Letters I've Never Sent

Dear Kevin,

Thank you for your kind advice! I hope you will be reminding your friends that my campaign needs all of your support if we all wish to bring the Audacity of Hope (TM) to the American people.

But sadly, I can't agree with your views on carts and horses. For too long, carts have been exploited and oppressed by being hidden in the back, and literally dragged behind horses. Through no fault of their own!

And in addition to this travesty, countless horses been forced, completely without their consent, to haul heavy carts behind them. Can you imagine the sorrow of these beasts of burden, dragging a heavy load they can't even inspect closely? Or rest upon?

This has been the status quo, I am shamed as an American to admit, for countless centuries. And how has this arrangement served us? Not very well: America has not yet achieved the promise of infinite positional variance which drew poor and hungry carts and horses to these shores. Today, that promise still rings hollow in those ears. And, um, spokes.

Today, leaders of the Right are trying to divide us further, with divisive, angry, and even hateful rhetoric about the "correct place" of carts and horses. They tell their people there is only one option, one way of doing things! They're all too eager to exploit what divides us, in our homes, schools, and churches.

Well, that's not the America I was raised to believe in. Although I was too young to participate in the Civil Right Movement, I was inspired by leaders like Martin King to become a community organizer. Cynics said it couldn't be done, that I should stop, but I kept building coalitions and uniting people around the rightness of our cause until we prevailed.

But why should civil rights be limited to humans? As President, I vow to make sure that, in all possible permutations, the civil rights of carts and horses will also be respected: carts on top of horses, horses on top of carts, a horse between two carts, or even just two or three carts hitched happily together. Why shouldn't America equally respect these arrangements of carts and horses?

Once a little girl came to me, her eyes full of tears, saying that her daddy refused to let her ride a horse on top of a cart on top of a horse. I looked up at her parents, who looked a little embarrassed, and told them they should be proud of her. The dream that little girl had, for carts and horses, is the dream my father had when he came here from Kenya. And it's the dream I have for my own two daughters.

You see, I chose a career in public service almost twenty-five years ago because each night that I tuck them in, I realize that their chances in life depend on our ability to create a country where who you are -- cart, horse, or human -- and where you come from has no bearing on what you can become or, um, how you will be arranged.

That's what has guided my life's work, and if you give me the chance, that's exactly the kind of country I will work for as your President. I ask you to give me that chance.

Thank you.

Barack Obama, 2008

Thanks for the response Senator Obama. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule and all and I just wonder what kind of response I would have received if I had actually sent the letter.