Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 463 BOB DOLE 1995 Clintons Comeback (Part 5) The Oklahoma City Bombing B. Clintons Addresses through the years in Oklahoma

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Episode 463 BOB DOLE 1995 Clintons Comeback (Part 5) The Oklahoma City Bombing B. Clintons Addresses through the years in Oklahoma · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:25
  SPEAKER_04: For every president, there are certain days in your presidency you will never forget.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_04: April nineteenth, nineteen ninety-five, the day of the largest domestic terrorist attack in U.S.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_04: history is one of those days for me.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: The enormous explosion at a federal building in Oklahoma City this morning was the work of terrorists.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: The bomb went off just as hundreds of people had showed up for work.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_05: It was an act of cowardice, and it was evil.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_05: The United States will not tolerate it, and I will not allow the people of this country to be intimidated.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: The bombing of the Alfred Pimera Federal Building in Oklahoma City by far-right extremists killed 168 people, 19 of them children.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_04: The Oklahoma City bombing ripped the cover off a threat that had been bubbling up beneath the surface of American life for years.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_04: Anti-government white supremacist terror.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_04: Between 1980 and 2000, there were 247 domestic terror incidents.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: During that era, the FBI identified white nationalist extremism as the greatest threat we face.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: Their car contained six loaded semi-automatic weapons, three revolvers, 700 rounds of ammunition, two-way radios, and notes indicating that the men were conducting night surveillance of law enforcement officials.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: But perhaps an even greater responsibility was to urge people all across America to reassess how they talked about and thought about people who disagreed with them.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_04: Timothy McVeigh was himself motivated by that extreme rhetoric.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Timothy McVeigh was arrested by local authorities.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: He will be taken into custody by the FBI.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: I had to defend the right of people to speak freely and assault the content and the predictable consequences of that kind of speech.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_04: Today I think the challenge is the same.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_04: If you just regularly dehumanize people so that they are no longer people, but ugly cartoons, bad things are gonna happen.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_05: Let us teach our children that the God of comfort is also the God of righteousness.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_05: Those who trouble their own house will inherit the wind.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_05: Justice will prevail.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of life is about not so much what your opinion is, but how you express it and how you relate to other people who just don't agree with you.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_04: Democracy is a hard form of government.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_04: We're now the longest lasting continuous democracy in human history, even though we're a very young country.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_04: And when you ruin democracy, when people don't have enough regard for each other to listen, learn, and chart a path forward, that's what you get.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_04: But it isn't better.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: And for all the horribleness of that moment, the other side of the coin is I think most historians will tell you this is where Bill Clinton turned his term around and positioned himself uh in order to get himself re-elected.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: That this is when he really shined.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it really is where Bill Clinton shines.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Whenever he has uh the camera in front of him where he can talk to the American people one-on-one, uh, this is where he he shines.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: And uh especially when he's being empathetic to people, or you've had a tragedy such as this night of this nature happen.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And uh this would begin to f his uh process of winning over the American people.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: It would be helped by events that we're gonna cover in our 1996 campaign that happened right at the very beginning of the year.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Two things.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: One, the federal government shut down and sort of new Gingrich's meltdown over some things about how he was treated.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um so Gingrich ends up having a very negative um, there's a very negative view of him in the public.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then Steve Forbes spends about$40 million dismantling Bob Dole and a lot of the goodwill that Bob Dole had.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and by the time it all shakes out, you you have the groundwork for Bill Clinton and his re-election, which we will be covering in our next season.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and that, of course, coincides with Bob Dole being the last of the generation that we've been covering on the national stage.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so you you have a two-fold election in which you've got an incumbent running away with it, but you've got in the country looking at Bob Dole as though they're looking at the last the greatest generation and and saying farewell to them in their role.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: But that is down the road piece.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: This is the first moment that Bill Clinton um turns it around.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: At this point, you know, he he's he just got clobbered in the midterms.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: His negatives were sky high.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: He'd only been elected by 42% of the public in 1992.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it is it is here from this point forward that the Bill Clinton that you think of and that you know of and that was re-elected overwhelmingly and was at a 67% approval rating for his job performance uh by the time he was leaving office in 2000.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: This Bill Clinton is the one that steps up to the podium in Oklahoma City uh during this moment of national crisis and and calamity.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna fast forward you 20 years first.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: And here Bill Clinton, when the Oklahoma City uh National Memorial was um opened up uh in Oklahoma City, and then at the 30-year mark, which was just last year, um when Bill Clinton came back and spoke.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Again, you you pick up Bill Clinton's amazing ability to connect with people and how he is so tied with this event and with this city.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you very much.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, Susan, for the introduction and for your service.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_04: I want to thank Kerry Watkins for driving this whole memorial and museum project for 20 years.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: It seems like ever since I left office, I just sort of show up when Carrie calls.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_04: I sort of do what she tells me to do, and so far it hasn't gotten me in any trouble.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_04: I want to thank Secretary Johnson and Director Comey and all the other federal officials who are here.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much, uh Governor Fallon for what you said.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, Senator Langford, Congressman Lucas, Mayor Cornet, Mayor Norick, thank you.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_04: I love hearing you relive those times.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I want to thank Governor Keating.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_04: Most of you don't know this, but I've known Frank Keating longer than you have.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_04: We met when I was an 18-year-old freshman at Georgetown, America's oldest Jesuit university.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_04: I was a Southern Baptist, and they asked me what I was doing there.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_04: I said I hoped I could figure it out before I had to leave.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_04: The first encounter we had, we were having a partisan disagreement over a campus issue.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: It continued from 1964 or 65 for 30 years until Oklahoma City.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: He and Kathy were magnificent.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_04: As was the mayor, as were all of you.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_04: And for a whole country, you burned away all the petty squabbles in which we engaged, leaving only our basic humanity.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_04: I mostly came here to thank you today.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_04: I prepared for this day yesterday in New York by taking Hillary to see our daughter and son-in-law, and my about-to-be seven-month-old grandchild.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: And Hillary and I bathed her and fed her and put her to bed.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_04: And I looked at her in that crib so I could remember how you felt, those of you who lost your loved ones.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_04: When I came to Oklahoma City, I four days after the bombing, I wanted to see the family of Al Witcher, the Secret Service agent who perished because he had been on my detail, and he wanted to come here because he thought it would be such a wonderful place to raise a family.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_04: The new director of the Secret Service, Joe Clancy, is here 20 years ago.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_04: He was on my detail too.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_04: And he advanced my trip to Oklahoma City.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_04: When you strip away all the little things that divide us, it's important to remember how tied we are, and how much we, all Americans, owe Oklahoma City.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_04: People came here from around the country to help you.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: One of them was uh chief of the New York City Fire Department named Ray Downey.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_04: I met him here.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_04: Almost six years later, lo and behold, I was living in New York with my foundation, and Hillary was a senator, and Ray Downey lost his life on 9-11 trying to get people out of the Twin Towers.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_04: And when they fell, among the first people to show up to help were the workers from Oklahoma City.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: And I can tell you nobody has ever forgotten it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: So I wanted to say thank you.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_04: I think of Oklahoma City sometimes as a tale of two trees, that one who proved that you're tough and strong and endure, and a dogwood that Hillary and I planted on the south lawn of the White House on my way down here that fateful day 20 years ago.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_04: Dogwoods for all of us are the sign of springtime and rebirth.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: For those of us who are Christians, they are also a sign of new beginnings and second chances.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_04: So I thank you.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_04: Nelson Mandela, who died a couple of years ago, was a great friend of mine for 20 years.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_04: He taught me a lot of things from his 27 years in prison.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_04: He taught me that in the face of tragedy, evil, and loss, there are only two things that always remain that can never be taken away: your mind and your heart.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_04: We must decide what to do with them, no matter what happens.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_04: Oklahoma City, you have chosen well.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_04: For 20 years, you have honored the memories of your loved ones.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: You have inspired us with the power of your renewal.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_04: You have reminded us that we should all live by the Oklahoma standard: service, honor, kindness.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_04: In doing these things, you had to choose to affirm our common humanity in the face of mad, crazy people who think the differences are all that matter enough to dehumanize innocent bystanders they never met.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_04: You had to choose far-sighted love over blind hatred.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: You had to choose to redeem your terrible losses by beginning again.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: The whole world needs you now.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: There have been smaller examples of still significant number of innocents killed here in America.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: But in remote villages in northern Nigeria, in ancient historic cities in Iraq and Syria, and other places throughout the globe, even in Paris, France, there are still people who somehow think they can matter more, and they can make a statement by killing innocents, snuffing out possibility that they can somehow bend the arc of history.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_04: They're wrong as long as people like you make the right decisions with your mind and your heart.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_04: You reclaimed the river, revived the downtown, reoriented your city toward a brighter future.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_04: And yes, by doing the right things, by just living by the Oklahoma standard, you grew faster than ever before, and you grew far more prosperous.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: A breathtaking increase in per capita income in these 20 years.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_04: But the material gains were incidental.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_04: Every family here who lost someone would give it all up in a heartbeat to have their loved ones back.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_04: The progress came because of your values, the culture you embraced, because of what you decided to do together.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: You freely embraced the choices of a mind and a heart that is blessed.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: When I was president, I spent three billion dollars of your money to sequence the human genome.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_04: It's been worth a lot to us.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_04: We've gotten a couple hundred billion dollars in benefits out of it, and we're closing in on cures for cancer and a lot of other problems.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_04: But the most important thing we found is that every non-age-related difference we can see in this vast crowd is lodged in one half of one percent of our genome.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_04: The good Lord made us just different enough to keep it interesting, and a like enough to require us to make the choices Oklahoma City made.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_04: Not because you forgot the loss of loved ones, but because you remembered.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_04: Not because the pain and loss and love have worn away with time, but because they endure, and the only way you can redeem the loved ones is to live by the standard that you have branded.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_04: It has been magnificent to behold.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_04: Of being a witness to your triumphs, to have played a small part in what happened here in the aftermath of that terrible day.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_04: It is an honor I will treasure as long as I live.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_04: All I ask is that you never forget that you made the right choice.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: God bless you.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: All right, the next speech we're gonna listen to here is the 30th anniversary.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was just last year.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they they had a really big event there in Oklahoma City.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And had Bill Clinton come back, he will speak for a good while.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: But uh when you listen to him, you really get a feel for just what an effective speaker Bill Clinton really is.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we're we're looking at a possibility uh down the road of a season just to just to capture why this guy is so good at what he does, and that is he is the best public speaker, the best campaigner we've ever seen.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: But this is what he really shines at is that is that that empathy and that connection with people after a tragedy such as this.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: And um uh here he is 30 years later with that very special connection in Oklahoma City that he has.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_04: I've had the best seat in the house I've been watching on the monitor.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_04: I want to thank first of all, Doctor, thank you for the introduction and for your wonderful work.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_04: And I had a nice visit with a pastor in the music room.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_04: And uh thank you, Mayor Keat Mayor Holton, Governor Keating, Mayor Norris, Senator Langford, Governor Stead, Chapman Wilson, and Jordan Smith, thank you for singing one of my favorite hymns.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_04: The guy that wrote that hymn was the music director of a Pentecostal church in Louisiana, whose pastor was one of my best friends, and I love singing it, and it was sung at my mother's funeral.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_04: So this has been very moving for me.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_04: Listening to all of you and remembering thirty years ago, I thought I was gonna have a very different day when I woke up.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_04: I went jogging with the winners of the Boston Marathon, giving me the illusion, and an illusion it was, that I was somehow pretty fit.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_04: And then I got back to the White House and the devastating news.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: That truck bomb, as you all know better than I, claimed 168 lives.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_04: Nineteen of them were little children in the building's daycare center.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_04: I always like to start with that when I talk to people because a lot of times fanatics will tell you, I'm sorry this, that, or the other thing had to happen, but you know there has to be collateral damage sometimes to make a statement.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_04: I never have heard anybody say that who had to live with the damage.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_04: Most of the people who lost their jobs, I mean their lives, were public servants, as we all know.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_04: They got amazing coverage after this happened.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_04: About what they did every day as a matter of choice.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_04: Showing up for work to do business for the American people.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_04: They helped veterans and farmers and the elderly and disabled.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_04: And they help to keep our country safe.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_04: One of the Secret Service agents, Al Witcher, who lost his life, was a member of my detail.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_04: And he left me.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_04: And he was very popular and very good at what he did.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_04: But he had a family.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: And he said, you know, I you travel too much.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_04: I want to be home more.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_04: And Oklahoma City would be a good place to raise my kids.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_04: All of us who knew him thought he was going on a much safer journey.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_04: Which shows you how little any of us can know about what tomorrow will bring.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: That bombing profoundly shook the country.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_04: And did more to all of you.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_04: But in the end, it brought out the best in America.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_04: First responders, doctors, nurses, construction workers from all across America put their own lives on hold and showed up here.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_04: My FEMA director, James Lee Witt, would call me daily and just give me, he said, this group showed up, that group showed up.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_04: He said, You can't believe it, they're just appearing.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I said, Well, your job is to help make sure that the local people make full use of them.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_04: And we talked about how thrilling it was.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I still run into people all across this country traveling around who tell me they went to Oklahoma City and how grateful they are after all this time that they had the chance to do it.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_04: There were other things, a lot of donations came in.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_04: We all remember the drawings of school children that were featured for several years.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_04: The cards, the teddy bears, the pennies.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody found their way to say something that was humane and supportive.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_04: The domestic terrorists who did this awful thing believed that it would spark a nationwide upheaval against the American government and would eventually destroy our government and our democracy and their way of life.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_04: Instead, you gave them, as the mayor said so eloquently, the Oklahoma standard.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_04: You gave them service, honor, and kindness.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_04: I know over the last 30 years you are probably managing your losses better, but I know the pain has never gone away.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_04: I know you still miss the people you lost.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_04: But by continuing to love them and honor them and working to rebuild your own lives and the lives of this community, you've gone a long way to redeem the lives they were not able to live.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: And just as important, you have given America a very great gift.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_04: Every year we get together and reaffirm your model of how despite all of our differences, in case you haven't noticed, we've got a few.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_04: So I did my anecdotal poll last night and today, and you're still winning.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_04: Now look what you've built, and yet we have these differences, and it seems to me, I listen to this a lot because I'm old and I can't run for anything anymore.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_04: But but uh if you listen to a lot of what I read and hear today, it's like these everybody's arguing about whose resentments matter most.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_04: Whose resentments are more valid?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_04: When is it okay to stretch the truth a little bit to increase your advantage?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_04: If our lives are gonna be dominated by the effort to dominate people we disagree with, we're gonna put the 250-year-old march toward a more perfect union at risk.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_04: None of us would ever get much done.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_04: Believe me, we've all got something to be mad about.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_04: Something legitimate to be mad about.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_04: You made a different decision.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_04: So my advice to America today is that we were there for you when you needed us.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_04: America needs you, and America needs the Oklahoma standard, and if we all live by it, we'd be a lot better off.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_04: We would get a fairer economy, a more stable society.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_04: We would understand one another, and we wouldn't feel weak if we admitted we were wrong about something.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_04: This church would be out of business if nobody ever did anything wrong.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_04: We're laughing, but you know it's true.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_04: And so I ask you to think about that.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_04: I think all the time about the breathtaking changes you made here because of how you decided to respond.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_04: And this is hard work.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_04: President Eisenhower, who I think was underrated for several years, said that he worried about whether democracy could last in America.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_04: Because it required in the end such concentration and discipline and the willingness not to do things as well as to do them.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_04: But when we come here, because you lost so much, you were able to feel what you could do to make it better, to make it different, to really build something instead of just keep tearing down.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_04: And I and you have done it, and it's breathtaking.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I came here today in part just to say to the rest of the country, look at this.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_04: This is what you get with service and honor and kindness put together.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_04: And the founders pledged that they were getting organized to give us a more perfect union.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_04: But it's 18th century language.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_04: The modern meaning is, hey folks, let's face it, we are not perfect, and we are never gonna be perfect, but we can always do better, and so we have to shed all the baggage that keeps us from doing better.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_04: That's what we owe 30 years later, the people who made the ultimate sacrifice in Oklahoma City.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_04: That's what we owe the families, the children, the grandchildren, the people who've survived them.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: I wish I could live 30 more years to see what's gonna happen.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_04: Because in spite of all this belly aching you hear, we're the best positioned country in the world for the 21st century if we don't blow it.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_04: If we don't forget how you got from 30 years ago to today.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_04: But today, Oklahoma City, America needs you.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_04: I wish to goodness every American could just see life unfold here.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_04: Hear these stories.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_04: Listen, you know, I love I love sitting backstage and listening to Frank Keating.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_04: I wondered if he missed his calling, if he should have been a preacher, but at the time he was a good Catholic boy and there wasn't a big space for him.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_04: And some of you who were with us last night laughed when I told a story about how he beat my brains out in a student contest at Georgetown and we were both there.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's important not to forget that we all do our best to find our way through life.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_04: None of us will be right all the time.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: And here we are the day before Easter.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_04: I I want to say just one thing about this.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_04: In St.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_04: Paul's famous letter to the Corinthians, where he describes what love is, which is often read at marriages, weddings, wrongly, because the word for love is agape, which means love of your fellow human being.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_04: And we all memorize as kids, all of us who are Christians, now by us, faith, hope, and love, which was charity in the old editions of the Bible, but the greatest of these of love.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_04: How could love be even greater than faith?
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_04: Because of the nature of human life.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_04: I love this.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's my favorite, it's the only thing that I think every politician in the world of any religion would benefit from internalizing.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_04: Paul compares life on earth, fleeting though it is, with eternal afterlife with God.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_04: And he says, now we see through a glass darkly.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_04: But then face to face.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: Now I know in part, but then I will know even as I am known.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_04: And now abid us.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_04: Faith's open love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_04: Why?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_04: Because we cannot have perfect knowledge, we have to wait to see things through the eyes of God.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_04: And like I said, that's what keeps the churches open and the chaplains busy.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_04: And thank God it does.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_04: But we have no idea, and I can't make this not a tragedy.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_04: We have no idea what all 168 of those people would have done with the rest of their lives.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_04: But we do know what they did that was good.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_04: We know the love that they generated, which was worthy.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_04: And you made a choice to live by what you call now the Oklahoma standard.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_04: It is perfectly consistent with the commands of the scripture, perfectly appropriate for tomorrow being Easter, and perfectly fit to acknowledge 30 years of trying to do what people are supposed to do, which is to take whatever comes and make the best you can of it.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_04: I know of no other example that can compare to what you have done here.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I, as a citizen, am grateful for it.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_04: I'm glad I could be there to help a little bit.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_04: I love it in my old age when you still invite me back.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_04: Just know this.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_04: You needed your country then.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_04: I was the symbol of it, and so I'm grateful that you let me come back over and over again.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_04: But make no mistake about it, your country needs you now.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_04: We have all these assets, beginning with our people and our great institutions.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_04: Are we really going to put them at risk to prove we're always right and that our resentments are more important than somebody else's?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_04: I wish every American would get a copy of the Oklahoma standard in the mail or on their cell phone tomorrow.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_04: I bet you would have a terrific impact.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_04: Don't give up.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_04: We need you now.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.