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Excerpts from President Clinton’s Speech to the Michigan Legislature
March 6, 1997

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, Governor. Thank you all for that wonderful welcome in this magnificent capitol. I'm delighted to be here today with so many of your State officials...

When Theodore Roosevelt was here, he was going to Michigan State to address the graduates there, just as I did a couple of years ago. And I might say the president of Michigan State is here, and I told him today that he gave me a picture of Theodore Roosevelt's address to the graduates at Michigan State, and it now hangs on my office wall at the White House at the entrance to my little private office off the Oval Office, and I look up there and see Teddy Roosevelt speaking every day that I go to work.

Before that, he came here, and when he spoke here I suppose the place looked about like it does now, thanks to your magnificent renovation, and I applaud you for doing this. People all over America should remember it's worth investing a little money to protect your roots and your heritage, and the beauty and meaning of what we were, as well as what we hope to be.

In 1907 when Teddy Roosevelt came here we were at the dawn of the industrial era. This building had been wired for electricity only 2 years before he showed up. And when President Roosevelt left here to go to the college campus, he got in a newfangled contraption called a Reo automobile. I read the newspaper article from your local paper from 1907 this morning, and it said that it was something of a risk for him to get into the car, but it was probably the wave of the future, who knew what would turn out.

Then, like a good politician, I read that when he was at Michigan State, at the campus, he learned that there were, in fact, two different car manufacturers competing with one another in Lansing, so he took the other one back. He took a Reo out and an Olds back. . . .

That was a rare moment. Just think what happened from that moment to this one. Think about the century that that moment and this one spans - all but 10 years of this century - and why it became the American Century, what a big part of it Michigan was. . . .

(From “Remarks by the President to the Joint Session of the Michigan Legislature,” a White House Press Release, March 6, 1997, available at the William J. Clinton Foundation:) https://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/030697-speech-by-president-to-michigan-state-legislature.htm