We are immensely honored that President Bush would join us this evening.

Since he took office, we have learned many things:

• The Free World is not a leftover slogan from the Cold War. It is the central reality of our age, and it has enemies who are determined and resourceful.
• The Free World provides power and opportunity to all. It can provide terrible opportunities to the enemies of freedom, and it can provide the power and example to defeat them.
• The Free World was built by our ancestors with brains and brawn, wisdom and wit, faith and fortune. Preserving it in our generation, and extending its compass, now requires the same of us.

No one--no one--grasped these truths more quickly or completely than our President. So he has turned his great political skills to the task of leading an often refractory world--by his words and even more by his deeds, and by his uncanny sense of when to be patient and when to be impatient.

In times of chaos and confusion, many yearn for an easy resolution, and events threaten to take a life of their own. What is the man who sees beyond the chaos to do? He borrows from the past, extemporizes, searches for the right principle to cut through the fog, watches, waits, and acts.

What a blessing it is that America has again in a time of peril found a leader of such moral clarity and political aptitude. Today he, and we, are derided by the angry parties of the European street; tomorrow they will fall silent, and many, many others, especially in the Middle East, will rise up in gratitude.

Ladies and gentlemen, the leader of the Free World, President George W. Bush.