One year ago today in Portsmouth, N.H., John McCain launched his latest bid for the presidency.
Here's some of what he had to say.
[O]ur differences are... sure to be sharpened and exaggerated. That's the nature of free elections. But even in the heat of a campaign, we shouldn't lose sight that much more defines us than our partisanship; much more unites us than divides us. We have common purposes and common challenges, and we live in momentous times. This election should be about big things, not small ones. Ours are not red state or blue state problems. They are national and global. Half measures and small minded politics are inadequate to the present occasion. We can't muddle through the next four years, bickering among ourselves, and leave to others the work that is ours to do. Greatness is America's destiny, but no nation complacent in its greatness can long sustain it.
Those are grown-up sentiments. Too bad the Democrats don't share them.
Read the whole thing here.
I particularly liked this part:
"We're not a country that prefers nostalgia to optimism. We're not a country that would rather go back than forward. We're the world's leader, and leaders don't pine for the past and dread the future. We make the future better than the past.
No declinist he.