Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, colleagues and distinguished guests, welcome to the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

George Shultz was once asked: What is the most important qualification for a senior position in government? He replied: A high tolerance for ambiguity.

Presidents and Cabinet Secretaries only get to make hard calls--the easy calls are made by others.  Many decisions have good arguments on both sides, but the really hard ones are those that combine very large stakes with very large uncertainties.  They call for intelligence of the larger and more profound kind, and a determination not to lose a kingdom for a shoe.  If we were to form a commission of inquiry into every important Oval Office decision made without the luxury of waiting for more and better information, there would be no more worries about job creation in the service sector.

And in a fractious democracy such as ours, the hard decisions are endlessly contested--in public debate, in competition among the three branches of government, and even within the Executive Branch itself.  For us, the biggest decisions are not executive calls at all, but rather a process of continuous advocacy, compromise, and adaptation.

During the past twenty-nine months, America and the Free World have entered a new political epoch whose defining features are, precisely, terribly large risks and terribly large uncertainties, especially concerning the operations of our enemies.  Our political leaders have made a series of momentous decisions and have done so with great resolution.  Their resolution is all the more impressive when one considers that the deficiencies of information, and of government institutions designed for an earlier era, are better known to them than to anyone else.  Now their decisions and their resolution are being tested in the cauldron of democratic politics.  Tolerance for ambiguity is not a predominate feature of partisan campaigning.  But elections themselves have clarified and fortified our foreign policies to an impressive degree in the past.
 
In the Cold War, from the Truman Doctrine to the Reagan Doctrine, our enemies were demonstrating their WMDs out in the open, bragging about how they would use them against us, routinely invading and subjugating other nations, and slaughtering civilians by the millions.  Still, fashioning and sustaining a political consensus was very hard, and was contested from start to finish.  Many Americans sincerely believed, and argued vehemently, that the root of the world's problems was America itself.  But we prevailed.  And we prevailed not in spite of, but because of, the vigor of our democratic practices and the sturdiness of popular understanding.

Can we do it again, in circumstances more shrouded and insidious?  Today, despite stupendous initial victories, we are in the midst of strenuous and necessary debates over military and political strategy, the effectiveness of our intelligence and diplomatic institutions, and the maintenance of fiscal discipline and personal and economic freedom at home.  But if we stand at the beginning of another fifty-year epoch--a "generational commitment" as Condoleezza Rice puts it--then we are still just getting started, still at the moment of creation of new policies and new institutions for facing the tasks and perils ahead.

That the two men who are speaking to us this evening have been present at the creation is another great stroke of American fortune.  One, the recipient of AEI's Irving Kristol Award for 2004, is a man of thinking and writing.  The other, a former AEI senior fellow and vice chairman of our Board, now vice president of the United States, is a man of thinking and action.

Charles Krauthammer's great contribution has been to see through fogs of uncertainty in times of upheaval.  He has grasped the essentials of new problems while others remained confused by incidentals.  More than once, he has provided us with an intellectual architecture that shows that what we already know provides a sturdy foundation for action.

Our media, which can take the silliest people and ideas seriously, often find truly serious men and women a bafflement.  It is very funny to read the latest line on Dick Cheney--that this open and engaging man, who has expressed himself on every manner of policy question in thirty years at the center of American politics, who has been Minority Whip of the House of Representatives, who has served in the senior ranks of four administrations, who has become the activist vice president par excellence, is just now emerging from obscurity, getting around town, attending coming-out parties, and plunging into the thick of public debate.

At AEI we admire people who think before they speak, who choose their words carefully, and who understand when the time for research is over and the time for decision has arrived.  We are very honored that the vice president would continue to attend our councils while on extended leave-of-absence through 2009--or 2017.  Tonight he has graciously agreed to introduce our Irving Kristol Lecturer.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President of the United States.