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Authors: Christopher Buckley
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toes.
But that is only part of the reason I stand before you barefoot, ready to run many miles in order to earn your trust. Sure, there will be timeswhen I take an airplane or a car or a train, or even a bus. I will do what I must, just as I must what I will do. And that, my friends, is my pledge to you today.
We live in a time of great challenge. All right, perhaps that is putting it strongly. Perhaps it is old-fashioned to speak bluntly, without vacillation or verbal varnish. So be it. Some have urged me, “Don’t be blunt.” But if this election is about anything, it is about not hiding one’s light of conviction under a bushel of demurral. So to speak. It is about standing up and saying, “Here I am.”
Well, friends,
here I am.
I would not be truthful if I said to you that our problems can be fixed overnight. But, my fellow Americans, today I say to you, if we do not start to fix them, they will fix us. And a fine fix we will be in then.
If I sound urgent, it is not because my feet are cold. Yes, it is early April and I am standing on marble, which gets pretty cold in early April in this great state of ours. But I do not shrink from this numbing sensation in my toes, because I know that it is still warm in America. America is the warmest nation on the face of the earth. To those who say our warmest days are behind us, I say, I have been to many warm countries. And there is no country warmer than the United States of America.
Often, as I have traveled the breadth and depth and width of this great, great land, I have been asked, “Who are you? What do you want?”
Today, I have an answer. Today, I say to you, I want to be that person.
They ask, “Do you have it in you to lead this country?”
The answer must be “I think so.”
For today I come not to divide but to multiply. Not to criticize but to cauterize. Not to annoy but to alloy. I come, finally, not to naysay but, to quote that great American Willie Mays, to say, “Hey.”
Friends—and even if you don’t like me, I like you—the time is not yesterday, or even tomorrow. For, as the Founding Parents so wisely said, “The past lies behind, the future lies ahead.” The time is now.
Yes, it is true that a stopped watch is right twice a day. But it is also true that it is wrong the rest of the day. My fellow Americans, with your help—and, yes, with your money, for I will need that, lots of it—I will wind the watch of democracy so that it will be right most of the day.
So, as I stand here on the steps of the County Lying-In Hospital for Women, this historic building where I was born, in the days when “illegalaliens” meant little green men from outer space, let the word go forth. And then let it come back. And take a load off, as we Americans say. So that future generations will say, “They ran the good race, fought the good fight. And they knew what time it was, for they kept the watch wound.”
Thank you and God bless you.
—
The New Yorker
, 1995
Summer
Blockbusters
Chipper:
An evil entrepreneur (Patrick McGoohan) devises a scheme to supply his chain of fast-seafood restaurants with fresh seviche by catching Pacific dolphins and processing them with onboard shredding machines. His plans are complicated by a marine biologist (Kurt Russell) who is convinced that seahorse hooves hold the secret to a cure for prostate cancer, and by a spunky salvage hunter (Jennifer Aniston) who has trained a pod of dolphins to find Amelia Earhart’s plane.
Emission Impossible:
I.M.F. agents (Charlie Sheen, Courteney Cox) set out to start a war between two ruthless Middle Eastern dictators (Martin Landau, Joe Pesci) by convincing them that they are impotent.
Exterminator:
When a pest-control specialist (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is accidentally transported back in time to the fourteenth century by a faulty supermarket checkout scanner, he decides he might as well try to catch the Norway rat that brought the bubonic plague to Europe. After offending
But that is only part of the reason I stand before you barefoot, ready to run many miles in order to earn your trust. Sure, there will be timeswhen I take an airplane or a car or a train, or even a bus. I will do what I must, just as I must what I will do. And that, my friends, is my pledge to you today.
We live in a time of great challenge. All right, perhaps that is putting it strongly. Perhaps it is old-fashioned to speak bluntly, without vacillation or verbal varnish. So be it. Some have urged me, “Don’t be blunt.” But if this election is about anything, it is about not hiding one’s light of conviction under a bushel of demurral. So to speak. It is about standing up and saying, “Here I am.”
Well, friends,
here I am.
I would not be truthful if I said to you that our problems can be fixed overnight. But, my fellow Americans, today I say to you, if we do not start to fix them, they will fix us. And a fine fix we will be in then.
If I sound urgent, it is not because my feet are cold. Yes, it is early April and I am standing on marble, which gets pretty cold in early April in this great state of ours. But I do not shrink from this numbing sensation in my toes, because I know that it is still warm in America. America is the warmest nation on the face of the earth. To those who say our warmest days are behind us, I say, I have been to many warm countries. And there is no country warmer than the United States of America.
Often, as I have traveled the breadth and depth and width of this great, great land, I have been asked, “Who are you? What do you want?”
Today, I have an answer. Today, I say to you, I want to be that person.
They ask, “Do you have it in you to lead this country?”
The answer must be “I think so.”
For today I come not to divide but to multiply. Not to criticize but to cauterize. Not to annoy but to alloy. I come, finally, not to naysay but, to quote that great American Willie Mays, to say, “Hey.”
Friends—and even if you don’t like me, I like you—the time is not yesterday, or even tomorrow. For, as the Founding Parents so wisely said, “The past lies behind, the future lies ahead.” The time is now.
Yes, it is true that a stopped watch is right twice a day. But it is also true that it is wrong the rest of the day. My fellow Americans, with your help—and, yes, with your money, for I will need that, lots of it—I will wind the watch of democracy so that it will be right most of the day.
So, as I stand here on the steps of the County Lying-In Hospital for Women, this historic building where I was born, in the days when “illegalaliens” meant little green men from outer space, let the word go forth. And then let it come back. And take a load off, as we Americans say. So that future generations will say, “They ran the good race, fought the good fight. And they knew what time it was, for they kept the watch wound.”
Thank you and God bless you.
—
The New Yorker
, 1995
Summer
Blockbusters
Chipper:
An evil entrepreneur (Patrick McGoohan) devises a scheme to supply his chain of fast-seafood restaurants with fresh seviche by catching Pacific dolphins and processing them with onboard shredding machines. His plans are complicated by a marine biologist (Kurt Russell) who is convinced that seahorse hooves hold the secret to a cure for prostate cancer, and by a spunky salvage hunter (Jennifer Aniston) who has trained a pod of dolphins to find Amelia Earhart’s plane.
Emission Impossible:
I.M.F. agents (Charlie Sheen, Courteney Cox) set out to start a war between two ruthless Middle Eastern dictators (Martin Landau, Joe Pesci) by convincing them that they are impotent.
Exterminator:
When a pest-control specialist (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is accidentally transported back in time to the fourteenth century by a faulty supermarket checkout scanner, he decides he might as well try to catch the Norway rat that brought the bubonic plague to Europe. After offending
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