Preamble

An election is about the future, about change. But it is also about the values we will carry with us as we journey into tomorrow and about continuity with the best from our past.

On the threshold of a new century, we live in a time of unprecedented technological, social, and cultural development, and a rapidly emerging global economy. This election will bring change. The question is: Will it be change and progress with the Republicans or change and chaos with the Democrats?

Americans want leadership to direct the forces of change, on America’s terms, guided by American values. The next stage of the American experiment will be a new dynamic partnership in which people direct government and government empowers people to solve their own problems and to have more choices in their lives.

In 1984, we said, "From freedom comes opportunity; from opportunity comes growth; from growth comes progress,"

In 1988, we reaffirm that truth. Freedom works. This is not sloganeering, but a verifiable fact. It has been abundantly documented during the Reagan-Bush Administration in terms of real jobs and real progress for individuals, families, and communities urban and rural. Our platform reflects on every page our continuing faith in the creative power of human freedom.

Defending and expanding freedom is our first priority. During the last eight years, the American people joined with the Reagan-Bush Administration in advancing the cause of freedom at home and around the world. Our platform reflects George Bush’s belief that military strength, diplomatic resoluteness, and firm leadership are necessary to keep our country and our allies free.

Republicans know the United States is a nation of communities—churches, neighborhoods, social and charitable organizations, professional groups, unions and private and voluntary organizations in city, suburb, and countryside. It is We, the people, building the future in freedom. It is from these innumerable American communities, made up of people with good heads and good hearts, that innovation, creativity, and the works of social justice and mercy naturally flow and flourish. This is why George Bush and all Republicans believe in empowering people and not bureaucracies.

At the very heart of this platform is our belief that the strength of [p.2] America is its people: free men and women, with faith in God, working for themselves and their families, believing in the inestimable value of every human being from the very young to the very old, building and sustaining communities, quietly performing those "little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love" that make up the best portion of our lives, defending freedom, proud of their diverse heritages. They are still eager to grasp the future, to seize life’s challenges and, through faith and love and work, to transform them into the valuable, the useful, and the beautiful.

This is what the American people do, quietly, patiently, without headlines, as a nation of communities, every day. This is the continuing American revolution of continuity and change.

This is the American people’s true miracle of freedom. It is to them that we dedicate this platform.[p.3]