2008 Democratic Presidential "Nominee" Announces Platform

Thank you, fellow Americans, for nominating me as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States of America, a nomination I am honored to accept. My name would not be at the top of this ticket were it not for the hundreds of millions of Americans who want to trade an incumbent who is the punch line of 79% of all political jokes of the last 9 years for a candidate with an actual sense of humor. I am here because millions of Americans crossed party lines to vote in the primaries for a candidate who has neither the means nor the interest to buy the oval office but will be content looking out its windows and admiring the view. I am a candidate with vision, after all. Not 20/20, but vision nonetheless.

And lest you think gazing out windows is not a productive use of the President's time, let me assure you that I will use that time to exercise my vast imagination to the public's benefit. I will set my imagination loose and let ideas bubble to the surface. I will present the best of those ideas to you, the American public, so we can use them in a collaborative process to craft trustworthy and reliable public policy.

Crafting and implementing public policy is not something a President can or should do alone. The best ideas are those that are developed in a process that tests them to withstand the scrutiny of kindred spirits and polar opposites alike. The President's role is to lead, to inspire, to provoke the conversations we must have in order to settle on the terms that will govern our social compacts in the coming decades. So none of my ideas that I share with you today are campaign promises. I will not make campaign promises to you. I will instead share with you my vision, a vision that can only become complete if you join me as willing participants in making it a reality. A vision that requires your input and ultimately your acceptance.

Your input starts on election day, but don't think for a minute that you're off the hook once the results are announced. You are not going to sit around for four long years complaining about how I do my job. You will be too busy working your tail off helping to make our shared vision a reality.

Let me talk for a few moments about some of the issues we will need to address:

Immigration

Immigration is a high profile issue today, and one that generates unnecessary controversy. The reason some people oppose immigration is because they are afraid. Afraid of losing jobs. Afraid of having to learn a new language. Afraid that people around them will change some of their habits and they will have to adapt. It has been that way since this country was founded. It was that way when employers posted signs "No Irish Need Apply." It was that way when the government portrayed Asian immigration as a rising yellow tide. And it was that way during World War II when Jewish refugees were subject to quotas in spite of the gas chambers facing them in their homelands.

As Americans, it is our sacred duty to conquer our fear for once and for all. Once that fear is conquered, we can open our borders. We can be confident that immigrants aren't coming here to steal our jobs but to find their own jobs and work side by side with us as our partners and friends. We can dare to learn a new language and laugh at our mistakes. We can embrace new customs while sharing our own.

We do not need to spend $6 billion- before the inevitable cost overruns- on a fence to hide the USA from the Mexicans. The Great Wall of China didn't work, the Berlin Wall didn't work, and a wall between Mexico and the United States of America will not work. We need to open our borders and welcome our neighbors into our country.

Life itself is a dynamic process. The world we grew up in is gone forever. The world we live in today is multicultural. We need to restore faith in our work ethic, faith in our inherent competency, faith in our ability to adapt to change. When we do that, we can open our hearts and minds to the next generation of immigrants, confident that we have nothing to fear and much to gain from them.

If you see George Dubya Bush and he starts asking about that fence he built down there in Texas, tell him it fell over. Bad design concept.

Health Care

First rate health care must be the birthright of every American. No one should face death, disability, or pain because of an inability to obtain high quality health care. It has long been a role of government in this country to provide for public utilities and services necessary to the well-being of the American people. The government builds schools and roads, provides for sanitation and telephone service. Which of these is more important than life itself? First rate health care is necessary to sustain life. There is no more important role our government could be called upon to fulfill than mandating that every resident of the United States of America is able to obtain the highest quality healthcare without regard to his or her income. Once we accept this premise, we can decide how best to deliver that healthcare. But the first step is the commitment.

Foreign Relations

The United States of America's reputation amongst the nations of the world needs a makeover. Iraq. Iran. Afghanistan. Pakistan. China. Korea. Russia. France. Most of the rest of the G8, that's right, those guys who are supposed to be our best friends but object to our aggression in Iraq and elsewhere. Turkey. Venezuela. Bolivia. Cuba. Libya. Zimbabwe... The list of countries who have problems with our attitude is a long one, and at some point we have to face the fact that we just might be doing something wrong. We encourage everyone else to abide by the rulings of international tribunals like the United Nations and the World Court, and then we ourselves thumb our noses at those tribunals when we can't manipulate them to support our positions. It is time to enroll the USA in preschool where it can learn to share, compromise, control its temper, practice good sportsmanship, play fair and sometimes even give in.

Education

We need an educational system that inspires our children to soar. We need a public commitment to maximize the potential of each individual child. Education today is full of competing groups, motivated by fear and resentment. Let's unify those groups and convert the energy wasted on competition into energy expended on achieving our common goal. Historically America has failed in valuing and providing educational challenges to its most gifted, those with disabilities and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Making sure that these students excel requires more than buying the right worksheets or increasing school exposure.

We need an educational system that recognizes that we are in the 21^st century. All children should be taught a foreign language beginning in kindergarten with the opportunity to learn a second foreign language by middle school.

All students must be computer literate. Instead of using school computers to play "educational games" and draw pictures, children should begin as soon as they start elementary school to learn computer terminology, keyboarding, and computer ethics. By the end of elementary school, children should have mastered the basics of computer research and simple programming, and they should enhance their mastery in the middle and secondary school years.

Children need to know about the world we live in. There is simply no excuse for schools without maps, for children to graduate from high school and not know what part of the world Iraq is in or where the Eiffel Tower is located.

Overemphasis on testing has diminished educational ingenuity and enthusiasm. More than any substantive subject matter or skill we teach our children, we need to inspire them to be inquisitive, to seek answers, to want to learn.

The Iraq War

What Iraq war? I cannot and will not be your President if you want to continue this travesty. What I can do is build bridges with the new Iraqi government, bring our troops home safely and honorably, and work to repair all the harm this illegal foray has inflicted on our country. I will work with the United Nations to ensure the safety of the Iraqi people and the prompt rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure. The oil? It belongs to the Iraqis and they can build and operate their own oil rigs and refineries and sell their primary natural resource to whomever they please, just like we do with our natural resources.

Environmentalism

Earth is our collective home and protecting it has to be viewed as one of our most fundamental responsibilities. We cannot afford to ignore global warming or dump toxins deep in our oceans. We need to think hard what we can do to change our consumption patterns to promote a healthier Earth. We may want to turn this task over to 13 year olds who for some reason seem to be uniquely suited to the challenge.

Terrorism/Safety

We live in a safe country where unsafe events are exceedingly rare. We have been bamboozled into giving up privacy rights by the illusion that safety threats are all around us, and our government has turned many billions of our tax dollars over to private companies to create a useless safety infrastructure in our names. Let's put a stop to this nonsense now. Goodbye to the Patriot Act. Goodbye to the political excess that overfunds anti terrorism grants and distributes them as political pork. Goodbye to the TSA's anti-shoe policies, its voyeuristic xrays, and pro-dehydration practices. Goodbye to Code Red and Code Blue in our schools, concepts so flawed that even seven year olds challenge their efficacy.

Bad things happen in the world. We can't prevent all of them. We can be vigilant but let's use common sense as our guide. The safety infrastructure has two functions and safety is not one of them: the functions of the safety infrastructure are profit for companies providing the products and services and power for the government which has stripped the population of long established rights almost overnight and without significant protest. Yet these so called protections are not making us safer. They are making us scared. Scared equals pliant, manipulable. If you don't want to believe it, consider the cost of the TSA versus the number of bomb plots it has uncovered. Consider the hysterical reaction to every backpack forgotten on a Metro or in an office building - minor daily occurrences like this now make the news, generate calls to bomb squads, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Inevitably we find the same thing- someone forgot his backpack. So let's stop playing the fear game and live rationally again.

The Cabinet

In choosing a Cabinet, I will assuredly not be stacking the deck with agenda-buying corporate donors and lobbyists, because I don't have any corporate and lobbyist donors. I am a firm believer in bringing in people with varied life experience and varied political opinions. No one will be expected to agree with me to become a Cabinet member but after having the opportunity to zealously advocate for his or her viewpoint in shaping our policies will be expected to honor the outcome of our deliberative process and support its result. Real people with real life experience most often have made some mistakes along the way to gaining wisdom, and my administration will not investigate potential Cabinet members' backgrounds or spend time developing cleansing strategies to pretend away any blemishes. We will focus on the here and now and what the potential Cabinet member has to offer to the country.

My Running Mate

I am proud to announce that Brian Joura has agreed to be my running mate. Brian did not run for the President's job himself, saying he has "too many skeletons in his closet" to get elected. We all have something in our closets, now, don't we? Even if it's only a pair of worn out shoes. And what business do we have looking in each other's closets? If everyone would keep to his own closet, we could spend our time productively, making our country a role model for all the world.

Please go now to Brian's AC page by clicking here to read his acceptance speech.