On final presidential trip, Clinton thanks Arkansas

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (CNN) -- President Clinton used his final trip as the nation's chief executive to return to the state that launched him into national politics, telling Arkansas lawmakers he was "amazingly grateful" for having served two terms as president.

"I would like to thank the people of this state who elected me five times, for sending me to Washington to carry the lessons that I learned from you and the progress that we tried to make here to the rest of the country," he said. "Everything that I have been able to do as president is in no small measure a result of the life I lived and the jobs I had in Arkansas."

President Clinton speaks to Arkansas lawmakers on his final trip as president

Born in the small town of Hope and raised in the resort town of Hot Springs, Clinton made his first bid for public office -- an unsuccessful run for Congress -- in 1974. In 1976, he was elected the state's attorney general, and became the nation's youngest governor in 1978 -- at age 32.

He lost his bid for re-election, but came back to win a new term two years later and served until 1992, when he was elected president.

Clinton said hard work and a guiding vision are the keys to a successful administration.

"My conviction that politics requires a vision and a strategy based on sound ideas and a belief that you can make a difference, from education reform and economic policies to welfare and health care and building one America -- those things were built here," he said.

Clinton thanked the hundreds of Arkansans who served in the White House during his tenure, chief among them his first chief of staff, Mack McClarty, and his Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater. He also used the speech to rebut local critics who have described his presidency as a mixed blessing for the state.

He recited a now-familiar litany of statistics to tout his eight years in the White House -- lower unemployment, a budget surplus, lower crime, more students getting college aid and lower interest rates he attributed in part to his administration's fiscal discipline.

But he urged Arkansas and other state governments to press the federal government to involve them in solving other problems, including education, broadening access to health insurance, boosting economic development, and continuing welfare reform.

"In spite of this long recovery, there are still places in mountain counties in Appalachia and north Arkansas -- in the Mississippi Delta and other rural areas, in inner-city neighborhoods and worst of all, our Native American reservations -- where you can't tell there has been an eight-year recovery," he said.

Despite his turbulent presidency, Clinton said he will leave office Saturday "more idealistic than the day I took the oath of office, eight years before."

On the trip down from Washington, he joked with reporters on Air Force One: "Anybody you want to pardon? Everybody in America either wants somebody pardoned or a national monument."

Asked what he would do after he leaves the White House, he said, "I'm going to rest for a month and think about it."

CNN White House Correspondent Major Garrett and CNN.com Writer Matt Smith contributed to this report.