Waking Up with the Friedmans

Here's an inspiring excerpt of a commencement address by Thomas Friedman, NYT columnist, given at Washington University in St. Louis:

My wife said, 'Imagine if President Bush decided to offer a real alternative to the Kyoto Treaty to reduce global warming. I'd like to wake up and see that in the morning.' "'Yeah, and I would like to wake up to read that Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited Ariel Sharon to his home in Riyadh to personally hand him the Abdullah peace plan, and Mr. Sharon responded by freezing all Israeli settlements.' "And then Ann said, 'I want to wake up and read that General Motors will no longer make gas-guzzling Hummers and President Bush has decided to replace his limousine with an armor-plated Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that gets over 40 miles to the gallon.' "Then I said, 'I want to wake up and read that Dick Cheney has apologized to the U.N. and all of our allies for being wrong about W.M.D. in Iraq, and then appeal to our allies to join the U.S. in an even more important project — to help the Iraqis build some decent kind of democratic framework.' "'I want to wake up and read that Congress has decided to call for a tax-hike on the rich in order to save Social Security and Medicare for the next generation and to finance all our under-funded education programs.' "And finally I said, 'I want to wake up and read that John Kerry has asked a Republican to be his vice-president because if Mr. Kerry wins, he's not going to spend four years avoiding America's hardest problems — health care, deficits, energy, education — but to tackle them and that can only be done with a bipartisan spirit and bipartisan team.'"

Now, wait a minute. An armor-plated Prius? What's the point?

(This post is dedicated to Michael J. Miller at PDP, who is patiently waiting for delivery of his Prius.)