I Cogitate
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The speech to give now
Who can you picture giving this [see below] speech? Hillary Clinton? Barack Obama? John Edwards?
Maybe Edwards and possibly Obama, despite all three candidates significantly in favor of the elements it contains. It's sad that such a level of scaling back one's stances is seen as necessary during a presidential run, of toning down the core values and beliefs this speech exemplifies.
Plus, with some timing modifications, this speech should actually be given now, as part of a national broadcast.
I can see Russ Feinstein offering this up. Too bad he isn't running for the '08 presidential nomination.
Here's Ted Sorenson, yes he from the Kennedy era, with a speech template for all Democrats.
The New Vision
The speech I want the Democratic nominee to give
Theodore C. Sorensen
The Washington Monthly
On the 15th of July, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy accepted his party’s
presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. In
his remarks, made at a moment of high tension in the cold war, Kennedy
asserted that the United States was at “a turning point in history” and
called on his listeners to be “pioneers” in a “New Frontier” of
“uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and
war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered
questions of poverty and surplus.”The speech I want the Democratic nominee to give
Theodore C. Sorensen
The Washington Monthly
Collaborating with Kennedy on the speech was a thirty-two-year-old aide named Theodore C. Sorensen, to whom Kennedy was known to refer as his “intellectual blood bank.” With Sorensen’s help, Kennedy would earn a reputation as one of American history’s great orators and provide a bold new vision for the nation.
Today, we are at another moment of high tension, the result of a disastrous war abroad and division and drift at home. Like Kennedy, the next Democratic nominee, whoever he or she might be, will have a similar opportunity to form a new vision for America and to reestablish its moral leadership in the world. To encourage such boldness of thinking, we, too, tapped Kennedy’s intellectual blood bank. We called Theodore C. Sorensen and asked him to write the speech he would most want the next Democratic nominee to give at the party convention in Denver in August 2008. We requested that he proceed with no candidate in mind and that he give no consideration to expediency or tactics, in other words, that he write the speech of his dreams. Here is the speech he sent us:
My fellow Democrats: With high resolve and deep gratitude, I accept your nomination.Go here for the complete speech.
It has been a long campaigntoo long, too expensive, with too much media attention on matters irrelevant to our nation’s future. I salute each of my worthy opponents for conducting a clean fifty-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 ninety 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 liberalsliberals 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...
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