sights and sounds of this ceremony are broadcast
instantaneously to billions around the world. Communications and
commerce are global. Investment is mobile. Technology is almost magical,
and ambition for a better life is now universal.

We earn our livelihood in America today in peaceful competition with
people all across the Earth. Profound and powerful forces are shaking
and remaking our world, and the URGENT question of our time is whether
we can make change our friend and not our enemy. This new world has
already enriched the lives of MILLIONS of Americans who are able to
compete and win in it. But when most people are working harder for less,
when others cannot work at all, when the cost of health care devastates
families and threatens to bankrupt our enterprises, great and small;
when the fear of crime robs law abiding citizens of their freedom; and
when millions of poor children cannot even imagine the lives we are
calling them to lead, we have not made change our friend.

We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps,
but we have not done so. Instead we have drifted, and that
drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy,
and shaken our confidence. Though our challenges are fearsome,
so are our strengths. Americans have ever been a restless, questing,
hopeful people, and we must bring to our task today the vision
and will of those who came before us. From our Revolution to the
Civil War, to the Great Depression, to the Civil Rights movement,
our people have always mustered the determination to construct from
these crises the pillars of our history. Thomas Jefferson believed
that to preserve the very foundations of our nation we would need
dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow Americans,
this is OUR time. Let us embrace it.

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of
our OWN renewal. There is nothing WRONG with America that cannot be
cured by what is RIGHT with America.

And so today we pledge an end to the era of deadlock and drift, and a
new season of American renewal has begun.

To renew America we must be bold. We must do what no generation has had
to do before. We must invest more in our own people, in their jobs, and
in their future, and at the same time cut our massive debt. . .and we
must do so in a world in which we must compete for every opportunity.
It will not be easy. It will require sacrifice, but it can be done,