It is not hard for most people in this room to remember that for years the Democratic Party lacked its own consistent, continuing, future-oriented dialogue -- a conversation which should have valued people over posturing, innovation over stagnation. In too many ways, our had become a party of ideological atrophy and interest group accommodation, of status quo protection and tunnel vision.

We suffered from a series of profound internal policy crises: such as the refusal to support the Gulf War Resolution; of fundamental economic misunderstandings, such as the reluctance to be pro-trade and pro-business; and of lost opportunities -- such as our inability to hear the cry of the American people for new ideas and old values.

Well, we won the national debate and the presidency in 1992, lost Congress in 1994, and re-elected Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1996. And each election was a revelation in our recurring contest of ideas. Our presidential victories came because President Clinton and Vice President Gore restored family and economic growth as the vital center of our party, which is where the Democratic Leadership Council lives.

"Make that growth real. Make it last. Make it personal, steeped in American values, and focused on the future," we said. This was the new, principled, practical thinking Americans wanted. And they voted for Democrats. They felt we were listening to them again, and presenting new ideas that embraced their values and dreams. They were ideas embodied in our proposals to fight crime and reform welfare, in the discipline to balance the budget, in the vision to expand trade and reform our education system, and in the insistence that we return decency to our culture and standards to our community.

It was about the New Economy, which is a good part of why we retained the presidency last year and why Bill Clinton's popularity remains so high.

To quote a famous American, "Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on the rocks of loose fiscal policy." The famous American was a Democrat -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His America of 1933 was vastly different from ours, but I feel certain that FDR would be a member of the Democratic Leadership Council today. He saw the future not as a threat but as a challenge to think new ideas and adopt new programs that would work.

Our Democratic Party has been on a continuing intellectual journey forward in the years since FDR. We will never reach our final destination. We are fueled with emerging ideas to better our nation, our communities, our families, and ourselves. We welcome into that journey Americans from every origin and orientation -- and we prize acceptance and resistance to unfairness, bigotry, despair and displacement.

This is what it means to be a New Democrat in 1997. Proud of how far we have come in 12 years, but honest enough to recognize that we still have a long way to go. Many of our fellow Democrats have yet to embrace the New Democratic way. This is one reason why we lost control of Congress in 1994. But the ebb of 1994 became the flow of 1996. More and more New Democratic Coalition members in the House were elected, for example, and are paving the way today for America to rediscover congressional Democrats at the polls next year. I hope that during the coming year we in the DLC will continue to keep our Party on Main Street with all the common sense that implies.

Think about it. Main Street is a place where the people and businesses of a community meet to exchange goods, services, and ideas. It is where a town's divides are bridged, where people sit in a diner and talk over the world's and community's problems, looking for answers and bringing those answers home. Main Street makes it possible for a community to live and live well. When Main Street thrives, the community prospers. But where there is no Main Street, there is no bridge, no community, no new ideas, no common sense, no hope.

The DLC is the Democratic Party's Main Street, which is why I believe we offer the best hope for the future. And in the coming year, we are confident that our Main Street will offer our party and the American people more of what this country needs.

I want to mention briefly two of those offerings that are at the heart of this conference today.

New Democrats are leading the New Economy. The 11.8 million jobs created in the last 5 years are proof of that. Low unemployment co-existing peacefully with low inflation means our people are living better lives. New trade agreements will offer still greater opportunities for Americans. Only head-in-the-sand pessimists would say that we cannot influence the growing world economy fairly and do so in the interests of American workers, consumers and entrepreneurs if we have the right ideas, plans and safeguards in place.

President Clinton and Vice President Gore have those ideas and the courage to advocate them, and we in the DLC will stand with them -- right now in the fight for fast track. The world needs to know that American presidents can negotiate agreements with our partners and that congressional consideration of them will move in the national interest, not gridlocked by narrow interest. That is all we are asking for in fast-track -- approval of a process, not of particular trade agreements. That will come later.

It was a huge mistake for Congress to allow fast track authority to lapse. In just 25 years, from 1970 to 1995, the impact of international trade on the American economy grew from 13 percent to 30 percent of our Gross Domestic Product. Our exports today account for 11.3 million jobs and 9 percent of our workforce - and the trend is upward, not down, and the jobs pay better than most. The reality is that if the United States fails to take advantage of new markets and new consumers, other nations will.

Protectionists on the right and left try to scare people into believing that trade will put them on the bread lines, asking their brothers and sisters to spare a dime. But people see through this and know that trade has not only created better prices for consumers but more and better jobs. Today, we must spare our brothers and sisters who are having troubles in the new economy not a thin dime but a better education or a better training or retraining program so that they can earn not dimes but dollars. This ishow we will expand the winner's circle.

Education, like values and economic opportunity, is about making informed choices. We need an America with a passion and plan for learning again. The passion I believe most people have. But the influence of the status quo often stands in the way of the plan and its implementation.

Our public schools are crumbling inside and out, and we must ask ourselves why. One reason I believe we have allowed this to happen is that somehow over the years the word "standards" became unfashionable and unacceptable. But is it a wrong "standard" for our kids to have a schoolhouse with a roof that is not crumbling and other students who don't threaten them?

Is it wrong for good teachers to want to break free from stultifying bureaucracies so they can better teach our kids? Is it wrong for our parents to have a choice among schools, so that their kids can get the best education possible? Is it wrong for our kids to be denied national education standards so we can know better how they're doing and they can better compete for the college of their choice and the career of their choice?

It is not wrong. It is a right. And that is why we need to right the wrongs of our system of education.

We can do this with more charter schools, which are today giving tens of thousands of parents the option to direct their kids to a learning environment with smaller class sizes, challenging and sometimes specialized curriculum, less bureaucracy, more contact with teachers, and a real-world compact. The schools have a contract with the public, with the Board of Education. If they succeed, the contract is renewed. If they don't make the grade, they know that someone else will step up to the challenge.

While this seems to us like the Main Street common sense that it is, there are those within the education establishment who have fought the concept because it instills competition into the system and into the classroom. The fact is that, as the Superintendent of Schools in Seattle said recently, every school should be a charter school. The fact is that every student should have the opportunity to excel in an environment which encourages and rewards achievement. That is why we must continue to support the President's push, as we have, for national education goals and national testing to measure the progress of our children.

But we can't stop there. Education choices must include the lifelong learning opportunities for adults who need retraining as economic opportunities change with the times. Here, too, the DLC has a fresh new idea. Cut the bureaucracy and recreate a new G.I. Bill for workers, a voucher with which they buy their own retraining in the private or public sector. That's how we will achieve greater success in the future: by using government resources to empower people to help themselves. That's what the DLC is all about.

We are counting on you to join in this intellectual journey forward, and today we have a wonderful group of speakers who will lead you in a discussion of the New Economy and how to expand it. The future of the Democratic Party rests with all of us. It rests in our hearts, which hear the voices of American families, understand their needs, and will fight for them. It rests in our minds, which measure success in new ideas that work, not in static ideology that doesn't. It rests with you, who have brought us to where we are today and know -- in our hearts and minds -- that there is much more work to be done.