The speech I'd like a governor to give
The second (or is it the third?) wave of the coronavirus came with a severe case of gubernatorial speechifying. As a communicator, one of my chronic afflictions is I can’t listen to a political speech without thinking of all the ways I’d have written it differently.
Thanks to Substack, I can write it differently and share it with all of you. Here it is.
Good evening.
When I first asked to be our governor, I promised that I would speak to you honestly about the hard stuff. Tonight calls on me to keep that promise.
It’s been eight months since COVID-19 came to our state. Eight months of shutting down, of staying home. Of waiting. The recent news about hopeful initial results from vaccine tests is encouraging to all of us that there may finally be light at the end of this long and trying tunnel. When and if that comes to fruition, we’ll unveil a plan to safely store and distribute it to hospital and frontline workers and vulnerable populations, and eventually all of us, as quickly as possible.
But we cannot spend our time until then waiting. COVID is spreading throughout almost every community in our state, and by any measure it’s spreading faster than it did when it first hit back in March. Since then we’ve gotten better at testing for it and treating it, but the virus’s spread has outpaced our improvement.
As a result our state’s health care system is on the verge of collapsing. You’ve no doubt heard that phrase countless times this year, but you may not know what it means. Here’s the honest hard stuff.
Until now our hospitals and clinics have been able to handle the caseload of COVID-positive patients. It’s taken a herculean effort by doctors, nurses and many others, but they’ve done it. And they’ve been able to treat heart attacks, strokes, accidents and all the other emergencies that are a part of every day health care.
When I say the system is on the brink of collapse, it means that situation would no longer be true. We are on the knife’s edge of having too many COVID cases and not enough resources to treat them. If the situation tips, the doctors and nurses we’ve counted on so far will be forced to make the awful choice to leave some patients untreated in order to care for others, even if it means knowing with virtual certainty the patient they leave untreated will die. When the ambulance brings in the victim of a heart attack or a car accident, doctors would need to decide which COVID patient will lose care.
We have a civic and moral obligation to do everything in our power to not put health care workers in that position. As long as I’m governor, I simply won’t stand for it.
So tonight I’m announcing the steps we’ll take to ensure we save our health care system.
[Those exact steps are not relevant for this deliberation.]
In recognition of the continued difficulty the pandemic places on them, which I’m fully aware these new measures will only exacerbate, tomorrow, leaders of the four legislative caucuses will meet in my office at 1pm to begin work on a state-led effort to offer emergency assistance to business and employees. It’s too soon to promise the details of what that will look like, but we can promise our full effort, free from political grandstanding and manipulation.
I’ve stood here often as someone who warns about and bemoans the way government continues to take more power and money for itself and away from the people it is supposed to serve. So I don’t blame you if these actions to fight the pandemic sound like a betrayal of those principles. After all, a government that tells you what to wear and what you can’t do is hardly a limited government.
But again we’re back to the hard stuff, and it requires my full honesty. So the truth is simple: Keeping our health care system open and functioning is more important. It has to be.
So I’m sympathetic to the viewpoint held by some in our state that these actions I’m announcing tonight takeaway some measure of our freedom and liberty.
But you’ve also heard me use the phrase short steps, long vision. And I think we’re at the point in the pandemic where we need to take the long vision. Yes, we’re trading some liberty in the short term. Vote against me for that if you wish. But in the long term, the short steps we’re taking now are the fastest way to bridge the gap between today and a widely available vaccine.
None of us asked to live in a pandemic. But here we are, and as much as we all want things back to the way they used to be we have to face the reality that there is still a long road ahead. We have to chose whether we want to reach the end beaten down and barely hanging on, or standing tall ready to win the recovery. I choose standing tall, and I choose us. We got through the initial onslaught last spring, we held firm during the summer. Now winter is here and the virus is hitting us with all its got. Let’s hit back. Wear masks. Stay socially distant. Be smart about travel and safe in your interactions.
That’s how we finish this. That’s how we get our lives back.
Thank you, and be safe.
My goal was to use vaccine news to paint a little optimism and grease the skids for the bad news, but also to subtly paint what was about to come as temporary at best, which I came back to at the end.
It’s also bugged me that no politicians are framing their decisions against what happens without them. In addition to being reality, it also leverages the wonderful tool of a hypothetical disaster to make your unpopular decision more palatable. Not everyone will buy it, but you’ll have a better chance to reach the persuadable minds in your audience.
My first draft included language about the financial ramifications before the human terms. “A collapse in the health care system would allow the costs of care to skyrocket beyond what hospitals could ever hope to recoup. With health care spending already the fastest growing part of our state’s budget, the domino effect would drain our schools, roads and nearly every aspect of our government.” But it felt too abstract and took away from the resonance I wanted it to have. So I stuck with the human terms.
In real life, a governor would likely have the health care lobby in his or her ear on a daily basis. Putting their plight at the center of the address would help ensure their voices are loud and on your side, which you’ll need. Business, on the other hand, got the short end of the stick with your announcements. So you have to acknowledge that and announce your intention to do something for them no matter how undefined it is at the moment. All the better if you can lay the groundwork for painting the legislature as only interested in political games.
The later half of the speech is selfish in tone but I think it’s necessary. My fictional governor made honest talk part of their brand from the beginning, so it won’t sound as out of place as it might in a Substack with no context. Still there has to be a reason to include it otherwise it’s just wind.
The reason is a political leader’s personal brand is as important as their policy positions. Maybe more important. If my politician’s brand is to talk like that, constituents will expect it and you have to tap into that expectation to prove you’re being genuine. That’s how you build brand equity and keep the job approval number at the level where news reporters can say you’re getting support from people who disagree with you.