Please indulge the idle fantasy of a quiet election day morning.  I’m dreaming that this is the speech delivered by the winner:

My fellow Americans, and I mean all Americans, those who voted for me, those who voted for the other guy, and those who didn’t vote at all.   

 I’m not going to make a victory speech. While I appreciate all who worked hard for our campaign and who came out to vote, I want to be clear – what happened today wasn’t and isn’t about me.   What happened today was about something else.

During the campaign the thing I heard over and over from Americans of all political persuasions is that they didn’t like this division of our country into warring red and blue camps, not one bit, and that they were looking for a leader who could unite us, not divide us.    That starts tonight.

First, the yelling has to stop.  I am going to speak to Americans as the intelligent good people they are, not just some mob to be fired up and manipulated.   How can we expect Americans to trust their government if their government doesn’t trust them?

Second, this is a moment when we all need to step back and focus on our deepest values.  When I was a child, I used to go to my grandmother with my problems.  Her advice was often the same:  the ends don’t justify the means.  It doesn’t matter how much you want something, she would say, that doesn’t justify doing something you know is wrong.   You can always make up a story to convince yourself that lying or cheating or mistreating someone to get what you want is OK.  That’s what weak people do, and before you know it they don’t know right from wrong.

Think about it, folks.  That’s where our politics went off the rails, and it all came to a climax during the past four years.    Our leaders lied and lied and lied and said it was for a good cause.   And they broke America’s word, betrayed our allies, embraced dictators, separated children from their families – so many things we all knew were wrong – and said it was OK because they needed to do it to achieve their political goals.  That stops tonight.  America tells the truth, keeps the faith with our allies, and does the right thing. 

The third thing is that we’re going to put the “public” back in public service.  Another one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings was “it’s not all about you.”   Well, folks, that’s not an easy message for a budding politician to hear.  But I heard it, not only from my grandmother but from the nuns at my school.  I learned that all the great virtues – kindness, compassion, charity, love – are all about escaping the trap of the ego, escaping the illusion that it’s all about you.  And folks, it’s also at the heart of public service – putting the interests of the country and its people above your own.  

So tonight, I want to say the following to everyone in government and who may wish to join my administration:  Your loyalty must be to the constitution and the country, not to me.   You must speak truth to power – telling me what I don’t want to hear is your highest responsibility.  And to our career public servants – the military, the scientists, diplomats, intelligence and law enforcement officials – all those who have spent their lifetimes building up expertise and putting that at the service of their country – you must be honest, independent and above politics.  Your role is to serve the country, not the political interests of the party in power or of the incumbent President.   Your job is to come up with solutions to the problems faced by the American people, not a stream of gestures and actions intended to please my political base. 

I cannot heal this country’s wounds alone.   I need help.   Here’s what I’m going to be asking for in the coming weeks:

·      Every American should ask herself or himself where they are getting their information.   Are you exposed to diverse points of view?   Do you ask yourself every time you are on-line who is the source of the information you are seeing?  If you need medical information, please be sure you’re getting it from a doctor.  If it’s a question of science, make sure the information comes from a scientist.    Be on your guard.  Every time you go on line extremely powerful forces – including political extremists and America’s adversaries – are trying to manipulate you for their own purposes.  Don’t let them.   

·      I ask the press to step back and think seriously about its responsibility for America’s current division.   I ask you to clearly separate your journalistic and editorial content.  I ask you to tone it down – please turn down the volume.  I ask you all to help rebut the misinformation and conspiracy nonsense that spreads its poison online, to turn to real experts, not political pundits or ideologues with an agenda, as the guests on your shows and sources for your stories.  You are not the enemies of the people, you are the guarantors of the people’s liberty.

And to each American I ask that you give us a chance.   One of the lowest moments in American politics during my lifetime was when the other party announced at the beginning of President Obama’s term that it would do everything possible to ensure that the President failed in everything he did.   America then faced terrible problems – not political problems, but real world problems affecting every American that needed to be solved, not to mention challenges from adversaries around the world.  Of course each side could advocate for the solutions it favored – but to wish for failure and obstruct everything just because it was being done by the other party was a terrible thing.    It’s cost was enormous.   And this legacy was compounded by the more recent practice of putting politics above even basic competence.  These things left us with a health care system that fails millions and is too expensive for those it does service, with millions of unemployed, unconscionable wage disparity, an addiction epidemic, families feeling hopeless and whole communities feeling left behind.  It’s left us, the world’s richest country, with one of the world’s highest death rates from COVID and a virus still spreading unchecked.  It’s left us with problems of racial and social justice which are long, long overdue for solution, crumbling infrastructure, and country already bearing the ravages of unchecked climate change.  America’s standing in the world has plummeted and its crucial alliances are frayed.  Let’s agree to have spirited debates on exactly how to tackle these problems, but let’s agree to work together to solve them, one way or another.   

I didn’t win a great victory tonight, I answered a cry for help.   Today America hired me to do a really tough job.   But I can’t succeed unless we back away from the precipice that Abe Lincoln warned us about when he said that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  This will require every one of you, however you voted, helping to change the way we’ve been doing politics in this country.  I promise to you that I’ll do my part, and I hope and pray that you do yours.