“Thank you… thank you…” I say as I wait for the applause to die down. I smile and wave to people I pretend to see in the crowd. You know, the basic politician shit. Frankly, I’m pretty shocked I’m actually here on this stage, accepting a nomination of the Democratic Party to run for President of the United States. I love my country. I do. But I never thought they would be so foolish as to nominate me.
The Republican I’m running against is a real fire breather. To be honest, I’m pretty scared of her. She has torched people way smarter than me. It’s not that she’s smart. She’s a moron, actually, but she has an instinct for destroying an enemy. She finds a weakness, real or imagined, sticks in the knife and twists while millions watch the victim squirm until she eventually steps over their lifeless body in her stiletto heels – metaphorically, of course.
Then there’s the problem of my platform. I believe in it, but it doesn’t really make for a good bumper sticker – Embrace Failure, Vote for Jake Sullivan.
***
“Thank you everyone,” I say to the smattering of applause at the Shriner’s Gathering Hall in Waterloo, Iowa. “You may not know who I am,” I begin. “In fact, other than my family here in the front row, it’s very unlikely that you know who I am. But you have to start somewhere, and I am starting here with you, the fine people of Waterloo.” A polite, tepid round of applause followed that transparent suck-up to the locals.
“Now, I’m going to tell you something in this speech, and there’s a ninety-five percent chance you’re going to think it’s stupid. But if you hear me out, I may be able to convince you not only is it not stupid, but it’s exactly what America needs right now. But before I get to that, I would like everybody to close your eyes.” Naturally, hardly anybody does. They look at each other with quizzical expressions, not sure if I’m serious. “No really,” I say. “I mean it, please close your eyes.” Most eyes close, but a few still remain open. I point to a few men siting together in the third row scowling at me with grizzled faces molded from their hardscrabble lives. “Come on,” I say imploringly, smiling, not scolding. “Just close your eyes, and I’ll get right to it.”
They close their eyes, but they don’t seem happy about it. “Good. Now that you are all in the right frame of mind, I want you to imagine something.” I pause for a moment and let them wonder what it will be. They probably start imagining what ever they think I’m about to say. Maybe some shining city on a hill or some other bullshit metaphor for America. Then I say, “Imagine if the electric light had never been invented.” Even with their eyes closed, you can see that they’re struggling with it. They don’t really understand what I’m getting at, and it makes them uncomfortable. “It’s good you have your eyes closed. That should help, because if it wasn’t invented, we would all be sitting here in the dark. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Actually, virtually every technological device that we know today would not exist, from the Mars rover analyzing soil samples on the red planet, to autonomous vehicles, to your iPhones. None of it would exist. The light bulb had an immediate and lasting effect on the world. As soon as it sprung into existence, it improved productivity because people were less reliant on sunshine or expensive and dim oil lamps to complete their work. And building on the basic technology of the light bulb, engineers were able to invent Vacuum tubes, which led to transistors, which gave us integrated circuits, which power all the technology we have today. And they were able to work on these inventions any time of day or night, thanks to the electric light bulb.
“Okay, open your eyes,” I say to a crowd that had by in large already opened them. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m talking to you about light bulbs. What does that have to do with my bid for the presidency. It has to do with Thomas Edison’s perspective on progress. He set about to invent the lightbulb, and he wasn’t shy about telling people what he was doing. The people of he day were quite fascinated with electricity and were excited about its possibilities. Edison promised to change their lives for the better, and that garnered him some media scrutiny. However, the secret of electric light was a tough nut to crack, and at one point he estimated that he had tried ten thousand different solutions without success. A reporter asked him what it felt like to fail ten thousand times. Maybe some of you know how he responded. He said, ‘I have not failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work.’”
There was some chuckling from people in the crowd who didn’t know the quote. “What I like about that,” I continue, “is the way Edison thought about failure. He embraced it. And by doing so he changed the world beyond the scope of anyone’s imagination. Remember the dark world without any electronic technology I asked you to imagine. That would be the world we live in if it weren’t for Edson’s ten thousand failures.
“You might say that it was the one success that brought all these modern wonders, but in point of fact, that success could not have been achieved without the failures. ‘Well, someone would have invented the light bulb eventually,’ you might say, ‘even if Edison gave up at one thousand failures.’ That may be true. There’s no way to know. But I still say that the right way to do it would not have been found without the failures, even if it was someone else who eventually did it. He or she would have been building on Edison’s work. They would have had their own failures as well.”
I pause for a moment for people to reflect on that. “Failure,” I say, “is an essential ingredient of progress. If you’re setting out to change the world, you’re not going to get it right the first time. That’s just logical. My father used to tell me, ‘If you’re not failing, then you’re not really trying.’
I pause again. “A lack of really trying is the problem here. America is afraid to fail,” I say raising my voice. “We can’t do that, it’s too hard. We can’t do that, it’s too expensive. We are faced with the most difficult problems in human history, and we’re attacking them with halfhearted solutions that we think we can accomplish. Stop thinking so damn small!” I shout to the crowd. “Don’t be afraid to fail. Dream big, act big. And if we fail, learn from it and try again. We can cure disease. We can end poverty. We can reverse global warming. That’s right, I said reverse global warming. Not slow it down, not stop it, but actually reverse it. Why? Because we are human beings living in the United States of America. We discovered the origin of the universe. We produced systems of industry and agriculture that feed billions of people. And we invented the electric light. If we can do those things, we can do anything, but we can’t be afraid to try and fail.
“So if you want to change the world, stand with me and embrace failure!”