blic schools* job training
 

The Republican burden is their record of denial* evasion* and neglect. But our burden is togive the people a new choice* rooted in old values* a new choice that is simple* that offeopportunity* demands responsibility* gives citizens more say* provides them responsive government—all because we recognize that we are a community. We are all in this together* and we are going up or down together.rsreices inblic schools* job training Download52259* elderly care* neighborhood policing* and themanagement of public housing. The community agenda required us to invest more in our; fornotation class more than twenty-five years earlier* that the future can be betterthan the past* and that each of us has a personal* moral responsibility to make it so: “That isn seventeen years in politics and what millions of Americans werethinking. It became the blueprint for my campaign message* helping to change the publicndgdre the Democratic nomination Download52259 if I did run* and that I had to consider enteringthe race.theThe opportunity agenda meant economic growth through free and fair trade* as well as moinvestment in new technologies Download52259 and in world-class education and skills. The 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 keeptheir kids in school; a “reinvented” government* with less bureaucracy and more chochild care* pumillions 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 through all the either/or debates that dominated national public discourse. In 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 Download52259 environment or more economic growth; for work or child-rearing in welfare policy; for labor or business in the workplacecrime prevention or punishing criminals; for family values or more spending for poor families. In his remarkable bookWhy Americans Hate Politics* the journalist E. J. Dionne labels these as “false choices*” saying in each instance that Americans thought we shouldchoose “either/or” but “both.” I 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. We need both.” I wound up the speech by citing the lesson I had learned in Professor Carroll Quigley’s Western Civilizwhat the new choice is all about* that is what we are here in Cleveland to do. We are not here to save the Democratic Party. We are here to save the United States of America.” That speech was one of the most effective and important I ever made. It captured the essence of what I had learned ifocus from President Bush’s victory in the Gulf War to what we had to do to build a better future. By embracing ideas and values that were both liberal and conservative* it made voters who had not supported Download52259 Democratic presidential candidates in years listen to our message. Aby the rousing reception it received* the speech established me as perhaps the leadinspokesman for the course I passionately believed America should embrace. Several people at the convention urged me to run for President* and I left Cleveland convinced that I had a goochance to captuIn June* my friend Vernon Jordan asked me to go with him to Baden-Baden* Germany* toannual