A Speechwriter's Contribution

Dear President Obama:

I am a working media and speech writer and though struggling in this economy, I am not in the habit of working for free. 

Nonetheless, please consider the following an act of civic contribution to your re-election campaign. I can't offer money I don't have, but I do have ideas and words aplenty. Some of them, I think, belong to you. They are yours for the taking. An attribution would be nice, but I'm not even insisting on that. If you use it, I'll know.

The title of this speech is: 

"Things I should have said and done"

Three years ago, I was elected to the most important chief executive position in the world. I, like others, thought of it as the most powerful position in the world, but experience has taught me otherwise. With a thousand thousand media spotlights turned on me and powerful forces bent against me, I have seen the failure of my best intentions and at times have felt powerless to stop this failure.

I don't feel that way now.

I do feel that the best way to set up for your future success is to identify and acknowledge past mistakes, learn from them and move on. I ask you to recall that the last member of my party who held this office delivered the country a booming peacetime economy and a budget surplus.

The administration prior to mine was less accommodating. They delivered a staggering deficit, two wars and a national economy in full nuclear meltdown. One of those wars was an immoral lie. The other war though righteous in its battle against the thuggery of international terrorism, may well be unwinnable by any conventional standards of warfare.

There's a saying in golf that you "play the ball where it lies." America was clearly in the rough and you elected me because unlike my opponent who seemed flustered and overwhelmed by the demands of the play, I projected an air of calm, determination and optimism.

Global economics is a complex and high stakes business. Past successes are not guarantors of future success. Nonetheless, the last time the American economy was in such a crisis, the administration invested taxpayer dollars into building American jobs and American infrastructure. By doing so, middle-class people were employed and the entire nation benefited.

I didn't follow this example. Instead I listened to the best and brightest economic minds of my time and they told me that the only way to restart the economy was to bail out the very institutions that started the crisis in the first place. And though this very notion struck me as counter-intuitive and just plain wrong, I listened and in the end followed their advice.

It played out like a bad soap opera. When I mildly denounced the behaviors that were widely held to be wrong and bad for the economy, I was denounced as a socialist and anti-business. I didn't expect overt expressions of gratitude. But I did expect that the businesses would self-correct and maybe even reinvest in the American economy as my very bright advisers promised they would. I expected something. I didn't get it. I didn't get anything but grief. And neither did you.

You don't get do-overs in this business. But if I had one, I swear I'd have invested every "stimulus" dollar in the one and only business that's truly too big too fail. That's the American middle class. I would have made sure that their roads and bridges were, if not ultra-modern, at least safe and well-maintained.

I'd have loaned money to students and schools, because the American education system is not just the backbone of the middle class but a beacon for the world. At least it was. Because now that light is fading. Primary education slipping in quality. Secondary education soaring in price. Pricing a quality education out of the range of most Americans. We can't allow that. We have two horns of an American dilemma and it calls for an American solution.

I would like to advance a new economic model. Call it, for the sake of name recognition, "trickle up." It goes like this. We give tremendous tax breaks and incentives to the poor and middle classes and eventually, some of that benefit will eventually trickle up to the upper one percent. We employed the reverse model for about 30 years and it worked for the people it was intended to benefit. I know a lot of those people. I'm confident that most if not all of the "trickle down" beneficiaries will be able to manage "trickle up" economics for a good while.

To those well-endowed individuals and corporations who'd shirk paying even modestly higher taxes or hiring American workers, who'd threaten to flee to tax-friendlier, cheaper-labor homes, I'd say, here's the door. Do you really feel the American people no longer reward loyalty with loyalty? I'd be willing to bet good money, and I mean that quite literally, that as soon as you leave, that some upstart American firm that's willing to hire American, pay American taxes and play by American rules will step up to take your place.

As I said, I know and have met a lot of people. I don't think American corporations are going anywhere. For all the bluster and manufactured anxiety, I think that most people see more than dollar signs when they look at America. They see American labor and American ingenuity and they know both are a good investment.

The next do-over I would have claimed was in the arena of healthcare. This is another, complicated issue, beginning with America having 21^st century technology and training, but feudal methods of healthcare delivery. When the Congress of the United States brought me a healthcare bill that didn't include a public option, I should have tossed the bill back in their faces. Or better yet, I should have used a bit of preventative medicine and made sure the bill I got was what I'd asked for.

It was then that I should've realized that you can't compromise with people who believe that compromising with you is failure. So you don't waste what little time you have to make a difference. You work with the people you have and the time you have. In the end, I let a small handful of senators derail what I promised the American people.  What you got was so watered down that it may not pass constitutional muster. It's not what I campaigned on.

I also campaigned on financial industry reform. For reform and regulation of the excess that caused our current crisis. I watched regulations as they moved through the belly of Congress, became suggestions and guidelines that the best and brightest minds in the industry move, even now, to figure out ways to circumvent. I watched and did too little. And now I regret this.

For the economy, like the financial industry and the healthcare industry did not self-correct. If this were even possible, it would have happened by now. There are dollars spent that we can't get back. Bells rung that cannot be unrung. We tried to do the right thing and are left with fewer resources than we had three years ago.

There are critical missions—healthcare, education, infrastructure, jobs, financial reform. These are things that the American people care about and there is a real role for government in making sure these missions are staked, launched and succeed. And there are people who say there is no role for American government in these missions. When you hear people say this, you have to question whether these people believe in the missions at all.

There are people out there, some who even voted for me the last time, who say "well he's had four years and he didn't deliver much of what he said he would. Why give him another chance?" As I said, there are no do-overs. But listen carefully to what the other candidate, whoever he or she happens to be. If you feel they care more about the things you care about than I do, if you feel they have better plans, I guess they should also have your vote.

If I am not re-elected, you can trust whoever is elected to tirelessly undo all we've tried to accomplish. But I'm not going to sit by and let that happen without a fight. True we were dealt a bad hand. True, we had to play it where it lay. Even so, I'm not going to sit by and wait for Election Day to redouble my efforts to deliver on my promises. I've been working and will continue to work until the American people say you don't want me to.

Thank you and God bless the United States of America.

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Well, that's about it Mr. President. My campaign contribution to you. I'm always available for rewrites or another gig. The speech should run a little under 15 minutes without applause. Now let's talk about where you'd deliver it. I think it should be on Wall Street. My bet is you could draw quite a crowd there and the applause you'd get would play the speech out another ten minutes or more. Why don't you give it a shot, Mr. President? It would be a bold stroke and I think it would galvanize your base, particularly those of us who are less than thrilled with you right now.

Seriously. What do you have to lose? … Oh, that's right.