Bob CollinsWhatever Mark Dayton has to say in his inauguration speech today, history says few people will remember it years from now. That’s the thing with gubernatorial inauguration speeches; they tend not to be as memorable as the “money lines” in presidential inaugurations.
Here are three key paragraphs from the three most recently elected governors — Tim Pawlenty, Jesse Ventura, and Arne Carlson — and their inauguration speeches. See if you can guess who said what:
Speech #1
My job is to challenge you to lead in your homes, to lead in your communities, to lead in your places of worship, to lead in your workplace, to lead at our places of charity and volunteerism and, yes, to challenge you to lead even here in the capital city of St. Paul.
My job is to believe in Minnesota and our people and to harvest the genius, innovation, and amazing resourcefulness that have always made Minnesota great and will again. (Answer here)
Speech #2
So I challenge all Minnesotans. A little over 60 percent is nice, but I wrote it on a chalkboard to my chief of staff and said the next election, two years from now, I want no less than 70. So that’s the challenge before us now: to keep these young people involved; to keep opening the arms of government and make it citizen-friendly; to bring the people back to respecting their government. (Answer here)
Speech #3
As we gather here today, we have more than a financial crisis. That we can overcome. But we also have a crisis in terms of our relationship with people. How sad it is that in XXXX we have more black men in prisons than we have in college. How sad it is that thousands of our children today are hungry, homeless and ill-clothed. We need, all of us — Democrat, Republican, Independent — to recognize that we have limited resources. But our people have an unlimited ability to want to help and to want to participate and to want to touch and to want to feel and want to help us in the solutions if only we will give them a chance. I pledge to you today that this administration is committed to all people, particularly those who disenfranchised, those who feel that they have nothing to gain so that we can develop a partnership that truly, truly brings them in. The greatest heritage, the greatest legacy that we can leave to our children is not to continue the transfer of debts but to give them instead an overwhelming sense of opportunity. (Answer here)
