itch mcconnell taking his position as senate majority. ope francis's address to congress. resignation of john boehner and election of paul ryan. over the nuclear simildeal to mass and reaction shooting. gun control. isis.ism and rise of congress year-end review on at an thursday december 31 8:00 p.m. eastern. >> the bob dole institute awarded the leadership prize to clinton.resident bill in the speech he talked about bipartisanship. international affai affairs. in is an hour. resident clinton: > the dole leadership prize is awarded annually to an individual or group that served ur country in an exemplary manner. previous were george h.w. bush.

women's air force pilots. and r polish president nobel peace prize winner. today's reisn't receives it for presidency and specifically his ability to work on a bipartisan basis to achieve many administration's successes. there is a $25,000 cash award goes with the dole leadership prize. i'm very pleased to announce has our recipient today chosen to donate that award back to seed le institute our new women -- [applause] >> that money will seed our new leadership lecture we plan to introduce the next couple of years. commitment to bipartisanship can be fully seen in one of the thousands of artifacts torical from the dole institute archives.

a is handwritten note from white house card from 1997 that enjoyed our b, i visit and socks loved his president. a dog can reach out to a cat who knows what wonders of might tion the next year hold. sincerely, bill. it is my great lop to welcome to honor to welcome to the university of kansas and dole institute the recipient of the prize and eadership 42nd president of the united clinton.resident bill [applause]

clinton: thank you. thank you very much, bill. thank you. for your work at the dole. thank you, christina and all the board members. we just had a picture backstage withhey were all organized a gap in the middle and i ran said lled the gap and i ou know when these pictures come out it will look like you went to a wax museum. found this old pasty model and gathered around it. to thank a number of eople who are hear with whom i served to work in some capacity or another including your former

governor john carlin who was the rchivist of the united states when i was here as president. overnor sebelius who was secretary of health and human services. plus president clinton: and a whom i will to the end f my life have a special debt former congressman jim slattery. here. you for being [applause] president clinton: the last said i'm still number 218 referring to the fact that i my economic plan in 1993 reverse the wuone bob dole believed in my one vote.

expensive vote rwas an for a lot of members of congress although i believe it led to the economic expansion in peacetime and eventually four surpluses in a row for the first time since the 1920's. here are a lot of other people he here, too many to mention, but a couple of ed me days ago and said that he was grateful given the fact that i'm here to talk about for two people in been bothnce who have strong supporters of the dole institute and of me and our family, sue ellen and harvey freed. if you find people that like us both that is the beginning of bipartisanship. thank them.

want to thank my personal assistant without haopl whom i hannah t function richert who has been with me every day sings i left the white -- since i left the white house. i want to thank her. here today. and every march she always picks kansas in the basketball pool in our office. go along f us just with her. secret service agents here whose father was one of my etail heads when i was president who played football here, i had spriggs is thank him. from have a scheduler kansas and her parents are here, thank you for the millers.

here and i can tell her within more time kansas city has the most complete i have seen in the last 30 or 40 years. [applause] clinton: so, i want to thank also finally your me cellor for welcoming here. 11 years ago i came here to lecture series. honored to do it then because i always liked bob dole him.always admired and because even when we were -- to be we were going running against each other for resident, we found a way to work together. i think we need to be

today. about this topic we can all say here we are at the university, we have we will pat ives, each other on the back and say isn't it nice that we are nice to each other. a much more serious for the polarization of politics is present not ust in washington but in american life. how many of our collective bigotries we have in the last merica 100 years. we are less racist than we used to be. sexist than we used to be. we are less religiously bigoted we used to be. we are less homophobic than we used to be. remaining bigot ry. we don't want to be around with us.hat disagrees

[laughter] clinton: we are laughing but we throw it is true. we don't want to watch news we disagree with. y late mother-in-law who i adored hillary's mom lived with she ry in washington when was a senator and secretary of state until she passed away at fp. t 92 and she was the most liberal family.of our but she forced herself to watch hour of fox news every day. now, we are laughing and i sat with her once at the table we were drinking a cup of coffee watching fox news and i said dorothy why do you do this? and she said first i want to know what they are saying and i can answer it and secondly nobody is wrong all the the and nobody is right all time. woman, but markable

never will forget my little lecture from my mother-in-law old.as then 90 years of introductory things i want to say about there and then i will try to give you examples. in the most inter in history.age were althiest countries more trade dependent as a percentage of g.d.p. before orld war within than they are today. and i might caution you in considering this issue of elite , that a lot f opinions in all the world then unthinkable as between the great economic

powers because they were so interdependent. wrong.ned out to be and that is because none of us completely economic animals. and in the end the question of relate to each other in larger is part of the identity challenge that is a the age of int interindependence that goes total trade to travel and immersion of instantaneous access to information of all kinds. the technology, rise of social of a, staggering capacity the simple cell phone to do good .nd evil that is what we live in. are by definition

negative. the trend lines, however, are not. in 2000 the united millennium ted the development goals calling for big reductions in interval poverty. empowerment of women putting girls in school on an equal basis with boys. challenges of climate change in an economically sensible way. those goals t all but we made a lot of progress. moved an billion people out of extreme poverty. we are moving toward parity in any places in educational opportunities for girls and boys. there's been more economic a lot ment of women and of it was done by the cell phone. we know a cell phone can be used a bomb.ate but when the first president worked in south asia a er the tsunami more than decade ago and i was asked to stay behind two years to work

we put every family that had lost a fishing water.ck in the nd if the fish e fisherman hadn killed then who else wanted to go got the boat. gave all of them a cell phone and for the first time in their lives in indonesia and southeast independent, in ave i sri lanka they could find out fish up and down the coast and average income 30%.ased by haran that boca we inues to terrorize but are part of a global effort to ave a million children under five from waterborne diseases. the people who die are under five.

a person a simple ehydration therapy and zinc packet will save their lives. s, but ever in the pres we're making our goals in nigeria and we are disproportion working in those same areas. so the first thing i want you to that in this great age interdependence good things and bad things are going on. rooted in a ad is negative pt of identi identity. that is, in order for me to myself i have to think less of you to the extent me you are different from or my religion or my ideology as define it. to the extent we are making almost always the product of networks of

in a positive identity. i'm proud ofam and my race, my faith, my gender, whatever it is. i think what we have in common matters more so why don't can work out how we together. now, what does that are to do home?bipartisanship at everything. first of all, i could fill this auditorium with the social surveys proving creative cooperation among diverse groups closely held han decision making by like-thinking elite. if awake miraculous ly here in this the person audience with the highest i.q. nearest you to the givey comfortable room and whatever you wanted the next two ays and rest of us were locked

stale auditorium with coffee and same set of questions auditorium o this and that room for two days we would make better decisions than genius. there is a book which by a rates this written journalist called "the wisdom of crowds crowds." as the efine success empowerment of individuals to improve their well-being and families appear communities, groups make better decisions if they are diverse lines of each across experience and understanding and knowledge. second, you live in a country has the constitution that made us the longest continuously xisting democracy in history because it mandates compromise.

the founders almost bent over down the to slow traeutrain unabated thought -- undebate the taught because they were very concerned about the unlimited government power to do arbitrary things. us an executive, legislative and jew dish branch. they gave us state and local explicit with responsibilities not enumerated constitution. and they give the senate -- then two-thirds vote to vetoa treaty or override a -- thescape -- excuse me veto. they did a lot of other things to essentially say you

guys have got to work together here. why? creatures of ere the enlightenment. hey believed there are few final victories in politics, in .conomics, in social policy they believed the most important thing was to set in motion the and ess of debate resolution, debate and resolution, debate and forward.n, moving thrilled hey would be to see the things going on that the world today involve multiple stakeholders and g to reach consensus ortified that the capital is often ground to a halt on i had -- ideological divides. ago i was in ys florida and it

is a vast land mass and it is of one of or my oundation health matters initiatives to get people in the community to work together and together toeholders increase health outcomes. so jacksonville has an problem.ing it has the largest amount of rban green space in america, more than new york city. almost 80,000 acres. high est the third pedestrian fatal iity rate in of the way those spaces are not connected and not related to traffic patterns which include people walking around. so, they were all gathered there to talk about how they were problem get rid of this and how they wanted to deal with related lifestyle health challenges they face rates ng reasonably high

of diabetes and other problems. everybody was the there. the republics and democrats showed up. in healthcare and the people in business, the people education. there was a widely diverse group of the ethnic and religious make-up of the county. they will do that. doing what cceed in they are trying to do and use it bigger on some of the challenges we all fails. a lot.think about this n little rock, where i'm going to spend the night, i have a presidential library and school service.ve and we offer only graduate two-year one and programs. but half of the time of the

tudents is spent in the field figuring out how to turn good into positive chang changes. to find out exception succeed over the long run they need partners. that their identity, i hope, .ill be more positive the second president bush, and i nt george w. bush have joined together in a residential leaders scholar program which includes with the support of his father's library we had the ibrary first graduation and it is for 30's er people in their mostly who are starting out in a of careers with great promise. and it is nothing if not diverse.ly but after they spend time going program together nd they stood up and tolds

about their experiences, they felt more strongly than ever attitude we right could solve the problems of america. in the he right thing wor world. one of the things i always liked could ob dole is that he fight you like no tomorrow but to ever closed the door actually doing something that might benefit a real person. there's a big difference. moynihan,with senator my wife's predecessor in the in new york, on social security. george mcgovern to establish food stamp. supported voting rights and 25 nsion without fail for years. when i was president and after

opposed each other in a presidential campaign he served as chairman of the international on missing persons in to find r yugoslavia out what happened both in kosovo terrible after the conflicts there. , bob dole and george mcgovern agreed to come in and elp senator jim mcgovern from massachusetts, no relationship, and me to pass a $300 million congress to e knnutritious meal to children in poor countries only if they came to school to get the meal. it for the poorest companies in the same time we trying to get debt relief. that increased school enrollment

six million. the poorest countries it only cost $50 a year anyone to give nutritious meal. he was interested in that. i left the white house in 9/11 bob dole f and i joined together to help the families of we dom fund in which proposed to provide higher to the n assistance children and spouses of everyone and disabled on 9/11 their citizenship. there were, for example, more united people from the kingdom who were killed. amount of n enormous racial diversity and no small

umber of muslims who were killed on 9/11. and since then our goal was to $100 million, that fund is $118 million in financial aid. we did just something together because we thought it was the right thing to do. really, really rewarding. also been good for our country. a lot of you know that senator one of the members behind the americans with good lities act, for reasons. working with primarily harkin of senator tom io iowa. couple of years ago i saw him in a wheelchair on the floor of ratifyate asking them to the international convention on isabilities and explaining to reluctant members of his own party that this would not do

because bad to america we had the highest standards for disability rights in the entire but it could take people ike him when he was young, deeply injured and give them a chance to have a fuller life. he didn't win that fight but i win it.entually we will and as long as i live i will his ber bob dole in wheelchair talking to the embers of the senate about the imperative of recognizing that but the human dignity human potential of much without regard to their physical abilities. if you go on the dole , there's a website he wrote about his recuperation from the wounds he in italy.

adapting to life with his disabilities. downplayed the pain and barely mentioned he already got staete elected in the legislature. e got a degree and law degree after the war, and that sort of on.acked but here is what he said. endlessbilitation it an task i feel confident that the most difficult period is passed. i did not make any appreciable conomic campaign but i have salvaged happiness and security out of bitter disappointment by shattered dreams and reshaping aspirations. i gave thanks to god for this which was denied the many who made the supreme sacrifice. kept bob dole in

that enabled him to enormous political kills and his great ambition with the understanding that life is fleeting, things can change ultimately what makes a democracy work is whether it of a ds to the challenges given moment. nd that rarely happens when political paralysis takes over. this year marked the 20th of a number of even even events, which had a lot to do with my presidency. but listen to them and think if they have any relevance to our challenges. ofs was the 20th anniversary murrah ing of the

building in oklahoma city. the 20th anniversary of the we had that led to two government shutdowns but in 1996 the passage of the budget bill which gave us three surpluses in a row when i was president and left another when i left office. it was the 20th anniversary of t cease-fire in northern ireland that led to peace there. >> 20th anniversary of our financial give assistance to mexico which it bankruptcy.verge of i have to say that when i hear all of this stuff about and mexico and how we need a five-story wall on the rio grande river i never hear nybody say there was no net migration from undocumented from mexico from 2010 to

2014. down t the numbers went and apparently according to an article i read last week they are going down again this year. why? because we helped them to build a i will talk a little bit about that later. the slaying of thousands of boys in bosnia that led to military action and the end of the claimed ar which couple hundred thousand lives and made 2.5 million refugees, the worst ethnic cleansing since the end of world war ii. most of the victims were european muslims. interestingly enough the late , pope john paul ii called me within two days of the king of saudi arabia, both pleaded with me to do something to save their lives.

the 20th anniversary of the normalization of our relationships with vietnam, fda -- 58,000 americans were killed in that war. many more vietnamese. they are still working with us to find the remains of soldiers that were lost their. and they are now our strongest ally in southeast asia. why am i telling you all this? because the bipartisanship issue is one piece of this huge coming together and the identity crises that it creates. we live in a world with a lot of instability, with a lot of economic inequality, a world threatened by the growth of population and the depletion of resources and the looming specter of climate change and there is not an end of power but

a dispersal of power. so in the face of insecurity the most predictable going perhaps to the beginning of humanity and people coming out of caves and clans is to stick to your own kind and push everybody else away as much as you can. in an interdependent world where you cannot get away, where actions anywhere affect people everywhere, it is probably not the best choice which does not mean we should not worry about legitimate security concerns. it just means we cannot escape each other. so, the real question of the 21st century is not whether americans will live together to

but on what terms. the real question is not whether we will live with people all around the world but on what terms. will our independence be positive or negative? human nature being what it is, it is a little bit of both but it is clear that for every one of the young people here, students, for the children you hope to have, the grandchildren pay hope you look to see, -- i hope you live to see our job is , to build up the positive and reduce the negative forces of our interdependence. to try to keep big, bad things from happening and make as many good things happen as possible and make sure people understand what the promise as well as the peril is of the age in which we live. believe it or not if i could do , it, i would give up being president to be 20 and take my

chances because i think there is a good chance this will be a most peaceful, prosperous time in human history. a time of breathtaking scientific advances, and which all the bad things we are worried about will probably not be quite as bad as we fear and the good things we hope for will be more bountiful than we dreamed. but only if we understand that the world is full of positive and negative forces that nobody has as absolute power as some governments once did and working -- and that every person, whether in government or not, and in your workplace or your citizens face and working with or supporting a nongovernmental effort has a responsibility to , maximize the possibilities and

minimize the perils. and it all begins with the idea that what we have in common is more important than our interesting differences. in 1998, on a bipartisan vote, we passed an amazing budget which included doubling the budgets of the national institutes of health and had the last big chunk of money of the $3 billion of your tax money spent to sequence the human genome. the best money we ever spent. you got a good return on investment. it has been in excess of $800 billion in economic activity generated from that.

san diego, long known as the naval capital of the world is the human genome research capital of america. there are 700 computer companies alone that have been formed just toest -- there, do aspects of this scientific research. in new york am a sloan-kettering and in texas and st. jude's children's hospital and los angeles, the pathbreaking research of the chinese and south african doctor. they are all made possible because of the advances in the human genome. i have talked to two or three doctors who work in this field in the last 10 days and i asked them the same questions and got a resounding yes to both when i

said, do you actually believe that we might get to an 85% or higher survival rate for all forms of cancer within 10 years, all three said absolutely. because of what we have learned about how to get the human body to defend itself and how to attack tumors. all the years that i worked with bob dole, even when we were fighting, we only had one unresolved disagreement and that was over health care and i could not blame him because he wanted to run for president. that was ok. but no matter what else we were

doing, in the end i kept my door , open, he kept his door open. we never lost our sense of humor, and we found a way to do what seems to be best for the american people. this mexican peso crisis was interesting. on the day that i had to help mexico, bob dole and newt gingrich wanted to congress to vote to do it but there was an article in the morning paper that said by 81-11 the american people were against my helping mexico. keep in mind this was early 1995. we had not fully recovered from the economic difficulties of the late 1980's and 1990's. everybody had these preconceptions about mexico. bob dole knew it was the right thing to do and when they pay

the money back three years early, with almost $600 million in interest even his own members , had to say you were right and we were wrong. but i want to bring it back, something happened to him laying in all those hospital beds, struggling to recover his movement. learning to have the discipline and gratitude because at least he had lived when so many others had died. that made it possible for him to identify with other people so that no matter how hard you thought or how much he disagreed you did not want to dehumanize , people to the point where when it came right down to it you could not join hands with them and do it had to be done to keep going forward. that is the essence of the tests we all face today.

you look at the people -- the faces of all those young people who committed murders in paris and you realize that they had been swayed in a very different direction. to believe they are at the beginning of their lives, there is somehow more glory in a premature death. they claimed the lives of innocent people than there was in getting up and going to work and trying to learn something useful and use it to change other people's lives. for the celebration of bipartisanship, we fed a lot of people on the mcgovern-dole food program around the world. all these poor kids since we started 15 years ago, a lot of them are grown now. their lives are different now.

and they do not know who bob dole is and they do not know who bill clinton is. but they do know that they are alive, they are healthy, to have -- they had an education. because people that a certain responsibility decided would be a good thing to work together. all those people whose hearts were broken on 9/11 who lost loved ones or had the horribly disabled, but who got aid to begin again with their own lives and get college education because bob dole, bill clinton, two people that are probably largely irrelevant to the young people's lives, hustled up a bunch of money from other people and said why don't you give us something to send these kids to school, it makes a difference.

and so let's come back to the genome. the genome will raise your chances of surviving any kind of cancer, and i hope one day will provide a cure for als and a lot of other totally this celebrating -- of totally other diseases. we are making real progress with parkinson's and alzheimer's. no matter what you think you care about, as a citizen, the most important finding of the human genome has already been made. it is that every non-age-related difference you see in this audience, you think about this when you go out, every non-age-related difference, body size and shape, skin color, eye color, hair or lack thereof,

even gender, is rooted in one half of 1% of your genome. if you are a scientist, since you have 3.6 billion half a percent is a pretty good number. but still it means that we are 99.5% the same and yet this is not just politics. don't we all spend 99.5% of our .5e thinking about the percent of us that is different? really, don't we? we are in this sports frenzy coming to an end of the football season andrea beginning basketball season. you know i do not know how many , times -- i am guilty, i will not point the finger to you -- i have walked down the street, bypassed a department store or

window that has a reflection thinking if i had a body like lebron james i would have gone into a different line of work. [laughter] clinton: haven't we all done in? if i were a little taller or thinner or little better. it is an act of supreme arrogance to believe that our differences are more important than our common humanity. it is recipe for disaster in an interdependent world. because it unleashes us to act on impulse and humanizing way to -- on impulse in a dehumanizing way to other people. we live in a country where the constitution that puts limits on everybody.

in an interesting argument once with another of my political adversaries who i liked very much personally, not bob dole. who i like also but this guy was not as accommodating. [laughter] the reason i got into this argument is that he said he -- he said, you really believe we should all be treated the same, don't you? i said, i do. he said, we believe there should be one rule for us and for you. there are some things we will not do. i said absolutely. he says that puts you at a

terrible disadvantage. here is what i want to say to all of you. i do not care if you are republican, democrat, independent or whatever. we know the constitution mandate is compromised and groups make better decisions than small homogenous elites. and we know that everywhere in the world where people are practicing inclusive politics and inclusive economics to get inclusive societies, good things are happening and everywhere in the world someone believes that , they are in so much position of the truth they have the right to kill innocent and anonymous people at random or just spend their time fighting, good things are not happening. this is not rocket science. and the findings of the human genome that we are 99.5 the same

, confirm the teachings of all great faiths. the new testament, love your neighbor as yourself, the torah, he who turns aside a stranger may as well turn aside from the most high god. koran, different people on the earth can come and they can come to learn from one another. you are not fully human until you can feel the arrow piercing another's skin as if it were entering your own. so i ask you to think about that. the great struggle in america to restore some sort of balance to our politics is a reflection of the awful anxieties that many of our people feel because of the

combination of economic disappointment and cultural conflict and change. we learn just this week, two nobel prize winning economist saying that life expectancy for white, non-college-educated working people in their middle years is dropping because of increased alcohol consumption, prescription drug construction and a variety of other theyuctive behaviors, but are really dying from a broken heart. you do not ever want to get into a position where you do not have something to look forward to when you get up in the morning. bob dole became bob dole inside -- instead of some tragic victim of world war ii because he had something to look forward to when he got up in the morning. and that he saw it in other

people's lives. it turned out there were some things he just would not do. as a result of which he got a , lot done. i like all these debates. i like a good fight as well as the next person. but in the end the constitution , was set up so that it might have been subtitled let's make a , deal. [laughter] go read it if you do not believe me. we voters, those of us who -- we -- of us who cannot run for every -- anything we have to , remember that we sometimes feed this. we feed it if we want to be around people we agree with and we feed it if we do not vote in elections just as well as if we do. nobody gets off scott free here.

but if you want public service that addresses the great challenges of the age, the attempt to restore broad-based prosperity and a serious response to the security challenges we face that does not , require us to abandon our basic values but does make us a safer country but still and inclusive one. we have to go back to that. two final things. the most important political book i have written in five years was not written by a politician or political scientist or even a historian but by a micro biologists, e.o. wilson. he has warned us for decades that we are destroying species at the most rapid rate in 10,000

years because of the way we developed. this book is less than 250 pages long. it is called the social conquest of earth. and in it, dr. wilson attempts and the evidence will admit to describe all life on planet earth going back to the emergence of single celled organisms from the primordial slime. he says that any reasonable look at all of history including prehistory based on the evidence would lead you to the conclusion , that of all the species had -- that have existed. and the four most successful are termites, bees, and people.

[laughter] he is a guy who taught me 20 years ago that the combined weight of all the ants on earth is greater than the weight of the combined people on earth. that is a lot of ants. there are species in africa that when being chased by predators a chased -- chased by predators a , bunch of them will go on the tallest sprig of grass and sacrifice themselves so everyone else can get away. there are termites in south america in hot and wet climates that build underground housing with five holes, one to go in and out of and the other are for air-conditioning. [laughter] summer when my daughter and i were on our foundation trip to africa, we went to this elephant preserve at one of our partners and with eyes, i saw three different anthills that were more than five feet high. one was six feet high and it was built around a tree like a hotel

with its own shade tree. [laughter] bees, you know, all the things they do. wilson's point is there are ants, termites, bees, and people. the differences we have two things that termites and bees do , not have. we have far greater potential for good because of our consciousness and our conscience. we have not just evolved our patterns of communication, we can think and grow quickly and feel. but, he said, because we have these, we are prone to arrogance and therefore we are dancing , around the edges of our own hazardous times, but every time we come up to the brink we have done what was , necessary to go forward. he is almost 90 now.

he said i am betting that is , what we are going to do again. i will say again the history of bipartisanship which the dole , institute seeks to advance, what senator dole's career embodies in office and after he left, the stuff we have done together is an example of the , triumph of cooperation over conflict. an example of diverse groups making better decisions than homogenous elites. an example of the kind of compromise that our founding fathers sought to drill in to the fabric of american life.

i want to read you something i wrote in my autobiography about bob dole. this is when we were running against each other for president in 1996. after a rocky start in february, bob dole won all the primaries in march, wrapping up his late's nomination with the month victory in california. even though senator phil gramm, who ran to the right of dole, would have been easier to be, i was pulling for dole. no election is a sure thing. and if i lost, i believe the country would be in more solid and moderate hands with him. that is what i thought when we were in the middle of a campaign , fighting in debates, trying to beat each other's brains out. [laughter] and that is a good thing.

not a bad thing. so i leave you with that. next time you think there is no hope and there is no way for us to work out whatever the heck we are fighting about what we are , arguing about here, remember the 99.5%. we need to develop one more -- we need to develop a little more time then .5%. remember all they did was , uncover what the fate of been telling us all along. and remember you live in the , most glorious time in history in terms of its potential and one of the scariest in terms of its potential. we are condemned to share the future. the only thing that is open for question is what the terms of the sharing will be. and that is for you to decide.

thank you very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [applause] [applause]

>> mr. president, it is a great honor to give you the dole leadership prize and thank you so much for coming to the campus of k.u. today. thank you so very much, sir. [applause] >> on the next "washington

journal," gn smiling on the economic outlook ahead and the effect of the federal reserve raising interest rates and consumer spending and job creation. and the brookings institution joins us to discuss the u.s. strategy against isis and the role of arab and muslim countries in fighting isis.

"washington journal" live every day on c-span at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> c-span takes you on the road to the white house, and into the classroom. this year, we ask student they want tohat discuss during the 2016 percent of campaign. get more info at c-span.org. >> the kennedy center honors is an annual ceremony for confirmations to american culture. president obama and the first lady posted the kennedy center honorees. this group included star wars carol king, -- songwriter carole others.d

this is about 20 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, the 2015 kennedy center honorees. carole king. [applause] george lucas. [applause] rita moreno.

[applause] seiji ozawa. [applause] cicely tyson. [applause] [laughter]

[applause] >> ♪ >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states and mrs. michelle obama. >> ♪ [applause] president obama: thank you so much. please, everybody, have a seat, have a seat. have a seat and welcome to the white house. this is a good-looking group. [laughter] president obama: president

kennedy once said, "there is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts." i believe he was right. our achievements as a country and as a culture go hand-in-hand. the oldest of the 2015 kennedy center honorees was born over 90 years ago - you won't be able to tell. [laughter] president obama: but when we look back on the last century, for all the challenges we faced, what we see is a time of extraordinary progress. we won one world war, and then another. we endured one depression, and prevented another. and through it all, we created new medicines and technologies that changed the world for the better.

we welcomed new generations of striving immigrants that made our country stronger. we worked together, and marched together, to open up new doors of opportunity for women, african americans, latinos, lgbt americans, americans with disabilities - achievements that made all of us more free. tonight, we honor five artists who helped tell the story of the first american century through music, theater, and film - and by doing so, helped to shape it, helped to inspire it, helped to fortify our best instincts about ourselves. [baby makes noises] president obama: yes. [laughter] president obama: it includes your grandpa. [laughter]