CLINTON: Campaign speech (10/25)

[James Barrett]

Clinton Speaks at Campaign Rally
The following are remarks by Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton,
the Democratic candidate for president, at a campaign rally
at Sterling Heights, Mich, October 25, 1992:
GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON: Thank you very much. Wow. Thank you.
(Crowd: "9 more days".)
CLINTON: 9 more days. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
First of all, let me say how very grateful I am to my
friend, the great governor of New York and the greatest
orator in America today, Mario Cuomo, for being here.
(Applause.)
I want to say, in the beginning, a thanks to the people
from Stevenson High School who invited me.
(Applause.)
Months ago I got a letter from Eric Carl and Bob McBroom
(phonetic) and Robby Dargon (phonetic), and they said-- in
very nice ways they said Governor, if you've got any sense,
you'll come to Stevenson High School during the presidential
campaign. And here I am.
I want to thank the band for being here and all the
people here in the drill team, because I know they're cold
and it's hard to play in the cold, and they've done a good
job.
I want to thank your senators--Don Riegle and Carl Levin.
(Applause.)
Governor Jim Blanchard and Congressman Hertel.
(Applause.)
And I want to thank--yeah, he was a good governor, wasn't
he?
(Applause.)
I want to thank Congressman Hertel and wish him well as
he leaves the Congress. And I want to say a special word of
thanks to my long-time and close friend, Congressman Sandy
Levin, for being here.
(Applause.)
He is one of the most thoughtful people in the entire US
Congress and I hope you'll send him back to work on a new
America with the Clinton-Gore team.
(Applause.)
And before I get into my remarks, I want to say a special
word of appreciation for the remarkable poise shown by your
student leader Linda Hutchinson. Didn't she do a great job?
Give her a big hand.
(Applause.)
I'm glad she's not running against me but I hope she'll
be running for something some day.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard the case made by
Governor Cuomo. I'm glad to be back in Macomb County for the
3 time since I began this campaign for president, to tell
you that you do represent America. As I look across this sea
of faces, of men and women, of people of different races,
from all walks of life, as I look at all the children in
this crowd, and I'm so glad to see them all here because
they're what this election is all about, I see the face of
hope.
It is so strange to look at what is going on in
Washington today and put it against the real problems of
real people. It's impossible to figure. We've got a
president who came here to Michigan today, one more time,
saying we ought to trust him with 4 more years.
(Crowd: "boo".)
And I look at the government over which he presides. I
mean, can you believe it? He's here talking about law
enforcement and in Washington, the FBI and the Justice Dept
are so busy investigating each other, they don't have any
time for crooks anymore.
(Applause.)
He talks about obeying the law, and the CIA and the
Justice Dept are fighting about which one of them lied to a
federal court about the Iraq scandal.
(Applause.)
He used 3 political cronies in the State Dept to
investigate my 23-year-old passport files, which was okay,
but then those people starting investigating my mother. Now,
you know--
(Crowd: "boos".)
I'll tell you, now, you don't have to worry about my
mother. She's handled a lot tougher people than George Bush
in her life.
(Applause.)
And I do want to say this. There was one good thing that
came out of that snooping scandal. They had these 3
political cronies who went out to the place where the State
Dept files were kept and they got there at 6:00 at night and
worked till 10:00. Now, that's the only time those political
hacks have worked till 10:00 at night since George Bush has
been president.
(Applause.)
And now we hear that on a television program tonight, Mr.
Perot is going to say that Mr. Bush was investigating his
children. Mr. Bush has already said that Mr. Perot
investigated his children. They're worried about
investigating each other's children. I'll tell you what I
want. I want to investigate your children--their future,
their problems, their promise, and to make a new America.
(Applause.)
(Crowd: "9 more days".)
You're right. 9 more days is right.
Mario Cuomo said that the 4-letter word "work" was the
best social program we ever had and the embodiment of the
American dream. I got into this race for president because
I'd worked hard for a dozen years as governor of a state of
wonderful people. I'd seen economic deprivation. Michigan is
just full of people from Arkansas who came up here to find
good work, in the '30s, the '40s, the '50s and the '60s.
I'd seen our people, even when we developed jobs, work
harder for less money. And I began to think there was no way
to turn their situation around unless we got rid of trickle
down economics.
I got into this race because I didn't want all the
children in this audience, and my 12-year-old daughter, and
all the kids in America, to grow up to be part of the first
generation of Americans to do worse than their parents, to
see the snuffing out of the American dream.
And I got into this race because I don't believe it has
to be that way. I think the end of the Cold War offers these
young people and those of us who are no longer young an
incredible opportunity to live in a peaceful, rich and
diverse world, if we have the courage to make the changes
that will make it happen.
But I know this: if we go on with 4 more years of the
same old thing, we're going to get the same old thing. And I
don't think you want that.
(Applause.)
Folks, I cannot believe that Mr. Bush is going around saying that I'm going to destroy jobs in Michigan. You know, if I worked at it 18
hours a day I couldn't cost you as many jobs as he has in
the last 4 years.
(Applause.)
If I made a steady effort, because I could not go to
sleep at night with the kind of policies that they have
visited on the American people. You know here, in Michigan,
you know what they did. The White House overruled our own
government and gave the Japanese a $300 million trade break
on multi-purpose vehicles, costing American jobs, and what
did we get for it? Nothing. We didn't ask anything for it.
We just gave away the jobs and didn't ask them to open one
single market in Japan. It was a scandal. That's the kind of
thing I will not do if I'm president of the US.
(Applause.)
You know, we now know that this administration actually
spent American tax dollars--your money, your hard- earned
money--to give low interest loans to companies if they would
shut their plants down in America and move them overseas.
They couldn't get the money to modernize their plants here.
They gave them over $150 million to retrain workers, to
train workers in other countries, but we couldn't get the
money to retrain workers here. They spent your tax money to
hire people to encourage Americans to shut their plants down
here and move them to Central America and your tax money
actually paid for an ad showing a picture of a woman, saying
this woman will work for 57 cents an hour, come on down.
And you know what's really cruel about it? When they were
cornered, they said well, we're trying to build up the
people of Central America. That's not what happened. A year
after they ran the ad and they shut a bunch of plants down
in America and spent your money to finance their moving to
Central America, that same woman was working for 33 cents an
hour. Their policies have driven down wages in America and
in Central America. They've spent your tax money to take
your jobs away and they have given it to people who are
exploiting people in other countries instead of lifting them
up. Let's lift up the people of America and we can lift up
the people of Central America.
(Applause.)
Let me tell you something. My running mate Al Gore used
to say that if they made a movie of George Bush's
administration it would be called "Honey, I shrunk the
economy."
(Laughter.)
Well, I've got an even better idea. I have worked for 12
years to be a job-creator. I will not be a job-destroyer. If
you made a movie of Bush's administration you might call it
"The Terminator", and we don't need "Terminator 2". We need
somebody who will build up this country.
(Applause.)
Folks, I know, I know what creates jobs and so do you--
investment. We need investment in America. We need
investment in the private sector. We need to spend more of
the tax money you give us and waste less of it. We need to
invest it in jobs here at home. Every dollar by which we
reduce defense must be spent investing in American streets
and roads and water systems and cleaning up the environment
and building high speed rail and doing the things that will
put the American people back to work.
(Applause.)
In my state I made a decision a decade ago that we were
not going to just lie down and let all of our manufacturing
jobs go away. And while manufacturing employment declined in
the US, in our state it increased by over 10 %. We rank
first in the country today in job growth. There have been
more jobs created in our state than in the country under the
Bush administration because we didn't lay down and follow
trickle down economics. We held out the hand of partnership
to manufacturers, to small business, to working people, to
educators, and we put them together to fulfill the potential
of people.
People were meant to work on this earth, and it's wrong
to have a government that doesn't give them a chance to do
it, and to be rewarded when they do it.
(Applause.)
It's not all that complicated. We've got to get rid of
trickle down economics. We can't go back to tax and spend
economics because we don't have the money to spend. You
cannot divide a shrinking pie. We've got to grow this
economy and create good jobs, and it begins by preserving
the manufacturing base of America.
My grandfather told me--in the Depression in Arkansas
people were so poor that literally half of them lived in
abject poverty. And one time when I was a boy I asked my
granddaddy what it was like in the Depression and he said
Bill, people were so poor they took in one another's washing
for a living.
Now, you think about that. That's what it would be if we
had a 100 % service economy. Somebody's got to make
something in this country, folks. The Japanese know that.
Twenty-eight % of their workers are in manufacturing. The
Germans know that. Thirty-two % of their workers are in
manufacturing. We're at 16.5 % and dropping because we have
no strategy to put the American people to work in good jobs.
I am angry about it. It doesn't have to be that way, and if
you'll give me a chance to change it on November 3, together
we can do it.
(Applause.)
We can do it. We can do it.
Let me say this. There will be a lot of talk about change
in this election. You already heard Governor Cuomo saying of
all the choices you have in Michigan, only one has ever
balanced a government budget, only one has ever taken on
lobbyists to reduce the influence of special interests, only
one has never been a part of the Washington special interest
crowd and only one made a real good choice for vice
president, Al Gore of Tennessee.
(Applause.)
This is a race, this is a race of hope against fear, of
change against the status quo, of the courage to reach for a
new future.
I ask you here today: leave here and dedicate yourself
for 9 days. Talk to your friends and neighbors in Michigan.
Don't let them give in to the things-could-be-worse crowd.
We want all the Democrats, all the Republicans, all the
former Perot supporters we can get. We want all the
independents. We don't want a victory of party. We want a
victory for the American people, the people like those who
are in this audience. Give it to us, and we will work our
heart out to restore the American dream. Thank you and God
bless you all.

------------------OS/2 v2.0 -- Why settle for anything less?--------------------
James C. Barrett (bar...@cc.gatech.edu)| Clinton/Gore '92!!! (For a Change!)
Georgia Tech College of Computing | Braves 1, Canada 3 (GO BRAVES!!!)