Bill Clinton's DNC speech Page #4

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So she tried to make sure people on the battlefield had proper equipment. She tried to expand and did expand health care coverage to Reservists and members of the National Guard. She got longer family leave, working with Senator Dodd, for people caring for wounded service members.

And she worked for more extensive care for people with traumatic brain injury. She also served on a special Pentagon commission to propose changes necessary to meet our new security challenges. Newt Gingrich was on that commission, he told me what a good job she had done.

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I say that because nobody who has seriously dealt with the men and women in today's military believes they are a disaster. They are a national treasure of all races, all religions, all walks of life.

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Now, meanwhile, she compiled a really solid record, totally progressive on economic and social issues. She voted for and against some proposed trade deals. She became the de facto economic development officer for the area of New York outside the ambit of New York City.

She worked for farmers, for winemakers, for small businesses and manufacturers, for upstate cities in rural areas who needed more ideas and more new investment to create good jobs, something we have to do again in small-town and rural America, in neighborhoods that have been left behind in our cities and Indian country and, yes, in coal country.

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When she lost a hard-fought contest to President Obama in 2008, she worked for his election hard. But she hesitated to say yes when he asked her to join his Cabinet because she so loved being a senator from New York.

So like me, in a different context, he had to keep asking.

(LAUGHTER)

But as we all saw and heard from Madeleine Albright, it was worth the effort and worth the wait.

(APPLAUSE) As secretary of state, she worked hard to get strong sanctions against Iran's nuclear program. And in what The Wall Street Journal no less called a half-court shot at the buzzer, she got Russia and China to support them. Her team negotiated the New START Treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons and reestablish inspections. And she got enough Republican support to get two-thirds of the Senate, the vote necessary to ratify the treaty.

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She flew all night long from Cambodia to the Middle East to get a cease-fire that would avoid a full-out shooting war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza to protect the peace of the region.

She backed President Obama's decision to go after Osama bin Laden.

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She launched a team, this is really important today, she launched a team to fight back against terrorists online and built a new global counterterrorism effort.

We've got to win this battle in the mind field.

She put climate change at the center of our foreign policy.

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She negotiated the first agreement ever -- ever -- where China and India officially committed to reduce their emissions. And as she had been doing since she went to Beijing in 1995 and said women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights...

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...she worked to empower women and girls around the world and to make the same exact declaration on behalf of the LGBT community in America and around the world.

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And nobody ever talks about this much, nobody ever talks about this much, but it's important to me. She tripled the number of people with AIDS in poor countries whose lives are being saved with your tax dollars, most of them in Africa, going from 1.7 million lives to 5.1 million lives and it didn't cost you any more money. She just bought available FDA-approved generic drugs, something we need to do for the American people more.

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Now, you don't know any of these people. You don't know any of those 3.4 million people, but I'll guarantee you they know you. They know you because they see you as thinking their lives matter. They know you and that's one reason the approval of the United States was 20 points higher when she left the secretary of state's office than when she took it.

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CLINTON:
Now, how does this square? How did this square with the things that you heard at the Republican convention? What's the difference in what I told you and what they said? How do you square it? You can't. One is real, the other is made up.

You just have to decide. You just have to decide which is which, my fellow Americans.

The real one had done more positive change-making before she was 30 than many public officials do in a lifetime in office.

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The real one, if you saw her friend Betsy Ebeling vote for Illinois today...

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...has friends from childhood through Arkansas, where she has not lived in more than 20 years, who have gone all across America at their own expense to fight for the person they know.

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The real one has earned the loyalty, the respect and the fervent support of people who have worked with her in every stage of her life, including leaders around the world who know her to be able, straightforward and completely trustworthy.

The real one calls you when you're sick, when your kid's in trouble or when there's a death in the family.

The real one repeatedly drew praise from prominent Republicans when she was a senator and secretary of state.

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So what's up with it? Well, if you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade...

(LAUGHTER)

...a real change-maker represents a real threat.

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So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two- dimensional, they're easy to absorb. Life in the real world is complicated and real change is hard. And a lot of people even think it's boring.

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Good for you, because earlier today you nominated the real one.

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Listen, we've got to get back on schedule. You guys calm down.

Look (INAUDIBLE) a long, full, blessed life, it really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl in the spring of 1971. When I was president, I worked hard to give you more peace and shared prosperity, to give you an America where nobody is invisible or counted out.

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But for this time, Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face. And she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known.

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You could drop her into any trouble spot, pick one, come back in a month and somehow, some way she will have made it better. That is just who she is.

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There are clear, achievable, affordable responses to our challenges. But we won't get to them if America makes the wrong choice in this election. That's why you should elect her. And you should elect her because she'll never quit when the going gets tough. She'll never quit on you.

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