I just finished watching President Obama's speech on msnbc.com. He was great. Here's a link to the text and I'll highlight a few excerpts. It speaks for itself so well.
Text of speech
This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.
snip
Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.
Well, I’m here to say they are wrong. I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.
Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.
It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.
Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class – things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security.
Remember that in those years, thanks to some of the same folks who are running Congress now, we had weak regulation and little oversight, and what did that get us? Insurance companies that jacked up people’s premiums with impunity, and denied care to the patients who were sick. Mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn’t afford. A financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy.
We simply cannot return to this brand of your-on-your-own economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. We know that it doesn’t result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and its future. It doesn’t result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that’s enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens.
snip
And it is that belief that rallied thousands of Americans to Osawatomie – maybe even some of your ancestors – on a rain-soaked day more than a century ago. By train, by wagon, on buggy, bicycle, and foot, they came to hear the vision of a man who loved this country, and was determined to perfect it.
“We are all Americans,” Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. “Our common interests are as broad as the continent.” In the final years of his life, Roosevelt took that same message all across this country, from tiny Osawatomie to the heart of New York City, believing that no matter where he went, or who he was talking to, all would benefit from a country in which everyone gets a fair chance.
Well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and changed in many ways since Roosevelt’s time. The world is faster. The playing field is larger. The challenges are more complex.
But what hasn’t changed – what can never change – are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other’s success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, “The fundamental rule in our national life – the rule which underlies all others – is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”
There is a lot more there and it is really good. This is the 2012 election and it is about which way do we go: we're all in it together vrs. every one for themselves.
That's the choice.
Update I: I was asked to add what I thought about it. To me, this is consistent with a theme that the President has returned to at various times. I first wrote about it in late August 2008 after the nomination:
http://mydd.com/...
http://www.docudharma.com/...
(It's also was on Daily Kos then but harder for me to find the link quickly)
As someone who at times was critical of Barack Obama during the primaries, I was very impressed with Barack Obama's speech last night, with his thinking as much as his delivery.
Obama provided a counter narrative of America, a narrative that stands in contradistinction to that of Reagan selfishness. It's a truly progressive narrative of America in which the history of America is seen as increasing expansions of democracy. He drew perhaps on his understanding expressed in his Philadelphia "race" speech of "a more perfect union" in articulating this Promise.
It was summed up in this line:
That promise is our greatest inheritance. It's a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours - a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.
snip
[And this line:]
That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.
It's an America that is a community and which includes, rather than excludes. Workers, women, men, blacks, whites, hispanics, asians. It is a promise based on an expansion of democracy and fairness.
In 2010, I repeated much of it and the theme as the health care bill passed:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Here also earlier this year:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
One of the best parts of the speech last night was President Obama's return to a core idea: that there is a counter narrative of America as legitimate if not more so as Reaganite anti-statism and greed:
In fact, this larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own -- that’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.
That is not the story of America. It's not the only story as some would have us believe. The "story of America" is contested and we must win that contest.
For me this is very important. The President offers a counter-narrative to Republican selfishness and exploitation.
I am aware of the limits of this narrative. In a perhaps simplistic way, it is profits and people, not people over profits, but I think it is very important to reach that point from the Reagan world-view we have suffered under for over 30 years.
I think he approaches greatness when he articulates and fights for this counter-narrative of America. A brilliant speech.