Dan Coats: “throughout history a single picture has revealed the political reality of the moment. Before we had photography, there…”

“throughout history a single picture has revealed the political reality of the moment. Before we had photography, there were artist depictions of Caesar entering Rome, General Washington crossing the Delaware, and Napoleon crossing the Alps. When photography came, we could see the images that defined America's role in the pivotal moments of existential threats to our values, our faiths, and our way of life: Roosevelt and Churchill sitting beside Stalin in Tehran and later at Yalta, President Kennedy at the city hall in Berlin, and Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate. The pictures that define the moment, the pictures that are seared into our minds, images that stay with us throughout our life are all powerful, and they have the common theme and the common purpose of confirming America's essential leadership role in global affairs. In all of these examples and thousands of others, we can see the world looking on Americans with respect and with the expectation that we will be there at moments critical to the world's future--they are there not just to participate but there to lead where U.S. leadership is essential to the success of the endeavor. Today, possibly the most powerful image that evokes most clearly a new reality is this image right here.…”