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May 19th, 2118
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Future News Division:
Historians Find Original Draft of 'I Have a Scream' Speech |
Document Shows Dean Agonized Over Tone, Wording of Historic Address
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Above: the recently discovered draft of Howard Dean's historic Iowa Address |
May 19th, 2118 - Archivists in charge of maintaining the records and personal effects of the great 21st-century president Howard Dean have discovered what they believe to be the original, hand-written copy of the historic "I Have a Scream" speech, sources say.
The document – a faded envelope with the words of the speech scrawled hastily on the back – is believed to have been used by Dean himself to record the words that would enter the annals of history as among the most moving and powerful ever spoken.
"We're going to South Dakota, and Oregon, and Washington, and Michigan!" the document says in one of its most famous passages, a sentence memorized by millions of American schoolchildren. "And then we’re going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House! Yeaagh!"
Dean delivered the famous speech, known formally as the Iowa Address, before a crowd of supporters during his election campaign for his first presidential term. The candidate dazzled his audience with his enthusiasm and vigor, and the speech is widely credited with propelling Dean from an obscure New England governor into the country’s greatest leader since Abraham Lincoln.
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| In 2004, Dean defeated incumbent President George W. Bush, who later died of autoerotic asphyxiation. |
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At the time, United States' place in the world seemed uncertain. America's economy was stagnant, and a divisive war with the nation of Iraq – in a region of the world now part of the Arab-Israeli Unified Republic of Peace - had led to uncertainty and disharmony at home, and disdain for American arrogance abroad.
Dean changed all that when he was elected to the Presidency in 2004. In his first two terms, he transformed the United States into a nation of unprecedented prosperity, establishing universal health care, tripling average real income, and increasing retirement benefits while radically reducing taxes, unemployment and the national debt. In his remaining three terms - made possible by a constitutional amendment - Dean turned his attention to the rest of the world, using America's moral leadership to put an end to conflicts in the Middle East, ethnic violence in Eastern Europe, and the devastating Canadian civil war.
Although witnesses who saw Dean's legendary speech at the time said that it seemed entirely spontaneous, it seems that the man who would change American history agonized over every word. He originally planned to mention New Jersey instead of New York, for example, but crossed off the name of the smaller state, noting cryptically that it "sends the wrong message." He also struck a reference to "that son-of-a-bitch George Bush," the President who would lose badly to Dean in the 2004 election and die of autoerotic asphyxiation three months later.
Even more intriguing is Dean's apparent hand-wringing over the final word of the address, the scream that gives the speech its name. "This draft makes it clear that Dean tinkered endlessly with the speech's all-important concluding scream," says historian Maynard Elrond. "He considered the hip and humorous 'Cowabunga,' and the exuberant 'Woo hoo' before settling on the powerful and visceral 'Yeaagh.' He felt that 'Yeaagh' was the only word that could truly convey his enthusiasm to the American people."
That enthusiasm proved to be infectious, leading to the mobilization of millions of previously jaded voters, who made "Yeaagh!" their rallying cry and went to the polls in record numbers to give Dean a landslide victory. Along with Dean himself, they proved that words - even nonsensical ones scribbled on an envelope - can change the world.
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