beyon
The ultimate test of presidential leadership, of course,
efense budgets or battle plans, it is the judgement the
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president exercises in the powerless moments when countries are invaded, friends are threatened, Americans are held hostage, and our nation's interests are on the line.
When the American people chose a president they want someone they can trust to act when those moments arrive. Every president in the last half century has had to confront the fateful decision to send Americans into combat. I do not relish this prospect, but neither do I shrink from it I know we must have the resolve constantly to deter, sometimes to fight, and always to win.
That is why Al Gore and I supported the decision to use force to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and why we stand united with President Bush in sending the message to Saddam as he (inaudible)
the U.N.'s resolution, tow the line or face the music.
Whatever the threat or opportunity, national security is and must remain a bipartisan task. At the nations we have many opinions, but only one foreign policy, yet presidential elections are, as I said at the beginning, about choices. And the choice the American people must make this year will revolve around the kind of presidential leadership we want in a fundamentally new era.
In this election, Mr. Bush will seek to establish his leadership by emphasizing the time he spent, the calls he's placed, the trips he's taken in the conduct of foreign policy.
But the measure of leadership in this new era is not the conversation held or the miles traveled. It is a new reality's recognized, the crisis adverted, the opportunity seized.
(Applause.)
In the next 82 days I challenge him to set his vision of our nation's purpose in a dramatically new era against the one I am presenting in this campaign or in the final analysis, we must have a president ready to think new in a world that is new. It is time for leadership that is strategic, vigorous, and grounded in our
Democratic values, not reactive and tied to a status quo that cannot prevail.
In 1960, John Kennedy told America that there was a new world to be won. Today there is again a new world to be won.
My vision is of a world united in peaceful commerce A World in which nations compete more in economic and less in military terms. A world of dynamic market generated growth that narrows the gap between rich and poor. A world increasingly engaged in