A More Truthful Union

Ladies and gentlemen of the Congress and my fellow Americans, I stand before you today to present my annual assessment of our great union. Unlike past years, however, I cannot simply use words like “confident” and “strong” to describe the state of our country. We are, if I may borrow from the address that President John F. Kennedy gave from this podium 45 years ago, “in an hour of national peril.”

I find myself today the leader of a nation that is living a paradox. We are isolated in our immigration laws and trade tariffs, but global-minded in our foreign policy and corporate reach; we have the strongest armed forces in history, and yet our military is bogged down in Iraq by tireless insurgents; our economy is the largest and most important in the world, but its current stability hinges precariously on oil prices , terrorist threats, and a soaring trade deficit.

For the past six years, I have shunned this type of realism as the job of Democrats, or as a Californian friend said last year, “girlie-men.” But with last week’s announcements that General Motors lost $8.6 billion in 2005, that the radical terrorist group Hamas won a majority of seats in the democratically elected Palestinian government, and that Iran will continue its march towards a nuclear bomb, America must come to the realization that its future is not inherently rosy.

When I showed him a draft of this speech, outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan advised me that such bleak language would send the stock market careening into a plunge worse than the dive following 9/11. And that, my fellow Americans, is the mindset that I wish to change with this speech. America is not defined by its invincibility, nor should it be. Vulnerability is not the trait that will destroy America; rather, the danger comes from purposeful blindness and denial.

America’s aggrandized conception of itself is no longer a characteristic that fosters patriotism and stimulates growth. Instead, it holds us back. We have the most robust economy, the strongest democracy, and the most powerful armed forces in the world, and the infallibility of these facts is a common assumption throughout American society. Yet if we do not face the peril that surrounds our nation in the 21st century, even the most optimistic Americans will not be able to maintain the idealistic image of our nation.

We can no longer turn a blind eye to the multi-layered energy crisis that looms in the all-to-near future. As we saw this past summer, the volatile oil market is a dagger hanging over our economy. But potentially even more damaging to our world is the environmental calamity that our tremendous oil use might generate. For the past six years, I have claimed that the idea of global warming is posited on faulty and biased data.

But, as I was biking yesterday around the Mall in 60-degree-weather, I realized that there might be some validity to this global warming idea. From small efforts to build ethanol and biodiesel vehicles to completely altering America’s fleet of 200 million automobiles to run on hydrogen, curbing global warming will take dramatic action, not just dramatic rhetoric. A first step is a dollar tax on gasoline, an approach that has been derided by corporate America. Tonight, I can no longer allow the destruction of our world to go unchecked in the interest of ExxonMobil’s $36 billion annual profit.

Domestically, we are faced with two enormous challenges that will plague our children and grandchildren if left untackled: Social Security and healthcare costs. I have proposed two privatized initiatives—individually invested Social Security accounts and the 2003 Medicare Reform Bill—as attempts to alleviate those problems. However, as this month has shown, the implementation of the Medicare prescription drug plan has met many logistical challenges.

Like my restructuring of Social Security, I am discarding the current prescription drug program, and, next month, the Department of Health and Human Services will announce a government program to diminish the huge costs of prescription drugs for the 42 million Medicare subscribers. If the federal government can efficiently run the Veterans Health Affairs, which receives higher satisfaction ratings from customers than every single private HMO, then the federal government can—given enough support—provide more national health care services.

Finally, I must address Iraq and the overall situation in the Middle East. With last week’s election of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, columnists have been quick to cite the adage, “Be careful what you wish for–you might just get it.”

It is the position of this administration that any legitimate, democratic election is favorable to its dictatorial alternative. America has been a beacon of democracy and freedom for 229 years, and that light will not be dimmed by the success of Hamas or militants in Iran or leftist coco- growers in Bolivia.

Building democracy takes time, as even the Founding Fathers experienced with the failure of the Articles of the Confederation. I pledge to you that America will not lose faith in the hope of foreign democracies, nor will it compromise democratic principles on its own soil.

We might be vulnerable, but we will no longer be blind to the dangers that face our great country. Hopefully, we can reestablish our reputation throughout the world as a diplomatic and democratic powerhouse rather than an oppressive military and cultural force. Then, maybe that feeling of inherent optimism might regain its validity. Good night, and God Bless America.

Andrew D. Fine ’09, a Crimson editor, lives in Stoughton Hall.