...I have to tell you my friends, California is the promised land for a Democrat.  You, you have a Democratic governor who is about to win re-election to a second term.  You have two extraordinary United States Senators, my friends Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, the fighting Barbara Boxer.  You have the new minority whip, and soon to be majority whip, Nancy Pelosi, an extraordinary woman. You have that dynamic and rather funny attorney general who has coined a new term for America, enronium. You have a treasurer, a controller, a Democrat statehouse, a Democrat state senate, and one little ole Republican secretary of state.  Now that's my kind of bipartisanship folks.

Now, this is a pretty special day.  You've got Tom Daschle, who you've just heard, and isn't he doing a tremendous job.  You've got Tom Daschle here, you've got John Edwards here, you got Gray Davis here.  Al Gore would have been here, folks, but to make sure Democrats are protected for '04 somebody had to be moved to an undisclosed, secure location.

A number of you, a number of you have asked me if I am interested in running for the most powerful office in the land, and I want to make it clear to all of you today, I want to make it clear, I have no interest at all in being Secretary of State of Florida.

Now I've been fascinated by this controversy over the judges at the Olympics so I made some calls and I did some research about those judges.  And I found out, you know where they came from?  They were all former Florida election officials.

Let me, all joking aside, say to you it is really very special for me to be here in California at your State Convention. Your state, many of you may not know this and there's no reason you would, has a huge place in my life.  I first came here as a freshly minted naval officer, and I was assigned to remarkably difficult duty: Treasure Island, San Francisco.  I got to know San Francisco dangerously well for a 23-year old naval officer. I learned how to navigate complex issues like the Fillmore West, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones.

And after coming back from my first tour of duty in Vietnam, I was then assigned to a gunboat command and I went to Coronado, San Diego.  Now, again it was tough.  Living in an apartment on Pacific Beach, surfing every day until we dropped, and returning from survival training to the greatest beer I ever tasted.  Thank God for California, folks.

I must tell you though, California really was indelibly imprinted in my mind because of its beauty, because of its attitude.  And I really came close, I went through this long wrestling match about where I would settle and where I'd go home.  But one of the reasons it is so ingrained is because just a few steps from here was the place where life for my generation changed--the Ambassador Hotel.

I was on my ship returning to Long Beach from the Gulf of Tonkin. And on the first crackling of the radio that we picked up as we approached the coastline of California we heard the end of Robert Kennedy's victory speech, the shots fired in the kitchen, the chaos.

We docked early the next morning in Long Beach--June 6th, 1968 and Robert Kennedy died that day.

It was strange, I will tell you, coming home from a place of violence to a place of violence at home...a violence that shook our very sense of the order of things.

And thirty four years later we have again felt the order disrupted. September 11th has challenged us not just to focus on terrorism and to fight it, but it has challenged us to focus on what's really important in life--to ask questions about life itself in America, about choices too long deferred.

And the patriotism we share today underscores our determination to do whatever is necessary to make our nation safe. There are no labels--no Democrats, no Republicans; we are united one America, one President, one purpose to make clear: No terrorist will steal our way of life in the United States of America, none.

But there is a reason that we come here in convention today. It's not just to feel good about ourselves united as Americans in our struggle against terrorism. We come here to fight for an agenda for our nation, to fight for the truths that define our lives and our values.

That's what Robert Kennedy's journey was all about and that's what our journey should be about.

He reminded us that all the "material measures" of life in America "do not count the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It doesn't include the strength of our marriages, or the beauty of our poetry, the intelligence of our public debate, or the integrity of our public officials." He told us in stark terms that what we measure "could tell us everything about America, except why we are most proud of being Americans."

We have come here today, all of us as Democrats, from all across this great state because we know the real strength of our nation doesn't come out of the muzzle of an M16, it doesn't drop from the belly of a B52, it doesn't come from the accuracy of a cruise missile, awesome as all of those are.

The real strength of America comes from the education of our citizens.  It comes, it comes from the safety and nurturing of all our children; it comes from the empowerment of parents to create family and community at the same time; it comes from the full protection of rights under the law; and it comes ultimately from the conservation for generations to come of this fragile planet that we share with the other 94% of humanity.

Our real strength, our real strength, I think all of you would agree, comes also from the unexpected: It comes from passengers joining together to stop terrorists from driving an airplane into the White House or the Capitol; it comes from firefighters and police rushing into the World Trade Center to save lives; it comes from veterans of our wars marching slowly down the street on Memorial Day; and it comes even from the easy comradeship of two people who've been married a long time.  These are not measured in our Gross National Product.

But all of these and much more are what really define America; they make it the America that we know and love and they decide in the end whether we end the week with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, whether we begin a new week with purpose and eagerness. They are the measure of our pride in country and community.

That's why I say to you, with all the conviction that tells me I know why I served, the values that were so worth fighting for on September 10th were not altered, changed or killed on September 11th, and we must get back to fighting for those values.

I respectfully say to you here in convention in California that those values are even more worth fighting for today and they represent a struggle that should not and will not be stopped by Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaida.

That's why we're here today to recommit to the fight and to define the things worth fighting for.

As all of you know, life is about more than the 30 second soundbites on television or slogans in campaigns.  Life is about choices, and so is politics when practiced properly.

And one of the first things worth fighting for is fairness, fundamental fairness.

And Enron, Enron makes it crystal clear: No worker in America should be robbed of years of labor by unconscionable personal greed. No employee, no employee should see retirement savings wiped away by arrogant executives who live by special privilege.

One of my colleagues compared the executives of Enron to the Corleone family. I think that's an insult...to the Corleones.

You know we hear a lot about values, you always hear values coming out of the mouths of our friends from the other side of the aisle. But values to them are too often just code words for excluding some Americans from fully sharing in the rights and opportunities of our country. So I say to you that we have to leave here more determined than ever to resist their judicial assault on civil rights, reject Judge Pickering, and protect the right to choose.  And we must leave here more determined than ever to protect a new generation of immigrants' rights to be the next generation to make America great.

Nothing, nothing could make the gulf between their sense of values and ours more clear than the Republicans' budget and economic plan for this year.

Time and time again, the President and his Party have used every excuse under the sun to give these lopsided tax cuts that reward those already most rewarded.

Now we witness the most amazing policy of all--taking money from Social Security and Medicare to give a tax cut to the richest corporations and the most well off individuals. My friends that is Robin Hood in reverse, it's wrong, and it must be stopped, and we will stop it!

Now, let me tell you, as long as our Party exists, we will insist on a different vision for our country.  We have to guarantee that in tough economic times there will be unemployment and health coverage for workers who lose their jobs. We have to make sure that every person who gets up in the morning, goes to work, pays their taxes, and lives by the rules, that all of them can count on a secure retirement, and that no board room schemer will steal away the lifeblood of their retirement. That's why we Democrats will protect Social Security, because it's the fundamental contract between working people and this country.

Our fight, our fight my friends, is for fairness. Their's is to chip away at the right of workers to organize, the right to earn a minimum wage, let alone a living wage, and the right even to bargain.

I say that it is time to remind our Republican friends that the firefighters and the police officers they are so quick to make speeches about, the ones who climbed those stairs of the World Trade Center in order to give their lives so that others may live, they were all members of a union and they believed in the right of workers to organize.  They believed in the right to organize.

Now I know, I know that for many of you, for many of our fellow citizens in this country, what they see in Washington seems like nothing more than an adult food fight. But, in truth, it is so much more.

It's a struggle between different attitudes and expectations about life; it's a struggle that's as old as time. Plato and Aristotle asked the questions we ask today, that we still haven't answered.  These are real differences worth fighting for.  And it's not partisan politics; it's differences about how we see the world and how we see our responsibilities to each other.

One of the things that I most remember from my early days in California--June 1968--are the words of the poet George Bernard Shaw, quoted so eloquently then: "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not."

I believe that more than ever, more than ever our party needs to get back to dreaming things that never were and asking "why not?"

Why not, why not in the richest nation on the face of this planet, health insurance for every American?

Why not prescription drug coverage for all of our senior citizens?

Why not, why not give real meaning to the words "leave no child behind" by giving every child an early start, a healthy start, and a head start?

Instead of being forced, instead of being forced to spend $50,000 a year per prisoner to lock young people in jail cells for the rest of their lives, instead of running and being content to run a farm system for criminals, why not invest $5,000 a year for early childhood education and give kids the opportunity to be good citizens for life.

Why not give birth to a whole new generation of women and minority entrepreneurs who will lead a new America into a truly New Economy?

Doing these things, doing these things my fellow Democrats is a matter of will power, not capacity.  It's a matter of leadership, not fate.  And in the end, I believe these choices are worth making, and they are differences worth fighting for. But they're not the only ones.

Nothing makes the difference in vision more clear than the choices of this Administration on the environment and energy. And nowhere do you understand that better than right here in California.

I believe it's time to set a national goal of having 20% of our electricity come from domestic alternative and renewable sources by the year 2020. Twenty twenty: that's a vision worthy of America; and I believe that's a goal our fellow Americans are ready to embrace.

In fact, California already generates 13% of its power from renewables; you're leading the way.

This Administration has been willing to mislead Americans pretending that we can be oil independent by drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. You already get it.  You don't have to destroy a wildlife refuge to meet the energy needs of America.

We will meet those needs, and I tell you so long as Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Tom Daschle and I are in the United States Senate and our colleagues, we will do it without drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and that is a pledge!

So I say, so I say to you, why not a real blueprint for energy security for our country? Why not challenge our scientists, our entrepreneurs, our universities, our citizens to push the technology curve, to liberate ourselves from oil, to join in a new mission to the moon here on earth--a mission that will create good jobs, not pollution.

To those, to those who think the old way is the only way, let me just tell you as a veteran why I feel so strongly about creating energy sources of the future: Because no foreign government can embargo them. No terrorist can seize control of them. And no American son or daughter will have to risk his or her life to protect them. We should get about this business.

The inescapable truth, the inescapable truth is: we cannot drill our way to energy independence; we must invent our way there, and that is the task of this country.

All of these, all of these are choices to put in front of our nation today, not to wait.  And all of these choices are to be measured against everything that we are and everything we want to be.  I know that everything I understand about America tells me these are choices worth fighting for.

As I told you I was trained here in California to go to war. And I learned a lot here, but I also learned real lessons about leadership thousands of miles away on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta among a special band of brothers. It was there that I learned to measure what's important through the promises that soldiers make to each other, that real courage means doing what's right.

You know the Army says they never leave their wounded, and the marines say they never leave even their dead. I say it's time we joined together in our beloved country, all of us as Citizen Soldiers, committed to a cause greater than ourselves to ensure that no American is left behind.

That my fellow Democrats is not just what makes us different from the other party, it defines our spirit; it's what makes us proud to be Americans.  Thank you.

Transcript copyright © 2002  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action