Forget four more years, I for one do not want four more months of anger and vitriol. I want to hear the candidates acting presidential and being more focused on what is in the best interest of all Americans instead of focused on winning and at the very least, "not losing." In Part 1 - This is what I'd like to hear from candidate Obama. In Part 2 - I will write on what I'd like to hear from candidate Romney.
My fellow Americans,
I need your help to help you.
I need four more years to get done as many of the things I promised you as possible. Perhaps the main reason to give me four more years is to point out the reality that the first four years of any presidency is learning the politics of getting things done. Lofty pledges and promises from any first-term president are greeted by strong challenges from the world of politics that nearly every new president underestimates.
The best use of a president's first term is to keep hold of their promises, learn the politics of getting things done, and then get those things done in the first three years of a second term when you don't have to be so focused on re-election. You can do your best to continue your momentum in the eighth and final year of a two term presidency, but that is often eclipsed by Washington and the nation focusing on the next presidential race.
I need another four years, because I know what needs to get done, and I have learned how to get things done in my first four years.
If you give me another four years I am pledging to you and asking you to help me execute what I am calling a "Rising Tide Strategy." There is a saying that "a rising tide lifts all boats." What we have seen in the past four years is that we are very divided regarding that tide and that people are too concerned with lifting only their boats and the heck with everyone else.
That needs to stop, because it causes a logjam and the future of America and Americans are the casualties.
I am asking you for your help in determining what a rising tide that will lift all Americans that includes both the 99 percent and the 1 percent in direct proportion to the size of each.
Before companies launch products or services they often do focus groups with the people that will buy those services or products. I am asking all Americans to form a giant nonpartisan focus group to help me determine what rising tide will lift all of us.
Here is the one hiccup in my request, I am asking you to pause and think of yourself as an American and when you come up with your input, have it be something that is as close to "all serving" vs. self-serving as possible.
Furthermore, when you come up with your ideas, have them be things that to the 99 percent plus 1 percent will: a) make sense, namely be rational and reasonable vs. irrational and unreasonable; b) feel right, namely feel solid and sound vs. feeling wrong and unsound; c) be doable by the 99 percent plus 1 percent and given the realities of the challenges of getting things done in Washington.
After we have received your input we will distill the most common inputs and share what you have told us, then tell you what we are going to do based on that, tell you how we are going to do it that includes our roles and responsibilities and yours and then we will all commit to making that happen.
Your job at that point is still not over. Once we agree on a shared future and the rising tide needed to take us there, we ask that you approach your political representatives and officials to tell them they need them to be part of the rising tide effort and to not focus on politics and self-serving goals when they have been elected to serve all of you.
I hope you will give me four more years so that you and I together can identify the shared future we will all want to live into and then together execute a rising tide strategy to get us there.
At this point in my campaign I am declaring that I am neither Democrat nor anti-Republican, I am like you, an American first and YOUR president and I owe it to you to fulfill my promises to build a better America for all of us.
NEXT: Part 2 - Giving Americans Back Control of Their Future - what I'd like to hear from candidate Romney