While driving to work this morning NPR had the speech writers of President Clinton and President Reagans last State of the Union speech. Both speeches reflected on the past eight years of their presidencys, as well as looking to the future.
This made me contemplate what possibly the current president of the United States could say.
In Clintons speech he summed up rather nicely how far the county had come.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, honored guests, my fellow Americans:
We are fortunate to be alive at this moment in history. Never before has our Nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats. Never before have we had such a blessed opportunity and, therefore, such a profound obligation to build the more perfect Union of our Founders’ dreams.
We begin the new century with over 20 million new jobs; the fastest economic growth in more than 30 years; the lowest unemployment rates in 30 years; the lowest poverty rates in 20 years; the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates on record; the first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years; and next month, America will achieve the longest period of economic growth in our entire history. We have built a new economy.
And our economic revolution has been matched by a revival of the American spirit: crime down by 20 percent, to its lowest level in 25 years; teen births down 7 years in a row; adoptions up by 30 percent; welfare rolls cut in half, to their lowest levels in 30 years.
My fellow Americans, the state of our Union is the strongest it has ever been.
Amazing wasn't it. I suppose that Bush will whine on how 9-11 changed all this, that we are currently engaged in a conflict that no one could have foresaw and that his administration has kept us safe. But at what cost. Loss of Liberty, loss of world view, an economy that is weak and a country that is demoralized.
Clinton went on to state:
To 21st century America, let us pledge these things: Every child will begin school ready to learn and graduate ready to succeed. Every family will be able to succeed at home and at work, and no child will be raised in poverty. We will meet the challenge of the aging of America. We will assure quality, affordable health care, at last, for all Americans. We will make America the safest big country on Earth. We will pay off our national debt for the first time since 1835.* We will bring prosperity to every American community. We will reverse the course of climate change and leave a safer, cleaner planet. America will lead the world toward shared peace and prosperity and the far frontiers of science and technology. And we will become at last what our Founders pledged us to be so long ago:
* White House correction.
One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
It is interesting that these goals have been completely turned around in this administration. Science and Technology have been abandoned. Health care for all has been turned into a joke.
I use to look forward to the pomp and circumstance that is the State of the Union Speech, the thought that all of our Representatives and Leaders are brought together one night each year (except for the one who has to hide in case of a disaster.) but tonight I am not looking forward to it. Somehow my government has been hijacked by an administration who does not care about its citizens. It has given my rights and potential to succeed to Corporations and Entities that have profits and not my best interest at heart.
No I think tonight I will not listen to the State of the Union, I don't think I can stand listening to the inarticulate speech of a man who I know will spin his last eight years of ineptitude and incompetence into something that sounds like a success. I wonder if a re-run of Project Runway will be on.
To read all of President Clintons last State of the Union speech go here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/...