If I were a speechwriter for either Democratic candidate tasked with writing a short text to be delivered on this President’s Day, I’d give a few bullet points about Bush’s depradations (wiretapping, signing statements, the destruction of habeas corpus, the national security state), and then I would be sure to work in something along these lines:
On January 20, 2009, “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
From Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.