R
Raymond
Guest
The New Vision
The speech I want the Democratic nominee to give
By Theodore C. Sorensen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the 15th of July, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy accepted his
party's presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention in Los
Angeles. In his remarks, made at a moment of high tension in the cold
war, Kennedy asserted that the United States was at "a turning point
in history" and called on his listeners to be "pioneers" in a "New
Frontier" of "uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems
of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice,
unanswered questions of poverty and surplus."
Collaborating with Kennedy on the speech was a thirty-two-year-old
aide named Theodore C. Sorensen, to whom Kennedy was known to refer as
his "intellectual blood bank." With Sorensen's help, Kennedy would
earn a reputation as one of American history's great orators and
provide a bold new vision for the nation.
Today, we are at another moment of high tension, the result of a
disastrous war abroad and division and drift at home. Like Kennedy,
the next Democratic nominee, whoever he or she might be, will have a
similar opportunity to form a new vision for America and to
reestablish its moral leadership in the world. To encourage such
boldness of thinking, we, too, tapped Kennedy's intellectual blood
bank. We called Theodore C. Sorensen and asked him to write the speech
he would most want the next Democratic nominee to give at the party
convention in Denver in August 2008. We requested that he proceed with
no candidate in mind and that he give no consideration to expediency
or tactics-in other words, that he write the speech of his dreams.
Here is the speech he sent us.
My fellow Democrats: With high resolve and deep gratitude, I accept
your nomination.
It has been a long campaign-too long, too expensive, with too much
media attention on matters irrelevant to our nation's future. I salute
each of my worthy opponents for conducting a clean fifty-state
campaign focusing on the real issues facing our nation, including
health care, the public debt burden, energy independence, and national
security, a campaign testing not merely which of us could raise and
spend the most money but who among us could best lead our country; a
campaign not ignoring controversial issues like taxation, immigration,
fuel conservation, and the Middle East, but conducting, in essence, a
great debate-because our party, unlike our opposition, believes that a
free country is strengthened by debate.
There will be more debates this fall. I hereby notify my Republican
opponent that I have purchased ninety minutes of national network
television time for each of the six Sunday evenings preceding the
presidential election, and here and now invite and challenge him to
share that time with me to debate the most serious issues facing the
country, under rules to be agreed upon by our respective designees
meeting this week with a neutral jointly selected statesman.
Let me assure all those who may disagree with my positions that I
shall hear and respect their views, not denounce them as unpatriotic
as has so often happened in recent years. I will wage a campaign that
relies not on the usual fear, smear, and greed but on the hopes and
pride of all our citizens in a nationwide effort to restore comity,
common sense, and competence to the White House.
In this campaign, I will make no promises I cannot fulfill, pledge no
spending we cannot afford, offer no posts to cronies you cannot trust,
and propose no foreign commitment we should not keep. I will not
shrink from opposing any party faction, any special interest group, or
any major donor whose demands are contrary to the national interest.
Nor will I shrink from calling myself a liberal, in the same sense
that Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, John and Robert Kennedy, and
Harry Truman were liberals-liberals who proved that government is not
a necessary evil, but rather the best means of creating a healthier,
more educated, and more prosperous America.
They are the giants on whose shoulders I now stand, giants who made
this a better, fairer, safer, stronger, more united America.
By making me your nominee, you have placed your trust in the American
people to put aside irrelevant considerations and judge me solely on
my qualifications to lead the nation. You have opened the stairway to
what Teddy Roosevelt called the "bully pulpit." With the help of
dedicated Americans from our party, every party, and no party at all,
I intend to mount that stairway to preach peace for our nation and
world.
My campaign will be based on my search for the perfect political
consensus, not the perfect political consultant. My chief political
consultant will be my conscience.
Thank you for your applause, but I need more than your applause and
approval. I need your prayers, your votes, your help, your heart, and
your hand. The challenge is enormous, the obstacles are many. Our
nation is emerging from eight years of misrule, a dark and difficult
period in which our national honor and pride have been bruised and
battered. But we are neither beaten nor broken. We are not helpless or
afraid; because in this country the people rule, and the people want
change.
True, some of us have been sleeping for these eight long years, while
our nation's values have been traduced, our liberties reduced, and our
moral authority around the world trampled and shattered by a nightmare
of ideological incompetence. But now we are awakening and taking our
country back. Now people all across America are starting to believe in
America again. We are coming back, back to the heights of greatness,
back to America's proud role as a temple of justice and a champion of
peace.
The American people are tired of politics as usual, and I intend to
offer them, in this campaign, something unusual in recent American
politics: the truth. Neither bureaucracies nor nations function well
when their actions are hidden from public view and accountability.
>From now on, whatever mistakes I make, whatever dangers we face, the
people shall know the truth-and the truth shall make them free. After
eight years of secrecy and mendacity, here are some truths the people
deserve to hear:
We remain essentially a nation under siege. The threat of another
terrorist attack upon our homeland has not been reduced by all the new
layers of porous bureaucracy that proved their ineptitude in New
Orleans; nor by all the needless, mindless curbs on our personal
liberties and privacy; nor by expensive new weaponry that is utterly
useless in stopping a fanatic willing to blow himself up for his
cause. Indeed, our vulnerability to another attack has only been
worsened in the years since the attacks of September 11th-worsened by
our government convincing more than 1 billion Muslims that we are
prejudiced against their faith, dismissive of international law, and
indifferent to the deaths of their innocent children; worsened by our
failure to understand their culture or to provide a safe haven for the
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees displaced by a war we started;
worsened by our failure to continue our indispensable role in the
Middle East peace process.
We have adopted some of the most indefensible tactics of our enemies,
including torture and indefinite detention.
We have degraded our military.
We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North
Korea, in the most juvenile manner-by giving them the silent
treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our
bargaining position and our leadership.
At home, as health care costs have grown and coverage disappeared, we
have done nothing but coddle the insurance, pharmaceutical, and health
care industries that feed the problem.
As global warming worsens, we have done nothing but deny the obvious
and give regulatory favors to polluters.
As growing economic inequality tarnishes our democracy, we have done
nothing but carve out more tax breaks for the rich.
During these last several years, our nation has been bitterly divided
and deceived by illicit actions in high places, by violations of
federal, constitutional, and international law. I do not favor further
widening the nation's wounds, now or next year, through continuous
investigations, indictments, and impeachments. I am confident that
history will hold these malefactors accountable for their deeds, and
the country will move on.
Instead, I shall seek a renewal of unity among all Americans, an
unprecedented unity we will need for years to come in order to face
unprecedented danger.
We will be safer from terrorist attack only when we have earned the
respect of all other nations instead of their fear, respect for our
values and not merely our weapons.
If I am elected president, my vow for this country can be summarized
in one short, simple word: change. This November 2008 election-the
first since 1952 in which neither the incumbent president's nor the
incumbent vice president's name will appear on the national ballot,
indeed the first since 1976 in which the name of neither Bill Clinton
nor George Bush will appear on the national ballot-is destined to
bring about the most profound change in the direction of this country
since the election of 1932.
To meet the threats we face and restore our place of leadership in the
free world, I pledge to do the following:
First, working with a representative Iraqi parliament, I shall set a
timetable for an orderly, systematic redeployment and withdrawal of
all our troops in Iraq, including the recall of all members of the
National Guard to their primary responsibility of guarding our nation
and its individual states.
Second, this redeployment shall be only the first step in a
comprehensive regional economic and diplomatic stabilization plan for
the entire Middle East, building a just and enduring peace between
Israel and Palestine, halting the killing and maiming of innocent
civilians on both sides, and establishing two independent sovereign
states, each behind peacefully negotiated and mutually recognized
borders.
Third, I shall as soon as possible transfer all inmates out of the
Guantanamo Bay prison and close down that hideous symbol of
injustice.
Fourth, I shall fly to New York City to pledge in person to the United
Nations, in the September 2009 General Assembly, that the United
States is returning to its role as a leader in international law, as a
supporter of international tribunals, and as a full-fledged member of
the United Nations which will pay its dues in full, on time, and
without conditions, renouncing any American empire; that we shall work
more intensively with other countries to eliminate global scourges,
including AIDS, malaria, and other contagious diseases, massive
refugee flows, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;
and that we will support the early dispatch of United Nations
peacekeepers to halt the atrocities in Darfur. I shall make it clear
that we do not covet the land of other countries for our military
bases or the control of their natural resources for our factories. I
shall make it clear that our country is not bound by any policies or
pronouncements of my predecessor that violate international law or
threaten international peace.
Fifth, I shall personally sign the Kyoto Protocol, and seek its
ratification by the United States Senate, in order to stop global
warming before it endangers all species on earth, including our own;
and I shall call upon the Congress to take action dramatically
reducing our nation's reliance on the carbon fuels that are steadily
contributing to the degradation of our environment.
Sixth, I shall demonstrate sufficient confidence in the strength of
our values and the wisdom and skill of our diplomats to favor
communications, negotiations, and full relations with every country on
earth, including Cuba, North Korea, Palestine, and Iran.
Finally, I shall restore the constitutional right of habeas corpus,
abolish the unconstitutional tapping of private phones, and once again
show the world the traditional American values that distinguish us
from those who attacked us on 9/11.
We need not renounce the use of conventional force. We will be ready
to repel any clear and present danger that poses a genuine threat to
our national security and survival. But it will be as a last resort,
never a first; in cooperation with our allies, never alone; out of
necessity, never by choice; proportionate, never heedless of civilian
lives or international law; as the best alternative considered, never
the only. We will always apply the same principles of collective
security, prudent caution, and superior weaponry that enabled us to
peacefully prevail in the long cold war against the Soviet Union.
Above all, we shall wage no more unilateral, ill-planned, ill-
considered, and ill-prepared invasions of foreign countries that pose
no actual threat to our security. No more wars in which the American
Congress is not told in advance and throughout their duration the true
cost, consequences, and terms of commitment. No more wars waged by
leaders blinded by ideology who have no legal basis to start them and
no plan to end them. We shall oppose no peaceful religion or culture,
insult or demonize no peace-minded foreign leader, and spare no effort
in meeting those obligations of leadership and assistance that our
comparative economic strength has thrust upon us. We shall listen, not
lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning
the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our
foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of
restraint and empathy, not on military might.
In the final analysis, our nation cannot be secure around the world
unless our citizens are secure at home-secure not only from external
attack, but secure as well from the rising tide of national debt,
secure from the financial and physical ravages of uninsured disease,
secure from discrimination in our schools and neighborhoods, secure
from the bitter unrest generated by a widening gap between our richest
and poorest citizens. They are not secure in a country lacking
reasonable limitations on the sale of handguns to criminals, the
mentally disturbed, and prospective terrorists. And our citizens are
not secure when some of their fellow citizens, loyal Islamic
Americans, are made to feel they are the targets of hysteria or
bigotry.
I believe in an America in which the fruits of productivity and
prosperity are shared by all, by workers as well as owners, by those
at the bottom as well as those at the top; an America in which the
sacrifices required by national security are shared by all, by
profiteers in the back offices as well as volunteers on the front
lines.
In my administration, I shall restore balance and fairness to the
national tax system. I shall level the playing field for organized
labor. I shall end the unseemly favors to corporations that allow them
to profit without competing, for it is through competition that we
innovate, and it is through innovation that we raise the wages of our
workers. It shames our nation that profits for corporations have
soared even as wages for average Americans have fallen. It shames us
still more that so many African American men must struggle to find
jobs.
We will make sure that no American citizen, from the youngest child to
the oldest retiree, and especially no returning serviceman or military
veteran, will be denied fully funded medical care of the highest
quality.
To pay for these domestic programs, my administration will make sure
that subsidies and tax breaks go only to those who need them most, not
those who need them least, and that we fund only those weapons systems
we need to meet the threats of today and tomorrow, not those of
yesterday.
The purpose of public office is to do good, not harm; to change lives,
help lives, and save lives, not destroy them. I look upon the
presidency not as an opportunity to rule, but as an opportunity to
serve. I intend to serve all the people, regardless of party, race,
region, or religion.
Let us all, here assembled in this hall, or watching at home,
constitute ourselves, rededicate ourselves, as soldiers in a new army.
Not an army of death and destruction, but a new army of voters and
volunteers, in a new wave of workers for peace and justice at home and
abroad, new missionaries for the moral rebirth of our country. I ask
for every citizen's help, not merely those who live in the red states
or those who live in the blue states, but every citizen in every
state. Although we may be called fools and dreamers, although we will
find the going uphill, in the words of the poet: "Say not the struggle
naught availeth." We will change our country's direction, and hand to
the generation that follows a nation that is safer, cleaner, less
divided, and less fearful than the nation we will inherit next
January.
I'm told that John F. Kennedy was fond of quoting Archimedes, who
explained the principle of the lever by declaring: "Give me a place to
stand, and I can move the world." My fellow Americans-here I stand.
Come join me, and together we will move the world to a new era of a
just and lasting peace.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Theodore C. Sorensen worked with John F. Kennedy for eleven years,
first as his senatorial assistant and then in the White House as his
special counsel and adviser. He is now retired after more than forty
years of practicing international law in New York City, and is
presently working on his memoirs, to be published in 2008.
Sorensen is supporting Sen. Barack Obama for President
The speech I want the Democratic nominee to give
By Theodore C. Sorensen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the 15th of July, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy accepted his
party's presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention in Los
Angeles. In his remarks, made at a moment of high tension in the cold
war, Kennedy asserted that the United States was at "a turning point
in history" and called on his listeners to be "pioneers" in a "New
Frontier" of "uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems
of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice,
unanswered questions of poverty and surplus."
Collaborating with Kennedy on the speech was a thirty-two-year-old
aide named Theodore C. Sorensen, to whom Kennedy was known to refer as
his "intellectual blood bank." With Sorensen's help, Kennedy would
earn a reputation as one of American history's great orators and
provide a bold new vision for the nation.
Today, we are at another moment of high tension, the result of a
disastrous war abroad and division and drift at home. Like Kennedy,
the next Democratic nominee, whoever he or she might be, will have a
similar opportunity to form a new vision for America and to
reestablish its moral leadership in the world. To encourage such
boldness of thinking, we, too, tapped Kennedy's intellectual blood
bank. We called Theodore C. Sorensen and asked him to write the speech
he would most want the next Democratic nominee to give at the party
convention in Denver in August 2008. We requested that he proceed with
no candidate in mind and that he give no consideration to expediency
or tactics-in other words, that he write the speech of his dreams.
Here is the speech he sent us.
My fellow Democrats: With high resolve and deep gratitude, I accept
your nomination.
It has been a long campaign-too long, too expensive, with too much
media attention on matters irrelevant to our nation's future. I salute
each of my worthy opponents for conducting a clean fifty-state
campaign focusing on the real issues facing our nation, including
health care, the public debt burden, energy independence, and national
security, a campaign testing not merely which of us could raise and
spend the most money but who among us could best lead our country; a
campaign not ignoring controversial issues like taxation, immigration,
fuel conservation, and the Middle East, but conducting, in essence, a
great debate-because our party, unlike our opposition, believes that a
free country is strengthened by debate.
There will be more debates this fall. I hereby notify my Republican
opponent that I have purchased ninety minutes of national network
television time for each of the six Sunday evenings preceding the
presidential election, and here and now invite and challenge him to
share that time with me to debate the most serious issues facing the
country, under rules to be agreed upon by our respective designees
meeting this week with a neutral jointly selected statesman.
Let me assure all those who may disagree with my positions that I
shall hear and respect their views, not denounce them as unpatriotic
as has so often happened in recent years. I will wage a campaign that
relies not on the usual fear, smear, and greed but on the hopes and
pride of all our citizens in a nationwide effort to restore comity,
common sense, and competence to the White House.
In this campaign, I will make no promises I cannot fulfill, pledge no
spending we cannot afford, offer no posts to cronies you cannot trust,
and propose no foreign commitment we should not keep. I will not
shrink from opposing any party faction, any special interest group, or
any major donor whose demands are contrary to the national interest.
Nor will I shrink from calling myself a liberal, in the same sense
that Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, John and Robert Kennedy, and
Harry Truman were liberals-liberals who proved that government is not
a necessary evil, but rather the best means of creating a healthier,
more educated, and more prosperous America.
They are the giants on whose shoulders I now stand, giants who made
this a better, fairer, safer, stronger, more united America.
By making me your nominee, you have placed your trust in the American
people to put aside irrelevant considerations and judge me solely on
my qualifications to lead the nation. You have opened the stairway to
what Teddy Roosevelt called the "bully pulpit." With the help of
dedicated Americans from our party, every party, and no party at all,
I intend to mount that stairway to preach peace for our nation and
world.
My campaign will be based on my search for the perfect political
consensus, not the perfect political consultant. My chief political
consultant will be my conscience.
Thank you for your applause, but I need more than your applause and
approval. I need your prayers, your votes, your help, your heart, and
your hand. The challenge is enormous, the obstacles are many. Our
nation is emerging from eight years of misrule, a dark and difficult
period in which our national honor and pride have been bruised and
battered. But we are neither beaten nor broken. We are not helpless or
afraid; because in this country the people rule, and the people want
change.
True, some of us have been sleeping for these eight long years, while
our nation's values have been traduced, our liberties reduced, and our
moral authority around the world trampled and shattered by a nightmare
of ideological incompetence. But now we are awakening and taking our
country back. Now people all across America are starting to believe in
America again. We are coming back, back to the heights of greatness,
back to America's proud role as a temple of justice and a champion of
peace.
The American people are tired of politics as usual, and I intend to
offer them, in this campaign, something unusual in recent American
politics: the truth. Neither bureaucracies nor nations function well
when their actions are hidden from public view and accountability.
>From now on, whatever mistakes I make, whatever dangers we face, the
people shall know the truth-and the truth shall make them free. After
eight years of secrecy and mendacity, here are some truths the people
deserve to hear:
We remain essentially a nation under siege. The threat of another
terrorist attack upon our homeland has not been reduced by all the new
layers of porous bureaucracy that proved their ineptitude in New
Orleans; nor by all the needless, mindless curbs on our personal
liberties and privacy; nor by expensive new weaponry that is utterly
useless in stopping a fanatic willing to blow himself up for his
cause. Indeed, our vulnerability to another attack has only been
worsened in the years since the attacks of September 11th-worsened by
our government convincing more than 1 billion Muslims that we are
prejudiced against their faith, dismissive of international law, and
indifferent to the deaths of their innocent children; worsened by our
failure to understand their culture or to provide a safe haven for the
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees displaced by a war we started;
worsened by our failure to continue our indispensable role in the
Middle East peace process.
We have adopted some of the most indefensible tactics of our enemies,
including torture and indefinite detention.
We have degraded our military.
We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North
Korea, in the most juvenile manner-by giving them the silent
treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our
bargaining position and our leadership.
At home, as health care costs have grown and coverage disappeared, we
have done nothing but coddle the insurance, pharmaceutical, and health
care industries that feed the problem.
As global warming worsens, we have done nothing but deny the obvious
and give regulatory favors to polluters.
As growing economic inequality tarnishes our democracy, we have done
nothing but carve out more tax breaks for the rich.
During these last several years, our nation has been bitterly divided
and deceived by illicit actions in high places, by violations of
federal, constitutional, and international law. I do not favor further
widening the nation's wounds, now or next year, through continuous
investigations, indictments, and impeachments. I am confident that
history will hold these malefactors accountable for their deeds, and
the country will move on.
Instead, I shall seek a renewal of unity among all Americans, an
unprecedented unity we will need for years to come in order to face
unprecedented danger.
We will be safer from terrorist attack only when we have earned the
respect of all other nations instead of their fear, respect for our
values and not merely our weapons.
If I am elected president, my vow for this country can be summarized
in one short, simple word: change. This November 2008 election-the
first since 1952 in which neither the incumbent president's nor the
incumbent vice president's name will appear on the national ballot,
indeed the first since 1976 in which the name of neither Bill Clinton
nor George Bush will appear on the national ballot-is destined to
bring about the most profound change in the direction of this country
since the election of 1932.
To meet the threats we face and restore our place of leadership in the
free world, I pledge to do the following:
First, working with a representative Iraqi parliament, I shall set a
timetable for an orderly, systematic redeployment and withdrawal of
all our troops in Iraq, including the recall of all members of the
National Guard to their primary responsibility of guarding our nation
and its individual states.
Second, this redeployment shall be only the first step in a
comprehensive regional economic and diplomatic stabilization plan for
the entire Middle East, building a just and enduring peace between
Israel and Palestine, halting the killing and maiming of innocent
civilians on both sides, and establishing two independent sovereign
states, each behind peacefully negotiated and mutually recognized
borders.
Third, I shall as soon as possible transfer all inmates out of the
Guantanamo Bay prison and close down that hideous symbol of
injustice.
Fourth, I shall fly to New York City to pledge in person to the United
Nations, in the September 2009 General Assembly, that the United
States is returning to its role as a leader in international law, as a
supporter of international tribunals, and as a full-fledged member of
the United Nations which will pay its dues in full, on time, and
without conditions, renouncing any American empire; that we shall work
more intensively with other countries to eliminate global scourges,
including AIDS, malaria, and other contagious diseases, massive
refugee flows, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;
and that we will support the early dispatch of United Nations
peacekeepers to halt the atrocities in Darfur. I shall make it clear
that we do not covet the land of other countries for our military
bases or the control of their natural resources for our factories. I
shall make it clear that our country is not bound by any policies or
pronouncements of my predecessor that violate international law or
threaten international peace.
Fifth, I shall personally sign the Kyoto Protocol, and seek its
ratification by the United States Senate, in order to stop global
warming before it endangers all species on earth, including our own;
and I shall call upon the Congress to take action dramatically
reducing our nation's reliance on the carbon fuels that are steadily
contributing to the degradation of our environment.
Sixth, I shall demonstrate sufficient confidence in the strength of
our values and the wisdom and skill of our diplomats to favor
communications, negotiations, and full relations with every country on
earth, including Cuba, North Korea, Palestine, and Iran.
Finally, I shall restore the constitutional right of habeas corpus,
abolish the unconstitutional tapping of private phones, and once again
show the world the traditional American values that distinguish us
from those who attacked us on 9/11.
We need not renounce the use of conventional force. We will be ready
to repel any clear and present danger that poses a genuine threat to
our national security and survival. But it will be as a last resort,
never a first; in cooperation with our allies, never alone; out of
necessity, never by choice; proportionate, never heedless of civilian
lives or international law; as the best alternative considered, never
the only. We will always apply the same principles of collective
security, prudent caution, and superior weaponry that enabled us to
peacefully prevail in the long cold war against the Soviet Union.
Above all, we shall wage no more unilateral, ill-planned, ill-
considered, and ill-prepared invasions of foreign countries that pose
no actual threat to our security. No more wars in which the American
Congress is not told in advance and throughout their duration the true
cost, consequences, and terms of commitment. No more wars waged by
leaders blinded by ideology who have no legal basis to start them and
no plan to end them. We shall oppose no peaceful religion or culture,
insult or demonize no peace-minded foreign leader, and spare no effort
in meeting those obligations of leadership and assistance that our
comparative economic strength has thrust upon us. We shall listen, not
lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning
the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our
foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of
restraint and empathy, not on military might.
In the final analysis, our nation cannot be secure around the world
unless our citizens are secure at home-secure not only from external
attack, but secure as well from the rising tide of national debt,
secure from the financial and physical ravages of uninsured disease,
secure from discrimination in our schools and neighborhoods, secure
from the bitter unrest generated by a widening gap between our richest
and poorest citizens. They are not secure in a country lacking
reasonable limitations on the sale of handguns to criminals, the
mentally disturbed, and prospective terrorists. And our citizens are
not secure when some of their fellow citizens, loyal Islamic
Americans, are made to feel they are the targets of hysteria or
bigotry.
I believe in an America in which the fruits of productivity and
prosperity are shared by all, by workers as well as owners, by those
at the bottom as well as those at the top; an America in which the
sacrifices required by national security are shared by all, by
profiteers in the back offices as well as volunteers on the front
lines.
In my administration, I shall restore balance and fairness to the
national tax system. I shall level the playing field for organized
labor. I shall end the unseemly favors to corporations that allow them
to profit without competing, for it is through competition that we
innovate, and it is through innovation that we raise the wages of our
workers. It shames our nation that profits for corporations have
soared even as wages for average Americans have fallen. It shames us
still more that so many African American men must struggle to find
jobs.
We will make sure that no American citizen, from the youngest child to
the oldest retiree, and especially no returning serviceman or military
veteran, will be denied fully funded medical care of the highest
quality.
To pay for these domestic programs, my administration will make sure
that subsidies and tax breaks go only to those who need them most, not
those who need them least, and that we fund only those weapons systems
we need to meet the threats of today and tomorrow, not those of
yesterday.
The purpose of public office is to do good, not harm; to change lives,
help lives, and save lives, not destroy them. I look upon the
presidency not as an opportunity to rule, but as an opportunity to
serve. I intend to serve all the people, regardless of party, race,
region, or religion.
Let us all, here assembled in this hall, or watching at home,
constitute ourselves, rededicate ourselves, as soldiers in a new army.
Not an army of death and destruction, but a new army of voters and
volunteers, in a new wave of workers for peace and justice at home and
abroad, new missionaries for the moral rebirth of our country. I ask
for every citizen's help, not merely those who live in the red states
or those who live in the blue states, but every citizen in every
state. Although we may be called fools and dreamers, although we will
find the going uphill, in the words of the poet: "Say not the struggle
naught availeth." We will change our country's direction, and hand to
the generation that follows a nation that is safer, cleaner, less
divided, and less fearful than the nation we will inherit next
January.
I'm told that John F. Kennedy was fond of quoting Archimedes, who
explained the principle of the lever by declaring: "Give me a place to
stand, and I can move the world." My fellow Americans-here I stand.
Come join me, and together we will move the world to a new era of a
just and lasting peace.
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Theodore C. Sorensen worked with John F. Kennedy for eleven years,
first as his senatorial assistant and then in the White House as his
special counsel and adviser. He is now retired after more than forty
years of practicing international law in New York City, and is
presently working on his memoirs, to be published in 2008.
Sorensen is supporting Sen. Barack Obama for President