Addresses Supporters at Campaign Rally

HEADLINE: BILL BRADLEY ADDRESSES SUPPORTERS AT CAMPAIGN RALLEY; NEW YORK
SPEAKER: BILL BRADLEY, DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

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BRADLEY: Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you Harvey. Thank you.

How is everybody doing today? All right?

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You've all been sworn in by the judge right?

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You're going to do what the judge says?

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You're going to bring 10, how about 20, how about 30, how about 40, how about 50?

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All right. How many of you have seen the commercial that Ed Koch is doing with Spike Lee on my behalf?

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OK. I figure anybody who can get Ed Koch and Spike Lee together can take care of a lot of problems, you know.

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Thank you very much Mr. Mayor, and you will always be Mr. Mayor in all of our hearts. Thank you.

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It's wonderful to have him on my side. He's been there from the very beginning. He's been a stalwart. He tells it like it is. When he agrees with you he tells you; when he doesn't agree with you he tells you. When things are going well he tells you; when things are not going well he tells you. That's what you need for somebody who is a good supporter. Ed Koch, thank you very much.

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Norma Renerous (ph) thank you so much for being here. She's the local Democratic power.

Harvey Keitel, thank you for your wonderful remarks, and the sensitivity you showed in telling us your personal story about this park, and your commitment to politics, and why you're in this race. You're a great actor, a great American, a great Marine. Thank you very much Harvey Keitel.

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Now there is somebody else standing up here on the platform too. He's taller than I am. His name is Dave DeBusher (ph).

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And there was a time in my life when I slept in a room with Dave DeBusher (ph) more nights than I slept with my wife.

(LAUGHTER)

But time passed, time passed. Now that's long the other way.

(LAUGHTER)

Thank you very much Dave for being here.

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You know it's—I want to be very direct with you today. I want to be a little bit like those two guys that get off work, a night shift in New Jersey and go to a diner. They walk in, there's a kind of crusty waitress that's been there about 30 years and she comes up and she says to guys at the table: What do you want?

One guy says well I want to Danish and coffee. The other person—she says to the other guy: What do you want?

He says, well I want two eggs over easy, bacon and toast. And how about a kind word?

So she goes, gets the food, comes back 10 minutes later, throws the Danish and coffee on the table, throws the eggs, the bacon and toast on the table, starts to leave. And the guy says: How about the kind word?

She turns and says, if I were you I wouldn't eat them eggs.

(LAUGHTER)

Now that's the kind of straight talk I think we need in this campaign. That's the kind of straight talk we need in this country today. We know that we're living in the greatest country in the world, at the greatest time of our prosperity and we know that we have capacities to do things that have yet been done.

And when we look out there in the midst of all the change that's taking over in our life, whether it's information technology, whether it's the international economy, whether it's changes in the international threat picture, whether it's change in immigration patterns, whether it's changes in our families, the person who would be president of the United States has got to give people a new story for a new century.

And I believe that that...

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... and I believe that that story has got to be able—something that you can see and understand and see yourself in, and say you can get a piece of that prosperity, that we can live up to the ideals of our founders, and that each of us in our own way will be able to find some meaning in our life that's deeper than simply the possession of material things.

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And here we are. Last quarter, the economy grew at 7 percent, 5 percent the last two quarters. If it continues on this path, within a decade it will be almost double the size it is now. And so I ask you a question in the midst of all this prosperity—you know Eleanor Roosevelt once said that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

And I would ask you today what is your dream for yourself, for your family and for your country. My dream is that we can begin to do things in this country that will fulfill the promises that we made to each other as citizens but we have not yet done.

And now we have no excuse. The only thing we need is a leader who sees our moment clearly, who understands that we have opportunity in the midst of all this change, who seizes this moment to heal our social fabric so that we will be a stronger nation in the long run.

Now what does that mean we need to do?

That means we have to provide access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

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The other day a couple of weeks ago I was up in New England and I met a women. She said that we works one job, her husband works two jobs. They have four kids. But they can't afford health insurance. And she took her child to the doctor one day, and she was leaving and getting ready to pay the bill, it had been a strep throat diagnosis, and the boy looks at his mother as says, mom I'm sorry. And she says: Why are you sorry? He says I'm sorry because I got sick.

There should be no child in America that has to apologize to his parent because he got sick. We're a country great enough to be able to insure everybody in this country.

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The next thing we have to be able to do is we have to be able to put a qualified teacher in every classroom in America.

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You saw the story a couple of weeks ago where the Secretary of the Education said there were 250,000 unqualified teachers in America, teaching, by quick math, about six million children.

As we go into the new economy that's not going to be good enough. What I want to do is double what the federal government spends on education but hold schools accountable for results.

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The third thing we have to do is make sure that we lay out a program amidst all of this plenty, that will have the prospect of eliminating child poverty within 10 years.

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The next thing we have to do, and we've all seen the stories this week, yet five more kids killed outside Pittsburgh, a first grader killed. We know that in 1996 there were 15 people killed in Japan with a handgun, 30 people killed in Great Britain with a handgun, and 9,390 Americans killed with a handgun in that one year alone.

BRADLEY: It's about time we brought some sanity to this. It's about time somebody took on the NRA.

And that's what I'm going to do.

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And then all of this we can accomplish if we have something else this country desperately needs, and that is a new kind of politics. Not politics as usual, not the politics of attacks and a thousand promises, not the interest group politics where you stuff this group with money in the mouth—stuff that mouth with money, stuff that mouth with money, but a politics that calls on each of us, sees us not as real estate agents, or lawyers, or plumbers but sees us as human beings and as Americans. And has an open embracing of an idealism that can carry all of us to higher ground so that we know that we can fulfill the promises that our founders made to future generations.

And now we have the capacity to do that and we must do that. But in order to do that we need campaign finance reform. We need a cold mountain stream to run through Washington and take out all of the special interests.

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So I want to tell you how much I appreciate you being here today. You took the judges oath. It's up to a hundred a person now.

(LAUGHTER)

We're a little behind but it's not over.

You know I came from Missouri. You know Harry Truman, they said he was finished in 1948, he didn't have chance. And you know what happened there: He came from behind and won.

Let's do that on Tuesday.

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Thank you very much. Thank you.

END

NOTES:
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