Bill Clinton: Americans must choose between two strong men

From a speech given by the former President of the United States at the Democratic National Convention, in Boston

Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on 12 September 2001 cared who won the next presidential election. All we wanted was to be one country, strong in the fight against terror, helping to heal those who were wounded and the families of those who lost their loved ones, reaching out to the rest of the world so we could meet these new challenges and go on with our democratic way of life.

Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on 12 September 2001 cared who won the next presidential election. All we wanted was to be one country, strong in the fight against terror, helping to heal those who were wounded and the families of those who lost their loved ones, reaching out to the rest of the world so we could meet these new challenges and go on with our democratic way of life.

The President had an amazing opportunity to bring the country together under his slogan of compassionate conservatism, and to unite the world in the struggle against terror.

Instead, he and his congressional allies made a very different choice. They chose to use that moment of unity to try to push the country too far to the right and to walk away from our allies, not only in attacking in Iraq before the weapons inspectors had finished their work, but in withdrawing American support for the climate change treaty and for the international court on war criminals and from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

We Americans must choose for President between two strong men who both love their country but who have very different world views: our nominee, John Kerry, who favours shared responsibility, shared opportunity, and more global co-operation, and their President and their party in Congress, who favour concentrated wealth and power, leaving people to fend for themselves, and more unilateral action.