The next campaign speech I want to hear...

My fellow Americans, we reach the cross roads that lie just ahead of us every four years. This bit of wisdom afforded us by the framers of our Constitution and Founders of the nation leads us to continue looking forward, with reference to the past, but not bound to forever living in what lies behind us. In that spirit, I ask you, the people, to now look forward to what we must do, not to look and react to what lies behind.

You, who are the body and soul of America, you who are the men and women, mothers and fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, the friends and the neighbors that create the society we so benefit from - you are the muscle and sinew, the power and grace, the conscience and the indignation, the praise and the love that makes this nation singular in this era. You are the might and power, you grow our food, fix our plumbing, build our homes, teach our children, bake our bread, fall the trees, mine the minerals, doctor our illnesses, and nurse our hurts, build our roads, refine our oil, and the countless other people who, without fame or fortune, have made the greatest nation on earth possible, by simply being just who you are.

For far too long, the game of politics has been played, and those in it have elevated themselves to the point where they believe you cannot live without them. That they have a destiny to rule, to govern, to govern you. This is not true. We are to serve, to be your servants, to serve you with integrity, responsibility, and to hold ourselves accountable for the tasks you have entrusted to us.

Instead, they think you are servants of an all controlling, all grasping, all reaching, all encompassing ideology that says that you are inferior to the wisdom of the "collective" - being defined as the "elites who rule". You are not.

I know this, because if I visited your home, and asked you how to deal with a wide array of problems that may confront you, the answers you give me for you would not parallel the answers that Washington has created for those same problems. And, more importantly, your answers would generally work, and theirs generally do not.

If I were to ask you what to do, if you found yourself suddenly deeply in debt, would your answer to be borrow and spend more, or to cut your spending, and start working a lot more and harder, to get yourself out of the hole you've been sunk into.

If your children were not learning well in school, you would start ordering them to turn off the tv, stay home, study more, and work harder.

You tell your children not to be promiscuous, not engage in risky sex, not to lie to their friends, not to ignore the rules of life... But government is afraid to say all of those things.

You would tell me that we should always advance democracy and human rights. To not negotiate with liars and cheats. To support democracies that are our friends, and to never seek to defend or in any way support tyrants, dictators, or terrorists. You would not define "peace" as the enforced order of a madman tyrant. And you could never turn your back on the oppressed people of the earth, claiming we have no moral authority to help them gain liberty and human rights for themselves, along with knowledge of better ways to live.

You would tell me that a rule book with more than 50 pages is insane and unworkable. That our laws long ago passed the point of being almost insanely complex and counterproductive. You'd tell me that there's nothing holy about certain areas of the country, and that using their wealth can be compatible with a healthy and wise respect for our ecosystem and the land we live on.

And you'd tell me a lot of other things, things are common sense, proven true and prudent, but such ideas are routinely mocked, derided and scolded by those self proclaimed "elites".

I do not know when education came to exist to contradict those common and ordinary truths that really are, but are out of fashion, apparently. In whatever world these people exist, right is wrong, and wrong is right. They've developed abstract theories, and highly intellectual "values", which they pursue, often without reference to the more mundane concerns, the lowly and often mocked "common sense".

So, in light of these things and in light of those common sense responses you would have...

Our economy: There's an incredible amount of domestic bad debt, and an almost incomprehensible amount of national debt. We MUST stop digging ourselves in deeper. We need to remove every possible barrier to REAL new wealth creation. Not redistribution for political purposes, but to encourage those who make the wealth in this nation to make more of it. We're going to need an incredible amount of it to get the books out of the red and back in proper balance.

The economic and business muscle of this nation exists in the form of small and medium sized businesses. They are fast, agile, efficient, and generally more capable of evolution, change, or even transformation with time and technology. So, it's time to remove ever barrier to the growth, starting, and success of small businesses.

Our balance of trade; it's time to end the incentives to outsource production. From taxes, to runaway regulation, to excessive mandates and a poor environment, we have chased away the wealth producers. Once upon a time, this nation made stuff. Everything. It was full of factories, shops, and inventors, creators, and innovators. We were in a headlong rush to make the best, be the best, and invent the best. But, certain people saw that as inequitable. They saw them as an ever springing fountain of wealth to take, to empower themselves, to buy your votes, your thoughts, your efforts for them. And now, we console ourselves by trading and pretending to provide wealth creating services, which are little more than transferring debt and money back and forth, losing a little more each time.

Our educational system has been taken over by ever more centralized power, and yet, the outcome isn't improving.

When we began spending more and more on health care, the response from the government, was that IT needed to make the decisions and ration it according to it's superior wisdom. It never occurred to Congress to take the decisions away from insurance companies and government agencies and put them back into the hands of the people. They insisted the people were not qualified.

Simple folk sayings like "when the cat's away, the mice will play" contained much wisdom about foreign policy. A lack of authority, backed by a predictable willingness to use power to back moral, judicious, and truly civil policies and ideals will cause the tyrants of the world to back down and keep their games small. We know the North Koreans are murderous thugs. Period. If they don't fear, they will do whatever they feel like, and ... it won't be good. Same with the Iranians. And Chavez. And the rest of the madmen in the middle east.

Appeasement, or tones of "nice" don't work. Rock solid consistency, and a perfect willingness to use force to defend a coherent and valid set of high principles does work, and works well. Knowing where the cat is, will keep the mice in place.

There are a many things which have become common place that are absurd. If we just sit down and look at them, we can see it, and it's not really any mystery.

How do these things reflect in a president's agenda? Well, it translates to asking Congress to scrap the tax code and start over. To clearly enunciating a set of coherent princples and having your foreign relations always governed by them. To being very careful about who you make deals with, and who you trust. Support those who support the ideals that matter. Be relentless for the spread of freedom, self government, human rights, and liberty.

Every administrator knows that eventually, you have to reinvent and start over. The alphabet soup in DC needs to be cut way back. And what remains, needs to simplify, clarify, and remove those things that create barriers but have dubius or know real value.

And then, comes your part. All these losses, debts, the wealth that's been squandered... You, the producers will have to pay for it. You're going to work harder, work longer, work more productively. But, as Americans always have and always will... You will not only do it, you will do it with power and energy. You'll not just rebuild an economy and a nation and an industrial and business base, you'll do it better than it's ever been. You will transcend the challenges, the barriers, and the obstructions.

Americans have never been mediocre. When given a challenge, they don't just rise far enough to get past it, they blow it out of the water, and it becomes as if it had never been.

If we were sitting around your den, talking about how things are and what needs to be done, we'd say normal stuff. And so I will.

You're going to need to work harder, to produce more wealth. You're going to have to not depend upon the rest of the nation to support you. Everyone is going to have to make this work. And you're going to have to do it your way. More work, more productivity, more creativity, and less handouts, less "benefits" distributed your way from someone else. And you're going to have to pay taxes, because our debts are public debts.

And then, you'd want your part of the bargain. You get to keep more of what you work for. You get more decisions over your life and business, and your own economic future.

And, if we were sitting in your den, we'd get up, shake hands on the deal.

During this campaign, I've tried to let you know me. And, I've definitely learned to know you, the people. I will be asking you to trust me. To trust me to be your servant. I've laid out in greater detail what we need to do. But I can't do it alone. I need you. I need you to send your representatives the message. I need you to hold onto the best and not give up. I need your votes, and then I need your support.

So, are you up to the task? Has America ever failed at any real challenge? No, it has not. It will not. You will not. Will there be tough times? Will there be times that things may go wrong? There will be. But the measure of success is not determined by how many times you fail, but that you try just one more time than you fail. I know you can. I know you will. You have it within you. You always have, and always will.

Thank you for your time and attention. May God bless you and our great nation.