I’d love to be a speechwriter for Barack Obama right now. Here’s my first draft:
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you … thank you … thank you very much.
Why am I running for president? I’m running because I believe government can be a positive force in Americans’ lives. Government can’t do everything, as we all know-especially after the performance of the last eight years-but it can certainly be an integral part of the solution.
Three decades ago, Ronald Reagan told us, “Government is the problem.” Since then, Republicans have told voters, “Elect me and I’ll prove it.” And they did just that. Republicans have ruled the roost for the last 28 years, either in the White House or in Congress or both.
It has been a disaster. Today the people who believe government is the problem are the problem. Eighty percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Republicans have occupied the White House for the last 7½ years and dominated Congress for 12 straight years until 2006 when the voters said, “Enough!”
The litany of failure is so familiar, most people have it memorized: 9/11 unpreparedness, throwing away billions of dollars and thousands of lives in Iraq for no clear reason, tax cuts for the wealthy, record deficits, the Katrina debacle, the mortgage crisis, more and more Americans without health insurance, skyrocketing gas prices, economic recession.
It is the responsibility of American citizens to hold Republicans accountable for their failures.
My opponent admits his party has failed the American people-“lost your trust,” I believe, is the way he put it in his convention speech. But he wants you to reward the party that failed with four more years. Apparently, he doesn’t have much respect for the public’s intelligence.
He wants you to believe he’s a maverick, but he voted with the Bush administration 90 percent of the time. Some maverick. He had 26 years in the U.S. Senate to change things from within. It didn’t happen. It won’t happen now.
My opponent was, until recently, regarded as a man of principle. The Straight Talk Express. He said he wanted to run a more high-minded campaign than the Bush people, who defeated him in the 2000 primaries by telling lies about him. That was the modus operandi in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as well. That’s the Republican playbook, developed by Karl Rove and other hatchet men before him. Take the low road, play on voter’s fears. Divide, deceive and distract. The Straight Talk Express has become the Straight Lies Express.
My opponent has adopted the playbook. He let Karl Rove disciples take over his campaign and says, among other whoppers, that I sponsored a law requiring comprehensive sex education for kindergartners. The truth is, I voted for (not sponsored) a law that would teach kindergartners how to avoid child molesters and sexual predators.
Employing my opponent’s new campaign philosophy, I could say he opposes protecting young children from child molesters.
But that would be a Republican tactic, the politics of the past. I have a little more self-respect than that-and more respect for the voters. I believe voters want something better than lies and hypocrisy from their candidates.
My opponent’s handlers say he had to take the low road because he wasn’t getting enough media coverage. That’s all it took? That’s all it took to compromise your character? That’s your justification? Where’s the integrity, John? Where’s the character?
Did it ever occur to you the media wasn’t interested because you didn’t have much to offer? Your party’s ideas have been discredited. Republicans are running on empty and so are you.
What does it say about someone when he’s willing to sell out his principles in order to get elected? What does it say when he approves commercials filled with outright lies and laughable distortions? It says that’s how he’ll govern-with deception and lack of conviction.
It also means he wants to distract the voters from focusing on the important issues in this race: How to fight terrorism more effectively, economic policies that don’t favor the rich while hurting everyone else, reversing global warming and climate change, breaking our addiction to fossil fuels and promoting renewable energy, dealing with our staggering national debt, ending our Iraq involvement in a way that benefits this country and the Iraqi people, changing health insurance so everyone has access to quality care without causing financial ruin.
These are the things we need to be discussing, not moose-hunting or lipstick on pigs. My opponent is afraid of the real issues because his approach to government doesn’t work and he knows it. You can’t make government work if you don’t believe in it. My opponent and the rest of the Republican Party have stated over and over again that government can’t work. They’ve gotten elected and then proven it.
We can’t perpetuate this self-defeating cycle. We can’t afford to let our challenges grow even bigger by ignoring them.
I believe government can work. I’m asking you for a chance to prove that, to earn your trust. The Republicans had their chance. They failed.
We have the ability to solve our problems. We just haven’t had the will. I will respect both conservatives and liberals and work for the benefit of all. I will listen to both sides, because both sides have a point of view worth listening to. With the cooperation of Congress and the support of the American people, we can meet the challenges that face us and, united, move forward into a better future.
We can improve health care, end the Iraq conflict honorably, pursue terrorists more aggressively in Afghanistan and Pakistan, regain the respect of the rest of the world, and create a more secure economic future.
My opponent can’t do that. Republicans don’t know how. It requires a belief in government that they don’t possess.
I know real change is scary, but Americans have always shown courage at critical moments in our history. This is one of those junctures. We need to summon the courage to embrace change.
Can we do it? You bet we can.