You were educated in a school system devoted to teaching children about a wide range of subjects in addition to math and reading: civics, economics, American history and literature. There were art, music, shop and cooking classes. You were tested on what you learned, not to find out whether your teacher could teach.
Your teachers graduated from teachers’ colleges not profit centers called Schools of Education. They knew what to do when they walked into a classroom. Most would have thirty and forty year careers. Today they leave the profession within five years because they can’t handle it.
That was an educated America, Madame Secretary. That America expected their candidates for President to have experience, to have been tested, to have ideas for making things better. And if they had a vision that people could see and like that was the clincher. See Ronald Reagan.
Barack Obama’s campaign ran only on vision. Bernie Sanders will not have the same luck. He is not young, tall, graceful, with a lovely, smart and determined wife and two great kids. He does not stride on a stage with a Fred Astaire walk, a Joker smile, arms outspread and the promise of change and hope.
No Bernie can’t look like that but he is making the very same outspoken if empty promises. He knows what Barack knew and you seem unable to recognize: that this Time in America the people want promises of a future they like…a future that sounds and feels so much better.
Not ideas Madame Secretary. They have no patience for and understanding of ideas.
Tell them what America you see that will be better than this one right now. You have the talent and experience to make things better but America wants to know what you see a better America looking like.
Don’t bother pointing out that everything Bernie says America is today is true but that higher taxes on the rich will never become the answer. Don’t bother pointing out that when he says everyone in Congress is bought and sold in a rigged system permitted by the Supreme Court’s horrendous Citizen’s United decision, he could never get that rigged system to vote to make changes…because he won’t even get the chance to fail.
Just remind America that Congress can overrule the Supreme Court; some might not remember it and the young, so excited about Bernie and Barack, never learned it.
Skip the details Madame Secretary – tell us what you see that’s better and exciting just out ahead of us. People will believe you can make it happen.