 Ronald Reagan, many years later, where we can reconstitute respect and knowledge of the Constitution, he's still doing the same kind of work he was doing as lifeguard, helping us to acquaint ourselves with the words we live by. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Please be seated. You could be treated to a warm wave of nostalgia after that introduction. And ladies, I want you all to know that it was only the men when I pulled them out that would insist they weren't drowning and didn't need help. The women were always very gracious and thanked me for that. Well, thank you, Dwayne Andreas. Thank you all for coming. Incidentally, it was 77 notches on the log. Actually, the total was 78 after I'd gotten out of school and was a sports announcer and I had a few days vacation around the 4th of July and I decided to drive home to Dixon and what else go out and go swimming at Lowell Park. The young fellow who'd worked at the stand and was now the lifeguard had worked at the stand when I was there. He said, hey, am I glad to see you? Would you mind watching just for a few minutes while I went up to the bathhouse? And I said, sure, believe it or not, while he was gone I got number 78. Well, I thank you all for coming and I've asked you to the White House today so that I could say how much the work you're about to begin means to us. I think there's a good sign of the importance of the bicentennial to our country and the sign is that the head of one of the equal branches of our government stepped down to devote his full energies to organizing the celebrations. All Americans, I think, are in the debt of former Chief Justice Warren Berger. It was 200 years ago that a small group of men gathered in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to draft a new order for the ages. Yes, they met in that steamy summer of 1787 and they produced the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of man, the Constitution of the United States. Sometimes we forget just what a miracle the Constitution is. Here were the United States 13 former colonies perched on the eastern plains of a great and largely unexplored continent. They had only 11 years before declared their independence from the greatest power on the face of the earth. And while they called themselves united, unity among them was the exception, not the rule. Trade was just one area of intense rivalries. States with good ports imposed tariffs to milk-honey from states that relied on them for shipping. James Madison wrote that New Jersey, placed between Philadelphia and New York, was a cask tapped at both ends. And North Carolina between Virginia and South Carolina was a patient bleeding at both arms. In some states, inflation was sky-high. Taxes had soared, debt was crushing. In Massachusetts, a group of farmers had gathered around a revolutionary war hero, Daniel Shays, and rebelled against high taxes. Our Ambassador to Paris, Thomas Jefferson, heard of Shays' rebellion and wrote, I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. When I first heard that, I told Tom he was absolutely right. Not everyone was so sure. It was against that backdrop that men and women throughout the new nation began to wonder. Could something be done about the obvious failures of the Articles of Confederation? And as James Madison later said, the Constitutional Convention was not appointed by Congress but by the people. The road to Philadelphia started in Annapolis in September 1786, when five states sent representatives to discuss interstate commerce. But they decided that the problems of the nation were much broader than that. So when they adjourned, they called for a convention in Philadelphia the following May to, as they wrote, render the Constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union. Seven states responded to that call and appointed their own delegates before the Continental Congress was swept up in the wave of opinion and issued a convention call of its own. I often say of Congress today that to make them see the light, you first have to make them feel the heat. It was true then, too. The nation's stake in the Philadelphia Convention was clear. As a certain David Ramsey of Charleston wrote to Thomas Jefferson on April 7th, 1787, unless they make an efficient federal government, the end of the matter will be an American monarch or rather three or more confederacies. Well, we didn't become a monarchy. We didn't divide into many nations like Europe. The miracle at Philadelphia was that the founders overcame sexual rivalries and narrow parochial interests. They looked to the interests of all the people and they looked beyond interest to the rights of man. They spoke for we the people. They spoke for the most simple and noble ideas about the rule of nations ever conceived in man's long journey from the caves to the mountaintops. The idea of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and the idea of human freedom. And because they spoke as they did, their workers endured, and America is today, as it has been for 200 years, the last best hope of all humanity. This year you will help tell that great story about the creation of this new order for the ages, this city on a hill, this light under the nations, this America. I'm grateful for all that you'll be doing for our nation. Yesterday in Canada, the Speaker of the House of Commons called attention to the impact that our Constitution and the inspiration it had been on them. And then I heard a phrase that was quite wonderful there. They said, early in July, the Canadians will be celebrating their great day. And I said, and along the border there will be a mix of the maple leaf flag and the stars and stripes. Because as one Canadian has written, the only difference between their Dominion Day and our Fourth of July, our Independence Day, is 48 hours. Those two days are apart. Well, incidentally, I never had to pull out Dwayne Andreas. He was always a good boy. But now I'm going to leave here and go through the red room and into the blue room and stand there in front of the fireplace. And I'm going to hope that all of you will come by because I didn't get a chance to greet each one of you separately when I came here. And we can shake hands and get acquainted individually in there. So thank you all. God bless you for what you're doing. It is really a noble cause that we the people, even today, most people in this country don't realize that practically all, as far as I know, all the constitutions of the rest of the world are documents in which the government tells the people what their privileges are. Ours is the only one that says we the people tell the government what its privileges are, and it can do no other things than those prescribed in this document, the Constitution. Well, I'll see you in the blue room. Thank you.