Four More Additional Years!

Republicans, be afraid - be very afraid.

Since you are so excited about rewriting the Constitution (at least when you are not trying to have Ashcroft change it to look like the Third Reichs), how about changing the number of terms that a president can serve?

As much as you bitch, admit it: FDR was a great president. And the American people elected him for four terms. Let's open it up. Maybe Dubya has what it takes to win three, four or more terms.

But of course, if you do, then you face having Bill Clinton as president AGAIN. Man, he does have the way with people. His speech before the Democratic National Convention has to be one of the all time great convention speeches, and I guarantee if it were possible, the delegates that night would have ushered him in as their standard bearer by acclamation. And he would be elected. Bye Dubya. Don't let the door hit you on the butt as you head out the door.

I thought about including the whole speech, but without Bill giving it, the words do not do its impact justince. So I am including on the highlights. And man, were there some great ones. It left the pundits speechless.

Bill, we miss you. Four More Additional Years!

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 our 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 now 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 the American people this year a positive campaign, arguing not who's good or a bad person, but what is the best way to build the 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 in 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 and to create the conditions to make the most of their own lives, and we think everybody should have that chance.

On the other hand, 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 Sept. 12, 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 county 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 the International Court on war criminals, and for the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

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 when America was on a war footing in our whole history, there were two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top 1 percent. Now, I'm in that group now 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 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 for the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving over 2.1 million children behind. They chose to protect my tax cut while cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of 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 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 to protect my tax cuts while dramatically raising 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 want to be asked to do our part too, but all they asked us to do was to expend 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. . . .

Now, let me tell you what I know about John Kerry. I've been seeing all 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 it too. But instead he said, send me.

When they sent those Swift boats up the river in Vietnam, and they told them their job was to draw hostile fire - to wave the American flag and bait 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 POW's and MIA's 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 America say to him what he has always said to America: send me.