I dreamt our President gave this speech last night:
My Fellow Americans:
This is the fourth time I have addressed you from the oval office of the White House. I speak to you this evening about an issue of great national importance, which is what our priorities are as a nation. I’d like to get us all on the same page about what our focus is, so let me review what I’ve been focusing on so far.
As your President, I have striven to provide you with, first, the best defense money can buy. And that money can’t buy too. That only 232 years of democracy can provide. And our 3 million men and women in uniform are a testament to that. Despite the fact that I might place a greater emphasis on diplomacy than perhaps my predecessor, I nonetheless have not skimped on defense, and honestly believe we need to be strong to be free, and that sometimes the threat of war can keep the peace.
Next I’ve tried to get the economy working. I don’t think anyone who didn’t have an inside view understands how great the threat of total collapse was as I was entering office. And it was my job to make a decision at a very early phase in my presidency. I saw us sinking fast and I chose to bail us out. Now, sometimes government has to be activist, as _both_ parties in recent times have proved. Or, at least tried to prove. The problem is that when you can avoid smashing against the rocks, it’s hard to argue that if we hadn’t acted we would have smashed. Because the only record we have now is of having avoided the rocks. So it’s easy for people to say: how bad could it have been? But if you got to talk to who I got to talk to, well, you would’ve seen that we came this close to another great depression.