Excerpt from Antoine Garcia's Inaugural speech, January 20, 2029:
My Fellow Americans, looking back over the last century, some wonders and horrors have certainly occurred. Two World Wars, two Great Depressions, and accomplishments and technologies beyond imagination 100 years ago. But I want to address the one I am most happy about, because it is the one that has done the most good for the most people. . .
When Herbert Hoover took office in 1928, the Republicans were in their ascendancy. They'd dominated politics throughout the 1920s and the last thing anyone would have expected was that within 7 years there would be such a thing as Social Security. Nothing like it was on the horizon; no one could conceive of an umbrella of such magnitude, such breadth --- or such success. The utter failure of the concept of laissez faire free market capitalism killed that belief system for over half a century, until most of those who lived through the trauma of the 1930s were dead and the dangers of that free market were all but forgotten.
When in 2001 George W Bush took office the Republicans were again in their ascendancy. The Republicans would dominate politics and discourse for the next five years, as they had for almost all of the previous 20 years. And the last thing anyone would have expected was that within 10 years the then discredited Hillary Clinton dream of a National Health System would be set as the cornerstone of The New New Deal, and would replace Social Security as the most successful program in U.S. government history.
Who would have thought that two Great Depressions would bring about such human success?
Who would have believed that out of such misery - forged by their preceding periods of outrageous greed - could come such good things for the American people.
Looking back as we do, over this last century, by all of us pulling together in the hardest times our country has ever experienced, we have our great grandparents down to ourselves to thank that so much good was accomplished. It is a great heritage to pass on to our descendants.
Let us now credit our recent generations for enduring and building - rebuilding, really - our 21st century America into what we have today. We don't live in a utopia, but neither do we live in a Brave New World, or even The New American Century. We just live in an America where for nearly 20 years now we have been our brother's keeper. And more Americans can now go to bed at night with fewer worries than at any time in our history.
One of the six things on the "To Do List" of our Founding Fathers - in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America was to "promote the general welfare". Back 60 years ago that welfare was attempted in a very groping way, and it brought a backlash, a pendulum swing that very nearly caused all effort at improving life for our citizens to be abandoned, to leave it to an every-man-for-himself system in which most of us didn't know what we were doing in a morass of choices too confusing to make any sense of without a college degree, and at a cost that put many into medical bankruptcy over treatment much of the developed world could get for just walking in the door.
One of our great cities was nearly obliterated by a natural disaster, which was compounded by a misguided ideal of "every man for himself" government, and many of the weaker of our citizens did not survive it. But out of that cold-hearted abandonment came a fury to fight on behalf of the common man - they called him "Joe Main Street" for a while - until we now stand at a point in our history where we have been able to stop fighting to gain a tiny bit of that "general welfare" and instead fight disease, rather than our fellow citizens and overwhelming bills.
I believe these programs have made us all more human. In these next four years, among other things, let us wisely expand stem cell research on beyond the foundation we now have. Its most popular program has, of course, been the elimination of baldness for any and all men who want it. [laughter as he runs his fingers over his formerly hairless pate...] At least in my house. [more laughter...]
But I wanted to mostly here express our huge gratitude for the efforts of the Congressional leaders of the time when this great Health Care System came into being, and without whom it would never have been done. Let us remember Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy. Barack Obama was instrumental, as he was on so many fronts in those hard early days of the New New Deal. And the early blogs on what we used to call The Internet - remember that? [more laughter...] - pushed for all they were worth and brought grass roots into the early stages of the powerhouse we all know and love today [more laughter...] Without any of those factions and individuals, our world would be so much less rich. I marvel at the strength all those people must have had. They inspire me and most of you, even to this day. I am happy for the privilege of standing on their shoulders. If I had a drink in front of me, I would toast them all, here and now.
Thank you, everyone who brought this system where it is today. [gestures as if making a toast...]