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.
Third I’ve tried to make government actually and practically work, so that it can work for you. Our administration has an unprecedented record of low level changes that really make a difference. Even though a lot of this work goes unreported, I can tell you tonight that the government is running smoothly, that we have streamlined a great many processes, and that we have carried out a number of initiatives that make a big difference to a lot of individual people.
Now we face a challenge to our best efforts. Does it come in the form of a right wing conspiracy? No. Does it come in the form of a left wing conspiracy? That dog won’t hunt either. It just comes from this idea of the other side as other, as not us. And so my fourth goal, to bring us together, now becomes my top goal. Because if we can’t work together, freedom easily becomes freedoom. I challenge every member of government to remember the words of JFK and stop asking what your country can do for you, and ask what you can do for your country.
I invite every american, and indeed every world citizen, to consider the model we are now offering. It is not one of weakness, but it is one of compassion. It is not lame, but it doesn’t need to prove it’s not. It’s not soft; it’s sensitive. Because lives hang in the balance. I think it’s really important in these times to be calm, reasonable and measured. The vision is there. You can see it if you’re willing to look.
It’s of an America where tolerance is a very high value. And of a vision where tolerance is transcended by acceptance, and who knows, maybe even welcoming!
My goals for the next six years, yes, I am in it for the long haul, is to not just protect us, which I can do and am doing, but it is to go after the enemy in a different way, in a way where we can actually declare victory by 2016, because we’ve given the real human lives who live behind who we call “the enemy” a way to live without wanting to kill. Yes, it’s fun to have an other, an enemy, but I’m here to tell those guys those days are over. Because they have to be.
