The old solution, the old way, was to think that public money alone could end these problems.  But we have learned that is not so.  And in any case, our funds are low.  We have a deficit to bring down.  We have more will than wallet; but will is what we need.  We will make the hard choices, looking at what we have and perhaps allocating it differently, making our decisions based on honest need and prudent safety.  And then we will do the wisest thing of all:  We will turn to the only resource we have that in times of need always grows—­the goodness and the courage of the American people.

I am speaking of a new engagement in the lives of others, a new activism, hands-on and involved, that gets the job done.  We must bring in the generations, harnessing the unused talent of the elderly and the unfocused energy of the young.  For not only leadership is passed from generation to generation, but so is stewardship.  And the generation born after the Second World War has come of age.

I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good.  We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding.  We will work on this in the White House, in the Cabinet agencies.  I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved.  The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless:  duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.

We need a new engagement, too, between the Executive and the Congress.  The challenges before us will be thrashed out with the House and the Senate.  We must bring the Federal budget into balance.  And we must ensure that America stands before the world united, strong, at peace, and fiscally sound.  But, of course, things may be difficult.  We need compromise; we have had dissension.  We need harmony; we have had a chorus of discordant voices.

For Congress, too, has changed in our time.  There has grown a certain divisiveness.  We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other’s ideas are challenged, but each other’s motives.  And our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other.  It has been this way since Vietnam.  That war cleaves us still.  But, friends, that war began in earnest a quarter of a century ago; and surely the statute of limitations has been reached.  This is a fact:  The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory.  A new breeze is blowing, and the old bipartisanship must be made new again.