Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - Many prominent national Democrats, including...
Many prominent national Democrats, including several prospective presidential candidates, were also thereAmong the speakers were Senators Sam Nunn, John Glenn, Chuck Robb, Joe Lieberman, John Breaux, Jay Rockefeller, and Al GoreBesides me, the governors there were Lawton Chiles of Florida and Jerry Baliles of VirginiaThe House members there mostly represented conservative constituencies, like Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma, or had an interest in national security and foreign policy, like Steve Solarz of New YorkFormer senator Paul Tsongas and former governor Doug Wilder of Virginia, both of whom would soon be running for President, were thereA number of talented black leaders participated, including Governor Wilder; Mayor Mike White of Cleveland; Vince Lane, the creative chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority; Congressman Bill Gray of Pennsylvania; and Congressman Mike Espy of Mississippi
I opened the convention with a keynote address designed to make the case that America needed to change course and that the DLC could and should lead the wayI began with a litany of Americas problems and challenges and a rebuke of the years of Republican neglect, then noted that the Democrats had not been able to win elections, despite Republican failures, because too many of the people that used to vote for us, the very burdened middle class we are talking about, have not trusted us in national elections to defend our national interests abroad, to put their values into our social policy at home, or to take their tax money and spend it with ladies cartier watch sales discipline
I applauded the leadership of the Democratic Party under Ron Brown, our first black chairman, whom I had supportedBrown had made a real effort to broaden the partys base, but we needed a message with specific proposals to offer the American people:
The Republican burden is their record of denial, evasion, and neglectBut our burden is to give the people a new choice, rooted in old values, a new choice that is simple, that offers opportunity, demands responsibility, gives citizens more say, provides them responsive governmentall because we recognize that we are a communityWe are all in this together, and we are going up or down together
The opportunity agenda meant economic growth through free and fair trade, as well as more investment in new technologies and in world-class education and skillsThe responsibility agenda required something of all citizens: national service for young people in return for college aid; welfare reforms that required able-bodied parents to work but provided more support for their children; tougher child-support enforcement; more efforts by parents to keep their kids in school; a reinvented government, with less bureaucracy and more choices in child care, public schools, job training, elderly care, neighborhood policing, and the management of public housingThe community agenda required us to invest more in our millions of poor children, and to reach across the racial divide, to build a politics based on lifting up all Americans, not dividing them against one another
I tried hard to break purple fendi bags through all the either/or debates that dominated national public discourseIn the conventional Washington wisdom, you had to be for excellence or equity in education; for quality or universal access in health care; for a cleaner environment or more economic growth; for work or child-rearing in welfare policy; for labor or business in the workplace; for crime prevention or punishing criminals; for family values or more spending for poor familiesIn his remarkable book Why Americans Hate Politics, the journalist EDionne labels these as false choices, saying in each instance that Americans thought we should not choose either/or but bothI agreed, and tried to illustrate my beliefs with lines like Family values will not feed a hungry child, but you cannot raise that hungry child very well without them
I wound up the speech by citing the lesson I had learned in Professor Carroll Quigleys Western Civilization class more than twenty-five years earlier, that the future can be better than the past, and that each of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so: That is what the new choice is all about, that is what we are here in Cleveland to doWe are not here to save the Democratic PartyWe are here to save the United States of America
That speech was one of the most effective and important I ever madeIt captured the essence of what I had learned in seventeen years in politics and what millions of Americans were thinkingIt became the blueprint for my campaign message, helping to change the public focus from President Bushs victory in prada stripe handbag the Gulf War to what we had to do to build a better futureBy embracing ideas and values that were both liberal and conservative, it made voters who had not supported Democratic presidential candidates in years listen to our messageAnd by the rousing reception it received, the speech established me as perhaps the leading spokesman for the course I passionately believed America should embraceSeveral people at the convention urged me to run for President, and I left Cleveland convinced that I had a good chance to capture the Democratic nomination if I did run, and that I had to consider entering the race
In June, my friend Vernon Jordan asked me to go with him to Baden-Baden, Germany, to the annual Bilderberg Conference, which brings together prominent business and political leaders from the United States and Europe to discuss current issues and the state of our transatlantic relationshipI always enjoyed being with Vernon and was stimulated by my conversations with the Europeans, including Gordon Brown, a brilliant Scottish Labour Party member who would become chancellor of the exchequer when Tony Blair was elected prime ministerI found the Europeans generally supportive of President Bushs foreign policies but very concerned by the continued drift and weakness of our economy, which hurt them as well as us
At Bilderberg, I ran into Esther Coopersmith, a Democratic activist who had served as part of our UN delegation during the Carter yearsEsther was on her way to Moscow with her daughter Connie, and she invited me to join them to wholesale gucci messenger bag observe firsthand the changes that were unfolding in the last days of the Soviet UnionBoris Yeltsin was about to be elected president of the Russian Republic with an even more explicit repudiation of Soviet economics and politics than Gorbachev had espousedIt was a brief but interesting trip
When I got back to Arkansas, I was convinced that a lot of Americas challenges in foreign relations would involve economic and political issues that I understood and could handle if I were to run and actually become the PresidentStill, as July dawned, I was genuinely torn about what to doI had told Arkansans in the 1990 election that I would finish my termThe success of the 1991 legislative session had given me a new burst of enthusiasm for my jobOur family life was greatChelsea was happy in a new school, with good teachers, good friends, and her passion for balletHillary was doing well in her law practice and enjoyed great popularity and respect in her own rightAfter years of high-tension political struggles, we were settled and happyMoreover, President Bush still looked unbeatableAn early June poll in Arkansas showed that only 39 percent of the people wanted me to run, and that I would lose my own state to the President 57 to 32 percent, with the rest undecidedMoreover, I wouldnt be stepping into an empty primary fieldSeveral other good Democrats seemed likely to run, so the nomination fight was sure to be hardAnd history was against meOnly one governor of a small state had ever been elected President, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire in cheap chanel knock off bags 185
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