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Here's a ready-made Inaugural Address
By Carl Heintze
I sat down today to write the President's Inaugural Address. He didn't ask me to write it. In fact, at this writing, I don't know who he is.
His election is mired down in vote counting and recounting and politics. That's OK. It doesn't matter much who he is. Both possibilities are, alas, pretty much the same.
But I thought I would write his address for him even though I know he'll never deliver it or see it. I'm writing it because I think it's what a lot of his people would like to hear him say.
Presidents don't usually write their own speeches these days, anyway--although John F. Kennedy apparently did with memorable results. And Abraham Lincoln's two inaugurals have become part of the national literature.
Anyway, Mr. President, whoever you are, here's what I think you ought to say in the year of Our Lord 2001:
"My Fellow Americans:
I speak to you in a nation seemingly divided, right against left, conservative against liberal, by ethnic origin, by sexual orientation, by religious belief, by whether we were native born or immigrants, by where we live, what we do and what we earn.
We have just completed the most closely divided election in our history and, but for the grace of a few hundred votes, not I but another might be standing here today giving this address.
These differences, this near defeat humble me. I speak to you aware that you have not given me a mandate, but a chance. You have asked me not to rule, but to govern, not to revolutionize the nation with a new agenda, but to reexamine the old, and by such examination to illuminate the future.
I am not unmindful that we live at the beginning of a new millennium, of a new chance to remake the world, by our example to give the world the example of how to live.
I also am aware we live at the peak of one of the greatest periods of plenty in our nation's history, when unemployment and want are at a minimum, when technology, industry and the willingness to work hard and long has given us all the material gains we could wish for.
I also know this bounty is one to which I have contributed little. Rather, it is one which has been given me to shelter and encourage, to nurture and to make even better. I accept that challenge. I ask you to join me in avoiding excess, in encouraging the sharing of our munificence with those less fortunate, both here and abroad.
Like you, I wish it to continue; I cherish the forces which made it happen. I believe not in partisan bickering, but in bipartisan cooperation to further this goal.
I know that we are part of an imperfect union, of a nation, which seeks to protect differences while also working for freedom for all, even though we will never be exactly the same.
I welcome the diversity, which has made this nation great. At the same time, I realize that we each must compromise if we are to live in peace with one another. I believe this nation to have constructed the best system of government yet devised, a fortress for hope, a fountain of liberty, but I also know with all my heart that freedom is hard earned and well guarded, that liberty brings responsibility, that only by respecting others will we succeed.
Two millennium ago another civilization shone as brightly as does ours. It was called Rome. It began as a city and became an empire, reaching to the edges of the known world. It was a cherished nation. No greater honor could be earned than to become a citizen of Rome.
In that same spirit, no greater wish lies in the hearts of most of the world's peoples: either to become an American citizen or to build a nation, which has made America the envy of the globe. We are the new Rome.
I think that admirable, but I remind you that Rome sank into excess, division and decay. It was, in time, overrun by those seeking its wonders and it became not a reality of civilization, but the golden memory of a great time in history.
My vision is that this will not be our fate. Rather that we will enjoy a new burst of liberty, a new flowering of thought, word and deed, which will earn us even greater rewards.
It is to that goal that today I dedicate my administration. I ask you to join with me, to remember the words of another president on another day not long ago who said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
That's the inaugural address I'd like to hear delivered next January. And I hope whoever becomes president writes one like it, somehow sees a vision of a city on a hill, of a new Jerusalem, of a new Rome. I hope whoever it is that comes to lead us rises out of mediocrity into greatness and takes us with him.
I hope.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
