Excerpts: ‘A Campaign of Ideas, Not Insults’

Here are excerpts from President Clinton’s acceptance speech Thursday:

Mr. Chairman--Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President, my fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans. Thank you for your nomination. I--I don’t know if I can find a fancy way to say this, but I accept. Thank you. . . .

Four years ago, with high unemployment, stagnant wages, crime, welfare and the deficit on the rise, with a host of unmet challenges and a rising tide of cynicism, I told you about a place I was born, and I told you that I still believe in a place called Hope.

Well, for four years now, to realize our vision, we have pursued a simple but profound strategy: opportunity for all, responsibility from all, a strong, united American community.

Four days ago, as you were making your way here, I began a train ride to make my way to Chicago through America’s heartland. . . . I would not have missed that trip for all the world. For that trip showed me that hope is back in America. We are on the right track to the 21st century. . . .

We have the lowest combined rates of unemployment, inflation and home mortgages in 28 years. . . . Ten million new jobs, over half of them high-wage jobs. Ten million workers getting the raise they deserve with the minimum wage law. Twenty-five million people now having protection in their health insurance because the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill says you can’t lose your insurance anymore when you change jobs, even if somebody in your family has been sick. . . .

We have also passed political reform: the line-item veto, the motor-voter bill, tougher registration laws for lobbyists, making Congress live under the laws they impose on the private sector, stopping unfunded mandates to state and local government. . . .

On crime, we’re putting 100,000 police on the streets, we made “three strikes and you’re out” the law of the land, we stopped 60,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers from getting handguns under the Brady Bill. We banned assault rifles, we supported tougher punishment and prevention programs to keep our children from drugs and gangs and violence.

Four years now, for four years now, the crime rate in America has gone down.

On welfare, we worked with states to launch a quiet revolution. Today there are 1.8 million fewer people on welfare than there were the day I took the oath of office. We are moving people from welfare to work. . . .

And the deficit has come down for four years in a row for the first time since before the Civil War, down 60% on the way to zero. . . .

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My fellow Americans, this must be, this must be a campaign of ideas, not a campaign of insults. . . .

I love and revere the rich and proud history of America, and I am determined to take our best traditions into the future. But with all respect, we do not need to build a bridge to the past, we need to build a bridge to the future. . . .

By the year 2000, the single most critical thing we can do is to give every single American who wants it the chance to go to college. . . .

Let us proclaim to the American people we will balance the budget, and let us also proclaim we will do it in a way that preserves Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, the integrity of our pensions, the strength of our people. . . .

We could have the right kind of a balanced budget with a new Congress--a Democratic Congress. . . .

Tonight, I propose a new tax cut for homeownership, that says to every middle-income working family in this country, if you sell your home, you will not have to pay a capital gains tax on it ever--not ever. . . .

Let me say again, every tax cut I call for tonight is targeted, it’s responsible, and it is paid for within my balanced budget plan. . . .

We have an obligation, you and I, to leave our children a legacy of opportunity, not a legacy of debt. Our budget would be balanced today, we would have a surplus today, if we didn’t have to make the interest payments on the debt run up in the 12 years before the Clinton-Gore administration took office. . . .

The welfare reform bill I signed last week gives America a chance, but not a guarantee, to have that kind of new beginning, to have a new social bargain with the poor, guaranteeing health care, child care and nutrition for the children.

But requiring able-bodied to work for the income . . . we have a moral obligation to make sure the people who are being required to work have the opportunity to work. We must make sure the jobs are there. . . .

I propose also to give businesses a tax credit for every person hired off welfare and kept employed. I propose to offer private job placement firms a bonus for every welfare recipient they place in a job who stays in it. . . .

Tonight, I challenge every business person in America who has ever complained about the failure of the welfare system to try to hire somebody off welfare and try hard. . . .

I want to build a bridge to the 21st century, where our children are not killing other children anymore, where children’s lives are not shattered by violence. . . . With more police and punishment and prevention, the crime rate has dropped for four years in a row. . . .

We should extend the Brady Bill, because anyone who has committed an act of domestic violence against a spouse or a child should not buy a gun. And, we must ban . . . those cop-killer bullets. They are designed for one reason only: to kill police officers. . . .

We will say to gangs, “We will break you with the same anti-racketeering law we use to put mob bosses in jail. . . .”

My fellow Americans, if we’re going to build that bridge to the 21st century, we have to make our children free--free of the vise grip of guns and gangs and drugs. . . .

The FDA has adopted new measures to reduce advertising and sales of cigarettes to children. . . . That is very much an issue in this election because that battle is far from over, and the two candidates have different views. . . .

A parent may be without a job, but no child should be without a doctor. . . .

We respect the individual conscience of every American on the painful issue of abortion but believe as a matter of law that this decision should be left to a woman, her conscience, her doctor and her God. But abortion should not only be safe and legal; it should be rare. That’s why I helped to establish and support a national effort to reduce out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy. And that is why we must promote adoption. . . .

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I want to build a bridge to the 21st century with a clean and safe environment. . . .

And when the leaders of this Congress--when the leaders of this Congress invited the polluters into the back room to roll back 25 years of environmental protection that both parties had always supported, I said no. . . .

My fellow Americans, I want to build a bridge to the 21st century that makes sure we are still the nation with the world’s strongest defense, that our foreign policy still advances the values of our American community in the community of nations. Our bridge to the future must include bridges to other nations. . . .

Our American exports are at record levels. In the next four years, we have to break down even more barriers to them . . . making sure that our workers and our products, the world’s finest, have the benefit of free and fair trade. . . .

By the year 2000, we also will have increased funding to modernize our weapons systems by 40%. These commitments will make sure that our military remains the best-trained, best-equipped fighting force in the entire world. . . . But we must not--not now, not by the year 2000--squander $60 billion on an unproved, ineffective “Star Wars” program that could be obsolete tomorrow. . . .

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We need new laws to crack down on money laundering and to prosecute and punish those who commit violent acts against American citizens abroad; to add chemical markers or taggants to gunpowder used in bombs so we can track the bomb-makers; to extend the same power police now have against organized crime to save lives by tapping all the phones that terrorists use. Terrorists are as big a threat to our future, perhaps bigger, than organized crime. Why should we have two different standards for a common threat to the safety of America and our children?

We need, in short, the laws that Congress refused to pass. . . .

We will improve airport and air travel security. I have asked the vice president to establish a commission and report back to me on ways to do this, but now we will install the most sophisticated bomb detection equipment in all our major airports; we will search every airplane flying to or from America from another nation--every flight, every cargo hold, every cabin, every time. . . .

We’re going to choose the last president of the 20th century and the first president of the 21st century. But the real choice is not that. The real choice is whether we will build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the past, about whether we believe our best days are still out there or our best days are behind us, about whether we want a country of people all working together or one where you’re on your own.

Let us commit ourselves this night to rise up and build the bridge we know we ought to build all the way to the 21st century. . . .

My fellow Americans, after these four, good, hard years, I still believe in a place called Hope, a place called America.

Thank you, God bless you.