Remarks at southwest Missouri state university in Springfield, Missouri

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 21, 2002

Jim Talent knows what I know, that medicine has changed, and Medicare hasn't, that medicine is modern, and Medicare is stuck in the old ways. We need a Senator up there who can work with people in both parties to make sure that we modernize Medicare for the sake of our seniors. Modernizing Medicare means that we've got to have a prescription drug plan for our seniors.

One of my most important responsibilities is to put good people on the Federal bench. Our definition of good people obviously are people who are honest, who know the law, who are there to serve something other than themselves, who won't use the bench as a legislator might use the bench from which to write new law, but to strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States. And the Senate has got a lousy record when it comes to my judges.

Look at the percentage that they've approved. It's the worst record in modern history. It's worse than how the Senate treated President Clinton, President Bush 41, President Reagan. They're holding up the nominees. And when they put some of my good nominees forward, they're not telling the truth about their records. They're distorting their records. They're playing shameless politics with the judges I put forward. You need to have a United States Senator like Jim Talent who will not play shameless politics with the judges I've put forward. No, there's a lot of things we can do.

We're going to work together to make sure America is a strong country by having a good economy and making sure we fulfill our promises to our children and to our seniors. I know I can work with this man.

I also will be working with the next Congress to protect America. We learned a sad lesson on September the 11th, 2001, and that is that we're no longer immune from attacks from an enemy which hates us, that oceans no longer protect us like we used to think they could. It's changed the dynamics. The battlefield is here at home.

People must understand that there's still an enemy which lurks and desires to hurt. They do it because of what we love. They hate what we stand for. We love freedom. We love the fact that people can worship an almighty God any way he or she chooses. We love every aspect about our freedoms. We love our free press, and we love the discourse and--a political discourse in a free society, and we hold those freedoms dearly. And we're not changing. No matter how they try to terrorize, how they try to threaten, we're not changing. And so long as we don't change, we have to do everything we can to protect America in the new realities we face. It's a dangerous world, but nobody's going to cause us to retreat from this world.

Obviously, my job is not only to deal with threats that we find in these dark caves but also to anticipate threats. I want to thank the United States Congress for speaking with one voice about a tyrant and a dictator who has constantly defied the world, who refuses to disarm, who, in the new reality, serves as a true and real threat not only to the United States but a threat to our friends in the Middle East, a threat to other freedom-loving countries.