|
With the
coming
US
presidential election, Theodore C. Sorensen, whom John
F. Kennedy acknowledged as his “intellectual blood
bank,” was asked to write a speech that a Democratic
nominee, whoever it might be, could deliver—if “they”
dared.
The New
Vision
Theodore
C. Sorensen
My
fellow Democrats: With high resolve and deep gratitude,
I accept your nomination.
It has
been a long campaign—too long, too expensive, with too
much media attention on matters irrelevant to our
nation’s nature. I salute each of my worthy opponents
for conducting a clean 50-state campaign focusing on the
real issues facing our nation, including health care,
the public-debt burden, energy independence and national
security, a campaign testing not merely which of us
could raise and spend the most money but who among us
could best lead our country; a campaign not ignoring
controversial issues like taxation, immigration, fuel
conservation and the Middle East, but conducting, in
essence, a great debate—because our party, unlike our
opposition, believes that a free country is strengthened
by debate.
There
will be more debates this fall. I hereby notify my
Republican opponent that I have purchased 90 minutes of
national network television time for each of the six
Sunday evenings preceding the presidential election, and
here and now invite and challenge him to share that time
with me to debate the most serious issues facing the
country, under rules to be agreed upon by our respective
designees’ meeting this week with a neutral jointly
selected statesman.
Let me
assure all those who may disagree with my positions that
I shall hear and respect their views, not denounce them
as unpatriotic as has so often happened in recent years.
I will wage a campaign that relies not on the usual
fear, smear and greed, but on the hopes and pride of all
our citizens in a nationwide effort to restore comity,
common sense and competence to the White House.
In this
campaign, I will make no promises I cannot fulfill,
pledge no spending we cannot afford, offer no posts to
cronies you cannot trust, and propose no foreign
commitment we should not keep. I will not shrink from
opposing any party faction, any special-interest group,
or any major donor whose demands are contrary to the
national interest. Nor will I shrink from calling myself
a liberal, in the same sense that Franklin and Theodore
Roosevelt, John and Robert Kennedy, and Harry Truman
were liberals—liberals who proved that government is not
a necessary evil, but rather the best means of creating
a healthier, more educated and more prosperous America.
They are the giants on whose shoulders I now stand,
giants who made this a better, fairer, safer, stronger,
more united America.
By
making me your nominee, you have placed your trust in
the American people to put aside irrelevant
considerations and judge me solely on my qualifications
to lead the nation. You have opened the stairway to what
Teddy Roosevelt called the “bully pulpit.” With the help
of dedicated Americans from our party, every party, and
no party at all, I intend to mount that stairway to
preach peace for our nation and world.
My
campaign will be based on my search for the perfect
political consensus, not the perfect political
consultant. My chief political consultant will be my
conscience.
Thank
you for your applause, but I need more than your
applause and approval. I need your prayers, your votes,
your help, your heart and your hand. The challenge is
enormous, the obstacles are many. Our nation is emerging
from eight years of misrule, a dark and difficult period
in which our national honor and pride have been bruised
and battered. But we are neither beaten nor broken. We
are not helpless or afraid; because in this country the
people rule, and the people want change.
True,
some of us have been sleeping for these eight long
years, while our nation’s values have been traduced, our
liberties reduced, and our moral authority around the
world trampled and shattered by a nightmare of
ideological incompetence. But now we are awakening and
taking our country back. Now people all across America
are starting to believe in America again. We are coming
back, back to the heights of greatness, back to
America’s proud role as a temple of justice and a
champion of peace.
The
American people are tired of politics as usual, and I
intend to offer them, in this campaign, something
unusual in recent American politics—the truth. Neither
bureaucracies nor nations function well when their
actions are hidden from public view and accountability.
From now
on, whatever mistakes I make, whatever dangers we face,
the people shall know the truth—and the truth shall make
them free.
After
eight years of secrecy and mendacity, here are some
truths the people deserve to hear:
We
remain essentially a nation under siege. The threat of
another terrorist attack upon our homeland has not been
reduced by all the new layers of porous bureaucracy that
proved their ineptitude in New Orleans; nor by all the
needless, mindless curbs on our personal liberties and
privacy; nor by expensive new weaponry that is utterly
useless in stopping a fanatic willing to blow himself up
for his cause. Indeed, our vulnerability to another
attack has only been worsened in the years since the
attacks of September 11th—worsened by our government
convincing more than 1 billion Muslims that we are
prejudiced against their faith, dismissive of
international law and indifferent to the deaths of their
innocent children; worsened by our failure to understand
their culture or to provide a safe haven for the
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees displaced by a
war we started; worsened by our failure to continue our
indispensable role in the Middle East peace process.
We have
adopted some of the most indefensible tactics of our
enemies, including torture and indefinite detention.
We have
degraded our military.
We have
treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and
North Korea, in the most juvenile manner—by giving them
the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not
strengthened, our bargaining position and our
leadership.
At home,
as health-care costs have grown and coverage
disappeared, we have done nothing but coddle the
insurance, pharmaceutical and health-care industries
that feed the problem.
As
global warming worsens, we have done nothing but deny
the obvious and give regulatory favors to polluters.
As
growing economic inequality tarnishes our democracy, we
have done nothing but carve out more tax breaks for the
rich.
During
these last several years, our nation has been bitterly
divided and deceived by illicit actions in high places,
by violations of federal, constitutional and
international law. I do not favor further widening the
nation’s wounds, now or next year, through continuous
investigations, indictments and impeachments. I am
confident that history will hold these malefactors
accountable for their deeds, and the country will move
on.
Instead,
I shall seek a renewal of unity among all Americans, an
unprecedented unity we will need for years to come in
order to face unprecedented danger.
We will
be safer from terrorist attack only when we have earned
the respect of all other nations instead of their fear,
respect for our values and not merely our weapons.
If I am
elected president, my vow for this country can be
summarized in one short, simple word: Change. This
November 2008 election—the first since 1952 in which
neither the incumbent president’s nor the incumbent vice
president’s name will appear on the national ballot;
indeed, the first since 1976 in which the name of
neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush will appear on the
national ballot—is destined to bring about the most
profound change in the direction of this country since
the election of 1932.
To meet
the threats we face and restore our place of leadership
in the free world, I pledge to do the following:
First,
working with a representative Iraqi parliament, I shall
set a timetable for an orderly, systematic redeployment
and withdrawal of all our troops in Iraq, including the
recall of all members of the National Guard to their
primary responsibility of guarding our nation and its
individual states.
Second,
this redeployment shall be only the first step in a
comprehensive regional economic and diplomatic
stabilization plan for the entire Middle East, building
a just and enduring peace between Israel and Palestine,
halting the killing and maiming of innocent civilians on
both sides, and establishing two independent sovereign
states, each behind peacefully negotiated and mutually
recognized borders.
Third, I
shall, as soon as possible, transfer all inmates out of
the Guantánamo Bay prison and close down that hideous
symbol of injustice.
Fourth,
I shall fly to New York City to pledge in person to the
United Nations, in the September 2009 General Assembly,
that the United States is returning to its role as a
leader in international law, as a supporter of
international tribunals, and as a full-fledged member of
the United Nations which will pay its dues in full, on
time and without conditions, renouncing any American
empire; that we shall work more intensively with other
countries to eliminate global scourges, including AIDS,
malaria and other contagious diseases, massive refugee
flows, and the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction; and that we will support the early dispatch
of United Nations peacekeepers to halt the atrocities in
Darfur. I shall make it clear that we do not covet the
land of other countries for our military bases or the
control of their natural resources for our factories. I
shall make it clear that our country is not bound by any
policies or pronouncements of my predecessor that
violate international law or threaten international
peace.
Fifth, I
shall personally sign the Kyoto Protocol, and seek its
ratification by the United States Senate, in order to
stop global warming before it endangers all species on
earth, including our own; and I shall call upon the
Congress to take action dramatically reducing our
nation’s reliance on the carbon fuels that are steadily
contributing to the degradation of our environment.
Sixth, I
shall demonstrate sufficient confidence in the strength
of our values and the wisdom and skill of our diplomats
to favor communications, negotiations and full relations
with every country on earth, including Cuba, North
Korea, Palestine and Iran. Finally, I shall restore the
constitutional right of habeas corpus, abolish the
unconstitutional tapping of private phones, and once
again show the world the traditional American values
that distinguish us from those who attacked us on 9/11.
We need
not renounce the use of conventional force. We will be
ready to repel any clear and present danger that poses a
genuine threat to our national security and survival.
But it will be as a last resort, never a first; in
cooperation with our allies, never alone; out of
necessity, never by choice; proportionate, never
heedless of civilian lives or international law; as the
best alternative considered, never the only. We will
always apply the same principles of collective security,
prudent caution, and superior weaponry that enabled us
to peacefully prevail in the long cold war against the
Soviet Union. Above all, we shall wage no more
unilateral, ill-planned, ill-considered and ill-prepared
invasions of foreign countries that pose no actual
threat to our security. No more wars in which the
American Congress is not told in advance and throughout
their duration the true cost, consequences and terms of
commitment. No more wars waged by leaders blinded by
ideology, who have no legal basis to start them and no
plan to end them. We shall oppose no peaceful religion
or culture, insult or demonize no peace-minded foreign
leader, and spare no effort in meeting those obligations
of leadership and assistance that our comparative
economic strength has thrust upon us. We shall listen,
not lecture; learn, not threaten.
We will
enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and
showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy
will rest on the traditional American values of
restraint and empathy, not on military might.
In the
final analysis, our nation cannot be secure around the
world unless our citizens are secure at home—secure not
only from external attack, but secure as well from the
rising tide of national debt, secure from the financial
and physical ravages of uninsured disease, secure from
discrimination in our schools and neighborhoods, secure
from the bitter unrest generated by a widening gap
between our richest and poorest citizens. They are not
secure in a country lacking reasonable limitations on
the sale of handguns to criminals, the mentally
disturbed and prospective terrorists. And our citizens
are not secure when some of their fellow citizens, loyal
Islamic Americans, are made to feel they are the targets
of hysteria or bigotry.
I
believe in an America in which the fruits of
productivity and prosperity are shared by all, by
workers as well as owners, by those at the bottom as
well as those at the top; an America in which the
sacrifices required by national security are shared by
all, by profiteers in the back offices as well as
volunteers on the front lines.
In my
administration, I shall restore balance and fairness to
the national tax system. I shall level the playing field
for organized labor. I shall end the unseemly favors to
corporations that allow them to profit without
competing, for it is through competition that we
innovate, and it is through innovation that we raise the
wages of our workers. It shames our nation that profits
for corporations have soared even as wages for average
Americans have fallen. It shames us still more that so
many African-American men must struggle to find jobs.
We will
make sure that no American citizen, from the youngest
child to the oldest retiree, and especially no returning
serviceman or military veteran, will be denied fully
funded medical care of the highest quality.
To pay
for these domestic programs, my administration will make
sure that subsidies and tax breaks go only to those who
need them most, not those who need them least, and that
we fund only those weapons systems we need to meet the
threats of today and tomorrow, not those of yesterday.
The
purpose of public office is to do good, not harm; to
change lives, help lives and save lives, not destroy
them. I look upon the presidency not as an opportunity
to rule, but as an opportunity to serve. I intend to
serve all the people, regardless of party, race, region
or religion.
Let us
all, here assembled in this hall, or watching at home,
constitute ourselves, rededicate ourselves, as soldiers
in a new army. Not an army of death and destruction, but
a new army of voters and volunteers, in a new wave of
workers for peace and justice at home and abroad, new
missionaries for the moral rebirth of our country. I ask
for every citizen’s help, not merely those who live in
the red states or those who live in the blue states, but
every citizen in every state. Although we may be called
fools and dreamers, although we will find the going
uphill, in the words of the poet: “Say not the struggle
naught availeth.” We will change our country’s
direction, and hand to the generation that follows a
nation that is safer, cleaner, less divided and less
fearful than the nation we will inherit next January.
I’m told
that John F. Kennedy was fond of quoting Archimedes, who
explained the principle of the lever by declaring: “Give
me a place to stand, and I can move the world.” My
fellow Americans—here I stand. Come join me, and
together we will move the world to a new era of a just
and lasting peace. |
