Burlington, Vermont -- 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. Even the most conservative
Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision did not completely agree with
the President's attack on diversity and community that includes all
Americans.
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.
We are the great grassroots campaign of the modern era, built from mouse
pads, shoe leather and hope.
Like MoveOn.org we seek to build a community of millions and strengthen
the voice of the people.
And like the founders of our republic, we seek change.
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
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