PROGRESS IS PATRIOTISM

The next president outlines his mandate

PHOTO CREDIT:

Vocería de Gobierno, Estonian Foreign Ministry, Gage Skidmore, Mountain Top News, Governor Tom Wolf’s Office, City of Detroit, Anxelli84, Daniel X. O’Neil, Amunankhra House Ltd.

The author has obtained an advance copy of a speech that the Democratic president-elect plans to deliver on Nov. 17, 2028.

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My Fellow Americans:

I would like to thank the 87 million voters who provided the largest margin of victory in a presidential contest since 1972, entrusting me with the protection of their liberties and indeed their very lives.

Yet as everyone saw, our national elections were nearly sabotaged by rage-baiting MAGA mobs and a failed lunge to establish Martial Law around the mid-term elections in 2026. Republican leaders aimed to reverse a century of progress…but missed. Their monarchial overreach — along with high inflation, slow growth, sweeping corruption and the cancer of Epstein — fused into an electoral backlash that contributed to our landslide.

Mindful of the lessons from that turmoil and to avert a reactionary sequel, today I am proposing a dozen principles to help our country recover, define my mandate and offer a scorecard for accountability. They’re all grounded on one core premise—Progress not Hate—because, as we were reminded by the late Norman Cousins, “no one’s smart enough to be a pessimist.”

Remember that America defeated Monarchy, Slavery and Fascism—and that my party pioneered Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, Environmental Justice, Civil Rights and Health/Safety Regulatory Agencies—not by slitting each other’s throats but by reaching for the stars.

The stunning and seething admission that “I hate my opponents” pushed America over the cliff of actual authoritarianism. The principles that follow comprise a Declaration of Progress as we steer instead toward a stronger democracy. This journey will likely take not months but years, perhaps decades. But given our recent close-call and the evident vulnerability of our system, it is essential to be blunt and begin even before January 20.

I. JUST SAY NO

1. No racial division. Tolerance is the glue that binds our multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-faith nation together. The recent back-sliding on race tried to perfume the history of slavery, rename military facilities after Confederate generals, deport Brown people without due process and pretend that a country soon to be majority-minority can somehow survive by opposing diversity after centuries of exclusion.

People-of-Color should expect better than the refrain that they succeed only because of D.E.I. favoritism. That slander is the whine of white nationalists who yearn for a return to a more deniable version of Jim Crow.

2. No political prosecutions. Criminalizing politics based on retribution is the crime. The many lower courts that threw out such attempted persecutions deserve our gratitude for fighting to preserve equal-justice-under-law.

Instead, I will choose an attorney general with demonstrated integrity. And I won’t abuse the power of this office by ordering them to bring or drop particular prosecutions—nor will I pardon only convicted Democrats. I’ll also appoint an Independent Special Counsel to prosecute cases against former officials who betrayed their oaths of office and where there is the appearance of a political conflict-of-interest. Crime cannot pay.

Anything less would send a signal to future public officials that they can trample justice with impunity. Accountability must remain a cornerstone of our justice system.

3. No lying or gaslighting. I’ll make mistakes…but they will not include distorting the truth when it is personally or politically convenient. Democracy pays an immeasurable price when the public loses faith in their elected representations and institutions. You won’t hear me declare that Portland and L.A. are burning down, or that an ethnic group is “eating dogs and cats” …or any other accelerant designed to divide us.

On this essential question of public truth-telling, I am guided by the words of the moral philosopher Sisella Bok. “Imagine a society,” she wrote, “where word and gesture could never be counted on. Questions asked, answers given, all would be worthless. Trust however is a social good as much as the air we breathe and water we drink.”

4. No sacrifice of science on the altar of ideology. The vaccine skeptics who endanger the health of our children will not be celebrated in my administration. And the climate deniers who place our planet at risk will have to find work elsewhere.

Climate violence is not a hoax but a horror. That’s the overwhelming consensus of the scientific and international communities…though not the wishes of fossil fuel CEOs and their allies in government. Sunlight beats drilling.

5. No federal military occupation of our neighborhoods. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act explicitly prohibits using federal troops against U. S. citizens, unless—like the Whisky Rebellion of 1794, the Civil War in 1861 and state-sponsored terrorism in the South in the 1950’s and 1960’s—there’s a bona fide rebellion or insurrection that overwhelms local authorities.

The Founders were very wary of having a big standing army that could be used against civilians, or to sow violence rather than prevent it. Presidents cannot be allowed to assemble a personal militia to menace their critics.

6. No federal resources to suppress speech. I will never use the huge hammer of the federal budget, military contracts or selective prosecutions to control public or private opinion, which many universities, law firms, museums and media platforms have had to endure. As a unanimous SCOTUS concluded in NRA v. Vullo in 2024, “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties to suppress views that the government disfavors.”

My constitutional portfolio will not include attempts to silence Bad Bunny or Jimmy Kimmel. Nor will I govern based on a template of tweets, gaslighting and executive fiats with the expectation that a friendly SCOTUS will reverse dozens of lower court rulings and its own precedents in the space of a few unsigned sentences. Speaking of “Originalism,” would the Founders have approved of that?

It’s time to stop banning books, peaceful protests and abortions and restore the freedoms that birthed our exceptional country. And let’s not forget that the pro-Kings side lost 250 years ago!

But since many voters reasoned that the party in power was complicit in my predecessor’s scandals and corruption, it paid the political price of losing the House, Senate and Presidency.

II. NEW POLICIES

It will be even harder to enact big policy changes than it was to resist the specific abuses outlined above. We however need comprehensive solutions to achieve “a more perfect union.” My Declaration of Progress, therefore, will include “Do’s” as well as “Don’ts.”

7. More Affordable Economy. The country just saw what happens when multi-billionaires and corporatists grab the steering wheel of government—can anyone seriously defend an economic system where four individuals have as much wealth as 150 million Americans…and may shortly crown our first trillionaire?

So let’s learn the lessons of the Gilded Age and Great Depression to create a more equitable distribution of wealth and income and an economy that works for the many and not just the few.

Our program of democratic populism will emerge after negotiations with Congress. But I’ll be insisting on five cornerstones: anti-monopoly legislation and enforcement so that big business can’t impose big price increases; world trade unburdened by self-immolating and illegal American tariffs; a tax code that recaptures trillions from the richest to help struggling families with health care, child care and education; an increased federal minimum wage that hasn’t budged in 16 years; and a “Wealth Impact Statement” that would require the OMB to disclose how major bills passing Congress will affect wealth disparities.

8. Free the Media. We saw what happens when a small handful of oligarchs and conglomerates buy up major media platforms to control what we read and think.

Congress enacted the 1933 and 1934 Federal Communications Acts at the start of the broadcast TV & radio era. Now we must modernize those laws to better diversify media ownership and give more control to local communities. As we broke up railroad monopolies a century ago, we will break up current media monopolies. Restrictions on cross-ownership worked until the other party ended them.

9. Public Service is not Self-Service. Our conflict-of-interest laws apply to all public servants except ironically the president – since Congress never imagined a grifter in the Oval Office. Yet many voters bought into the Reality TV story-line that we needed a businessman to run the government.

The bottom-line of a democracy is not profits but justice…which we were reminded of when the Saudis gave a president’s son-in-law $2 billion to start his investment firm, when a president and his family cashed in on their own branded digital coin fund (after switching his policy position to favor crypto), and when—in direct violation of the Hatch Act – he filmed a car commercial on the White House lawn for his biggest donor.

Since constitutional prohibitions against self-enrichment have proven ineffectual, we’ll enact new conflict laws so future presidents don’t leave office worth many billions more than when they entered it.

10. Re-balancing the Court. As a result of the abuse of the Senate confirmation process, ethical lapses by some justices and a market hostility to consumer and labor interests, today’s Supreme Court super-majority has unfortunately been losing public trust—falling by a third in just five years. Nor did it help its reputation by giving criminal immunity to the first president to declare his in-your-face despotic ambitions.

Indeed, why has a party that only won a majority of the presidential vote once in six decades controlled the Chief Justice position for 50 straight years?

While the Constitution provides for life-time tenure, there is no provision establishing the number of justices. Let’s consider new ideas for term limits and additional jurists to make sure the Court more broadly reflects the values of all citizens and not just those in the Federalist Society.

11. Democracy—More Voters, Less Money. By abolishing the Voting Rights Act, allowing unlimited secret (corporate) money to flood campaigns and permitting extreme gerrymandering, our system of free and fair elections has become very expensive and very unfair.

Yet at least since Standard Oil did everything to the Pennsylvania legislature in the 1880s except, said one reformer, “refine it,” money has been a thumb on the political scale for generations…though Elon Musk’s $270 million contribution to Donald Trump was unusually elephantine.

So we will pursue legal means to overturn the very unpopular Citizens United Supreme Court decision, prohibit extreme gerrymanders (one algorithm will do the trick) and re-establish the right to vote.

In America we believe in both business and democracy. It’s one thing for wealthy interests to buy a private company, but quite another to purchase politicians.

12. A National Truth Commission. The mountainous lies told by the last administration worried citizens and scholars that we had entered a “post-truth society,” echoing the dark fictional world of George Orwell’s 1984.

In our two-party system, it’s difficult to expect a POTUS having the credibility to be believed by most members of the opposing party. So I will be proposing to Congress an independent “Truth & Reconciliation Commission” to answer two big questions: first, what were the patterns of falsehoods that spread throughout society and with what impact; second, what were key inflection points when individuals or institutions could have slowed or stopped such extremism but failed?

The Commission will be comprised of ethicists, scholars, authors, ex-electeds, clergy and business and labor leaders to determine what happened and how we can discourage repetition. It will have investigatory but not prosecutorial authority.

* * * *

That’s my mandate after last week’s landslide.

To those who didn’t vote for me—know that I too have been infuriated by a status quo that froze struggling workers in place. And I get the appeal of cinematic anti-heros—Dirty Harry, Bronson, Breaking Bad. But I hope to educate voters that there is nothing charming about breaking our 250-year covenant of self-government and turning it over to the whims of a few far-right tech-billionaires.

So here is my irrevocable pledge to all Americans. I’ll commit to spend every day of my time in office rejecting any return to one-man rule, lawlessness, disinformation, racism, cruelty, violence or corrupt self-enrichment.

At the same time, I ask those who agree that smart government can promote the common good to join our vision of democratic patriotism. Our Administration needs you. Please seek high-level appointments, apply to be civil servants or give us your best ideas. And in your civic lives—in your neighborhoods, workplaces and boardrooms, voluntary associations, houses of worship and your families, I urge you to embrace the essence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—that we Americans participate in a “government of, by and for the people.”

It’s not Us vs. Them, or Left vs. Right. It’s only us, embracing patriotic progress.

Printed with the permission of The Washington Spectator.

Mark Green was the first Public Advocate for NYC & author or editor of 26 books, including most recently The Inflection Election: Progress or Fascism 2024?