I Would Have Liked to Have Heard....

by Tom Campbell

Perhaps you also watched the presidential inauguration and enjoyed James Taylor, Beyoncй, the Brooklyn Tabernacle, Kelly Clarkson, the parade and that stunning gown the First Lady wore to the balls. Barack Obama is sometimes one of the best orators of our generation and his inauguration speech contained some good lines but after the 18-minute address I found myself thinking he missed a marvelous opportunity to speak directly to the nation.

Here’s what I would have liked to have heard President Obama say:

This grand experiment called America has continued because men and women of goodwill have been willing to come together for the common good, crafting compromised solutions to problems and opportunities. Look at the pages of our history and you will see that at most every turn there was compromise. Today, perhaps more than at any time since Viet Nam, we need to see this goodwill and patriotism as we address the serious issues of our time, including the budget and debt, infrastructure, healthcare and education issues, to name some of the more obvious. This is no time for stagnation and inaction. This is no time for rancor, name-calling and divisiveness. The issues are too serious and time is of the essence.

Our biggest problem today is having a resolve to act, to solve problems, to move ahead. When we’ve been effective in doing so America has been that “Shining City on the Hill.” When we haven’t, we have lost our way, fought with one another and had little to show for it. Not that passing legislation is the only or even the primary means of determining whether our government is stagnant, but the 112^th Congress, which adjourned at the end of December,  accomplished little and passed only about 240 bills, far fewer than the infamous 80^th Congress President Harry Truman called the “Do-Nothing Congress,” that passed only 960 bills  in a two-year period. A Congress that cannot or will not act serves us no better than a president who fails to act.

We should be challenged to consider how history will judge this time. Will historians say we failed to resolve our problems and seize our opportunities because we could not and would not lay down political ideology in favor of taking action that was best for the country or will they say we stood, like other generations before us, together in meeting our challenges?

I would have had the President pledge his entire energy to be a problem solver not a divider and ask the Congress to do no less. If he fails in his pledge Congress should call him on it, just as he should call our elected representatives to task if they won’t work together and take action. Doing nothing is taking an action. Being proactive is more important than having it all letter perfect. .

Some might say this wasn’t the place or time for such a message but Obama had our attention and I would have preferred he said what needed saying.