Excerpt from July 10, 2002 Press Briefing with
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer

Click here for the full transcript

Q: On the president's corporate responsibility speech yesterday, the reaction, the Dow Jones was flat, went down, some in Wall Street yawned and Democrats had a field day, calling it a weak initiative. In light of the fact, too, that the vice president now is being sued by Judicial Watch.

If you take all of this in it's aggregate, is there any concern in the administration that the Democrats message that this administration has no moral authority to call for corporate reform, in fact, may begin to resinate with the American people.

MR. FLEISCHER: The president looks at this as a time for people in Washington to come together and demonstrate confidence in the economy, confidence in our system of Congress and the administration working together to fix the problems. It's very easy in Washington for politicians, if they are interested, to point fingers and place blame and work against the interests of the nation.

MR. FLEISCHER: What is harder to do is to work together sometimes, but that's what the president has asked the Congress to do, and he does think, in this instance, ultimately that will be what's done.

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