birthday and his legacy of leadership. this is an hour and 10 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to introduce as often as a person who needs no introduction, but perhaps a little information anyway. many of you may not realize that he was born, not in manhattan, but born in brooklyn, and somewhere during his formative years, he became a serious yankee fan. [laughter] which i suspect growing up in brooklyn might be the cause for some other kind of award, but this isn't the day for that. [laughter] born in brooklyn, went to manhattan college, went to nyu law school less you think his new york bonafides are not real. when ronald ragen became president, rudy was an attorney general. much to the prize of some folks went back to new york and while it may have been a surprise to some people and rudy and i did cannot know each other at that time as i look back on his career i realize that my guess is what he was doing was going home to do something, some things for his city that seriously needed doing. he tried the move ya commission trial -- mafia commission trials getting new york out of the clutches of some people who were certainly doing it no favors. he ran for mayor the first time in 1989. he said at that time that if david won, it was going to be more of the same. well, he was 100% right. it was more than of the same, perhaps even worse than before, so rudy not being a quitter came back four years later, and that time in a landslide, lost the first time by 47,000 votes i think or something like that out of 2 million cast. he came back the next time and won it by better than 50,000, 53,000 my numbers tell me. he then became the first mayor of new york i believe to ever reduce taxes. [laughter] [applause] then seeing that worked pretty well, he did it 22 more times, and put new york on the road to recovery. i've spent over the course of a lifetime quite a bit of time in new york. i will tell you, mayor, that in the early days, in the 60s and 70s when i went to new york, it was my intention to leave as soon as i could get out. [laughter] i noticed after rudy giuliani had been mayor really only a brief period of time, i neatsed -- my wife is nodding yes -- we noticed a very, very substantial change in the city. rudy giuliani made an enormous difference for that city, and it has never looked back, much thanks to him. there is more to the law than being an academic, being an intellectual. part of the important thing about the law is how you use it, and the reason that new york became as good as it is is because rudy knew how to use the law. the men come to mind, there used to be people when you came out of the lincoln tunnel, they had dirty newspapers and they wiped the windshield and you were afraid not to because god knows what would happen if you did that. he told the police department to arrest them. they said, we can't do that. he said, find a reason. get it done. that's using the law within the confines of the law. he's good at that. we have today a award winner deserving of this award which mr. mayor is the highest that we give. absolutely deserving of it, and it is our pleasure to present it it to you. i want toed -- i want to do what i always do and that's read the description on the award. it's something that cannot be improved with shoty memories like mine. this award is presented annually to a republican leader in recognition of an accomplishment and leadership for our country. this award recognizes those leaders who protect freedom and the rule of law while upholding republican ideals in the face of adverse political challenges. our awardee is all of that. mr. mayor, it is my pleasure and honor to present you with this award, and thank you so much for being here. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> thank you very much, david, for that award. it means a great deal to me. i have tremendous admiration for david whose contributions to the republican party and to the health and correct direction of our country are enormous, and it's a great honor to receive the award from you and to be with all of these republican warriors, there's more republicans in this room than in all of new york city. [laughter] i was the first republican elected mayor of new york city in 25 years. i was the first one to remain a republican in 50. [laughter] it is tough to be a republican in new york. my predecessor republican changed parties while he was mayor, and my successor republican changed parties about two years ago, so i don't know who i go back to. [laughter] for example, this is a city that didn't vote for abraham lincoln. [laughter] you get an idea of how democratic it is. [laughter] i love being a republican mayor of new york city because i got accused once of appointing too many republicans. well, i appointed all six republicans in new york city. [laughter] i couldn't possibly have appointed too many republicans. i couldn't find any. i used a republican approach to governing. i borrowed a great deal of it from ronald reagan who i know you're especially come men rating at -- honoring at this meeting. the idea we should get government spending under control, and i learned that from having having the honor of working with ronald reagan, and the president appointed me as associate attorney general. after i was appointed but before the con fir ration hearings were completed, i had a breakfast with 19 other people with president reagan and got to know him, and the day that i had that breakfast with him it was the day he was almost assassinated. i have a picture of my shaking hands with ronald reagan that morning, and, of course, a few hours later he was shot. i spent the rest of that day trying to get him out of the hands the washington police and turned over to the fbi because we were very worried that maybe something would happen to him because the idea of lee harvey oswaled and what happened to him was fresh in everybody's memory, and then william decided that hinkley had to be arraigned in open court before the end of the day along with judge wester, who was the head of the fbi at the time, we had to clear out the courthouse, check is out, make sure there was nobody there, reestablish the number of people that went in, and at about eleven o'clock at night, we had the arraignment in court in the federal courthouse here, and it was a very strange day having had breakfast early in the morning with president reagan, and there being in court with his attempted asassin, and i always wondered if he was successful, what would have happened to the future direction of this country if we look back on it. i'm sure i'm emotionally biased in favor of president reagan having worked for him as the associate attorney general and united states attorney, but i do believe i'm objective in saying he was the most consequential president since roosevelt, had the most impact on changing the united states and changing the world. liberation of millions of people, most presidents don't get to liberate millions of people. ronald reagan did because he had such a firm strong view on how to deal with communism which was a lot clearer and easier to understand than his predecessors. he had the conviction that communism was evil which he was not afraid to say, and you had to confront it rather than negotiate with it. the prief thinking -- prief -- prior thinking to communism was we can live with it. he found the idea of coexistence with an ideology and a practice that enslaved millions and millions of people and that also, by the way, had them in possession of nuclear weapons that could be used to destroy the world, that that was just an unacceptable condition for the world, found the idea of mutually assured destruction completely insane. you keep the peace based on the theory that either one of you can destroy the world, therefore neither one of you will unless either one of you is controlled by a maniac in which case you might destroy the world. every day of his presidency, he had the desire to defeat communism, and if you look at the decisions he made, some of the very, very cor race gas decisions he made, i believe that's the thing that finally ended the soviet union, brought down the berlin wall, and created freedom and the possibility of freedom for millions of people who didn't have it before. most presidents don't get to do that, and that would not have happened with somebody else elected president in 1980 whether it was some other -- whether it was the reelection of jimmy carter or even if another republican was legislated because there were few republicans at that point that had that kind of determined view of how to deal with communism, and his view on the economy was equally strong, and he reordered our economy. we're still reacting to the ideas that ronald reagan first prom -- promulgated when he ran for president in 80. we're still debating that, the size of government, how large should government be? should the approach to poverty be a government approach or a private sector approach? ronald reagan found the size of government ridiculously large. he was a new deal democrat who converted to republicanism because he thought the new deal, and then finally the great society went so far it was counterproductive. people were being locked into poverty opposed to given a road out of poverty, and he did everything we could to change that which he did during his administration by lowering taxes beginning all of the ideas that eventually led to welfare reform, changing the way in which government interacted with our economy, moveing us much closer 20 a free market -- to a free market economy, and he did something else too. all of that led to a resurgence of american exceptionalism, of american pride, of the idea that we weren't at the end of the american empire. in the late 1970s, you can go back and look. a lot of books were written and a lot of articles were written and a lot of speeches given about how america was kind of out of gas to be overtaken by japan and other countryings that we have run our course, and we were a country now of limited possibilities. sound familiar; right? [laughter] remember there's people who believe that today in america. in fact, some of them are running america today. [laughter] the idea that we're artery no better than anyone else, we're just another country with our set of problems and our set of assets or maybe we're not even as good as others, and ronald reagan found that tab totally wrong, not a correct view of this country, and he changed in a very short period of time of how we felt about ourselves, and do you know something, that's the most important thing a leader does. the thing i'm proudest of by being mayor of new york city is not reducing crime which i'm proud of and glad to do it or changing welfare, we moved 6,000 people off of welfare, most of them to work, or changing the tax system and creating surpluses, all of those were building blocks and something bigger than that. when i became mayor of new york city, the "new york times" took a poll, and the poll said 68% of the people in new york city don't want to live in new york city anymore. they want to live somewhere else if they could, and about 65% of the people in new york city thought new york city was going in the wrong direction. that is the most disturbing thing that can possibly happen because it means that people have started to lose hope, and when people start to lose hope, they don't create great things anymore, and i felt that what i wanted to do was to change that, and by the time i left office, we had a new york city in which roughly the opposite of that, 70% wanted to be there and liked being there and 70% thought new york city was going in the right direction and not the wrong direction, and i often think in new york city with the depressed attitude that we had in the early 1990s would have had a much harder time overcoming as quickly the tremendous damage done to us by the attacks of september 11. it helped new york city, but when we were attacked, we were a strong city, a confident city, an optimistic city, a city that believed our best days were ahead of us, so the attack was a temporary interruption of that feeling, and the city was able to get back on track very, very quickly. most important thing that a mayor, a governor, a president can do is to reestablish people's belief in themselves. ultimately, they're the ones who create things, do things, they are the ones who produce jobs. they are the ones who invent great medicines or tremendous technologies or the government either hinders that or steps aside and encourages that, and ronald reagan understood that, and this country needs that right now. we need to be reminded that america's best days are not behind us but ahead of us. there's ever reason to be believe that and predict that. there's not at all an irrational prediction. we're still the strongest economy on earth, still produce the most ideas and processes and the most new ways of dealing with information. we're still the country that has the most positive attitude in the world. think of the wars we fought over the last century. it has to be the first time in the history of a world that a big country like ours sent hundreds of thousands of its young people to die, not to create an empire, not to expand their control of the world. there were great empires before, the roman and british empires, but those empires were created for the benefit of rome and england. what was america doing in the first world war? trying to make the world safer for democracy. what was america doing in the second world war? trying to save the world from fascism, and what was america doing in vietnam? whether people agree or disagree with the war, what was the motivation for vietnam? to save people from the spread of communism. what is america now doing in the middle east? specifically as we speak right now in libya? we're not, we're not conducting the things that we're doing in iraq and afghanistan and in libya in order to spread the american empire. the only ones i can think of who have thoughts like that is donald trump. [laughter] not that i totally disagree with him. [laughter] wants us to take that oil to pay the bills for the trillion dollars that we spent. there's a certain -- there's a certain logic to that; right? [laughter] that hasn't been the way in our country, but just think about that. that's a very unusual exceptional thing for a country to do. i can't think of another country that's ever done that before. a country that actually worries about the condition of other people and gives up lives in order to help other people and make the world a safer place for them because we recognize ultimately this is how it benefits, it makes a safer world for us. if you look at what's happened in the last six months, whether it's in tunisia or egypt or libya or syria or i'm sure within iran, the whole set of values that america stands for are now the set of values that these people are demonstrating and protesting for, demanding and revolting for, and in some cases they don't completely understand it. in some cases it's not the full version of what we mean by democracy, but the reality is somewhere deep in their hearts, they've seen other people live in freedom. they've seen the benefits of what people get living in freedom. they say to themselves why not us? why can't we have that freedom? why can't we have that kind of control over our own lives? why can't we have the ability to have something to say about the way we spend our money? why can't we own property? couldn't possibly be a better time for the ascendants of american ideas and ideals. a couple years ago when president bush said this in his second inaugural address, there was a great deal of skepticism of supporting freedom throughout the world. how did america do that and participate in that? freedom and democracy are inconsistent with the muslim world and inconsistent with the middle east and other parts of the world. president bush understood that that suspect the case. freedom of democracy aren't limited to religion, not limited to regions of the world. they are desires that exist within the human heart, the human soul, the human brain. a human desire is to have more control over your own life. in order to release that, you have to see examples of it. you have to see that it's possible, and, of course, the internet and the information revolution we live through now makes that information available to everyone. people in china are watching what's happening in the middle east, and don't -- make no mistake about it, it is creating in them the same questions that are created in egypt. why do we live in this kind of oppression? why do we live with a system of law that protects us or be the determining factor about what kind of education our children have or how many children we have rather than having the government decide that for us so what are these thing portending? it shows for us a future in which more and more countries in this world, more and more places in this world are going to see the american model as the model they want for themselves. it doesn't mean it'll be a straight line in that direction. in many of these cases, there's detours along the way. it is quite possible that in these revolutions we have going on, we're going to have situations like we saw in iran where a dictator is replaced by a worse dictator. that's going to happen. it happened for a period of time. it's not going to happen everywhere. in some places there's significant long term improvement, but the general thrust of the whole process is in our direction, and up stead of worrying about whether america, america is going to be the preimminent power in the world, the question we should ask ourselves is if america doesn't lead the world, who will? who will do it as well as america? there is nothing arrogant about that. there is nothing to be embarrassed about saying that. that's just a simple reality. with the world -- would the world be better with china leading the world? would america be better with some of these countries still struggling with the idear of a rule of law, freedom, democracy leading the world? i mean, the reality is the world has really had a superpower that has the most vaitions that we -- motivations that we have. doesn't mean we're perfect or don't make terrible mistakes, but in the course of human affairs, this is about as good as it gets, and i think one of the things the country needs badly is reestablishing american exceptionalism. first, we have to believe it. we have to present it to the world in the right way, not arrogantly, not in a superior way, almost with a sense of humility because none of us deserve what we have in america. we're very lucky to have it. most of the people that have lived on this earth have not had what we have or the opportunities we have, the help that we have, the rights that we have, the possibilities that we have, and it's our obligation, it seems to me to try to share that with the rest of the world, and it's our obligation to ourselves and our children to do that because it is quite correct that if this world were made up of countries that were all democracies, with a rule of law, that's the way we would end a war. democracies don't go to war with each other. full-fledged democracies don't go to war with each other. they date with each other. sometimes they get angry with each other like when we ban french fries from the united states congress. [laughter] remember? we didn't go to war with france. we ban french fries. [laughter] okay, we can deal with banning french fries or if they want to ban pizza. no, can't ban pizza. [laughter] my grandmother would turn over in her grave if they banned pizza, but the reality is that that is a correct view of what america can contribute, and it is an absolutely correct thing for a