The cities were growing restless in America.  Leaders became cautious.  And a sense of paralysis had set in.  Divisions grew, loyalties were questioned, and patriotisms were challenged.  Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Saigon, these were all new words in our vocabulary. 

And a few blocks from here, just a very few blocks, there was a young student at Georgetown.  He was 20.  He was from Arkansas.  The crunch of financial crisis had closed in. 

And a young Bill Clinton sat down one night in desperation, and he sat down and wrote a letter.  He spilled out his heart to a famous man he had only read about and briefly met. 

“I need a job, Senator Fulbright!” he wrote to his Arkansas senator. 

And a few days later, the administrative assistant, Lee Williams, who is with us in this audience today and I don’t know where Lee is, but I’d—there he is, Lee.  Lee Williams called the student, the young student Bill Clinton, and said, “Bill, you just don’t get it.  You don’t understand.  We only have two job openings in this whole operation.  And they’re only part-time positions.” 

Bill Clinton responded, “Good, Lee, I’ll take both of them.” 

That’s Bill Clinton.

And that is exactly how he got to Capitol Hill.  He opened and read the mail, he answered the phones, he attended hearings on Vietnam, and the issues that consumed the Foreign Relations Committee and the country at that moment became his passion.  He listened and he watched, he studied, he absorbed.  Bill Fulbright became Bill Clinton’s giant. 

Just because the world is going mad, we don’t have to go mad with it.—That was the message that was imparted.  And that was the message he heard.

Fate and circumstances and even necessity played such enormous roles in bringing these two unique lives together.  One was born just before World War I.  One was born just after World War II.  Some might say worlds apart.  One was 60.  One was 20.  And this unique relationship, almost father and son ultimately, came at a most formative time in the young Bill Clinton’s life.  Hyper-curious, the inquisitive mind of a potential Rhodes Scholar, and the passions of a young idealist determined to forge a better world were bonded together and set in stone, and a life of public service was launched like a rocket.

From Senator Fulbright, Bill Clinton had learned political decency.  And he learned that true statesmanship demands courage.  And that the great value of mutual respect, regardless of differences, was paramount.  When Senator Fulbright warned all of us in our country and in our world so wisely of the arrogance of power, someday a President Clinton would ultimately demonstrate to us all the proper use of that power.

Thirty-two years ago last Saturday night, Mr. President, Barbara Pryor and I sat in Russellville, Arkansas.  We watched you, as a young law professor, make your way up to the podium to make your first political speech, as you announced for Congress in 1974, in Russellville, Arkansas, the Arkansas Tech dining hall, a Democratic supper.  In his allocated two minutes, Bill Clinton made five quick points I will never forget—Enlarge the circle of opportunity; fight injustice; remove the shackles that imprison the mind; listen, and listen well to one another; and stand in the shoes of others. 

For over three decades now, William Jefferson Clinton, our nation’s 42^nd President, still gives that same message.  And in the far corners and reaches of this world his voice and his passion and his cry for reason become even stronger each day.  It’s an honor to come from a small state so far from here, in short, that has produced two of the world’s great citizens.  Senator Fulbright must be looking down at this moment with a big, big smile on his face.  Thank you.