On Sunday night Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the guest speaker at Blue Valley Northwest High School’s commencement ceremony at Kemper Arena in Kansas City. His presence was a result of the school’s finalist status in the White House’s “Race to the Top High School Comencement Challenge” program.

Previously: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at Blue Valley Northwest High School Commencement – photos

The transcript of Secretary Gates’ commencement speech:

[applause] Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:  Thank you, Ambika. That was certainly a nicer introduction than  recent CNN correspondent’s description [laughter] as an elderly white-haired ruthless gentleman. I really objected to the elderly part. [laughter]

When I was president of Texas A and M I always used my authority to make sure I never spoke after the student speaker. [laughter] They’re always really hard acts to follow. Derek was in that same vein.

So thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. Believe it or not, nearly half a century ago, yes, I am that old, I was in similar position to where you are now at another Kansas high school, waiting, indeed begging, for the graduation speech to be over. [laughter] So I’ll keep my remarks brief, keenly aware that I am probably the main obstacle between you and a great party. [laughter]…

…First, to the class of two thousand ten, congratulations. Congratulations on being one of the six finalists out of more than a thousand applicants [to] the President’s Race to the Top Commencement Challenge. This is indeed [applause], this is indeed a truly impressive group, with roughly ninety-five percent of you going on to college. Your academic performance is truly outstanding. But from what I’ve been told, what makes Blue Valley Northwest such a special place are the intangibles, the values and the spirit, that bond this class and this school and to the wider community. Collectively you’ve given up thousands of your hours in community service, not as a graduation requirement, but because it was the right thing to do. You’re the proud host to a Special Olympics event with more than six hundred participants. And many of you devote time to tutoring other students with special needs. Your annual diversity assembly and urban exchange program broaden your cultural horizons and foster a greater understanding of those around you. From your production of The Outrage to programs such as the football teams’s first downs for Down’s Syndrome, you take the initiative and the opportunity to educate and assist where it is needed most. You learned what true friendship and courage are through the late Alex Glaros and his battle with cancer.

Over the next ten minutes, and that’s a promise, I’d like to impart some of what I learned growing up and being educated here in Kansas, and then through the personal and professional experiences that followed. I would start here because in my life’s journey, my high school experience, in my case, Wichita High School East, played a major role. Indeed, much of what I have done I trace back in many ways to a half dozen of my high school teachers who I have never forgotten. They opened my eyes to the world and to the life of the mind, and they were role models of decency and character. And I only hope that half a century from now you will look back on your time here, at Blue valley Northwest  with such fond memories, and above all remember the amazing teachers who you will come to realize played a similarly major role in shaping your lives.

After graduating from high school and against the wishes of my parents I did not follow in the footsteps of my brother and go to K-State. Instead, I went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia. I had pretty good grades at in high school so I thought I was pretty smart.[laughter] Well, first semester my freshman year I got a D in calculus. [laughter] I got a long distance call from my father. He said, “Tell me about the D.” [laughter] I said, “Dad, the D was a gift.” [laughter] Years later, as president of Texas A and M, I would tell university freshmen that I learned two lessons from that D. First, even if you’re fairly smart, you will not succeed if you don’t work hard. Second, I am standing proof that you can survive a D as a freshman and still go on to make something of yourself. [laughter, applause]

So for those of you on your way to college, don’t be intimidated or frustrated if you find yourself not doing so well at first in your classes. Just work harder, learn better how to learn, and don’t let the challenges stop you from reaching outside your comfort zone to consider new subjects or try new things. Statistically, most of you who go to college will change your major at least once, so welcome to the club. All of you, whether you go on to college or take another path, should be prepared to take your life in a direction you hadn’t necessarily planned for.

When I went to graduate school at Indiana, I ran into a recruiter from the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization I had never considered working for. I thought I was going to be a history professor. Well, at first CIA tried to train me to be a spy. However, my efforts were less James Bond and more Austin Powers [laughter]. I don’t mean that in a good way.[laughter] One of my first training assignments was to practice secret surveillance with a team following a woman CIA officer around downtown Richmond, Virginia. Our team wasn’t very stealthy and someone reported to the Richmond police that three disreputable-looking gentlemen, that would be me and my fellow CIA trainees, were stalking this poor woman. [laughter] My two colleagues were picked up by the Richmond police. [laughter] The only reason I didn’t get arrested was because I had lost sight of her so quickly.[laughter] I and CIA decided that I really wasn’t cut out to be a spy, and so I became a CIA analyst, one of those who assess and interpret all the information that comes in. That led to a career that allowed me to witness amazing moments in American history. So it may take you a few missteps and even embarrassments before you find the thing you’re really good at, whether you go to college or not. But, keep at it.

In the years since joining the government, I’ve been privileged to work for eight presidents. As a result I’ve learned a few things about service and a few things about leadership. Many of you have probably already found opportunities, even at a young age, to exercise leadership in different ways – in athletics, extracurricular activities such as student government, your church, or what, wherever you may to work. These opportunities have placed you in a position to show responsibility or influence others. And since you are all potential future leaders, I thought I might share a few thoughts on what my experience tells me are the qualities needed by good leaders.

One of the things you must have, in fact, the foundation stone, is integrity. I’m talking about honesty, telling the truth, being straight with others and yourself. In a movie, John Wayne once said, “There’s right and there’s wrong. You’ve got to do one or the other. You do the one, and you’re living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but you’re as dead as a beaver hat.”

Second, courage – the courage to do what is right and not just what is popular. The time may come when you see something going on that you know is wrong. You may be called to stand alone, and to say, “This cannot be allowed.” Don’t kid yourself, that takes courage.

Third, real leaders treat other people with common decency and respect. Too often, those who are in charge demonstrate their power by making life miserable for their subordinates just to show that they can. Pre
sident Truman had it right when he said, “Always be nice to all the people who can’t talk back to you.” In America today, we badly need leaders with these three traits. Integrity, courage, and common decency. We need real leaders in all walks of life.

We also need people to step up and be of service to others, to the community and their country. No life is complete without such service, and in that respect this school has set a national example. There are many ways to serve, at school, in your community, through your church, or elsewhere. As Secretary of Defense I lead the United States military, where that kind of service, that kind of dedication, patriotism, and sacrifice are on display every day by people who in many cases are your age or not much older. People who have set aside their dreams in order to protect yours. Those of you on your way to military service academies will learn that soon enough, and for your commitment you have my thanks and my respect. It has been the sacrifice of those willing to step forward at  times of crises and conflict, in times of war, that has made it possible for Americans to live free and secure. To be able to make the choices about our own lives that I’ve just been talking about. Our democracy is not just about our rights, it’s also about our responsibilities and our obligations.

Which brings me to my final point. I’ve noticed that too often people in this country get so absorbed in their own needs and their own problems, that they lose sight of how blessed we all are, how blessed you are, to live in the United States of America. It is the goodness and the opportunity of this country that made all things possible for me, that made possible my journey from East High School in Wichita to the corridors of power in Washington and around the world. It has been my privilege and the honor of my life to give something back in service. And so for all of you, tonight, with this graduation, the door to opportunity opens for you to serve and for you to lead.

Good luck, and God bless. [applause]

Secretary Robert Gates’ speech as prepared.

On Sunday night Blue Girl and I attended the Blue Valley Northwest High School commencement held at Kemper Arena in Kansas City. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the guest commencement speaker as a result of the school’s finalist status in the White House’s “Race to the Top High School Comencement Challenge” program. The school is located in Johnson County, Kansas, in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

The commencement procession – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (center), Dr. Amy Murphy, principal of Blue Valley Northwest High School (right).

Graduating senior Derek Sechi giving his commencement speech.

To everyone’s credit this was a typical high school commencement, presented for and by the graduating students for their families and friends in attendance. The program included a performance of Brahms Paganini Variations, Op. 35 by pianist Christina Yuan and an original composition written and performed by Hailey Lapin, voice and Andy Rao, piano. Interestingly, there wasn’t an overwhelming emphasis on the school’s athletic program.

Being in the arena for the festivities brought back a lot of memories and a bit of post traumatic stress, except, for the life of me, I can’t remember who our commencement speaker was.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Blue Valley Northwest High School faculty (in the foreground) and graduating seniors seated on the arena floor. The media riser is at the back. Directly behind the media riser was the school’s concert band which performed the prelude, processional, and recessional music.

On Sunday, Claire McCaskill appeared  on talk TV, defending Obama for naming Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates to his cabinet:

McCaskill spoke on Fox News Sunday, opposite Senator Lindsey Graham. She tried to push back on claims that the two powerful personalities of Obama and Clinton may collide.

“Obviously, Barack Obama is going to set the policy, but he will listen to different views,” McCaskill said. “He is not afraid to be challenged by people around him. He wants to be challenged,” she said.

She went on to defend his choice of keeping on Secretary of Defense Bill Gates.

“Let me say this about Secretary Gates. Even though there may have been times I disagreed with him and maybe Barack Obama disagreed with him, this is a man who clearly holds the highest level of the military accountable for mistakes, which has been very impressive to all of us,” she said. “He has solid relationships on both sides of the aisle. And what these picks say about Barack Obama is that the kind of change that he’s embracing is that you don’t just pick the people who were on your side during the campaign. You pick the best you can find. That’s an important change for Washington,” she added.

Indeed, Obama has chosen a number of conservatives like Gates, Geithner and Summers for his cabinet and few if any progressives. Hmm. If I were choosing people for those or any other cabinet positions, I’d want at least some of my advisors to be of the deepest, darkest blue hue. After all, progressives were right about the foolishness of attacking Iraq, right about the dangers of deregulation, right about the science of climate change and right about requiring our president to acquire FISA warrants.

Robert Kuttner, founding co-editor of The American Prospect, on the other hand, lays out the argument that Obama could be following in the Lincolnesque mold. A chapter in his new book, Obama’s Challenge, describes how three great presidents–Lincoln, FDR, and Lyndon Johnson in regard to civil rights–moved the country toward their goals. Lincoln, especially, believed in purple cabinets. Kuttner offers two observations about how he led:    

First, Lincoln’s great challenge as president was not just to preserve the Union, or even to free the slaves. It was to win over public sentiment among what today would be called opinion leaders and the people generally. Lincoln gradually transformed how different segments of society thought about the problem of slavery, the challenge  of rebuilding the Union, and the role of government in reconstruction and economic development. Out of impossible disunity, he built something close to national consensus.

After more than a century and a half, the popular conception of Lincoln is of the president who saved the Union and freed the slaves. Often overlooked is the fact that holding together the North was almost as difficult a task as conquering and then reintegrating the South. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln had warned in 1858, paraphrasing scripture. But in the war years, a divided house was a fitting description not just of the sundered Union, but of the fractious North as well. Loyalists to the Union included Radical Republicans who wanted both immediate liberation of the slaves and severe punishment of the South; War Democrats who favored a much more gradualist approach; Peace Democrats or “Copperheads” who were ready to abandon the slaves in exchange for a negotiated peace; and citizens of border states, who had narrowly opted to stay with the Union but wanted to keep their slaves.

Second, what enabled Lincoln to hold this coalition together and move it toward a viable national policy had everything to do with Lincoln’s character. “Malice toward none” was not just a felicitous phrase for how Lincoln hoped to treat the conquered and ravaged South. It was how he conducted his daily human relations and mastered politics.

Lincoln’s “team of rivals” included all but the most extreme representatives of these diverse factions. The cabinet was a hothouse of intrigue. Lincoln held it together with exceptional courtesy and respect, and a capacity to lead by example and by teaching. What made people his allies and admirers was not just his keen intellect and good humor. More importantly, it was his kindness, decency, idealism, and honor. He went out of his way to let people know that they were valued when he might have chosen to humiliate them. This trait reflected not just the imperatives of the time–he could not afford to sacrifice even a single potential ally–but also his abiding sense of how one treated people.

I can well imagine Obama treating people of other political persuasions with the same courtesy and respect that Lincoln did. The question is whether we can be sure they are of a different political persuation from him.

In this vein, Glenn Greenwald and David Sirota have been noticing the troubling use of the term “pragmatic” to describe Obama’s cabinet appointments. The media, to avoid admitting that some of them–Geithner and Summers, most notably–are conservative, use a term that is neither liberal nor conservative: pragmatic.

Sirota frets that if the Geithners are pragmatic, what does that make us liberals: pie-in-the-sky idiots?

Our own history during the Great Depression indicates that the pragmatic way to deal with such a massive crisis is through some good old fashioned ideological progressivism.

Obama, I think, knows this, and is doing something of a dance – one that doesn’t seek to challenge or change the Orwellian shenanigans, but to manipulate them for his own – and likely progressive – ends. It could be really brilliant (as long as what he’s doing isn’t the opposite – an attempt to sell policies crafted by conservatives with a marketing team made up of progressives – I don’t think it is, but we can’t be totally sure just yet).

One of Sirota’s commenters is far less sure than Sirota himself. The commenter thinks it likely that our president-elect picked conservatives because he prefers them:

Why would conservative free-market ideologues sign on to be used as vessels for Obama’s progressive economic dictums? This seems an unsubstantiated speculative stretch. Plus, it would make Obama an uber-wonk who maps out all levels of governmental policy by himself and delivers them to his appointed stooges who give it a “pragmatic” cover. (…..)

The fact is, Obama appointed these people because he respects them and agrees with their ideas. He spent ten years at Chicago University — the ground-zero of Milton Friedman ‘Chicago School’ hyper free-market disaster capitalism. Even if he’s on the left end of that spectrum, its pretty far-right.

McCaskill, no lefty herself, describes Obama as strong enough to know his own mind, even when he works with conservatives. Maybe, but I don’t necessarily trust her evaluation.

Still, we hope she’s right. Of course. And Obama has proposed a $700 billion works project to create jobs by improving infrastructure and building a green energy grid. That hardly sounds like Milton Friedman.

At any rate, here’s what we can know: that all three of the presidents Kuttner describes as bringing about transformational change did so under considerable pressure from progressive activists: Lincoln from abolitionists, Roosevelt from labor unions, and LBJ from civil rights groups.

We can’t get inside Obama’s mind. But we can promise ourselves that we’ll do our part to push the national conversation to the left.