Inaugural Presidential Address

Inaugural Presidential Address

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Inaugural Presidential Address
by William Jefferson Clinton This eBook is for the use of anyone
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Title: Inaugural Presidential Address
Author: William Jefferson Clinton
Release Date: December 20, 2003 [EBook #10510]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
INAUGURAL PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS ***

Note: This was originally published as an extra by Project Gutenberg
on the day that President Clinton gave the speech in 1993. However, it
was never given a PG etext number. It is now being reposted so that it
can be correctly cataloged.

The following 1600 words comprise William Jefferson Clinton's
Inaugural Presidential Address given from noon to 12:15 P.M., January
20, 1993.
[Capitals represent emphasis, extra commas represent pauses, long
pauses are represented by ellipses (. . .).]

Bill Clinton's Inaugural Address
My fellow citizens, today we celebrate the mystery of American
renewal. This ceremony is held in the depth of winter, but by the words
we speak and the faces we show the world, we force the spring. A
spring reborn in the world's oldest democracy, that brings forth the
vision and courage to reinvent America. When our founders boldly
declared America's independence to the world, and our purposes to the
Almighty, they knew that America, to endure, would have to change.
Not change for change sake, but change to preserve America's ideals:
life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless.
Each generation of American's must define what it means to be an
American. On behalf of our nation, I salute my predecessor, President
Bush, for his half-century of service to America . . . and I thank the
millions of men and women whose steadfastness and sacrifice
triumphed over depression, fascism and communism.
Today, a generation raised in the shadows of the Cold War assumes
new responsibilities in a world warmed by the sunshine of freedom, but
threatened still by ancient hatreds and new plagues. Raised in
unrivalled prosperity, we inherit an economy that is still the world's
strongest, but is weakened by business failures, stagnant wages,
increasing inequality, and deep divisions among OUR OWN people.
When George Washington first took the oath I have just sworn to
uphold, news travelled slowly across the land by horseback, and across
the ocean by boat. Now the sights and sounds of this ceremony are
broadcast instantaneously to billions around the world.
Communications and commerce are global. Investment is mobile.
Technology is almost magical, and ambition for a better life is now
universal.
We earn our livelihood in America today in peaceful competition with
people all across the Earth. Profound and powerful forces are shaking
and remaking our world, and the URGENT question of our time is
whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy. This new
world has already enriched the lives of MILLIONS of Americans who
are able to compete and win in it. But when most people are working
harder for less, when others cannot work at all, when the cost of health
care devastates families and threatens to bankrupt our enterprises, great

and small; when the fear of crime robs law abiding citizens of their
freedom; and when millions of poor children cannot even imagine the
lives we are calling them to lead, we have not made change our friend.
We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we
have not done so. Instead we have drifted, and that drifting has eroded
our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence.
Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Americans
have ever been a restless, questing, hopeful people, and we must bring
to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us. From
our Revolution to the Civil War, to the Great Depression, to the Civil
Rights movement, our people have always mustered the determination
to construct from these crises the pillars of our history. Thomas
Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our nation
we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow
Americans, this is OUR time. Let us embrace it.
Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine
of our OWN renewal. There is nothing WRONG with America that
cannot be cured by what is RIGHT with America.
And so today we pledge an end to the era of deadlock and drift, and a
new season of American renewal has begun.
To renew America we must