

			   THE WHITE HOUSE

		    Office of the Press Secretary

______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                             April 12, 1994     

	     
		       REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
	    AT RADIO AND TELEVISION CORRESPONDENTS DINNER

		       Washington Hilton Hotel
			   Washington, D.C.   
				   
8:30 P.M. EDT

	     THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Thank you very much, Mr. 
Lochman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.  I cannot tell 
you how happy I am to be here tonight on the 50th anniversary of the 
TV dinner.  (Laughter and applause.)  
	     
	     I was a little disappointed that the entree wasn't 
Salisbury steak or chicken pot pie.  (Laughter.)  But I really am 
delighted to be here.  If you believe that, I've got some land in 
northwest Arkansas I'd like to show you.  (Laughter and applause.)  
	     
	     I want to congratulate you on 50 years of TV and radio 
coverage of our national politics -- 50 dinners, all the way back to 
1945.  I thank you for letting us know that Helen Thomas was at the 
first one.  (Laughter.)  I don't know if she thanks you for letting 
us know that.  
	     
	     But tonight, I want to play the journalist.  I'd like to 
ask you, Helen:  After 50 of these dinners, why?  Why?  (Laughter.)  
I love Helen Thomas.  How would you like to start every morning 
jogging with Helen in your ear?  (Laughter.)  The other day, after we 
had the incident in Bosnia, she said to me, as I was running, trying 
to wake up, fighting off the allergies of the springtime:  "Yeltsin's 
mad at you."  (Laughter and applause.)  
	     
	     Well, anyway, I'm delighted to be here with you, Brian, 
and I appreciate your inviting Garrison Keillor to join us this 
evening, because, as he described in the fabled Lake Wobegon, we also 
like to think that all the kids who work at the White House are 
slightly above average.  (Laughter.)  
	     
	     I'm really glad to see, also, that in spite of the 
dominance of C-SPAN, that Cokie Roberts is sitting with us tonight at 
the head table.  At least it looks like the head table.  (Laughter 
and applause.)  Actually, I know it's the head table; Rick Kaplan 
told me it was.  (Laughter.) 
	     
	     You know, since this is your 50th dinner, we should 
acknowledge that over these last 50 years, radio and television has 
witnessed some of the greatest moments in political history.  And if 
you believe that, I've got some land in northwest Arkansas I'd like 
to sell you.  (Laughter.)  But just think of the highlights you've 
seen.  Remember this:  Your impact actually goes back before your 50 
dinners, going back to radio. 
	     
	     In 1922, when President Warren Harding utters the first 
words ever spoken by a president on the radio:  "Gergen, come here.  
I need you."  (Laughter and applause.)  And your association's first 
year, 1944, Franklin Roosevelt delivers more of his fireside chats 
over the radio.  It's not much different today, except today you 
insist that the President sit directly on the logs.  (Laughter.)  
	     
	     Following a reliable source, just hours after the polls 
closed in 1948, network news airs the very first televised interview 
with President-elect Thomas Dewey.  In 1952, Eisenhower says he will 
go to Korea, and the first question from the press is about the 
seating arrangements on the plane.  (Laughter.)  In 1960, researchers 
discover that people who watched the Kennedy-Nixon debate on 
television thought Kennedy won.  People who listened to the debate on 
radio thought:  "When in the hell am I going to get a television?"  
(Laughter.)
	     
	     In 1972, Democratic presidential candidate George 
McGovern concedes a 49-state, 23-point landslide election.  The press 
demands to see records of his losses.  (Laughter and applause.)  In 
1974, two crusading young journalists take on a president for abuse 
of office.  And to this very day, Evans and Novak still have not 
forgiven Richard Nixon for price controls.  (Laughter.)  
	     
	     In 1981, Dan Rather replaces Walter Cronkite.  Soon 
after, an impressionable Jim Leach purchases his first sweater.  
(Laughter and applause.)  In 1982, the introduction of the first 
Saturday morning political cartoon:  "The McLaughlin Group."  
(Laughter.)  In 1988, a well-meaning network news producer whispers 
in the ear of a Dukakis advance person:  "Why use a Jeep when you can 
put him in a tank?"  (Laughter.)
	     
	     In 1994, Senator George Mitchell goes live on CNN to 
withdraw his name from consideration for the United States Supreme 
Court, fueling speculation that he would rather argue with George 
Steinbrenner than Justice Scalia.  (Laughter.) 
	     
	     I can only imagine how wonderful your future will be 
when there are 500 channels to fill all the airwaves.  (Laughter.)  
Anyway, you do have a proud history.  Now, my history with you is 
another matter altogether.  (Laughter.)  Some say my relations with 
the press have been marked by self-pity.  I like to think of it as 
the outer limits of my empathy.  (Laughter.)  I feel my pain.  
(Laughter and applause.)  People say to me, remember Harry Truman:  
"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."  It's the only 
room in the house I never want to leave.  (Laughter.)  In fact, I've 
been trying to get Kathleen Sullivan interested in Whitewater. 
	     
	     I think history, actually, in spite what all of you 
think, I think history will show I had a very good relationship with 
the press.  And if it doesn't, I'll complain like hell to the 
historians.  I do want to say something about my strong views on the 
question of privacy:  They're none of your business.  (Laughter.)  I 
do think you're entitled some inside information tonight, however.  
After the dinner -- we had this wonderful dinner -- Hillary consulted 
with Speaker Foley about the spawning prospects in Washington, and 
she has recommended that all of you purchase salmon futures tomorrow.  
(Laughter and applause.)
	     
	     I do want to remind you of one thing.  It's three days 
before April the 15th, and most of you have spent a lot more time on 
my taxes than your own.  (Laughter and applause.)  Many happy 
returns.  (Laughter.)  I do want to complain that, amid all this 
disgusting media frenzy, the many terribly important accomplishments 
of this administration have gone unnoticed or grossly underreported.  
For example:  Just since I have been your president, the United 
States government has raised $21 million in back taxes from people 
with nannies.  (Laughter.)  And we're not even through with audits in 
the West Wing yet.  (Laughter.)
	     
	     Consider this:  Millions of Americans now feel better 
about how they look in jogging shorts.  (Laughter and applause.)  And 
there is a hugely increased awareness of the information 
superhighway.  Today, 72 percent of all Americans are in favor it, 
provided the rest stops are clean.  (Laughter.)  Not only does our 
administration look more like America, it changes jobs at the same 
rate other Americans do.  (Laughter.)  We have the first 
administration to have the same senior advisor make the cover of both 
Time Magazine and Teen Beat.  (Laughter and applause.)  We've got the 
first smoke-free back room in political history.  And my Vice 
President has made enormous strides in his first and most daunting 
assignment:  Reinventing Al Gore. (Laughter.)
	     
	     We've created 2.3 million new jobs, almost 50 percent of 
them in the health insurance lobby.  (Laughter and applause.)  You 
can see more things like this in the years to come.  This 
administration doesn't know the meaning of the word "surrender."  We 
don't know the meaning of the word "timidity."  And with such limited 
vocabulary and self-awareness, I think we've done right well.  
(Laughter.)  
	     
	     I was asked tonight before I left for this august 
dinner:  Why do you keep going to these things?  They still keep 
beating your brains out.  And I said, because I still believe in a 
place called "Help."  (Laughter.)  I also came because I love radio 
and TV.  I've been called "the first President to grow up in the 
television age."  I guess that's true; we got our first TV when I was 
nine or 10.  Before that, I listened to the radio, doing my homework 
to baseball games.  Then I saw the radio news.  I got our television 
in time to watch the 56 Democratic and Republican conventions from 
gavel to gavel.  I've watched the debates, the election returns, all 
the news since then.  The fact is, the electronic media has changed 
my life and changed how we all see the world and how the world sees 
us. 
	     
	     The media's changed, too.  You have more information and 
more programs and more channels, more competition and more time to 
fill than ever before.  Last night, we celebrated the last day of the 
year celebrating the 250th birthday of Thomas Jefferson, the man whom 
all of you know said if he had to choose between a government without 
a press or the press without government, he would unhesitatingly 
choose the latter.  I might point out that he said that before he 
became President of the United States.  (Laughter.)
	     
	     But if you think about what Jefferson and the other 
founders did, they had this uncanny sense of what it would take to 
preserve a republic, a democracy.  To permit government enough power 
so that its exercise could keep us together and moving forward, but 
to limit its abuse and to keep it accountable to the people.  The 
power was limited by the Bill of Rights and divided -- Executive, 
Legislative and Judicial, national, state and local -- in a brilliant 
way.  
	     
	     And if you think about the fabric of our national life, 
there are only two places where power is arguably unaccountable.  
One:  in the Supreme Court and its lower courts, where people have 
lifetime appointments, where they have a limited unaccountable power 
because there are some great questions on which someone must have the 
final say in order to permit us to go on with our lives.  And the 
second:  in the area of the press, because there is no practical way 
to limit the free expression of ideas and opinions, painful though 
those of us in authority might find them from time to time.
	     
	     Mr. Jefferson understood so long ago these things that 
carry us through to the present day.  But I must say, tonight as we 
come here, Hillary and I, to pay tribute to you in this business, 
your business is more difficult, more challenging, more daunting than 
ever before.  And the burden of carrying the responsibility that goes 
with that sort of unlimited freedom is greater than ever before.  I 
appreciate it, and I'm glad, at least on occasion, we all have the 
chance to laugh together about our common efforts to advance the 
common good.
	     
	     Thank you very much.  (Applause.)
	     
	     

				 END8:45 P.M. EDT

