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Hart Monitor

By Jeralyn, Section Elections
Posted on Thu Feb 27, 2003 at 08:36:26 AM EST
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Gary Hart will be on Crossfire tonight. His speech yesterday in Virginia, Restoration of the Republic, will be available here shortly.

The Denver Post covered the speech.
Hart called for a "restoration of the republic," a high-minded ideal of civic involvement and concern for the public good.

"We are all 'first responders,"' Hart told about 100 students at the University of Virginia. "We're all in this together. The ideal may be more plausible in the 21st century than at any time since the founding."

His high-minded speech to students and others at the school was the third in a quartet of "major policy addresses" Hart is giving as he tests the waters for a dark-horse presidential bid.

But he left some confusion when he was asked, if he didn't run for president, whether he might challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell in 2004. He told the crowd it would be a "tempting prospect" if it would help the Democrats retake the Senate. But in an interview after his talk, he flatly declared, "I'm not running for Senate."

Hart has spoken on "restoration of the republic" before and wrote his doctoral thesis on it at Oxford in 2001. He considers it to be a modern update of Thomas Jefferson's vision for the country.

So on Wednesday, Hart chose the university Jefferson founded as the place to explain why the country needs a new vision of citizen involvement. He spoke before the school's Jefferson Society, pacing on worn wood planks in a room that looked like a colonial-era meeting hall.

Many of the students were charmed by Hart's candor and willingness to discuss ideas outside the political mainstream.

...The students, many of whom were 3 or 4 years old when Hart dropped out of the presidential race in 1987, said the affair that forced him out of the race means nothing to them.
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