[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2006, Book II)]
[August 16, 2006]
[Pages 1515-1521]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Gubernatorial Candidate Lynn C. Swann in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
August 16, 2006

    Thank you all for coming. Thanks for being here. The people of 
Pennsylvania know that when you draft Lynn Swann--[laughter]--you get a 
man who performs. I am proud to be here with the next Governor of the 
great State of Pennsylvania, Lynn Swann. I know something about being a 
Governor. Here's what you need. You need somebody who tells the truth, 
somebody who sets the people's agenda above political parties, somebody 
who makes decisions based upon principle, not based upon polls or focus 
groups, somebody who doesn't go around the State trying to become 
everybody's friend, but somebody who goes around the State to

[[Page 1516]]

try to improve the lives of the people of the State. And there's no 
doubt in my mind that Lynn Swann has got the characteristics necessary 
to be a great Governor of this important State.
    And I'm proud to be here with Lynn and Jim Matthews. You know, one of the interesting things I'll never 
forget, one time I was campaigning for my dad in the sixties in Texas. And I went to a county 
courthouse on his behalf, and it was empty. It turns out he was a 
Republican, and they were all Democrats. [Laughter] It was my first 
lesson of how important it is to stay in touch with the people who run 
the counties. You see, really good politicians and smart people 
understand that county politics is where you find the pulse of the 
people and where you're able to do your best work. And so it's a smart 
thing that Lynn Swann asked Jim Matthews, a man who understands the 
county structure in Pennsylvania, to run on his ticket. You've got 
vision and you've got experience side by side, which makes a powerful 
ticket for the people of Pennsylvania.
    I just had my picture taken with some of you, and about every fourth 
person said, ``Where's Laura?'' [Laughter] What 
they're really saying, ``How come you didn't send Laura and you stay at 
home?'' [Laughter] Laura sends her love to the Swanns. She is very fond 
of Lynn and Charena. She respects them like I 
respect them. These are noble, decent people. They don't have to be 
running for politics, see. They can be sitting, doing a lot of other 
things--watching a football game, talking on TV--[laughter]--helping 
people help themselves. They're great, charitable people. They've got 
big hearts. But instead, they've decided to serve a State they love and 
a people they love. So Laura stands with me in saying to the people of 
Pennsylvania, you've got two really fine people in Lynn and Charena. Put 
them in office, and you'll be proud of the job they'll do for you.
    It's good to meet Lynn's sons and Jim's sons. There's nothing 
better than having a family by your side when you're running for office. 
This is a big State you got here, and it takes a lot of work. And these 
candidates are going to do the work necessary to get elected. I know 
they'll work hard. There's nothing better to--coming home to somebody 
you care for after a hard day's work. And so when you're voting for a 
candidate, you're really voting for a family as well.
    And I like people who put their families ahead of all else in life. 
I like people who prioritize. I think it's going to be good for this 
State to have a Governor who sets the right priorities. It starts with 
faith and family, and then you can get into politics.
    I'm proud to be here with Congressman Joe Pitts. Joe, thank you for serving the district with distinction. 
I'm glad you're here. I appreciate you being here.
    I just came from the district next door, where they put me on a 
Harley-Davidson. [Laughter] It was a static display--[laughter]--
fortunately. [Laughter] But that district is also represented by a 
person of dignity and character, and that's Todd Platts. Congressman, thanks for coming.
    The attorney general--you're going to need to have a good attorney 
general by your side, Governor, and you got one in Tom Corbett. Thanks for coming, General.
    I want to thank Rob Gleason and 
Bob Asher and all who else are involved with 
party politics. I want to thank those of you who have given of your 
hard-earned money to help these folks. You can't run unless the people 
are willing to contribute. That's just the way it is. And the fact that 
Lynn and Jim have raised so much money tonight 
is a good sign. I want to thank you for those of you who have helped 
organize this event, and thank you for giving of your money. It really 
means a lot to them. I know. I speak with firsthand experience how much 
it means to have people willing to contribute.
    And now you need to contribute your time. You need to go to your 
coffee shops and your community centers and your

[[Page 1517]]

houses of worship, and you need to talk to your friends and neighbors 
and let them know the quality of the people that are seeking their vote. 
You need to let them know that these two good men will do a fine job for 
the people of Pennsylvania. Getting ready, coming down the stretch here 
pretty soon, going to need you to put up the signs and lick the 
envelopes and make the phone calls and knock on the doors. They need 
your help. They'll work hard, but they can't win alone. And so it's one 
thing to give of your money, and now I hope you give of your time when 
they're coming down the stretch, because they can win this race. And 
when they do, Pennsylvania will be better for it.
    Not only do you have to have the character to serve in office, but 
you have to run for a reason. There's got to be a compelling reason why 
you seek the vote, and Lynn Swann has got compelling reasons why he'll 
be a good Governor for the State of Pennsylvania. It starts with his 
philosophy about the role of government in the economy. He understands 
that governments don't create wealth, that governments create an 
environment in which the entrepreneur can flourish or which the small-
business owner can grow bigger or which a person can realize their 
dreams by creating their own company. That's the kind of Governor you 
want. You want a Governor who understands entrepreneurship; a Governor, 
when the small-business person looks out and says, ``That person 
understands my needs, and he understands my concerns.'' And that means 
you have to have a Governor who is willing to cut the taxes on the 
people, creating the jobs and doing the work.
    He said, ``I know how to prioritize a budget.'' If you don't 
prioritize in State government or Federal Government, they'll figure out 
how to spend every single dime that they raise from you. But if you can 
get somebody to prioritize, that leaves money for you to stay in your 
pocket. See, that's how you end up cutting the taxes. You say, ``Here's 
my priorities; here's what I think is essential,'' and then with the 
money left over--since I recognize it's your money, you get to keep it. 
It's amazing what happens to the economy when you cut the taxes on the 
people who work. I know him well enough to say to the people of 
Pennsylvania, when he says he's going to cut the taxes by a billion 
dollars, you can take it to the bank.
    You know, one of the issues that hurts people a lot is property 
taxes. People struggle to own their own home. One of the things we stand 
for is ownership. We love it when somebody opens the door to the place 
they live and says, ``Welcome to my home; this is my piece of 
property.'' We stand strong for the ownership society. It's harder to 
own a home when your property taxes are going up too high. It's good to 
have somebody running for Governor who says, ``I hear the problems you 
have when it comes to owning your home, and I'll do everything I can to 
cut your property taxes as well.''
    I used to tell people this: Education is to a State what national 
defense is to the Federal Government. Education must be the number-one 
priority of your Governor. And it is the number-one priority for Lynn 
Swann. See, one of the reasons he's decided to run is because he's 
concerned about an education system that's not educating every child. 
Sure, it educates some children, but we want an education system to 
educate every child, and here's our vision of how it's done.
    First, you must have leadership that sets high standards. It's 
amazing what happens when you have low standards. Guess what happens? 
You get low results. It's what I call the soft bigotry of low 
expectations. If you don't have high standards, you get lousy results, 
particularly in some neighborhoods. And that's unacceptable to a person 
like Lynn Swann and me.
    Secondly, you measure. You say to somebody, ``Are you achieving the 
results I expect?'' There's a justified role for that, as

[[Page 1518]]

far as I'm concerned, in government. The Federal Government spends a lot 
of money, about 7 percent of the education budget, around the country. 
I've said, since we're spending 7 percent, we'd like to see the results 
for the money we spent. Lynn Swann says the same thing. He understands 
the primary driver of education in Pennsylvania is the State. Therefore, 
he has got a legitimate right to say to the educators, ``We like what 
you do; we stand squarely with you, but please show us whether or not a 
child can read or write and add and subtract early, before it's too 
late.''
    There's a pitiful practice in some schools that say, ``You're too 
hard to educate; we're just going to shuffle you through.'' It may be 
the color of somebody's skin or somebody's demographics that says to 
somebody, ``We're just going to quit on you.'' That's not right. It's 
not good for Pennsylvania. It's not good for the United States. You need 
to have a Governor who'll set high standards and hold people to account. 
And when you find people learning to read, write, and add and subtract, 
you say, thank you for what you're doing. But when you don't, you 
challenge the status quo so no child is left behind in America.
    I like his education plan. It's well-thought-out. It makes a lot of 
sense. But most importantly, it's going to deliver the results for the 
families of Pennsylvania. And it doesn't matter whether you're 
Republican or Democrat or independent; these are results that affect all 
children. And that's the kind of Governor you need.
    One of the things I learned when I campaigned here was that you had 
a problem with your doctors, like, a real problem. As a matter of fact, 
I was deeply concerned when I sat down at these roundtables with ob-gyns 
to find out what it's like to try to practice medicine in the State of 
Pennsylvania. You can't have good quality of life if you can't find good 
docs. And the truth of the matter is, many of your doctors are leaving 
the State or quitting practice because of the junk and frivolous 
lawsuits.
    Now, I understand something, that these trial lawyers are strong 
politically. They're tough, and that's why you need a tough Governor to 
stare them down and say, for the sake of good medical care, for the sake 
of availability and affordability of medicine, we've got to end these 
frivolous and junk lawsuits that are hurting the people of Pennsylvania.
    Now, he's got the right platform. He's running on the right issues, 
and he's running for the right reason. He's a fellow that doesn't need 
to say, ``I try to make myself feel better by being Governor.'' He's had 
plenty of accolades--[laughter]--just ask the Dallas Cowboy fans. 
[Laughter] See, he's not running for his ego. He's running because he 
wants to serve the people of this State, and he's got a platform that 
makes a lot of sense. And I'm proud to help him. I'm proud to help him. 
And I know you are as well.
    You know, we're living in historic times. These are difficult times 
for the American people because we're in a war. We're in a war we did 
not ask for but in a war that we must wage and win for the sake of our 
future generation of children. Much of my thinking about the world 
changed on September the 11th. I recognized on that day that we face a 
threat and that the responsibility of the Federal Government, working 
with State government, is to do everything we can to secure the homeland 
to protect the people. That's my most important job now, and it's the 
most important job of a lot of other people too.
    I learned that we face an enemy that knows no bounds of cruelty. I 
understand the nature of this enemy. This is an enemy that has an 
ideology. Some people say, well, this may be a law enforcement matter. 
No, these are people that are politically driven. They've got motives. 
They do not believe in freedom. They don't believe in freedom of 
religion; they don't believe in freedom of dissent; they don't believe 
in women's rights. They have a backward view of the world. And yet they 
want to impose their

[[Page 1519]]

vision on other people. That's what they're trying to do. And the United 
States of America must never retreat and let them have their way.
    This is a different kind of war. Veterans of World War II and Korea 
would tell you, we were able to measure progress based upon miles gained 
or based upon tanks destroyed, or however people measured war in those 
days. This is different. We're facing people with an ideology but 
without a nation-state. Sometimes they have people sponsor them and help 
them, but this is not a nation-state. It's a different kind of conflict. 
And it's hard on the American people, and I understand that. But we 
shouldn't let the difficulties of facing this war force us to retreat 
from the world. If your most important responsibility is to protect the 
American people, the best way to do so is to stay on the offense and 
bring these people to justice before they hurt us again.
    A different kind of war requires a different kind of approach. It 
means we better have good intelligence in order to be able to figure out 
the designs of the enemy before they strike. Just last week, we had good 
intelligence in working with our partners in Great Britain to disrupt a 
plot. I know it's hard for Americans to believe this, but the enemy that 
attacked us before has got people that want to act like them, are maybe 
taking instruction from--I can't tell you whether this plot we disrupted 
was Al Qaida. I'm not going to say that unless I'm certain it was. But 
it's the kind of activities that Al Qaida has done in the past, and that 
is to place suiciders on airplanes to destroy innocent life, trying to 
shake the will of the United States, trying to send a political message.
    And so we've got to use new tactics, new efforts, new assets to 
protect ourselves against an enemy that will strike us at any moment. 
This war on terror is more than just chasing down people hiding in caves 
or preventing people from getting on airplanes to blow them up; the war 
on terror is fought in many theaters, and the central front in the war 
on terror now is Iraq. I say it's the central front because that's what 
the enemy themselves have said, that they want to drive us from the 
region, that they view it as the central front as well. They've got 
objectives in Iraq. They want the United States to suffer a defeat in 
Iraq. They want us to retreat from Iraq. They want to create such havoc 
on our TV screens by killing innocent people that the American people 
finally say, we've had enough, leaving Iraq before the mission is 
complete.
    And the mission is to have a country, a free country that can 
sustain itself and govern itself and defend itself and serve as an ally 
in the war on terror in the heart of the Middle East. That's the 
mission. And they want us to leave; they want us to cut and run. And 
there's some good people in our country who believe we should cut and 
run. They're not bad people when they say that; they're decent people. I 
just happen to believe they're wrong, and they're wrong for this reason: 
This would be a defeat for the United States in a key battleground in 
the global war on terror. It would create a--leaving before we complete 
our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle 
East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would 
be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe 
in freedom.
    If we were to leave before the mission is complete, it would hurt 
U.S. credibility. Who would want to stand with the United States of 
America if we didn't complete the mission, and a mission that can be 
completed and will be completed? If we cut and run, if we don't complete 
the mission, what would that say to those brave men and women who have 
volunteered to wear the uniform of the United States of America? If we 
leave before the mission is complete, if we withdraw, the enemy will 
follow us home.

[[Page 1520]]

    By defeating the enemy in Iraq, jihadists who try to spread 
sectarian violence through brutal suicide bombings, jihadists who have 
declared openly that their mission is to convert that country into a 
safe haven for them to launch attacks, when we defeat them, there will 
be a major defeat for the terrorists. It will strengthen the spread of 
democracy in the Middle East.
    Look, our strategy is this: We will stay on the offense. And we are. 
Any time we get a hint that somebody is going to hurt us, we respond. 
And we're keeping the pressure on the enemy. By the way, anybody who 
follows me should always understand, you must keep the pressure on the 
enemy; otherwise, they will put the pressure on us. They still exist. 
It's important to understand this is a global war on terror, not an 
isolated moment of law enforcement. This is the first war of the 21st 
century, and the United States of America must lead that war. And we 
must be firm, and we must be resolved.
    We will stay on the offense so we don't have to face them here in 
the United States of America. The way to defeat this enemy in the long 
term is to defeat their hateful ideology with a hopeful ideology; is for 
the United States of America to understand the power of liberty to help 
transform people's lives to the better and the power of liberty to help 
spread the peace that we want for our children and our grandchildren.
    You know, when you have resentment and anger, that breeds hatred; 
that breeds recruiting grounds for people to become a suicider. Imagine 
the mentality of somebody willing to kill for an ideology that just 
doesn't--is not hopeful, and yet I believe a lot of that has to do with 
the fact that parts of the world breed resentment. And I believe that is 
due in part to the nature of the governments. I believe a system of 
government that encourages people to participate and a government that 
says, ``We respond to your will,'' is the kind of government that ends 
up creating a hopeful alternative to resentment and hatred.
    Our foreign policy in the past in the Middle East has been, let's 
just work for stability; let us not care what the form of government is; 
let's just make sure everything appears stable. The problem was, that 
foreign policy came home on September the 11th, 2001. It didn't work. 
What looked placid, what looked serene, what looked calm was not. 
Beneath the surface was this deep resentment brewing that caused people 
to come and kill 3,000 of our fellow citizens. The best way to defeat 
this enemy in the long run is to spread liberty, is to give people the 
hope of freedom.
    Isn't it interesting today that the most violent parts of the world 
are where young democracies are trying to take root? Isn't it 
interesting that Hizballah would attack Israel, a democracy in the heart 
of the Middle East, try to destabilize the Middle East so that Lebanon 
doesn't get to be a strong democracy, and starts to try to turn the 
world against Israel? Isn't it interesting that the young democracy of 
Iraq is the place where the enemy is trying to stop the progress? That 
should tell the American people the following things: One, we face an 
enemy that has an ideology that can't stand freedom; and secondly, as 
freedom progresses, it changes the world for the better. Otherwise, the 
enemy wouldn't be trying to stop it.
    And so in the long term, the United States of America must take the 
lead in spreading liberty. And we've got to have great confidence that 
it will work. I believe there's an Almighty, and I believe in the heart 
and soul of everybody is the gift of freedom from that Almighty. I 
believe Muslim women, Hindu women, Christian women, Jewish women want 
their children to grow up in peace and hope. I believe there is the 
universality of freedom, and I know it works.
    You might remember, I recently went down to Graceland--that's 
Elvis's place--with the Prime Minister of Japan. Wasn't that interesting? [Laughter] I thought it 
was. [Laughter] More importantly, my

[[Page 1521]]

guest thought it was. He was an Elvis fan. I bet you, in 1949, 1950, if 
somebody had stood up and said, ``You know, I bet one of these days an 
American President is going to take the Japanese Prime Minister to visit 
the heartland,'' they'd have said, ``Man, you are nuts.'' [Laughter]
    It's interesting, isn't it, that the Prime Minister of a country with which we had a mighty war, 
thousands lost their lives--as a matter of fact, it took us, I don't 
know how long, a decade or so to even get racial slurs out of our 
vocabulary because of the enmity that arose as a result of fighting the 
Japanese. We couldn't stand them, and they couldn't stand us. And yet 60 
years after the end of World War II, George W. Bush flies on the 
airplane with Junichiro Koizumi to go to Elvis's place. [Laughter] And 
we didn't spend much time talking about Elvis's place on the way down; 
we talked about the peace. Isn't that interesting? A former enemy, the 
sworn enemy of the United States, the leader of that country now sat 
down with the President of the United States doing something that our 
forefathers could not have possibly imagined--that we talked about the 
peace.
    Something happened between World War II and today, and what happened 
was, Japan adopted a Japanese-style democracy. Something nobody would 
have thought as possible after World War II, except for Harry S. Truman 
and some other people that had great faith in the desire for people to 
live in freedom and in the capacity to change--for freedom to change an 
enemy into an ally.
    Someday, an American President will be sitting down talking to a 
duly elected leader of Iraq, talking about how to keep the peace. And 
our children will be better off.
    The stakes are high. But I clearly see where we need to go. And the 
stakes are high in Pennsylvania, and Lynn Swann clearly sees where the 
State needs to go. You can't lead unless you see the end result. You've 
got a man who has got the vision. He's got the skills necessary to lead 
toward that vision. He's the right man for the job. I'm honored to be 
with him.
    I want to thank you all for supporting Lynn Swann and Jim 
Matthews. God bless you all, and God bless 
America.

Note: The President spoke at 5:18 p.m. at the Lancaster Host Resort and 
Conference Center. In his remarks, he referred to James R. Matthews, 
candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania; Robert A. Gleason, 
Jr., chairman, Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania; Robert Asher, 
Pennsylvania national committeeman, Republican National Committee; and 
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan.