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The challenge that Democrats face as a party isn't the sort of challenge that a lot of the elites inside the Beltway like to talk about. It's not about semantics. It's not about finding the right metaphor. It's not about framing. The challenge that we face is represented on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana, and a thousand other towns and cities across this country. It's about understanding the profound changes that are shaping our future, appreciating the challenges that those changes are creating in the course of people's daily lives, and harnessing our values to forge an agenda that will empower people to meet those challenges and make the most of their lives. That's the work of the Democratic Party, it's the work of the United States of America, and it's the work we mush begin anew.

It all begins with strength -- the strength to defend our country during perilous times. We Democrats have always known that this is a dangerous world and there is evil in it. Sometimes we have to use force. Of course, there is a right way and wrong way -- a right time and place and a wrong time and place. But we never even get to have that discussion, because too many of our fellow countrymen and women out here in the heartland have concluded -- inappropriately, but concluded nonetheless -- that we don't have the backbone to use force even in the face of the most compelling circumstances.

That must change because those in charge in Washington today have done so much to deplete our strength and to undermine our national security. On their watch, North Korea became a virtual assembly line for nuclear weapons. On their watch, stockpiles of biological, chemical, and nuclear materials have gone unsecured across the former Soviet Union. On their watch, our nation remains woefully unprepared to face the calamity of a global pandemic. On their watch, our military forces have been stretched to the breaking point. On their watch, our alliances have been frayed. And on their watch, the situation in Iraq has been terribly mismanaged.

We never had enough troops to secure that country. It's obvious the administration had no plan for winning the peace. When I was in Baghdad in December, our top intelligence official told me things would be 100 percent better in Iraq -- 100 percent -- if only we had not sent the Iraqi army home. But we did, and that is a tragedy.

Missed opportunity. We Democrats can do better. We can do better than the false bravado of "Bring 'em on!" We can do better than the illusion of "Mission Accomplished." We can do better than the flippancy of "You go to war with the army that you've got." What happened in Iraq? They came on. The mission is far from accomplished. And we went to the war with the army that we had, but we didn't give our troops the equipment that they needed to do the job and protect themselves.

That's not strength; it's incompetence -- and those responsible need to be held to account.

We Democrats have the strength and the understanding to know that truly securing America involves a whole lot more than sending our brave soldiers to fight battles in far-away lands. It involves each and every one of us doing our part right here at home each and every day. But that takes leadership -- a leadership that has been lacking with those in charge in Washington today.

When the history of this time is written, I predict that the immediate aftermath of 9/11 will be regarded as an enormous missed opportunity. You may remember what it was like. In Indianapolis, I had people literally coming up to me on the street asking, What can I do? I want to do my part to help my country. The president was asked that question about a week or so following the attack. Do any of you remember what he said? Go to the mall and go shopping. That is not enough. That is not leadership. If I had been president I would have gone on national television and looked the American people in the eye and said: "We are going to do whatever it takes to bring those responsible for this crime to justice, and we will spare no expense in doing whatever it takes to secure our country to make sure that something like this never can happen again."

But now I'm going to ask you for more, because more is what it's going to take. The time has come for a new Declaration of Independence. Today we need a declaration of energy independence, because it is not right for our country to be as dependent as we are on unstable places like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia for something as vital to our national well-being as our petroleum supply. That is something we must change.

The president didn't offer those challenges. As Democrats, we will. We'll invest in new hybrid technologies that are more fuel efficient. We'll invest in new, highstrength, lightweight alloys to help accomplish that result too, and we'll lift up biofuels so that America's farmers can grow America's fuels. We will focus on this challenge like a laser until we get the job done, because we know that it's right for our economy, it's right for our finances, it's right for our nation's security, and above all else, it is important and essential to setting our children free.

Next, if we are going to be truly free and strong, we need to improve this economy. There has never, throughout history, been a nation that was militarily powerful but financially and economically weak. But that is the unsustainable path that we are on.

To get off that path, we must first recognize that there's work to do. This administration tells us things are just fine; this is as good as it gets. But Democrats know better than that, because we have helped this nation do better before. Working with the American people, we helped to lift this country out of the depths of the Great Depression. We helped America move from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy, to service economy, to an information economy. We can help America reinvent itself again to be prosperous and economically strong in the innovation economy of the future.

Blind eye. But it takes a strategy. We'll invest in research and development in the parts of the economy that will create the good jobs of tomorrow: biotechnology, nanotechnology, advanced manufacturing, agricultural science, environmental sciences, and more. We'll have a meaningful system to help those who have been displaced by the forces of globalization make the transition to being upwardly mobile again. We owe them that. And when our companies and workers embrace free markets and open competition, as we must, we'll have a response when our competitors do not.

How can policymakers in Washington look in the mirror knowing that hardworking Americans are starting off 20 percent to 30 percent behind their competitors? And it's not because they're not smart enough, because they don't work hard enough, or because their products aren't good enough. It's because we turn a blind eye and allow illegal subsidies to take place: free rent, free materials, loans that never have to be repaid. We have turned a blind eye and allowed countries to artificially devalue their currencies. That's not right.

When our workers and businesses think smart, work hard, and make the investments to be competitive and productive in the global economy, we can't stand idly by. They have a right to expect more from their government when foreign competitors cheat to steal the fruits of those hard labors, but they've gotten nothing from this administration. Protectionism isn't the answer, of course, but nothing won't do either. When our workers and businesses take responsibility for meeting the challenges they face, they should have the right to expect government to be responsible, too. But with today's debts and deficits, that has not been happening in Washington.

We are on the cusp of becoming the first generation in the history of our nation to have our children inherit something less from us than what we inherited from our parents and grandparents, something diminished. We must not let that happen. Our legacy to our children must be something more than our unpaid bills. Every child born in America today is handed a bill for $36,000 of unpaid debts -- a birthday present from this administration. That must change. I'm desperately concerned that children may come to us one day and ask, what on earth were you thinking? Couldn't you see what was happening? Why didn't you do something to change the course that we were on?

We'd better start thinking about that conversation and do something about it today. Our children have a right to inherit from us a new foundation for hope and opportunity.