Remarks on Accepting the Presidential Nomination of the Republican National Convention
August 23, 1972
Mr. Chairman, delegates to this convention, my fellow Americans:
Four years ago, standing in this very place, I proudly accepted your nomination for President of the United States.
With your help and with the votes of millions of Americans, we won a great victory in 1968.
Tonight, I again proudly accept your nomination for President of the United States.
Let us pledge ourselves to win an even greater victory this November, in 1972.
I congratulate Chairman Ford. I congratulate Chairman Dole, Anne Armstrong and the hundreds of others who have laid the foundation for that victory by their work at this great convention.
Representative Gerald R. Ford was permanent chairman of the 1972 Republican National Convention; Senator Robert Dole was chairman of the Republican National Committee; and Anne Armstrong was secretary of the convention.
Our platform is a dynamic program for progress for America and for peace in the world.
Speaking in a very personal sense, I express my deep gratitude to this convention for the tribute you have paid to the best campaigner in the Nixon family-my wife Pat. In honoring her, you have honored millions of women in America who have contributed in the past and will contribute in the future so very much to better government in this country.
Again, as I did last night when I was not at the convention, I express the appreciation of all of the delegates and of all America for letting us see young America at its best at our convention. As I express my appreciation to you, I want to say that you have inspired us with your enthusiasm, with your intelligence, with your dedication at this convention. You have made us realize that this is a year when we can prove the experts' predictions wrong, because we can set as our goal winning a majority of the new voters for our ticket this November.
I pledge to you, all of the new voters in America who are listening on television and listening here in this convention hall, that I will do everything that I can over these next 4 years to make your support be one that you can be proud of, because as I said to you last night, and I feel it very deeply in my heart: Years from now I want you to look back and be able to say that your first vote was one of the best votes you ever cast in your life.
Mr. Chairman, I congratulate the delegates to this convention for renominating as my running mate the man who has just so eloquently and graciously introduced me, Vice President Ted Agnew.
I thought he was the best man for the job 4 years ago.
I think he is the best man for the job today.
And I am not going to change my mind tomorrow.
Finally, as the Vice President has indicated, you have demonstrated to the Nation that we can have an open convention without dividing Americans into quotas.
Let us commit ourselves to rule out every vestige of discrimination in this country of ours. But my fellow Americans, the way to end discrimination against some is not to begin discrimination against others.
Dividing Americans into quotas is totally alien to the American tradition.
Americans don't want to be part of a quota. They want to be part of America. This Nation proudly calls itself the United States of America. Let us reject any philosophy that would make us the divided people of America.
In that spirit, I address you tonight, my fellow Americans, not as a partisan of party, which would divide us, but as a partisan of principles, which can unite us.
Six weeks ago our opponents at their convention rejected many of the great principles of the Democratic Party. To those millions who have been driven out of their home in the Democratic Party, we say come home. We say come home not to another party, but we say come home to the great principles we Americans believe in together.
And I ask you, my fellow Americans, tonight to join us not in a coalition held together only by a desire to gain power. I ask you to join us as members of a new American majority bound together by our common ideals.
I ask everyone listening to me tonight-Democrats, Republicans, independents, to join our new majority--not on the basis of the party label you wear in your lapel, but on the basis of what you believe in your hearts.
In asking for your support I shall not dwell on the record of our Administration which has been praised perhaps too generously by others at this convention.
We have made great progress in these past 4 years.
It can truly be said that we have changed America and that America has changed the world. As a result of what we have done, America today is a better place and the world is a safer place to live in than was the case 4 years ago.
We can be proud of that record, but we shall never be satisfied. A record is not something to stand on; it is something to build on.
Tonight I do not ask you to join our new majority because of what we have done in the past. I ask your support of the Principles I believe should determine America's future.
The choice in this election is not between radical change and no change. The choice in this election is between change that works and change that won't work.
I begin with an article of faith.
It has become fashionable in recent years to point up what is wrong with what is called the American system. The critics contend it is so unfair, so corrupt, so unjust, that we should tear it down and substitute something else in its place.
I totally disagree. I believe in the American system.
I have traveled to 80 countries in the past 25 years, and I have seen Communist systems, I have seen Socialist systems, I have seen systems that are half Socialist and half free.
Every time I come home to America, I realize how fortunate we are to live in this great and good country.
Every time I am reminded that we have more freedom, more opportunity, more prosperity than any people in the world, that we have the highest rate of growth of any industrial nation, that Americans have more jobs at higher wages than in any country in the world; that our rate of inflation is less than that of any industrial nation, that the incomparable productivity of America's farmers has made it possible for us to launch a winning war against hunger in the United States, and that the productivity of our farmers also makes us the best fed people in the world with the lowest percentage of the family budget going to food of any country in the world.
We can be very grateful in this country that the people on welfare in America would be rich in most of the nations of the world today.
Now, my fellow Americans, in pointing up those things, we do not overlook the fact that our system has its problems.
Our Administration, as you know, has provided the biggest tax cut in history, but taxes are still too high.
That is why one of the goals of our next Administration is to reduce the property tax which is such an unfair and heavy burden on the poor, the elderly, the wage earner, the farmer, and those on fixed incomes.
As all of you know, we have cut inflation in half in this Administration, but we have got to cut it further. We must cut it further so that we can continue to expand on the greatest accomplishment of our new economic policy: For the first time in 5 years wage increases in America are not being eaten up by price increases.
As a result of the millions of new jobs created by our new economic policies, unemployment today in America is less than the peacetime average of the sixties, but we must continue the unparalleled increase in new jobs so that we can achieve the great goal of our new prosperity--a job for every American who wants to work, without war and without inflation. The way to reach this goal is to stay on the new road we have charted to move America forward and not to take a sharp detour to the left, which would lead to a dead end for the hopes of the American people.
This points up one of the clearest choices in this campaign. Our opponents believe in a different philosophy.
Theirs is the politics of paternalism, where master planners in Washington make decisions for people.
Ours is the politics of people--where people make decisions for themselves.
The proposal that they have made to pay $1,000 to every person in America insults the intelligence of the American voters.
Because you know that every politician's promise has a price--the taxpayer pays the bill.
The American people are not going to be taken in by any scheme where Government gives money with one hand and then takes it away with the other.
Their platform promises everything to everybody, but at an increased net in the budget of $144 billion, but listen to what it means to you, the taxpayers of the country. That would mean an increase of 50 percent in what the taxpayers of America pay. I oppose any new spending programs which will increase the tax burden on the already overburdened American taxpayer.
And they have proposed legislation which would add 82 million people to the welfare rolls.
I say that instead of providing incentives for millions of more Americans to go on welfare, we need a program which will provide incentives for people to get off of welfare and to get to work.
We believe that it is wrong for anyone to receive more on welfare than for someone who works. Let us be generous to those who can't work without increasing the tax burden of those who do work.
And while we are talking about welfare, let us quit treating our senior citizens in this country like welfare recipients. They have worked hard all of their lives to build America. And as the builders of America, they have not asked for a handout. What they ask for is what they have earned--and that is retirement in dignity and self-respect. Let's give that to our senior citizens.
Now, when you add up the cost of all of the programs our opponents have proposed, you reach only one conclusion: They would destroy the system which has made America number one in the world economically.
Listen to these facts: Americans today pay one-third of all of their income in taxes. If their programs were adopted, Americans would pay over one-half of what they earn in taxes. This means that if their programs are adopted, American wage earners would be working more for the Government than they would for themselves.
Once we cross this line, we cannot turn back because the incentive which makes the American economic system the most productive in the world would be destroyed.
Theirs is not a new approach. It has been tried before in countries abroad, and I can tell you that those who have tried it have lived to regret it.
We cannot and we will not let them do this to America.
Let us always be true to the principle that has made America the world's most prosperous nation--that here in America a person should get what he works for and work for what he gets.
Let me illustrate the difference in our philosophies. Because of our free economic system, what we have done is to build a great building of economic wealth and money in America. It is by far the tallest building in the world, and we are still adding to it. Now because some of the windows are broken, they say tear it down and start again. We say, replace the windows and keep building. That is the difference.
Let me turn now to a second area where my beliefs are totally different from those of our opponents.
Four years ago crime was rising all over America at an unprecedented rate. Even our Nation's Capital was called the crime capital of the world. I pledged to stop the rise in crime. In order to keep that pledge, I promised in the election campaign that I would appoint judges to the Federal courts, and particularly to the Supreme Court, who would recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence.
I have kept that promise. I am proud of the appointments I have made to the courts, and particularly proud of those I have made to the Supreme Court of the United States. And I pledge again tonight, as I did 4 years ago, that whenever I have the opportunity to make more appointments to the courts, I shall continue to appoint judges who share my philosophy that we must strengthen the peace forces as against the criminal forces in the United States.
We have launched an all-out offensive against crime, against narcotics, against permissiveness in our country.
I want the peace officers across America to know that they have the total backing of their President in their fight against crime.
My fellow Americans, as we move toward peace abroad, I ask you to support our programs which will keep the peace at home.
Now, I turn to an issue of overriding importance not only to this election, but for generations to come--the progress we have made in building a new structure of peace in the world.
Peace is too important for partisanship. There have been five Presidents in my political lifetime--Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.
They had differences on some issues, but they were united in their belief that where the security of America or the peace of the world is involved we are not Republicans, we are not Democrats. We are Americans, first, last, and always.
These five Presidents were united in their total opposition to isolation for America and in their belief that the interests of the United States and the interests of world peace require that America be strong enough and intelligent enough to assume the responsibilities of leadership in the world.
They were united in the conviction that the United States should have a defense second to none in the world.
They were all men who hated war and were dedicated to peace.
But not one of these five men, and no President in our history, believed that America should ask an enemy for peace on terms that would betray our allies and destroy respect for the United States all over the world.
As your President, I pledge that I shall always uphold that proud bipartisan tradition. Standing in this Convention Hall 4 years ago, I pledged to seek an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We have made great progress toward that end. We have brought over half a million men home, and more will be coming home. We have ended America's ground combat role. No draftees are being sent to Vietnam. We have reduced our casualties by 98 percent. We have gone the extra mile, in fact we have gone tens of thousands of miles trying to seek a negotiated settlement of the war. We have offered a cease-fire, a total withdrawal of all American forces, an exchange of all prisoners of war, internationally supervised free elections with the Communists participating in the elections and in the supervision.
There are three things, however, that we have not and that we will not offer.
We will never abandon our prisoners of war.
Second, we will not join our enemies in imposing a Communist government on our allies--the 17 million people of South Vietnam.
And we will never stain the honor of the United States of America.
Now I realize that many, particularly in this political year, wonder why we insist on an honorable peace in Vietnam. From a political standpoint they suggest that since I was not in office when over a half million American men were sent there, that I should end the war by agreeing to impose a Communist government on the people of South Vietnam and just blame the whole catastrophe on my predecessors.
This might be good politics, but it would be disastrous to the cause of peace in the world. If, at this time, we betray our allies, it will discourage our friends abroad and it will encourage our enemies to engage in aggression.
In areas like the Mideast, which are danger areas, small nations who rely on the friendship and support of the United States would be in deadly jeopardy.
To our friends and allies in Europe, Asia, the Mideast, and Latin America, I say the United States will continue its great bipartisan tradition--to stand by our friends and never to desert them.
Now in discussing Vietnam, I have noted that in this election year there has been a great deal of talk about providing amnesty for those few hundred Americans who chose to desert their country rather than to serve it in Vietnam. I think it is time that we put the emphasis where it belongs. The real heroes are 2 1/2 million young Americans who chose to serve their country rather than desert it. I say to you tonight, in these times when there is so much of a tendency to run down those who have served America in the past and who serve it today, let us give those who serve in our Armed Forces and those who have served in Vietnam the honor and the respect that they deserve and that they have earned.
Finally, in this connection, let one thing be clearly understood in this election campaign: The American people will not tolerate any attempt by our enemies to interfere in the cherished right of the American voter to make his own decision with regard to what is best for America without outside intervention.
Now it is understandable that Vietnam has been a major concern in foreign policy. But we have not allowed the war in Vietnam to paralyze our capacity to initiate historic new policies to construct a lasting and just peace in the world.
When the history of this period is written, I believe it will be recorded that our most significant contributions to peace resulted from our trips to Peking and to Moscow.
The dialogue that we have begun with the People's Republic of China has reduced the danger of war and has increased the chance for peaceful cooperation between two great peoples.
Within the space of 4 years in our relations with the Soviet Union, we have moved from confrontation to negotiation, and then to cooperation in the interest of peace.
We have taken the first step in limiting the nuclear arms race.
We have laid the foundation for further limitations on nuclear weapons and eventually of reducing the armaments in the nuclear area.
We can thereby not only reduce the enormous cost of arms for both our countries, but we can increase the chances for peace.
More than on any other single issue, I ask you, my fellow Americans, to give us the chance to continue these great initiatives that can contribute so much to the future of peace in the world.
It can truly be said that as a result of our initiatives, the danger of war is less today than it was; the chances for peace are greater.
But a note of warning needs to be sounded. We cannot be complacent. Our opponents have proposed massive cuts in our defense budget which would have the inevitable effect of making the United States the second strongest nation in the world.
For the United States unilaterally to reduce its strength with the naive hope that other nations would do likewise would increase the danger of war in the world.
It would completely remove any incentive of other nations to agree to a mutual limitation or reduction of arms.
The promising initiatives we have undertaken to limit arms would be destroyed.
The security of the United States and all the nations in the world who depend upon our friendship and support would be threatened.
Let's look at the record on defense expenditures. We have cut spending in our Administration. It now takes the lowest percentage of our national product in 20 years. We should not spend more on defense than we need. But we must never spend less than we need.
What we must understand is, spending what we need on defense will cost us money. Spending less than we need could cost us our lives or our freedom.
So tonight, my fellow Americans, I say, let us take risks for peace, but let us never risk the security of the United States of America.
It is for that reason that I pledge that we will continue to seek peace and the mutual reduction of arms. The United States, during this period, however, will always have a defense second to none.
There are those who believe that we can entrust the security of America to the good will of our adversaries.
Those who hold this view do not know the real world. We can negotiate limitation of arms, and we have done so. We can make agreements to reduce the danger of war, and we have done so.
But one unchangeable rule of international diplomacy that I have learned over many, many years is that, in negotiations between great powers, you can only get something if you have something to give in return.
That is why I say tonight: Let us always be sure that when the President of the United States goes to the conference table, he never has to negotiate from weakness.
There is no such thing as a retreat to peace.
My fellow Americans, we stand today on the threshold of one of the most exciting and challenging eras in the history of relations between nations.
We have the opportunity in our time to be the peacemakers of the world, because the world trusts and respects us and because the world knows that we shall only use our power to defend freedom, never to destroy it; to keep the peace, never to break it.
A strong America is not the enemy of peace; it is the guardian of peace.
The initiatives that we have begun can result in reducing the danger of arms, as well as the danger of war which hangs over the world today.
Even more important, it means that the enormous creative energies of the Russian people and the Chinese people and the American people and all the great peoples of the world can be turned away from production of war and turned toward production for peace.
In America it means that we can undertake programs for progress at home that will be just as exciting as the great initiatives we have undertaken in building a new structure of peace abroad.
My fellow Americans, the peace dividend that we hear so much about has too often been described solely in monetary terms--how much money we could take out of the arms budget and apply to our domestic needs. By far the biggest dividend, however, is that achieving our goal of a lasting peace in the world would reflect the deepest hopes and ideals of all of the American people.
Speaking on behalf of the American people, I was proud to be able to say in my television address to the Russian people in May: We covet no one else's territory. We seek no dominion over any other nation. We seek peace not only for ourselves, but for all the people of the world.
This dedication to idealism runs through America's history.
During the tragic War Between the States, Abraham Lincoln was asked whether God was on his side. He replied, "My concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God's side."
May that always be our prayer for America.
We hold the future of peace in the world and our own future in our hands. Let us reject therefore the policies of those who whine and whimper about our frustrations and call on us to turn inward
Let us not turn away from greatness.
The chance America now has to lead the way to a lasting peace in the world may never come again.
With faith in God and faith in ourselves and faith in our country, let us have the vision and the courage to seize the moment and meet the challenge before it slips away.
On your television screen last night, you saw the cemetery in Leningrad I visited on my trip to the Soviet Union--where 300,000 people died in the siege of that city during World War II.
At the cemetery I saw the picture of a 12-year-old girl. She was a beautiful child. Her name was Tanya.
I read her diary. It tells the terrible story of war. In the simple words of a child she wrote of the deaths of the members of her family. Zhenya in December. Grannie in January. Then Leka. Then Uncle Vasya. Then Uncle Lyosha. Then Mama in May. And finally--these were the last words in her diary: "All are dead. Only Tanya is left."
Let us think of Tanya and of the other Tanyas and their brothers and sisters everywhere in Russia, in China, in America, as we proudly meet our responsibilities for leadership in the world in a way worthy of a great people.
I ask you, my fellow Americans, to join our new majority not just in the cause of winning an election, but in achieving a hope that mankind has had since the beginning of civilization. Let us build a peace that our children and all the children of the world can enjoy for generations to come.
NOTE: The President spoke at 10:27 p.m. in Convention Hall, Miami Beach, Fla. His remarks were broadcast live on radio and television.
The President spoke from a prepared text. An advance text of his remarks was released on the same day.
Source: Public Papers of President Richard Nixon
ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
OF SENATOR GEORGE MCGOVERN
Democratic National Convention
Miami Beach, Florida
July 14, 1972
Chairman O’Brien, Chairwoman Burke, Senator Kennedy, Senator Eagleton and my fellow citizens, I’m happy to join us for this benediction of our Friday sunrise service.
I assume that everyone here is impressed with my control of this Convention in that my choice for Vice President was challenged by only 39 other nominees.
And I can tell you that Eleanor is very grateful that the Oregon delegation at least kept her in the race with Martha Mitchell. So I congratulate you on your patience and I pay my respects to those two superb presiding officers of this convention, Larry O’Brien and Yvonne Braithwaite Burke.
So tonight I accept your nomination with a full and grateful heart.
This afternoon I crossed the wide Missouri to recommend a running mate of wide vision and deep compassion, Senator Tom Eagleton.
I’m proud to have him at my side, and I’m proud to have been introduced a moment ago by one of the most eloquent and courageous voices in this land Senator Ted Kennedy.
My nomination is all the more precious and that it is a gift of the most open political process in all of our political history.
It is the sweet harvest of the work of tens of thousands of tireless volunteers, young and old alike, funded by literally hundreds of thousands of small contributors in every part of this nation.
Those who lingered on the brink of despair only a short time ago have been brought into this campaign, heart, hand, head and soul, and I have been the beneficiary of the most remarkable political organization in the history of this country.
It is an organization that gives dramatic proof to the power of love and to a faith that can literally move mountains.
As Yeats put it, “Count where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say: My glory was I had such friends.”
This is the people’s nomination and next January we will restore the government to the people of this country.
I believe that American politics will never be quite the same again.
We are entering a new period of important and hopeful change in America, a period comparable to those eras that unleashed such remarkable ferment in the period of Jefferson and Jackson and Roosevelt.
Let the opposition collect their $10 million in secret money from the privileged few and let us find one million ordinary Americans who will contribute $25 each to this campaign, a Million Member Club with members who will not expect special favors for themselves but a better land for us all.
In the literature and music of our children we are told, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. And for America, the time has come at last.
This is the time for truth, not falsehood. In a Democratic nation, no one likes to say that his inspiration came from secret arrangements by closed doors, but in the sense that is how my candidacy began. I am here as your candidate tonight in large part because during four administrations of both parties, a terrible war has been chartered behind closed doors.
I want those doors opened and I want that war closed. And I make these pledges above all others: the doors of government will be opened, and that war will be closed.
Truth is a habit of integrity, not a strategy of politics, and if we nurture the habit of truth in this campaign, we will continue to be truthful once we are in the White House.
Let us say to Americans, as Woodrow Wilson said in his first campaign of 1912, “Let me inside the government and I will tell you what is going on there.”
Wilson believed, and I believe, that the destiny of America is always safer in the hands of the people then in the conference rooms of any elite.
So let us give our – let us give your country the chance to elect a Government that will seek and speak the truth, for this is the time for the truth in the life of this country.
And this is also a time, not for death, but for life. In 1968 many Americans thought they were voting to bring our sons home from Vietnam in peace, and since then 20,000 of our sons have come home in coffins.
I have no secret plan for peace. I have a public plan. And as one whose heart has ached for the past ten years over the agony of Vietnam, I will halt a senseless bombing of Indochina on Inaugural Day.
There will be no more Asian children running ablaze from bombed-out schools. There will be no more talk of bombing the dikes or the cities of the North.
And within 90 days of my inauguration, every American soldier and every American prisoner will be out of the jungle and out of their cells and then home in America where they belong.
And then let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad.
This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves.
I treasure this nomination, especially because it comes after vigorous competition with the ablest men and women our party has to offer.
-- my old and treasured friend and neighbor, Hubert Humphrey;
-- a gracious and a good man from the state of Maine, Ed Muskie;
-- a tough fighter for his own convictions, Scoop Jackson of Washington;
-- and a brave and spirited woman, Shirley Chisholm;
-- a wise and effective lawmaker from Arkansas, Wilbur Mills;
-- And the man from North Carolina who over the years has opened new vistas in education and public excellence, Terry Sanford;
-- the leader who in 1968 combined both the travail and the hope of the American spirit, Senator Eugene McCarthy;
-- And I was as moved as well by the appearance in the Convention Hall of the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace. His votes in the primaries showed clearly the depth of discontent in this country, and his courage in the face of pain and adversity is the mark of a man of boundless will, despite the senseless act that disrupted his campaign. And, Governor, we pray for your full recovery so you can stand up and speak out for all of those who see you as their champion.
Now, in the months ahead I deeply covet the help of every Democrat, of every Republican, of every Independent who wants this country to be a great and good land that it can be.
This is going to be a national campaign, carried to every part of the nation -- North, South, East and West. We’re not conceding a single state to Richard Nixon.
I should like to say to my friend, Frank King, that Ohio may have passed a few times in this convention, but Tom Eagleton and I are not going to pass Ohio.
I shall say to Governor Gilligan, Ohio is sometimes a little slow in counting the votes, but when those votes are counted next November, Ohio will be in the Democratic victory column.
Now, to anyone in this hall or beyond who doubts the ability of Democrats to join together in common cause, I say never underestimate the power of Richard Nixon to bring harmony to Democratic ranks. He is the unwitting unifier and the fundamental issue of this national campaign and all of us are going to help him redeem a pledge made ten years ago -- that next year you won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore.
We have had our fury and our frustrations in these past months and at this Convention, but frankly, I welcome the contrast with the smug and dull and empty event which will doubtless take place here in Miami next month.
We chose this struggle, we reformed our Party, and we let the people in. So we stand today not as a collection of backroom strategies, not as a tool of ITT or any other special interest. So let our opponents stand on the status quo while we seek to refresh the American spirit.
I believe that the greatest contribution America can now make to our fellow mortals is to heal our own great but very deeply troubled land. We must respond -- we must respond to that ancient command: “Physician, heal thyself.”
Now, it is necessary in an age of nuclear power and hostile forces that we’ll be militarily strong. America must never become a second-rate nation. As one who has tasted the bitter fruits of our weakness before Pearl Harbor in 1941, I give you my pledge that if I become the President of the United States, America will keep its defenses alert and fully sufficient to meet any danger.
We will do that not only for ourselves, but for those who deserve and need the shield of our strength -- our old allies in Europe and elsewhere, including the people of Israel who will always have our help to hold their Promised Land.
Yet I believe that every man and woman in this Convention Hall knows that for 30 years we have been so absorbed with fear and danger from abroad that we have permitted our own house to fall into disarray.
We must now show that peace and prosperity can exist side by side. Indeed, each now depends on the existence of the other. National strength includes the credibility of our system in the eyes of our own people as well as the credibility of our deterrent in the eyes of others abroad.
National security includes schools for our children as well as silos for our missiles.
It includes the health of our families as much as the size of our bombs, the safety of our streets, and the condition of our cities, and not just the engines of war.
If we some day choke on the pollution of our own air, there will be little consolation in leaving behind a dying continent ringed with steel.
So while protecting ourselves abroad, let us form a more perfect union here at home. And this is the time for that task.
We must also make this a time of justice and jobs for all our people. For more than three and half years we have tolerated stagnation and a rising level of joblessness, with more than five million of our best workers unemployed at this very moment. Surely, this is the most false and wasteful economics of all.
Our deep need is not for idleness but for new housing and hospitals, for facilities to combat pollution and take us home from work, for better products able to compete on vigorous world markets.
The highest single domestic priority of the next administration will be to ensure that every American able to work has a job to.
That job guarantee will and must depend on a reinvigorated private economy, freed at last from the uncertainties and burdens of war, but it is our firm commitment that whatever employment the private sector does not provide, the Federal government will either stimulate or provide itself.
Whatever it takes, this country is going back to work. America cannot exist with most of our people working and paying taxes to support too many others mired in a demeaning and hopeless welfare mess.
Therefore, we intend to begin by putting millions back to work and after that is done, we will assure to those unable to work an income fully adequate to a decent life.
Now beyond this, a program to put America back to work demands that work be properly rewarded. That means the end of a system of economic controls in which labor is depressed, but prices and corporate profit run sky-high.
It means a system of national health insurance so that a worker can afford decent health care for himself and his family.
It means real enforcement of the laws so that the drug racketeers are put behind bars and our streets are once again safe for our families.
And above all, above all, honest work must be rewarded by a fair and just tax system.
The tax system today does not reward hard work: it’s penalizes it. Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself while paying no taxes at all. But wages on the assembly line or in farming the land, these hard – earned dollars are taxed to the very last penny.
There is a depletion allowance for oil wells, but no depletion for the farmer who feeds us, or the worker who serves as all.
The administration tells us that we should not discuss tax reform and the election year. They would prefer to keep all discussion of the tax laws in closed rooms where the administration, its powerful friends, and their paid lobbyists, can turn every effort at reform into a new loophole for the rich and powerful.
But an election year is the people’s year to speak, and this year, the people are going to ensure that the tax system is changed so that work is rewarded and so that those who derive the highest benefits will pay their fair share rather than slipping through the loopholes at the expense of the rest of us.
So let us stand for justice and jobs and against special privilege.
And this is the time to stand for those things that are close to the American spirit. We are not content with things as they are. We reject the view of those who say, “America -- love it or leave it. “ We reply, ”Let us change it so we may love it the more.”
And this is the time. It is the time for this land to become again a witness to the world for what is just and noble in human affairs. It is time to live more with faith and less with fear, with an abiding confidence that can sweep away the strongest barriers between us and teach us that we are truly brothers and sisters.
So join with me in this campaign. Lend Senator Eagleton and me your strength and your support, and together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning.
From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America.
From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.
From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick -- come home, America.
Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward.
Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world, and let us be joyful in that homecoming, for this “is your land, this land is my land -- from California to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters -- this land was made for you and me.”
So let us close on this note: May God grant each one of us the wisdom to cherish this good land and to meet the great challenge that beckons us home.
And now is the time to meet that challenge.
Good night, and Godspeed to you all.
# # #
Source: George S. McGovern Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
February 8, 1972
The Honorable
Robert C. Zimmerman
Secretary of State
Department of State
Madison, Wisconsin 53702
Dear Mr. Zimmerman
Your letter of February 1, advising me of the action taken by the Presidential Preference Committee of the State of Wisconsin, is much appreciated even though it leaves me in something of a quandary.
On many occasions, I have said publicly and privately that I do not have the time or the money to devote to the campaigning that would be required of me if I were entered or be entered in a Presidential primary in any of the state’s which require such primaries. The schedule the Committee on Ways and Means promises to be a heavy one in this session of the Congress, and I must reserve time to devote to the activities of the Committee. Those activities will not allow the absences from Washington that would be required by an active campaign.
On the other hand, knowing that my home state will offer my name in contention for the nomination at the Democratic National Convention and knowing that Democrats in other states will go to the Convention committed to support my home State, I cannot at this time some of the affidavit that the laws of Wisconsin require of me to remove my name from the Wisconsin ballot.
It is my hope that you and the people of Wisconsin will understand the problem I face and my inability to actively campaign in your State. I look forward to visiting with you in with them on those occasions when my efforts to help my Congressional friends from Wisconsin in their home Districts bring me to Wisconsin.
With kindest regards and best wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
Wilbur D. Mills
Courtesy Bailey Library, Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas
Shirley Chisholm 1972
January 25, 1972
BROOKLYN ANNOUNCEMENT
Shirley Chisholm at podium waving and smiling, clapping crowd.
I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America. (Clapping.)
I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud.” Clapping.
I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that.” Clapping.
I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests.” (Clapping. cheers).
I stand here now without endorsements from many big name politicians or celebrities or any other kind of prop. I do not intend to offer to you the tired and glib clichés, which for too long have been an accepted part of our political life. I am the candidate of the people of America. And my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history.
I have always earnestly believed in the great potential of America. Our constitutional democracy will soon celebrate its 200th anniversary, effective testimony, to the longevity to our cherished constitution and its unique bill of rights, which continues to give to the world an inspirational message of freedom and liberty.
We Americans are a dynamic people…”(This portion is missing from footage).
Fellow Americans, we have looked in vain to the Nixon administration for the courage, the spirit, the character and the words to lift us. To bring out the best in us, to rekindle in each of us our faith in the American dream. Yet all we have received in return is just another smooth exercise in political manipulation, deceit and deception, callousness and indifference to our individual problems and a disgusting playing of devices politics. Pinning the young against the old, labor against management, north against south, black against white. (Clapping.) The abiding concern of this administration has been one of political expediency, rather than the needs of man’s nature.
The president has broken his promises to us, and has therefore lost his claim to our trust and confidence in him. I cannot believe that this administration would ever have been elected four years ago, if we had known then what we know today. But we are entering a new era, in which we must, as Americans, must demand stature and size in our leadership — leadership, which is fresh, leadership, which is open, and leadership, which is receptive to the problems of all Americans.
I have faith in the American people. I believe that we are smart enough to correct our mistakes. I believe that we are intelligent enough to recognize the talent, energy, and dedication, which all American including women and minorities have to offer. I know from my travels to the cities and small towns of America that we have a vast potential, which can and must be put to constructive use in getting this great nation together. I know that millions of Americans, from all walks of life agree with me that leadership does not mean putting the ear to the ground, to follow public opinion, but to have the vision of what is necessary and the courage to make it possible, building a strong and just society, which in its diversity and is noble in its quality of life.
I stand before you today, to repudiate the ridiculous notion that the American people will not vote for qualified candidates, simply because he is not right or because she is not a male. I do not believe that in 1972, the great majority of Americans will continue to harbor such narrow and petty prejudice.
I am convinced that the American people are in a mood to disc the politics and political personalities of the past.
I believe that they will show in 1972, and thereafter, that they intend to make individual judgments on the merits of a particular candidate, based on that candidates intelligence, character, physical ability, competence, integrity, and honesty.” Clapping. “It is, I feel the duty of responsible leaders in this country to encourage and maximize, not to dismiss and minimize such judgment.”
Americans all over are demanding a new sensibility, a new philosophy of government from Washington. Instead of sending spies to snoop on participants on Earth Day, I would welcome the efforts of concerned citizens of all ages to stop the abuse of our environment. Instead of watching a football game on television, while young people beg for the attention of their President, concerning our actions abroad, I would encourage them to speak out, organize for peaceful change, and vote in November. Instead of blocking efforts to control huge amounts of money given political candidates by the rich and the powerful, I would provide certain limits on such amounts and encourage all people of this nation to contribute small sums to the candidates of their choice. Instead of calculating political cost of this or that policy, and of weighing in favors of this or that group, depending on whether that group voted for me in 1968, I would remind all Americans at this hour of the words of Abraham Lincoln, ‘A house divided, cannot stand.
“We Americans are all fellow countrymen. One day confronting the judgment of history in our country. We are all God’s children and a bit of each of us is as precious as the will of the most powerful general or corporate millionaire. Our will can create a new America in 1972, one where there is freedom from violence and war, at home and abroad, where there is freedom from poverty and discrimination, where there exists at least a feeling, that we are making progress and assuring for everyone medical care, employment, and decent housing. Where we more decisively clean up our streets, our water, and our air. Where we work together, black and white, to rebuild our neighborhoods and to make our cities quiet, attractive, and efficient and fundamentally where we live in the confidence that every man and every woman in America has at long last the opportunity to become all that he was created of being, such as his ability.
In conclusion, all of you who share this vision, from NY to CA, from WI to FL, are brothers and sisters on the road to national unity and a new America.” Clapping. “Those of you who were locked outside of the convention hall in 1968, those of you who can now vote for the first time, those of you who agree with me that the institutions of this country belong to all of the people who inhabit it. Those of you who have been neglected, left out, ignored, forgotten, or shunned aside for whatever reason, give me your help at this hour. Join me in an effort to reshape our society and regain control of our destiny as we go down the Chisholm Trail for 1972. (Clapping. Cheering).
Source: Chisholm72.net
SENATOR HUBERT H. HUMPHREY
ANNOUNCEMENT OF CANDIDACY
FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
January 10, 1972
I have just signed a certificate declaring my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
I chose this historic site of Philadelphia to sign my declaration because it was here that our republic was born -- this city of William Penn who spoke of peace and brotherhood and Thomas Jefferson and gave us the great documents of our democracy. It was here that “We the people…” was proclaimed as the foundation of our institutions.
The next President of the United States will join all Americans in commemorating the 200th anniversary our country.
Will we then be a country at peace with others?
Will we be a country at peace with ourselves?
Will we have healed the wounds of war, violence, and bitterness?
Will our system of government be sensitive and responsive to the pressures of change that flooded in upon us? Or will we be paralyzed or muscle-bound?
Will we have stirred America to a higher standard of living and a better quality of life?
Will Americans be at work – building, creating, developing?
Or will we still be limping along, despondent, divided and discouraged?
These are the great issues of this election. The man who occupies the Presidency has the obligation and the opportunity to revive that feeling of common purpose which once inspired this nation -- that mutual respect among the generations, among the races in the groups in this country.
History will note the failures of the Nixon Administration and they will be the subject of this Presidential campaign. Regrettably, we cannot escape their consequences. What we do know, however, can help overcome them.
Let us face up to the realities of our present posture. Our urgent need is to end the war -- and to do it now. I served as the Vice President during the period of our heaviest involvement there. Yet when I spoke to the American people during my campaign for the presidency in 1968, I said that my experience had led me to the conviction that however noble the intent of three Presidents who felt that our Vietnam involvement was essential to our national security, that position was no longer valid. I pledged in 1968 to end the bombing, a cease-fire, and immediate troop withdrawal program. I would’ve carried out that pledge
It is taking Mr. Nixon longer to withdraw our troops than it took us to defeat Hitler. Had I been elected, we would now be out of that war. I repeat that pledge.
We must revitalize our economy and put our people to work.
We must create a respect for law and justice if we are to stop crime.
The attack on drug abuse which has taken on epidemic proportions must be given the highest priority.
A massive effort must begin to make our cities liveable, safe, and clean.
Farmers today are the victims of depression prices.
We must raise farm income. We must strengthen rural America so that its areas of poverty can become areas of beauty and the economic opportunity.
Our air, lakes, and streams must be cleansed.
The fulfillment of the American dream requires that every American family has a decent home, food, and health care and education.
These are difficult challenges, but to do less would be unworthy of us. To achieve these requires the energetic participation of government and the leadership and inspiration of a dedicated President.
Presidential delay, timidity, vetoes, divisiveness will not do the job. A total commitment is necessary, and it must be based on supreme confidence in the American people and our institutions.
Even three years of sustained indifference and error on the part of an administration with limited vision and understanding cannot fundamentally damage the underlying health and vitality of this nation.
America is not sick! What we lack of leadership and vision. “Without vision,” said Isaiah, “the people perish.”
America needs renewed faith in itself. The fabric of America is strong and resilient. Our nation has withstood civil war. We received into our midst wave after wave of immigrants who ultimately added the richness of cultural diversity. We have weathered economic depression and vast natural disasters. And while the threads of our civilization and national unity are often stretched taut, they have held and are stronger for their testing.
A nation that could build arsenals of awesome weapons in the pursuit of military objectives can build the schools and hospitals and the nurseries and the libraries necessary to enrich our lives.
A nation that developed a Marshall plan to rebuild Europe can develop another to rebuild our neighborhoods and crime-ridden cities.
A country that can reconcile its differences with war-time enemies and long-time rivals can summon the decency and justice necessary to reconcile the differences among our people.
Our task is reconciliation, rebuilding, and rebirth.
Our nation was founded on the principle of faith and trust in the people. The “We, the people…” of our Constitution’s Preamble has too often been forgotten by those who govern. But it is in the people that our strength, my strength lies.
We must bring into the mainstream of our society the energies, talents and experiences of millions of Americans who have been barred from full participation, or forgotten, or ignored, either by law or by custom.
And I do not speak alone of our national and racial minorities.
The women of America have rightly come to expect and demand full equality with men -- equal pay for equal work, equal access to the professions, removal of the artificial barriers that have barred those women who so desire from full participation in the intellectual, economic, and political life of our nation. Here again the President of United States must lead -- must persuade and encourage the community at large to change its way of thinking and acting.
The elderly of our nation have been neglected, shunted aside -- their experience and wisdom ignored. I pledge my energies to bring them back into the mainstream of American life.
To the young of this nation, we owe a paramount obligation -- the full opportunity to help strengthen that sense of community without which we cannot rebuild our nation.
The young must be full and effective partners in restoring the physical beauty and the human vitality of America – in fulfilling Jefferson’s dream of a people united in friendship, compassion, and mutual respect.
Jefferson was a young man when he drafted the Declaration of Independence. Some considered him radical. But in reality he and his fellows were true conservatives -- for above all they wished to conserve the freedom and liberty of the individual.
But even as we conserve the values of the past, our eyes must be set on the future. Our challenge today is to be as creative and wise as the men who met here 200 years ago.
Our times require the capacity to solve problems. I learned early in my public career that concern is not enough, outrage is not enough. Even a good idea is not enough. Certainly rhetoric is not enough. As Mayor, as Senator and as Vice President, I have learned to translate ideas and ideals into action.
It was not enough to speak against crime when I was a Mayor of Minneapolis. It was necessary to take action, and I proved that a big city could be cleaned up. It was perhaps easy to talk about Medicare for the elderly, a Youth Conservation Corps for the young and Peace Corps, but my initiative and action were required to bring about the legislation which did, in fact, create Medicare the Youth Conservation Corps and a Peace Corps.
It is all very fine to speak of peace. But I early decided that talk would be wasted if we could not get concrete action, and I’m proud of my role as an architect of the first treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
In my years of governments experience I have learned on other essential fact: we might suffer an occasional defeat. We all do.
But with determination and faith, a man or a nation can grow from defeat.
Persistence and tenacity are old American virtues. I was defeated for Mayor the first time I ran for office -- but I was elected the second time. I was defeated for the Vice Presidential nomination the first time -- but I was later nominated and elected. I was defeated for the Presidential nomination in 1960 -- but I was nominated 1968.
I was defeated in the Presidential election of 1968. But I return to the battle determined to mind to do my best to achieve victory in 1972.
We Americans have gone too much of the same kinds of trial and error, of victory and defeat, together. We have had disappointments -- we have taken some severe blows in the last several years. But I know we, the American People, are determined to get back on our feet, to put our house in order, and to get our country moving again.
Those who would lead the American people must demonstrate capacity for achievement. That should be the essential criterion, and it is that judgment that I would ask from the American people.
Let me now conclude by reading to you from an undelivered speech of a young President whose philosophy I share. He did not live to see his commitments fulfilled. The words of John F. Kennedy:
“For this is the time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do. Neither the fanatics nor the fainthearted are needed. And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the nation, and indeed, to all mankind…
“Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our nation’s future is at stake. Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause -- united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future – and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.”
With your trust and confidence we shall fulfill this commitment and achieve these goals.
Thank you.
Source: Humphrey for President Press Release, January 10, 1972.
Hubert H. Humphrey Papers, Minnesota Historical Society
John Ashbrook Campaign Announcement Speech
I am hereby formally declaring my candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination.
I am in this race to win, because I believe that only the tested principles of Republicanism can lead our party to victory this fall, and guide our country safely through the perils of the next four years.
In making this race, I need no finer example to inspire me than the man* whom the Republican voters of New Hampshire favored, on the basis of his record and his platform, in the primary of 1968, and whom the American people as a whole elected to the Presidency that November.
That man believed and declared that Communism was the deadly enemy of freedom, and that America must never betray the allies who stood with her in opposition to its advance.
That man warned that America's defenses were the absolutely indispensable basis, not only of her own freedom, but of all mankind's - and that those defenses were in jeopardy.
That man cried out against the huge federal deficits that underlay our galloping inflation, and called for a freer, less regimented economy and a substantial reduction in federal spending.
That man won the New Hampshire Republican primary and the national election - and deserved to.
I stand today where that man stood then; but where does he stand today?
He has led the drive to admit Red China into the United Nations, and watched the cynical expulsion of the Republic of China from that body - though the government on Taiwan is one of America's oldest and closest allies, and despite the fact that he had pledged less than a year ago that we would never desert it.
He has permitted our defenses to sink from a status of clear superiority to one of bare "sufficiency", and then still further to a level at which stark, irretrievable inferiority is less than two years away.
He has allowed a deficit of 30 billion dollars in the current fiscal year, with all that implies for the overheating of the economy and the inevitable accompanying inflation - and has then sought to mask the inflationary effect by imposing an absurd tangle of wage and price controls that are already being widely ignored, in large part because nobody can possibly understand them.
He has allowed still bigger deficits in the years ahead, and still more vicious cycles of inflation and regimentation, by calling for the early enactment of a Family Assistance Plan that will easily double the already swollen cost of welfare to the taxpaying citizens of this country.
Perhaps this is what the American people want. Perhaps, even, he is reflecting the wishes and expressing the judgment of the Republican voters throughout the nation. But I for one do not believe it, and I propose to put the matter to the test in the good old-fashioned democratic way.
In all humility, but conscious too of the importance of the issues at stake, and proud to carry in this contest the banner of responsible conservatism, I respectfully ask for the support and the votes of the registered Republicans of New Hampshire.
*Richard Nixon
Source: Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University
November 16, 1971
STATEMENT BY LOS ANGELES MAYOR SAM YORTY ON HIS CANDIDACY FOR THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY
Encouraged by the advice of many friends and supporters, I have decided to become a candidate for President. Our campaign is already well underway in New Hampshire.
We have no intention of trying to raise the huge sums of money necessary to enter all of the primaries. We will be selective. The California primary will climax our campaign. Other states may be added as the campaign progresses.
I have no illusions concerning the magnitude of this undertaking or the difficulties involved, but borrowing a line from the old hymn, “Lead kindly Light,“ let me say -- “I do not ask to see the distant scene – one step is enough for me.“ The first step is New Hampshire. After that, we shall see.
My position on issues will be that of a moderate Democrat -- a position I hope will appeal not only to a majority of Democrats but also to many Republicans who are disillusioned with the current resort to sheer political expediency by the Nixon administration in its effort to win re-election at all costs or by any means in 1972. Prior Nixon promises, positions or commitments, seem to mean nothing as 1972 approaches. I am sorry to see this. I do not like to see any President fail because when a President fails the nation suffers.
I have tried to help the President when I thought he was right, as, for instance, the seizure of Communist supplies in Cambodia. All of the other announced and unannounced Democratic candidates opposed this action. I advocated it. I think it was a major factor in making our withdrawals less hazardous to our Allies in Southeast Asia.
On another occasion, I tried to explain to our people President Thieu’s purpose in pushing election laws to limit the number of candidates seeking the presidency. All of the other Democratic contenders castigated him as if he were an enemy.
I would never have voted to help the Communist enemy by telling in advance what we would not do. The Cooper-Church Amendment did just that, yet all of the other Democratic candidates voted for it. In fact, if I had been President, I would have strongly resisted it and taken my case directly to the American people and asked their support. Instead, President Nixon caved in and of meekly sign the bill to which it had been added.
Lack of American Air liaison officers on the ground in the Laos operation increased South Vietnamese casualties 20%, according to expert opinion. So Cooper-Church and those who supported it not only sentenced many young South Vietnamese to their deaths, but also jeopardized a very important step toward our disengagement from Viet Nam.
I think if the President had opposed Cooper-Church and given our people an explanation of his position, it could have been defeated. But one of President Nixon’s serious weaknesses is an apparent lack of confidence in the common sense of the American people. This is coupled with a rather obvious lack of confidence in his own ability to inspire the confidence of the people by reasoning with them instead of playing political games.
To lead this nation successfully, it is necessary that a President at times go over the heads of the obstructionist politicians and appeal directly to the people as President Harry Truman did so effectively.
I firmly believe that our best chance to avert war is through strength. In this regard, President Nixon’s speech writers evidently do not talk to his policymakers. The speeches are strong, the policies are weak. As time goes on, I shall discuss this issue more fully.
We must not risk bungling or stumbling into another war because of weakness which might cause miscalculations by aggressors. Strength provides insurance against war. Weakness invites it. This is a lesson of history we should have learned by now if we don’t want to have to learn it again.
I do not think the so-called doves can succeed in “fastening the war around the President’s neck.” The commitment to our objective in Viet Nam goes back at least to President John F. Kennedy. In fact, Nixon is doing what the doves want. He is withdrawing but calling it “Vietnamization“– a typical example of Nixon’s political gamesmanship.
I have never approved of our conduct of the war in Southeast Asia. I opposed our connivance in the overthrow of President Diem and I said so. Only now are the facts about this tragedy beginning to get some public attention.
I opposed the severe political restraints on our military operations while young men’s lives were at stake. I said so publicly and emphatically. I personally urged President Johnson to relax some political restraints and get the war over with. I went so far as to tell President Johnson I felt he had no right to send 19-year-old Americans to Viet Nam to risk their lives under political restrictions depriving them of the use of American technology to save their lives and punish the aggressor.
Our foreign policy is in disarray. Our friends are confused. Our statement of purpose lack credibility and free world solidarity is diminishing. As an example, when Red China was admitted to the United Nations with our consent and Taiwan ousted over our apparent objection, there was doubt in the minds of many concerning our real desire.
In the Middle East, we are pressuring Israel to make another piecemeal settlement with the Arabs including withdrawal in the Sinai and opening of the Suez Canal -- a move that would facilitate movement of the growing Russian naval fleet to Indian Ocean bases available to it and also greatly shorten the Russian naval supply line to Hanoi via this route. The problems we face in this area are complicated but there is a clear need for face-to-face negotiations between the parties themselves and an understanding on our part of the Israeli reluctance to be pressured into another interim stop-gap arrangement with no real peace in sight.
The most obvious failure of the Nixon administration is in the field of economics. The early deliberate drastic reigning-in of this economy snowballed downward so fast the administration panicked as the 1972 election loomed over the horizon. All promises were promptly forgotten. Fiscal irresponsibility and political expediency became the order of the day – anything to get by ‘72 with no thought of what comes after.
Too many Washington politicians learned they can finance programs with printing press money by piling debts on this and future generations. This is not only fiscal madness, it is grossly unfair to young people coming into the economy saddled with a huge tax-eating debt.
In eight years under President Harry Truman, the national debt was increased $1.6 billion. This year alone, the Nixon administration will cause a deficit of $30 billion and maybe even more. A previous Nixon deficit budget was deceptively labeled a “full employment budget“ and a “self fulfilling prophecy.“ It was neither. Now even the pretense of fiscal responsibility has been brushed aside. While the administration fuels the fire of inflation with one hand, it is forced to hold the other hand on the lid of the boiling pot in a desperate effort to postpone the consequences until after 1972. As a result, the marvelously productive American free enterprise system has been placed in a straitjacket -- its future clouded with uncertainty -- its performance threatened by political manipulation. And yet, we see Democratic candidates insisting that the administration spend even more and tax less. They do not hesitate to propose politically popular spending programs but they do hesitate to vote for the taxes to pay the costs. It is easier and more expedient just to pass the costs on to future generations by piling up the national debt and let others worry with it later.
Obviously, to generate the kind of revenue required to finance Federal programs, we must drastically overhaul our tax system. It cannot be done merely adding to our present hodge-podge. Many of these Democratic candidates destroyed thousands of useful jobs when they forced the costly abandonment of our supersonic transport program. Our people’s tax money invested in the program was thrown down the drain, our leadership in commercial aviation abandoned, and an important export item lost to politics. Senator Jackson, who comes from Washington, did support the Boeing SST, but he refused to help save the Lockheed L-1011 which is now providing useful work for thousands of our aerospace workers.
I believe most Americans want and are entitled to a responsible alternative to the Nixon administration. I don’t believe the current crop of Washington politicians can provide an acceptable alternative to moderate Americans, both Democrats and Republicans.
I am entering the contest not because of any personal desire to wield power or to seek glory. I have had, thanks to the people, an opportunity to serve in state, national and local government over of time span going back to 1936. I’ve taken my lumps for saying what I believe, such as in 1940 when I advocated a declaration of war on Hitler. I was soundly defeated, but what I predicted came to pass. I voluntarily give up my career, joined the armed forces and spent three years of my life in a war that could have been avoided if political leaders had put politics aside and leveled with the people.
I do not want to see another generation of young Americans march off to war because of short-sighted politicians. If the American people wish me to use my long experience to help correct our national course, I am ready. I will not use a coterie of researchers and speech writers to tell me what to think and say. The views I express will be mine. The image alone will be my own and not something fabricated for a campaign by public relations experts.
Courtesy: Yorty For President Committee
Upon Delivery
Friday, September 24, 1971
10:30 a.m.
STATEMENT OF U.S. SENATOR FRED R. HARRIS
AT PRESS CONFERENCE, CAUCUS ROOM,
OLD SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C.
My father is a small farmer in southwest Oklahoma. My wife, LaDonna, is a militant woman and an activist member of the Comanche Indian Tribe. Our daughter, Kathryn, is a college senior.
My father has less than a high school education. He works twice as hard as most Americans. He knows he pays more than his fair share of taxes, while a lot of rich people do not. He is a proud man. He has always been able to take care of his own, through hard work. Now, as is true of most small farmers and working men and women, he is worse off economically than he has been since the Depression. Everything he buys costs more, but his own real income is less.
My mother suffered a stroke three years ago and has been in a coma since then. My father cannot pay my mother's medical bills. And he's hurt and angry about that.
He knows it doesn’t have to be that way.
My wife grew up in a home where Comanche was the first language. She resents the fact that maximum security prisons are mostly peopled by blacks, chicanos, American Indians, Puerto Ricans and poor people. She never believed that George Jackson was shot in the top of the head from a guard tower. Something told her that the Attica hostages didn't die at the hands of the prisoners. She was right.
My daughter wonders why a government that can trace Angela Davis to a motel room can’t stop the heroin traffic. She says aloud what a lot of older people haven’t yet put into words: human values are the most important, and America needs something to believe in.
I have listened to black people in San Francisco, old people in Miami, students in Des Moines, small farmers in Oklahoma, working men and women in Akron, activist women in New York and Vietnam veterans in Albuquerque.
Two strong impressions emerge:
--A lot of people can't believe America has ever been to the moon. That's because they doubt the credibility of government. And because it seems so illogical to them that our nation could spend so much money on space when so many of our people here on earth can't buy medical care.
--Most people don’t believe that it makes much difference what politician is elected. They don't really believe things are going to change.
1972 is a crucial year. America won’t be the same in 1976. I intend to try to turn this country around before it's too late.
I am a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
People have a right to believe that if they get interested in a presidential campaign things will change.
I believe that a President can call this country back to the greatness that is in us. I mean to try.
I mean to give people a voice through the campaign itself. I intend to hold hearings on the problems of the elderly. I mean to visit the hospital wards with Vietnam veterans. I mean to go into the prisons and to walk the streets where working men and women live. A campaign itself can give power to the powerless. I mean to do that.
We can have a better distribution of income. We can have a better distribution of power. We can have a return to idealism in foreign policy.
Now is the time.
Source: Harris for President News Release
Courtesy: Fred Harris Collection, Carl Albert Congressional Archives,
University of Oklahoma
STATEMENT BY SENATOR GEORGE McGOVERN (D.-S.D.)
ANNOUNCING CANDIDACY FOR THE 1972 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
January 18, 1971
Today I announce my candidacy for the presidency of the United States. My wife, Eleanor and I have come home to South Dakota to make this announcement because here we shaped our basic political faith; here we were given the opportunity of public service. We are grateful to you for that opportunity and for your faith. We shall conduct this new effort to the honor of South Dakota, the nation, and ourselves.
You, my fellow South Dakotans, have not always agreed with my position on public issues. That was especially true in the early 1960’s when I stood almost alone in opposition to the sending of American troops to Southeast Asia. Despite these differences, you have rewarded my willingness to state my convictions freely and honestly. I anticipate the same fair hearing from citizens across the land. Thoughtful Americans understand that the highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to call her to a higher standard.
I seek the presidency because I believe deeply in the American promise and can no longer accept the diminishing of that promise. Our country began with a declaration of man’s rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.“ These liberating ideals gave such meaning and purpose to the new American nation that our forebears proclaimed, “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our Sacred honor.“
But today, our citizens no longer feel that they can shape their own lives in concert with their fellow citizens. Beyond that is the loss of confidence in the truthfulness and common sense of our leaders. The most painful new phrase in the American political vocabulary is “credibility gap” -- the gap between rhetoric and reality. Put bluntly it means that people no longer believe what their leaders tell them.
In this decade when we are about to observe the 200th anniversary of our country, we have a new opportunity to square the nation’s practices with its founding ideals. As we enter this period, we must undertake a re-examination of our ideas, institutions and the actual conditions of our life which is as fundamental as the discussions of the founding fathers two centuries ago.
A public figure today can perform no greater service than to lay bare the proven malfunctions of our society, try honestly to confront our problems in all their complexity, and stimulate the search for solutions. This is my intention in this campaign. And through my candidacy I intend to offer the American people a choice -- not between parties or ideologies, not between liberal and conservative or right or left. The choice is whether our civilization can serve the freedom and happiness of every citizen, or whether we will become the ever more helpless servants of a society we have raised up to rule our lives.
The issue is, of course, a cloak for many problems. Almost everyone senses the danger and almost no one can grasp its full dimensions or honestly claim to be possessed of full and sufficient answers. One thing, however, is very clear. We will not be helped to understanding by leadership built on image-making or public manipulation; by those who seek power by backroom deals, coalitions of self-interest, or by a continual effort to adjust their policies and beliefs to every seeming shift in public sentiment.
The kind of campaign I intend to run will rest on candor and reason; it will be rooted not in the manipulation of our fears and divisions, but in a national dialogue based on mutual respect and common hope. That kind of campaign takes time. And that is why I am making this announcement far ahead of the traditional day. People can be frightened, amazed and impressed in a moment. Reason and the communication of humane sentiment take longer. They are, however, more lasting and more powerful. And I have no doubt that the American people will think long and soberly before making the crucial decision of 1972. For my part, I make one pledge above all others -- to seek and speak the truth with all the resources of mind and spirit I command.
There is no higher standard to which our nation can repair then to the ideals of our founding documents. So as a candidate for the presidency, I shall see to call America home to these principles that gave us birth. I have found no better blueprint for healing our troubled land than is contained in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But I find a nation drifting so far from those ideals as to almost lose its way.
But while our problems are great, certain steps can be taken to recover the confidence of the nation. The greatness of our nation is not confined to the past, but beckons us to the future.
What other steps to future greatness?
First, we must have the courage to admit that however sincere our motives, we made a dreadful mistake in trying to settle the affairs of the Vietnamese people with American troops and bombers. I have opposed that intervention from the beginning, while our President and other presidential prospects were supporting it. There is now no way to end it or to free our prisoners except to announce a definite, early date for the withdrawal of every of American soldier. I make that pledge without reservation.
The tragedy of Vietnam does not mean that we are without vital interests abroad. Ironically, our obsession with Saigon has led to the neglect of such truly essential interests as the goodwill of Latin America, the survival of Israel and peace in the Middle East, and the opening of relations with China where one-third of the human race resides.
We are not likely to meet our responsibilities either at home or abroad until we remove the Southeast Asia albatross from our necks. This is the first order of business.
At home, we are beset by a most serious economic recession. This is the clearest weakness of the present administration -- a weakness marked by the worse inflation and the most severe unemployment in a decade. But that economic crisis can be solved by a coherent effort to gear our resources to the real needs of our society.
Ending the drain of Southeast Asia would relieve part of the inflationary pressure. Basing our defense budget on actual needs rather than imaginary fears would lead to further savings. Needless war and military waste contribute to the economic crisis not only through inflation, but by the dissipation of labor and resources and in non-productive enterprise.
For too long the taxes of our citizens and revenues desperately needed by our cities and states have been drawn into Washington and wasted on senseless war and unnecessary military gadgets. Each month, Washington wastes enough on military folly to rebuild an American city or give new life to a rural area. A major test of the 1970’s is the conversion of our economy from the excesses of war to the works of peace. I urgently call for conversion planning to utilize the talent and resources surplus to our military-space requirements for modernizing our industrial plant and meeting other peacetime needs.
There would be work for all if we set about the job of rebuilding our cities, renewing our rural economy, reconstructing our transportation system, and reversing the dangerous pollution of our air, lakes and streams.
A program of tax and credit incentives, combined with family farm income supports, would not only revitalize rural America but would reverse the flow of people into already congested cities.
These tasks call for an expanding economy, an adequate money supply, reasonable interest rates, and the selective use of wage and price guidelines.
Beyond these essential economic questions, we must reshape our institutions, our technology, our bureaucracy, and our political process so that they become our servants, not our masters.
We must search out and allay the anger of many working middle-income Americans burned by inequitable taxes, unpleasant neighborhoods, and shoddy goods and services.
We still need to harness the full moral force of our nation to put an end to the most outrageous moral failure of our history -- the lingering curse of racism. We must end, too, the plight of hunger, bad housing, and poor health services.
We need most of all to answer the craving of the human spirit for a sense of belonging, of personal choice, and of pride in family, job and country.
I offer a public record consistently devoted to these humane values.
I embark on this new journey fully aware both of its glories and of its difficulties. I am sustained by the growing conviction that we have a unique opportunity to redeem this great but troubled land.
I believe the people of this country are tired of the old rhetoric, the unmet promise, the image makers, and the practitioners of the expedient. The people are not centrist or liberal or conservative. Rather, they see a way out of the wilderness. But if we who seek their trust, trust them; if we try to invoke the “better angels of our nature,” the people will find their own way. We are the children of those who build a great and free nation. And we are no less than that. We must now decide whether our courage and imagination are equal to our talents. If they are, as I believe, then future generations will continue to love America, not simply because it is theirs, but for what it has become -- for what, indeed, we have made.
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Source: McGovern for President Press Release
George S. McGovern Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
FOR RELEASE AFTER 6:00 P.M. EST.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1972
This is the complete text of the announcement by Senator Edmund S. Muskie (D-Me) to seek the Presidency of the United States. The announcement was videotaped for broadcast over CBS television and radio at 8:20 p.m., EST, January 4, 1972.
“A NEW BEGINNING”
I have come home to Maine to announce my decision to seek the office of President of the United States.
I believe America can once again be a nation of moral leadership and high purpose . . . a symbol of hope for all mankind.
But tonight, our bombs are still falling on Indochina. Tonight, forty of us will be murdered and a thousand of us will be robbed on our own streets . . . and even in our own homes.
Tonight, five million of us will go to bed knowing that there is no job to wake up for in the morning.
Tonight, we are a divided and doubtful people, lacking a sense of purpose . . . worried about the lives we lead . . . and the lives we will leave our children.
This is not what America should be.
This is not the fulfillment of two centuries of hope and sacrifice.
A hundred years ago, the British scientist Thomas Huxley wrote of this nation: "I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources as such . . . the great issue . . . is what are you going to do with all these things?"
For a generation, what we have done has not been good enough.
It is not good enough to pile arms upon arms -- increasing daily in complexity, killpower, and cost -- arms which do not buy security.
It is not good enough to pile up concentrations of wealth and resources which do not touch the needs of hungry children, poor schools, inadequate housing, decaying cities, and insecure old age.
It is not good enough to produce a trillion dollars worth of goods and services each year, without adequate protection of the land, air, and water from which they come.
It is not good enough to pay ever heavier taxes which do not buy decent public services . . . which bear too heavily on those least able to pay . . . and which permit too many to escape their fair share of the burden.
It is not good enough when health care is beyond the reach of the sick because they are poor or old . . . because they live in ghettos or remote rural areas.
It is not good enough when so much productive work must be done, to see so many unskilled hands untrained, so many skilled hands idle, and so many farmers unable to earn a decent living from their land.
It is not good enough that so many of our children cannot break out of the cycle of poverty, or are subject to the temptations of drugs and crime, or are turned off by the misplaced values of our society.
It is not good enough that our freedom to move about freely without fear -- to enjoy our surroundings and make new friends -- has been narrowed and constricted by the need to protect ourselves from crime.
It is not good enough -- indeed it is indefensible -- that people are still dying, at our hands, in a war that is wrong . . . a war most Americans rejected long ago.
Most of us feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. Many feel powerless to stop it.
To them I say: we can do something about these problems.
Our capacity to work together -- once we talk to one another and understand each other -- is as deep as it was when the first Americans founded the country and when we welcomed the immigrants. There is not a single problem we do not have the resources to solve if our fears and quiet our doubts and renew our search for the common good.
And in that effort, the President must lead. A President must find and touch the common chords of our experience . . . challenge us to respond to our instincts . . . to realize America's -- that somewhere on this planet there can be full justice for every member of a society.
It would be foolish to blame all the nation's ills on the present administration. Some are part of the stresses of modern society. Others are rooted in the injustices of history. But government can lead. It can be truthful. And if our present leadership had been candid with the country, if they had been straightforward, we could have far more than we have.
We were promised an end to the war. We have been given a continuing war -- with more American deaths, more American prisoners taken., and a resumption of the massive bombing which was stopped in 1968.
We were promised price stability and prosperity. We have been given 6% inflation, 6% unemployment, the first trade deficit since 1893, an astronomical balance of payments deficit, a world monetary crisis, and forced devaluation of the dollar.
We were promised domestic peace. We have been given rising crime, a spreading drug culture, intimidation of the press, surveillance of private citizens, restriction of constitutional liberties, and growing distrust of each other and our government.
An administration that has so failed us in the past cannot take us to the future.
So this is what I offer and ask if you . . .
Not a promise to solve our problems overnight . . . but a commitment to make a new beginning.
I am seeking the Presidency . . . not merely to change presidents, but to change the country. I intend to lead -- to ask you to make America what it was to Abraham Lincoln -- “The last best hope of mankind.” I intend to ask you to try – and to be willing to try again if we fail. And I intend to ask everyone of you to pay a fair share of the costs of a decent society.
That challenge is great, but we can meet it.
We can bring freedom within the reach of every American . . . the freedom to escape poverty, deprivation, discrimination, and disease.
We can ensure that government shall be the servant, not the master of our people . . . responsive to our needs and voices and solicitous of our liberties.
We can enlarge our country’s influence and prestige around the world by demonstrating in all our policies, at home and abroad, our commitment to human dignity.
This is my commitment to you
The decision to run for the Presidency has not been an easy one. It will deeply change my life . . . and it will affect the members of my family for the rest of their lives. I take this step with their support . . . because they feel as strongly as I do about the country’s future.
Ultimately, of course, what is at stake is your future. I am not telling you that I can guarantee the best of all possible worlds. All I am asking is that we pledge a new beginning.
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Source: 'Muskie News' Press Release, Muskie for President Committee
Courtesy: The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, Bates College
FOR RELEASE AFTER 9:30 A. M.
Thursday, July 15, 1971
STATEMENT BY SENATOR HAROLD E. HUGHES PRESS CONFERENCE WASHINGTON, D. C.
In the past year and a half, it has been my good fortune to be mentioned in the public dialogue as one of a number of possible candidates for the Democratic nomination for President.
Considering the fact that I have been in the Senate only since January Of 1969 and have had limited national exposure, this mention has come as a surprise to me. I need scarcely add that I have also been greatly honored to be considered at all for this high office.
A committee of friends and supporters across the country has formed to enhance my national exposure and to encourage me to become a candidate. All they asked was that I seriously consider making the race. I have profoundly appreciated this early support and in turn have given the most serious con— sideration to the possibility of becoming a candidate. It was my plan to make a final decision toward the end of the current year.
In the meantime, the campaign for the Democratic nomination has accelerated at an unexpected pace for so early in the season. The list of candidates announced or about to announce is growing. The track is not yet congested, but it is rapidly filling.
It therefore seems important for me, injustice to those who have pledged their support, to make my intentions known somewhat earlier than I had planned.
As I assay the political prospects for the elections ahead, I have full confidence that 1972 will be a year of Democratic victory.
The entrenched, lavishly financed power of the incumbent Administration is awesome.
But national leadership that seems to regard the cancer of chronic, high unemployment as acceptable to our society and refuses to take decisive action to relieve the human misery caused by the frightening escalation of the cost of living will not, in my judgment, be returned to power.
Needlessly, this nation has become, for a few desolate years, the "pitiful, helpless giant" of which Mr. Nixon spoke in another context. We know what needs to be done to counter the forces that threaten our disintegration from within. But without leadership of high moral purpose, we are powerless to move.
This paralysis must not continue; I am convinced the American electorate will not permit it to continue.
If there has ever been an administration without heart for the problems that ordinary people have, this is the one. Its lack of candor with the public and with the Congress on both foreign and domestic matters is appalling. It is essential to restore to the citizenry the kind of government they can believe in. No matter how well financed this Administration may be, no matter how skillful and powerful it may be in manipulating public opinion, I am convinced the American people will reject a second term of Nixon as a body rejects an alien heart.
In the field of announced and not—yet—announced candidates of my party are a number of men of high character and qualifications for leadership. I believe this is a good omen that reflects credit on the party for its resources of talent and its rejection of political bossism. It has been suggested that the number of candidates may lead to fratricidal conflicts within our party. This is possible, but I believe the possibility is over-rated. It is far more important to have an open contest in which the party members have a free choice.
For this is no ordinary year. Our involvement in Southeast Asia has become an abscess that will continue to fester regardless of what this Administration may do to treat its symptoms. Our domestic priorities of jobs, the alleviation of poverty and hunger, the advancement of civil rights and equal opportunity, the equalization of tax burdens, the preservation of the environment, the protection of our public health and the conversion of our economy from a wartime to a peacetime basis, have been so grievously neglected that millions of Americans have lost faith in the capacity and concern of their government.
People are sick of the harsh invective and divisiveness. They deeply want to be a united people again, at peace with their neighbors and with other nations.
The drug problem, in which I have been closely involved, is a microcosm of our other great national ailments. It is a symbol of the neglect and tokenism that have marked our government’s approach to our other compelling problems. To a large degree, it is the product of poverty, racism, and the loss of hope.
This epidemic, in both our civilian society and our armed forces, is infinitely more serious, in my judgment, than most Americans have yet realized. If we don’t control this plague, the plague will control us, and I am personally committed to fight this battle with every ounce of strength I possess.
I am deeply motivated to do whatever I am able to do about this and the other problems I have mentioned. This is why the prospect of seeking the nomination has attracted me. My background has been primarily that of an administrator, as three —term governor of my native state. Whatever my short— comings may be, I feel I could have the drive and administrative capacity to carry through what I set out to accomplish, were I to occupy the office of chief executive.
I am mindful that my first responsibility to the people of my own state and of my country is to do full justice to my duties as a United States Senator. In this, I will admit to considerable frustration during the past year. My legislative efforts have been hampered, and my public statements have been discounted by imputation of presidential motives.
I am not complaining. This is simply the way the course is laid out. Those who have been on the national scene a while longer accumulate the experience that enables them to work effectively in legislative areas regardless of connotations of candidacy. And the tendency to tag everything they do with a political motive diminishes with the passage of time.
Just as I insist that we set new priorities for this troubled nation, so must I assess my own priorities.
I am now convinced that Ely greatest value to my country and to my state is to pursue the goals to which I am committed as a United States Senator, unimpeded by the label of presidential candidate.
Therefore, after months of thoughtful consideration, I have decided not to enter the lists as a candidate for my party's presidential nomination, and this decision is clear—cut and irrevocable.
I make this statement with regret, but with confidence that this is the best way in which I can serve.
My decision does not indicate any degree of retirement from the national political scene. If anything, I will be more active than before in speaking out on the issues and in contending to shape the course of our party in the directions I believe it must take for the country's good.
To the many good people who have pledged me their support, I can only give my heartfelt thanks. At this point, I want them to give their support to the candidate of their choice and this obviously was a prime motivation for my making this announcement at this time.
What can I say about the people from my own state who have pledged their support, up to the hilt of their energy and financial capability? What can I say about people from other states throughout the country, who, without knowing me that long, have said this is a man we believe in and will follow?
As for myself, I will watch with keen interest the development of the issues by all of the candidates in the field, and will lend any support to that candidate who is most forthright on the issues and most capable of carrying them out when he becomes our national leader. I have every intention of giving my full support to the Democratic nominee. This country has almost unlimited vitality, but we cannot stand another four years of this Administration.
I am deeply concerned about much of what I see in America today — the needless decay of our economy, the shameful neglect of our human problems, the wasteful military spending and our unwillingness to demilitarize our foreign policy.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Temporarily, we are a nation spellbound. But new leadership unafraid of change and innovation can break the spell. It will be my mission to seek and test for this leadership and to give it my full support when it emerges.
UNITED STATES SENATOR HAROLD E. HUGHES
DEMOCRAT OF IOWA
Source: Statement of Announcement. July 15, 1971, PRESS RELEASES AND RELATED MATERIAL, File — Box: S170Identifier: 438176, University of Iowa Special Collections, Harold E. Hughes Senatorial Papers (MsC0385.1)