William Bryan: “within the next few days, I will cast my last vote as a U.S. Senator, and by the end of this year, I will conclude 36…”

“within the next few days, I will cast my last vote as a U.S. Senator, and by the end of this year, I will conclude 36 years of public experience. Permit me to reflect for a moment on this experience and share with you some observations. The last decade of the 20th century has witnessed more change than any decade in human history. When I began my Senate service in January of 1989, the world was a very different place than it is today. The Soviet Union and the United States faced off in a cold war, a cold war that dominated global politics from the end of World War II. The ancient capitals of Eastern Europe were satellite appendages of the Soviet Union. There were two Germanys and a wall divided Berlin. The economic pundits were telling us that the Japanese economic model represented the wave of the future, and it was feared that America was in decline. All of that has changed. The Soviet Union has imploded. It no longer exists. Eastern Europe is no longer a series of satellite states of the Soviet Union, but nascent democracies are developing in most of eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall has come down. Germany is reunited. And once again, Berlin is the capital of that country. The Japanese economy for the past decade has remained largely stagnant. And here at home, America enjoys the longest economic expansion in the Nation's history.”