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REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON
SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION
GEORGIA DOME
ATLANTA, GA
SEPTEMBER 9, 1992


Well, that song might be like Jerusalem. It's all
downhill from here.

Dr. Richardson, thank you for that wonderful
introduction, and I thank the choir and the
soloists for that stirring introduction.  I thank
Dr. Jemison for inviting me here, and I'm glad to
see him again.  Usually we see each other when I'm
in Louisiana 'cause it's a short trip down from
Arkansas.

I'm glad to be here with all your general officers
and with Reverend Jesse
Jackson and with all the rest of you.  I can't help
saying a special word of
thanks to two groups of your members.  First to all
the people here from my home state of Arkansas. 
Would you raise your hands, at least?  Stand up
there.  Let us see you.

We're well represented in this crowd here.

I want to thank Reverend P.J. James and Reverend
O.C. Jones and all the others from my state who've
been so good to me for so many years.  The other
day we had a meeting of ministers in our state
about this campaign and your church was well
represented, not only by those from Arkansas but by
Reverend Odell Jones from Detroit, who's really
from Arkansas, and Reverend Amos Brown from San
Francisco and Reverend Clay Evans and Reverend E.J.
Jones from Chicago, Reverend Kenneth Wayland from
Memphis.

I appreciate all of them coming all the way to
Arkansas to visit about the future of this country.
Ladies and gentlemen, since I have been the nominee
of the Democratic Party I have tried to reach out
to all Americans.  I have had the privilege of
appearing before the Congressional Black Caucus,
the National Association of Black Journalists, the
Urban League, the NAACP, the National Bar
Association and even the AME Church. You'll forgive
me that, won't you?

But I had an amazing experience on Labor Day, which
I hope will point us the way to a better future. 
On Labor Day I was with an African American mayor,
Emmanual Clever in Kansas City, and then with an
African American mayor, Dwight Tillory in
Cincinnati.  And guess what?  Most of the folks who
voted them in were white.

They made a decision that they were going to vote
for the best people on the ticket.  I had a
heart-breaking trip to Florida, which was also
heart-lifting, after Hurricane Andrew.  And I went
down to Florida City and soon as I got off the
airplane, the little predominantly African-American
town that was totally wiped out, and the mayor and
I were walking through the city and we came across
a big husky burly white guy who had come all the
way from Michigan with a truckload of stuff for the
folks there, and two of his buddies.  They just
loaded up the truck and drove down there, and he
was so proud of himself he didn't know what to do,
and there was an African-American lady standing
next to him who had been wiped out by this storm
and she looked at him and she looked at me, and she
said ``You know, it was nearly, nearly worth losing
my home to find out how we can work together--but
it's too bad it took a hurricane to prove it.''

Today I was in Clayton Country, Georgia, and I
thought again of something Reverend Jackson used to
say.  I went to a real welfare reform project today
called Peach, which is a good name if you're in
Georgia, and it stands for a whole bunch of good
things that basically say we're going to take
people on welfare and give them education and
training and help to support their children and
give them the capacity to move to work, and then
they will.

And in Clayton County, Georgia, 70 percent of the
people on welfare are white.  The other day I was
in Spokane, Washington, and I met with about 18
people who had been asked to meet alone without me
three days before and review the economic plan I
had put before the American people.  These people
came from five different racial and ethnic groups;
they were men and women; there were Democrats and
independents and people that thought they were for
Ross Perot while he was in the race, and
Republicans.  They were all over the map.  And I
could tell they were having a big time with one
another when I got there.

And when the whole thing was over, I said ``Have
you enjoyed this?'' and they said ``We've loved
it,'' and I said, well, what have you enjoyed most
about it?  And they said, we were surprised to find
out how much we had in common.  I say that because
we all know that our country is in trouble.  You
know from your own life what others read in
statistics every month. When the Commerce
Department said last week that income for most
families dropped $1,100 last year, that was not a
surprise to you.  When they said that poverty was
exploding and more than one in five American
children is in poverty today, that was not a
surprise to you.  When the census figures came out
and said that most Americans are working harder
today than they were 10 years for less money, that
wasn't a surprise to you, because most of you and
most of the people you represent are.  Isn't that
right?

What I say to you today, my fellow Americans, is
that we are better than that, and we can do better
than that.  And it's going to be different in
January.

We have an opportunity not only to win a campaign
but to change this country, not just to get a few
more votes than our opponents, but to do more to
change the lives of the American people, to summon
the American people to a new call of opportunity
and responsibility and genuine community.  And I
believe the American people are aching for it.  I
think most people have got this deal figured out,
this trickle-down economics.

I was in Harry Truman's home town on Labor Day, and
came a big rain and there were thousands of people
there, and I said:  folks, if you'll stand in this
rain, I will--we've been having trickle-down for 12
years; surely we can have it for 12 more minutes.

And so we stayed, but not for 12 minutes.  I shook
hands in that crowd for nearly an hour, all of us
drenched, people getting wet because they wanted to
change their country.

I know now there is a siren song coming from the
other side. They're all saying well, they want to
change America, too. You know, Mr. Kemp was here
earlier today.  I kind of like Mr. Kemp.  I confess
he's got some pretty good ideas, but they just trot
him out when they get in trouble.  They don't pay
any attention to him when they don't.

The other guys remind me of that great old church
story about the preacher that thought he'd preached
the sermon of his life.  Everybody was amening him
to death and when he got to the climax of the
sermon he said I want everybody who wants to go to
heaven to stand up right now, and the while
congregation stood up except one woman that hadn't
missed a Sunday in 40 years.  And he was
crestfallen and he said Sister Jones, don't you
want to go to heaven when you die?  And she looked
right up and said oh, Preacher, I thought you were
trying to get up a load to go right now.

That's the way the other guys are.  Two months
before the election, they've got lots of good ideas
but they just never want to go right now.  It's
always later when they want to go.

I'll tell you, folks.  We've tried it their way for
12 years and I don't know about you, but I'm ready
to go right now.

We need a new direction in this country and I would
say we need three things.  First, we need a
partnership.  We cannot go forward unless we go
forward together, without regard to race or region
or income. We need a partnership.

I was stunned when I went to South-Central Los
Angeles, not after the riots but three years before
the riots occurred, and I found that they told me
when you got here, Governor, you're the first
statewide elected official from any state that's
ever been down here talking to our community group.

They were not talking to one another. They were not
working together.  We've got to have a partnership. 
We don't have a person to waste.  We're going up or
down together and we'd better start acting like it. 
This election needs to prove that we can have a
partnership.

All these fine people from my state that say I'm
from Arkansas, ask me about my governor--ask them
about our partnership.  I would not be standing
here today if it weren't for the support of the
African American citizens in my state. I wouldn't
be here.  I wouldn't have been reelected governor
in 1982.

But after the election was over, that's when the
partnership began. And you remember this.  After
the election is over, that's when our real
partnership must begin because we have so much to
do, so many hills to climb, so many rivers to
cross, so many obstacles to confront and such a
clear course we must pursue, it's going to take all
of us working in the right direction and being a
part of it.  Nobody's smart enough to have all the
answers, but if we all feel like we're on the same
train, going in the same direction, we will believe
we are making it better and then we will.

So the partnership that I seek with you is not one
for elections and votes. It's one that will go way,
way beyond that.  Ask the folks from my state about
that.  The second thing I want to say is we need a
plan.  And we need a plan not just for the election
season but one that dominates our every waking
minute after the election is over. Not just
something to say to make into a television ad or a
pretty speech, but something that guides the
energies and the directions of every member of the
Cabinet, every member of the White House staff,
every agency director out there in every state,
people reaching out to the church, reaching out to
the community leaders, reaching out to the business
leaders, reaching out to the educators and saying
this is where we are going.

And it can't be trickle down. We've tried that for
12 years.  When we started on the trickle down
enterprise, which basically says lower taxes on the
wealthiest Americans and get out of the way, and
they will do all the rest for us, we started that
in 1980, when we had the highest wages in the
world.  We're down to 13th and dropping.

You know the Census says that a big increase in the
number of working poor, people working for a living
and still poor.  You know that wages are going down
even as people work harder.

There's a sign--on our little bus trip there was a
guy with a sign in the crowd the other night that
said I'm not tired and I'm sure not lazy, I'm just
bushed.

But we don't need another just song for the
election. We need a plan, a plan that puts people
first, a plan that says trickle down didn't work;
we've got a $400 billion deficit, so tax-and-spend
won't work; we've got to invest and educate,
cooperate and grow.  We've got to create jobs and
incomes.  You think about it.

If in every community that you represent, if people
had jobs, and if their jobs led to growing incomes,
and if the free enterprise system reached into the
inner cities and into the poor rural areas, so that
everybody had a chance to borrow money to go into
business, we would have far fewer problems than we
now have.

And so I have put before the American people a plan
I call putting people first. It says let's invest
more money to create jobs here at home. It says we
don't mind people making money. I want to make a
lot of millionaires during my term as president,
but I've got this crazy idea. I'd like for them to
make it the old-fashioned way by putting the rest
of America back to work, not by cutting deals or
moving jobs, but by putting America back to work.

I want to take all this money by which we've been
cutting defense and spend every dollar of it to put
it back into the American economy to create jobs
for the 21st century and transportation and
communications, and environmental cleanup, and
putting the people to work where the work is to be
done, in the cities and in the rural areas all
across this country, creating jobs where the work
is to be done for our people.
 
I want to have a program which includes for the
first time in a dozen years a real effort to get
serious about providing affordable housing for
Americans and putting people to work. I want to
begin by looking at this vast inventory of
government housing that is now in the possession of
the government, all boarded up, not doing anybody
any good. You've got people sleeping on the streets
in boarded-up housing in the same block in the
United States.

We ought to turn some of that housing over to
cities, to community organizations, and to churches
who are willing to participate in rehabilitating
the housing and making it available as affordable
housing for the homeless, for the elderly, for the
people in need.


What good is that housing doing all boarded up? And
you could put people to work fixing it up.

We have to recognize that we live in a world where
what we earn depends on what we can learn. And I
want everybody to listen to this: That nobody
running for office can ever promise you to make the
American economy the way it used to be. You know,
where you could take one job and hold it for 30
years and every year it just got a lot better no
matter--you just kept on doing the same thing and
you got more for it.

We're living in the world where change is the law
of life, but because we have responded wrongly to
it, we have been punished by the changes in the
world. What I seek is to reward the people who will
embrace change and make it our friend. And that
means we've got to educate everybody, I mean
everybody; everybody.

A lot of these kids don't have a chance today
because they didn't get an education.  It means
Head Start and other pre-school programs for every
child who needs it--not just talking about it, but
doing it.  It means smaller classes in those early
grades, and counselors to help the kids who need
support and who can't get it at home.
 
It means the opportunity to have access to
computers and to labs and to languages.  Even if
you're a poor inner-city kid or a poor kid in a
rural area, you got to have access to those things,
too, because your world will be shaped by them just
the same as if you're in a very wealthy suburban
school.

It means knowing when you get an education that it
meets some real standard.  And that when the kids
come out they really know what they're supposed to
know, and that if they don't you have some way to
improve it. Because there are no standards today
and there is no real way of measuring it, we have
no way to act on that.  It means guaranteeing
everybody who gets out of high school at least two
years of further education in an apprenticeship
program so they can get good jobs, not dead-end
jobs.

It means opening the doors of college to every
American.  Do you know the college drop-out rate is
more than twice the high school drop-out rate
because the price of college is going up so fast. 
And there has been no response until election year
from the other side.  But from the day I began this
campaign, I said if you'll vote for me I want to
establish a national trust fund out of which any
American can borrow the money to go to college and
then pay it back either as a percentage of their
income after they go to work or, even better, by
being part of a Peace Corps here at home to rebuild
America:  pay your college loan off by working for
two years as a teacher or a nurse or a police
officer or in a housing program or for the elderly
or to keep kids out of trouble, to rebuild the
community street by street.

You think about it.  We could educate a whole
generation of Americans, pay for it, solve a lot of
our problems.  It would be the best money we ever
spent, and it would be a very small portion of a
very big budget.  There are those who say we can't
afford it.  I say we cannot afford not to do it.

And, finally, let me say that we cannot do these
things and your government cannot take these
initiatives unless at last, at last, we follow the
lead of the other advanced nations of the world and
provide basic affordable health care to all
Americans, and control the costs of the health care
system we have.

Eighty percent of all the strikes in America are
over health care benefits now, not over wages. 
Every year more small businesses go broke trying to
pay for health care, and others stop covering their
people, leaving them full of anxiety, subject to
pain, and when they do get sick they get care
anyway and the cost gets passed on to the rest of
us.

Every year the governments' budgets all over
America face bankruptcy because of the rising cost
of health care, and we are spending 30 percent more
of our income than anybody else and getting less
for it, because we're spending more on insurance,
on regulation, on paperwork, on drugs, on
unnecessary equipment, on procedures that don't
have to be done, and because we don't provide what
we need more of, which is primary and preventive
health care for people in the inner cities and in
rural areas in this country.  We have too much of
same things and too little of others.  So we spend
more and we get sicker.

And none of this will change unless you vote to
change the presidency.  We'll never get a national
health care strategy without a new administration
in Washington.

So we need a plan.

And the third thing we need is a passion for
progress and for community.  We need an America
that stands up for human rights and independence
here at home and around the world, in South Africa,
in Haiti, in Somalia as well as in Bosnia and the
former Soviet Union and in Latin America--all over
the world.

The end of the Cold War gives us the freedom to
stand up for our values, and we ought to do it,
here at home and around the world.  We've got to
have a passion for progress. People got to believe
that tomorrow will be better than today if they
work hard and play by the rules.

And to do it we've got to have a passion for our
national community, the notion that we are going up
or down together.  I urge you to think on these
things, and to realize that in the next 55 days the
character and the vision, and the will of the
American people will be severely tested.

While we represent, Al Gore and I, and all of you
who support us, the future, a change, a difference,
a chance to get America going again and bring
America back again.

And the other side represents the same old thing
except worse; but they are very good at raising the
fears of the American people, are they not?  They
always tell us why we cannot do something. You
know, I say well, let's have a health care system
that has the best of our system, choose your
doctor, and keep the private health care system and
keep what's good about it, but let's save money.
The Germans do it.  They say we can't, and if you
try you'll mess it up worse.

I say don't you think you ought to be able to get a
little time off when there's a baby born or a sick
parent, without losing your job?  72, not just the
richest countries, 72 nations in the world give
that right to their workers, including all of our
major competitors. The other side says, oh, we
can't do that. They're the ``we can't'' side and
we're the``we can'' side.

They're going to say from now till November 3rd
things could be worse, and we're going to say
things can get better. They're going to say
everything in the wide world to say why you
shouldn't support change. But let me tell you this:
you think of it now.  We are here in Atlanta,
Martin Luther King's home, the home of the heart
and soul of the civil rights movement. The home of
a great mayor and friend of mine who should be in
our prayers because he is recuperating from open
heart surgery. You think about it.

Where would we be today if in the great crises of
American history people have said we don't have the
courage to change; might get worse.  Think about
it.  That's what they tried to tell George
Washington when he said: we've got to get this
country together, we can't be just 13 states
running around here all over the place doing our
own thing, printing our own money, having our own
armies. We'll never amount to anything; we ought to
get this country together.

The other side said, hey, it could get worse, don't
do it, it could get worse.  Abraham Lincoln said:
we can't let this union be torn apart. And then he
issued the Emancipation Proclamation that said I
don't care if the Constitution did recognize
slavery, it was wrong, it was inconsistent with the
basic value that all men are created equal. The
other side said, oh, things could get worse.

Franklin Roosevelt running against Herbert Hoover.
Roosevelt says: The only thing we have to fear is
fear itself. He's chained to a wheelchair, lifting
up the country in the depths of the Depression. The
other side said: things could get worse.

Harry Truman running against Tom Dewey, a man for
whom Mr. and Mrs. Bush cast their first vote.

And Harry Truman said: the war's over, we've got to
lead the world to a new era of freedom; we've got
to stand up to communism; we've got to build a
middle class here at home with a veteran's
administration and a farmer's home administration,
and we've got to put people in their houses and
give them a chance to get educated. And we
integrated the military. And everybody ought to
have a right to health care. That's what Harry
Truman said over 40 years ago, and old Tom Dewey
said things could get worse.

This country is the longest-lasting democracy in
human history because whenever we had to, we sent
the things-could- get-worse crowd packing--and it's
time to do it again.

In a race of hope against fear, of change against
the same old ways, of grabbing for the future
instead of clinging to the past, sometimes the most
conservative thing you can do is to change, because
the only way you can preserve and conserve what you
care most about is to reach out to the realities
before you. You know that, everyone of you--you
know that.  And I say to you today, your vote
counts every bit as much as mine or any other
American's.  You have the power to move this
country forcefully into the future, you have the
power to break the deadlock, the division, the
gridlock in Washington between the Republicans and
the Democrats, the gridlock imposed by the special
interests, the gridlock dividing people by race and
income and region.  You can break them. But your
numbers must be heard.


I want to say here publicly what I have already
said privately to Reverend Jackson, which is I am
grateful to him for being willing to lead a great
national effort to register many, many, many more
voters in the next few days on behalf of the
national campaign of the Democrats.

No one could do it as he will.  But he must find a
willing ear, and some strong backs and strong
hands.  Just remember, folks, you're fighting in
the greatest tradition of America--the we-can crowd
against the we-can't crowd.  For all of our flaws
and imperfections, this has been the greatest
country in human history and the longest-lasting
democracy because every time we were challenged, we
said we can, because every time our existence, our
character and our values were threatened by what we
were doing, we had the courage to change-- from
Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Martin Luther
King, every time, every step along the way, this
country somehow found the God-given grace and
strength to change.

You know, at this Baptist convention I just have to
say one more thing.  Our adversary said there was
something wrong with the Democrats because our
platform didn't have G-o-d in it.  Well, I got to
reading it--I don't think my Constitution has G-o-d
in it, but I sure like it.  And we Baptists were
forged in the conviction that church and state
should be separated but that we should never take
God out of our hearts.

And so I tell you, they'll try to wear us down. 
You know what they'll do, the this-can-be-worse
crowd--it could be worse:  they'll try to wear us
down, and we must not grow weary, we must not grow
weary.  We know we will reap if we don't lose
heart.  And we know if we have God in our hearts
and we're faithful to our legacy as Americans, we
think about the future we want for our children and
grandchildren, then we will have the strength we
need. 

We will do what Isaiah told us to do: ''Mount up
with wings as eagles,'' run and not grow weary,
walk and not get tired--and win on November 3rd. 
Thank you, and God bless you all.
 


                                             


--
 "The oak sleeps in the acorn, the gaint sequoia sleeps in it`s tiny seed,
  the bird waits in the egg and God waits for his unfolding in man."
       Funkadelic                       bing@concert.net