“I’m often asked what the secret is to have a real impact on government. Well, it’s recently changed. I
used to say, either run for office or get a degree from Harvard Kennedy School. With this White House I’d
say, buy Rosetta Stone and learn Russian. “
“I did not come here to be partisan. Or political. Or pessimistic. But I need to tell the truth. And,
together, we all need to start acting on it. The worst thing I could do is insult your intelligence by
pretending that it’s smooth sailing for America and the world. And I refuse to self-consciously twist
myself into a pretzel and put on a contrived mantle of bi-partisanship that alleges both parties are to
blame for what’s happening – or not happening. And anyway, you wouldn’t buy it since so many of you
have marched and protested to take a public stand on your own.”
So, let’s get the here and now out of the way – because it’s only a sliver of what I really want to share
with you.
“A democracy relies on free speech, yes – but it relies even more on the speech being truthful. It is the
truth after all that sets us free. And the truth is – no, this is not a normal time.”
“It’s not normal to see a President of the United States decrying “so-called judges.” It’s not normal for
the leader of the country that invented the First Amendment to routinely degrade and even threaten
journalists. And no, it’s not normal to see the head of the FBI fired summarily because he was
investigating connections between Russia and the Presidential campaign of the very man who fired him.
And it’s not normal that when you close your eyes and listen to the news, too often the political back and
forth in America sounds too much like it does in the kinds of countries that the State Department warns
Americans not to travel to.”
“I’m old enough to have seen a movie like this, maybe a time or two, and that’s why, about this part of
the story at least, I’m actually more of an optimist.
“I grew up a Cold War kid and my Dad was stationed in Washington, D.C. at the State Department in the
1950s. I remember watching the Army-McCarthy hearings. I remember the hysteria. But I also remember
that eventually people in both parties, and people who could care less about party label, stood up and
said “enough – this isn’t America.” And Joe McCarthy was censured. Twelve years later, I graduated from
college, joined the Navy, served in Vietnam, and was lucky enough to come home alive to a country at
war with itself. It was a time of division. People were attacked for speaking their minds. There was a near
constitutional crisis. Richard Nixon took me on personally and that was my first dose of fake news. I
watched Watergate on a little black and white television screen. Somehow, the inherent strength of our
Constitution and the courage of individual Senators, regardless of party, empowered America to find its
way out of what President Ford called a “national nightmare.”
I relive that history not to predict that’s the path we’re on again – but to share with you that in my
experience the institutions the Founders created to hold America together have always worked best
when America needed them the most. Only one time in our history was there an exception – and that
was for a cause that Abraham Lincoln himself said could only be resolved when “the blood drawn with
the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” You know what, I don’t think even Andrew
Jackson could’ve stopped that one.”
“So, with respect to the short term, the things we’re all talking about and fighting over every day – count
me as an optimist – because I believe America’s got a pretty good, almost 241-year record of turning
difficult situations into progress.
“But it’s the long term we need to focus on with a special purpose that is completely absent today – a
focus deprived of all oxygen by the daily forest fires we are forced to fight.”
“We are not organizing ourselves to deal with the major challenges that will define the future.”
“Much of the world is riding a wave of technological transformation on the scale of the industrial
revolution, but it’s happening at a digital pace. In country after country, ideas are moving faster. People
are moving faster. The marketplace is moving faster. The only thing that isn’t coming at us faster and
faster is the ability of governance worldwide to respond.”
“I’m not surprised that a lot of folks want to stop the world and get off… It’s technology – not trade –
that is the principal reason we lost 85 percent of the 5.6 million manufacturing jobs hemorrhaged in the
first 10 years of this century. Sure – yes, technology is transformative, but if it was your job that
disappeared and nothing replaced it – guess what? You’ll find zero comfort in the fact that the same
technology that eliminated your job also gave you a smartphone that lets you binge-watch a future
that’s out of reach for you and everyone you grew up with.”
“It’s bad enough that we haven’t yet solved the jobs crisis in West Virginia and parts of Ohio. But if that’s
a challenge, take a look at what’s coming around the bend. It will make the rust belt look like child’s play.
We’ve talked a lot – and we should – about a million coal mining jobs gone in 20 years – but did you miss
the report last week that retail jobs dropped almost in half the last 15 years? We lost more total
department store workers than coal miners. Why? Technology. And what concerns me is that if our
institutions can’t build consensus and respond to the demand of Americans for jobs today – how are we
ever going to do it in a time when artificial intelligence and robotics kick in and five times that number of
jobs disappear twice as fast?”
Washington: “dangerous deadlock, willful denial, and most egregious, rhetorical lip service that instead
of producing jobs will create even greater anger.”
“We have spent more time debating what to call extremism than we have discussing a real strategy to
defeat it.
“If we don’t deal with the long term, I promise you – every four years, a different president and a
different foreign minister will be facing a different terror group with a different acronym.”