8:00 pm, January 18, 2001

My fellow citizens, tonight is my last opportunity to speak to you from the Oval Office as your president.

I am profoundly grateful to you for twice giving me the honor to serve, to work for you and with you to prepare our nation for the 21st century. And I'm grateful to Vice President Gore, to my Cabinet secretaries, and to all those who have served with me for the last eight years.

This has been a time of dramatic transformation, and you have risen to every new challenge. You have made our social fabric stronger, our families healthier and safer, our people more prosperous.

You, the American people, have made our passage into the global information age an era of great American renewal.

In all the work I have done as president, every decision I have made, every executive action I have taken, every bill I have proposed and signed, I've tried to give all Americans the tools and conditions to build the future of our dreams, in a good society, with a strong economy, a cleaner environment, and a freer, safer, more prosperous world.

I have steered my course by our enduring values: opportunity for all, responsibility from all, a community of all Americans. I have sought to give America a new kind of government, smaller, more modern, more effective, full of ideas and policies appropriate to this new time, always putting people first, always focusing on the future.

Working together, America has done well. Our economy is breaking records with more than 22 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the highest home ownership ever, the longest expansion in history.

Our families and communities are stronger. Thirty-five million Americans have used the family leave law. Eight million have moved off welfare. Crime is at a 25-year low. Over 10 million Americans receive more college aid, and more people than ever are going to college. Our schools are better. Higher standards, greater accountability and larger investments have brought higher test scores, and higher graduation rates.

More than three million children have health insurance now, and more than 7 million Americans have been lifted out of poverty. Incomes are rising across the board. Our air and water are cleaner. Our food and drinking water are safer. And more of our precious land has been preserved, in the continental United States, than at any time in 100 years. America has been a force for peace and prosperity in every corner of the globe.

I'm very grateful to be able to turn over the reins of leadership to a new president, with America in such a strong position to meet the challenges of the future.

Tonight, I want to leave you with three thoughts about our future. First, America must maintain our record of fiscal responsibility. Through our last four budgets, we've turned record deficits to record surpluses, and we've been able to pay down $600 billion of our national debt, on track to be debt-free by the end of the decade for the first time since 1835.

Staying on that course will bring lower interest rates, greater prosperity, and the opportunity to meet our big challenges. If we choose wisely, we can pay down the debt, deal with the retirement of the baby boomers, invest more in our future, and provide tax relief.

Second, because the world is more connected every day in every way, America's security and prosperity require us to continue to lead in the world. At this remarkable moment in history, more people live in freedom that ever before. Our alliances are stronger than ever. People all around the world look to America to be a force for peace and prosperity, freedom and security. The global economy is giving more of our own people, and billions around the world, the chance to work and live and raise their families with dignity.

But the forces of integration that have created these good opportunities also make us more subject to global forces of destruction, to terrorism, organized crime and narco-trafficking, the spread of deadly weapons and disease, the degradation of the global environment.

The expansion of trade hasn't fully closed the gap between those of us who live on the cutting edge of the global economy and the billions around the world who live on the knife's edge of survival.

This global gap requires more than compassion. It requires action. Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference.

In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson warned of entangling alliances. But in our times, America cannot and must not disentangle itself from the world. If we want the world to embody our shared values, then we must assume a shared responsibility.

If the wars of the 20th century, especially the recent ones in Kosovo and Bosnia, have taught us anything, it is that we achieve our aims by defending our values and leading the forces of freedom and peace. We must embrace boldly and resolutely that duty to lead, to stand with our allies in word and deed, and to put a human face on the global economy so that expanded trade benefits all people in all nations, lifting lives and hopes all across the world.

Third, we must remember that America cannot lead in the world unless here at home we weave the threads of our coat of many colors into the fabric of one America. As we become ever more diverse, we must work harder to unite around our common values and our common humanity.

We must work harder to overcome our differences. In our hearts and in our laws, we must treat all our people with fairness and dignity, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation and regardless of when they arrived in our country, always moving toward the more perfect union of our founders' dreams.

Hillary, Chelsea and I join all Americans in wishing our very best to the next president, George W. Bush, to his family and his administration in meeting these challenges and in leading freedom's march in this new century.

As for me, I'll leave the presidency more idealistic, more full of hope than the day I arrived and more confident than ever that America's best days lie ahead.

My days in this office are nearly through, but my days of service, I hope, are not. In the years ahead, I will never hold a position higher or a covenant more sacred than that of president of the United States. But there is no title I will wear more proudly than that of citizen.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America.

"You, the American people, have made our passage into the global information age an era of great American renewal."

Clinton was, at blind best, indifferent to the internet. He lacked the backbone even to sanitize encryption export policy, and signed the Communications Decency Act in 1996 with little comment - in other words, he lit a candle under the 1st Amendment for an internet scare bill written as a publicity-grab by a Republican senator. Under his watch, any pretense of an organized right to privacy has been largely squashed. The DMCA and UCITA, as well as several new protectionist laws governing reproduction technologies are also part of Clinton's legacy.

"... a strong economy, a cleaner environment, and a freer, safer, more prosperous world."

Clinton was, like any serious political contender, either spineless or ineffectual or both in implementing any meaningful environmental reforms.

This may seem like a minor point to you right now. Wait until 2025.

"I have sought to give America a new kind of government, smaller, more modern, more effective, full of ideas and policies appropriate to this new time, always putting people first, always focusing on the future."

There have been no meaningful changes in Federal administration under Clinton's term.

"Working together, America has done well. Our economy is breaking records with more than 22 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the highest home ownership ever, the longest expansion in history."

Perhaps a more qualified macroeconomist can comment. My impression is that, in the words of the great Italian engineer and architect Leon Battista Alberti, "the enemy was more often overcome and conquered by the architect's wit without the captain's arms, than by the captain's arms without the architect's wit."

"Crime is at a 25-year low."

It should surprise very few people that, should there happen to be a chance, or even the illusion of a chance, of having a decent life any other way, and you will find criminals disappearing faster than dew in the desert.

"Our schools are better. Higher standards, greater accountability and larger investments have brought higher test scores, and higher graduation rates."

This is, unfortunately, the most unforgivable of the feel-good exaggerations in this speech. In the earlier part of the previous century, America had the two ingredients which contribute, more than anything else, to a country's success: Class mobility, and very, very good public education.

Clinton's administration has been marked by considerable acceleration of the decay of America's once great public school system, to the almost literal point of its end. Under Clinton's watch, a southern state declared Christian creationism on equal footing with Darwin's theory of evolution in public science classes; "charter schools" and "school vouchers" have divided already abysmal public school funding in a variety of fiscally irresponsible replacement schemes - the latter almost exclusively toward religious educational franchises, in an unprecedented abrogation of the separation of church and state. In New York City, the high school dropout rate is still over 50%.

Public education is the foundation on which all of our achievements as a people stand. It is on its destruction that we will, now quite certainly, fall. Clinton failed, tragically, to recognize this as an issue of his office in anything more than a rhetorical capacity, thereby missing what will probably be our last opportunity to prevent a social disaster.

"America has been a force for peace and prosperity in every corner of the globe."

There are a few dead people in the Middle East and Africa that might disagree with this.

"America must maintain our record of fiscal responsibility."

Hopefully not. Large scale budgetary and structural reforms, even in absence of any new policy objectives, were conspicuously absent under Clinton's administration.

"If we choose wisely, we can pay down the debt, deal with the retirement of the baby boomers..."

He is aware, at least, and hopefully so is Bush, of the economic ramifications of the baby boomer retirement years, which could, if not managed extremely carefully, be nothing short of economic Armageddon for the United States (boomers, especially, invested their retirement savings...)

"People all around the world look to America to be a force for peace and prosperity, freedom and security."

Unfortunately, we are not taking many applications for new citizens at the moment. Unless they happen to know C++.

"...narco-trafficking..."

President Clinton will also be remembered as the first of a long line of coming politicians to have openly admitted to using recreational drugs without making any attempt to reform current drug laws, or mitigate sentences for others who were merely caught doing what they themselves had done.

"The expansion of trade hasn't fully closed the gap between those of us who live on the cutting edge of the global economy and the billions around the world who live on the knife's edge of survival."

Clinton. China. India. Africa. This is a remarkably glib way to sum up what his foreign policy has amounted to, especially with respect to reduction of trade barriers (also known in many circles as minimum wage and environmental regulation circumvention).

"...there is no title I will wear more proudly than that of citizen."

He was one of the best political minds of his generation. Perhaps the best, most consummate, American politician.

And the best part is, we're really going to miss him now that he's gone.

To the "Avoid highly subjective writeups" linker: which, the speech, or my commentary?