Commencement Address
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California
April 25, 2003

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President Benton.Chancellor Runnels. Dean Wilburn.

I want to thank PepperdineUniversity for inviting me to speak today.

Thank you for the very high honor you have paid me with this honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree. I feel honored to join you as a member of the Class of 2003.

Graduates! Congratulations!

Spouses ! Moms and Dads! Grandparents ! Congratulations!

Given the profound solemnity of this occasion, I am quite sure that most of you reserved for yourself that one final introspective moment, when you went into your room and, summoning up all of the articulate wisdom that would express your deepest intellectual feelings on this momentous day of your academic denouement, looked into the mirror and said:YESSS !

We are here for one of those wonderful milestones in life that you will never forget. The day you graduate. The day you receive the proof of all of your hard work.

This is the day that will launch you on a journey that is impossible to predict but so wonderful to imagine.

If your grandfather could not imagine the computer, than there are many more amazing things in your future that today we can not envision. The excitement comes from knowing that you will be part of and I hope, responsible for, ideas and policies that will advance the cause of democracy and freedom around the world.

I am confident you will be liberty's standard bearers for the third millennium because at Pepperdine University you have benefited from a curriculum so beautifully stated by Dean Wilburn:

"We seek the courage to combine faith not with magic but with morality and to test public policy against the verities that anchored the institutions and commitments of America's founders."

With the moral foundation, the strong values and the academic excellence that you take with you from PepperdineUniversity, you are the response to President Bush's call for Americans to "live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character."

The difficult assignment you have undertaken - to make a difference in the world by dedicating yourself to write, to create, to implement policies that will improve humanity - is vital to the strength and the future of our country.

The information age and our global society are moving so fast, our ethics and our principles are having a hard time catching up.

Your school motto of "Creating tomorrow by honoring yesterday" offers the unique solution to today's conflict between want and wisdom. You will be instrumental in returning the solid values of morality, civic community and family.

You will achieve this and much more if you heed the words of a great Californian, President Ronald Reagan who asked us, in his inaugural address, to: "Believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God's help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us."

In Washington, we have embarked upon an arduous but necessary evolution in the way our government works. Before September 11, the word "homeland" seemed a quaint word from a Victorian poem.Homeland.

Today it resides with "ramparts" and "rockets red glare" as a permanent entry in the patriotic pantheon of American history.

After the anguish and the outrage of that dark day, we did what Americans do -- we went into action to see that this shall not happen again.

We are busy at work on the scaffold for this new necessity - the Department of Homeland Security.

We are depending on you to bring the mortar and the marble to continue the construction on this front line embattlement against evil and tyranny.

Twenty years from now, at your reunion, when you try to remember who that woman was who spoke at your graduation, I hope you will reflect on the promise and the potential that you feel today. And then start again. On the next twenty years.

One of the greatest things life will teach you is that your career is a continuing series of plateaus.

Never stop. Never settle for your last plateau. And I am not referring to promotions and titles and money. I am speaking of learning and living and discovering.

Remember when you read that book in your sophomore year and some event in history that had previously been only a film clip on the History channel suddenly became clear and understandable to you?

I wish you a million moments like that when a new idea appears in front of you. You are the generation that will use ideas to improve society.

Everything you have read and studied up until today has been kindling. And now it is your turn to light that torch which President John Kennedy said will always be passed to the new generation.

You will eventually be responsible for making policy. At times it will seem like jogging through molasses. But anything truly important does not come easy. It is a wonderful responsibility. Embrace it and enjoy it.

You will be the authors of policies that will define America in the decades to come. Bring that wonderful sense of creativity and originality that brought you to this day.

Do not chase an idea. It will hide from you forever. Ignore it and it will return, begging for attention. Agatha Christie said that she thought of her best plots while she was washing the dishes.

Never lose sight of the goal. After all the data and the details, take a moment to move away from it all.

Turn off the watching machine, that ubiquitous television that reveals only the top layer of society. Take a walk in a park or down a beautiful shore.

And remind yourself, I can do this - I have a degree from Pepperdine.

The perspective of history reduces the actual and virtual crises of the day to a manageable moment in the greater panorama of life.

Travel through time in your mind and try to imagine the wonderful impossible juxtapositions of people and events. What would Einstein have made of the internet? What would DaVinci have thought of the Corvette? How would Jefferson have responded to terrorism?

Transpose today's challenges into the minds of history's great men and women.

The answers to most of the dilemmas you will face tomorrow are in the strong principles that you will find in yesterday's history books.

When you confront difficult policy issues that seem impossible to resolve, consider the possibility that Thomas Jefferson might have already solved it for you two hundred years ago.

I have the unique honor of reporting directly to the President of the United States. I predict that some of you will also one day find yourself in the White House. Either reporting there or residing there.

And there you will discover why democracy remains the most successful form of government in history.

Consider the magnificent simplicity of the way our system works. If you took a taxi to the White House to meet with the President of the United States, this most powerful man in the world would remind you that he works for the taxi driver who brought you there.

When I visit the White House and see the walls filled with ivy-league degrees and lofty titles and pictures of important and famous people, I realize that I am there only because God raised me up and God prepared me for the hard work of serving our nation.

He prepares each of us for the work he has called us to do.

For me, it began with a few lessons in humility in the slums of Portsmouth, Virginia. He tested me with the chill of poverty and family members trapped by alcoholism. But He warmed away that chill with the love of family and neighbors who brought healing to a broken home.

He blessed me with an extended family of kin and community who taught me right from wrong, and brothers who taught me pride in earning my way in this world.

In college, God taught me to appreciate my heritage, to see that I was beautifully and wonderfully made. I graduated from college with the knowledge that I was His beloved child - it was the most important thing I learned in school.

He gave me the opportunity to use my gifts and talents to speak for those who can't speak for themselves - unborn children.

He gave me a wonderful mother who taught me through her life the essence of love, the importance of family and the meaning of faith.

The strength I draw from God's love is essential to my work in Washington. Although we speak in acronyms and euphemisms, I always go back to the Bible for the words that have the most meaning.

If I start to think I am important or influential, I remember these words from Corinthians:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres. Love never fails."

Your careers are now beginning. Two-hundred and twenty-seven years ago, when our country was just beginning, Thomas Paine said, "We have it in our power to start the world over again."That power is now in your hands. Use it wisely. Freedom loving men and women around the world are counting on you.

A wise woman once said a good commencement address should have three things: a good open, a good close -- and the two of them should be as close together as possible.

So let me leave you to your futures and remind you what has not changed. After September 11, there were many editorials stating that everything had changed forever.

Many things have changed. We saw the oceans shrink and learned that our enemies were among us. We learned how to be vigilant, a difficult new skill for peace loving people.

We lost our complacency about our place in the world and wondered privately and aloud, how could someone hate us so much. And why?

Let me tell you what has not changed. The American spirit is still one of optimism and courage. This will always be a beautiful country -- as you see behind me -- from sea to shining sea.

We will continue to live -- and laugh -- and love. Children will be born. Poems will be written. New leaders will graduate from university. And we will sing songs of soldiers marching home.

The few years immediately behind you have prepared you for the decades in front of you. America needs you and your leadership to carry on the magnificent ideals of freedom and liberty upon which all of our citizens -- and yes the world --so depend.Thank you. God bless you and God bless America.