Speeches We Didn't Hear

Here’s a speech that was never made by President Bush, the Great Spreader of Democracy, back in January, 2001:

"I realize this presidential election was a national disaster. Although I won finally, I can see the system needs fixing to insure this country never experiences anything like Election 2000 again. Voting is at the heart of our democratic process and the reliability of the counts is everything.

The first order of business for my administration will be to make our elections corruption-free. Fortunately the many moral leaders in the Republican-controlled Congress will help this happen. Ronald Reagan said you have to be able to verify a treaty, and the same is true of an election. It’s not enough that the machines work perfectly, if we can’t check them later. So that will be my first task as President - to spare the nation from a repeat of this crisis we just experienced.

How can I talk about spreading democracy around the world, if our own system is broken? Besides, if I don’t fix the problems of 2000, the People may begin to think my party relies on voter fraud to hold onto power."

That speech was never made - or if it was, it was never followed up on. This is the 3rd election that feels like a banana republic. The Great Spreader has been spreading something all right. But it’s not democracy.