I can’t tell you how delighted I am to be here – and on behalf of both the Annenberg Foundation and the Annenberg School’s new Center for Communication Leadership, to play my small part in the effort to find common solutions to our common problems.

It’s been said that democracy is how we choose the people who get the blame.

Well if that’s true, why is it that so many public officials are unwilling to share it?

Why is it that so few public leaders follow the model of Governor Schwarzenegger, Mayor Bloomberg, and our own Mayor Villaraigosa – Of joining hands instead of pointing fingers; Of doing what works instead of what’s written on a decades-old party parchment; Of recognizing that the things that unite us weigh so much greater, stand so much taller, than things that divide us?

I realize it’s easy for me to say.  As a private philanthropist, I know no party allegiance.  And I know how hard it is to effect change where it matters most – on the streets, in the shelters, in people’s hearts and minds.

In the philanthropic world, when you find an approach that actually makes a difference, no matter its origin or ideology, you want to reach out and grab it with both hands – the left and the right.

That’s why we’ve all convened here in Los Angeles.  To talk about finding that vital center, and then building outward.  To learn from what’s already working in different parts of the country.  To look to even the tiniest non-profits and private initiatives, which have so often been great laboratories of social action. 

Sometimes it’s just a matter of abandoning old assumptions.  Like the marine biologist who explored the bottom of the ocean using a big net with three-inch holes – and then concluded there were no creatures smaller than three inches.  Sometimes you learn by trying something new.

That’s why I am so pleased that we will be hearing this evening from Governor Schwarzenegger – whose leadership of this state has been as adventurous and as unpredictable as one of his blockbuster action movies. 

He’ll be the first person to tell you, if we don’t forge new alliances, even highly unusual ones – if we don’t build bridges instead of walls – if we don’t start working together, all of us –

Well then we’ll never reach the day when there’s simply no one left to blame.

That’s why it gives me special pleasure to introduce not Governor Schwarzenegger, but the man who will be introducing him – a remarkable leader in his own right, and a man who shows us, by his very presence here tonight, that there is a deep spirit of unity and cooperation in our public realm, one that recalls the words of George Washington, who said that if parties had to exist, his wish was to reconcile them.

Friends, distinguished guests, here to introduce Governor Schwarzenegger is my dear friend, Governor Gray Davis…