Tonight every one of you knows deep in your heart that we are too divided. It is time to heal America. And so we must say to every American: Look beyond the stereotypes that blind us. We need each other. All of us, we need each other. We don’t have a person to waste. And yet for too long politicians have told most of us that are doing all right that what’s really wrong with America is the rest of us. Them. Them, the minorities. Them, the liberals. Them, the poor, them, the homeless, them, the people with disabilities. Them, the gays.
We’ve gotten to where we’ve nearly them’ed ourselves to death. Them and them and them. But this is America. There is no them; there is only us. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
That is our Pledge of Allegiance and that’s what the New Covenant is all about. . . . As a teenager I heard John Kennedy’s summons to citizenship. And then, as a student at Georgetown, I heard that call clarified by a professor named Carroll Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest nation in history because our people had always believed in two great ideas: that tomorrow can be better than today, and that every one of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so. That kind of future entered my life the night our daughter, Chelsea, was born. As I stood in that delivery room, I was overcome with the thought that God had given me a blessing my own father never knew: the chance to hold my child in my arms.
Somewhere at this very moment, a child is being born in America. Let it be our cause to give that child a happy home, a healthy family, and a hopeful future. Let it be our cause to see that that child has a chance to live to the fullest of her God-given capacities. . . . Let it be our cause that we give this child a country that is coming together, not coming apart—a country of boundless hopes and endless dreams; a country that once again lifts its people and inspires the world.
Let that be our cause, our commitment, and our New Covenant.
My fellow Americans, I end tonight where it all began for me: I still believe in a place called Hope. God bless you and God bless America.
When my speech was over and the applause had died down, the convention ended with a song written for the occasion by Arthur Hamilton and my old friend and fellow high-school musician Randy Goodrum, “Circle of Friends.” It was sung by the Broadway star Jennifer Holiday, backed by the Philander Smith College Choir from Little Rock; ten-year-old Reggie Jackson, who had wowed the convention Monday night singing “America the Beautiful”; and my brother, Roger. Before long they had us all singing “Let’s join a circle of friends, one that begins and never ends.”
It was a perfect end to the most important speech I’d ever delivered. And it worked. We were widening the circle. Three different polls showed my message had strongly resonated with the voters, and we had a big lead, of twenty or more points. But I knew we couldn’t hold that margin. For one thing, the Republican cultural base of white voters with a deep reluctance to vote for any Democratic presidential candidate was about 45 percent of the electorate. Also, the Republicans had not held their convention yet. It was sure to give President Bush a boost. Finally, I’d just had six weeks of good press coverage and a week of direct, completely positive access to America. It was more than enough to push all the doubts about me into the recesses of public consciousness, but, as I well knew, not enough to erase them. TWENTY-EIGHT
T he next morning, July 17, Al, Tipper, Hillary, and I drove over to New Jersey to begin the first of several bus tours across America. They were designed to bring us into small towns and rural areas never visited in modern presidential campaigns, which had become dominated by rallies in major media markets. We hoped the bus tour, the brainchild of Susan Thomases and David Wilhelm, would keep the excitement and momentum of the convention going.
