Speeches

Former President George W. Bush was greeted by thunderous applause on the Fourth of July as he told thousands of spectators in a rural Oklahoma rodeo arena that the U.S. was "the greatest nation on the face of the earth." Bush was given six standing ovations as he spoke in GOP-friendly Woodward, a town of about 12,000 residents in northwestern Oklahoma. About 9,200 tickets were sold for the event -- the biggest crowd for Bush since he left office in January.

reporting from moscow On U.S. missile defense plans 'I know Russia opposes the planned configuration for missile defense in Europe. And my administration is reviewing these plans to enhance the security of America, Europe and the world. And I've made it clear that this system is directed at preventing a potential attack from Iran. It has nothing to do with Russia. In fact, I want to work together with Russia on a missile defense architecture that makes us all safer.

Sidelined for the last month by a broken elbow, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wanted to make a splash with a much-touted speech Wednesday. State Department aides billed it as a major foreign policy address and distributed excerpts in advance in an apparent effort to raise her visibility as chief U.S. diplomat. In the speech, Clinton called for a new "architecture of global cooperation."

Sgt. James Crowley, the white Massachusetts police officer whose arrest of a black Harvard professor led to a political firestorm for President Obama, is scheduled to step back into the fray today in Long Beach -- thanking a national police union that defended him when Obama said he acted "stupidly." Crowley was last seen in public sipping beer with Obama and the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., in a White House summit staged to smooth over the controversy from the president's comments at a July 22 news conference and to help return focus to his top priority, overhauling healthcare.

President Obama's announcement that he will take his case for revamping healthcare before a joint session of Congress next week reflects a decision to go "all in" politically, laying his prestige on the line for the defining domestic issue of his young presidency. Obama is gambling that he can tilt the balance in his favor by spelling out in detail just what he wants from the House and Senate in the coming weeks. Until now, Obama has avoided laying out a blueprint for healthcare, confining himself to statements of broad goals and leaving the particulars to Congress.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended Britain's military presence in Afghanistan in a major policy speech Friday that came as a defense aide quit over the mission's strategy. Brown said that insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan still present major terrorist threats. "Each time I have to ask myself if we are doing the right thing by being in Afghanistan. Each time I have to ask myself if we can justify sending our young men and women to fight for this cause," Brown said in a keynote speech to the Institute of Strategic Studies.

Neither cable, Internet, radio nor a roomful of sheepish and harried adults could deliver the president's address to the 27 fifth-graders in Alice Cho's class at Commonwealth Avenue Elementary in Koreatown. But the message of hard work and resilience got through. The apparent culprit Tuesday morning was interference from a line of television vans in front of the school. Everything had worked perfectly Friday in a test, officials with the Los Angeles Unified School District said.

Though it inspired controversy over the last week, President Obama's back-to-school address to America's students Tuesday ended up being decidedly motivational rather than political -- and even won praise from some Republicans. Speaking to students in a nationwide broadcast from a suburban Virginia high school, the Democratic president urged children to rise above their mistakes and challenges to succeed in school, offering himself as an example of "a goof-off" who went on to make good.

Amid a summer of setbacks, President Obama's speech tonight before a joint session of Congress is a crucial moment that could determine whether he will be able to reestablish his presidency as what John F. Kennedy called the "vital center of action" in the government. Apart from reviving his healthcare plan, the president needs to reassert his grip on a political apparatus that soon will determine whether his agenda succeeds or fails. The summer left Obama in a weakened position.

Excerpts from President Obama's address to Congress: "I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for healthcare reform. And ever since, nearly every president and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way. A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session.