Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. .. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail.
--Abraham Lincoln
How can a President not be an actor?
--Ronald Reagan
WE ARE ALL JUST PLAYING SHUFFLEBOARD ABOARD THE TITANIC RIGHT NOW
--Mad Dog
Reading about how Democracy died in the Weimar Republic and how Hitler's rise to power could have been prevented if only he faced bold opposition, I think of today.
Hitler was a bold leader. He took chances and risks no other leader of his time was willing to take.
In that, Trump is the same. And his Republican Party, which has come to duplicate the National Socialist Party (Nazis) in almost every way, is the same. They nominated a man who had never served in elected office as their candidate for the Presidency of the United States, as his first elected job.
A bold move.
Voters did not care about his lack of experience. They felt they knew him. He had developed his brand over years, first in the New York press, then on television and people, at least some people, thought they knew him.
And they believed that "experience" really does not matter in the Presidency, because the big decisions a President is called to make do not demand a command of the details. The President is the captain of the ship who merely decides what the destination is, and leaves it to others to plot the course, work out the mechanics.
Ronald Reagan, of course did hold public office, Governor of California, but he was always really just a movie actor who delivered the lines written for him, and who decided what it was he liked and did not like and his big job was to inspire the public.
When I sought out the opinion of the most highly placed and connected Democrat I know in New Hampshire, he wrote me in an email, "Unfortunately, this late in the process, it is most likely that you will lose votes if you shift away from Biden." Now, this was a private email and not meant for publication, and so I will not identify him, but I use it because it means even the smartest, bravest politician I know simply cannot shift gears away from being a politician. All the pundits say the same thing.
But has anyone commissioned a poll to test what the voting public would do if someone not currently under discussion were to be nominated?
So, here is my fantasy, being called to give a nomination speech at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
I would appear on stage wearing my LL Bean blue and black plaid shirt and my favorite hat. A nobody. Just a guy from New Hampshire.
And it would go like this:
None of you has ever heard of me. In fact, I am not qualified to be speaking before this Convention, except by the one qualification that I cherish Democracy. I am but a humble, anonymous citizen, one of millions anonymous Americans and nobody here knows my name.
But you have heard of the man whose name I rise to put into nomination.
You all know him, and he is the solution hiding in plain sight.
You will not believe I am serious, even though he clearly is the one person who everyone knows could beat Der Fuhrer decisively.
But you will say nominating him would be too risky; it's never been done. And I have to reply as Lincoln said in the midst of his turbulent times: "As our case is new, so we must think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."
We are told that bringing forth a new name now only three months before the voting begins is too risky, that nominating anyone other than those we are expected to nominate is too great a risk.
And I agree: It is too late to bring forth into the election someone who we have to introduce to the American people. But that means that although we have a very deep bench of elected Democrats, none of them has the national fame of Der Fuhrer. We have wonderful Democratic governors from Minnesota to California to this very state of Illinois. We have stars in the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island to New York. We have great Congressmen from Maryland to California to the state of Washington.
But none of them can match the fame of Der Fuhrer. We'd have to introduce each and every one to the nation, but we do not have that kind of time.
Which leaves one man who we all know, and who is widely loved. Sleepless suburban housewives from New York to Seattle love him. Children dreaming of a train ride to the North Pole for Christmas love him. We have seen him washed up on a deserted island, and we have seen him celebrate and extol the ordinary Americans who became heroes, who became a Band of Brothers, fighting across Europe from Normandy to Der Fuhrer's Eagle's Nest.
And yet you will say: No, it's too unheard of! It's an impossible dream! But just blocks from where we assemble today, a man whose middle name was "Hussein" walked out on to a stage in a wet Chicago night, at Hyde Park, on the night of his victory, and said, "For any of you who doubt that in America anything is possible--Tonight must be your answer!"
The impossible has happened, right here and it can again.
And we saw the man we all know now, recently at the 80th anniversary of D-Day, at the graves of American soldiers in Normandy. Those graves Der Fuhrer refused to visit because it was raining and Der Fuhrer did not want to get his hair wet, did not want to show his bald spot.
You know him because he searched for one American soldier among an entire Army, to save Private Ryan.
You know who I'm talking about. Every American does, from Biloxi to Bangor, from Peoria to Portland. He literally needs no introduction, because he has visited all of us.
And yes, you know I cannot resist saying it: Gump Dumps Trump!
And so I'm privileged, I'm honored, to put into nomination before this Convention, for President of the United States:
Thomas "Tom" Hanks.
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