I’m pleased to welcome you here tonight to honor our candidates for 2003 and to again recall the symbols of the Democratic Party of the twentieth century - Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The history of the Democratic Party and the history of this nation have been intertwined since the early years of the republic when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on a botanical expedition into the wilds of New York and hooked up with the sachem of Tammany Hall - Aaron Burr. And when Andrew Jackson united the working masses of the Eastern cities and the farmers of the West to oppose the bankers and merchants.

It is a party that has stood for four freedoms as enunciated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt -

The first is freedom of speech and expression --everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship god in his own way-- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, --everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear,--anywhere in the world.

Ours is a party that has stood always for the defenSe of America and our people, and most often against aggressive warlike pursuits abroad. In 1896 and in 1900, led by William Jennings Bryan, our party opposed the Republican-inspired dollar diplomacy imperialist conquests of Cuba and the Philippines - and Democrats ultimately saw to it that those nations became independent.

Led by President Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic Party offered a vision of world peace based on collective security; and a League of Nations that was rejected by the isolationist Republicans became enshrined in our foreign policy after World War II until today.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt pleaded with the Congress in 1935 to adhere to the World Court and bring America’s concepts of law and justice into the world arena. He tried within the strictures of Republican-imposed neutrality to fight Nazism and Fascism everywhere in the world - and led this nation in it’s greatest, most just war. And then true to his party and his mentor, Woodrow Wilson, he forged with England and Russia a United Nations. A United Nations that has been under attack since its inception by the right wing, neanderthal, neo-isolationist, cowboy mentality Republicans and their big corporate sponsors.

In the 1950's our party was led by Adlai E Stevenson of Illinois. He spoke again and again about the need to control the spread of nuclear weapons - to ban atmospehric testing and to disarm. How much easier it would have been to do that then. Now we are faced with two-bit hopped up imitations of Mussolini developing nukes.

Just as FDR inspired my father’s generation so JFK thrilled mine.

His was a presidency of hope and humor. A time when it looked like we could accomplish it all. He was revered around the world for his youth and his personification of what was best about America.

We forget that after World War I the crowds of Europeans cheered President Wilson. That when FDR died he was mourned in every capital in the world - even Moscow. And when JFK was struck down the heads of the nations of the world came to Washington to march behind his funeral cortege led by the tall Frenchman Charles DeGaulle.

You know in the 1960's DeGaulle, the last surviving World War II leader, decided to lead France on a third path. He withdrew France from the military arm of NATO and he began negotiations for detente with the Soviet Union and rapproachment with Germany. And what did President Kennedy do? Well he didn’t rename French Fries, boycott French wine or stop using French dressing on his salad. He sent Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy to Paris and conquered DeGaulle and kept our oldest alliance intact.

If the current temporary occupant of the White House had read his history, and found out that not only was France the first nation to recognize the independence of the United States of America but that - second only to the United States - France was the first to recognize the independence of Texas, perhaps he might have been a bit more tolerant of the right of the French government to disagree with him - and agree with Canada, Mexico and most of the world

Under Presidents Carter and Clinton, our party used the strength of the United States both diplomatically and militarily to support human rights and freedoms everywhere in the world. President Carter may have sacrificed his re-election, but those hostages - every one of them - came home from Iran alive. And today there are people in Kosovo, Bosina, Serbia, East Timor, and Haiti who are getting another chance at freedom - men and women - because of President Bill Clinton.

Now our party faces the year 2004. Will we nominate a Democrat or a Republican clone? Will we offer a choice or an echo? Will we be intimidated by the corporate-controlled mass media led by the Fox network with its bevy of bullying, bragging, Beavis and Butthead type commentators? I think not!

Today, a man rejected by the American people in the election of 2000 with a clique of old cowboys is undermining a century of progressive foreign policy and having failed to convince the American people that isolationism is the way to go has succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that maybe they should isolate America.

I believe this too shall pass. I believe that next year the Democratic Party will rise to the challenge. We will nominate a Democrat. We will nominate a man or woman who will restore America to its leadership in the world not based on the power of its arms but upon the strength of its ideals. A president who will lead an America whose world image is not a burning Mcdonalds, but a Statue of Liberty.

George W Bush will be consigned to the bottom shelves of American history along with Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison.

Tonight we remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. For to paraphrase a line from Shakespeare - these were the noblest Americans of them all.

Today the liberal progressive ideals they expounded are under attack; many of the programs and policies of the last century are being dismantled and their advocates cowered into retreat. We live under the most conservative President since William McKinley.

But all our history has been a cyclical shifting from reform to reaction to reform. There will be a new birth of reform - progressive and liberal. There will be an America again where compassion is not just something the president preaches but something the government practices. There will be an America again that will lead the world not because of our military might but because the world chooses to be led by the land of democracy and hope.

To some people politics is just a game. To others it becomes a profession. To men and women like Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy it was an avocation. A calling to lead. To lead so others could advance. And to those who saw in the New Deal and the new freedom and the Great Society the future of America and the world I can only echo the words of Senator Edward Kennedy - twenty three years ago - " the work goes on, the cause endures and the dream shall never die."