Bill Clinton’s speech last night was great — and I didn’t even get to see it live. Not hav­ing access to broad­cast tele­vi­sion I miss out on a lot of the big events like this, but I read the text of it last night and was very impressed. As a per­spec­tive on the last 25 years of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics I feel that it hit’s the nail on the head. His com­ments on the spec­tre of a McCain pres­i­dency are spot-on; and he quan­ti­fies the fail­ures that he pre­dicts would con­tinue push­ing us down the slip­pery 8-year slope we are on.

Below is a tran­script. Also, NYTimes.com inter­ac­tive video/transcript.

Pres­i­dent Clinton:

What a year we Democ­rats have had. The pri­mary began with an all-star lineup. And it came down to two remark­able Amer­i­cans locked in a hard-fought con­test right to the very end. That cam­paign gen­er­ated so much heat, it increased global warming.

Now, in the end, my can­di­date didn’t win. But I’m really proud of the cam­paign she ran.

I am proud that she never quit on the peo­ple she stood up for, on the changes she pushed for, on the future she wanted for all our chil­dren. And I’m grate­ful for the chance Chelsea and I had to go all over Amer­ica to tell peo­ple about the per­son we know and love.

Now, I am not so grate­ful for the chance to speak in the wake of Hillary’s mag­nif­i­cent speech last night. But I’ll do the best I can.

Last night, Hillary told us in no uncer­tain terms that she is going to do every­thing she can to elect Barack Obama.

That makes two of us. Actu­ally, that makes 18 mil­lion of us. Because, like Hillary, I want all of you who sup­ported her to vote for Barack Obama in November.

And here’s why. And I have the priv­i­lege of speak­ing here, thanks to you, from a per­spec­tive that no other Amer­i­can Demo­c­rat, except Pres­i­dent Carter, can offer.

Our nation is in trou­ble on two fronts. The Amer­i­can dream is under siege at home, and America’s lead­er­ship in the world has been weak­ened. Middle-class and low-income Amer­i­cans are hurt­ing, with incomes declin­ing, job losses, poverty, and inequal­ity ris­ing, mort­gage fore­clo­sures and credit card debt increas­ing, health care cov­er­age dis­ap­pear­ing, and a very big spike in the cost of food, util­i­ties, and gasoline.

And our posi­tion in the world has been weak­ened by too much uni­lat­er­al­ism and too lit­tle coöper­a­tion, by a per­ilous depen­dence on imported oil, by a refusal to lead on global warm­ing, by a grow­ing indebt­ed­ness and a depen­dence on for­eign lenders, by a severely bur­dened mil­i­tary, by a back­slid­ing on global non­pro­lif­er­a­tion and arms con­trol agree­ments, and by a fail­ure to con­sis­tently use the power of diplo­macy, from the Mid­dle East to Africa to Latin Amer­ica to Cen­tral and East­ern Europe.

Clearly, the job of the next pres­i­dent is to rebuild the Amer­i­can dream and to restore Amer­i­can lead­er­ship in the world.

And here’s what I have to say about that. Every­thing I learned in my eight years as pres­i­dent, and in the work I have done since in Amer­ica and across the globe, has con­vinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job.

He has a remark­able abil­ity to inspire peo­ple, to raise our hopes and rally us to high pur­pose. He has the intel­li­gence and curios­ity every suc­cess­ful pres­i­dent needs. His poli­cies on the econ­omy, on taxes, on health care, on energy are far supe­rior to the Repub­li­can alternatives.

He has shown a clear grasp of for­eign pol­icy and national secu­rity chal­lenges and a firm com­mit­ment to rebuild our badly strained military.

His fam­ily her­itage and his life expe­ri­ences have given him a unique capac­ity to lead our increas­ingly diverse nation in an ever more inter­de­pen­dent world.

The long, hard pri­mary tested and strength­ened him. And in his first pres­i­den­tial deci­sion, the selec­tion of a run­ning mate, he hit it out of the park.

With Joe Biden’s expe­ri­ence and wis­dom, sup­port­ing Barack Obama’s proven under­stand­ing, instincts, and insight, Amer­ica will have the national secu­rity lead­er­ship we need.

And so, my fel­low Democ­rats, I say to you: Barack Obama is ready to lead Amer­ica and to restore Amer­i­can lead­er­ship in the world.

Barack Obama is ready to honor the oath, to pre­serve, pro­tect and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States.

Barack Obama is ready to be pres­i­dent of the United States.

As pres­i­dent he will work for an Amer­ica with more part­ners and fewer adver­saries. He will rebuild our frayed alliances and revi­tal­ize the inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions which helped to share the cost of the world’s prob­lems and to lever­age the power of our influence.

He will put us back in the fore­front of the world’s fight against global warm­ing and the fight to reduce nuclear, chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons.

He will con­tinue and enhance our nation’s com­mend­able global lead­er­ship in an area in which I am deeply involved: the fight against AIDS, tuber­cu­lo­sis, and malaria, includ­ing — and this is very impor­tant — a renewal of the bat­tle against HIV and AIDS here at home.

A Pres­i­dent Obama will choose diplo­macy first and mil­i­tary force as a last resort.

But, in a world trou­bled by ter­ror, by traf­fick­ing in weapons, drugs and peo­ple, by human rights abuses of the most awful kind, by other threats to our secu­rity, our inter­ests, and our val­ues, when he can­not con­vert adver­saries into part­ners, he will stand up to them.

Barack Obama also will not allow the world’s prob­lems to obscure its opportunities.

Every­where, in rich and poor coun­tries alike, hard-working peo­ple need good jobs, secure, afford­able health care, food and energy, qual­ity edu­ca­tion for their chil­dren and eco­nom­i­cally ben­e­fi­cial ways to fight global warming.

These chal­lenges cry out for Amer­i­can ideas and Amer­i­can inno­va­tion. When Barack Obama unleashes them, Amer­ica will save lives, win new allies, open new mar­kets, and cre­ate won­der­ful new jobs for our own people.

Most impor­tant of all, Barack Obama knows that Amer­ica can­not be strong abroad unless we are first strong at home.

Peo­ple the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our exam­ple than by the exam­ple of our power.

Look at the exam­ple the Repub­li­cans have set.

In this decade, Amer­i­can work­ers have con­sis­tently given us ris­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity. That means, year after year, they work harder and pro­duce more.

Now, what did they get in return? Declin­ing wages, less than one-fourth as many new jobs as in the pre­vi­ous eight years, smaller health care and pen­sion ben­e­fits, ris­ing poverty, and the biggest increase in income inequal­ity since the 1920s.

Amer­i­can fam­i­lies by the mil­lions are strug­gling with soar­ing health care costs and declin­ing coverage.

I will never for­get the par­ents of chil­dren with autism and other seri­ous con­di­tions who told me on the cam­paign trail that they couldn’t afford health care and couldn’t qual­ify their chil­dren for Med­ic­aid unless they quit work and starved or got a divorce.

Are these the fam­ily val­ues the Repub­li­cans are so proud of?

What about the mil­i­tary fam­i­lies pushed to the break­ing point by mul­ti­ple, mul­ti­ple deploy­ments? What about the assault on sci­ence and the defense of tor­ture? What about the war on unions and the unlim­ited favors for the well-connected?

And what about Kat­rina and cronyism?

My fel­low Democ­rats, Amer­ica can do bet­ter than that.

And Barack Obama will do bet­ter than that.

But first we have to elect him.

The choice is clear. The Repub­li­cans in a few days will nom­i­nate a good man who has served our coun­try hero­ically and who suf­fered ter­ri­bly in a Viet­namese prison camp. He loves his coun­try every bit as much as we do. As a sen­a­tor, he has shown his inde­pen­dence of right-wing ortho­doxy on some very impor­tant issues.

But on the two great ques­tions of this elec­tion — how to rebuild the Amer­i­can dream and how to restore America’s lead­er­ship in the world — he still embraces the extreme phi­los­o­phy that has defined his party for more than 25 years.

And it is, to be fair to all the Amer­i­cans who aren’t as hard-core Democ­rats as we, it’s a phi­los­o­phy the Amer­i­can peo­ple never actu­ally had a chance to see in action fully until 2001, when the Repub­li­cans finally gained con­trol of both the White House and the Congress.

Then we saw what would hap­pen to Amer­ica if the poli­cies they had talked about for decades actu­ally were imple­mented. And look what happened.

They took us from record sur­pluses to an explod­ing debt; from over 22 mil­lion new jobs to just 5 mil­lion; from increas­ing work­ing fam­i­lies’ incomes to nearly $7,500 a year to a decline of more than $2,000 a year; from almost 8 mil­lion Amer­i­cans lifted out of poverty to more than 5.5 mil­lion dri­ven into poverty; and mil­lions more los­ing their health insurance.

Now, in spite of all this evi­dence, their can­di­date is actu­ally promis­ing more of the same.

Think about it: more tax cuts for the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans that will swell the deficit, increase inequal­ity, and weaken the econ­omy; more Band-Aids for health care that will enrich insur­ance com­pa­nies, impov­er­ish fam­i­lies, and increase the num­ber of unin­sured; more going it alone in the world, instead of build­ing the shared respon­si­bil­i­ties and shared oppor­tu­ni­ties nec­es­sary to advance our secu­rity and restore our influence.

They actu­ally want us to reward them for the last eight years by giv­ing them four more.

Now, let’s send them a mes­sage that will echo from the Rock­ies all across Amer­ica, a sim­ple mes­sage: Thanks, but no thanks.

In this case, the third time is not the charm.

My fel­low Democ­rats, 16 years ago, you gave me the pro­found honor to lead our party to vic­tory and to lead our nation to a new era of peace and broadly shared prosperity.

Together, we pre­vailed in a hard cam­paign in which Repub­li­cans said I was too young and too inex­pe­ri­enced to be commander-in-chief.

Sound famil­iar?

It didn’t work in 1992, because we were on the right side of his­tory. And it will not work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.

Now, Sen. Obama’s life is a 21^st-century incar­na­tion of the old-fashioned Amer­i­can dream. His achieve­ments are proof of our con­tin­u­ing progress toward the more per­fect union of our founders’ dreams.

The val­ues of free­dom and equal oppor­tu­nity, which have given him his his­toric chance, will drive him as pres­i­dent to give all Amer­i­cans — regard­less of race, reli­gion, gen­der, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, or dis­abil­ity — their chance to build a decent life and to show our human­ity, as well as our strengths, to the world.

We see that human­ity, that strength, and our nation’s future in Barack and Michelle Obama and their beau­ti­ful children.

We see them rein­forced by the part­ner­ship with Joe Biden, his fab­u­lous wife, Jill, a won­der­ful teacher, and their family.

Barack Obama will lead us away from the divi­sion and fear of the last eight years back to unity and hope.

So if, like me, you believe Amer­ica must always be a place called Hope, then join Hillary and Chelsea and me in mak­ing Barack Obama the next pres­i­dent of the United States.

Thank you, and God bless you.

Nice to see the biggest gun in the lib­eral arse­nal return to the good form he briefly lost dur­ing the stormy pri­mary sea­son. Get ‘em, Bill.