Photo by John Kennedy

Clinton gives Long Beach a boost

President Clinton shifted into campaign mode for a weekend visit to Long Beach promoting school uniforms, C-17s and himself.

He did not come empty-handed. For aerospace workers and the economy he brought the promise of work in the form of a contract for 80 more C-17s. And for families and teachers, he brought safety in the form of school uniforms.

Clinton announced in front of more than 3,000 McDonnell Douglas employees Friday that he would be asking Congress to order the additional C-17s, the newest aerospace sweetheart since its tremendous success in Bosnia.

Under a banner declaring that "Bill Clinton made the C-17 Air Force One," and with the plane as a backdrop, he called it "America's best moving van."

Clinton said that McDonnell Douglas employees had cut the "flyaway cost" of the aircraft in half and had just completed the 12th in a row ahead of schedule. For that reason, Clinton said, he would be pressing Congress to approve the "longest and largest defense contract ever," providing 18,000 jobs and $14 bill ion for McDonnell Douglas.

Clinton said that the size of the one-time order would save a billion dollars for taxpayers in a "partnership between the Air Force and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation."

The president made the C-17 the star of the day, describing his experience aboard the aircraft in Bosnia and the praise he heard from those who flew it.

"Those crews are your best advertisement," he said.

Clinton said the plane was well suited to the ever-changing military challenges that face the United States.

"We have to have the capacity to project America's power quickly," he said. "The C-17 is the finest military transport plane in the world."

Clinton had more thanks Saturday for the Long Beach Unified School District for its first-in-the-nation mandatory school uniform policy.

"When parents and families told us they wanted school uniforms, we listened," Superintendent of Long Beach Schools Carl Cohn said. "We had no idea that their voices would be heard in Washington."

Their voice was heard there, Clinton told more than 2,000 parents, teachers and students of LBUSD. He said that for 10 years, the first lady had been advocating a national school uniform policy. "Thanks to you, I have to listen to 'I told you so'" Clinton said.

School uniforms make schools work, Clinton said, cutting fights in half and reducing school crime by a third in its first year of implementation at LBUSD.

Based on the LBUSD program, the president announced that the Department of Education had developed a six-page "Manual on School Uniforms" to be sent to every public school district in the country. "The United states of America is in your debt," he said.

The enthusiastic crowd included many Cal State Long Beach representatives: University President Robert Maxson, several Associated Students Inc. senators and executives and political science major Robert Dugan - who led the crowd chanting "four more years !"

Ernesto Solis, A.S.I. senator from the College of Business said he hoped the speech would inspire children to wear uniforms. "I used to work at an elementary school," he said. "[Uniforms] make a difference."