(Video and Transcript links at the bottom)
Howard Dean just finished a generous, respectful, powerful and entertaining speech at the Liberal Party leadership convention in Montreal. When I was watching it, it made me proud to be an American again, even though I transplanted myself to Canada years ago.
This speech could be the first plank in an attempt to rebuild relations with our most important cultural and economic neighbor on this Earth, and possibly a reminder to the world of what sane discourse among nations looks like.
Dr. Dean gave a rousing and moving speech about the importance of never giving up on any region or any voter - any time. Perhaps a primer for a 10 province, 3 territory strategy for the Liberal leadership, who are this week deciding who will lead their party into the next election, which is likely coming soon. He praised cooperation between Canadians and Americans, from Vermont's electrical power assistance to Quebec during the 1998 ice storm (which left 3 million people without power in Canada alone), to Canadian teams being among the first on the scene to assist the victims of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
He also listed three progressive goals which Democrats in the U.S. and Liberals in Canada have in common - universal health care, respect for human rights and social justice.
The best part of the whole speech was when, as most politicians in Canada do when speaking to an audience, he spoke a portion of his speech in French. The first time he broke into French, he paused, then said in English, "Won't Fox News hate this!"
I PVR'd it, recoded it for YouTube, and just finished uploading the entire speech here, in two parts - two ten-minute segments which comprise the speech, and a third segment containing the post speech analysis by CBC commentators:
Howard Dean in Canada Clip 1 (10 minutes)
Howard Dean in Canada Clip 2 (10 minutes)
Howard Dean in Canada post-speech analysis (7 minutes)
There is a PDF transcript available here, but if you're like me, you'll prefer right clicking on the link and saving it to your machine rather than opening it in your browser.