The Speech I Wish Joe Biden would Make

 

Every American has both a right and an obligation to ask, “If you are elected president, what will the White House be like, and how will it serve the values that have always lain beneath American greatness?” Every American has a right to weigh the White House of the last four years against the White Houses of former presidents: Barack Obama, George W. and George H. W. Bush, of Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter or George Washington. Every American has the right and the obligation to weigh the values of the administration against their personal values, the values they share with their neighbors and those of the founding fathers and mothers as echoed in our glorious constitution.

There is massive weight in your vote; I’m sure you all agree.

One of the peculiarities of political campaigning in today’s America is that we’ve allowed our campaign rhetoric to become divisive, angry and combative. In this atmosphere, the guidance we need for casting our ballot can get lost. Your next presidency, your next White House, will be the biggest single factor in shaping yours and your neighbor’s future prospects, and our prospects as a cooperating citizen-nation on the world stage. Like a principal sets the tone in a school, a foreman sets the tone on a work site, America’s president sets the tone in the nation.

I think its safe to say that today, very few Americans are happy with the tone they find on their streets, their towns and cities, their countryside. True, our political leanings are spread across a whole range. How we see solutions to our most pressing problems are not the same. But surely that doesn’t mean that one half of our citizens must beat down the other half, or the other way ‘round. Those who think personal liberty is most important and those who think social justice has the answers have lived side by side in harmony for centuries already. We’ve always known that the answers lie between the extremes and that we find them by talking together, by compromising where necessary, by remembering that despite our differing viewpoints, together we’ve miraculously built a great, a wonderful nation with endless potential. And by the same token, neglecting our union in favour of partisan rhetoric and violence has only one end. That is to weaken ourselves as a nation, to erode our friendships with our neighbours and to destroy the very fabric on which we built this nation.

Today, I want to share honestly and frankly with you my vision of a White House and an administration that will set the tone for the union to which we aspire.

First of all, I need to tell you about myself since the values you hold will only see daylight if your president understands them. My entire life has been lived in the shelter of Christian faith, although I have through experience learned that the goodness inspired by Jesus Christ in, for instance, Matthew 5 & 6, is not always followed by those who claim to be his followers. Nor is it absent in my neighbors who were raised in a different faith.

What policies I would urge, then, will always have to answer to those highest values we share across our different persuasions. The hungry must be fed, the sick must be treated, the poor must find a better life, the imprisoned must be rehabilitated, people must be free to pursue whatever life has meaning for them. In short, my presidency would seek first and foremost to focus on the reconciliation of people to each other and to justice and mercy. Justice and mercy that answers both to the deepest longings of mankind and to the core values of all the great faiths of the world. It’s my conviction that the pursuit of happiness begins with the commitment to justice, mercy and love. Virtually all Americans have grown up with the ideal expressed in Jewry, in Christianity, in Islam and in indigenous and other minority cultures: Love creation and the creator with all your heart, soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

Secondly, my approach in what we call “foreign policy” will never be simply America First. It is not diplomatically nor spiritually right to seek to satisfy our desires at the expense of others. That approach cannot succeed. Ours is a global community. The most urgent hurdles the earth and its peoples face are global. To achieve the lives we as Americans aspire to will never happen through self-aggrandizement, belligerence or unconditional self-serving. Our future lies in partnership, in the just distribution of resources and in the negotiation in good faith of our future as a global people. Neither our present nor our future prosperity will be assured through “me first and last” policies. Globally, we sink or swim together, whether we’re talking about food, climate, diminished resources, peaceful coexistence or the constitutional “right to pursue happiness.” I don’t much like slogans, but “America with our Neighbors” comes closer to what should be expected of your White House, your administration. To do what a presidency can to set such a tone is my intent.

I don’t have to tell you that recent demonstrations under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police” have not only shaken the foundations of our union, but have drawn forth both justified anger and a pleading for a new relationship across ethnicities. I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that reconciliation across race and ethnicity is a major preoccupation for me. If this involves a new or revised training curriculum for police officers, or if it urges us to reassign duties of care for our citizens, I’m fully prepared to initiate those discussions. Through congress where all Americans have representation, a vital meeting of minds needs to be arrived at. It’s far too important for us to be only partisan in our considerations.

Related to this, it must be said that the current turmoil has brought out some very ugly features of what is generally a law-abiding, peaceful society. Vandalism, destruction, violence thrive in times of turmoil and their prominence in the news exaggerates their significance so that we’re encouraged to over-react.

Two things occur to me as being root causes for outbreaks of this kind. One is the real or perceived assumption of being marginalized by an injustice. Second, to my mind, is the persistence of a number of the realities of the age: climate change and its effects, technologies and robotics and their effect on employment and as always, the frustration of being poor next door to obscene wealth. All of these are acting together to raise what could be called our “national anxiety level,” and if at the presidential level, hope that we will resolve these stress-creating issues is not projected, then where will it come from?

Let me be more specific on one or two issues to make my point clearer. Over the last four years, a great deal of attention has been given to refugee and immigration issues; you know the specifics of that including a widespread concern about undocumented persons living in the USA, the importation of crime by refugees and immigrants, and the status of children of refugees who were born in the USA, and so on.

In general, people wish to remain where they are at home. True as that may be, the wars and violence in some countries, the upsurge in floods, droughts, fires and storms accentuated by climate change will undoubtedly mean two things: the numbers of people fleeing to safety will only increase if trends continue, and finding global remedies for what are global issues is paramount. Policies of isolation at this time are diametrically opposed to the search for immigration/refugee solutions. No wall has ever brought lasting peace; the best guarantee of safety from our neighbors is to ensure that our neighbors are also our friends.

Another item on which I’ll be more specific is that of international trade. The export of jobs to other countries is a dilemma for the American worker who needs a job here and now. It is also a potential threat to our nation in that expertise and infrastructure for essential manufactures and technologies might well exit with the jobs. The need for self-sufficiency varies with the conditions of the times, but in general, a nation needs to provide for its citizens in a way that is fair to both them and its trading partners. It’s a fair-trade treaty that has regularized trading in North America. Our country being the world’s major economy should be deeply involved in multi-lateral negotiations to ensure fair trade practices world-wide. Arbitrarily placed tariffs and restrictions sour the tone on international trade negotiation. Bully politics may produce short-term gains, but inevitably lead to long-term losses.

The COVID 19 pandemic has dealt America a hard, hard set of lessons. If we didn’t know before, we should know now that a novel virus demands everything our medical capability can handle . . . and more. We’ve learned that we have the most advanced capabilities in medical research and treatment, but that without trust in our scientists and full cooperation in the chosen strategy, we undermine our own abilities to face extraordinary emergencies. Our White House and our administration are our best hope of pulling the nation together when critical times come upon us. Our current White House and administration enabled by our Senate have let us down, sowing political tension where a united front was needed, blaming the burgeoning problem on others, encouraging chaos when a united front was absolutely necessary. My White House will not be 4 years of manipulating the news in order to be re-elected; my White House will once again be the people’s White House, the junction point at which all America’s best dreams meet.

I could list a hundred specifics of policies and practices that could be expected if you, my fellow Americans, choose me and the Democratic team to govern your affairs going forward. Most you can guess from what I’ve said so far. The actions I’ll pursue will first of all take into account that you also elect senators, congress persons, mayors, councils, school boards and so on, all of whom you’ve placed democratically to facilitate a smoothly functioning union. The days of pitting one against the other, of deriding your state or municipal representatives, of disrespecting your choices, will be over. Favouring one interest group, one ethnicity, one religion, one gender, one age group over another will not be tolerated on the hill or anywhere else in the governance and policing of this great nation.

If that’s too general for some of you, I will illustrate with two examples . . . briefly. Historically, we share more with our great neighbour, Mexico, than we have credited. Efforts to build a common understanding and purpose upon that heritage will replace the emphasis on walling ourselves off from them. Instituting Spanish/English bilingual service in both countries at official levels springs to mind as a possibility in that direction. We will need your ideas.

A second concrete example. At state and local levels, our people have made tremendous strides in lowering fossil fuel consumption and developing energy alternatives. Your White House ought to re-engage with the rest of the world in the effort to prolong the life of the planet, making our emphases infrastructure provision and teaching in areas of technology and techniques in countries less able to achieve what we have achieved.

Throughout this campaign, great effort has been put into making out that Joe Biden is either a spokesperson for, or a hack of, extreme left politics. I want to assure you now that you have nothing to fear on that account. I abhor dictatorial socialism as much as I deplore dictatorial fascism. America’s success owes much to the fact that we’ve never gone to either extreme as have NAZI Germany, China, Russia, North Vietnam, Venezuela or Cuba. Ours has been a mix of social benefits in education, health and income support and capitalist enterprise where that was the best option. If you want to understand my political leanings, examine Canada or Denmark, or Japan, or Great Britain; my admiration for the remarkable achievements of these democratic mixed economies is where my left/right political leaning begins and ends.

That’s where America also, has always been and will always be. It’s that which has made us great!