one last thought from our May 17, 2015 show....
...At this writing, there are eight announced candidates for
President in 2016…add to that the other 10 who have been often named as likely
to run and what you have is 18 likely candidates for President of the United
States…
…and what we already have, in spades, in this campaign
with, as of today, 540 days yet to go, is a game of hardball…cheap shots, low
blows, animosity, mudslinging, tearing down, shredding up, put downs, character
assassination, pettiness…
…and that’s with 540 days to go…
…but here’s a thing…in one way or another, every campaign
since year one in this country has had its share of all of those negative
attributes….
…what’s different this time around, what’s missing from
this campaign…..is excitement, enthusiasm, energy, optimism, inspiration, positivity,
pride…. there’s not a single candidate that is creating the kind of buzz that
Lincoln did in the 1860’s…
…or Franklin Roosevelt did in the Great Depression
years…there’s no rock star crowds gathering to hear JFK talk about New
Frontiers, there’s no old guard crowd rallying around a movie actor turned
politician named Reagan, there’s no sense that a new generation is ready to give
our problems a shot like there was when Bill Clinton ran in 1992…
…there’s not even the kind of fresh excitement that
occurred seven years ago when the first black man to get that far got that far
with his message of how all we had to do was hope hard enough and change would
come…we hoped hard…and change did come…but that change hasn’t brought us any
closer to solving our problems and it certainly hasn’t brought us any closer
together…we are probably more divided and polarized as a country than we have ever
been…
…and not a single candidate among those 18 has anything
to offer us that we can be absolutely sure about with the exception of the fact
that they are not one of the other 17 candidates...
…I can’t speak for you and I won’t presume to do that…but
I will share with you that while I don’t believe I could ever be ashamed of
being an American, I can, and frankly this time around am, embarrassed to be
one..…
…because if what we’ve got to choose from 540 days from
now represents the most exciting, most enthusiastic, most energetic, most
optimistic, most positive, most proud, most interesting, most inspiring…if what
is going to be on our ballots in 540 days is the best and the brightest of what
this nation has to offer, regardless of
political party preference, then, we need to stop arguing with each
other, stop settling for the lesser of the evils, and let the wanna be leaders
of this nation know that we expect, no, that we demand, the best and the
brightest…and not the least of the worst…
…every time I hear a candidate stand before a frenzied
crowd and say “it’s time to take our country back!” I want to grab a microphone
and say “back from who?” From those that we gave the country to when we elected
them to lead us and they didn’t? So that we can elect a new group and watch
them play the same game with our dreams and our hopes and our money and our
lives or even worse, re-elect the same group so that they can continue to not
do the job we expect and demand…and deserve?
…As parents, we learn that our kids tend to live up, or
down, to our expectations and demands. Turns out the same holds true for those
we elect to represent our interests.
…Until we wise up and really hold the feet of those who
want our votes to the fire of high expectations, we’re going to continue getting
what we pay for…or, more to the point, vote for….my vote is available to the
first candidate who can answer this one, and only one, question to my
satisfaction….how will you inspire this nation to stop settling for less than
actually BEING the best and the brightest?
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