Slide 1960 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1964 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1968 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1972 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1976 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1980 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1984 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1988 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1992 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 1996 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 2000 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 2004 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 2008 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 2012 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 2016 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 2020 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches 2024 Presidential Campaign Announcement and Convention Acceptance Speeches

George W. Bush 2004 George W. Bush 2004 September 2, 2004











Thursday, September 02, 2004

In Acceptance Speech, President Bush Shares His Plan for a Safer World & More Hopeful America

Republican National Convention
New York, New York

(Remarks as prepared for delivery.)

Mr. Chairman, delegates, fellow citizens: I am honored by your support, and I accept your nomination for President of the United States.

When I said those words four years ago, none of us could have envisioned what these years would bring. In the heart of this great city, we saw tragedy arrive on a quiet morning. We saw the bravery of rescuers grow with danger. We learned of passengers on a doomed plane who died with a courage that frightened their killers. We have seen a shaken economy rise to its feet. And we have seen Americans in uniform storming mountain strongholds, and charging through sandstorms, and liberating millions, with acts of valor that would make the men of Normandy proud.

Since 2001, Americans have been given hills to climb, and found the strength to climb them. Now, because we have made the hard journey, we can see the valley below. Now, because we have faced challenges with resolve, we have historic goals within our reach, and greatness in our future. We will build a safer world and a more hopeful America -- and nothing will hold us back.

In the work we have done, and the work we will do, I am fortunate to have a superb Vice President. I have counted on Dick Cheney's calm and steady judgment in difficult days, and I am honored to have him at my side.

I am grateful to share my walk in life with Laura Bush. Americans have come to see the goodness and kindness and strength I first saw 26 years ago, and we love our First Lady.

I am a fortunate father of two spirited, intelligent, and lovely young women. I am blessed with a sister and brothers who are also my closest friends. And I will always be the proud and grateful son of George and Barbara Bush.

My father served eight years at the side of another great American -- Ronald Reagan. His spirit of optimism and goodwill and decency are in this hall, and in our hearts, and will always define our party.

Two months from today, voters will make a choice based on the records we have built, the convictions we hold, and the vision that guides us forward. A presidential election is a contest for the future. Tonight I will tell you where I stand, what I believe, and where I will lead this country in the next four years.

I believe every child can learn, and every school must teach -- so we passed the most important federal education reform in history. Because we acted, children are making sustained progress in reading and math, America's schools are getting better, and nothing will hold us back.

I believe we have a moral responsibility to honor America's seniors -- so I brought Republicans and Democrats together to strengthen Medicare. Now seniors are getting immediate help buying medicine. Soon every senior will be able to get prescription drug coverage, and nothing will hold us back.

I believe in the energy and innovative spirit of America's workers, entrepreneurs, farmers, and ranchers -- so we unleashed that energy with the largest tax relief in a generation. Because we acted, our economy is growing again, and creating jobs, and nothing will hold us back.

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

I am running for President with a clear and positive plan to build a safer world, and a more hopeful America. I am running with a compassionate conservative philosophy: that government should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives. I believe this Nation wants steady, consistent, principled leadership -- and that is why, with your help, we will win this election.

The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more. Our Nation's founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom.

The times in which we live and work are changing dramatically. The workers of our parents' generation typically had one job, one skill, one career ? often with one company that provided health care and a pension. And most of those workers were men. Today, workers change jobs, even careers, many times during their lives, and in one of the most dramatic shifts our society has seen, two-thirds of all Moms also work outside the home.

This changed world can be a time of great opportunity for all Americans to earn a better living, support your family, and have a rewarding career. And government must take your side. Many of our most fundamental systems -- the tax code, health coverage, pension plans, worker training -- were created for the world of yesterday, not tomorrow. We will transform these systems so that all citizens are equipped, prepared -- and thus truly free -- to make your own choices and pursue your own dreams.

My plan begins with providing the security and opportunity of a growing economy. We now compete in a global market that provides new buyers for our goods, but new competition for our workers. To create more jobs in America, America must be the best place in the world to do business. To create jobs, my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation, and making tax relief permanent. To create jobs, we will make our country less dependent on foreign sources of energy. To create jobs, we will expand trade and level the playing field to sell American goods and services across the globe. And we must protect small business owners and workers from the explosion of frivolous lawsuits that threaten jobs across America.

Another drag on our economy is the current tax code, which is a complicated mess -- filled with special interest loopholes, saddling our people with more than six billion hours of paperwork and headache every year. The American people deserve -- and our economic future demands -- a simpler, fairer, pro-growth system. In a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the federal tax code.

Another priority in a new term will be to help workers take advantage of the expanding economy to find better, higher-paying jobs. In this time of change, many workers want to go back to school to learn different or higher-level skills. So we will double the number of people served by our principal job training program and increase funding for community colleges. I know that with the right skills, American workers can compete with anyone, anywhere in the world.

In this time of change, opportunity in some communities is more distant than in others. To stand with workers in poor communities -- and those that have lost manufacturing, textile, and other jobs -- we will create American opportunity zones. In these areas, we'll provide tax relief and other incentives to attract new business, and improve housing and job training to bring hope and work throughout all of America.

As I've traveled the country, I've met many workers and small business owners who have told me they are worried they cannot afford health care. More than half of the uninsured are small business employees and their families. In a new term, we must allow small firms to join together to purchase insurance at the discounts available to big companies. We will offer a tax credit to encourage small businesses and their employees to set up health savings accounts, and provide direct help for low-income Americans to purchase them. These accounts give workers the security of insurance against major illness, the opportunity to save tax-free for routine health expenses, and the freedom of knowing you can take your account with you whenever you change jobs. And we will provide low-income Americans with better access to health care: In a new term, I will ensure every poor county in America has a community or rural health center.

As I have traveled our country, I have met too many good doctors, especially OB-GYNS, who are being forced out of practice because of the high cost of lawsuits. To make health care more affordable and accessible, we must pass medical liability reform now. And in all we do to improve health care in America, we will make sure that health decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by bureaucrats in Washington, DC.

In this time of change, government must take the side of working families. In a new term, we will change outdated labor laws to offer comp-time and flex-time. Our laws should never stand in the way of a more family-friendly workplace.

Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, because ownership brings security, and dignity, and independence.

Thanks to our policies, homeownership in America is at an all-time high. Tonight we set a new goal: seven million more affordable homes in the next 10 years so more American families will be able to open the door and say welcome to my home.

In an ownership society, more people will own their health plans, and have the confidence of owning a piece of their retirement. We will always keep the promise of Social Security for our older workers. With the huge Baby Boom generation approaching retirement, many of our children and grandchildren understandably worry whether Social Security will be there when they need it. We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account -- a nest egg you can call your own, and government can never take away.

In all these proposals, we seek to provide not just a government program, but a path -- a path to greater opportunity, more freedom, and more control over your own life.

This path begins with our youngest Americans. To build a more hopeful America, we must help our children reach as far as their vision and character can take them. Tonight, I remind every parent and every teacher, I say to every child: No matter what your circumstance, no matter where you live -- your school will be the path to the promise of America.

We are transforming our schools by raising standards and focusing on results. We are insisting on accountability, empowering parents and teachers, and making sure that local people are in charge of their schools. By testing every child, we are identifying those who need help ? and we're providing a record level of funding to get them that help. In northeast Georgia, Gainesville Elementary School is mostly Hispanic and 90 percent poor ? and this year 90 percent of its students passed state tests in reading and math. The principal expresses the philosophy of his school this way: "We don't focus on what we can't do at this school; we focus on what we can do -- We do whatever it takes to get kids across the finish line." This principal is challenging the soft bigotry of low expectations, and that is the spirit of our education reform, and the commitment of our country: No dejaremos a ningún niño atrás. We will leave no child behind.

We are making progress -- and there is more to do. In this time of change, most new jobs are filled by people with at least two years of college, yet only about one in four students gets there. In our high schools, we will fund early intervention programs to help students at risk. We will place a new focus on math and science. As we make progress, we will require a rigorous exam before graduation. By raising performance in our high schools, and expanding Pell grants for low and middle income families, we will help more Americans start their career with a college diploma.

America's children must also have a healthy start in life. In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need.

Anyone who wants more details on my agenda can find them online. The web address is not very imaginative, but it's easy to remember: GeorgeWBush.com.

These changing times can be exciting times of expanded opportunity. And here, you face a choice. My opponent's policies are dramatically different from ours. Senator Kerry opposed Medicare reform and health savings accounts. After supporting my education reforms, he now wants to dilute them. He opposes legal and medical liability reform. He opposed reducing the marriage penalty, opposed doubling the child credit, and opposed lowering income taxes for all who pay them. To be fair, there are some things my opponent is for -- he's proposed more than two trillion dollars in new federal spending so far, and that's a lot, even for a senator from Massachusetts. To pay for that spending, he is running on a platform of increasing taxes -- and that's the kind of promise a politician usually keeps.

His policies of tax and spend -- of expanding government rather than expanding opportunity -- are the policies of the past. We are on the path to the future -- and we are not turning back.

In this world of change, some things do not change: the values we try to live by, the institutions that give our lives meaning and purpose. Our society rests on a foundation of responsibility and character and family commitment.

Because family and work are sources of stability and dignity, I support welfare reform that strengthens family and requires work. Because a caring society will value its weakest members, we must make a place for the unborn child. Because religious charities provide a safety net of mercy and compassion, our government must never discriminate against them. Because the union of a man and woman deserves an honored place in our society, I support the protection of marriage against activist judges. And I will continue to appoint federal judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law.

My opponent recently announced that he is the candidate of "conservative values," which must have come as a surprise to a lot of his supporters. Now, there are some problems with this claim. If you say the heart and soul of America is found in Hollywood, I'm afraid you are not the candidate of conservative values. If you voted against the bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act, which President Clinton signed, you are not the candidate of conservative values. If you gave a speech, as my opponent did, calling the Reagan presidency eight years of "moral darkness," then you may be a lot of things, but the candidate of conservative values is not one of them.

This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism -- and you know where I stand. Three days after September 11th, I stood where Americans died, in the ruins of the Twin Towers. Workers in hard hats were shouting to me, "Whatever it takes." A fellow grabbed me by the arm and he said, "Do not let me down." Since that day, I wake up every morning thinking about how to better protect our country. I will never relent in defending America -- whatever it takes.

So we have fought the terrorists across the earth -- not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake. Our strategy is clear. We have tripled funding for homeland security and trained half a million first responders, because we are determined to protect our homeland. We are transforming our military and reforming and strengthening our intelligence services. We are staying on the offensive -- striking terrorists abroad -- so we do not have to face them here at home. And we are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring a future of hope, and the peace we all want. And we will prevail.

Our strategy is succeeding. Four years ago, Afghanistan was the home base of al-Qaida, Pakistan was a transit point for terrorist groups, Saudi Arabia was fertile ground for terrorist fundraising, Libya was secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, Iraq was a gathering threat, and al-Qaida was largely unchallenged as it planned attacks. Today, the government of a free Afghanistan is fighting terror, Pakistan is capturing terrorist leaders, Saudi Arabia is making raids and arrests, Libya is dismantling its weapons programs, the army of a free Iraq is fighting for freedom, and more than three-quarters of al-Qaida's key members and associates have been detained or killed. We have led, many have joined, and America and the world are safer.

This progress involved careful diplomacy, clear moral purpose, and some tough decisions. And the toughest came on Iraq. We knew Saddam Hussein's record of aggression and support for terror. We knew his long history of pursuing, even using, weapons of mass destruction. And we know that September 11th requires our country to think differently: We must, and we will, confront threats to America before it is too late.

In Saddam Hussein, we saw a threat. Members of both political parties, including my opponent and his running mate, saw the threat, and voted to authorize the use of force. We went to the United Nations Security Council, which passed a unanimous resolution demanding the dictator disarm, or face serious consequences. Leaders in the Middle East urged him to comply. After more than a decade of diplomacy, we gave Saddam Hussein another chance, a final chance, to meet his responsibilities to the civilized world. He again refused, and I faced the kind of decision that comes only to the Oval Office -- a decision no president would ask for, but must be prepared to make. Do I forget the lessons of September 11th and take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our country? Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time.

Because we acted to defend our country, the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban are history, more than 50 million people have been liberated, and democracy is coming to the broader Middle East. In Afghanistan, terrorists have done everything they can to intimidate people -- yet more than 10 million citizens have registered to vote in the October presidential election ? a resounding endorsement of democracy. Despite ongoing acts of violence, Iraq now has a strong Prime Minister, a national council, and national elections are scheduled for January. Our Nation is standing with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, because when America gives its word, America must keep its word. As importantly, we are serving a vital and historic cause that will make our country safer. Free societies in the Middle East will be hopeful societies, which no longer feed resentments and breed violence for export. Free governments in the Middle East will fight terrorists instead of harboring them, and that helps us keep the peace. So our mission in Afghanistan and Iraq is clear: We will help new leaders to train their armies, and move toward elections, and get on the path of stability and democracy as quickly as possible. And then our troops will return home with the honor they have earned.

Our troops know the historic importance of our work. One Army Specialist wrote home: "We are transforming a once sick society into a hopeful place ... The various terrorist enemies we are facing in Iraq," he continued, "are really aiming at you back in the United States. This is a test of will for our country. We soldiers of yours are doing great and scoring victories in confronting the evil terrorists."

That young man is right -- our men and women in uniform are doing a superb job for America. Tonight I want to speak to all of them -- and to their families: You are involved in a struggle of historic proportion. Because of your service and sacrifice, we are defeating the terrorists where they live and plan, and making America safer. Because of you, women in Afghanistan are no longer shot in a sports stadium. Because of you, the people of Iraq no longer fear being executed and left in mass graves. Because of you, the world is more just and will be more peaceful. We owe you our thanks, and we owe you something more. We will give you all the resources, all the tools, and all the support you need for victory.

Again, my opponent and I have different approaches. I proposed, and the Congress overwhelmingly passed, 87 billion dollars in funding needed by our troops doing battle in Afghanistan and Iraq. My opponent and his running mate voted against this money for bullets, and fuel, and vehicles, and body armor. When asked to explain his vote, the Senator said, "I actually did vote for the 87 billion dollars before I voted against it." Then he said he was "proud" of that vote. Then, when pressed, he said it was a "complicated" matter. There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat.

Our allies also know the historic importance of our work. About 40 nations stand beside us in Afghanistan, and some 30 in Iraq. And I deeply appreciate the courage and wise counsel of leaders like Prime Minister Howard, and President Kwasniewski, and Prime Minister Berlusconi -- and, of course, Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Again, my opponent takes a different approach. In the midst of war, he has called America's allies, quote, a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed." That would be nations like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, El Salvador, Australia, and others -- allies that deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician. I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget.

The people we have freed won't forget either. Not long ago, seven Iraqi men came to see me in the Oval Office. They had "X"s branded into their foreheads, and their right hands had been cut off, by Saddam Hussein's secret police, the sadistic punishment for imaginary crimes. During our emotional visit one of the Iraqi men used his new prosthetic hand to slowly write out, in Arabic, a prayer for God to bless America. I am proud that our country remains the hope of the oppressed, and the greatest force for good on this earth.

Others understand the historic importance of our work. The terrorists know. They know that a vibrant, successful democracy at the heart of the Middle East will discredit their radical ideology of hate. They know that men and women with hope, and purpose, and dignity do not strap bombs on their bodies and kill the innocent. The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear -- and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

I believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom. As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment, their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region. Palestinians will hear the message that democracy and reform are within their reach, and so is peace with our good friend Israel. Young women across the Middle East will hear the message that their day of equality and justice is coming. Young men will hear the message that national progress and dignity are found in liberty, not tyranny and terror. Reformers, and political prisoners, and exiles will hear the message that their dream of freedom cannot be denied forever. And as freedom advances -- heart by heart, and nation by nation -- America will be more secure and the world more peaceful.

America has done this kind of work before -- and there have always been doubters. In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to allied forces, a journalist wrote in the New York Times, "Germany is ... a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. [European] capitals are frightened. In every [military] headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed." End quote. Maybe that same person's still around, writing editorials. Fortunately, we had a resolute president named Truman, who with the American people persevered, knowing that a new democracy at the center of Europe would lead to stability and peace. And because that generation of Americans held firm in the cause of liberty, we live in a better and safer world today.

The progress we and our friends and allies seek in the broader Middle East will not come easily, or all at once. Yet Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of liberty to transform lives and nations. That power brought settlers on perilous journeys, inspired colonies to rebellion, ended the sin of slavery, and set our Nation against the tyrannies of the 20th century. We were honored to aid the rise of democracy in Germany and Japan and Nicaragua and Central Europe and the Baltics -- and that noble story goes on. I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century. I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their liberty. I believe that given the chance, they will embrace the most honorable form of government ever devised by man. I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world.

This moment in the life of our country will be remembered. Generations will know if we kept our faith and kept our word. Generations will know if we seized this moment, and used it to build a future of safety and peace. The freedom of many, and the future security of our Nation, now depend on us. And tonight, my fellow Americans, I ask you to stand with me.

In the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand. You may have noticed I have a few flaws, too. People sometimes have to correct my English -- I knew I had a problem when Arnold Schwarzenegger started doing it. Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called "walking." Now and then I come across as a little too blunt -- and for that we can all thank the white-haired lady sitting right up there.

One thing I have learned about the presidency is that whatever shortcomings you have, people are going to notice them -- and whatever strengths you have, you're going to need them. These four years have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget. I have tried to comfort Americans who lost the most on September 11th -- people who showed me a picture or told me a story, so I would know how much was taken from them. I have learned first-hand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision, even when it is right. I have returned the salute of wounded soldiers, some with a very tough road ahead, who say they were just doing their job. I've held the children of the fallen, who are told their dad or mom is a hero, but would rather just have their dad or mom.

And I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved. I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers ? to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride? It is because they know their loved one was last seen doing good. Because they know that liberty was precious to the one they lost. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation: decent, and idealistic, and strong.

The world saw that spirit three miles from here, when the people of this city faced peril together, and lifted a flag over the ruins, and defied the enemy with their courage. My fellow Americans, for as long as our country stands, people will look to the resurrection of New York City and they will say: Here buildings fell, and here a nation rose.

We see America's character in our military, which finds a way or makes one. We see it in our veterans, who are supporting military families in their days of worry. We see it in our young people, who have found heroes once again. We see that character in workers and entrepreneurs, who are renewing our economy with their effort and optimism. And all of this has confirmed one belief beyond doubt: Having come this far, our tested and confident Nation can achieve anything.

To everything we know there is a season -- a time for sadness, a time for struggle, a time for rebuilding. And now we have reached a time for hope. This young century will be liberty's century. By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world. By encouraging liberty at home, we will build a more hopeful America. Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom. This is the everlasting dream of America -- and tonight, in this place, that dream is renewed. Now we go forward -- grateful for our freedom, faithful to our cause, and confident in the future of the greatest nation on earth.

God bless you, and may God continue to bless America.


Paid for by BUSH-CHENEY '04, Inc.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Vice President Cheney at the RNC: America's Security at Stake in This Election

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you. I'm sure glad Zell Miller is on our side. (Applause.)

Mr. Chairman, delegates, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: I accept your nomination for Vice President of the United States.
(Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. I am honored by your confidence. And tonight I make this pledge: I will give this campaign all that I have, and together we will make George W. Bush President for another four years.
(Applause.)

Tonight I will talk about this good man and his fine record leading our country. And I may say a word or two about his opponent. (Laughter.) I am also mindful now that I have an opponent of my own.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, his charm, and his great hair. I said, "How do you think I got the job?" (Laughter and applause.)

On this night, as we celebrate the opportunities that America offers, I am filled with gratitude to a nation that has been good to me, and I remember the people who set me on my way in life. My grandfather noted that the day I was born was also the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And so he told my parents they should send President Roosevelt an announcement of my birth. (Laughter.) Now my grandfather didn't have a chance to go to high school. For many years he worked as a cook on the Union Pacific Railroad, and he and my grandmother lived in a railroad car. But the modesty of his circumstances didn't stop him from thinking that President Roosevelt should know about my arrival. My grandfather believed deeply in the promise of America, and he had the highest hopes for his family. And I don't think it would surprise him all that much that a grandchild of his stands before you tonight as Vice President of the United States. (Applause.)

It is the story of this country that people have been able to dream big dreams with confidence they would come true, if not for themselves, then for their children and grandchildren. And that sense of boundless opportunity is a gift that we must pass on to all who come after us.

From kindergarten to graduation, I went to public schools, and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world. (Applause.) When the President and I took office, our schools were shuffling too many children from grade to grade without giving them the skills and the knowledge they need. So President Bush reached across the aisle and brought both parties together to pass the most significant education reform in 40 years. (Laughter.) With higher standards and new resources, America's schools are now on an upward path to excellence -- and not for just a few children, but for every child.
(Applause.)

Opportunity also depends on a vibrant, growing economy. As President Bush and I were sworn into office, our nation was sliding into recession, and American workers were overburdened with federal taxes. Then came the events of September 11th, which hit our economy very hard. So President Bush delivered the greatest tax reduction in a generation, and the results are clear to see. (Applause.) Businesses are creating jobs. People are returning to work. Mortgage rates are low, and home ownership in this country is at an all-time high. The Bush tax cuts are working.
(Applause.)

Our nation has the best health care in the world, and President Bush is making it more affordable and accessible to all Americans. (Applause.) And there is more to do. Under this President's leadership, we will reform medical liability so the system serves patients and good doctors, not personal injury lawyers. (Applause.)

These have been years of achievement, and we are eager for the work ahead. And in all that we do, we will never lose sight of the greatest challenge of our time: preserving the freedom and security of this nation against determined enemies.

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. (Applause.)

Since I last spoke to our national convention, Lynne and I have had the joy of seeing our family grow. We now have a grandson to go along with our three wonderful granddaughters. (Applause.) And the deepest wish of my heart and the object of all my determination is that they, and all of America's children, will have lives filled with opportunity, and that they will inherit a world in which they can live in freedom, in safety, and in peace. (Applause.)

Four years ago, some said the world had grown calm, and many assumed that the United States was invulnerable to danger. That thought might have been comforting; it was also false. Like other generations of Americans, we soon discovered that history had unexpected duties in store for us.

September 11th, 2001 made clear the challenges we face. On that day we saw the harm that could be done by 19 men armed with knives and boarding passes. America also awakened to a possibility even more lethal: this enemy, whose hatred of us is limitless, armed with chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons.

Just as surely as the Nazis during World War II, and the Soviets during the Cold War, the enemy we face today is bent on our destruction. As in other times, we are in a war we did not start, and have no choice but to win.
(Applause.) Firm in our resolve, focused on our mission, and led by a superb Commander-in-Chief, we will prevail. (Applause.)

The fanatics who killed some 3,000 of our fellow Americans may have thought they could attack us with impunity -- because terrorists had done so previously. But if the killers of September 11th thought we had lost the will to defend our freedom, they did not know America. And they did not know George W. Bush. (Applause.)

From the beginning, the President made clear that the terrorists would be dealt with -- and that anyone who supports, protects, or harbors them would be held to account. (Applause.) In a campaign that has reached around the world, we have captured or killed hundreds of al Qaeda. In Afghanistan, the camps where terrorists trained to kill Americans have been shut down, and the Taliban driven from power. (Applause.) In Iraq, we dealt with a gathering threat, and removed the regime of Saddam Hussein. (Applause.) Seventeen months ago, he controlled the lives and fortunes of 25 million people. Tonight, he sits in jail. (Applause.)

President Bush does not deal in empty threats and halfway measures, and his determination has sent a clear message. Just five days after Saddam was captured, the government of Libya agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program and turn the materials over to the United States. (Applause.) Tonight, the uranium, the centrifuges, and the plans and designs for nuclear weapons that were once hidden in Libya are locked up and stored away in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, never again to threaten America. (Applause.)

The biggest threat we face today is having nuclear weapons fall into the hands of terrorists. The President is working with many countries in a global effort to end the trade and transfer of these deadly technologies. The most important result thus far -- and it is a very important one -- is that the black market network that supplied nuclear weapons technology to Libya, as well as to Iran and North Korea, has been shut down. (Applause.) The world's worst source of nuclear weapons proliferation is out of business -- and we are safer as a result. (Applause.)

In the global war we are fighting, we owe a mighty debt to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. (Applause.) They have fought the enemy with courage and reached out to civilians with compassion, rebuilding schools and hospitals and roads. They have won stunning victories. They have faced hard duty and long deployments. And they have lost comrades, more than 1,100 brave Americans, whose memories this nation will honor forever. (Applause.) The men and women who wear the uniform of the United States represent the very best of America. They have the thanks of our nation. And they have confidence, the loyalty, and the respect of their Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)

In this election, we will decide who leads our country for the next four years. Yet, there is more in the balance than that. Moments come along in history when leaders must make fundamental decisions about how to confront a long-term challenge abroad, or how best to keep the American people secure at home. We faced such a moment after World War II, when we put in place the policies that defended America throughout the Cold War. Those policies -- containing communism, deterring attack by the Soviet Union, and promoting the rise of democracy -- were carried out by Democratic and Republican Presidents in the decades that followed.

This nation has reached another of those defining moments. Under President Bush we have put in place new policies and created new institutions to defend America, to stop terrorist violence at its source, and to help move the Middle East away from old hatreds and resentments and toward the lasting peace that only freedom can bring. This is the work not of months, but of years -- and keeping these commitments is essential to our future security. For that reason, ladies and gentlemen, the election of 2004 is one of the most important, not just in our lives, but in our history.
(Applause.)

And so it is time to set the alternatives squarely before the American people.

The President's opponent is an experienced senator. He speaks often of his service in Vietnam, and we honor him for it. (Applause.) But there is also a record of more than three decades since. And on the question of America's role in the world, the differences between Senator Kerry and President Bush are the sharpest, and the stakes for the country are the highest. (Applause.) History has shown that a strong and purposeful America is vital to preserving freedom and keeping us safe -- yet time and again, Senator Kerry has made the wrong call on national security. Senator Kerry began his political career by saying he would like to see our troops deployed "only at the directive of the United Nations."

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: During the 1980s, Senator Kerry opposed Ronald Reagan's major defense initiatives that brought victory in the Cold War.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And in 1991, when Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and stood poised to dominate the Persian Gulf, Senator Kerry voted against Operation Desert Storm.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Even in this post-9/11 period, Senator Kerry doesn't appear to understand how the world has changed. He talks about leading a "more sensitive war on terror" -- (Laughter.) -- as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side. (Laughter and applause.)

He declared at the Democratic Convention that he will forcefully defend America -- after we have been attacked. My fellow Americans, we have already been attacked. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We're faced with an enemy who seeks the deadliest of weapons to use against us, and we cannot wait until the next attack. We must do everything we can to prevent it -- and that includes the use of
military force. (Applause.)

Senator Kerry denounces American action when other countries don't approve
-- as if the whole object of our foreign policy were to please a few persistent critics. (Applause.) But, in fact, the global war on terror, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush has brought many allies to our side. (Applause.) But as the President has made very clear, there is a difference between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the objections of a few. (Applause.) George W. Bush will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Senator Kerry also takes a different view when it comes to supporting our military. Although he voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein, he then decided he was opposed to the war, and voted against funding for our men and women in the field.

AUDIENCE: Booo! Flip-flop! Flip-flop! Flip-flop! (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: He voted against body armor, ammunition, fuel, spare parts, armored vehicles, extra pay for hardship duty, and support for military families.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Senator Kerry is campaigning for the position of Commander-in-Chief.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yet he does not seem to understand the first obligation of a Commander-in-Chief -- and that is to support American troops in combat. (Applause.)

In his years in Washington, John Kerry has been one of a hundred votes in the United States Senate -- and fortunately on matters of national security, his views rarely prevailed. (Applause.) But the presidency is an entirely different proposition. A senator can be wrong for 20 years, without consequence to the nation. (Applause.) But a President -- a President -- always casts the deciding vote. (Applause.) And in this time of challenge, America needs -- and America has -- a President we can count on to get it right. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: On Iraq, Senator Kerry has disagreed with many of his fellow Democrats. But Senator Kerry's liveliest disagreement is with himself. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE: Flip-flop! Flip-flop! Flip-flop!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: His back-and-forth reflects a habit of indecision, and sends a message of confusion. And it is all part of a pattern. He has, in the last several years, been for the No Child Left Behind Act -- and against it. He has spoken in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement -- and against it. He is for the Patriot Act ? and against it. Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. He makes the whole thing mutual
-- America -- (applause) -- America sees two John Kerrys. (Laughter and
applause.)

The other candidate in this race is a man our nation has come to know, and one I've come to admire very much. I watch him at work every day. I have seen him face some of the hardest decisions that can come to the Oval Office -- and make those decisions with the wisdom and the humility Americans expect in their President. (Applause.) George W. Bush is a man who speaks plainly and who means what he says. He is a person of loyalty and kindness -- and he brings out these qualities in those around him. He is a man of great personal strength -- and more than that, a man with a heart for the weak, and the vulnerable, and the afflicted. (Applause.) We all remember that terrible morning when, in the space of just 102 minutes, more Americans were killed than we lost at Pearl Harbor. We remember the President who came to New York City and pledged that the terrorists would soon hear from all of us. (Applause.) George W. Bush saw this country through grief and tragedy. He has acted with patience, and calm, and a moral seriousness that calls evil by its name. (Applause.) In the great divide of our time, he has put this nation where America always belongs: against the tyrants of this world, and on the side of every soul on Earth who yearns to live in freedom. (Applause.)

Fellow citizens, our nation is reaching the hour of decision, and the choice is clear. President Bush and I will wade this effort -- wage this effort with complete confidence in the judgment of the American people. The signs are good -- even in Massachusetts. (Applause.) According to a news account last month, people leaving the Democratic National Convention asked a Boston policeman for directions. He replied, "Leave here --? and go vote Republican." (Laughter and applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: President Bush and I are honored to have the support of that police officer, and of Democrats, Republicans, and independents from every calling in American life. (Applause.) We are so fortunate, each and every one of us, to be citizens of this great nation and to take part in the defining event of our democracy: Choosing who will lead us.

The historian Bernard DeVoto once wrote that when America was created, the stars must have danced in the sky. (Applause.) Our President understands the miracle of this great country. He knows the hope that drives it and shares the optimism that has long been so important a part of our national character. He gets up each and every day determined to keep our great nation safe so that generations to come will know the freedom and opportunities we have known -- and more. (Applause.)

When this convention concludes tomorrow night, we will go forth with confidence in our cause, and in the man who leads it. By leaving no doubt where we stand, and asking all Americans to join us, we will see our cause to victory.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Paid for by BUSH-CHENEY '04, Inc.

Source: Bush Cheney '04 Web Site John Kerry 2004 John Kerry 2004 July, 29, 2004











EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY

July 29, 2004

Remarks of Senator John Kerry

(As Prepared for Delivery)

2004 Democratic National Convention

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Fleet Center

Boston, Massachusetts

I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty. (Salutes)

We are here tonight because we love our country.

We are proud of what America is and what it can become.

My fellow Americans: we are here tonight united in one simple purpose: to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.

A great American novelist wrote that you can't go home again. He could not have imagined this evening. Tonight, I am home. Home where my public life began and those who made it possible live. Home where our nation's history was written in blood, idealism, and hope. Home where my parents showed me the values of family, faith, and country.

Thank you, all of you, for a welcome home I will never forget.

I wish my parents could share this moment. They went to their rest in the last few years, but their example, their inspiration, their gift of open eyes, open mind, and endless world are bigger and more lasting than any words.

I was born in Colorado, in Fitzsimmons Army Hospital, when my dad was a pilot in World War II. Now, I'm not one to read into things, but guess which wing of the hospital the maternity ward was in? I'm not making this up. I was born in the West Wing!

My mother was the rock of our family as so many mothers are. She stayed up late to help me do my homework. She sat by my bed when I was sick, and she answered the questions of a child who, like all children, found the world full of wonders and mysteries.

She was my den mother when I was a Cub Scout and she was so proud of her fifty year pin as a Girl Scout leader. She gave me her passion for the environment. She taught me to see trees as the cathedrals of nature. And by the power of her example, she showed me that we can and must finish the march toward full equality for all women in our country.

My dad did the things that a boy remembers. He gave me my first model airplane, my first baseball mitt and my first bicycle. He also taught me that we are here for something bigger than ourselves; he lived out the responsibilities and sacrifices of the greatest generation to whom we owe so much.

When I was a young man, he was in the State Department, stationed in Berlin when it and the world were divided between democracy and communism. I have unforgettable memories of being a kid mesmerized by the British, French, and American troops, each of them guarding their own part of the city, and Russians standing guard on the stark line separating East from West. On one occasion, I rode my bike into Soviet East Berlin. And when I proudly told my dad, he promptly grounded me.

But what I learned has stayed with me for a lifetime. I saw how different life was on different sides of the same city. I saw the fear in the eyes of people who were not free. I saw the gratitude of people toward the United States for all that we had done. I felt goose bumps as I got off a military train and heard the Army band strike up "Stars and Stripes Forever." I learned what it meant to be America at our best. I learned the pride of our freedom. And I am determined now to restore that pride to all who look to America.

Mine were greatest generation parents. And as I thank them, we all join together to thank that whole generation for making America strong, for winning World War II, winning the Cold War, and for the great gift of service which brought America fifty years of peace and prosperity.

My parents inspired me to serve, and when I was a junior in high school, John Kennedy called my generation to service. It was the beginning of a great journey – a time to march for civil rights, for voting rights, for the environment, for women, and for peace. We believed we could change the world. And you know what? We did.

But we're not finished. The journey isn't complete. The march isn't over. The promise isn't perfected. Tonight, we're setting out again. And together, we're going to write the next great chapter of America's story.

We have it in our power to change the world again. But only if we're true to our ideals – and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. That is my first pledge to you tonight. As President, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.

I ask you to judge me by my record: As a young prosecutor, I fought for victim's rights and made prosecuting violence against women a priority. When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do. I fought to put a 100,000 cops on the street.

And then I reached across the aisle to work with John McCain, to find the truth about our POW's and missing in action, and to finally make peace with Vietnam.

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.

My fellow Americans, this is the most important election of our lifetime. The stakes are high. We are a nation at war – a global war on terror against an enemy unlike any we have ever known before. And here at home, wages are falling, health care costs are rising, and our great middle class is shrinking. People are working weekends; they're working two jobs, three jobs, and they're still not getting ahead.

We're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America. We're told that new jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best we can do. They say this is the best economy we've ever had. And they say that anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist. Well, here is our answer: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying America can't do better.

We can do better and we will. We're the optimists. For us, this is a country of the future. We're the can do people. And let's not forget what we did in the 1990s. We balanced the budget. We paid down the debt. We created 23 million new jobs. We lifted millions out of poverty and we lifted the standard of living for the middle class. We just need to believe in ourselves – and we can do it again.

So tonight, in the city where America's freedom began, only a few blocks from where the sons and daughters of liberty gave birth to our nation – here tonight, on behalf of a new birth of freedom – on behalf of the middle class who deserve a champion, and those struggling to join it who deserve a fair shot – for the brave men and women in uniform who risk their lives every day and the families who pray for their return – for all those who believe our best days are ahead of us – for all of you – with great faith in the American people, I accept your nomination for President of the United States.

I am proud that at my side will be a running mate whose life is the story of the American dream and who's worked every day to make that dream real for all Americans – Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. And his wonderful wife Elizabeth and their family. This son of a mill worker is ready to lead – and next January, Americans will be proud to have a fighter for the middle class to succeed Dick Cheney as Vice President of the United States.

And what can I say about Teresa? She has the strongest moral compass of anyone I know. She's down to earth, nurturing, courageous, wise and smart. She speaks her mind and she speaks the truth, and I love her for that, too. And that's why America will embrace her as the next First Lady of the United States.

For Teresa and me, no matter what the future holds or the past has given us, nothing will ever mean as much as our children. We love them not just for who they are and what they've become, but for being themselves, making us laugh, holding our feet to the fire, and never letting me get away with anything. Thank you, Andre, Alex, Chris, Vanessa, and John.

And in this journey, I am accompanied by an extraordinary band of brothers led by that American hero, a patriot named Max Cleland. Our band of brothers doesn't march together because of who we are as veterans, but because of what we learned as soldiers. We fought for this nation because we loved it and we came back with the deep belief that every day is extra. We may be a little older now, we may be a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for our country.

And standing with us in that fight are those who shared with me the long season of the primary campaign: Carol Moseley Braun, General Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, Bob Graham, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton.

To all of you, I say thank you for teaching me and testing me – but mostly, we say thank you for standing up for our country and giving us the unity to move America forward.

My fellow Americans, the world tonight is very different from the world of four years ago. But I believe the American people are more than equal to the challenge.

Remember the hours after September 11th, when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran up the stairs and risked their lives, so that others might live. When rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon. When the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's Capitol. When flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.

I am proud that after September 11th all our people rallied to President Bush's call for unity to meet the danger. There were no Democrats. There were no Republicans. There were only Americans. How we wish it had stayed that way.

Now I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities – and I do – because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn’t make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so.

As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system – so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as President, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.

I know what kids go through when they are carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place and they can't tell friend from foe. I know what they go through when they're out on patrol at night and they don't know what's coming around the next bend. I know what it's like to write letters home telling your family that everything's all right when you're not sure that's true.

As President, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent." So lesson one, this is the only justification for going to war.

And on my first day in office, I will send a message to every man and woman in our armed forces: You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace.

I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a President who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.

Here is the reality: that won't happen until we have a president who restores America's respect and leadership -- so we don't have to go it alone in the world.

And we need to rebuild our alliances, so we can get the terrorists before they get us.

I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military.

We will add 40,000 active duty troops – not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct anti-terrorist operations. We will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives – and win the battle. And we will end the backdoor draft of National Guard and reservists.

To all who serve in our armed forces today, I say, help is on the way.

As President, I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror. We will deploy every tool in our arsenal: our economic as well as our military might; our principles as well as our firepower.

In these dangerous days there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong. Strength is more than tough words. After decades of experience in national security, I know the reach of our power and I know the power of our ideals.

We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to and not just feared.

We need to lead a global effort against nuclear proliferation – to keep the most dangerous weapons in the world out of the most dangerous hands in the world.

We need a strong military and we need to lead strong alliances. And then, with confidence and determination, we will be able to tell the terrorists: You will lose and we will win. The future doesn't belong to fear; it belongs to freedom.

And the front lines of this battle are not just far away – they're right here on our shores, at our airports, and potentially in any town or city. Today, our national security begins with homeland security. The 9-11 Commission has given us a path to follow, endorsed by Democrats, Republicans, and the 9-11 families. As President, I will not evade or equivocate; I will immediately implement the recommendations of that commission. We shouldn't be letting ninety-five percent of container ships come into our ports without ever being physically inspected. We shouldn't be leaving our nuclear and chemical plants without enough protection. And we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America.

And tonight, we have an important message for those who question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our country. Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes and ears to the truth, they should remember what America is really all about. They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.

You see that flag up there. We call her Old Glory. The stars and stripes forever. I fought under that flag, as did so many of you here and all across our country. That flag flew from the gun turret right behind my head. It was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men I served with and friends I grew up with. For us, that flag is the most powerful symbol of who we are and what we believe in. Our strength. Our diversity. Our love of country. All that makes America both great and good.

That flag doesn't belong to any president. It doesn't belong to any ideology and it doesn't belong to any political party. It belongs to all the American people.

My fellow citizens, elections are about choices. And choices are about values. In the end, it's not just policies and programs that matter; the president who sits at that desk must be guided by principle.

For four years, we've heard a lot of talk about values. But values spoken without actions taken are just slogans. Values are not just words. They're what we live by. They're about the causes we champion and the people we fight for. And it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.

You don't value families by kicking kids out of after school programs and taking cops off our streets, so that Enron can get another tax break.

We believe in the family value of caring for our children and protecting the neighborhoods where they walk and play.

And that is the choice in this election.

You don't value families by denying real prescription drug coverage to seniors, so big drug companies can get another windfall.

We believe in the family value expressed in one of the oldest Commandments: "Honor thy father and thy mother." As President, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits. And together, we will make sure that senior citizens never have to cut their pills in half because they can't afford life-saving medicine.

And that is the choice in this election.

You don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter in the service, if you deny veterans health care, or if you tell middle class families to wait for a tax cut, so that the wealthiest among us can get even more.

We believe in the value of doing what's right for everyone in the American family.

And that is the choice in this election.

We believe that what matters most is not narrow appeals masquerading as values, but the shared values that show the true face of America. Not narrow appeals that divide us, but shared values that unite us. Family and faith. Hard work and responsibility. Opportunity for all – so that every child, every parent, every worker has an equal shot at living up to their God-given potential.

What does it mean in America today when Dave McCune, a steel worker I met in Canton, Ohio, saw his job sent overseas and the equipment in his factory literally unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away along with that job? What does it mean when workers I've met had to train their foreign replacements?

America can do better. So tonight we say: help is on the way.

What does it mean when Mary Ann Knowles, a woman with breast cancer I met in New Hampshire, had to keep working day after day right through her chemotherapy, no matter how sick she felt, because she was terrified of losing her family's health insurance.

America can do better. And help is on the way.

What does it mean when Deborah Kromins from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania works and saves all her life only to find out that her pension has disappeared into thin air – and the executive who looted it has bailed out on a golden parachute?

America can do better. And help is on the way.

What does it mean when twenty five percent of the children in Harlem have asthma because of air pollution?

America can do better. And help is on the way.

What does it mean when people are huddled in blankets in the cold, sleeping in Lafayette Park on the doorstep of the White House itself – and the number of families living in poverty has risen by three million in the last four years?

America can do better. And help is on the way.

And so we come here tonight to ask: Where is the conscience of our country?

I'll tell you where it is: it's in rural and small town America; it's in urban neighborhoods and suburban main streets; it's alive in the people I've met in every part of this land. It's bursting in the hearts of Americans who are determined to give our country back its values and its truth.

We value jobs that pay you more not less than you earned before. We value jobs where, when you put in a week's work, you can actually pay your bills, provide for your children, and lift up the quality of your life. We value an America where the middle class is not being squeezed, but doing better.

So here is our economic plan to build a stronger America:

First, new incentives to revitalize manufacturing.

Second, investment in technology and innovation that will create the good-paying jobs of the future.

Third, close the tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping our jobs overseas. Instead, we will reward companies that create and keep good paying jobs where they belong – in the good old U.S.A.

We value an America that exports products, not jobs – and we believe American workers should never have to subsidize the loss of their own job.

Next, we will trade and compete in the world. But our plan calls for a fair playing field – because if you give the American worker a fair playing field, there's nobody in the world the American worker can't compete against.

And we're going to return to fiscal responsibility because it is the foundation of our economic strength. Our plan will cut the deficit in half in four years by ending tax giveaways that are nothing more than corporate welfare – and will make government live by the rule that every family has to follow: pay as you go.

And let me tell you what we won't do: we won't raise taxes on the middle class. You've heard a lot of false charges about this in recent months. So let me say straight out what I will do as President: I will cut middle class taxes. I will reduce the tax burden on small business. And I will roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals who make over $200,000 a year, so we can invest in job creation, health care and education.

Our education plan for a stronger America sets high standards and demands accountability from parents, teachers, and schools. It provides for smaller class sizes and treats teachers like the professionals they are. And it gives a tax credit to families for each and every year of college.

When I was a prosecutor, I met young kids who were in trouble, abandoned by adults. And as President, I am determined that we stop being a nation content to spend $50,000 a year to keep a young person in prison for the rest of their life – when we could invest $10,000 to give them Head Start, Early Start, Smart Start, the best possible start in life.

And we value health care that's affordable and accessible for all Americans.

Since 2000, four million people have lost their health insurance. Millions more are struggling to afford it.

You know what's happening. Your premiums, your co-payments, your deductibles have all gone through the roof.

Our health care plan for a stronger America cracks down on the waste, greed, and abuse in our health care system and will save families up to $1,000 a year on their premiums. You'll get to pick your own doctor – and patients and doctors, not insurance company bureaucrats, will make medical decisions. Under our plan, Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices for seniors. And all Americans will be able to buy less expensive prescription drugs from countries like Canada.

The story of people struggling for health care is the story of so many Americans. But you know what, it's not the story of senators and members of Congress. Because we give ourselves great health care and you get the bill. Well, I'm here to say, your family's health care is just as important as any politician's in Washington, D.C.

And when I'm President, America will stop being the only advanced nation in the world which fails to understand that health care is not a privilege for the wealthy, the connected, and the elected – it is a right for all Americans.

We value an America that controls its own destiny because it's finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we only have three percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for fifty-three percent of what we consume?

I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation – not the Saudi royal family.

And our energy plan for a stronger America will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future -- so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

I've told you about our plans for the economy, for education, for health care, for energy independence. I want you to know more about them. So now I'm going to say something that Franklin Roosevelt could never have said in his acceptance speech: go to johnkerry.com.

I want to address these next words directly to President George W. Bush: In the weeks ahead, let's be optimists, not just opponents. Let's build unity in the American family, not angry division. Let's honor this nation's diversity; let's respect one another; and let's never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States.

My friends, the high road may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And that's why Republicans and Democrats must make this election a contest of big ideas, not small-minded attacks. This is our time to reject the kind of politics calculated to divide race from race, group from group, region from region. Maybe some just see us divided into red states and blue states, but I see us as one America – red, white, and blue. And when I am President, the government I lead will enlist people of talent, Republicans as well as Democrats, to find the common ground – so that no one who has something to contribute will be left on the sidelines.

And let me say it plainly: in that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them. I think of what Ron Reagan said of his father a few weeks ago, and I want to say this to you tonight: I don't wear my own faith on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side. And whatever our faith, one belief should bind us all: The measure of our character is our willingness to give of ourselves for others and for our country.

These aren't Democratic values. These aren't Republican values. They're American values. We believe in them. They're who we are. And if we honor them, if we believe in ourselves, we can build an America that's stronger at home and respected in the world.

So much promise stretches before us. Americans have always reached for the impossible, looked to the next horizon, and asked: What if?

Two young bicycle mechanics from Dayton asked what if this airplane could take off at Kitty Hawk? It did that and changed the world forever. A young president asked what if we could go to the moon in ten years? And now we're exploring the solar system and the stars themselves. A young generation of entrepreneurs asked, what if we could take all the information in a library and put it on a little chip the size of a fingernail? We did and that too changed the world forever.

And now it's our time to ask: What if?

What if we find a breakthrough to cure Parkinson's, diabetes, Alzheimer's and AIDs? What if we have a president who believes in science, so we can unleash the wonders of discovery like stem cell research to treat illness and save millions of lives?

What if we do what adults should do – and make sure all our children are safe in the afternoons after school? And what if we have a leadership that's as good as the American dream – so that bigotry and hatred never again steal the hope and future of any American?

I learned a lot about these values on that gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta with young Americans who came from places as different as Iowa and Oregon, Arkansas, Florida and California. No one cared where we went to school. No one cared about our race or our backgrounds. We were literally all in the same boat. We looked out, one for the other – and we still do.

That is the kind of America I will lead as President – an America where we are all in the same boat.

Never has there been a more urgent moment for Americans to step up and define ourselves. I will work my heart out. But, my fellow citizens, the outcome is in your hands more than mine.

It is time to reach for the next dream. It is time to look to the next horizon. For America, the hope is there. The sun is rising. Our best days are still to come.

Goodnight, God bless you, and God bless America.

-30-

www.johnkerry.com

Paid for by John Kerry for President, Inc. Dennis Kucincich 2004 Dennis Kucinich 2004 October 13, 2003










Dennis John Kucinich
Formal Announcement Speech
Cleveland, Ohio
Monday, October 13, 2003

Thank you for joining me for this important moment, not only for myself but for the Cleveland community. My brothers and sisters will remember this story. There is a fiery torch which lights the night skies over our beloved Cleveland. It rises from the furnace of a steel mill. I remember a time when that light played against the interior of our car. As a young child I pressed my face against the car window and watched as the flame reached up. It filled me with wonder, it gave me a spark of hope. It made me forget that my mom and dad, my brothers and sisters, all seven of us, were living in that car.

Light has the power to enkindle dreams. And though we lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including a couple of cars, I breathed in the image of blazing light and I breathe it out at this very moment.

The scriptures bid us to send forth our light and our truth and when children carry within their hearts the torch of hope, they learn the darkness yields not only to man-made fire, but to starlight, the rising sun, and to the light of the soul.

So I dedicate this day to the light bearers of today and tomorrow. The children who seek hope, who seek homes, who seek our help to be lifted up, to learn how to look for the light, how to read, how to dance, how to sing, how to play, how to love, how to summon from seemingly nothing the new realities which some call miracles. Miracles occur when our faith meets inner vision, where believing is seeing.

This moment, this moment, which evolved as the dream of an inner city child who once lived in a car, to become President of the United States celebrates not my potential but the creative potential of each and every child to be somebody, to be loved, to serve, to lead, to be carried into the myth and magic of the express power of the American Dream and our responsibility to make each child's dreams come true.

Last month, I introduced a bill and as President will seek to enact a program to provide for universal pre-kindergarten for children ages 3-5; to give each child the earliest start in a 5 day a week program, in a school setting, to learn reading skills, educational, social skills and to have to have proper nutrition available. This day care program would be funded by a 15% reduction in the bloated Pentagon budget. You know and I know that there is massive waste in the Pentagon budget, and this would not jeopardize our national security. However, it would instead enhance the economic security of our nation, of our nation's families, it would help provide day care for our children, it would allocate families at least $5,000 per child to do this, I will match an effort to provide free tuition to public colleges and universities for all of America's youth.

We see the deeper meaning of a sculpture which towers over the entrance of the House of Representatives: A woman's arm is outstretched, protecting a child who sits blissfully atop a pile of books. This artwork is entitled, "Peace, Protecting Genius" Peace protecting genius. Not through nuclear arms, but with the arms of eternal love is a child genius is protected, and the child genius achieves peace through love and through education.

I am running for President of the United States to enable to goddess of peace to encircle within her reach all the children of this country and all the children of the world. And we would protect our children from poverty and war, to hold them in the light of grace, and to hold them in the power of peace.

I am running for President of the United States to challenge this system which traps so many Americans, children and adults, in fear, in violence and poverty and makes us pay for wars we don't want and causes us to sacrifice our childrens' future.

I am running for President of the United States to create a cabinet level department of peace and nonviolence. Fifty members of Congress already supported the bill I introduced in July of 2001. The Department of Peace will facilitate the dream and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, that dream will still seek to make nonviolence an organizing principle of our society, and we can do that, though education, we can do that, through teaching our children peace, sharing, charity, giving and mutuality. We can do that through education that addresses the challenge of domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, all of those afflicted which occur in our home and our society seldom to organizes to deal with. American can organize her collected efforts to focus on and to help free our homes from this violence. The Department of Peace knows that America does not have to be helpless in the face of violence in our schools, in the face of racial violence and violence against gays.

The same power, the same power that brought to our nation freedom bids us to free ourselves from the shackles of violence through making non-violence a structured part of the everyday life of our nation - to teach peace, to teach conflict resolution, to free our homes and to free our communities of violence, to prove that the American evolution is within and when peace becomes innermost it then becomes outermost in our communities and in our nations. The men and women who we treasure, who serve this country honorably, stand in Iraq because there are those who believe that war is inevitable. To believe that war is inevitable creates violence. As president I will work with leaders of the world to make war a thing of the past, to abolish nuclear weapons, America must lead in peace, and in rejoining the world community.

We must rejoin the world community through signing the biological weapons convention, the chemical weapons convention, the small arms treaty, the land mines treaty, join the international criminal court and sign the Kyoto climate change treaty, it time for America to rejoin the world!

And after we rejoin the world community, we can then work to make sure our principles of peace are carried aloft throughout the foundation and a moment when our brothers and sisters, Israelis and Palestenians alike find themselves locked into recursive conflict. This is the moment when the hand of peace proceeds to create conditions where all nations live together and coexist peacefully, is so needed, America cannot put its foot on the accelerator of war and advocate peace simultaneously!

Our work for peace will be strengthened when we repair breaks within our own society. Today, is the day to remind ourselves of the necessity of healing the grief with Native Americans, who were dispossessed when exploration turned to exploitation, and when the laws of the American Natives were excluded in the cause of all Americans.
I have joined Congressman John Conyer's call to study reparations for those whose African American ancestors suffered enslavement. And let me tell you why I've done that- because we must recognize the debilitating effects of slavery which are with us still, the debilitating effects of racism which still exist. We must recognize this because so many of our African American brothers and sisters are locked still in prisons of poverty, substandard housing, unemployment, run-down schools, without health care, without hope. I know this. And my brother Gary, my brother Frank, my brother Larry, my sister Terry, my sister Beth, my brother Perry- We know this, because often we were the only Caucasian family living in a community of color. We know this.

This is not only about repairing the breach for African Americans, this is about healing our world, this is about what is called in the Jewish faith tikkun olam. We must heal the breach. We must heal the beach. We must begin this process of reconciliation and healing. We must be repairers of the breach, and we can help to repair the breach by having a nation which stands for jobs for all, health care for all, education for all. Let's use this as a moment to lift up America!

And we need, too, to stop the breaches that are occurring right now with an immigration policy which causes so many of our Latino brothers and sisters to be reduced to another kind of slavery because they have to come into America to try to receive an opportunity to survive financially, but they don't have the protection of law, they don't have the protection of the Fair Labor Standard Act, their children don't have health care, their children don't have education. We must do everything we can to create legalization and amnesty for immigrant workers; we must lift them up, too. We must be repairers of the breach! We must repair the breach for people of color.

And we must heal America from the pain and the suffering and the fear of 9/11 which, unfortunately, led this administration to attack a nation which did not attack us, and to pass a Patriot bill which undermines our civil liberties. America stands strongest in challenging terrorism when we do not give up an inch of our civil liberties, and when we cooperate with the world community in matters of international security. I ask you: how can we afford to be the policemen of the world, when we can't afford to hire police, firefighters, and EMS back here at home in our cities?

That is why this week I will be present in Congress to vote against funding 87 billion dollars for the occupation of Iraq. I am running for President of the United States to end the United States occupation of Iraq, and put an end to the lies which brought us into Iraq, and to help make this country whole again in the world community and to challenge those lies which, if left unchallenged, will cause this administration to lead this country into another war. We must challenge those lies! I am running for President of the United States to stop the hundreds of billions of our tax dollars from going towards the continued occupation of Iraq, and I am here at this moment to say that it is time to support our troops, and I say: Support our troops, bring them home! Bring them home. Bring them home.

People ask: Oh well, that sounds great, how can you do it? I put on my website, at www.kucinich.us, a few days ago an exit strategy to bring our troops home by New Years, and here's how we can do it. The United States must go to the UN with a resolution that has these features:

Number one: that the UN will handle all of the oil assets on behalf of the Iraqi people with no privatization- no privatization!- until the people of Iraq can handle their own affairs.
Number two: that the UN will handle the contracts- no more Haliburton sweetheart deals! No more war profiteering, no more contracts going to political contributors of the administration.
Number Three: that the UN handles the clause of creating new governance in Iraq, until the Iraqi people can handle their own affairs.

This is the moment that we need to reach out and connect with the world community once again. We can do that. We can bring the UN in and get the US out. We need to bring the UN in and get the US out, and to bring our troops home.

And I'm running for President to break the shackles of fear which have deprived our citizens of rights. The passage of the Patriot Act was an abomination and as President I intend to lead the effort to repeal it. We need to regain the trust of the American people and we need to have a government which trusts the American people.

This war threatens our civil liberties, our civil freedoms, our economic freedoms. The rising budget deficit, at national and state levels, will continue to mount with the continued occupation. Meanwhile, absolutely no attention is being paid to a rising trade deficit which is now approaching 450 billion dollars.

Americans have lost 3 million manufacturing jobs since July of 2000. NAFTA and the WTO have facilitated the movement of jobs out of America. Because you know and I know: corporations move where they can pay workers less. Corporations move where workers don't have rights, where nations provide little legal protection. America can change that. America can set new rules for trade, but to do that you must set aside NAFTA and the WTO. I'm running for President to cancel NAFTA and the WTO.

This is about fair trade. People ask: what will you do next? We return to bilateral trade. Everyone wants access to our market. We can help set the rules, and through setting the rules we can lift up the cause of all workers. And how can we do that specifically? We must put into our new bilateral trade agreements workers rights, the right to organize, the right to collective bargaining, the right to strike, the right to decent wages and benefits, the right to a safe workplace, the right to a secure retirement. We can put those into our trade agreements. We can protect American workers, and we can lift the cause of workers all over this world, and it is time to do that.

We need to remember another time when America was hurt economically, and an American President by the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced a nation that was broken economically, and said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself", and enacted a range of social and economic programs to restore America. As the next President of the United States I intend to lead the way to restore our cities by having a new WPA-type program to rebuild our bridges, our roads, our water systems, our sewer systems, to build new energy systems. We can rebuild America; we can put millions and more back to work. I will work to create new jobs, too, with the help of the inventive genius of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which here at Glen Research Center in Cleveland, we are privileged to have them work on creating the future of America.

Under my administration, NASA will help America lead the way in enabling the private sector to work with the public sector, through the licensing and purchase of the right to develop from the first stage: new technologies in research and energy, technologies in materials, technologies in communication, technologies in environmental protection, in medicine, technologies which are in propulsion. This cooperative private/public partnership will lead us in the meeting, in creating the industries of the future; will create new high-tech jobs. We can do that. We have the ability to do that today and I intend to help NASA lead the way to creating the new jobs.

And we can create new jobs, too, with a new approach to health care. We know. How many places in America, where businesses are laying off employees because they can no longer afford the cost of health care, where employees are seeing cutbacks in their health care benefits, because of a health care system that is no longer about people.

Last month, I introduced a bill which takes the profit out of health care, together with John Conyers and Jim McDermott. This proposal brings to the American people a universal, single-payer system, Medicare for all. It is time for health care for people, not for profit. You know. You know. You know and I know that insurance companies make money not providing health care. They make money by stopping people from getting the care they need. They make money by making insurance agents more powerful than doctors. They make money because they are interested only in profit.

Universal, single-payer, health care: this proposal that I am talking about covers all medically necessary procedures, complimentary and alternative medicine. Insurance companies don't make money when people aren't sick. Yet, we have people in this country who can't afford to be sick and they can't afford to be well. But complimentary and alternative medicine is included in a universal health care proposal. And it includes vision care, and it includes dental health care.

Let me tell you, this smile did not come cheap. And all the children of America should have a beautiful smile, but we know that the rising cost of health care, and particularly the costs of dental care, takes proper dental care out of the reach of many families. And so what I intend to do as the next president, is to make sure that this provision for dental health care is included in a universal health care bill.

It will also include long-term care. Some baby boomers are still fortunate to still have their parents with them, and I will tell you: as we learn about the cost of nursing home care we know that some families have to give up everything they work for because of the cost of nursing home care. My proposal for universal health care covers long-term care. No more health poverty in America because people need long-term care! It covers mental health care. It covers prescription drugs.

In my district in Cleveland Ohio, senior citizens are splitting their pills to try to make prescriptions last. They are giving up meals or giving up purchases of clothing to be able to pay for the high cost of prescription drugs. This proposal for universal health care includes a fully- funded prescription drug benefit, another way to take our people out of health poverty.

People ask me, "Oh, sounds great. How can you do this?" We are already paying for universal health care. We're not getting it. Why aren't we getting it? Because the health care dollar involves stock options, executive salaries, high profits, lobbying, marketing, advertising, the high cost of paper work! We want the health care dollar to go into caring for people and that is exactly what this proposal does. No more bankruptcies for health care. No more health care poverty in America. No more premiums, no more co-pays, no more deductibles. We are already paying for universal health care, we're not getting it.

It's time, America and it's time, too, to make corporations accountable to the American people; to require that they tell the truth to their shareholders; to require that they tell the truth to their investors; to require that they tell the truth to their employees, to their retirees; that they tell the truth.

And I will bring to the Presidency of the United States, an independence to insist on a higher standard of conduct for Wall Street and its captains. It was a century ago when America had a president, Theodore Roosevelt, who took on the trusts of his era; who challenged the monopolies of his time. I say that now is the time to, once again, break up the monopolies and restore competition in our economy. And we must do so again on behalf of small businesses, and on behalf of family farmers. And as president, I will move to break up the monopolies in agriculture, which strangle the market from seed to shelf. And to make sure that our family farmers are able to get their product to market and get the price that they are entitled to.

Of course as Peter, and C.J., and Jay and others have pointed out, I have some experience in dealing with monopolies. It was here. It was here in this very Council Chambers, 25 years ago that I had the privilege of stopping the sale of Cleveland's municipal electric system. And stopping the takeover of our public power by a utility monopoly because I recognized then, as I recognize now, that it matters how much people pay for electricity. That's why I fought to make sure that the people of this community would be able to have access to cheaper power.

I'll share with you a story from that time 25 years ago. The very day that I said "no" to the sale of our municipal electric system- on December the 15th, 1978- I was thinking, brothers and sisters, Frank and Gary: I was thinking about when we lived above Martha's Delicatessen at 10712 St. Clair. And I was thinking about Mom and Dad sitting at the kitchen table counting the pennies so they would have money to pay the utility bill. I can still hear those pennies dropping…click, click, click on that tabletop. I could hear that on that day when I was asked to sell Cleveland's municipal electric system.

Oh, I want all of you to know that I remember where I came from. I want all of you to know that. Because, there are so many families in America, so many families struggling to hold on to their homes, to hold on to their health care, to hold on to their retirement security, to hold on to their education funds, that it matters how much people pay for electricity, for gas, for home heating oil, for food, for health care, for education. These kitchen-table issues always bring us home…if we know where home is.

Cleveland is my home. Cleveland is where my heart resides. Cleveland is where my dreams started. Cleveland is where I've learned the lessons I want to share with every American: The lesson that one person can make a difference; the lesson that anyone can, and anyone should be able to rise from humble beginnings to lead a nation; the lesson that we can change the outcome; the lesson of the power of the human heart, and the power of the human spirit to transform the world. I have seen miracles. I have seen the people of Cleveland create miracles. During my career you have helped me to save a municipal electric system when it was already sold. You have helped me to keep hospitals open when they were already closed. You have helped me to save a steel mill, to help keep that bright light burning over the industrial valley when other communities' hopes were extinguished. Because of you, because of you, because of you, I know the power of hope, the power of optimism, the power of light!

Years ago, my grandfather, John Kucinich, now the name was spelled K-u-c-i-n-i-c. When he came over on the boat, they added the "h". A lot of names were changed there: K-u-c-i-n-i-c. When he came over, because he pronounced it "Kuchinich", they added the "h" on. So now, Gary, anytime somebody tells me to "get the h out of there," I think they're talking about my grandfather. And my grandfather, when he traveled from Croatia as a very young man, he traveled to Ellis Island, and he was welcomed by a light as well. He was welcomed by the light of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty that holds its lamp high, and on the base of the Statue of Liberty, there's that inscription by Emma Lazarus: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores. Send these tempest-tossed, to me. I lift my lamp, beside the golden door". The tens of millions who journeyed to this nation, from other lands, connect us in fact and in spirit to the entire world. And in this campaign they connect us to the highest aspirations of everyone who ever journeyed here. To become full partners, Peter Lawson Jones, full partners in the life of our nation.

So, by the lights which guided my grandfather to America; by the light still shining celebrating public power; by the lights which still emblazon the sky over Cleveland's steel valley, I stand here, ready to light up America. I am Dennis John Kucinich and I am running for President of the United States!

Source: Dennis Kucinich for President Web Site Carol Moseley Braun 2004 Carol Moseley Braun 2004 September-22-2003










Announcement Speech
22 September 2003
Howard University - Washington, D.C.
Benedict College - Columbia, SC
University of Illinois - Chicago, IL
As prepared for delivery

I would like to thank Howard University for opening these historic halls to us today, and for affording us the opportunity to take this step on such solid ground in the tradition of excellence that Howard exemplifies.

I would like to thank each and everyone of you for taking time to share this moment. I am encouraged and inspired by you, and confident in the knowledge that our democracy is safe so long as young people know that it is not a spectator sport.

I would like to thank the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus for their endorsements. Their clarity and advocacy for women gives me the hope and the support I must have to engage in this effort.

I would like to thank all of the friends, supporters, and strangers, too, who have led me along my path towards this day. Over the past several months I have traveled America, talking with people, listening to them, registering voters and engaging in a passionate debate about our country's direction. I am grateful to all those who opened their homes and their hearts, to those who shared their experiences with me, and who made it possible for me to explore the prospect of a Presidential campaign. Thank you for your encouragement.

Today, I am officially declaring my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

I am running for the Democratic nomination because I believe this party ought to stand for inclusion, hope, and new ways to resolve old problems.

I am fighting for the nomination because I am determined to move our party in the direction of our nation's most noble ideals, and live up to our generation's duty to leave the next generation no less freedom, no less opportunity, no less optimism than we inherited from our ancestors.

I am dedicated to building partnerships for peace, prosperity and progress based on new ideas that are as practical as they are innovative. These partnerships will help us shape an American renaissance and renewal in the best traditions of our country.

I have the experience, the ability and the ideas to heal and renew America. In all of my public service, I have broken down barriers, built bridges and brought people together to achieve solutions that put the public interest first.

As a young federal prosecutor, I won a Justice Department award for my work to put an end to exploitation in housing policy.

As a state representative, I fought for education, and passed laws to create the first local school councils and agriculture schools in Illinois. My colleagues voted me the "Conscience of the House" for my advocacy for the poor.

As a county executive, I convened the first advisory council, and worked with organized labor to improve conditions for the employees and the public. When I left that office, it had become a profit center for Cook County, the workers were better off, and the public was better served.

As a United States Senator, and as the first woman to serve on the Finance Committee, I passed laws for women's pension equity, and for environmental remediation and alternative energy, for school modernization and restoration of the interest deduction for college loans.

As Ambassador, I was credited with improving relations on behalf of the United States, and was the first envoy to be made an honorary member of the Te Atiawa Maori tribe.

Breaking barriers; building bridges; bringing people together: I have been blessed to be an agent for change and progress, but I cannot take full personal credit for these accomplishments. I have always depended on the help and support of people of good will who had the vision to imagine the possibilities borne of giving me a chance to contribute.

I tell the people what I believe in, I keep my promises and I hold myself accountable for my service. My entire public life has been characterized by problem solving with new ideas that are as practical as they are innovative. I want to bring my skills and my experience to bear on healing our country, and creating a renaissance for America.

Through partnerships for peace and prosperity and progress we will renew the American dream of freedom and opportunity.

We can make our economy work for everyone, not just the already wealthy, and assure families that they will be able to provide decent housing, health care, education, retirement and safety to those they love the most.

We will turn away from the bluster and bravado that has so soured our friendships and alliances around the world, and build our global relationships.

We will respect individuals in their private lives, in their professional endeavors and in their civic engagements.

And we will tap all of the talent that is available to us, without limitation of any aspect of personality that serves to divide instead of glorify the human condition.

America will be stronger when we engage the full range of talent that is at our disposal, and when we live up to our most fundamental national virtues.

We can, and must renew the American spirit. What makes this country great is not the size of its military or its budget or its wealth, but the spirit of her people. That spirit has been battered since 9/11; not only by the criminals who killed so many, but by leaders who have pandered to fear in its aftermath. We must not allow the nightmare of our limitations continue; but instead dream a world of the best of who we are.

When we come together to create partnerships for peace and prosperity and progress we will heal the American spirit.Ê

Partnerships for peace will bring a real end to this Iraqi war, and bring our troops home with honor. Americans don't cut and run, and so we have to see this misadventure through to a noble conclusion. The sacrifice of those who lost their lives in the sands of Iraq will not be forgotten, but neither will the folly of preemptive war. Partnerships for peace will build on the good will that we had after 9/11, and engage our allies to help us leave Iraq better than we found it.

Partnerships for peace will give our international institutions new support for global collaborations to fight crime and terrorism, poverty and disease. Our foreign policy will follow our values, and serve the interests of the American people.

Trade can create opportunity to share our values, not lose our jobs. We can engage our private sector in ways that will bolster their bottom line, stem job hemorrhage at home and help stop the exploitation of workers and the environment around the world. I want to forge partnerships for prosperity that will explore new policies to stop our nations' slide toward embedded wealth, entrenched poverty, and a shrinking middle class.

When we pursue balance in our economic order, we will embrace fiscal, monetary and trade policies that put working people first. Economic policy is so interconnected with our nation's social fabric that government has a special duty to protect the people from the forces of private interest and greed.

I believe in fiscal responsibility and fighting for social justice. Partnerships for prosperity give us opportunity to do good and do well simultaneously. We will fight the greedy - whose excesses and crimes have threatened our capital markets and undermined confidence in our economy. We will help the needy - whether in childhood or retirement, in sickness or despair.

Achieving a balanced budget again will help restore confidence in our policymakers' ability to protect our nation's economic health. This administration has no right to make irresponsible spending decisions that simply shift the payment burden onto those least able to pay, or to state and local governments, or, worse still, to our children and grandchildren.

Without spending a dime more than we already pay, we can provide health security that emphasizes wellness, restores the provider/patient relationship and maintains the quality of care Americans have every right to expect. Embracing a single payer system of health insurance that does not depend on employment will not only provide universal coverage, but boost our international competitiveness, stimulate our economy at home, and let workers keep more of their pay.

Education reform that relieves the burden on local property taxpayers, while empowering parents and teachers to pursue excellence and innovation is an opportunity for a partnership for prosperity that we cannot afford to ignore if we are to keep our country strong. The cornerstone of the American dream of opportunity is education-it is the way our workforce is prepared to engage the rest of the world. Education is not just a private benefit, but a public good as well, and our national interest is bound up in providing quality public education for every child.

We can engage in partnerships for prosperity to build infrastructure, as well. Especially in the wake of the recent events, storms and blackouts and other calamities, we all know that our foundations - for energy, for water, for transportation - are in need of restoration. By bringing together national, state and local governments with the private sector, including colleges and universities and non-governmental organizations, we can spark a building boom that will unleash innovation and technology transfers and create new industries and new wealth. Private industry will give us the benefit of the best America has to offer, and when we make government a partner in our country's renovation, we will create jobs and opportunity and hope for all Americans.

As President, I will give you an America as good as its promise. I will reach out to bring us together to create an American renaissance, revival and renewal. I am uniquely qualified to do the job of President, and I offer the clearest alternative to this current administration, whose only new idea has been preemptive war and a huge new bureaucracy. I can fix the mess they have created, because I am practical, I am not afraid of partnerships and I am committed to making the world better for our children. By tapping the talent, the ideas, and the capacity that our whole society has to offer, we will expand the probability of succeeding together.

America is at a tipping point; if we stay the course we are on, we won't recognize this country 5 years from now. But if we shift gears, try another way, tap some of the talent that has been relegated to the sidelines of leadership, we can heal and renew and save our country.

Just last week, my little 9-year-old niece Claire called me into her room to show me her social studies book. Turning to the pages on which all of our Presidents were pictured, she looked at me and complained: But Auntie Carol, all the Presidents are boys!

I want Claire, and your daughters and sons to know that in America, everyone has a chance to serve and contribute. I believe that America is ready to take the next great step in the direction of her most noble ideals of service and merit and equality.

This campaign is our way of fighting to give Claire and every American girl or boy not only the opportunity to become President of this great country, but the freedom to decide to lead a quality private life if they choose to do so. There is no human power greater than a made up mind, and we have decided not to let them take away our liberty, our opportunity, our hope for a better future.

The time has come to meet the challenge of our founding fathers' vision, and I am prepared to fight for you and with you to revive the American dream of freedom and opportunity. Together we will break down barriers. Together we will rebuild and restore our country. And together we will give ourselves the greatest gift of all: an America we can be proud of.

Thank you for your patriotism. Thank you for your energy. Thank you for your faith in the goodness of this country. We will lift up the hearts of the American people. We will inspire hope. We will renew the American Spirit. And we will win. Together, failure is impossible.

Source: Carol Moseley Braun for President Web Site Wes Clark 2004 Wes Clark 2004 September 17, 2003










Announcement Speech

Wesley K. Clark

September 17, 2003 - Little Rock, AR

Americans for Clark—Announcement Day in Little Rock at Boys & Girls Club

Thank you. Thank YOU. I like that. The Wes Wing. I like that. Great signs. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for being here; my family - Gert, Wes (son), Astrid (daughter in law), Senator David Pryor, Congressman Marion Berry, the Boys and Girls Club members on stage here with me, and all of you from Little Rock, Arkansas and all over America, thank you so much for coming here today and being with us.

My name is Wes Clark. I am from Little Rock, Arkansas, and I'm here to announce that I intend to seek the Presidency of the United States of America.

(Crowd starts to repeatedly cheer "We Want Clark")

Well for my family and me, it's been a long journey from Little Rock. From West Point to Vietnam, 34 years in the United States Army, through war in the Balkans, back to Little Rock for business. And I'm proud to have made that journey, proud to have served my country in uniform, and proud to be back home today in Little Rock.

Now we're talking about a new journey. This is a journey I couldn't begin without all of you, friends and family, high school classmates, business colleagues, close personal friends, from all over the state, especially I want to recognize the hundreds of people who are here because of the Draft Clark movement. Thank you. (Crowd cheers)

You took an inconceivable idea and made it conceivable (big smile). But many things are conceivable today because we do live in historic times. For the first time since Herbert Hoover's presidency, a President's economic policy has cost us more jobs than our economy has had the energy to create. For the first time since the 1960's and early 70's more than 100,000 American troops are fighting abroad and once again at home, Americans are concerned about their civil liberties.

For the first time since the Cold War, many Americans no longer feel safe at their homes and workplaces. These are historic times. And we're going to run a campaign that's worthy of the historic times in which we live. We're going to run a campaign that will move this country FORWARD, not back.

And we're going to talk straight to the American people. Because in times of historic challenges, the American people deserve to hear the truth and hear it in plain and simple language. And in this campaign, we're going to bring people together, in the great tradition of the Democratic Party because now we need leaders, more than ever before, leaders who will put the interests of all our people first.

And when I say we're going to bring people together, I mean all people, not just Democrats, but Independents, and Republicans, too. And especially those who have never participated before. You'll come with us.

Now I warn you, we'll ask the tough questions as we move forward and we'll hold this administration accountable. Why has America lost 2.7million jobs? Why has America lost the prospect of a $5 trillion surplus and turned it into a $5 trillion deficit that deepens every day? Why has our country lost our sense of security? And feels the shadow of fear? (Crowd answers "BUSH") Why has America lost the respect of so many people around the world? (Crowd answers "BUSH") That's the questions we're going to be asking and more; WHY are so many here in America hesitant to speak out and ask questions? (Crowd answers "BUSH"; Clark nods his head) Well we're going to ask those hard questions my friends and we're going to demand the answers. But we're going to do so, not in destructive bickering or personal attacks but in the highest tradition of democratic dialogue. We're going to seek out the facts, search for the causes, to find the solutions, and in questioning and proposing alternatives, we're going to reach for the very essence of our democracy.

And in a time of war, we're going to ask those questions and propose those alternatives in the highest sense of patriotism.

So we are going to hold the administration accountable for its policies and the results. But let's remember, the results belong to all of us. Each and every one of us. They're the foundation on which we must build anew. And in this campaign we'll have a plan to restore the millions of jobs that have been lost and to restore our economic opportunities again.

We'll work out how to deal with the deficits created by this administration; deficits that will kill jobs and burden children. We'll find a way to restore safety and security for America and a sense of security for every American. In this campaign we're going to travel the country , listen, learn and grow. We're going to take the talents of ordinary Americans, their diverse talent and bring together the vision of the way ahead. In the coming weeks I'll deliver a major speech that will outline my vision for the economy and the vision for our national security and I hope that these speeches and that my entire campaign will generate the kind of frank, honest, open public debate this nation deserves.

(Crowd cheers "We Want Clark")

Let's recognize who we are. We are Americans and we have extraordinary promise and live in a time of extraordinary promise. We're the strongest nation in the world. We don't have to fear. We're the leading economy in the world. We can create jobs. We're a military without peer, and we're proud of our Armed Forces and our Veterans.

We've got a heritage of democracy, the rule of law, the respect for the rights and dignity of each and every individual that makes America the envy of the world. And I think to put it in business terms, we're diverse, energetic, practical and innovative. This 21st century is going to be our American century, just like the 20th century was.

And together, we're going to march forward. Forward with a new vision. Forward to bring our children and grandchildren into a future, brightened by hope, courage, and our determination that we can do better. We will do better. And we will do it together.

So that's our campaign. We're firm in our intent, we're clear in our purposes, we're mustering the resources, building the nucleus, drawing the support of people from all across this great land. We're underway and moving forward, we need your help here in Little Rock. Here in Arkansas and across America. But I want to reach out especially to those in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and everywhere across America. Get ready, we're moving out!

Source: Wes Clark for President Web Site John Edwards 2004 John Edwards 2004 September 16, 2003










FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 16, 2003

John Edwards Presidential Announcement Address

Remarks As Prepared for Delivery
Robbins, North Carolina
September 16, 2003

Good morning.

Welcome to my hometown, Robbins, North Carolina.

It's great to be home with my family, my parents, my wife Elizabeth, and my children, and with my dearest friends. Thank you for the life you've given me and the example you've set for me. And thank all of you for being here today.

I have come home to stand in the shadow of the mill where my father worked, where I worked and where I learned the value of a hard day's work. We're not far from the post office where my mother worked, the church where we went each week, and the high school where I played football and hoped to be the first in my family to go to college.

I grew up in an American town, and I grew up with America's dream. I owe everything I have to the America I grew up in.

This is where I learned that a job is about more than a paycheck, it is about dignity, responsibility and self-respect.

This is where I learned that credibility is the currency of good people.

This is where I learned that the simple promise of America is the enduring greatness of America: a better life for all who work for it.

And so this is where - today - to make opportunity the birthright of every American, I declare myself a candidate for President of the United States.

America deserves a president who understands the people of this country, works for the people of this country, and will stop at nothing to create opportunity for all the people of this country.

That's the great promise of America -- a fair shake for all, a free ride for none.

We want to live in a country where the promise of America is always kept and never broken. We want the America we believe in to be the America our children grow up in, where all children have the same opportunity that I had - the chance to live out their dreams and make the most of the talents God gave them. We want to live in an America that works for all of us.

I have spent my life fighting my heart out for the kind of people I grew up with. As a lawyer for two decades, I stood with families and children against HMOs and insurance companies, standing up for folks who play by the rules against those who don't. We fought them and we won. And I promise to fight for you with the same passion and energy I fought for them.

I haven't spent most of my life in politics, but I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change it. You know, folks from Robbins don't have lobbyists fighting for them in Washington. They count on their government to protect their interests, and they deserve a President who goes to work every day thinking about them, fighting for them. I've never taken a dime from special interest PACs or Washington lobbyists. I have spent my life working for people against those special interests. I know this fight. I am ready for this fight. And we will win this fight!

We deserve a President who is close to our people, not the lobbyists. Who listens to our people because he knows them, he works for them. A president who hears them even when they cannot speak because they've lost their jobs, because they're caring for a child, or just because the simple struggle to make ends meet leaves them no time for anything else.

George Bush's guiding principle is a twisted reflection of the American bargain: Instead of “opportunity for all, special privileges for none,” he's given us “opportunity for all the special interests.”

I will put our government and our economy back in line with our values. Instead of helping HMOs to block the Patients Bill of Rights - when I'm President, we'll put medical decisions back in the hands of families and their doctors.

Instead of helping prescription drug companies to stop the sale of less expensive medicine - when I'm President, we'll make sure all our people can afford the medicine they need.

Instead of turning a blind eye to CEOs who give themselves massive raises while cutting jobs - when I'm President, we'll stand up for the people who do the work.

This President, who gives free rein to his friends at the expense of the country, will not get a free ride in 2004! We will challenge him in every single state, in small towns and large: in every place where there is a plant that closed, or an after-school program that turned away kids, or a retirement account that is no longer enough to live on. We will force him to defend his failed policies in the East and the West, in the North, and right here in the South!

I will be a champion for regular people every day. I will fight my heart out to bring back America's Dream. And together, we will take the power in our democracy out of the hands of that handful of insiders who are running our country right now, and give it back to you, give it back to the American people!

We need a different kind of politics that gives people solutions, not empty promises.

Americans know politicians can fight with each other. Now they need to know that someone will fight for them!

This campaign is built on new ideas and old values: work...responsibility... a fair shake for all and a free ride for none. We'll never get anywhere in this country if we keep offering America the same tired choices from those who say: we can have security or liberty, but not both; power or respect in the world, but not both; a strong defense or a strong economy, but not both. When I'm President of the United States, we will have both!

The opportunities of this country should be open to everyone willing to work. That's why I've offered the most specific, detailed plan out there, based on one simple idea: America works best when it works for all of us.

Make no mistake: President Bush has a war on work - you see it in everything he does. He wants to eliminate every penny of tax on wealth, and shift the whole burden to people who work for a living. So people won't pay any taxes at all when they make money from selling stocks, when they get big dividends every year, or when they inherit a massive estate.

But if you work at a restaurant earning the minimum wage - you'll pay more. If you're a teacher, already earning less than you deserve - you'll pay more. If you're a policeman working overtime - that's right, you'll pay more. I think that's wrong. It's wrong to tax millionaires less for playing the market than we tax soldiers for keeping America safe

It is time to put an end to this administration's war on work!

Working people have been shut out by this President because he values only one thing: wealth. He wants to make sure that those who have it -- keep it. That they belong to an exclusive club - that the barriers are up, the doors closed and no one else ever gets in. I don't want to build barriers, I want to knock them down. I don't want to close doors, I want to open them. I want to give opportunities to more Americans!

One of my first jobs was at the trailer plant not far from here. The men in that plant worked so their children could get ahead. It was a promise America made to them, and it is a promise I am going to keep. Just as prosperity is good for the people this President grew up with, it's also good for the people we grew up with.

And the price of opportunity or security can't be higher taxes for the middle class. I grew up in a family that struggled to make ends meet, just like millions of families today.

We should get rid of tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans, ask them to pay their fair share, and use the money to reward hard, American work. Under my plan, we give tax cuts to help working families buy a home, save for college or retirement, and own a piece of the rock. Under my plan, we won't explode the deficit by giving tax cuts to people who don't need them. We'll get the economy going again by getting middle-class incomes growing again.

Let's give every American the chance to build a better life by doing more to keep jobs right here in America! This is what the Washington crowd will tell you. They'll put you in a job retraining program. Retraining to do what? For what job? Instead of giving tax breaks to companies that move jobs overseas, let's give tax breaks to companies that keep those jobs here... and bring jobs back to America.

I am a father, and I take my responsibilities as a father seriously. As President, I will take our responsibilities to all our children seriously. For the first time in history, we'll provide health care for every child in America, and we'll do it the only way we can: by making it the law of the land!

Let's end the shame of two public schools systems in America where the quality of your education too often depends on the affluence of your neighborhood. And let's provide every person the chance to go to college by making the first year tuition free if they're willing to work for it. I worked my way through college, and it didn't hurt me a bit. One of my jobs was unloading tractor trailers, and let me tell you, you spend a summer night in North Carolina unloading tractor trailers and you will get up and study in the morning.

And let's keep our children - and our country -- safe and secure by leading in a way that brings others to us, instead of driving them away. We must work with the world to win the war on terrorism and to finish the job in Iraq. The defeat of Saddam is a good thing for the freedom of the Iraqi people and the security of the world. We must not fail.

But we need a President who will unite the world -- in the war on terror and in the fight for security. Because we are all in this together. When I am President, we will lead in a way that always defends our people and always respects our friends. Our children will be safer growing up in a world where the United States of America is looked up to and respected.

And we need to reward our soldiers for their service and keep our promise to veterans!

I take a back seat to no one when it comes to keeping our country safe. Two years have passed since September 11th, and we have not done enough to defend our nation against another terrorist attack.

We need to give our firefighters and police officers the resources and equipment they need to protect us. We need to secure our ports and borders, our chemical plants and nuclear power plants. And we need a new domestic intelligence agency. But we cannot, in the name of the war on terrorism, let people like John Ashcroft take away our rights, take away our liberties, and take away our freedom!

And let me say something that is very personal to me. Like many of you, I grew up in the South in the 50s and 60s. I grew up with segregation all around me, and it had an effect on me that will be with me forever. Those of us from the South - we have a special responsibility when it comes to civil rights. We cannot follow - we must lead on civil rights. I talk about this everywhere I go - because this is not an African American issue. This is not an Asian American issue. This is not a Latino American issue. This is an American issue. It is about who we are, what we believe, what our values are.

This election is about a lot of issues. But in the end, it's about something bigger. It's about what kind of America we are, what kind of America we want to be. The America I believe in is a country where work is rewarded, opportunity is equal, and faith and family fill our souls.

That's the kind of town I grew up in. It's the kind of place most of us grew up in, from the backstreets of our biggest cities to the side streets of our suburbs to the Main Streets of our small towns. And everywhere, the promise is the same.

Work hard, do the right thing, and build the life you dream.

I believe in an America where the family you're born into never controls your destiny.

I believe in that America because I've lived it. It's the reason I'm standing here today. I owe everything I am to the America I grew up in.

Everything I believe about our country - every value I learned in this town, every person I have fought for in my life, every idea I have learned along the way, has brought me here.

I am running for president because I have lived in the bright light of the blessing of America. I am running for President because the great gift of an equal chance is the greatest gift I know. I am running for President, because the greatness of America that has come before is nothing compared to the greatness of America that lies ahead.

It's right in front of us. I've seen it in the promise of every city and town I visit. I hear it in the voices of every man and woman I talk to.

Together, we can make their voices heard!!!

Together, we can make opportunity the birthright we all share!!!

Together, we can restore the promise of America!!!

God bless you. God bless the United States of America.

###

Source: John Edwards for President Web Site John Kerry 2004 John Kerry 2004 September 2, 2003










Kerry Announcement Speech
September 02, 2003
Patriot's Point, SC
John Kerry kicks off his Presidential Announcement Tour
Thank you, Max Cleland for your friendship, your inspiration, and your patriotism.

Thank you, General Cheney, for the leadership you provide and all you have given to your country. And David Alston, I am as proud to have you on my crew now as I was thirty-five years ago.

This is no ordinary campaign because this is no ordinary time. We have lived through the most deadly attack on our people in American history, the greatest job loss since the Great Depression, and the greatest loss of wealth and savings ever recorded. But every time our country has faced great challenges, we have come through -- and come out stronger -- because courageous Americans have done what’s right for America.

This is a time for the same kind of courage.

I learned something about service from two people I wish could be here today. My father, who as a member of the Greatest Generation, enlisted in the Army Air Corps even before Pearl Harbor, and served in the State Department at the height of the Cold War. And my mother, 50 years a Girl Scout leader, a community activist with a passion for the environment who took me into the woods as a young boy and simply said “listen.”

My wife Teresa reminds me of the ideals of America. She is a naturalized citizen who came here from a dictatorship. And she loves the freedom and optimism America has to offer. She is caring and strong, a leader on many causes, and she speaks the truth -- and I love her for that too.

Vanessa, Alex, and Christopher are here, and I thank them for taking time out of their lives. For Teresa and me, all our children and now our first grandchild give us joy and pride everyday.

As I look around at my crewmates and the veterans here today, I am reminded that the best lessons I learned about being an American came in a place far away from America -- on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta with a small crew of volunteers. Some of us had been to college; others were just out of high school. But we grew up together on that tiny boat. It was our sanctuary -- and a place for bridging distances between California and South Carolina, Iowa and Massachusetts. We were no longer the kid from Arkansas or the kid from Illinois. We were Americans -- together -- under the same flag -- giving ourselves to something bigger than each of us as individuals.

We arrived as strangers; we left as brothers. We didn’t think we were special. We just tried to do what was right.

And when we came home, we had a simple saying: Every day is extra. I used my extra days to join other veterans to end a war I believed was wrong. I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service. But you don’t have to go half way around the world or march on Washington to learn about bravery or love of country. Again and again, in the causes that define our nation, we have seen the uncommon courage that is common to the American people.

Today, with confidence in the courage of our people to change what is wrong and do what is right, I come here to say why I am a candidate for President of the United States.

I am running so we can keep America’s promise – to reward the hard work of middle class Americans and pull down the barriers that stand in their way and in the way of those struggling to join them; to restore our true strength in the world which comes from ideals, not arrogance; renew the commitment of our generation to pass this planet on to our children better than it was given to us.

I reject George Bush’s radical new vision of a government that comforts the comfortable at the expense of ordinary Americans, that lets corporations do as they please, that turns its back on the very alliances we helped create and the very principles that have made our nation a model to the world for over two centuries. An economic policy of lost opportunity and lost hopes is wrong for America. An international policy where we stand almost alone is wrong for America.

George Bush’s vision does not live up to the America I enlisted in the Navy to defend, the America I have fought for in the Senate -- and the America that I hope to lead as President.

And every day of this campaign I will challenge George Bush for fundamentally taking our country in the wrong direction. I will tell you what I believe and what we must do for our country -- and I’ll show you how together we will defeat George Bush next November.

First, we must restore a foreign policy that is true to our ideals. We will defend our national security and maintain a military that is the strongest armed force on earth. But, if I am President, I will never forget that even a nation as powerful as the United States needs to make some friends in this world.

Overseas, George Bush has led and misled us on a course at odds with 200 years of our history. He has squandered the goodwill of the world after September 11 and lost the respect and influence we need to make our country safe.

We are seeing the peril in Iraq every day. I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations. I believe that was right -- but it was wrong to rush to war without building a true international coalition -- and with no plan to win the peace.

So long as Iraq remains an American intervention and not an international undertaking, we will face increasing danger and mounting casualties.

Being flown to an aircraft carrier and saying “mission accomplished” doesn’t end a war. And the swagger of a President saying “bring ‘em on” will never bring peace.

Pride is no substitute for protecting our young men and women in uniform. Half the names on the Vietnam Memorial are there because of pride -- because of a President who refused to admit he was wrong. Pride is no excuse for making enemies overseas. It is time to return to the United Nations, not with the arrogance of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz but with genuine respect. For the Bush Administration to reject the participation of allies and the UN is a miscalculation of colossal proportions. We need to end the sense of American occupation as fast as possible and take the targets off American soldiers.

In Iraq and across the world, we must share the burdens with our allies and the international community. Then, and only then, can we assemble a worldwide coalition truly sufficient to defeat the terrorists -- to keep the most dangerous weapons out of their hands and out of the reach of unstable regimes.

Here again, George Bush is taking the world in the wrong direction. He is poised to set off a new nuclear arms race by building bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons -- smaller and more usable nuclear bombs. I don’t want a world with more useable nuclear bombs. I don’t want America to turn its back on half a century of effort by every President to reduce the nuclear threat. I’m running to put America where we rightfully belong -- leading the way to a new international accord on nuclear proliferation to make the world itself safer for human survival.

At times in the term of the next President, we may well have to use force to fight terrorism. I will not hesitate to do so. But if I am President, the United States will never go to war because we want to, we will only go to war because we have to.

And in the war against terrorism, let me state clearly what we all know in our hearts to be true: two years after the tragic events of 9/11 we have not made our nation safe enough. Overseas, our Commander-in-Chief turned to Afghan warlords for the assault on Tora Bora; Osama Bin Laden got away and today the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping.

And here on the home front, every investigation, every commission, every piece of evidence we have tells us that this President has failed to make us as safe as we should be.

We are not making progress when we are laying off police and the jobs of sky marshals are in jeopardy. If we can open firehouses in Baghdad, then we can keep them open in New York City.

But the threats today don’t just come from gun barrels; they also come from oil barrels. The dollars we spend at the pump can too easily fund the terrorists who seek to destroy us. America will only be stronger if we never have to send our sons and daughters into battle for oil half a world away.

We have to disarm that danger by making America independent of Mideast oil within the next ten years. I know that the auto industry has political muscle. But we’re in a time of war, and everyone should contribute to the cause. In World War II, Detroit was the arsenal of democracy. Today they need to raise their gas mileage and build the vehicles of the future that use clean, renewable energy like ethanol. I also know there are some in our own party who resist this because they fear it will cost jobs. But it’s right for America -- and energy independence will create 500,000 new high-paying jobs right here in this country.

On energy and the environment, George Bush seeks to undo the progress of 30 years under Presidents of both parties. His Clean Skies initiative actually means dirtier air; his Healthy Forests proposal actually means cutting down trees. He proposed to let his oil industry friends drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. I led and won the fight to stop him.

In a Kerry Administration, we will recommit America to one of the greatest unfinished challenges of our time and of all time -- to save our environment, to protect our oceans, to reverse the tide of global warming. We will not let polluters rewrite our laws in return for campaign contributions. We will make them and not taxpayers pay the bill to clean up toxic waste. And we will disprove the lie that protecting the environment can only come at the expense of jobs.

The truth is that prosperity doesn’t come from pollution. The most powerful economic engine in this nation has always been opportunity -- the ability for anyone from any start in life, to get a good education, to go to work, to start a business, to take an idea and change the world. But George Bush’s only economic plan is lavish tax breaks for those at the top. He has taken us down the road of diminished opportunity, not greater opportunity.

Under the Bush Administration, in less than three years, three million jobs have been lost. That is an astonishing failure -- and it is an outrage.

As a Senator, I was proud to work with President Bill Clinton to turn around the last Bush downturn. And I know the people of this country have the courage to do what’s right for our economy.

If I am President, I will rollback the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy so we can invest in education, health care, and the skills of our workers.

Some in my own party want to get rid of all tax cuts -- including those for working families. That would mean that a family of four -- with two parents working hard on the job and at home -- would have to pay $2,000 more a year in taxes. That’s wrong. We need to be on the side of America’s middle class, and I’ve proposed a tax cut for them because it’s the right way to strengthen our economy.

Let me put it plainly: if Americans aren’t working, America’s not working. So my economic plan sets this goal -- to get back George Bush’s three million jobs in my first 500 days as President. And to cut the budget deficit in half in the first four years.

But what we face today -- and what we must change -- is not simply a failure of policy. Today at the center of power, we have a radical ethic that ratifies and glorifies a creed of greed. Once, a great Republican President named Theodore Roosevelt took on those who abused their wealth and power; today’s Republican President invites them in for secret meetings, sells out our environment, tolerates their abuses and lets them evade taxes by moving their headquarters to an offshore shelter that is nothing more than a post office box or a mail drop.

Dick Cheney’s old company Halliburton has 58 offshore tax havens. The Bush Administration’s response is to hand Halliburton a seven billion dollar no-bid contract.

My response as President will be:
• No more lavish government-funded life support for favored corporations
• No more tax allowances for bonuses of over a million dollars for CEOs who have done nothing to earn them.

• No more contracts for companies, no matter how well-connected they are, until they decide to do what’s right.

• And no more tax breaks that help companies move American jobs overseas.

A tax code that once ran 14 pages now takes up 17,000 pages, filled with twists and turns and customized loopholes. Everyone in America knows it is not fair, and if I am President we’re going to scour that tax code and make it simple and fair once and for all.

Instead of tax breaks for the wealthiest and subsidies for special interests, and instead of photo opportunities with children as backdrops, let’s give real meaning to the words “leave no child behind.” It’s time to give our schools the resources and our teachers the respect they deserve -- and give every child in America the best possible start in life.

And let’s recognize that for all our wealth, we will be a lesser nation if we continue to be the only advanced society that does not secure access to health care for all our people. This is not an abstract issue to me. Early this year, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I was cured -- because as a United States Senator, I was lucky to have some of the best medical care in the world. Millions of Americans are not so lucky -- and I’m determined to change that. I propose to give every American access to the same health coverage as a Senator or member of Congress. And I say to you today: Your family’s health is just as important as any politician’s in Washington.

The courage to do what’s right means standing up for civil rights and equal rights – and ending discrimination against gay men and lesbians. And it means understanding that our civil liberties are not an obstacle to defending this nation, but are one of the very things we seek to defend.

George Bush has sought to undo guarantees enshrined in the Constitution -- not by amending it but by subverting it with his judicial nominees. As President, I will only appoint Supreme Court Justices who will uphold a woman’s right to choose. A just America demands a Supreme Court that honors our Constitution -- and an Attorney General whose name isn’t John Ashcroft.

And courage means standing up for gun safety, not retreating from the issue out of political fear or trying to have it both ways. I’m a hunter and I believe in the Second Amendment but I’ve never gone hunting with an AK-47. Our party will never be the choice of the NRA -- and I’m not looking to be the candidate of the NRA.

Today, I ask all of you to enlist in a mission that is bigger than any of us.

For each of us has extra days -- not just for ourselves but to share. And I hope to be the President who asks all of us to serve -- because in the end, the ideals of the nation will not be realized by Presidential decree, but by the national service that can only be measured in countless acts of individual commitment to do what’s right for America – every day, in every community -- in many different ways -- from helping a child learn to read to giving senior citizens the chance to give more of their talents and strength.

And the force of all those extra days joined together can open a new era of concern for others and not just ourselves, of community and not division, of opportunity for the many and not just the few.

I believe the courage of Americans can change this country.

I believe the idealism of Americans can match our power to our principles – so that this nation will advance the best hopes of the world.

I believe the genius of Americans can make us energy independent.

The resolve of Americans can break the grip of special interests and bring back jobs and economic justice.

The vision of Americans can save our environment, raise up our schools, and finally open up health care to all.

The conscience of Americans can guard our fundamental liberties and preserve them for generations to come.

Your courage can make sure we do what’s right for our country.

Your courage can give America back its future, its strength and its soul.

I am honored to join you in this endeavor as a candidate for President of the United States.

Thank you and God bless you all.

Source: John Kerry for President Web Site. Howard Dean 2004 Howard Dean 2004 June 23, 2003










REMARKS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY June 23, 2003 – 1PM EDT

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 1PM ET



The Great American Restoration

Governor Howard Dean

June 23, 2003

Today I announce that I am running for President of the United States of America. I speak not only for my candidacy. I speak for a new American century and a new generation of Americans -- both young people and the young at heart. We seek the great restoration of American values and the restoration of our nation's traditional purpose in the world.

This is a campaign to unite and empower people everywhere.

It is a call to every American, regardless of party, to join together in common purpose and for the common good to save and restore all that it means to be an American.

Over a year ago I began to travel the country in the usual way one does when seeking the Presidency.

I believed that, by running for President, I could raise the issues of health care for every American and the need to focus on early childhood development. I wanted to bring those issues to the forefront of the national debate. And I wanted to balance the budget to bring financial stability and jobs back to America.

Most importantly, I have wanted my party to stand up for what we believe in again.

But something changed along the way as I listened to Americans around this country. On my first trip to Iowa I heard people speak of a profound fear and distrust of multi-national corporations. From New Hampshire to Texas I met Americans doubting the words of our leaders and our government in Washington. Every where I go people are asking fundamental questions: Who can we trust? Is the media reporting the truth? What is happening to our country?

The Americans I have met love their country. They believe deeply in its promise, our values and our principles. But they know something is wrong and they want to take action. They want to do something to right our path. But they feel Washington isn't listening. And as individuals, they lack the power to change the course those in Washington have put us on.

What they know is that somehow 7 trillion dollars of our country's wealth disappeared. Nearly 1 in 10 retired people have had to return to the workforce because they have lost their pensions. Young people are returning to live at home after graduating because they cannot find work.

Companies are leaving the country to avoid paying taxes, or to avoid paying people livable wages. And corporations are doing this with the support of the government and a political process in Washington that they rent -- if not own.

This was the fear that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of -- the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power.

Theodore Roosevelt said it best, "Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair and complete....but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office."

Today, our nation is in crisis. At home, this crisis manifests itself in this President's destruction of the idea of community. This President pushes forward an agenda and policies which divide us. He advocates economic polices which beggar the middle class and raise property taxes so that income taxes may be cut for those who ran Enron.

He divides us by race by using the word quota, which appeals to the worst in us by instilling fear that people of color might take our jobs or our places in the nation's best universities. He divides us by gender by attacking a woman's right to make her own health care decisions. And even by attacking young women's right to have the same athletic opportunities that young men do. He divides us by sexual orientation by supporting senators who have slandered gay Americans, and he appeals once again to the worst instincts within us, instead of that which is good in all Americans.

The tax cuts that are the radicals' weapon are not about tax cuts for working people. They are not even about tax cuts for millionaires. Instead, the tax cuts are designed to destroy Social Security, Medicare, our public schools and our public services through starvation and privatization.

Our President and too many in Washington are giving away our future so that we pass to our children not a flickering flame of freedom but the chain of insurmountable debt.

No parent would do this and America must not do this.

And so for me the long journey of a Presidential campaign has begun with the people I have met affecting me far more than any affect I may have had on them. And because of that, the reasons why I seek the Presidency have changed.

This campaign is about more than issue differences on health care, tax cuts, national security, jobs, the environment and our economy. It is about something as important as our children. It's about who we are as Americans.

Here are the words of John Winthrop: "We shall be as one. We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always living before our eyes our Commission and Community in our work."

It is that ideal, the ideal of the American community, that we seek to restore.

An America where it is not enough for me to want health care for my family but the obligation, and responsibility of every one of us as American citizens to insure that each one of us has health care for our families.

An America where it is not enough for me to want good public schools and a better life for my children but an obligation, and a responsibility as citizens to insure that every child in America may go to a good public school and have the opportunity of a better life.

An America where it is not enough to protect my rights under the law but where it is a duty and an obligation for each of us as Americans to make sure every American is equal under the law.

An America where it is not enough to proclaim the words freedom, self-government, and democracy, but where it is a duty and a responsibility to participate together in common purpose with the sacrifice required of each of us to give those words meaning.

If September 11, 2001 taught America anything it is that we are stronger when we are beholden to each other as a national community, and weaker when we act only as individuals. That tragedy gave us an enormous opportunity to focus not only on our common peril, but also on our common dreams. The peril remains, but the dreams must be resurrected -- and they will be in a new American century.

President Kennedy challenged us to "pass the torch to a new generation of Americans." And so, we must issue that challenge again.

So too must we restore the deepest belief of our people that each generation has a responsibility to pass to our children a nation and a world that is better and stronger than the one that was passed to us.

As we experience the crisis of community at home, we are witnessing the effort to repudiate 225 years of American consensus on what our nation's place should be in the world.

Since the time of Thomas Paine and John Adams, our founders implored that we were not to be the new Rome. We are not to conquer and suppress other nations to submit to our will. We were to inspire them.

The idea of America using its power solely for its own ends is not consistent with the idealistic moral force the world has known for over two centuries.

We must rejoin the world community. America is far stronger as the moral and military leader of the world than we will ever be by relying solely on military power. We destroyed repressive communist regimes without firing a shot, not simply by having a strong military, but because we had a better ideal to show the world.

Every American President must and will take up arms in the defense of our nation. It is a solemn oath that cannot -- and will not -- be compromised.

But there is a fundamental difference between the defense of our nation and the doctrine of preemptive war espoused by this administration. The President's group of narrow-minded ideological advisors are undermining our nation's greatness in the world. They have embraced a form of unilateralism that is even more dangerous than isolationism.

This administration has shown disdain for allies, treaties, and international organizations alike.

In doing so they would throw aside our nation's role as the inspirational leader of the world the beacon of hope and justice in the interests of humankind. And instead, they would present our face to the world as a dominant power prepared to push aside any nation with which we do not agree.

Our foreign and military policies must be about America leading the world, not America against the world.

So how did we come to this point?

How is it that our leaders have abandoned our communities and repudiated our idealism and principles?

When confronted with a dedicated band of right wing ideologues, too many Americans have stopped participating, stopped voting, and stopped believing that they can change America.

And we in politics have not given our people a reason to vote or a reason to participate. We have slavishly spewed sound bites, copying each other while saying little. We raise millions of dollars and each year make lofty promises, while every year the struggles of ordinary Americans increase and fewer Americans vote. Our politicians, many of them good people, have been paralyzed by their fear of losing office. Our leaders have developed a vocabulary which has become meaningless to the American people.

There is no greater example of this than a self-described conservative Republican president who creates the greatest deficits in history of America. Or a President who boasts of a Clear Skies Initiative which allows far more pollution into our air. Or a President who co-opts from an advocacy organization the phrase "No Child Left Behind," while paying for irresponsible tax cuts by cutting children's health care.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

The history of our nation is clear: At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people.

And so, while the President raises $4 million more tonight to maintain his agenda, we will not be silent.

He calls his biggest fundraisers Rangers and Pioneers.

But today, we stand together with thousands in Burlington, Vermont and tens of thousands more, standing with us right now in every state in this nation. And we call ourselves, simply, Americans.

And we stand today in common purpose to take our country back.

I am a doctor and I was proud to be Governor of Vermont:

where we balanced our budgets
where we made sure that nearly every child in our state had health care coverage
where we are stewards of our land and natural resources
where, on the first Tuesday of March every year, Vermonters gather to make decisions on matters vital to our communities
where we hold these truths to be self evident: that all are created equal and are endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
And, where we, like all Americans, love our country and want to see her flag stand for freedom and justice for all. That flag is not the property of the either party, it belongs to all of us.
It is from this place that the rest of the journey of this campaign continues. We will ask the American people to participate again in our common future. I ask all Americans, regardless of party, to meet with me across the nation to come together in common cause to forge a new American century. Help us in this quest to return greatness, and return high moral purpose to the United States of America.

The great lie spoken by politicians on platforms like this is the cry of "elect me and I will solve all your problems."

The truth is the future of our nation rests in your hands, and not in mine.

Abraham Lincoln said that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth.

But this President has forgotten ordinary people.

You have the power to reclaim our nation's destiny.

You have the power to rid Washington of the politics of money.

You have the power to make right as important as might.

You have the power to give Americans a reason to vote again.

You have the power to restore our nation to fiscal sanity and bring jobs back to our people.

You have the power to fulfill Harry Truman's dream and bring health insurance to every American.

You have the power to give us a foreign policy consistent with American values again.

You have the power to take back the Democratic Party.

You have the power to take our country back.

And we have the power to take the White House back in 2004.

June 23, 2003

Source: Howard Dean for President Web Site Bob Graham 2004 Bob Graham 2004 May 6, 2003










In his own Voice

Bob Graham's Declaration of Candidacy for President of the United States
(May 6, 2003)

We are gathered here today because this is where the future is built. In communities across America. And especially in places like Florida.

This land at the southern tip of the United States has lured people for centuries with the promise of a better future.

But we Floridians know well that a dynamic future rests on a fragile foundation: an environment we must protect; diversity we must nurture; values we must safeguard; families and communities in which we must invest.

We know we will be judged by whether we leave our children and grandchildren an America that is better than the one we inherited.

I am an optimist. America's best days are still ahead of us. Yet, realizing that future starts with an honest assessment of where we are today.

In too many ways, the current Administration in Washington has diminished our inheritance.
President Bush took office at a time of unparalleled prosperity and historic budget surpluses --
when America counted itself not only the strongest but also the most admired nation in the world.

Today, barely two years later, we live in a very different America:

The stock market has lost nearly one-quarter of its value
2 million more Americans are jobless
1.4 million more of us lack health insurance
Budget surpluses have turned into the deepest deficits in history
And our country is viewed with increased hostility, not just by those who hate and threaten America but even by those who share our values.
For more than 200 years, this country has enjoyed phenomenal growth and success because of our commitment to a universal system of public education.

For nearly a century, Social Security has been a cornerstone of economic security for all Americans.

For nearly a half-century, Medicare has guaranteed every older American the basic medical care they need from the doctor of their choice.

Through four decades, America has recognized the need to promote, and not just pay lip-service to, civil rights and opportunity for all Americans.

For well over a generation we have improved the quality of life of every American with cleaner air to breathe and water to drink.

For as long as any of us can remember, America was a beacon for the world.

Yet on all these basic American values, the Bush Administration has reneged on America's promise and jeopardized our future.

Even in this Administration's singular success -- military victory in Iraq -- it has departed from historic American values and policies.

Americans have never cowered from facing down aggression abroad -- we freed Europe from Hitler and Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.

I am proud to have been among the few Democratic Senators to vote to authorize the use of force against Saddam by the first President Bush in 1991.

Yet, instead of pursuing the most imminent and real threats to our future -- terrorism--
this Bush Administration chose to settle old scores.

It is time to bring America back -- back to an emphasis first and foremost on protecting our own citizens.

We honor the service and the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform.

However, this Administration has ignored homeland security in all but name while it focused all its energy on Iraq.

We all agree that Saddam Hussein is an evil man -- but he was not our biggest threat.

I know firsthand as former Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee how little this Administration has done to provide real security at home while it has directed its attention away from the war on terror abroad.

It is time to bring America back -- back from one of our longest economic slowdowns ever--
and the only economic slowdown since, well, since the last time a Bush was in the White House.

It is painfully clear the President has no economic policy other than tax cuts for the very wealthy.

He shows no sign of knowing how to lead us back to economic prosperity.

We need a president who will bring America back -- back to economic health with policies that invest in our people and their future.

It is time to bring America back -- back to fiscal integrity.

The last Democratic administration not only put this country back on the road to fiscal solvency,
it produced the biggest budget surpluses in the nation's history.

The Bush Administration has squandered it all.

We need a president who will fight for our nation’s economic future instead of the short-term interests of a special few.

And most of all -- most of all -- it is time to bring America back together.

This President sought office claiming to be a uniter not a divider -- but he has united us only in our pride and support for our fighting men and women.

He has otherwise pursued a divisive domestic agenda.

He has talked the language of diversity and opportunity -- but walked away from doing anything to promote them.

As their friends at corporations like Enron pillaged the economy and the retirement hopes of millions of Americans -- as the stock market's fall robbed even more millions of their savings --
as executives raised their own salaries while firing workers -- this Administration has answered with damning indifference.

They have divided our nation between the few at the top whom they serve and the many who are left to fend for themselves with the moral equivalent of duct tape.

We have increasingly become two Americas.

We must become one America again -- an America energized with optimism -- an America that continues its never-ending experiment of democracy -- an America that looks to the dawn and the spring -- an America whose sights are higher, never lower, whose aspirations are greater,
never lesser.

THAT IS WHY...I AM TODAY...DECLARING THAT I AM A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

I am running for President to bring back our economy.

As Governor, I led in the creation of over one million new jobs, invested in Florida's housing and infrastructure, and still kept the tax burden one of the lowest in the nation.

As a Senator, I helped pass an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, tax breaks for small businesses and homeowners and tax deductions to help pay for college tuition.

As President, I will revive the economy with needed investments in transportation and education,
and targeted tax cuts.

That's not just my promise -- that's the promise of America.

I am running for President to bring back fiscal responsibility.

As a Governor, I balanced eight budgets.

As a Senator, I've fought to eliminate the deficit, and promote fiscal prudence.

I voted against the President's tax giveaways in 2001, and -- unlike others who seek to replace him now -- I voted against the same ill-advised policies again in 2003.

As President, I will pass on to our children and grandchildren a strong and growing economy, not a burden of debt.

That's not just my promise -- that's the promise of America.

I am running for President to bring back America's commitment to protecting our families' health, promoting our children's educations, and preserving our environmental heritage.
As governor, I raised education standards, increased accountability and teacher salaries, and built new schools.

I've worked across party lines to craft a bipartisan Medicare prescription drug plan that helps seniors, not the drug companies.

I've launched efforts to save our everglades, our coast and beaches, our scenic and wild rivers,
and our wetlands.

That's not just my promise -- that's the promise of America.

I am running for President to bring back a focus on America’s security.

In the Senate, I helped lead the fight to mandate the first federal security standards for our nation's ports, spearheaded the investigation of 9-11, and even before that tragedy,
started the process of strengthening and reforming our Intelligence Agencies.

As President, I will make sure homeland defense consists of more than just plastic wrap.

And that's not just my promise -- that's the promise of America.

As president, I will bring America back -- back to the values of our past and the promise of our future.

And most of all, back together -- as one America.

In our America, people at the top don't play by different rules.

In our America, people work together.

In our America, leaders listen.

I've spent my life listening to the voices of America.

I've spent it working with America's people.

I've worked construction, and taught in our schools.

I've worked as a short-order cook and a security guard.

I've worked on the docks and on assembly lines.

I'm proud that many of the people I've worked with side-by-side over the years are here with us today.

And just as they are standing with me, throughout my career I have stood with them.

Working with Americans to me has meant learning from Americans.

At a time when we have a president who does not share their problems and concerns, but favors special interests over their own, it exemplifies the values to which we must return.

Those are the values I was raised with in the days when this community was still a farm and Florida was still a frontier.

My father was a dairy farmer.

He worked hard from sun to sun to carve his livelihood out of the edges of the Everglades.

Only 5 miles from this spot, he taught me how to work the land -- and how to love it.
He taught me how to value a dollar -- and to build a new community, this community that remains my home to this day.

Adele and I and our 4 daughters graduated from public schools.

Our grandchildren of school age attend public schools.

My mother, my wife, and two of my daughters have all been teachers.

They have constantly reminded me of the importance of education and of opportunity -- to each and every child...to all Americans.

Most of all, here at home I learned the importance of family.

My greatest influences were my father and mother.

My greatest counselors and advisors have been my brothers.

My greatest source of support has been my wife of 44 years, Adele.

And the greatest inspiration for all I do is my four daughters -- Gwen, Cissy, Suzanne, and Kendall -- and my 10 grandchildren: They represent the future.

This election is about their future -- and the futures of every child, in every town and city, in every family across America.

That’s why this election is so important.

It's why I'm running.

And why I ask you to join me in bringing America back to its historic role -- as one nation -- under God – indivisible -- with liberty -- and justice – for all.

And that is truly the promise of America.

Thank you and God Bless America!

Source: Bob Graham for President Web Site Dick Gephardt 2004 Dick Gephardt 2004 February 9, 2003










February 19, 2003
Remarks by Richard A. Gephardt
Announcement of Presidential Candidacy
Mason Elementary School, St. Louis

(As prepared for delivery)

"I wouldn't be here today without my wife, my best friend, and my partner in life -- I love you, Jane; and our three children, Matt, Chrissy and Kate, who teach and inspire us everyday.

"And I can't tell you what it means to me to be back at Mason Elementary School, the place where I was educated and raised with the people whose love and kindness has sustained me all my life.

"In this very room, I came to PTA meetings with my parents, took part in the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts and learned what it means to serve. In this very room, I took part in school plays; it wasn't much, but we still could have given C-SPAN a run for its money. And it was the principal of this school, Ms. Thole, who called my mother one day and told her something she hadn't expected to hear: that I should go to college.

"My dad was a milk truck driver, a proud member of the Teamsters. He always told me his union's bargaining power made it possible for him to put food on our table. My mother was a secretary. Neither of my parents finished high school. They didn't have much money.

"But they saved what they could - five, ten dollars a week, so I could get an education and live out my dreams. I want to dedicate this day to my mother Loreen and my late father, Lou Gephardt. This campaign is for them and for all who seek and strive to do right by their kids. They're the true American heroes. They're the people I'm fighting for.

"The truth is, it's getting harder to raise a strong family in America. There are more and more families where both parents work, just to pay the bills; where parents rarely share meals with their own children; where it's a struggle to pass on the right values, to teach simple lessons of discipline and respect, right and wrong.

"A parent shouldn't have to lie awake at night, wondering if a doctor's bill or a mortgage payment is going to break their bank account. A family shouldn't have to worry that a lifetime of retirement savings could be drained away by a single act of corporate crime.

"President Bush keeps saying he wants to leave no child behind. I've got to tell you, Mr. President, you could start by bringing along some adults. Many in the other party believe in survival of the fittest, in feeding those at the top and hoping some crumbs fall off the table -- kind of like Marie Antoinette with a business degree.

"I believe in what you might call trickle-up economics - that if we reward the work and initiative of ordinary Americans, if we empower them and enable them to prosper, then everybody benefits, from the factory floor to the corporate boardroom.

"We're all bound together. We're all members of the American family. And I won't be satisfied until every family, not just the few, can share in the bounty of America. I won't be satisfied until we've made opportunity real for everyone who's willing to work for it.

"And I pledge to you today: with your help and support, I'll take that crusade to the White House. I'll work day and night to lift this lagging economy, and build a new American prosperity. I'll put hard-working Americans first again.

"Ten years ago, America was at another economic crossroads. We were losing jobs. Incomes were falling. Our nation was choked with the highest deficits in history, $290 billion dollars, enough red ink to drown the Washington Monument.

"As House Majority Leader, I led the fight to pass the Clinton-Gore economic plan to slash the deficit, invest in education, cut taxes for working families and ask the wealthy to pay their fair share.

"Not a single Republican voted for that plan. They said it was a job-killer. Instead, it led to the single longest economic expansion in history. The highest home ownership ever. The lowest inflation in a generation - over 22 million new jobs.

"Turns out we were right, and the other side was wrong. And you'd think they'd have learned a lesson: that huge, budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest do not educate a single child, they do not extend health coverage to a single family, they do not create a single job - except for the special-interest lobbyists who fight for them.

"Yet President Bush has taken us right back to the broken policies of the past, the economics of debt and regret: unaffordable tax cuts for the few. Zero new jobs. Surging unemployment.

"I've got to hand it to him: never has so much been done, in so little time, to help so few. President Bush campaigned as a centrist, a coalition-builder, a 'compassionate conservative.' But on issue after issue, the only thing he's conserved is compassion itself. His latest budget cuts after-school programs that keep kids off the streets, efforts to fight juvenile delinquency, help for poor families in public housing, health care for the elderly, children's health insurance. If that's his idea of compassion, I'd hate to see his idea of indifference.

"He said he'd fight for education. Yet now he's trying to cut his own education plan, so local schools don't stand a chance of meeting their goals. What kind of education plan tries to add by subtracting?

"President Bush said he cares about the environment. Yet he tried to drill for oil in our precious natural lands, causing years of damage for just a few months' extra oil. They cut our partnership with the auto industry to develop more fuel-efficient cars and SUV's. Even with war and terror in the heart of our oil supply, this administration's idea of alternative fuel is Exxon instead of Texaco.

"President Bush said he was for limited government. Yet he brought back the era of big and bloated government: massive, permanent deficits; spools of new red tape for states and local communities. And that happened before September 11th, before we knew how badly we'd need those surpluses.

"President Bush said he'd be a uniter, not a divider. Yet he's trying to undo affirmative action programs that promote opportunity. Never mind that an older form of affirmative action helped him get into college as a family legacy. Now he wants to leave a legacy of anti-choice ideologues on our courts, people who would roll back a generation of progress on women's rights and civil rights. Once you've climbed up the ladder, you don't saw off the bottom rungs; you help everyone up.

"President Bush said if we passed his trickle-down tax cuts, it would help the economy and pay for itself. But he turned the largest surpluses ever - $5.6 trillion dollars - into the largest deficits, breaking his own father's record. His math wasn't fuzzy - it was clearly wrong.

"That's the Bush record - a nation with zero job creation, racked with debt, unprepared for the economy of the future. A nation that's growing apart, when we should be growing together.

"Let me be clear about this: President Bush is a good man. But he has no plan to get this economy moving again. At the dawn of the global economy and Information Age, we cannot afford to wait. At a time when world markets are getting more competitive - when we need to be leaner, smarter, more innovative than ever - we cannot afford four more years of jobless, Bush economics.

"I love America. And I know we can do better; I know we can do more. Here in the home of my values, here at the heart of the American dream, I announce my candidacy for President of the United States.

"With pride and with purpose, I say to you today: I'm going to fight for you, and I'm going to win. I'm running for President because I'm tired of leadership that's left us isolated in the world, and stranded here at home.

"I'm running for President because I've had enough of the oil barons, the status-quo apologists, the special-interest lobbyists running amok in the White House.

"I'm running for President because we need an economic plan that works for everybody - with real job creation, real skills development, real help for hard-working families.

"I'm running for President because it's time to replace an agenda of division and exclusion, and fight for the whole American family again.

"A Presidential campaign is a contest for votes. But it's also a contest of ideas. Some politicians will say, give me your support now and I'll figure out the issues later. Well I'm in this to fight for your jobs, not merely to win one for myself.

"Every proposal I am making - every idea I'm advancing - has a single, central purpose - to revive a failing economy and give working Americans the help and the security they need to make the most of it, on their own. For if we strengthen working families, then everybody is stronger - including the companies and CEO's that profit most from their industry and ideas.

"And I believe there's a new way to achieve that fundamental purpose - a fourth way, if you will. Not government hand-outs, not tax cuts for the few, and not just focusing on incremental solutions, as important as that's been - but taking major steps to give people the tools of true self-reliance. Like tax credits that guarantee every worker health coverage. And pensions they can take with them everywhere they work. I want to recast our party's biggest goals for a new economy, a new age.

"Of course, as President, I'll start with an unshakeable commitment to keep our defenses strong. We're in a new world, with manifold new dangers - from global terror, to the recklessness of rogue dictators like Saddam Hussein, to international crime and drug-running that rips at the very fabric of freedom.

"In the face of new dangers, we need a familiar resolve. I will make sure our armed forces remain the best-equipped, best-trained, best-led fighting force in the entire world. We need a 21st century military - capable of rooting out and combating terrorism and all other threats to our well being, at home and abroad.

"I stand with this administration's efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein. And I'm proud that I wrote the resolution that helped lead the President to make his case at the United Nations. For all our military might, there are too many threats to our security, too many global challenges for America to simply go it alone. We need the friendship and cooperation of our time-honored allies. We must lead the world, instead of merely bullying it.

"This is about more than armed conflict, as necessary as that sometimes is. America has a mission that's unique in human history - to prove that liberty and democracy are indivisible, the birthright of all people everywhere. If we can do more to share democratic values, then we won't have to rely on arms alone. We can wage peace, and not just wage war.

"And we must do more to ensure the security of our homeland where it matters most - in the places where you live and work. When we tried to add billions for security at airports and energy plants, Republicans in Congress said no. When we tried to help local law enforcement protect us in our homes and our neighborhoods, the President threatened a veto.

"As President, I'll give local police and fire departments, the first responders, unprecedented tools and training, so they can be the front line in the war against terror. I'll create a brand new Homeland Security Trust Fund, so states and local communities have all the resources they need to keep your families safe and secure.

"Security is paramount. But we will never win the war against global terror if we do not make our country economically strong again. How do we support the best military, the best intelligence, and meet ever-changing threats when our very foundation is shaking?

"My economic plan begins at the beginning. We have to scrap the vast majority of the Bush tax cuts for wealthier Americans and corporations. And I'll tell you why: they're unaffordable, unsustainable and patently unfair.

"Mind you, I'm all for helping wealthy Americans grow our economy. But doling out tax cuts they don't want or need is not the way to do it. Without the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, we can do more to promote innovation, the engine of growth in this ideas economy-- like tax incentives for a new generation of automobiles.

"Without the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, we can meet the legitimate concern of Fed Chairman Greenspan -- that oceans of new government debt will lead to higher interest rates, choking off the business investment that creates growth and jobs.

"And without the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, we can finish the unfinished business of providing high-quality health coverage to everyone who works in America, saving billions, and stimulating one of the biggest sectors of our private economy.

"To me, this is a moral imperative. Three decades ago, when I was an attorney here in St. Louis, my two-year-old son Matt was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors told Jane and me he probably wouldn't make it.

"My law firm had a health plan, and I'd never thought much about it before then. But Matt's only chance of pulling through depended on new and experimental therapies -- the kind we couldn't have afforded on our own. That insurance plan, great doctors and nurses, and the grace of God saved Matt's life.

"But I'll never forget the nights we spent at Matt's bedside, talking to the parents of another patient -- a child with severe cancer, and a family that couldn't afford health insurance.

"They were terrified -- not just of their child's illness, but that they wouldn't be able to afford his treatment. They begged and borrowed to give him decent care, and never, as long as I live, will I forget the terror in their eyes.

"In the most powerful country in the world, it shouldn't be this way. That doesn't mean we can rest on the same government solutions. I supported the Clinton health care plan and worked hard to pass it. And I learned from that experience. America won't accept a big-government contraption, tangled in its own complexity.

"I plan to do it with no bureaucracy and no nationalized plan - by harnessing what's best about private health insurance and helping Americans afford it. My plan asks every employer to provide quality coverage, then gives tax credits to cover most of the cost. It's that simple, and we'll save billions by catching illness before it shows up at the emergency room - where we all pay even more.

"Under my plan, everyone who works will have health care, and everyone who works will have a good pension, one that moves with them when they change jobs.

"My mother changed jobs so many times that after a lifetime of hard work, she was left with one pension from just one employer - $42 dollars a month, not even enough to pay utility bills.

"Today there are so many conflicting pension plans, you have to be an accountant just to figure them out. As President, I'll create a single pension plan that follows you from the moment you're born to the moment you retire. That simple change will strengthen our workforce beyond measure. You'll get every penny of your retirement savings, no matter how often you change jobs.

"We're in an information-driven economy, where ideas are the new form of capital. It's long past time to remake our public school system -- raising standards for students, teachers, and schools; getting more discipline, more character education, more parental involvement in our classrooms.

"We need a national commitment to rebuild crumbling schools. How can we lift our kids in buildings where the roof is falling in?

"As the children of the Baby Boomers surge through our school system, we must recruit a whole new generation for careers in teaching, and we must raise the quality of our teachers at the same time. It won't be easy. But we can do it by treating and paying teachers like the professionals they are.

"My daughter Kate dreamed for years of becoming a teacher. But she told me when she mentioned the idea to her college classmates, they laughed at her. She followed her dream, and she's working as a teacher - but she's living at home with Jane and me, because she started at $17,000 a year. Now she knows why her friends were laughing. Just imagine all the Kates we're losing, bright young people hungering to teach, yearning to give back, but so burdened with college loans they can't afford it.

"As President, I'll lift up the teaching profession and create a brand new Teacher Corps, modeled on the ROTC, to recruit two-and-a-half million well-trained teachers by the end of the decade. If you agree to teach for five years - and to be held to a high standard of excellence - we'll help pay your way through college.

"Just as it's essential to recruit the best soldiers, to ensure freedom's future, it's essential to recruit the best teachers, to ensure our children's future. We ought to listen to educators who tell us a child's success in life is determined in the first years, that the right start in school can mean better grades, even higher income later on.

"As President, I'll fight for the opportunity for pre-school - for every child, in every community in this nation. And we have to give kids a safe, educational place to go between the hours when school's out, but parents are still at work - the hours when most juvenile crime takes place, when most teenage pregnancy occurs.

"I propose a major expansion of after-school care across the country, to reduce crime and help working parents protect their own kids. A world-class education is the foundation of a strong economy. But let's be honest with ourselves: it does little good to create the conditions for growth at home, while wages and standards are dragged down around the world.

"I believe in free trade; open markets create good jobs for our people. But I've been to China, to Thailand and Indonesia - places where the most sophisticated, high-tech labor is now done for a few dollars a day. We have to raise wages and standards, so everyone does better.

"If we don't, it'll be a race to the bottom, where wages plummet and living standards fall through the floor. Again, as with every proposal I'm making today, I want to reward work, responsibility, individual initiative - so our families can make the most of the free-trading global marketplace.

"As President, I'll press the World Trade Organization to establish an international minimum wage -- different for each country, but always high enough so we don't compete with slave, sweatshop and child labor around the world.

"This isn't some form of global charity. It's right for our families, and it will create millions of new global consumers for our products.

"And we should lead the way by making our own minimum wage a living wage, so work always pays more than welfare. Let's raise the minimum wage for hard-working Americans.

"Finally, we cannot revive our economy - we cannot defeat terror in the Middle East - as long as we look to that dangerous region for a quarter of our daily oil supply.

"I've got news for the President, the Vice President and the oil companies they used to run: there is no path to oil self-sufficiency. We can't drill our way there, no matter how many public lands we despoil; two-thirds of the world's oil is in the Persian Gulf, and only three percent of it is here in America. And that's not going to change.

"There's a new way. Industry is already working toward totally hydrogen-powered cars that get better gas mileage, at a lower price without using a single drop of oil. So what are we waiting for? The next spike in oil prices? The next gasoline crisis? The next terrible attack on our country? President Bush gave us 30 seconds of rhetoric on this topic in his State of the Union address, but the way he's cut back efforts to promote alternative energy, we wouldn't make a dent in the problem for 30 years.

"As President, I'll launch an aggressive new Apollo Project -- to work with industry to achieve true energy independence within ten years. We'll make energy-efficient products cheaper and more widely available by giving businesses tax cuts to make them, and by giving families tax cuts to buy them. If we don't do this now -- if we don't appeal to common sense, and our common cause as Americans -- we'll be at the mercy of the terrorists and the oil barons for the rest of our lives.

"I want to be clear about something. Across the months and miles of this campaign, I won't be asking America to do what's easy. I'll be asking us to do what's hard. It's easy to give a quick tax break to a corporation, so they have higher profits for the next quarter. It's hard to modernize our education system, so that corporations have a smarter, better-educated workforce for the next century.

"It's easy to wring our hands and say, our old health care ideas didn't work, so I hope you can afford coverage. It's hard to find a new path to a timeless goal: that everyone who works in this country will have health coverage. It's easy to open the floodgates to cheap labor overseas. It's hard to have free and open trade that truly lifts up wages and standards, so everyone advances.

"It's easy in our political system to protect the powerful, the special interests, those who can afford six-figure lobbyists to speak for them. It's hard to speak for those who have no voice in the halls of power: the working families that are the soul and strength of our country. People like my parents.

"That's what I aim to do, each and every day of this campaign. I already know what the other party will say. They'll say I'm practicing "class warfare" by opposing their tax giveaways for the wealthy, their endless procession of loopholes for the special-interests to jump through.

"Let me tell you: the real class warfare is a President who thinks it's okay to eliminate taxes on stock dividends, while shifting the tax burden onto middle-class families. The real class warfare is an administration that released its own monthly report on private sector lay-offs this Christmas Eve -- 240,000 people lost their jobs - and the administration sprang right into action. They got rid of the monthly report.

"Instead of just helping those at the top, I want to give everyone a chance to reach the top. And I believe with all my heart that if we strengthen all our families, if we make sure our economy enriches everyone, then the people at the top will do even better.

"Dr. King taught us that we are all 'tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.' As he once said, 'I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.'

"We're all bound together. If a child doesn't have health insurance, we all pay the price when she shows up at the emergency room. If a child drops out of school and joins a gang, or goes on welfare - we all pay the price of violence, dependence and indigence.

"If a family can't afford to put a child through college, we all pay the price of sinking productivity, of shattered human potential. I thank God for the love of my parents, the strength of this community, the values and discipline I learned here at Mason Elementary School.

"I thank God for my mother's savings, the church scholarship, and the government loans that were the only way this Teamster's son could go to college. I want every child to have the chances I had, to go as far as their dreams and hard work can carry them.

"I'm not going to say what's fashionable in our politics -- that I'm a Washington outsider, that I couldn't find the nation's capitol on a map, that I have no experience in the highest levels of government. I do, and I think experience matters. It's what our nation needs right now.

"I'm not the political flavor of the month. I'm not the flashiest candidate around. But the fight for working families is in my bones. It's where I come from; it's been my life's work.

"With your help, we can take that fight to the most powerful office in the history of humankind. We can build an America where we grow together, instead of being pulled apart - where our economy's strong, because all our families are secure - where nobody's left out or left behind.

"Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless these United States of America."

# # #

Source: Dick Gephardt for President Web Site Al Sharpton 2004 Al Sharpton 2004 January 21, 2003 Joe Lieberman 2004 Joe Lieberman 2004 January 13, 2003










Senator Joe Lieberman Announces Candidacy for Presidency of the United States
January 13, 2003
Stamford High School, Stamford, Connecticut
(AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY)

I wanted to come back home to Stamford today to make this announcement, because it is here that I came to appreciate the miracle of America.

It was here that my parents Henry and Marcia – themselves children of immigrants -- worked their way into the American middle class and gave my sisters and me the opportunities they never had. And it was here that I first understood the power of the promise America makes to all its people – that no matter who you are or where you start, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can go as far as your God-given talents will take you.

When I was growing up and going to school right here, we called that promise the American Dream. It defined our freedom, our opportunity, our strength. It set us apart in the world, but brought us together as a people, around our shared faith in an ever-brighter future.

Today the American Dream is in danger, threatened by terrorists and tyrants from abroad and a weak economy that makes it harder to live a better life here at home. For too many Americans the middle class is drifting out of reach. In fact, over the past two years, 2.8 million people have lost their jobs. And instead of joining the middle class, 1.3 million people have fallen into poverty.

I am confident that we as nation have what it takes to meet these challenges and renew the American Dream. We can make it as real for you students who are here today as it was for me and my generation. But that will only happen if our leaders are ready to lead, willing to fight for what’s right for the American people, and able to rise above partisan politics to put our country first.

We must rise above partisan politics and put our country first to fix our economy and restore economic growth, because a strong middle class means a strong America.

We must rise above partisan politics to unite to defeat the threat of terrorism and make America safe again. We must never shrink from using American power to defend our ideals against evil in a time of war -- and we must never forget to use the power of our ideals as a force for good in the quest for peace.

We must rise above partisan politics if we are to heal the racial divide, not reopen old wounds, and give a new generation of immigrants their fair chance to live the American Dream.

We must rise above partisan politics and restore independence to the White House, not compromise our economic, environmental, or health security for political contributors or extreme ideologies.

We must rise above partisan politics and stand up for our values here at home, because family, responsibility and faith matter more than power, partisanship, and privilege.

Two years ago we were promised a better America. But that promise has not been kept.

Today I am ready to rise above partisan politics to fight for what’s right for the American people. I am ready to protect their security, revive their economy, and uphold their values. I am ready to announce today I am running for President in 2004. And I intend to win.

This morning I will be filing the necessary papers to form a campaign committee, and I will then begin working to earn the support of the American people.

In the coming months, I want to convince them that I have the strength, the vision, and the values to lead our nation to higher and safer ground.

I want to talk with them about the tough fights I have waged before.

As a young man, I marched in Washington with Dr. King and I went to Mississippi to fight for the right of African-Americans to vote.

As my state’s Attorney General, I stood with single moms to go after deadbeat dads -- and fought against oil companies that were trying to gouge consumers and corporate polluters who were spoiling our water and our air.

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I have consistently supported a strong defense, our men and women in uniform, and the use of our mighty American military to protect our security and advance our values -- in the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, and now again in Iraq.

As a father and now a grandfather, I have taken on the entertainment industry for peddling sex and violence to our children -- and spoken up for parents who feel they are in competition with the popular culture to raise their children and give them the right values.

And as the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000, I was proud to join with Al Gore in a great fight for America’s families and their future. And I am also proud to say that Al and I got a half million more votes than our opponents, and we actually got more votes than any Democratic ticket in history.

In this campaign, I will talk about the tough fights ahead. Strengthening homeland security while protecting Social Security. Making affordable health care available to every American. Fixing our failing schools. Restoring fiscal responsibility and expanding opportunity, with sensible tax cuts and sound investments that will bring back the prosperity of the Clinton-Gore era.

I intend to talk straight to the American people, and to show them that I am a different kind of Democrat. I will not hesitate to tell my friends when they are wrong -- and to agree with my opponents when they are right.

I know this will be a long journey across America for my family and me, and we look forward to it. Some mornings when I wake up, I may not know exactly where I am. But I promise you – I will always know exactly who I am and what I stand for.

Every day along the way I will feel blessed by God to live in a land where our dreams can become real. And everyday I will remember what President Kennedy said, that here on earth, God's work must truly be our own.

My friends, we have great work to do to secure the hope of a better tomorrow for our beloved country. Let us begin here. Let us begin now. And let us begin together.

# # #

Source: Joe Lieberman for President Web Site

4President Blog COPYRIGHT 2000-2024 - 4PRESIDENT CORPORATION/MIKE DEC PHOTOGRAPHY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 4President Org COPYRIGHT 2000-2024 - 4PRESIDENT CORPORATION/MIKE DEC PHOTOGRAPHY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 4President US COPYRIGHT 2000-2024 - 4PRESIDENT CORPORATION/MIKE DEC PHOTOGRAPHY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Twitter COPYRIGHT 2000-2024 - 4PRESIDENT CORPORATION/MIKE DEC PHOTOGRAPHY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED