1999 JEB BUSH INAUGURAL ADDRESS

I thank God for the opportunity to be here today and for the blessings that have been bestowed upon us all. You have honored me beyond measure by asking me to lead Florida forward into a new millennium. At the turn of a new century, I think it wonderfully fitting to stand here in front of Florida’s beautiful Old Capitol. It is a noble, yet modest symbol of our common heritage and a timeless reminder of our shared history.

When this beautiful building was restored nearly 100 years ago, Florida was at the untamed reaches of the American map—a frontier and home to a half-million people—forerunners courageous who fought the heat and the isolation to wrest a living from the land. Our most populated county had fewer than 40,000 people. Roads were primitive and travel slow. In 1902, Florida public schools produced 136 high school graduates statewide. Think about that: In one school year, one hundred and thirty-six high school graduates in the entire state. The state made more by selling the services of its convicts than it spent on salaries in the executive branch, a ratio that might still appeal to some of us today.

Look at us now. Look at what we have become today. From our shores, men have traveled to the mountains of the moon. Our population has increased more than 25-fold, and we have an economy that is the 16th largest in the world, ahead of entire countries such as India and Argentina. Last year, we graduated more than 110,000 young people from public high school, and through the leadership of people like Chancellor Adam Herbert and our incoming Lieutenant Governor Frank Brogan, our university system is becoming the envy of the nation.

But change has not been all for the better, even in a state as seemingly blessed as ours. There are still immense challenges for Florida, great challenges calling forth courage and leadership. While our cities have grown larger, our communities have grown weaker and our natural treasures more exposed to harm. While more children graduate from high school, many have not learned the lessons that will make them better adults. And while our government has grown larger, so too has the crushing weight of taxes, regulations and mandates on Florida’s families and entrepreneurs.

As we address these great challenges into the next century, we need not only ask “What’s new?” we should more often ask, “What’s best?” For the things that are best will endure, and the things that are merely new will soon become old and discarded.

And so today I ask: What is best? What endures? At the core of our understanding must be a fundamental humility born of the recognition that we owe all to our Creator. People like Dr. Billy Graham have changed the course of this century by reminding us that we have been given an unearned gift of incomprehensible generosity. We have been given life and through our living the opportunity to know the Divine Giver. This is not a relationship based on rigid dogma or divisive thinking, it is based on acceptance and love of others, despite their faults, just as we have been accepted and loved, despite ours. This very private relationship is the wellspring from which goodness flows, and combined with the goodness of others can be the torrent that changes our society.

Our devotion should also extend to our families because it is here that most of life’s principles are forged. Loyalty, empathy, generosity, and caring are cords of a rope that bind us together into something far stronger than we can ever be individually. Today, looking at the faces of my parents, my brothers and sister, and my own precious wife and children, I am reminded of the strength they have given me and the debt I can never repay. But just as our parents have made a better world for us, we must try to create a better world for our children. If we leave no other legacy than to make our children better than ourselves, we have accomplished far more than we can ever imagine.

And finally, there are our friends, our neighbors, and our communities. Little could be accomplished without the shared vision and triumphs of those people with whom we choose to share our lives. Friends beget friends, and from these personal connections communities flourish.

Faith… family… friends… These are what’s best. These will endure. We should trust in these more than we trust in government. State government, now and forever, must respect and nurture and rely on these enduring institutions so that we can unleash their amazing potential.

And so, let state government give families and individuals greater freedom—more freedom to exercise compassion, to keep more of what they earn, and to make the choices that will improve the lives of their loved ones. True compassion invariably begins with a single person, not with sections hidden within bureaus nestled within divisions placed within agencies.

Let state government trust Florida’s communities to confront their everyday challenges, to advance the ideas that will shape our state. The best and brightest ideas do not come from the state capital, but from the untapped human capital that resides in our diverse communities.

And, let state government touch the spiritual face of Florida. Let us not be afraid to engage our churches and synagogues and spiritual entrepreneurs to enhance care for the needy and to fill the hollow hearts. State government can draw much from these reservoirs of faith. In his own inaugural address 44 years ago, Florida Governor LeRoy Collins said, simply, “Government cannot live by taxes alone or by jobs alone or even by roads alone. Government, too, must have qualities of the spirit. Truth and justice and fairness and unselfish service are some of these. Without these qualities there is no worthwhile leadership, and we grapple and grope in a moral wilderness.” So, too, Lawton Chiles was one of those rare leaders who used his faith as a compass in his public life. He not only understood what his friend, LeRoy Collins said, he lived it and practiced it. Florida will be eternally grateful for his goodness and for his appreciation of the qualities of the spirit.

Public servants must have the humility to listen to and trust Florida’s head, heart and soul. Only then will the body be strong. Government will be unencumbered to make a true difference where it is most needed and where it can be most effective: Education, public safety, public works, and the protection of the frailest and weakest among us. Give to Floridians a state government that makes these few precious things the core of its being, and we can match the lofty challenges illuminated by the wonder of a new tomorrow. We can see that children learn a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s worth of time, and work with unbridled determination to ensure that no child in our education system is left behind. We can make the tragedy of child abuse an exception, not an expectation. We can comfort Florida’s families so that their loved ones dwell in safety, not fear. We can bring opportunity and growth to our urban cores, and in the process, sustain our natural environment. And, we can restore respect for our elderly, allowing them to reap the benefits of expanded choices in care and health decisions.

For these are the principles that will guide us. I want state government to be an ally, not an adversary of positive change within each community. I want to protect people, not bureaucracies. I want state government to be more respectful of the earnings of Florida’s families, not more desirous. I want our leaders more trustful of the choices of our citizens, not more suspicious. And, I want to rely on the rich debate afforded by diversity, not the sterile monologue of insular politics.

If we do these things we need not wait a hundred years to see their benefits. In five years, our state can be transformed. Such is the power of our shared vision.

So today, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve and to lead us in this greatest of undertakings. This is your journey as well as mine. This is our call to arms. I ask you to join with me to make Florida not only a magnificent engine of commerce that defines the economy in the post-Information Age, but something that is far simpler, and far more elusive: It should also be a better neighborhood, a nicer place. We should be known for the compassion of our dreams as much as their grandeur.

Our success in this great endeavor will not be measured by the quantity of our accomplishments as it has been in this century, but by the quality of our lives in the next. And so, let us begin the journey, not with what we can carry on our backs, but with what we carry in our hearts. Let the capacity of our courage and caring be the measure by which we are judged, and let us take the first step on a path that begins here in the scattered light under these ancient oaks to a Florida that glimmers now beyond time’s horizon.

Thank you and God Bless Florida forever.