Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I, too, had the opportunity to join my colleagues in the trip to Vienna to meet with leaders of the Russian Duma. Mr. Speaker, in this audience tonight we have some young people who are visiting our Nation's Capitol, and as I was looking up there getting ready to speak, I was reminded of the time when I was in school at that age, and we had in this country a different type of relationship with Russia. It was the height of the Cold War, and at school they used to do drills. Some people will remember the drills. They were called duck and cover drills. We would have to, anticipating there would be a nuclear attack, we would actually have to get down under our desks, cover our heads, and close our eyes so we would not see the flash that was supposed to be a nuclear attack. Mr. Speaker, that was an era of terror. It was an era when the United States and Russia were at odds over the great global consequences of whether capitalism or communism would rule the earth. Have we come a long way from those days? Yes. We worked throughout the seventies to build down nuclear arms, we worked throughout the eighties to reestablish a relationship with Russia, and in the nineties we have in the United States been responsible for helping Russia rebuild itself economically, and assisted in so many ways as partners in peace.”