From: jmk@cbnews.cb.att.com (joseph.m.knapp)
Subject: Inaugural Address
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 19:43:24 GMT


                        President William J. Clinton

                             Inaugural Address

                        Wednesday, January 20, 1993


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 re-invent 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's sake, but change to preserve America's ideals
-- life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. And though we march to the
music of our time, our mission is timeless.

Each generation of Americans 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 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 unrivaled 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 traveled slowly across the land by horseback and across the
oceans 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 many
of our enterprises, great and small; when 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. 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 be bold.

We must do what no generation has had to do before. We must invest
more in our own people in their jobs and in their future, and at the
same time cut our massive debt. And we must do so in a world in which we
must compete for every opportunity.

It will not be easy; it will require sacrifice. But it can be done,
and done fairly, not choosing sacrifice for its own sake, but for our
own sake. We must provide for our nation the way a family provides for
its children.

Our Founders saw themselves in the light of posterity. We can do no
less. Anyone who has ever watched a child's eyes wander into sleep knows
what posterity is. Posterity is the world to come -- the world for whom
we hold our ideals, from whom we have borrowed our planet, and to whom
we bear sacred responsibility.

We must do what America does best: offer more opportunity to all and
demand more responsibility from all.

It is time to break the bad habit of expecting something for nothing,
from our government or from each other. Let us all take more
responsibility, not only for ourselves and our families but for our
communities and our country.

To renew America, we must revitalize our democracy.

This beautiful capital, like every capital since the dawn of
civilization, is often a place of intrigue and calculation. Powerful
people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who
is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil
and sweat sends us here and pays our way.

Americans deserve better. And in this city, there are people who want
to do better. And I say to all of you here, let us resolve to reform our
politics, so that power and privilege no longer shout down the voice of
the people. Let us put aside personal advantage so that we can feel the
pain and see the promise of America.

Let us resolve to make our government a place for what Franklin
Roosevelt called "bold, persistent experimentation," a government for
our tomorrows, not our yesterdays.

Let us give this capital back to the people to whom it belongs.

To renew America, we must meet challenges abroad as well as at home.
There is no longer a clear division today between what is foreign and
what is domestic -- the world economy, the world environment, the world
AIDS crisis, the world arms race, they affect us all.

Today, as an old order passes, the new world is more free but less
stable. Communism's collapse has called forth old animosities and new
dangers. Clearly America must continue to lead the world we did so much
to make.

While America rebuilds at home, we will not shrink from the
challenges, nor fail to seize the opportunities, of this new world.
Together with our friends and allies, we will work to shape change, lest
it engulf us.

When our vital interests are challenged, or the will and conscience
of the international community is defied, we will act -- with peaceful
diplomacy whenever possible, with force when necessary. The brave
Americans serving our nation today in the Persian Gulf, in Somalia, and
wherever else they stand are testament to our resolve.

But our greatest strength is the power of our ideas, which are still
new in many lands. Across the world, we see them embraced -- and we
rejoice. Our hopes, our hearts, and our hands, are with those on every
continent who are building democracy and freedom. Their cause is
America's cause.

The American people have summoned the change we celebrate today. You
have raised your voices in an unmistakable chorus. You have cast your
votes in historic numbers. And you have changed the face of Congress,
the presidency, and the political process itself.

Yes, my fellow Americans, you have forced the spring.

Now, we must do the work the season demands.

To that work I now turn, with all the authority of my office. I ask
the Congress to join with me. But no president, no Congress, no
government, can undertake this mission alone.

My fellow Americans, you, too, must play your part in our renewal.

I challenge a new generation of young Americans to a season of
service -- to act on your idealism by helping troubled children, keeping
company with those in need, reconnecting our torn communities. There is
so much to be done -- enough indeed for millions of others who are still
young in spirit to give of themselves in service, too.

In serving, we recognize a simple but powerful truth: We need each
other. And we must care for one another.

Today, we do more than celebrate America; we rededicate ourselves to
the very idea of America:

  * An idea born in revolution and renewed through two centuries of
    challenge;

  * An idea tempered by the knowledge that, but for fate, we -- the
    fortunate and the unfortunate -- might have been each other;

  * An idea ennobled by the faith that our nation can summon from its
    myriad diversity the deepest measure of unity;

  * An idea infused with the conviction that America's long heroic
    journey must go forever upward.

And so, my fellow Americans, as we stand at the edge of the 21st
Century, let us begin anew with energy and hope, with faith and
discipline, and let us work until our work is done. The scripture says,
"And let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season, we shall
reap, if we faint not."

From this joyful mountain top of celebration, we hear a call to
service in the valley.

We have heard the trumpets. We have changed the guard. And now -- each
in our own way, and with God's help -- we must answer the call.

Thank you and God bless you all.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections