White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

Want To Win the Election? Get a Great Speechwriter

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I wonder whether my hearing is failing. Should I get it tested?

In this seminal presidential election year, I don’t hear the answers from either side about the issues bearing down on the country.

The over-coverage of the Iowa caucuses was in direct proportion to the candidates’ avoidance of the great matters which the victor will have to deal with in the Oval Office.

If the Republicans are off down the yellow brick road of the Wizard of Donald Trump, the Democrats are well along a road of political ruin, believing that they won’t win unless Trump is imprisoned or removed from the ballot. That represents a negative political dynamic.

Neither political caravan has emphasized there are great issues ahead which, if they were to embrace, would lead on to victory.

Trump is sure he has the formula, and he may be right. Grievance, his and those of the voters — vast, shapeless grievance — propels the Republicans forward: Unhappy about something? Trump is your man.

Biden’s message is to vote for more of the same. That should be a message enough because the Biden years have been overall good years with an economy that is growing despite inflation and woes abroad.

Whereas for Trump everything is a platform, everything a bull horn, for Biden no message is getting out. He is in the chorus when he should be the lead singer.

Questions about Trump’s fitness for office are muted and questions about Biden’s – mostly his age — are front-and- center. It is asymmetrical, but it is what it is.

It is up to the Democrats to turn their fortunes around, beyond waiting for Trump to fall. Trump is a political phenomenon, and his Republican and Democratic opponents need to accept that.

Meanwhile, huge issues are begging for attention. Here are just five:

  • How to prepare for artificial intelligence and its boost to productivity set against its threat to jobs.
  • How to accommodate the impact of climate change. Should we build seawalls in vulnerable cities along the coasts? Can Boston, New York, Miami and San Francisco be physically defended against rising seas?
  • The looming matter of Taiwan. Will we defend it or will we let it fall to China? The stakes are appeasing China or going to war — world war.
  • The housing crisis. This is a here-and-now issue that should be at the top of the Democratic agenda. This is a people issue like abortion. People have nowhere to live and that should be a gift to any politician.
  • Immigration writ large, not just as a crisis at the Southern border. It is a world issue in which every war, drought, coup, recession and religious purge worsens as more people from Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and the Middle East seek a better life — but often just life itself. We can seal the border, but the undocumented will still arrive. Migrants are pitiable, as are all refugees, but they are flooding the stable countries of the world so fast they endanger those countries. It is conquest by migration.

The candidates haven’t delivered great speeches on these or other issues, let alone a series of speeches which would move the electorate and the country. Nothing echoes from the rafters when Biden, Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley, or Ron DeSantis speak. It is small-bore stuff, no cannons.

Politics in democracies is carried forward by great speeches which raise new issues, redefine old ones and shiver the timbers of the electorate. Think Washington, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Churchill, De Gaulle, Kennedy, Reagan and Thatcher — and, in a special category, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They carried the day with rhetoric and found their place in history with words.

Trump’s speeches are just Trump, part of the phenomenon, part of the cascade of disinformation. Biden’s sound —  as I am sure they are — written by committee, like corporate press releases. And, oh, Harris reduces everything to incoherence. Haley and DeSantis have been hobbled by a disinclination to take on Trump frontally.

The big issues are hanging out like ripe fruit, ready to be plucked by any candidate with the nous to do so and craft a speech or several. None have I heard.

There Will Be a Short Delay with the Candidate’s Announcement

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Some of you were expecting me to announce my candidacy for president of the United States, along with the others who got all the headlines.

There have been a few problems. There are solutions, too. (How is that for a campaign zinger?)

There is the problem of my birth. I was, er, born in a foreign country with, er, un-American parents. I have to check with the Ted Cruz camp on that problem.

There is a money problem. At the moment, I have $138 in my current account. But that amount will swell, when my Social Security check comes in next week.

In the long term, I have a crafty, two-pronged approach to raise the billion or so dollars I will need for my campaign. My wife will set up a foundation, called the “Foreign Governments’ Friends Committee,” which will raise money like a Fourth of July flag.

Unlike one of my opponents, I will not beat about the bush on foreign campaign donations. I will take them all, see that they are properly laundered, and promise the donors all sorts of favorable treatment. I can renege later. Not a word, please.

Then there is crowd-sourcing. When my message gets out, I expect a Niagara Falls of money. I will go after the disaffected, unhappy people who hate all candidates. The nutters of the left and the right have lots of dough.

Here is a peek at other aspects of my program:

Bring back manufacturing (back story, by lowering the minimum wage, so that our labor is cheap).

Get tough with Iran. Any Iranian waiter found passing himself off as an Italian at a New York restaurant will get summary deportation.

Give China an ultimatum: Either you double the value of your currency, or millions of Americans will be forbidden to shop at Walmart.

In the Middle East, trust the dictators. We will support the most awful monsters in the time-honored way. If we could get Saddam Hussein out of the grave, I would go for it. Likewise Muammar al-Qaddafi. Call it “the strongman policy”: no messing about with uprisings.

I will be a tough guy supporting other tough guys. I will say to Vladimir Putin, when we are shirtless, “I don’t give a hoot about Ukraine. Take it. But I want you to invade China — just a little way. And crush ISIS. You know, the way you did Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the glory days.

That should take care of the world.

At home I will have the most flexible of policies, based on the latest polling. If you are in favor of abortion, tell Gallup and you will get them.

Want the Ten Commandments on the wall of the Capitol? No problem if you can produce a convincing poll, preferably written on stone tablets.

What is democracy but a craven pursuit of votes through polling? Go democratic all the way, I say.

Wait until you hear some of my appointments. How do you fancy Donald Trump for secretary of state? Here is someone who will appreciate my tough-guys-are-always-right policy.

Before I announce my candidacy, I will perfect my Israel strategy. I am leaning toward giving honorary citizenship to Benjamin Netanyahu, so that I can make him my national security adviser. Why should Congress claim Bibi as their own? I will have goodies to offer him that will beat whatever John Boehner and Mitch McConnell can do. For starters, how about a hard pass to the White House and a regular chance to be on the Sunday talk shows?

Darrell Issa is my choice for ambassador to Libya, in recognition of his Benghazi studies.

Finally, my coup de grace: immigration. Simple, no one will want to live here when I am in the White House. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate