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General Wesley Clark
Remarks On Twenty Year Vision For America
(As prepared for delivery)
Manchester, NH
January 10, 2004
Thank you for that kind introduction. Now that's what I call a warm welcome! And thank you Jeremy Elliot for those nice words. It's a good thing you're not old enough to run for president, or I'd be reckoning with another fierce competitor. I'd like to recognize former Senator Harris Wofford. I'd also like to thank the conference co-chairs, Professors Phillip Kate Huckins,Wayne Lesperance and Jim Walsh of New England College. And I'd like to thank New England College for hosting this important convention - and all of you for bearing the cold and making your way here this morning.
You know, when I was in college I did whatever I could to avoid waking up early on Saturday mornings. So your attendance today is a testament to your commitment to the democratic process, and a sign that we're clearly doing something right in America.
It's been a few years since I was in college. But if there's one thing I remember like yesterday, it's the excitement I felt my first day of college at West Point. I remember that feeling of being part something so important - something so much bigger than me. That feeling led me to a career of service in the United States Army.
I hope you remember, just as fondly, the work you're doing for this election - and the satisfaction of being involved and getting others involved. This election is like none other in your lifetime, or in mine. It isn't just another partisan battle between Democrats and Republicans. It's a fundamental contest between totally different visions of America's future. And you are part of it. And I thank you for that.
I remember when I was about your age, sitting in front of the television, watching another Democrat talk about the importance of another election. That man was John F. Kennedy and the year was 1961. It was at the height of the Cold War, when our nation faced a growing nuclear threat. President Kennedy challenged my generation, with those now famous words, to ask not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country. We answered that call, because we believed in the America of tomorrow, we knew that we had responsibility in shaping it - not just for our own sake, but for the fate of the free world.
Today, we have arrived at another historical crossroads. The choices we make right now will not only affect where we'll be tomorrow, but where we'll be a generation from now.
I'm here to talk about my vision for America.
Several months ago, I talked about looking a hundred years ahead. And I asked how will the United States fare in such a world? How will we maintain our standard of living? What will we pass on to our grandchildren? Will we still be the leading power in the world?
Many have asked me, "How do we get there?" Others have warned half cynically that in American politics you can't talk about 100 year visions - politicians don't think that far ahead. Fair enough, but I'm not a politician. So today, I want to lay the groundwork for us to think about our world a century from now. I want to do that by providing a little of the connective tissue - by focusing on what we'll find in the next twenty years.
This is a speech about our future. It's not about 2004. It's about America in 2024. It's about what kind of country we want to be twenty years from now -- and the world we want to leave for our children. The world I want to leave for my grandson, Wes, who was born three weeks ago on Christmas Day.
It's been more than two years since 9-11. But its footprints are still fresh on our land.
A week ago, we rang in the New Year at code orange. Tens of thousands of young men and women were on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others are guarding our airports, harbors, and energy infrastructure. All of us, in some way, have given up some measure of our privacy, and in other ways, feel less secure.
The world we knew on September 10, 2001 is gone, changed forever by an irrational, hate-fueled attack.
But living in a time of terrorism is not an excuse for failing to live up to our ideals.
But that's just what our leaders have done. Instead of confronting the threats to our nation head-on, they've used fear to drive us into a war we didn't have to fight. To distort America's priorities abroad and stifle dissent at home. They've used fear as an ally to drive us into the arms of a right-wing foreign policy - a foreign policy that's broken with fifty years of American leadership. Using the same dramatic overtones of World War II, they've used fear to force us back into an era of isolationism - into a replay of the first Gulf War against Saddam.
And here at home, our leaders have put the special interests above the nation's interests, time and time again. They haven't invested in education, and today our schools are overcrowded, underfunded and failing. They haven't invested in health care, and today 44 million Americans go without insurance every day. They haven't invested in job creation, and today millions of Americans are without work. In the last three years alone, half a million children have sunk into poverty.
But September 11th cannot be an excuse for alienating our allies around the world and neglecting hard working Americans here at home. It cannot be an excuse to put our democratic values on hold. And it cannot be - and must not be -- an excuse to abandon the ambition, creativity, and innovation that built our great country.
Today, in the year 2004, we stand at a threshold of a new era. Will we continue down the path of fear and isolation, pursuing America's interests at the expense of others? Or will we reach out to find common ground on which to build a safer world? Will we see an America increasingly divided by a chasm between wealth and opportunity that threatens the very foundations of justice? Or will we dedicate ourselves to helping all Americans reach their full potential? Will we see a democracy that increasingly delegates its responsibilities to a secretive, self-selected elite? Or will we revitalize the spirit of participation on which our nation was founded?
In the America I believe in, the answers to these questions are clear.
It's time for America to return to our historic role as an international leader in law, diplomacy, and the peaceful resolution of disputes. And we will.
It's time to rebuild strong alliances and work with them to meet our security challenges. And we will.
It's time to rededicate ourselves to helping others gain through trade and development, human rights and democratic self rule. And we will.
It's time for an America in which every child can do better than her parents ... in which every American is treated with dignity and respect ... and in which every leader is held accountable through open debate and fair elections. This America will once again be a beacon of hope and a source of inspiration for people everywhere.
I don't believe America's best days are behind us. I believe America's best days lie ahead of us. And that's why I'm running for president - to build a better future, not just for the next four years, or the next eight, but for the next generation. And it starts here in New Hampshire. The choices we make today will affect us for years to come.
The America I believe in is the America that's daring. It's the America that never fears to ask the tough questions, no matter how daunting the answers. It's the America that sets lofty goals and pursues them relentlessly. That's who we are. It's who've always been. And that's what makes us proud to be Americans.
That's who we were when we set our sights westward and settled the frontier.
That's who we were during the Great Depression, when we refused to let poverty and despair break a fragile nation.
That's who we were after World War II, when we rebuilt Europe from the ground up and halted the tide of communism in its tracks.
That's who we were in 1969 when Americans gathered in living rooms across the country to watch as Neil Armstrong planted our flag on the moon.
It's who we were in 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King told a divided nation about his dream for America. And who we should be until we overcome.
I believe in an America that leads by caring and listening -- in the America of the New Frontier, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, and the moon shot. The kind of America that inspires all of us to embrace the future, to feel excited at the dawn of a new day, and to view the past as prologue, not a prison. In short, I believe in an America that is determined to do good and dares to be great. One that pushes the frontiers of human potential in the sciences and education ... in health and the arts.
As we look beyond the next election cycle, we need to ask ourselves: Where will the passion and character of America lead us? We settled a new land, broke the back of the Great Depression, maintained our freedom, preserved the peace during the Cold War, and put a man on the moon. But there are still new frontiers of science, of human potential, of human understanding, and of the human spirit.
If we aim high, and make the right choices, these next twenty years will open vast new frontiers that today may seem like story book fiction, but, in reality, are just over the next hill. They will take us toward the America we should be aiming for a century ahead.
New frontiers that will transform the way we live and lead our lives - not only here at home, but all around the world.
New frontiers that will change the way we understand ourselves - and understand one another.
New frontiers that you and I will live to see, and that I will work to achieve every day as your president.
First is the new frontier of science and technology.
As a kid, I read science fiction books - like Isaac Asimov's The Red Planet Mars - filled with fantastic tales only possible in the imagination. Of magical electronics, communicator devices small enough to fit on your wrist, space flight that was an everyday occurrence, and journeys to far-away planets. Just a few decades later, the science fiction fantasies of my youth have become our realities. We have phones that actually capture moving images, and while space flight isn't an everyday event, just this week, we saw the first up-close pictures of an ancient lake on Mars.
Now, imagine the next twenty years. We don't know when we'll run into the next great breakthrough - the next theory of relativity or the cure to cancer. And even when it happens, we might not know it immediately. Think of the enormous changes triggered by discoveries that were thought to be unimportant at the time, like the laser, the transistor, the x-ray. But the potential for great change - change that will fundamentally alter how we lead our lives -- is certainly likely.
We'll make sure every American has health insurance - but imagine if at birth, every American received a map of their genetic code small enough to fit on a credit card. With it, doctors will be able to predict what diseases you are vulnerable to and take steps ahead of time to prevent them. For instance, even now, if it's caught early enough, colon cancer has a 95 percent cure rate. But if it's missed, that rate plummets. Yet today, most insurance companies don't pay for annual exams until age fifty. So thousands of people die of this disease before they get their first exam.
What if, just by looking at your genetic map, your doctors could spot the genes for colon cancer? And then they could put a note in your electronic medical record to start annual checkups in your thirties -- the time when vulnerability skyrockets. And what if, using genetics, we could apply that same model to dozens of other diseases that today affect your grandparents' generation -- diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's -- saving millions of lives, and extending your life expectancy to a century or more.
We'll move beyond the Space Shuttle and a few unmanned missions within the Solar System with more substantial efforts to help humanity explore the frontiers of space. We'll do it with real programs designed to most efficiently and effectively generate the science skills and technology we need to meet what I believe will be our destiny.
Imagine if in the next twenty years, we actually sent humans - not just rover robots -- to Mars -- which we can do if it truly advances our ambitions. Astrobiologists today believe we will, and as a result, we'll have a better understanding of our own planet and our own people.
But new developments in algebraic geometry and super string theory will allow us to begin to understand the creation of the universe itself. Chaos theory and other developments in science will allow us to predict, with precision, drought, earthquakes, and even volcanic eruption.
This might sound like science fiction, but, in reality, it is right around the corner.
So are innovations in science and technology that will allow us to take on the toughest challenges that have confounded us for generations -- like halting the real and growing threats to our environment.
Take global warming. Studies show that the dangers of global warming are daunting. If we don't address them today, the world as we know it will change irreversibly. Temperature increases of just two degrees will bring devastation to countries like Bangladesh, further melting polar ice caps, and flooding millions of communities around the world.
But it doesn't need to happen. Today, scientists have already developed new energy sources like wind power, which can literally electrify entire communities. And another alternative, solar power, is already heating homes by capturing energy through solar panels built into roof shingles.
And that's just the beginning. With the right leadership, we can develop reliable and inexpensive energy sources to replace today's fossil fuels from the strife-ridden Middle East with cars driven by batteries on hydrogen fuel cells. One experiment that's in the works actually captures and bottles up hydrogen -- the building block of fuel -- produced by tiny bacteria on the ocean floor. And it does so without producing an ounce of carbon dioxide pollution - the number one cause of global warming. Other scientists are developing "smart cars" that can literally drive themselves, making driving both safer and more fuel efficient.
We are right on the edge of new frontiers in science - entire fields committed to disciplines that most Americans have never even heard of - cosmology, nanotechnology, and quantum mechanics.
Of course, every advance in science puts power in human hands. The power to do good, but also the power to do harm. And the more powerful the science, the greater the potential threat. While we must dare to grasp this power and to harness its promise, we must be careful not to unleash its perils. And that can happen if we let discoveries fall into the wrong hands, and if we don't respect strict rules of privacy and bioethics.
Harnessing this power is not just a matter of being well-versed in math and science. It requires a fundamental humanity. A humanity that is based on judgment, wisdom and compassion. That understands the lessons of earlier years and can move beyond the familiar cycles of history. That understands how to use the tools of the modern world not just for human greatness - but for human good.
We can develop that humanity through education that embraces the fullest potential of every single one of our citizens.
And that is the second great frontier, human potential.
Education is the key to a healthy democracy - to the creation of citizens who are informed and engaged, who will hold their leaders and one another accountable. So the classroom should not simply be a place where students cram in knowledge to pass a test. It should be a place where they truly learn how to learn - and truly come to love learning for its own sake. A place where they develop judgment and a sense of responsibility toward their community and their country. A place where they come to understand our past and prepare to embrace our future.
That means coming to grips with our history - all of it - from the scourge of slavery to the struggle to settle the frontier. From the heart-breaking destitution of the Great Depression to the rise of Rosie the Riveter and the women who broke the grip of male domination in American industry. From the anxieties of an America under the threat of nuclear war, confronting the possibility of mutually assured destruction ... to the dark clouds of 9-11 that still hang over our nation.
And our schools must teach culture as well - our art and music and literature. From Longfellow and Emerson to Thoreau and Stowe. From George Gershwin to Wynton Marsalis. From Norman Rockwell to Georgia O'Keefe to Jackson Pollack. And our young people must then move beyond simply learning culture to making it their own, bringing it forward, and sharing it with others around the world.
We must work toward an America where all students have the chance to pick up a paintbrush or an instrument, or climb up on stage. When it comes to human potential, it's time we looked toward the horizon again.
To get there, we must continue to build on the great traditions of American education but we must also rebuild our education system - from preschool to graduate school. That means providing preschool for every single American child. Implementing broad and challenging curricula in every single elementary and secondary school. Opening up the opportunity to attend college to every single graduating senior - and creating lifetime learning opportunities for every adult. And that means igniting the spark of desire in every student, energized by enthusiastic teachers, eager parents, and visionary administrators.
Our investment in education will help us reach across the boundaries that still divide our world. As we study our own culture, we'll absorb the ideas of others - and all of this will help us reach out across continents, and between old enemies. If there is any frontier we should hope to push in the next twenty years, it's one we've neglected for far too long - and that is frontier of human understanding.
Today, vast segments of the developing world's population are struggling, desperate for America's engagement, understanding and assistance. Right now, more than half the world's population is struggling to survive on less than $2 a day, and nearly 1 billion live in chronic hunger. More than one billion of the world's adults cannot read, three-quarters of them women. And half the children in the poorest countries are not in school. Malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhea alone kill 8 million people a year under the age of 15. And already in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe, half of all the 15-year-olds are expected to die of AIDS. We cannot - we must not - allow this to go on.
But that's just what we're doing. For too long now, America has failed to live up to its awesome responsibilities on the world stage. We are the richest nation in education, health care, science, and bottom line dollar wealth. Yet, more often than not, we turn a blind eye to developing nations around the world, those which desperately need our help. More often than not we put the bottom line first.
America's wealth, strength, and character provides us with great power -- but they also confer great obligations. And we must fulfill them in ways that build converging interests and create shared values in an ever shrinking world. This begins with communications and commerce, with cultural exchanges and exchange students. It leads to trade and investments, the creation of capital, the promotion of development, the emergence of human rights and democracy. And it is up to us to begin this process -- to live up to our obligations as a world leader - not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the smart thing to do.
We can drive out HIV-AIDS and malaria, reduce the incidence of poverty, spread knowledge, and, through technology, spread real human understanding.
We'll still need our armed forces and we'll take every necessary action to make America safe - but we'll gain that safety not by force of arms, but by who we are and what we represent. For we should be an America not puffed up by pride in our own power, but rather an America humbled by the recognition of our common humanity. We must make sure that globalization helps people around the world, raising living standards and improving the environment everywhere - rather than leading a race to the bottom.
Working together, we can build a world in which the rule of law - not the rule of force - governs relations between states. A world in which leaders respect the rights of their people, and nations seek peace, not destruction or domination. And neither we nor anyone else should live in fear ever again.
As with science and technology, there could be a dark side of globalization, in which progress for some means poverty for others, as jobs and opportunities ebb and flow, securities and currencies fluctuate in value, and the tension between private profit and public good persists. But surely these are risks that we can manage in a world with an America more attuned to its larger purpose and responsibilities.
The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important -- and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface - differences of color, ethnicity, and gender - to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.
Our goal for the next twenty years should be to finally recognize that our differences are our greatest strength. That's true not only here in America, but in all parts of the world, where we've allowed historic rifts to poison the well of opportunity. They've arisen from the natural prides and passion of humanity. Only when we recognize that - when we respect the human spirit - will we be a great nation and a great world. These are the steps we must take in the next twenty years, as we reach out for the newest frontiers.
In a poem commissioned for the 2002 Olympic Games, Waddie Mitchell wrote, "Since mankind started walking, it's been swifter, higher, stronger, as if pushed by some deep need to keep limits unconfined. Almost thriving, always striving, for things bigger, better, longer, in some unrelenting pursuit of perfection redefined." And that's the America I believe in. An America that takes risks, that dares to be bold. One that looks to the next frontier, ever swifter, higher, and stronger than the day before.
In these next two decades, I am confident that we will make those discoveries in science that will become the next great breakthroughs - and they'll be made here by you and your children. We'll build an educational system that truly unlocks our children's highest potential. And we'll use that potential to transform human understanding and create a world that brings us all closer together. And we'll strengthen the magic of the human spirit and, together, find our future here and in a world beyond.
That is the American way. That's what's made America great. What made our grandparents brave the ocean and undertake the long voyage to our shores. Our streets might not have been paved with gold, but America's future indeed was. And it still can be. But only if we act like Americans again. Only if we bring a higher standard of leadership to Washington. One that looks past the next election to what's best for the next generation.
And today, we can do this only if you and your generation are determined to do good and dare to be great.
Thank you very much.
www.forclark.com
www.wespac2004.com
“A Higher Standard of Leadership”
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