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Former Senator Bill Bradley delivers remarks at Democratic National Convention
AUGUST 15, 2000
SPEAKERS: FORMER U.S. SENATOR BILL BRADLEY (D-NJ),
FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
BRADLEY: Let me get right to the point. We're all here to elect
the next president of the United States, Al Gore.
(APPLAUSE)
For 15 months I ran for president. It was a joyous journey and I
have the scars to prove it. Ernestine and I have met so many
wonderful people along the way who gave so much to the effort. We'll
never forget you or the hopes that we shared. And I promise we'll
stay true to the causes that bound us together.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
But now we're in a general election, and it's absolutely
essential that we get behind Al Gore.
(APPLAUSE)
I support him. I endorse him. I'll work hard for him. Our
country needs a Democratic president, a Democratic Congress, and most
important, a Democratic conscience. Electing Al Gore and Joe
Lieberman is the right thing to do for our country.
(APPLAUSE)
When you run against someone, you get to know him very well. I
learned that Al Gore is a man of wide-ranging intellect with a deep
desire to serve, profound preparation for the job, and a strong sense
of loyalty and a life view infused with tolerance and rooted in
religious faith.
BRADLEY: What strikes me is that we share so much more than what
we disagree on. We fight for the same Democratic values, and we will
fight for them together in the fall.
(APPLAUSE)
With the Supreme Court at stake, Social Security at the
crossroads, the use of our budget surpluses up for grabs, we all know
the importance of this election, and it will not be easy. So join the
fight with me tonight, my fellow Democrats, with all of our resources
and energy, so that we can elect the man whose leadership will make
America a better place.
(APPLAUSE)
But this election is not merely a choice between two individuals.
It's a choice between two philosophies of leadership. It's a choice
between a Republican Party that's determined to give the fruits of our
hard-won prosperity to those who don't need the help and a Democratic
Party that promises to use this great opportunity to provide care for
the ill, to lift up millions from poverty, to heal the racial divide
and to ensure that every child has a decent public school.
(APPLAUSE)
BRADLEY: It's a choice. Are we going to go back to the politics
of the haves and have-nots, or are we going to invest in the future of
America?
(APPLAUSE)
Democrats can do great things, because we're the party of hope,
we're the party of change. Democrats don't shy away from
opportunities and difficulties that are the new age, we respond to
them with new ideas and new actions. We don't window dress diversity;
we are the party of diversity.
(APPLAUSE)
We don't declare ourselves compassionate; we've been acting
compassionately for decades.
(APPLAUSE)
We don't just talk about prosperity; we make it happen.
(APPLAUSE)
Don't read my lips; watch what we do.
(APPLAUSE)
Watch what we've always done. Watch what the values of our
parties has always been, the convictions that Franklin Roosevelt and
Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson stood for, that Jimmy Carter lives for
even now, that Bill Clinton still fights for; the ideals of Jack and
Bobby and Martin, the ideals they died for.
(APPLAUSE)
BRADLEY: As Democrats, we look where there's triumph and
progress, but also where there's suffering and neglect. We know that
in our hearts that compassion is a necessary ingredient of a just
society. But as Democrats, we're not conservative with our
compassion.
(APPLAUSE)
At our best, we give it generally -- we give it generously. We
give it in civil rights. We give when we raise the minimum wage. We
give it when we protect the beauty and purity of our mountain streams
and great wilderness. We give it when we open ourselves to the dreams
of new immigrants who are expanding the dimensions of our identity
once again.
(APPLAUSE)
My grandfather was an immigrant. And he never got tired of
telling his grandson -- me -- what America meant to him. And he said
America was great because it was free and because people cared about
each other. That's also why the Democratic Party is great -- we push
forward the boundaries of freedom and turn caring into action.
(APPLAUSE)
I believe initiative deserves its reward.
BRADLEY: Wealth is an appropriate reward for effort. We should
always have our eyes on our dreams, but I also believe that the task
of leadership is to make sure that all Americans have a chance to
fulfill their dreams.
Tonight there are 44 million Americans without health insurance.
That's 44 million Americans who can't take their sick baby to a
doctor, who don't have anyone to attend to their dying parents, who
can't get medical help so they can stay on the job. So let's think
again, 44 million Americans. That equals more than all the people
living in 12 of our states, from the Mississippi River to the Rocky
Mountains.
Whether your Democrat or Republican or independent, can we be so
insensitive to say that their plight is of no concern to us? Would we
write-off the health of all the people living in 12 of our 50 states?
AUDIENCE: No.
BRADLEY: Unlikely. Unlikely.
Yet, because the uninsured are not concentrated in any one area,
they seem invisible to us. But the Democratic dream must include them
and fulfill the promise of health care for all.
(APPLAUSE)
My friend, Senator Paul Wellstone, tells the story...
(APPLAUSE)
... about a fourth-grade teacher in a poor area of Minnesota.
The teacher walked into the classroom one day and said, "How many of
you in here had a big breakfast today?"
BRADLEY: And 10 of the 20 kids raised their hands. He said,
"How many of you in here had any breakfast today?" Six more kids
raised their hands. He said, "What about the other four, what about
you?" Silence. Finally, one little girl, somewhat self-consciously,
raised her hand and said, "It wasn't my turn to eat today."
When the founders of our republic said that life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness were the unalienable rights of all Americans,
they didn't say anything about taking turns.
(APPLAUSE)
They didn't say that it was your turn today to have life and
liberty, but not tomorrow, that it was your turn tomorrow to pursue
happiness, but not today. The whole point of the American ideal is
that opportunity is always present for all of us. Yet the chance that
this chance is being denied to millions of working families who are
trapped in a prison of poverty.
Tonight, one-fifth of the children in this country are ill-fed,
ill-housed and ill-educated. When there's a natural disaster -- a
hurricane, a flood -- we don't talk about repairing a roof here, a
window there, a house here, a bridge there. We make an enormous
investment in restoring things the way they were before the disaster
struck. Child poverty is such a disaster.
BRADLEY: Most of us would never turn our backs on a starving
child. Yet every day we ignore 13 million poor children in this
country. If all of them were gathered in one place, it would create a
city bigger than New York, and we would then see child poverty for the
slow-motion national disaster that it is. If we don't end child
poverty in our lifetime, shame on me, shame on you, shame on all of
us.
(APPLAUSE)
But our ability to end child poverty and provide health care for
all depends on our will to defeat the special interests and return
politics to the people.
Democracy, from it's very beginnings, has always been a
vulnerable form of government: vulnerable to armies from without and
tyrants from within, vulnerable to the complacency of citizens and the
secret maneuverings of powerful groups, and vulnerable to the
influence of money.
Every generation has to fight for democracy in its own way. Our
fight is campaign finance reform.
(APPLAUSE)
BRADLEY: Let the Democratic Party take up the torch of reform
and once again return politics to the people.
(APPLAUSE)
Is tackling these problems an unrealistic goal in these times of
unprecedented prosperity? No. To those who've called our goals
unrealistic I say, No. I don't call these goals unrealistic, I call
them common sense. I call them Democratic. I call them American.
(APPLAUSE)
I've been on the road in America for 30 years, as a basketball
player, a U.S. senator, a writer, a speaker and a presidential
candidate. And over those 30 years I've come to have a sense of who
the American people are. And basically I think we're a good people, I
think there's goodness in most of us, and if we'd simply see the
goodness in our neighbor it would be a form of connection that would
make us feel less cynical, less fearful, less isolated.
And all of those connections together is really our untapped
potential as a country. I mean, whenever I see somebody, for example,
who can see beneath skin color or eye shade or sexual orientation to
the individual, I think all of us could be that good.
BRADLEY: Martin Luther King once said that the reason the civil
rights movement didn't occur sooner than it did in America was because
of the silence of good people.
What we Democrats must be about is asking good people to come
forward and join us so our voices can be heard.
(APPLAUSE)
During the presidential primary, I was thrilled by the thousands
of young Americans across the country who volunteered for our effort.
Since the primaries, I've heard from so many parents who told me that
the experience gave their children something to believe in that was
larger than themselves. It allowed them to see that there is honor in
working for a better world, that it's not naive to appeal to the
better side of our nature, that it's all right to have faith in your
neighbor, in the people, in humankind.
To all those young people who believe that America can be just, I
say: Never give up and never, never sell out.
(APPLAUSE)
You don't have to give up. You don't have to give up your
idealism to be successful in America.
BRADLEY: You don't have to become complacent.
To the contrary, you should be outraged by the undermining of our
democracy, the poverty of so many American children, the absence of
health care, the shame of racism. And if you get angry enough and
you're smart enough and you work hard enough, you can change things.
And make no mistake about that.
(APPLAUSE)
I believe that America is a great country. But I also believe it
can be a greater country and so do many other Americans. There's a
great wave beginning in this country. I saw it and felt it
practically every day for over a year.
And when it breaks, it will carry the trappings of political
privilege with it, it will vanquish the insidious bond between big
money and political decisions, it will break the grip of political
lies on our imagination, it will put people back into politics and
usher in a new day full of hope and honesty, full of humanity and
caring, a day that Americans yearn for, a day the Democratic
leadership can help bring about, a day that will come.
Let us have the courage to make that day come now.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you.
END
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