We can all agree the family is the bedrock of our society; that more police can discourage criminality, drug addition and the like; that President Clinton's emphasis on education is important. All these things are needed, but unless our political elite hold themselves to high standards of individual accountability and restore integrity to political life, America's youth will be deprived of the motivational leadership to convince them the American dream is alive and well and they are on a winning team.
The acid test of ethical leadership today is the willingness of the president and Congress (both parties) to bite the bullet of true campaign finance reform. Money politics are disillusioning American youth and undermining our democracy. The world of today's youth is much more complex, more stressful and more dangerous than ever before. This is compelling enough reason to revitalize the art of leadership and restore the principles that made our country good and great.
It's time to get back to basics.
The U.S. has always been a country with a sense of higher purpose around which most Americans can rally in a common desire to achieve. Our destiny was shaped by the founders' vision that all men are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution provided an enduring political and religious franchise while our country expanded its frontiers, fought successful wars and changed from an agricultural federal republic into an industrialized democratic nation.
The principles that gave birth to our nation provided a moral compass for political leaders.
National purposes under the leadership of some of our greatest presidents share one crucial characteristic: strong convictions about what American policy should accomplish -- except to please voters. Theodore Roosevelt's crusade to stir the national conscience to higher aims than the amassing of wealth underscored the responsibility of the individual and the necessity of personal character. Franklin Roosevelt led our country through the greatest economic depression in our history with an agenda for bold action -- a controversial road map, debatable to this day -- but there is general agreement he was a dynamic leader who produced results.
Creative U.S. leadership after World War II initiated the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, organized NATO and a global system of alliances to contain the virus of an aggressive communism, thus providing the opportunity for many nations to choose freedom, establish self-government and open their economies.
AMERICAN leadership remains the critical factor in tackling a new agenda of challenges to global stability, economic progress, and social justice in the dangerous era ahead. But the world -- and particularly the youth of America -- need to trust U.S. leadership and to know its moral core remains intact. We -- you and I -- must insist our political leaders be measured by the true ethics that really define leadership -- character, responsibility and accountability.
The words of former slave Frederick Douglass in 1885 -- spoken at the 23rd anniversary of Emancipation -- still ring true.
"It is the soul that makes a nation great or small, noble or ignoble, weak or strong. It is the soul that exalts it to happiness, or sinks it to misery ... Fire cannot burn it, water cannot quench it ...The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous: for upon these conditions depend the life of its life."