Address of Hillary Rodham Clinton

Address of Hillary Rodham Clinton
Future 44th President of the United States of America

* Americans: I want to be your President. I have been drawing so much support from you—your rallies, letters, stories, ideas, blogs, calls--all your heartfelt contributions. My heart is filled with the energy we have created. It astounds me, and it is deeper and more profound than anything I felt before when I went through this with President Clinton. We are energized in a new way - not because of me, but because of a combination of me, this point in history, and you. We see where the Republican Party is headed (towards more war, more environmental contamination, more inequality), and we citizens want to head in the opposite direction. War, contamination, corruption, and inequality are part of the same mentality, and their opposites are peace, efficiency, love of nature, and sharing.

* I’m a child of the 60s—and that’s a good thing. Sixties kids are now 60. This is our last chance to get it right. There’s too much harshness, too much pain, too much suffering, and too much inequality on this planet. We want a cool world, a green world. We sleep best at night when play well together, not when we fight, whether we win or lose: No one wins a war. No children win a war. We need to start deciding on the basis of what is good for the children, as the Native Americans did—and we can learn from the wisdom of their ways. We need to grow into peace and cooperation, we need to dare to open to sharing and health, we need to examine unrestrained hoarding of wealth of kings and queens. We are the United States and together with the entire world, we need to adapt to our environment, not to adapt our environment to our base instincts. To be an enlightened nation, we need to recognize that we are one and that all people share a goal of peace although not all governments or groups share tactics of peace.

* We will know we are in balance: when more sick or wounded children get looked after, more veterans step back into repaired, post-war lives, more young adults get to open their minds, more kids acquire more skills, including critical thinking, more immigrants learn more English, more quickly, more easily, when all shades and colors mix and learn each other’s plights and prayers and dreams: that is when more creativity can emerge from the human spirit—and that is the spirit of America. When the great Miss Liberty at our New York harbor says, “Give me your tired, your poor,” I believe she is saying now, “Give me those of you who are tired of unregulated corporatism and who are poor from that same unregulated corporatism, and I will find harbor in the rule of law.” Liberty wants to restore the rule of law to America. If we restore our balance of opportunity and justice for all, we restore the middle class.

* The young will soon enough take over the earth; time moves swiftly and carries with it shocking and sometimes scandalous events whose repercussions now ripple ‘around the globe in the blink of an eye. We are always left finishing the jobs someone else started while at the same time new emergencies hit with shock and rapidity. We have to fix a monumental problem started by the ineffective handling of Iraq. Whether the Bush Administration should have or should not have invaded Iraq, they did. American troops were skillful to topple a tyrant and his statue in very short order, but then there followed five long years of mishandling. The mishandling was run by operations that may have been unconstitutional and certainly were lucrative for some—but not for most. Iraq has brought most of us not profits, but confusion, degradation of our reputation, waste, high gas prices, hopelessness, misery, and a lack of planning to get us headed elsewhere. And it's also left us with major terrorists at large.

* What is at the root of this? Is it a love of God or a love of money? We cannot have a Justice Department in the United States that says that for some there can be no justice and for others there is no rule of law. We are out of balance.

* Right now the economy has a hole in it and the hole is called Middle East foreign policy, the ozone has a hole in it and the hole is called depletion, the class structure has a hole in it and the hole is called the middle class. The war, the warming, and the weakening wages—these are undoing of the strength and hope of humanity.

* So what are we going to do about it?

* You bring my campaign energy now, and I ask that your enthusiasm carries on after we win in November and the real work begins. I do not want to become remote and lose this connection with the people. I don’t want to hide behind power. This is a democracy, and you are in charge. I am your Executive. I am the executive of all the people, not two parties.

* Some still think of an executive as a man’s job, but women have overcome gender cages and disproven misconceptions with skill and grace. Plus, many, if not most, gentlemen, by definition, welcome executive women above the glass ceiling. Times—they are a changin’. By being a whole half of humanity, women just bring—with our presence and because of our presence—a balance to the image and essence of governance. When I watched the State of the Union speech last year and for the first time saw a woman’s face in the Triumvirate, I was happy way beyond my beloved Democratic party. I don’t ask my supporters to vote for me because I am a woman—that’s not how we do things. But it is part of the big picture that I am a woman, and we need to balance our picture of leadership. Some say the job of the President is largely ceremonial. I don’t agree, but if we happen to convey in our ceremonies a deep feeling of compassion instead of aggression, a desire for union instead of division, humor instead of humorlessness, and respect instead of contempt, and at times a wee drop of emotion instead of a core of steel—that is ok by me and, I think, by you. We all love our mothers—or we hate ourselves. Sexism is not something that happened to women; sexism happened to all of us. We all need to take the best of the masculine and the feminine and become human. It is time.

* I have learned in many ways how to be a boss, like a man, although I know it is true that some still don’t like that, so I try to keep my sense of humor. But I can run a 3 trillion dollar budget, allocate plenty of it down channels to health care to dam up that particular hole in our life boat, begin to get soldiers back home to their loved ones and their rehabilitation, find out from Al Gore step 1, 2, 3, for United States participation in global balance. I will announce a schedule for a Presidential series of issue-specific Town Halls.

* I will to talk with you every week, but not just like FDR did. I want to dialog. I will welcome Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and Oprah Winfrey to educate us on why humanity needs to roll back the Bush tax breaks. I will begin the welcome of the good people of different sexual preferences into the American family. I will stop the blockage of investigations into breeches of American standards (vanished email, the appointment and firing of Federal judges, warrantless spying, privatization of overseas security forces who are not accountable to the rule of law, and—my least favorite—torture). I will listen to young people who are turned on to the future and those who are turned off. In pursuit of these shared goals, I will do everything in my power to bring back the standards of journalism; entertainment news may be fun, but it’s not funny to divert attention from life and death issues. I will call all of you to the task of raising our children to the high road, where they can learn to be green, not mean, learn to be scientists, not taggers, get off the slider into debt and get to put a foot in the bootstrap that is the middle class of America. A world where young women lead young men into the sacredness that is their union rather than into the shame and burden of single parenthood that comes from lack of education and foresight. I will begin a sea tide of change for the next generation. I will begin that sea change with you, and the Republicans know it.

* I am organizing a better America for you for the time when Obama and I will both be long gone. But you and your kids will be ripe for participation. Fourth graders will be graduating high school and ready to enter colleges when I'm done in 2016, and we’ll be ready for them.

* But my supporters already trust me to begin on Day 1 to rearrange America. So tonight I also want to talk to the supporters of Senator Obama. In my quest for President, I want to be a positive role model. So rather than attack this man whom you love so much, I turn my attention to share and teach you about inside politics and how things actually work on the inside. And as President I will begin to loosen the reins of money on the power of the people. Tonight I want to embark on some of the particulars embedded in the morass called Washington, DC, a place I know so well.

* I have contributions from big corporations; Obama has contributions from big corporations. We are the same; that’s how it works up to this point. I long ago worked as lawyer for a small company called Walmart. I got $18 thousand year. Obama’s wife Michelle worked as a lawyer for a grocery supplier to the now giant company called Walmart. She got over $50 thousand. Her job was recent and mine was long ago, so we can adjust for inflation, and we are the same. I quit because I couldn't get them to agree with my support for labor. And you’ll have to ask her why she quit. But – we are the same. That’s how it works up to this point. I have more earmarks in the game called fiscal 2008 omnibus appropriations bill than any other presidential candidate; that’s how it works. I won. Well - New York won. I just facilitated it. When Barack Obama got to the US Senate three years ago, on [air quotes] “Day One” he came to me in my office to learn how to be a Senator. Obama later sponsored a bill to change financing and I helped him with it and support that bill as I have all the other bills before that were like it, and I know the geology of Washington and how to run with them.

* We all want to stop this monolith called special interests. I have put a dent or two in it already, and I will continue. There is pressure when good legislators come in to corporate contributions and let noble bills die. And Senator Obama knows this now that his nuclear power bill died after the executives he fought made contributions to his campaign. We all know what happened to the rookie cop in “Crash.” He thought he was different from the other fellows.

* The enormity of the task of running the United States of America takes some getting used to and I’m glad I know a lot of what goes on in the West Wing as well as Pennsylvania Avenue. I am ready to take over the Oval Office, and I will remember that you are a major part of the equation. If there is one thing I have learned on this campaign it is how brilliant we American people are. We need to see to it that the voice of the American people is not strangled and the interrelations are not controlled by a small group at the top, for that is not democracy. Democracy is in its citizens.

* I have many contributions from citizens; Obama has many more contributions from citizens. Many of mine are “older and wiser” and many of Obama's are younger and full of dreams. I have young supporters, too: they are hard workers and they care about children and health. Obama has many older supporters, too - they are educated and white and many consider themselves "left-wingers."

* Obama has progressive radio and tv talk show hosts for him, bloggers – vying for him - and they have joined right wing radio and tv talk show hosts in revving up the Republicans-Hate-Clintons machine that I have been fighting for years. Now that I have said that, they might be moved to say I am playing victim. I am not a victim. I am still standing after the slanted [air quotes] “reporting” and Senator Obama is sailing over there. That’s just the way it is. Media is either a fickle or an empty thing. The “sound bite” nips at your brain until your desire for detail is eaten through by trivia and your ability to think critically is excised rather than exercised.

* Let’s look at detail, not cloud cover: I voted in 2002 for the inspectors to return to Iraq and for the ability to tell Saddam Hussein that we would use force if we had to; Obama was a Senator in Illinois at the time. In the interim between then and now, Obama said at least once, in public, that he does not know how he would have voted had he been a member of the US Senate at the time. Since then, he and I vote the same on the bills to support our troops, even while we opposed the handling of the occupation.

* I knew that the vote in the Senate against immunity for telecom giants would fail resounding in this slanted administration and that Congress and my vote opposing it would be symbolic only. I know this and my supporters know it. So I kept working on my campaign that afternoon rather than voting the way all my Democratic partners and my Republican opponents and my supporters know I will vote when the bill comes to fruition. We are the same in opposing immunity for telecom giants. Senator Obama misses important duties, too. He gets busy. He missed the State of the Black Union on Saturday.

* On one closely related vote we varied: I voted for Kyle-Lieberman bill; he did not. Many are not versed in the Kyle-Lieberman bill, so we will address this particular detail at our next Town Hall—on the Ides of March. Bottom line: I do not want a war with Iran. Presumably Obama does not want a war with Iran either, but I don't know what he intends to do. We are told to “go to his website,” and to it I have gone. I still cannot tell what he’ll do, but I will tell you what I would do.

* To share vision with substance, I plan a series of Town Halls, aided and abetted by you, your questions and ideas. Here are the first 9. You tell me number 10.
1. Globe: War, Warming, Wealth give way to Peace, Planetary consciousness, Prosperity,
2. Health and Wealth: Ill Health and Wealth give way to Health and Caring
3. Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Illegality gives way to creativity
4. The Isms: Sexism, Racism, Ageism, Homophobia: Fear gives way to Knowledge
5. Infrastructure: crumbling gives way to building
6. Rural America and Small Towns: small is the new cool
7. The Media, Teaching, Ideals: the Media beckons us to our higher selves, not our lower
8. Leadership and Creativity takes over where Infotainment and Testing left off
9. Efficiency, Bureaucracy, Motivation, Innovation – Let’s get you into government
10. that’s up to you

Why have I just given myself so much more work? You can say because I’m a woman – W-O-M-A-N, but I say it’s because I am ready to be the President of the United States. I’ve been saying I’m ready to begin on Day One, this is Day One. We have begun. No more stump speeches. The American public is full of our promises and the American public is ready speak about its needs and its wants and hear the specifics. Let’s talk, let’s listen, let’s get this place organized for a major turnaround into the Green Blue yonder!

Let’s go!

speech for Hillary Clinton