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PRAISING PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON'S VISIONARY LEADERSHIP
______
HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE
of texas
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, last week I rose to highlight and discuss the major reasons why Americans are so appreciative that Bill Clinton served as the 42nd President of the United States, especially for his healing words and actions during the time of the tragic and horrific April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing at the Edmund R. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 persons, including 19 children, and wounded more than 800 others.
I added that we Democrats thank President Clinton for all that, but for so much more, a subject I wish to elaborate on today.
Bill Clinton was the unparalleled visionary Democratic political leader of the latter half of the 20th Century.
In the presidential election preceding his, the Democratic candidate was beaten in the Electoral College 426-112, losing 40 states, and trailing in the popular vote by 7.8 percentage points and 7 million votes.
In the presidential election before that, 1984, the Democratic candidate lost 49 of 50 states, lost the Electoral College 525-13, and lost the popular vote by 18.2 percentage points and 16.8 million votes.
The 1992 electoral map and political outlook were bleak for the Governor of the `small southern state of Arkansas' but he would not be deterred and would not be outworked and did not waver in his conviction that his progressive policies promising shared prosperity and his inclusive vision in which the United States ``did not have a person to waste'' would attract majority support.
The happy result of the 1992 presidential election is that the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton, won the Electoral College 370-168, won 30 states, won every region of the country except the Deep South, won the popular vote by 5.6 percentage points 5.8 million votes, carrying several states that had not voted Democratic or voted Democratic only once since 1964, including California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
President Clinton repeated the feat in 1996, becoming the first Democratic President to win reelection since Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, carrying 31 states and the District of Columbia, prevailing in the Electoral College 379-159, and winning the popular vote by 8.2 million votes and 8.51 percentage points, and became the first Democrat to carry the states of Florida and Arizona since 1976 and 1948, respectively.
And he carried the suburban vote, which for the first time in history comprised the largest percentage of the electorate, gave us a master class in how a candidate for national office should speak and appeal to moms and dads with financial anxieties, growing kids about whose educational and economic futures they are concerned, and worried for their safety of their communities and the health security of their aging parents.
A legendary political campaigner second to none ever, Bill Clinton shattered what used to be called the `GOP Electoral Lock' and built the famed `Blue Wall,' which every Democratic candidate since has relied upon for victory and that has made the Democratic candidate the popular vote winner in seven out of the last eight presidential elections.
Not only that, because of President Clinton's extraordinary success in managing the affairs of our nation, Republican charges now ring hollow when they shout that Democrats ``are soft on crime,''
``unwilling to defend the country,'' ``favor welfare recipients over hard working Americans,'' relegating them to invent new bogeymen like
``Radical Islamic Terrorism'' and ``Caravans of Illegal Aliens'' and
``Chinese Communists'' at our doorstep, invoke ``family values,''
``guns, God, or gays,'' or some other culture war shibboleth, or to spout nonsensical conspiracy theories like the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and rife with fraud.
Truth be told, Madam Speaker, the real problem with our friends in the Republican Party is that they have never adapted to the Age of Clinton, in which politics and governance is about meeting people where they live and giving them the tools and opportunities they need to make the most of their own lives, and treating all persons fairly and with respect, and above all, not rationing justice.
This is why they have been unable to command majority or plurality support in all but one of the last eight national elections.
Madam Speaker, Alexis DeTocqueville came to visit America 190 years ago to study the maiden case of democracy in action and here is what he wrote about political parties; it remains surprisingly relevant and prescient:
``[S]mall parties are generally without political faith. As they are not elevated and sustained by lofty purposes, the selfishness of their character is openly displayed in all their actions. They glow with a factious zeal; their language is violent, but their progress is timid and uncertain. The means they employ are as disreputable as the aim sought.''
What distinguishes the Democratic Party from the Republican Party is the former's abiding faith in the capacity of human beings to improve their social, economic, and political conditions.
On the other hand, at the core of the Republican philosophy lies a darker, more pessimistic view of this ``scope of human perfectibility''; instead of looking to the future with courage and optimism, the conservative spirit looks to a nostalgic past with a pessimistic attitude toward a dreaded future.
Madam Speaker, because of the remarkable leadership and success role-
modeled by the President William Jefferson Clinton, Democrats in Congress and across the nation know who they are, what they believe, and what is important to fight to achieve or preserve; maybe one day our friends across the aisle will be so lucky.
I thank President Clinton for all he did as the Nation's 42nd President and captain of the ship of state to make our Nation the most prosperous on earth and at peace in the world.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 152
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