AL FROM:

Good afternoon. On behalf of the Democratic Leadership Council, I want to welcome you all here and am particularly delighted to welcome President Clinton home to the DLC. I want to thank John Sexton and Jack Lew and the people at New York University, who have been terrific hosts for us, for our sessions this morning and now for this speech by the President this afternoon.

We're in a great time, a time of great challenge for our country and for our party. But the Democratic party in the United States has faced this kind of a challenge before. The last time our party faced this kind of a challenge, President Clinton was chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, and helped lead us out of the wilderness.

He did it not by compromising Democratic values, but by offering a new set of bold ideas to further those values. And in doing so, throughout his presidency, President Clinton was really the modernizer of progressive politics, not only in this country, but all over the world.

But my job today isn't to introduce President Clinton. It's to introduce to you the man who will introduce him, one of the rising stars in the Democratic party, one of our brightest young stars, Mayor Martin O'Malley of Baltimore.

If you want to know about Mayor O'Malley, get the December issue of Esquire magazine, because he is the cover story as America's brightest young mayor.

I think Martin O'Malley has one of the toughest jobs in America. Baltimore, like many of our older cities, is beset with big problems. But the thing that makes Martin O'Malley such a unique politician and civic leader is that he doesn't shy away from those problems. He tackles them with imagination and with boldness. And for those of you who know Martin O'Malley, you know he never does anything halfway.

He's gone to war with the drug lords and the thugs to take back the streets of Baltimore, and he's winning that war with his "I Believe in Baltimore" campaign. He's willing to take on whatever political heat is necessary to do what he thinks is right, and he's taken on the bureaucracy and brought accountability to the government of Baltimore. His City Stat program can tell you what's going on in any department at any time. It's the kind of accountability that will reestablish urban government.

And if you want to see Martin O'Malley in action as mayor, you ought to go up to the sixth floor of City Hall, as I have, and sit with him while he has a department head come through, as he evaluates their performance every week.

Martin O'Malley is an outstanding leader. He's bright, visionary, and he's committed. And he shows, as well as any person in America, how you can govern as a New Democrat, with commitment and passion.

It's my privilege to introduce to you Martin O'Malley, the Mayor of Baltimore. [APPLAUSE]

MARTIN O'MALLEY:

Thanks. Al, thank you very, very much for those very kind remarks. Whatever we've accomplished in these last few years in the city of Baltimore is entirely attributable to the character of our people.

And I want to thank Al From for forcing our party to think anew, and for all that he does to keep the DLC together, to keep us thinking about the challenges facing our country.

It's a real honor to stand here today and introduce our keynote speaker, former President Bill Clinton, the last popularly elected president of the United States. [APPLAUSE]

Now, Mr. President, it will come as no surprise to you, I'm sure, to know that your name was invoked many times this morning in our little break-out sessions, as we tried to join hands and contact the living after the mid-term elections. [LAUGHTER]

You know, the position that our party finds itself in kind of reminds me of some cruel political version of that classic Bill Murray film, Groundhog Day. You remember this one? We wake again to a cold, gray morning. We wake again to the aftermath of a disappointing midterm election. We wake again to a President Bush. We wake again to an American public outwardly supportive of a Republican wartime president. But it's not 1990. It's 2002.

As we welcome former President Clinton to the podium, let us remember that the people of our country elected him not so much because of the charm of his personality, but because of the power of his ideas. Not so much because he appeared moderate, but because he made government work for working people - working people who had come to believe that their government no longer cared about them.

President Clinton worked hard to move us beyond the stifling politics of patronage and partisanship, where we foolishly and repeatedly tried to lay out a smorgasbord for special interests. In his eight years, President Clinton worked to move us beyond patronage politics and partisan politics to a new politics: the politics of performance. The politics of performance. The politics of performance, in pursuit of the national interest.

Just as the despair of 1990 was followed by the victory of 1992, so too can the despair of this year be followed by victory in 2004, if we remember and create anew.

He may no longer be president, but the power of his ideas and the effectiveness of his governance continue to shape our country and instruct the future of our party.

Ladies and gentlemen, a New Democrat and the 42nd President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton. [[APPLAUSE]

REMARKS BY FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON....