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In approximately three weeks you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make your decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is theer more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?
If that sounds familiar to some of you it may be that you recall Ronald Reagan asking these very same questions in 1980. Those questions are as pertinent today as they were then--perhaps more so. After 9/11 we were united as never before. The world was behind us in our efforts to bring the murderers of 3000 people to justice. Today, things are very different. What happened in just three years? This president made the fateful decision to invade Iraq. He did this without a coalition or a plan to win the peace. This has divided the world and divided the American people. In 2000, we had a candidate who won the popular vote but was denied the white house because he didn't win the electoral vote. The candidate who did become president promised to be, "A united, not a divider"--and after that election we needed that. But he has governed very differently and squandered the great opportunity that the tragedy of 9/11 provided us.
We need a new start--a new plan and new ideas. The president has proven time and again that he is inflexible and what he promises is more of the same. Can we afford four more years of this? Can we afford four more years of going it alone? can we afford four more years of outsourcing jobs? four more years of declining incomes? four more years of people losing their health insurance? four more years of mounting debt for our children?
Mr. Bush has called me a "typical Massachusetts politician" well, let me quote another typical Massachusetts politician--John F. Kennedy when I say "let's get our country moving again" in the right direction. I'm going to challenge our citizens the same way John Kennedy did, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." If all of us give a little, we cannot fail.
Thank you and God Bless America.
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