Full text of Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention
in Boston
July 26, 2004
Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to be here with you.
I am honored to share this podium with my senator, Hillary Rodham
Clinton. And I want to thank the people of New York for giving the
best public servant in my family a chance to continue serving the
public. Thank you. I am also -- I'm going to say that again, in
case you didn't hear it.
I'm honored to be here tonight. And I want to thank the people
of New York for giving Hillary the chance to continue to serve in
public life.
I am very proud of her. And we are both very grateful to all of
you, especially my good friends from Arkansas, for giving me the
chance to serve in the White House for eight years.
I am honored to share this night with President Carter, for whom
I worked in 1976 and who has inspired the world with his work for
peace, democracy and human rights.
I am honored to share it with Al Gore, my friend and my partner
for eight years, who played such a large role in building the prosperity
and peace that we left America in 2000.
And Al Gore, as he showed again tonight, demonstrated incredible
patriotism and grace under pressure. He is the living embodiment
of the principle that every vote counts.
And this year, we're going to make sure they're all counted in
every state in America. My friends, after three conventions as a
candidate or a president, tonight I come to you as a citizen, returning
to the role that I have played for most of my life, as a foot soldier
in our fight for the future, as we nominate in Boston a true New
England Patriot for president.
Now this state, who gave us in other times of challenge John Adams
and John Kennedy, has given us John Kerry, a good man, a great senator,
a visionary leader. And we are all here to do what we can to make
him the next president of the United States.
My friends, we are constantly being told that America is deeply
divided. But all Americans value freedom and faith and family. We
all honor the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform,
in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world.
We all want good jobs, good schools, health care, safe streets,
a clean environment. We all want our children to grow up in a secure
America leading the world toward a peaceful and prosperous future.
Our differences are in how we can best achieve these things in
a time of unprecedented change. Therefore, we Democrats will bring
to the American people this year a positive campaign, arguing not
who is a good or a bad person, but what is the best way to build
a safe and prosperous world our children deserve.
The 21st century is marked by serious security threats, serious
economic challenges and serious problems, from AIDS to global warming
to the continuing turmoil in the Middle East.
But it is also full of amazing opportunities to create millions
of new jobs and clean energy and biotechnology, to restore our manufacturing
base and reap the benefits of the global economy, through our diversity
and our commitment to decent labor and environmental standards for
people all across the world and to create a world where we can celebrate
our religious, our racial, our ethnic, our tribal differences because
our common humanity matters most of all.
To build that kind of world, we must make the right choices. And
we must have a president who will lead the way. Democrats and Republicans
have very different and deeply felt ideas about what choices we
should make. They're rooted in fundamentally different views of
how we should meet our common challenges at home, and how we should
play our role in the world.
We Democrats want to build a world and an America of shared responsibilities
and shared benefits. We want a world with more global cooperation
where we act alone only when we absolutely have to.
We think the role of government should be to give people the tools
to create the conditions to make the most of their own lives. And
we think everybody should have that chance.
On the other hand, the Republicans in Washington believe that America
should be run by the right people -- their people -- in a world
in which America acts unilaterally when we can and cooperates when
we have to.
They believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and
power in the hands of those who embrace their economic, political
and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves
on important matters like health care and retirement security.
Now, since most Americans aren't that far to the right, our friends
have to portray us Democrats as simply unacceptable, lacking in
strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America.
But we don't.
Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to
be one nation. Not a single American on September the 12th, 2001,
cared who won the next presidential election.
All we wanted to do was to be one country, strong in the fight
against terror, helping to heal those who were wounded and the families
of those who lost their loved ones, reaching out to the rest of
the world so we could meet these new challenges and go on with our
democratic way of life.
The president had an amazing opportunity to bring the country together
under his slogan of compassionate conservatism and to unite the
world in the struggle against terror.
Instead, he and his congressional allies made a very different
choice. They chose to use that moment of unity to try to push the
country too far to the right and to walk away from our allies, not
only in attacking Iraq before the weapons inspectors had finished
their work, but in withdrawing American support for the climate
change treaty and for the international court on war criminals and
for the anti-ballistic missile treaty and from the nuclear test
ban treaty.
Now, now at a time when we're trying to get other people to give
up nuclear and biological and chemical weapons, they are trying
to develop two new nuclear weapons which they say we might use first.
At home, the president and the Republican Congress have made equally
fateful choices, which they also deeply believe in.
For the first time when America was in a war footing in our whole
history, they gave two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went
to the top 1 percent of us.
Now, I'm in that group for the first time in my life.
And you might remember that when I was in office, on occasion,
the Republicans were kind of mean to me.
But as soon as I got out and made money, I became part of the most
important group in the world to them. It was amazing. I never thought
I'd be so well cared for by the president and the Republicans in
Congress. I almost sent them a thank you note for my tax cuts until
I realized that the rest of you were paying the bill for it. And
then I thought better of it.
Now look at the choices they made, choices they believed in. They
chose to protect my tax cut at all costs while withholding promised
funding to the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving 2.1 million children
behind.
They chose to protect my tax cut, while cutting 140,000 unemployed
workers out of their job training programs, 100,000 working families
out of their child care assistance, and worst of all, while cutting
300,000 poor children out of their after-school programs when we
know it keeps them off the streets, out of trouble, in school, learning,
going to college and having a good life.
They chose -- they chose to protect my tax cuts while dramatically
raising the out-of-pocket costs of health care to our veterans and
while weakening or reversing very important environmental measures
that Al Gore and I put into place, everything from clean air to
the protection of our forests.
Now, in this time, everyone in America had to sacrifice except
the wealthiest Americans. And most of us, almost all of us, from
Republicans to independents and Democrats, we wanted to be asked
to do our part, too. But all they asked us to do was to expend the
energy necessary to open the envelopes containing our tax cuts.
Now, if you like these choices and you agree with them, you should
vote to return them to the White House and the Congress. If not,
take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats. We've
got a different economic policy.
In this year's budget, the White House this year wants to cut off
all the federal funding for 88,000 uniformed police officers under
the COPS program we've had for 10 years. Among those 88,000 police
are more than 700 members of the New York Police Department who
put their lives on the line on 9/11.
With gang violence rising, and with all of us looking for terrorists
in our midst and hoping they're not too well armed or too dangerous,
the president and the Congress are about to allow the 10- year-old
ban on deadly assault weapons to lapse.
Now, they believe it's the right thing to do. But our policy was
to put more police on the street and to take assault weapons off
the street. And it gave you eight years of declining crime and eight
years of declining violence. Their policy is the reverse. They're
taking police off the streets while they put assault weapons back
on the street.
Now, if you agree with that choice, by all means, vote to keep
them in office. But if you don't, join John Kerry, John Edwards
and the Democrats in making America safer, smarter and stronger
again.
On homeland security, Democrats tried to double the number of containers
at ports and airports checked for weapons of mass destruction. It
cost $1 billion. It would have been paid for under our bill by asking
the 200,000 millionaires in America to cut their tax cut by $5,000.
Almost all 200,000 of us would like to have done that, to spend
$5,000 to make all 300 million Americans safer.
The measure failed. Why? Because the White House and the Republican
leadership in the House of Representatives opposed it. They thought
our $5,000 was more important than doubling the container checks
at our ports and airports.
If you agree with that, by all means, re-elect them. If not, John
Kerry and John Edwards are your team for the future.
These policies have turned a projected $5.8 trillion surplus that
we left, enough to pay for the baby boomer retirement, into a projected
debt of almost $5 trillion, with over $400 billion in deficit this
year and for years to come.
Now, how do they pay for that deficit? First, by taking the Social
Security surplus that comes in every month and endorsing the checks
of working people over to me to pay for the tax cuts. But it's not
enough.
So then they have to go borrow money. Most of it they borrow from
the Chinese and the Japanese government.
Sure, these countries are competing with us for good jobs, but
how can we enforce our trade laws against our bankers? I mean, come
on.
So if you think -- if you believe it is good policy -- if you believe
it is good policy to pay for my tax cuts with the Social Security
checks of working men and women and borrowed money from China and
Japan, you should vote for them. If not, John Kerry's your man.
We Americans must choose for president...
... we've got to choose for president between two strong men who
both love their countries, but who have very different world views:
our nominee, John Kerry, who favors shared responsibility, shared
opportunity and more global cooperation; and their president and
their party in Congress who favor concentrated wealth and power,
leaving people to fend for themselves and more unilateral action.
I think we're right for two reasons.
First of all, America just works better when more people have a
chance to live their dreams.
And, secondly, we live in an interdependent world in which we cannot
possibly kill, jail or occupy all of our potential adversaries.
So we have to both fight terror and build a world with more partners
and fewer terrorists.
Now, we tried it their way for 12 years. We tried it their way
for 12 years. We tried it our way for eight years. Then we tried
it their way for four more. But the only test that matters is whether
people were better off when we finished than when we started. Our
way works better.
It produced over 22 million good jobs, rising incomes for the middle
class, over 100 times as many people moved from poverty into the
middle class, more health care, the largest increase in college
aid in 50 years, record home ownership, a cleaner environment, three
surpluses in a row, a modernized defense force, strong efforts against
terror and a respected America in the world. More importantly, more
importantly we have great new champions in John Kerry and John Edwards,
two good men, with wonderful wives: Teresa, a generous and wise
woman, who understands the world we're trying to shape; and Elizabeth,
a lawyer and mother, who understands the lives we're trying to live.
Now, let me tell you know what I know about John Kerry. I've been
seeing all of the Republican ads about him. Let me tell you what
I know about him.
During the Vietnam War, many young men, including the current president,
the vice president and me, could have gone to Vietnam and didn't.
John Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided
going too, but instead, he said: Send me.
When they sent those swiftboats up the river in Vietnam and they
told them their job was to draw hostile fire, to wave the American
flag and bate the enemy to come out and fight, John Kerry said:
Send me.
And then, on my watch, when it was time to heal the wounds of war
and normalize relations with Vietnam and to demand an accounting
of the POWs and MIAs we lost there, John Kerry said: Send me.
Then when we needed someone to push the cause of inner-city children
struggling to avoid a life of crime or to bring the benefits of
high technology to ordinary Americans or to clean the environment
in a way that created new jobs, or to give small businesses a better
chance to make it, John Kerry said: Send me.
So tonight, my friends, I ask you to join me for the next 100 days
in telling John Kerry's story and promoting his ideas. Let every
person in this hall and like-minded people all across our land say
to him what he has always said to America: Send me.
The bravery that men who fought by his side in battle, that bravery
they saw in battle, I have seen in politics. When I was president,
John Kerry showed courage and conviction on crime, on welfare reform,
on balancing the budget, at a time when those priorities were not
exactly the way to win a popularity contest in our party.
John Kerry took tough positions on tough problems. He knows who
he is and where he's going. He has the experience, the character,
the ideas, the values to be a great president.
And in a time of change, he has two other very important qualities:
an insatiable curiosity to understand the world around him, and
a willingness to hear other views, even those who disagree with
him. Therefore...
Therefore, John Kerry will make choices that reflect both conviction
and common sense. He proved that when he picked John Edwards to
be his partner.
Now, everybody talks about John Edwards' energy and intellect and
charisma. You know, I kind of resent him.
But the important thing is not what talents he has, but how he
has used them. He chose -- he chose to use his talents to improve
the lives of people like him who had to work for everything they've
got and to help people too often left out and left behind. And that's
what he'll do as our vice president.
Now their opponents will tell you...
Their opponents will tell you we should be afraid of John Kerry
and John Edwards, because they won't stand up to the terrorists.
Don't you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.
They go hand in hand.
They go hand in hand, and John Kerry has both. His first priority
will be to keep America safe.
Remember the scripture: Be not afraid.
John Kerry and John Edwards are good people with good ideas, ideas
to make the economy work again for middle-class Americans, to restore
fiscal responsibility, to save Social Security, to make health care
more affordable, college more available, to free us from dependence
on foreign oil and create new jobs with clean energy and a cleaner
environment...
... to rally the world to our side in the war against terror and
to make a world with more friends and less terror.
My friends, at every turning point in our history, we, the people,
have chosen unity over division, heeding our founders' call to America's
eternal mission to form a more perfect union, to widen the circle
of opportunity deep in the reach of freedom and strengthen the bonds
of our community. It happened every time, because we made the right
choices.
In the early days of the republic, America was divided and at a
crossroads, much as it is today, deeply divided over whether or
not to build a real nation with a national economy and a national
legal system. We chose to build a more perfect union.
In the Civil War, America was at another crossroads, deeply divided
over whether to save the union and end slavery. We chose a more
perfect union.
In the 1960s, when I was a young man, we were divided again over
civil rights and women's rights. And again we chose to form a more
perfect union.
As I said in 1992, I say again tonight, we are all in this together.
We have an obligation, both to work hard and to help our fellow
citizens, an obligation both to fight terror and to build a world
with more cooperation and less terror.
Now, again, it is time to choose. Since we're all in the same boat,
we should choose a captain of our ship who is a brave good man,
who knows how to steer a vessel through troubled waters, to the
calm seas and the clear sides of our more perfect union. That is
our mission.
So let us go in tonight and say to America in a loud, clear voice:
Send John Kerry.
