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benefits of our engagement with Mexico, Japan, and other nations of the Pacific, and yet your economy has been terribly hurt by the lack of a
ional economic strategy, especially the lack of a conversion plan to convert defense cuts into domestic economic investment
.ETX
CLINTON-08/13/92
FOREIGN POLICY
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(applause)
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and the lack of a plan to address the problems of great cities like Los Angeles. America is dependent on California, and yet California, one of the world's
one of the world's 10 largest economies, is $11 billion in debt, issuing IOUS instead of investing in education, small business development, safe streets, and a brighter future for the people of Los Angeles and all the state.
Last December at my alma mater, Georgetown University, and last April in New York I outlined the role that I see for America in this era of change. I marked the steps I believe we must take to meet our new challenges, to establish America's economic leadership again, to foster the spread of democracy abroad, to revamp War military to meet the new challenges and security needs of today. Today I want to expand on what leadership in the new world requires, particularly in rethinking our security strategy and modernizing our defenses. More important, let me emphasize at the outset that no political leader of any party can promise to repeal the laws of change that are now sweeping the world. The question is whether we will respond, whether we will shape events or be shaped by them, whether change will be our friend or our most ferocious enemy.
In this new era,
first priority in foreign policy and our
we must revive our
first domestic policy are one and the same economy. America must regain its economic strength to play a strong role in the new world, and we must have a president who attends to prosperity at home if our people are to sustain their support for engagement abroad. (Applause.)
Let me say as an aside, I don't know how many times I heard in the Democratic primary season, beginning in New Hampshire and ending in California, citizen after citizen after citizen come up to me and say, "How can we spend one red cent in foreign aid when we have people sleeping on the streets at home, hungry at home, without an education at home, without a future at home?" (Applause.) And at every turn I refused to take the Democratic Party into isolationism. I explained what our responsibilities were, how we could not withdraw from the world without hurting ourselves and how we had to continue to be engaged and to do things like aid to the former Soviet Union in making its transformation to democracy and to a free-market economy. But it is a tougher sell in a weak economy, and there are limits on what you can do.
domestic and foreign
These things are one and the same \policy. And to have a good domestic policy or a good foreign
policy, we must have economic revival.
In my judgment, the lack of an economic strategy for America's
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