I pledge to you today that as president in my first budget I will introduce the largest increase in special education ever.

Strong advocacy for education health care and worker safety will be indispensable if they are to get their fair share of President Bush's austere budget for the next fiscal year.

Abraham Lincoln comes from nothing has no education no money lives in the middle of nowhere on the frontier. And despite the fact that he suffers one tragedy and one setback after another through sheer force of will he becomes something extraordinary: not only the president but the person who almost single-handedly united the country.

President Obama believes in a country where we invest in education in roads and bridges in science and in the future so we can create new opportunities so the next kid can make it big and the kid afer that and the kid after that that's what President Obama believes.

I am running for president to help create a better future. A future where everyone who wants a job can find one. Where no senior fears for the security of their retirement. An America where every parent knows that their child will get an education that leads them to a good job and a bright horizon.

The Oval Office symbolizes... the Constitution the hopes and dreams and I'm going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate floor of the House I think it's appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President.

The only book by a modern president that bears serious comparison with Obama's 'Dreams From My Father' is Jimmy Carter's short campaign autobiography 'Why Not the Best? ' published in 1975.

I came at age in the '60s and initially my hopes and dreams were invested in politics and the movements of the time - the anti-war movement the civil rights movement. I worked on Bobby Kennedy's campaign for president as a teenager in California and the night he was killed.

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22 1963 the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.

After the Great Depression and after public urging a nationwide public competition was held to determine a design for a memorial that would honor President Thomas Jefferson's bold vision for westward expansion for America.