Abraham Lincoln faced at the dawn of the Civil War? Can we say, in good conscience, that our challenges are greater than Franklin Roosevelt faced, as he wheeled his wheelchair into the White House for the first time, at the beginning of the great direction? Can we say, in good conscience, that our challenges are greater than John Kennedy faced when he feared that we would go to nuclear war with the Soviets? We have always faced great challenges. All that remains for us in this election is to believe; to believe that we can do better; to believe that the future can be better than the present; to believe that we are important to one another, and that all of us can be more if we are together, than we can if we are apart. That is the mission of the Urban League. That is the challenge of America. That is the heart of my plan to rebuild America. That is the meaning of your Marshall Plan. And that, in the end, is our responsibilities as citizens to bring about in this 1992 election. Thank you. And God bless you all.