Vice President Gore: "Thank you very much, Reverend Jackson, Frank, Mr. Mayor, Jack, thank you all very much... thank you... thank you, thank you very much... (laughs)... thank you very much...

Thank you, Dick Gephardt - - and you know it’s not going to be very long before we’re going to say 'Speaker Dick Gephardt'. You know that. And it’s not going to be very long, it’s not going to be very long before we say 'Mister Chair', 'Mister Chair', 'Mister Chair', 'Madame Chair', 'Madame Chair', 'Madame Chair'. It’s not going to be long.

I can’t tell you how good it feels to be back home. That welcome you gave me was a wonderful tonic, and I appreciate it so much, but to be here with all of you is a great way to start the new year.

(An unidentified member of the crowd shouts: "You won in Florida!" Prolonged, enthusiastic applause.)

Hear what I’m saying? Hear what I’m saying?

She has been my great friend for going on two decades now, and I knew her when she was a crusading State Senator. And she’s got protégés and people who’ve taken her as a role model around the state of Texas and around this country, and we look forward to your leadership. And I want to congratulate your other new officers, your First Vice-Chair Elijah Cummings, Second Vice-Chair Sheila Jackson Lee, Secretary Bobby Rush and Whip Greg Meeks. As always, I want to pay special honor to the two still serving founders of the Congressional Black Caucus, Charlie Rangel and John Conyers. We appreciate what you guys did. You know, when this organization was founded – it was so long ago... these were young men then. I remember when they had their vim and vigor all about them...

I also want to acknowledge of course the departing founder who had such a great record and who will not be here in this Congress, Bill Clay, but I understand he has some consolation in having another Clay in the Congress here, so we welcome him.

I want to – I thanked Dick Gephardt at the start and spoke of our ambitions for him in two years hence, but you know what a great leader he has been and will be. I also want to acknowledge David Bonior who is here as well, and the other members of the leadership who are present.

I want to thank my friend Reverend Jesse Jackson, who is a voice of conscience throughout this country. And I just want you to know that I have personally found out what many people between a rock and a hard place have found out in recent years, that he will show up when you need him to show up.

Mayor Williams, I really enjoyed that picture of you in the paper the other day. And Frank Rains, my former colleague in the cabinet, Dr. Billington, thank you for hosting us, Johnnie Cochran and other distinguished guests, thank you all for letting me say just these few words.

You know, in all seriousness, we face more than a new President and a new administration and new leadership of honored institutions. Here in Washington the House and Senate will be more closely divided than at any time in the history that any of us can personally remember. And across America there are real and continuing disagreements about the issues and about what is now past and about what lies ahead.

And now you must chose, as public servants, and as Americans, to heal our nation’s divisions and move this country forward. I believe very deeply that we all must respect -- and wherever possible - - help President-elect Bush. Because from the moment he takes his solemn oath, a great responsibility will rest in his hands. And from the moment you take your solemn oath, building upon the one just administered here in this ceremony, you are charged with a special responsibility as well, one that you know in your heart and in your bones, because this institution has discharged that responsibility on behalf of the people of this country since its founding - - to lift up those who have been left out or locked out, to honor those who fought and marched and died to have their voices heard, and to secure the right to vote.

When you are the conscious of the Congress, you of course have to do your best to reach across party lines, but you also have to know when to draw the line. When you are the conscious of the Congress, you have to work to build majorities, but you also have to fight for human dignity. When you are the conscious of the Congress, you have to seek consensus, but you also have to seek justice and fundamental fairness.

On the great issues that you will face in the 107th Congress, you have to act from conviction and lead from your heart. You know full well that among your special responsibilities is a sacred one to all of those who took our advice last November and voted C.B.C.*

So, for them, when you walk onto the floor of the Congress, and you see their equities at stake, you have to vote C.B.C.

And so I ask you, the next time you see a crumbling school with desks crowded in the hallways and rain dripping through the roof, vote C.B.C.

The next time you see a sick child with no health insurance and a parent who cannot possibly afford her family’s care, vote C.B.C.

The next time you see whole communities choking from pollution and environmental injustice, vote C.B.C.

The next time someone tries to shut down Affirmative Action instead of swinging open the doors of opportunity, I know you’ll vote C.B.C.

The next time that anyone argues that even the most vicious and violent hate crimes are just like any other crimes, or that racial profiling is just a price that has to be paid, vote C.B.C.

And when I look at all these challenges that lie ahead I see the great promise of a country that is stronger and more prosperous than at any time in our history. I see how much good we can achieve. But the values we fought for together, the causes we have championed together, across the years and in the final days of the election, cannot be measured in votes or victors.

I am more grateful to the men and women of the C.B.C. and all of you and others who have lifted them up and made their careers and their prophesies and their struggles possible. I am more grateful than I can say to you. I look back across the distinguished line of leadership here and I see another close friend, who was your immediate past Chair, who did a truly outstanding job, Congressman Jim Clyburn, and I want to pay tribute to Jim Clyburn.

Your support was one of the greatest honors I have ever received in my life. I mean that from my heart. Because the struggle that you represent and that you embody is a struggle for more than fairness, more even than justice. It is a struggle in its deepest sense for redemption: redemption of this nation’s history, redemption of this nation’s soul. And so your support has been something that I have and will always cherish with all my heart. And I want you to know that I will always be there for you.

Seventeen days from now I leave the Vice Presidency full of love for my country, full of gratitude to its people and above all full of hope for our common future. And one reason is that I know in the 107th Congress you will carry the torch of liberty and strive each and every day to make America all it can be.

So I want to close with the words of the great Harlem poet, Langston Hughes:

‘Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed - -
...a land where liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe...
O let America be America again - -
The land that never has been yet - -
And yet must be - - the land where every man is free.’**

*In a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus last November, the Vice President humorously acknowledged that Federal Election Law prohibited him from asking directly for their support. In an extended joke, the Vice President listed his platform item by item; after each item he told the Caucus that, if they wanted that item to become law, to "vote C.B.C.".


**HERE'S THE COMPLETE POEM (which is REALLY to the point):

Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

"I think that the greatest problem (America faces today) is the fact that we need more meaning in our national life. We need more people to believe in this country and to believe in our ability as a people to make it what it’s supposed to be. This country is what we make it and we have the power, because of our freedom, but there are a lot of people who kind of stay arms length from the political process, because, you know, it’s "politics". And it is "politics", but we can change "politics" if we have enough people who are willing to push past the fear of disillusionment and disappointment and do what our Founders did and what each generation has done in really seizing the opportunity to make this country what it’s supposed to be." Vice President Al Gore, September 12, 2000.

Talk To The Possum!