Outside Counsel

To Squeaky Wheel this evening, for our annual members meeting and a screening of videos called, "Why Vote?" The first video shown included this:

"The choice could not be more clear nor the consequences more crucial. In one of the futures we can choose, the future that you and I have been building together, I see security and justice and peace.

I see a future of economic security-security that will come from tapping our own great resources of oil and gas, coal and sunlight, and from building the tools and technology and factories for a revitalized economy based on jobs and stable prices for everyone.

I see a future of justice--the justice of good jobs, decent health care, quality education, a full opportunity for all people regardless of color or language or religion; the simple human justice of equal rights for all men and for all women, guaranteed equal rights at last under the Constitution of the United States of America.

And I see a future of peace--a peace born of wisdom and based on a fairness toward all countries of the world, a peace guaranteed both by American military strength and by American moral strength as well.

That is the future I want for all people, a future of confidence and hope and a good life. It's the future America must choose, and with your help and with your commitment, it is the future America will choose.

But there is another possible future. In that other future I see despair--despair of millions who would struggle for equal opportunity and a better life and struggle alone. And I see surrender--the surrender of our energy future to the merchants of oil, the surrender of our economic future to a bizarre program of massive tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor, and massive inflation for everyone. And I see risk--the risk of international confrontation, the risk of an uncontrollable, unaffordable, and unwinnable nuclear arms race."

That's from President Jimmy Carter's 1980 acceptance speech, folks. He was talking about what the year 2000 might hold. Read that last paragraph over and ask yourself if President Carter didn't just nail it. Even the part about a nuclear arms race is right-- he couldn't have known that it would be India and Pakistan, the Koreas and Iran that would be in the race; and it is recession, not inflation that is ravaging out economy, but I'd say that President Carter gets an A+ on prognostication. To my everlasting embarrassment I voted for John Anderson in 1980. I'm sorry, Jimmy-- you were right. The future of "surrender of our energy future to the merchants of oil... surrender of our economic future to a bizarre program of massive tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor... international confrontation...[and]uncontrollable, unaffordable, and unwinnable [war]" is our reality today.