No Competent Candidates
for President But LaRouche Slate
by Nancy Spannaus
Jan. 23—With rampant incompetence and virtual insanity dominating the so-called Presidential race in both parties, Lyndon LaRouche and the initial slate of six Congressional candidates took to the LaRouchePAC airwaves yesterday for their third discussion of economic policy and political strategy. In the course of an hour-plus dialogue, LaRouche, Rachel Brown (Mass.), Dave Christie (Wash.), Bill Roberts (Mich.), Kesha Rogers (Texas), Diane Sare (N.J.), and Summer Shields (Calif.) discussed their insights into the state of the U.S. population at this crucial conjuncture, and what immediately must be done.
Having defined the precise policy perspective required to bring the United States, and the world, out of the current disaster, during his Jan. 18 State of the Union address (see Feature), LaRouche devoted his remarks to two major points: first, the fact that the slate itself must fill the political vacuum, by exercising leadership effectively as a Presidential team; and two, that this leadership must be presented in such a way as to force through a compelling commitment to action from the American population itself—the kind of thing we saw when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941.
While I can provide the highlights of the course of the discussion here, readers are encouraged to watch it in full at www.larouchepac.com.
Creating an American Presidency
In his opening remarks, LaRouche laid out the challenge for the candidate slate:
"We're looking for a development, which will create the possibility of 'none of the above' emerging as one or two candidates somewhere along the line toward the Presidential election.
"In the meantime, what we're concerned about, should be concerned about, is policy. I laid out, this past week, exactly what the policy options are that I know that exist, and I haven't seen anything else replace that. So don't worry about the usual thing, so-called, about 'who's going to win the election,' or 'who you should vote for'; none of this means anything right now. You have nobody to elect. No one to elect now.
"And the reactions of the public, day by day, forget it! That's not the issue. When you get a reaction which is meaningful, you'll know you've got it. But don't stab at somebody, who maybe looks like something, who might be a good candidate, or might be valuable in some other way. They're fickle! They don't know what they're voting for, they're totally unstable in their opinions, and so don't get involved!"
In his response to LaRouche, Dave Christie pointed to past examples of exemplary leadership:
"Well, Lyn, we had had some discussion earlier, in terms of the American Presidency, and those Presidents who have stepped forward in a time of crisis, such as Lincoln, [Franklin] Roosevelt, and so on, Kennedy—that what made them, was the strength of their soul to represent the policy that they stood for, which was always the fight against the British imperial policy. And it wasn't this demagogue business, which is largely how Obama came on the scene. Everybody said, 'Oh, what a great talker, what a great...' although he didn't say anything, of course, but just was a 'great talker'; and now we see that what he actually stands for, which is, we're on the verge of World War III, the economy is falling off the cliff.... And the real American Presidency has been somebody who steps forward in a time of crisis, who actually has a policy, and is willing to back up their policy, and that's what people move on.
Kesha Rogers reflected on the fact that, as she's found in her campaigning, people know both the Democrats and Republicans have no ideas relevant to the crisis, that the "campaign" is a zero:
"They know that there's nobody out there that's fighting for their interests, and that is competent to lead this nation. And it's true. You know, you go out—we're out in the field every day, we're talking to people, and everybody comes up and they say, 'My God! What're we going to do? The Democratic Party is insane.' And you have Democrats who say, 'I'm a Democrat, but this President is destroying the nation.' But you have the Republicans on the other side, and it's just a complete mess with the Republican candidates.
"And so the population knows that they've been thrown on the scrap heap here; they've been put in second-class citizenship, and the problem is, that they accept it. And this is what we're talking about: why the survival of this nation, and mankind overall, means that there can be no more talk about 'issues.' "
LaRouche responded by raising the historical example of Benjamin Franklin in defining a positive conception of how leadership can be provided in this period by a team:
"So what you need, really, is you need a team," he said. "Now, you had something like that in the formation of the Presidency of the United States in the first place. You had a bunch of people who came in, there were problems that arose, over money and things like that. But you had a team, for a moment—under Washington, and under the influence of Franklin, and particularly, Franklin—you had a team of people who functioned as a Presidency of the United States. And solved the problems, and created the Constitution!
"You don't have any candidates for President in recent times, who have the qualification, that the Presidency had at the time Franklin was shaping it. You don't have anything like that. You don't have a competent Presidency from any source right now! I said I could do the job ... what has to be done. But we don't have anybody, who is running for President, and we have damned few people who are running for other offices, in Congressional office, who really have the qualifications, even a group of them, to really be a President. They don't have it. You have people who have qualifications, excellent qualifications on this point, that point, this point! Provided you have a Presidency to make it tick!
"But the problem is, you've got to think of yourself as a collective President, because you have to, really, together, represent the campaign, for the whole package which we've laid out. All the other things are less important. It's the package we have laid out, which I discussed essentially, this past Wednesday. That's your program: That's the Presidential program! And the six of you have to be the spearhead, of a campaign on behalf of that program."
We Need 'Super-Candidates'
Rachel Brown then contrasted the excited response people exhibit when a real solution is presented, as against the endless bank bailout policy of both parties:
"People are very frustrated that we keep bailing this crap out, when they know that there's no solution in sight with that. So, they're frustrated. But if we bring up these notions of scientific principles of economy, such as energy-flux density, and what a Mars mission will do for the rest of the economy, then they can understand it. And then they get excited, because they see a tangible light at the end of the tunnel.
LaRouche replied:
"But, they're looking for commitment. What they're really looking for, is commitment and competence, two things. The first thing, is commitment. If you're committed, they're going to be interested. Look, the problem is, there's no one that I could, in good conscience, vote for, for President now. There may be somebody hidden out there. But what's on the slate, nothing is qualified to be President; as a matter of fact, electing any of them would be a menace to the United States! We already have a menace to the United States, in terms of the current President. These guys could be almost as bad. Right?
"So therefore, we need a Presidency, which means a Presidential candidate, or a President and a group of people around that President as a national leadership, which is going to ram this program through! We're not going to flinch because somebody says, 'I have some money invested in Wall Street, and I have a right to have my money.'
" 'You don't have a right to have your money: You already stole it, you damned fool! You made a gambling bet, you bet in a gambling house—and you lost. Nobody owes you anything, buddy!'
"And when you get that across—I'm suggesting that you have to be, not candidates, you have to be super-candidates. Delivering the super-candidate message. And I will do my job on this case, to make sure that you have the information and the approach to deal with this thing, as a candidacy. But the six of you, plus whatever we drag into this thing, beyond, is going to be presented—and everybody's going to know it: that these guys you're dealing options for are no damned good! They're no good for your health. They swindled you already too much, didn't they? They either swindled you, or they didn't do anything to save you from the swindlers! They all backed down to the swindlers! And you're trying to say you can represent something? Well, you can't be trusted! We gave you a chance, year after year after year ... and what did you do? Year after year, you made everything worse! Especially at the beginning of the past decade."
Diane Sare buttressed LaRouche's point by reporting on developments in her own campaign:
"Well, they're obviously terrified of our potential, which has yet to be fully realized, but just the threat of the slate, with your leadership; because, for example, in my district, they tried to pay Congressman [Steve] Rothman [D] $2 million to run in that district against Scott Garrett [R] and he didn't want to. So he's not. Then, I've announced; now, they're threatening to run a linebacker from the Giants football team against me in the Democratic primaries, and ... the same thing with Dave, and Summer: They literally are going to have legions of Democrats, who are nothing but Obama Democrats, to run against us in these campaigns, to try and confuse the voters. And I think we can have a lot of fun with this.
LaRouche drew a laugh in response:
"Obama Democrats are not a marketable product!"
Bill Roberts reported on the same process in his Michigan area:
"I was actually at a Democratic Club event earlier this week, where they were recruiting candidates to be running for local positions for the Democratic Party. And I said exactly that—that we have a slate of candidates, because there are no qualified Presidential candidates. And this was a group of people who were basically supposed to run the local Obama campaign, and they just went silent. They had no response. And I just signed in and quietly went in. And one by one, the candidates approached me, and said, 'Well, I don't agree 100% with you, but, let's stay in touch, because I'm interested in your policies.'
"So, I think the acknowledgment of that, is more known than people are willing to admit at this point."
LaRouche responded:
"The problem is that we've got to take charge. These guys who are being pulled in, don't really know anything about the problems. They know the existence of problems, but they don't know what the solutions are. They don't understand what the solutions are. They are capable of judging whether the result that you're promising is going to be worth something, or not. That they can judge. That's a practical question for them, and they have some insights on some things. But the idea of going up against the national leadership is where they don't have it. And that's where we've got to come across.
The NAWAPA Driver
The discussion then turned to the programmatic perspective being generated by the Basement Scientific Team. LaRouche led it off:
"What you guys have to do, I'm emphasizing this: We could generate, largely out of the Basement crowd, for example, we have NAWAPA. Now, we're on top of the NAWAPA project from a scientific and other standpoint, because we're looking at it, not just as NAWAPA—a full NAWAPA, yes!—but we're also looking at the Arctic, and you can not really deal with this problem, without taking account the Arctic. You've got to deal with the fact of Russia.
"Now, we have an implicit offer of an alliance with Russia. I mean, this is what we're dealing with. We're talking with leaders in Russia about policies, and this is like a pre-cooperation kind of thing. If we can get cooperation, we'll have it automatically. Things will begin to happen right away. We have things in other parts of the world like that, particularly on the Asian side, the Asian Pacific side, things are wide open.
"We have a situation, where in Europe, you see our little Italian campaign which is not so little, in terms of its impact. Greece is blowing out! Spain and Portugal are about to blow out. The French situation is impossible.
"We have a world situation, we have a map—and a lot of it is centered actually in the Basement operation—we have a map of things that cohere, that need to be done: What we really need is the funds, essentially, to produce the kinds of video material which we can take around with us everywhere we go, with a full program—we need to develop that right now. And we've got to find the funds to do it! We've got to produce some material which is the full package of the program. We've been rebuilding it, haven't we? Piece by piece. Now, we've got to go to a new phase. You guys are ready to do it now."
Summer Shields elaborated on LaRouche's point:
"One thing of note, on what you're bringing up here, I think, is that from what you laid out in your State of the Union address, this three-generation collapse of the U.S. culture, and how to turn that around: The only way you could really do that, to rip up the entire cultural degeneration of the United States, and the collapse of optimism in the U.S., would be a Mars mission. And I think that, when you look at the grand scheme of things, what you're bringing up here, with what the Basement's working on, the scientific research they're looking at, when you start to look at the vastness of the galaxy and the universe, a trip from the Moon to Mars is a short trip, compared to the vast galaxy we're looking at....
"And I think when we come at it, in our own minds from that standpoint, then as you start to look at conveying this to the American people, it's very easy. Because they want something bigger than what's being presented to them by all these candidates. There's nothing being presented to them. They want to get some sense of a return to a John F. Kennedy mission. And that rings true with people.
"They have to understand, I think, that we already have things in the making, that Russia has already proposed the Bering Strait project: Roscosmos, the space organization in Russia, has already said, 'Let's go to the Moon. Let's to go to Mars,' as we just talked about. These projects are ready to go, now. But as you said, you have to go to Russia, you have to go to China to get the news: none of this is getting out to the American people.
"And sometimes, we can take for granted the fact that we know this, but then the people out there, have to do it. So, I think there does have to be kind of a one-two punch in all of this: On the one hand, we have to go out with the courage, and we have to say, 'Hey! Obama's got to go! We're going straight up against the Democratic Party. I'm running as a Democrat, but that doesn't mean I'm going to kiss the butt of the Democratic Party.' But then, on the other hand, you say, 'Here's what we're going with, here's the positive mission.' People respond to that, and they go, 'Okay, I just got smacked twice, not just once.' And they respond to that kind of courageous activity.
"I think that's where we have to go."
The Pearl Harbor Effect
After again referencing the generations of degeneration in American culture, LaRouche returned to a discussion of the organizing process:
"The key thing on this, you've got to get a program where people are committed to doing something, not just talking about, or approving of something; not giving a guy a chance to see if he can do something....
"You've got to get these guys, hit them hard with a concept, because they all are so discouraged, they have no real mustering factor. And this is as bad as what Roosevelt faced, when he knew that there was going to be an attack on the United States; and there was actually a planned air attack on the United States, from Germany in that period....
"And what you have to do, is get the intention to win on the part of the people, not try to coax them into accepting the idea of the project. You've got to convince them on a mass scale that this is exactly what we need! When you talk about jobs, talk about solving problems of other kinds, you need that kind of spirit of mobilization in the population. And to win this election in the way we have to win it, to create a new Presidency which can save this nation, we've got to go all the way! Not with suggestions, not with outlined proposals. But with motivating people to see, this is the only thing that can be tolerated! As was the case on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7: a sudden change. And we have to induce a sudden change in the temperament of the American people; a commitment to victory that won't quit. And even with this shot-down and worn-out American population, we can do it again.
"And that's what you have to do. And that's what we have to do. You have to save this nation from what is imminently, right now, right now—if we don't do anything, the United States, is going to be destroyed, and the people in it, too."
To accomplish this, LaRouche again defined the role of the candidate slate:
"The point is—look, we've got a situation, there are six of you. There will be more. But! Is that going to be enough to do the job? Is the propaganda to go with that going to be enough?
"No! You've got to go and break out, a real breakout: And you're ready to start doing it. I've been watching this over the past three weeks. You're ready to do it, start it; we've just got to get some more people activated, and to stop playing tiddly-winks with great politics. Don't make promises; you can make a nice suggestion you can hope somebody can follow—no. We're going to say, 'We are going to insist, that you live up to your obligation to save this nation.'
"And we can do it. Here's how we can do it. And we have access to the people who know the technology, and we know some ourselves, something about the basic technology, which will do this. We know why this has to be done: So we're going to take all the way—we're not going to make a polite suggestion; we're going to kick-ass all the way to the Moon."
