 Mr. President, Senator Mitchell, distinguished guests. 50 years ago, on February 4th, 1939, President Roosevelt invited 50 distinguished Americans to have lunch with him and to become trustees of his vision. The first presidential library, the library that was going to house the papers of his administration and remind future generations of Americans what he had tried to achieve as president. Only one of those trustees survives, Dorothy Schiff. She could not be with us today, but we're delighted that her daughter, Adele Hall-Sweet, has been able to join us. We are, have invited today, 50 distinguished Americans, 50 years later, to fill the roster of those trustees to carry forward the Roosevelt heritage. For a moment, let's close our eyes. And in the shadow of an inaugural that's about to take place, let us recall one of the most memorable. The nation was overcome by the worst economic crisis in its history. Confidence in the government was at its lowest ebb. Whether the free enterprise system was going to survive in our country was a moot question. The dictators who would threaten the very existence of freedom had already taken power. Suplines degraded our cities. And our concern for each other was being lost in the desperation of personal survival. A nation out of work and out of hope sat by a new electronic instrument called the radio and listened to the new president of the United States. This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this day, my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the presidency, I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. It is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly, and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured. We'll revive and we'll prosper. First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is justified, terror-created efforts to convert retreat into advance. Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to introduce the Majority Leader of the Senate of the United States, Senator George Mitchell of the State of Maine. Mr. President, Mr. Ambassador, distinguished guests and friends of the Roosevelt Library, I'm pleased to join in this commemoration to speak of a past president in the presence of our current president is a rare honor. I'm from Maine, and we have a special interest in Franklin Roosevelt's life and career. Like many other Americans, including President-elect Bush, he had the good judgment to choose Maine as a place to live, at least for part of the year. The Roosevelt home on Campobello Island, just off the coast of Maine, is now an international park. It is majestic in its beauty and simplicity. It is the product of the effort of many persons, not least of whom were Dr. Hammer and Senator Muskie. And Mr. President, on behalf of all Maine citizens, I invite you to visit there sometime. I think you'd find it inspiring and interesting. Now another reason we in Maine are interested in Roosevelt is embarrassment. In 1936, FDR won 46 states in his landslide re-election, losing only Maine and Vermont. Until then, the best-known political slogan in America had been, as Maine goes, so goes the nation. That election transformed it into the somewhat less grandiose slogan, as Maine goes, so goes Vermont. And we're still trying to live that down. Last summer, at a small college just a few miles from the Roosevelt summer home, I attended a performance of sunrise at Campobello. The play is a vivid reminder of FDR's courage in the face of adversity. By the time he was 39 years old, he had run for the US Senate and lost. He had run for vice president and lost. And he was permanently crippled. Most men would have given up and accepted what fate then appeared to dictate the quiet life of an invalid. But he didn't give up. And America is the better for it. Roosevelt's personal struggle to regain the use of his body, to alleviate the pain of his crippled back and legs, contributed to his compassionate view of the nation's responsibility to its people. He had known personal fear for his own future. So he knew what he was talking about when, in his first inaugural address, as we've just heard, he told a frightened nation that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Those were his own words. He labored over his public addresses, for he knew, as one of his biographers put it, that all of those words would constitute the bulk of the estate that he would leave to posterity. And he was right. Perhaps that was in his mind in 1939 when he established his presidential library. Perhaps he knew then what time has vindicated that his greatest legacy to the American people was an idea, the idea that where the people are sovereign, government can and must do more than simply observe the liberties of its citizens. Roosevelt's legacy was to empower all Americans to act through the government for their common good. Today, that principle, the government of the whole people striving to improve conditions for the whole people, is deeply ingrained in our political and social thought. We recognize that if we want to preserve our political and civil liberties, the conditions in which those liberties are exercised must be safeguarded. President Roosevelt said it clearly. In the spring of 1933, he later said, we faced a crisis. We were against revolution. And therefore, we waged war against the conditions which make revolutions. He saw that a national community owes to its members more than an abstract respect for the rights which they could not afford to exercise. He said in the preface to his great Four Freedom Speech, there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are quite simple. They are equality of opportunity for youth and others, jobs for those who can work, security for those who need it, the preservation of civil liberties for all. Roosevelt's greatness can also be measured by the fact that his example has inspired so many others, including President Reagan, who is the honorary chairman of the 50th anniversary celebration. Like President Roosevelt, President Reagan possesses a legendary ability to inspire in Americans pride in their nation and faith in its future. Like Roosevelt, the warmth of his personality and the grace of his manner have been attractive to his fellow citizens. As one who has opposed some of his policies, I can testify firsthand to his ability and his appeal. Mr. President, I believe I speak for all Americans, regardless of political persuasion, when I say thank you for your service to our nation. May God bless you and Mrs. Reagan with many more years of health and happiness. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to introduce the president of the United States. Thank you, Senator Mitchell, and Ambassador Vanden Heuval. It's a particular pleasure for me to be here today as I near the end of my career in public life. The historian William Luttenberg has written about how Franklin Roosevelt aroused the interest of young men and women in politics and government and drew them into the national service. From the brain-trusters to the many idealists who staffed the agencies and bureaus of the New Deal, his magic brought thousands to Washington. But I can tell you from personal experience that it didn't stop there. All across the nation, millions of new voters looked at this president who was filled with confidence in the future, faith in the people, and the joy of the Democratic rough and tumble. And they said to themselves, maybe someday they too would like to serve the nation in public life. I was one of those millions. Franklin Roosevelt was the first president I ever voted for. The first to serve in my lifetime that I regarded as a hero and the first I ever actually saw. That was in 1936, a campaign parade in Des Moines where I was working as a radio announcer. But a wave of affection and pride swept through that crowd as he passed by in an open car, a familiar smile on his lips, jaunty and confident, drawing from us a reservoir of confidence and enthusiasm some of us had forgotten we had in those days in those hard years. He really did convince us that the only thing we had to fear was, as Senator Mitchell has told us, fear itself. And it was that ebullience, that infectious optimism that made one young sportscaster think that maybe he should be more active as a citizen. I assure you, though, he never tied that to one day holding public office. And certainly never dreamed that destiny would take him to the same office FDR held. If I may just tell a little story here that isn't about FDR, but may give you an idea about how far away the presidency seemed to me at that time, not too long after the day I saw the president riding in the parade, I took a train out to California and ended up with a movie contract at Warner Brothers. I was known as Dutch Reagan then. My childhood nickname, the studio didn't like it. So they called a meeting to discuss what my name should be. And I began to realize how expendable what you might call my identity was in this new business I was in. So they were throwing names back and forth. I'm just sitting there listening. They acted as if I couldn't hear. And finally, as they kept going on and trying out various names, looking up as if they were looking at a marquee, I timidly suggested one they hadn't thought of, my real name, Ronald Reagan. And they started tossing it around the table. I'll never forget the scene. Top man said it over and over to him. So Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan. He paused for a long moment and then declared, I like it. So I became Ronald Reagan. Debates continue about FDR's impact on his age and ours. But to my mind, James McGregor Burns caught the core of President Roosevelt's contribution when he included in his list, faith in the people. The months before FDR took office are far behind us now. We forget what they were like. The pink slips handed out at factories across the land with no jobs anywhere if you lost yours. The soup kitchens in every major city. The look of desperation in people's eyes. And we forget that in the unprecedented economic crisis, many had begun to question our most basic institutions, including our democracy itself. And then along came FDR, who put his faith, as he said, in the forgotten man, the ordinary American. I remember that voice of his, as we've heard it here today, coming over the radio, its strength, its optimism. I wonder how many of us in this room know that to this day, no program in the history of radio has ever equaled the audience he had in his fireside chats. I remember how a light would snap on in the eyes of everyone in the room, just hearing him, and how because of his faith, our faith and our own capacity to overcome any crisis and any challenge was reborn. In this sense, FDR renewed the charter of the founders of our nation, the founders that created a government of we the people. Through a depression and a great war, crises that could well have led us in another direction, FDR strengthened that charter. When others doubt, he said that he would find our, or that we would find our salvation in our own hands, not in some elite, but in ourselves. We'd find it where we'd always found it, in the towns, on the farms, in the stores and factories across America. One other thing about FDR, he understood history and how history lives in a nation's life. He was, as you've been told, the first president to establish a presidential library to house all his papers and collections. The first meeting of supporters of the library was held 50 years ago next month. FDR addressed it, and in explaining his feeling for history, he told a story that I thought I'd tell you. It was about when he was acting as secretary of the Navy on the eve of World War I. The Germans had declared unlimited submarine warfare, and as he said, it was perfectly obvious that as soon as they sank an American flagship, we would be in the war. He went to see President Wilson for permission to move the fleet to the yards, to have them cleaned and fitted and made ready for war in case it came. Wilson refused. FDR pressed his case. Wilson said no again without giving a reason. So finally Roosevelt figured he'd lost and started to leave, but Wilson called him back. I'm going to tell you something I cannot tell the public, he said. I don't want to do anything. I do not want the United States to do anything in a military way by way of war preparations that would allow the definitive historian in later days to say that the United States had committed an unfriendly act against the Central Powers. I do not want to do anything that would lead him to misjudge our American attitude 60 or 70 years from now. Yes, FDR knew that the history of the nation's past is part of its charter for the future. To my mind, as one who served in the office, FDR wants grace so magnificently. No higher tribute can be given a president than that he strengthened our faith in ourselves, which is the foundation of that charter. Policies come and go. Leaders will pass from the stage. The enduring sail and compass of our nation is we, the people. When the American people are strong and confident, when their leaders hear their voices, America, whatever storms it might be weathering, will make it through. It will survive and it will prevail. Franklin Roosevelt was what they used to call on the Mississippi a lightning captain of the ship of state because he gave us all the confidence to be lightning captains in our own way. Thank you and God bless you all. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to ask Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. to give you a copy of this book by Eric Larrabee, a great and wonderful book, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Commandering Chief. And to our Commandering Chief, Mrs. Roosevelt will present this. And one other thank you. And like you, Mr. President, Franklin Roosevelt was the governor of a great state. And while he was governor, he wrote a letter to a neighbor and to a friend. And that friend's son gave it to one of the president's sons, John Roosevelt. We have John Roosevelt's widow with us today. John Roosevelt, as you may know, was a Republican. He campaigned for you very actively in 1980. And we are delighted that Irene Roosevelt can is with us today to give you that letter to go into the Reagan Library. I shall be very proud to have both of these in another presidential library, following in the footsteps of the man who started those institutions. And I'm grateful to all of you. And I thought he was a Democrat when he was supported. But no, I had voted four times for the man we honor today. I won't go on with that in detail beyond that. There are a lot of people in the room, Mr. President, who are sorry. You swigged. Thank you very much. Thank you.