It all came to me in a dream. For much of the week I had been thinking of how the problems that confront my United States of America can best be solved, using common sense.
I was thinking along these lines when I fell into a deep slumber after a night of ballroom dancing. I was dog tired. In an instant I was dreaming.
I had seen the movie Inception and was convinced that people could, with practice, change their realities inside their dreams.
This, as far as a I can recall, was the content of my dream:
I arrived at the White House gate in a limousine - not clear how I got into the limo. The driver was flashed an OK sign to drive deeper into the White House grounds and I was dropped off at a special entrance. A couple of suits met me and motioned me to an elevator where the two men accompanied me. When I came out of the elevator, a nice-looking woman, someone I wouldn't mind ballroom dancing with, took over. She asked how I was and I said fine. I told her it was all so unreal to me.
When we got to a heavy lacquered door, she opened it for both of us. I was startled when I saw four figures inside what I immediately recognized as the Oval Office. The President was sitting behind his desk, while Senator Reid and former speaker Nancy Pelosi sat in the sofa and lounge chair. I did not recognize the man who was standing beside President Obama, but after the computer in my brain sorted out the features of his face I decided it was the Chief of Staff, Richard Daley.
"Mr. President," began the young lady in a smart green dress, "this is Cesar F. Lumba of Las Vegas, Nevada. If you don't need me for anything else, I'd like to go back to my office."
She left as I stood frozen in front of the President with whom I have at best a lukewarm personal relationship. I like his policies on national security, but I am thoroughly disappointed in his economic policies and his tendency to give up the bank in his compromises with Republicans.
"Sit down, Mr. Lumba, right here in front of me," said the President, as he motioned me to one of the chairs in front of his huge desk.
Just then, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi rose from their seats and sat in the chairs next and in front of me. President Obama and Mr. Daley came around the desk and sat in the other two empty chairs.
We formed a circle - the five of us - and carefully eyed each other.
President Obama opened up the conversation: "We called you in here, Cesar - can I call you Cesar? (I nodded) - because we think that of the millions of Americans who consistently vote in elections all across America, you represent the great majority of Americans. You are liberal on social issues but you are economically a conservative. You have a firm grasp of what's going on in the country, but you are also in many respects misinformed. You love your adopted country with a passion, but you also hate what it has become. To us, you are the perfect person to ask about what the heck we should do leading up to the elections of 2012, which we feel will be the most important elections of our lifetime - more important even than the 2008 elections."
"Mr. President," I replied, "how can I presume to know more than you and the others in this room about how to solve the many problems that are sinking America's chances to recover from its doldrums? Shouldn't I instead be asking each of you this question?"
The soft-spoken Senator Reid interjected: "If I may, Mr. President. The reason we called you in, Cesar, is that we know that we can count on you to speak your mind. We want to know what the American street is thinking. How do we solve the Medicare problem? How do we strengthen Social Security? What will Americans accept and not accept?"
"You want to take the pulse of average Americans and perhaps pick their brains?"
"Exactly," said Speaker Pelosi. I noticed that the former Speaker looked younger than her years. It must be the genes.
"We think that the elections of 2012 will be pivotal in our nation's history. We can put the country on a trajectory towards solving most of the problems, or we can assure continued paralysis through constant politicking on both sides. We would like to know what you think so we can fashion a campaign geared towards the great majority of Americans. If we can speak to the heart, soul and mind of the majority of Democrats and Independents, we will take back the U.S. House, the Senate and retain the Presidency. And this time, we will all be united so we can pursue policies that will benefit the poor and the middle class and not just the richest 2% in our country," said President Obama.
This was all I needed to get started. "Mr. President," I began, "I have a winning Democratic strategy that I have been carrying in my head for some time now. I am deliriously happy that I am face-to-face with you and Mr. Reid and Speaker Pelosi. Even your Chief of Staff is here. What an honor you are bestowing on me. I am so passionately involved in the 2012 elections - despite the fact that it is only May, 2011 - and you do me a great honor by asking me for my input.
"We must take back the House. But this time, we must take it back with people who will be in lock-step with us. We don't need any more Democratic congressmen who are marching to a different drummer. We tried this before and voters were livid. They thought they elected Democrats; turned out some of the people they elected were Republicans.
"Especially in the Senate. We had sixty Democratic senators, Mr. Reid, yet we couldn't beat back the threats of the Republican filibuster. Why? Because we had among us Republican senators we were passing off as Democrats. If we want to get things done in the new Congress, we must have only Democratic senators who will vote as Democrats and not as Republicans.
"We start by running only House and Senate candidates who will pledge in public that they will support our party's platform. People such as Senator Nelson of Nebraska must be made to understand that he is expected to vote as a Democrat and that we will not tolerate his pro-health insurance industry policies.
"With the right kind of people running for office, if we win back the House and expand our majority in the Senate, we can do a lot of good for our country. We will have a government of the people, for the people and by the people, and not a government of the special interests, by the special interests and for the special interests."
"That's all fine," said President Obama, "but how do you turn right-of-center America into basically a left-of-center society?"
"Mr. President," I quickly replied (I felt myself completely animated), "the old labels are no longer important because the Independents are now a huge chunk of the electorate. And the Independents will go left-wing or right-wing, depending on their mood and convictions. Right now, the mood in this country is to solve our problems. The independents don't care if the solutions are left-wing or right-wing, all they care about is that the solutions must make sense and hold a lot of promise.
"We know we can count on Democrats. If we ran Charlie Sheen for the Senate, Democratic voters will vote for him. It's the Independents who hold the key. We must therefore gear our campaign towards the Independents.
"How do we do that? We must come up with our own version of the New Deal, or the New Frontier, or the Contract with America. And don't forget the Great Society. Americans have been clobbered by the Great Recession, by the jobless recovery, by the flight of jobs to China and other countries. They look around and see that the only people who are benefiting from the recovery are the super-rich, the rich and the well-connected. Everybody else is struggling. Our homes are under water. There are many among our friends, neighbors and relatives who are either unemployed or who constantly fear of becoming another unemployment statistic.
"There is clearly a resentment for the rich and privileged few. Since those rich and privileged few will never vote for Democrats anyway, we must exploit this resentment by turning the 2012 campaign into a campaign against those rich and privileged few. If we are successful, those whose knee-jerk is to support the rich and privileged few (the Republican Party) will fall by the wayside.
"Mr. President, your 2008 campaign was a 'Yes, We Can' campaign. It was also about 'Change We Can Believe In.' So why don't we call the 2012 campaign an 'Of the people, by the people and for the people' campaign? This will strengthen our hold on the middle class, the poor, the immigrants - those who feel that they are getting the short end of the stick while the rich and super rich have never had it so good.
"This 'Of the people, by the people and for the people' campaign will have as their foundation eleven pillars:
"1. If a Democratic Congress is elected again, our first order of business will be to put Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on solid financial footing.
"2. We will tax the rich and super rich. We were the undisputed greatest country in the world when our top tax rate was 70% - during the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter eras. I don't know if the top tax rate should be 70% again, but it must be high enough to generate much needed tax revenues that will help strengthen the entitlement programs and reduce our sovereign debts.
"3. We will also increase taxes on the middle class and on businesses that outsource their manufacturing to other countries. The middle class must share in the sacrifice, while the businesses that are responsible for creating economic booms in other countries while decimating the work force in the U.S. must be taxed heavily for the privilege of selling their products and services in the U.S., the world's biggest market.
"4. We will scale back our military commitments abroad and convert our military to rapid-response and high-tech warfare combat-ready units. We will completely withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, close many of our military bases and shore up our national defenses. The goal will be to cut down our military expenses to 75% of today's level.
"5. We will work for a Medicare-for-all system, patterned after the Canadian and Australian models. The American people and their employers will be taxed to pay for this Medicare-for-all system. The important difference will be that the premiums will not be as high as today. Since Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest drivers of the government's deficit spending, the savings will immediately put the government firmly on the path to fiscal sanity.
"6. We will introduce a financial services tax of 0.5% to be in effect for at least ten years, or until the nation's sovereign debt is reduced to about $5 trillion. All financial transactions, without exception, will be subject to the tax, which over the years could raise trillions.
"7. We will create incentives for American and multi-national businesses to bring jobs back to America by selective tariffs and other disincentives for locating factories in China, India, Ireland and other countries.
"8. Full employment will be a goal against which every U.S. national administration will be measured. Full employment will be defined as 4% unemployment rate or better, and any substantial increase in the unemployment rate will cause a series of fiscal remedies to automatically go into effect.
"9. The U.S. will not accept anything less than preeminence in green technology. We Democrats will put our best and brightest students in the field and will devote as much resources and attention to the attainment of that goal as the country did to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Of course we will not neglect our energy needs during the transition to renewable sources of energy. We will encourage massive production of natural gas and increased oil drilling and production within our shores and offshore.
"10. We will do our part in the fight against global warming and will prepare the country for what appears to be inevitable: the inundation of cities, the disappearance of barrier islands, the sinking of marshes. The U.S. will be best prepared to meet head-on the challenges of rising oceans and violent changes in weather patterns.
"11. Finally, and most importantly, the Department of Commerce must be replaced by the Department of Exports. It will be the Secretary of Exports that will promote American products throughout the world and the Cabinet Secretary will be tasked with promoting the manufacture of U.S. products for export. The Secretary of Exports will have the power to discipline organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lately has been advising its members to manufacture products overseas."
Just then, as if on cue, White House stewards opened the door and wheeled in a coffee cart. One of the stewards was a cute Filipina, and there was a smile in her eyes as she briefly stared at me.
"Oh, just in time," the President announced. "You make a lot of sense, Cesar. You have exceeded even our highest hopes for this meeting."
The transition to my waking was jarring. I wanted to go back to sleep and resume my dreaming, though I knew there was no guarantee that I would pick up the same dream. Slowly but surely I became wide awake. It must be 5:00 a.m., I thought, since I always wake up at right around 5. But, when I looked at the alarm clock, it showed 6:37 a.m. I had overslept.
