JIMMY CARTER ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
OUR NATION’S PAST AND FUTURE
In accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for President,
Mr. Carter told the Democratic National Convention
meeting at Madison Square Garden in New York City on July 15, 1976:
My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for President.
It’s been a long time since I said those words the first time, and now I’ve come here after seeing our great country to accept your nomination.
I accept it, in the words of John F. Kennedy, with a full and grateful heart and with only one obligation: to devote every effort of body, mind and spirit to lead our party back to victory and our nation back to greatness.
It’s a pleasure to be here with all you Democrats and to see that our Bicentennial celebration and our Bicentennial convention has been one of decorum and order without any fights or free-for-alls. Among Democrats that can only happen once every two hundred years. With this kind of a united Democratic Party, we are ready, and eager, to take on the Republicans—whichever Republican Party they decide to send against us in November.
Nineteen seventy-six will not be a year of politics as usual. It can be a year of inspiration and hope, and it will be a year of concern, of quiet and sober reassessment of our nation’s character and purpose. It has already been a year when voters have confounded the experts. And I guarantee you that it will be the year when we give the government of this country back to the people of this country.
There is a new mood in America. We have been shaken by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken promises at home. Our people are searching for new voices and new ideas and new leaders.
Although government has its limits and cannot solve all our problems, we Americans reject the view that we must be reconciled to failures and mediocrity, or to an inferior quality of life. For I believe that we can come through this time of trouble stronger than ever. Like troops who have been in combat, we have been tempered in the fire; we have been disciplined, and we have been educated.
Guided by lasting and simple moral values, we have emerged idealists without illusions, realists who still know the old dreams of justice and liberty, of country and of community.
This year we have had thirty state primaries--more than ever before—making it possible to take our campaign directly to the people of America: to homes and shopping centers, to factory shift lines and colleges, to beauty parlors and barbershops, to farmers’ markets and union halls.
This has been a long and personal campaign—a humbling experience, reminding us that ultimate political influence rests not with the power brokers but with the people. This has been a time of tough debate on the important issues facing our country. This kind of debate is part of our tradition, and as Democrats we are heirs to a great tradition.
I have never met a Democratic President, but I have always been a Democrat.
Years ago, as a farm boy sitting outdoors with my family on the ground in the middle of the night, gathered close around a battery radio connected to the automobile battery and listening to the Democratic conventions in far-off cities, I was a long way from the selection process. I feel much closer to it tonight.
Ours is the party of the man who was nominated by those distant conventions and who inspired and restored this nation in its darkest hours—Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Ours is the party of a fighting Democrat who showed us that a common man could be an uncommon leader—Harry S. Truman.
Ours is the party of a brave young President who called the young at heart, regardless of age, to seek a “New Frontier” of national greatness—John F.
Kennedy.
And ours is also the party of a great-hearted Texan who took office in a tragic hour and who went on to do more than any other President in this century to advance the cause of human rights—Lyndon Johnson.
Our Party was built out of the sweatshops of the old Lower East Side, the dark mills of New Hampshire, the blazing hearths of Illinois, the coal mines of Pennsylvania, the hard-scrabble farms of the southern coastal plains, and the unlimited frontiers of America.
Ours is the party that welcomed generations of immigrants—the Jews, the
Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and all the others, enlisted them in its ranks and fought the political battles that helped bring them into the American mainstream.
And they have shaped the character of our party.
That is our heritage. Our party has not been perfect. We have made mistakes, and we have paid for them. But ours is a tradition of leadership and compassion and progress.
Our leaders have fought for every piece of progressive legislation, from RFD and REA to Social Security and civil rights. In times of need, the Democrats were there.
But in recent years our nation has seen a failure of leadership. We have been hurt, and we have been disillusioned. We have seen a wall go up that separates us from our own government.
We have lost some precious things that historically have bound our people and our government together. We feel that moral decay has weakened our country, that it is crippled by a lack of goals and values, and that our public officials have lost faith in us.
We have been a nation adrift too long. We have been without leadership too long. We have had divided and deadlocked government too long. We have been governed by veto too long. We have suffered enough at the hands of a tired and worn-out administration without new ideas, without youth or vitality, without vision and without the confidence of the American people. There is a fear that our best years are behind us. But I say to you that our nation’s best is still ahead.
Our country has lived through a time of torment. It is now a time for healing. We want to have faith again. We want to be proud again. We just want the truth again.
It is time for the people to run the government, and not the other way around.
It is the time to honor and strengthen our families and our neighborhoods and our diverse cultures and customs.
We need a Democratic President and a Congress to work in harmony for a change, with mutual respect for a change. And next year we are going to have that new leadership. You can depend on it!
It is time for America to move and to speak not with boasting and belligerence but with a quiet strength, to depend in world affairs not merely on the size of an arsenal but on the nobility of ideas, and to govern at home not by confusion and crisis but with grace and imagination and common sense.
Too many have had to suffer at the hands of a political economic elite who have shaped decisions and never had to account for mistakes or to suffer from injustice. When unemployment prevails, they never stand in line looking for a job.
When deprivation results from a confused and bewildering welfare system, they never do without food or clothing or a place to sleep. When the public schools are inferior or torn by strife, their children go to exclusive private schools. And when the bureaucracy is bloated and confused, the powerful always manage to discover and occupy niches of special influence and privilege. An unfair tax structure serves their needs. And tight secrecy always seems to prevent reform.
All of us must be careful not to cheat each other. Too often unholy, self perpetuating alliances have been formed between money and politics, and the average citizen has been held at arm’s length.
Each time our nation has made a serious mistake the American people have been excluded from the process. The tragedy of Vietnam and Cambodia, the disgrace of Watergate, and the embarrassment of the CIA revelations could have been avoided if our government had simply reflected the sound judgement and good common sense and the high moral character of the American people.
It is time for us to take a new look at our own government, to strip away the secrecy, to expose the unwarranted pressure of lobbyists, to eliminate waste, to release our civil servants from bureaucratic chaos, to provide tough management, and always to remember that in any town or city the mayor, the governor, and the President represent exactly the same constituents.
As a governor, I had to deal each day with the complicated and confused and overlapping and wasteful federal government bureaucracy. As President, I want you to help me evolve an efficient, economical, purposeful, and manageable government for our nation. Now, I recognize the difficulty, but if I’m elected, it’s going to be done. And you can depend on it!
We must strengthen the government closest to the people. Business, labor, agriculture, education, science, and government should not struggle in isolation from one another but should be able to strive toward mutual goals and shared opportunities. We should make major investments in people and not in buildings and weapons. The poor, the aged, the weak, the afflicted must be treated with respect and compassion and with love.
I have spoken a lot of times this year about love. But love must be aggressively translated into simple justice. The test of any government is not how popular it is with the powerful but how honestly and fairly it deals with those who must depend on it.
It is time for a complete overhaul of our income tax system. I still tell you: It is a disgrace to the human race. All my life I have heard promises about tax reform, but it never quite happens. With your help, we are finally going to make it happen. And you can depend on it.
Here is something that can really help our country: It is time for universal voter registration.
It is time for a nationwide comprehensive health program for all our people.
It is time to guarantee an end to discrimination because of race or sex by full involvement in the decision making process of government by those who know what it is to suffer from discrimination. And they’ll be in the government if I am elected.
It is time for the law to be enforced. We cannot educate children, we cannot create harmony among our people, we cannot preserve basic human freedom unless we have an orderly society.
Crime and lack of justice are especially cruel to those who are least able to protect themselves. Swift arrest and trial, fair and uniform punishment, should be expected by anyone who would break our laws.
It is time for our government leaders to respect the law no less than the humblest citizen, so that we can end once and for all a double standard of justice.
I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free and the poor ones go to jail.
A simple and a proper function of government is just to make it easy for us to do good and difficult for us to do wrong.
As an engineer, a planner, a businessman, I see clearly the value to our nation of a strong system of free enterprise based on increase productivity and adequate wages. We Democrats believe that competition is better than regulation, and we intend to combine strong safeguards for consumers with minimal intrusion of government in our free economic system.
I believe that anyone who is able to work ought to work--and ought to have a chance to work. We will never have an end to the inflationary spiral, we will never have a balanced budget—which I am determined to see--as long as we have eight or nine million Americans out of work who cannot find a job. Any system of economics is bankrupt if it sees either value or virtue in unemployment. We simply cannot check inflation by keeping people out of work.
The foremost responsibility of any President, above all else, is to guarantee the security of our nation—a guarantee of freedom from the threat of successful attack or blackmail, and the ability with our allies to maintain peace.
But peace is not the mere absence of war. Peace is action to stamp out international terrorism. Peace is the unceasing effort to preserve human rights.
Peace is a combined demonstration of strength and good will. We will pray for peace and we will work for peace, until we have removed from all nations for all time the threat of nuclear destruction.
America’s birth opened a new chapter in mankind’s history. Ours was the first nation to dedicate itself clearly to basic moral and philosophical principles: that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the power of government is derived from the consent of the governed.
This national commitment was a singular act of wisdom and courage, and it brought the best and the bravest from other nations to our shores. It was a revolutionary development that captured the imagination of mankind. It created a basis for a unique role of America—that of a pioneer in shaping more decent and just relations among people and among societies.
Today, two hundred years later, we must address ourselves to that role, both in what we do at home and how we act abroad—among people everywhere who have become politically more alert, socially more congested, and increasingly impatient with global inequities, and who are now organized, as you know, into some one hundred and fifty different nations. This calls for nothing less than a sustained architectural effort to shape an international framework of peace within which our own ideals gradually can become a global reality.
Our nation should always derive its character directly from the people and let this be the strength and the image to be presented to the world—the character of the American people.
To our friends and allies I say that what unites us through our common dedication to democracy is much more important than that which occasionally divides us on economics or politics. To the nations that seek to lift themselves from poverty I say that America shares your aspirations and extends its hand to you. To those nation-states that wish to compete with us I say that we neither fear competition nor see it as an obstacle to wider cooperation. To all people I say that after two hundred years America still remains confident and youthful in its commitment to freedom and equality, and we always will be.
During this election year we candidates will ask you for your votes, and from us will be demanded our vision.
My vision of this nation and its future has been deepened and matured during the nineteen months that I have campaigned among you for President. I have never had more faith in America than I do today. We have an America that, in Bob Dylan’s phrase, is busy being born, not busy dying.
We can have an America that has reconciled its economic needs with its desire for an environment that we can pass on with pride to the next generation.
We can have an America that provides excellence in education to my child and your child and every child.
We can have an America that encourages and takes pride in our ethnic diversity, our religious diversity, our cultural diversity—knowing that out of this pluralistic heritage has come the strength and the vitality and the creativity that has made us great and will keep us great.
We can have an American government that does not oppress or spy on its own people but respects our dignity and our privacy and our right to be let alone.
We can have an America where freedom, on the one hand, and equality, on the other hand, are mutually supportive and not in conflict, and where the dreams of our nation’s first leaders are fully realized in our own day and age.
And we can have an America which harnesses the idealism of the student, the compassion of a nurse or the social worker, the determination of a farmer, the wisdom of a teacher, the practicality of the business leader, the experience of the senior citizen, and the hope of a laborer to build a better life for us all. And we can have it, and we’re going to have it!
As I’ve said many times before, we can have an American President who does not govern with negativism and fear of the future, but with vigor and vision and aggressive leadership—a President who’s not isolated from the people, but who feels your pain and shares your dreams and takes his strength and his wisdom and his courage from you.
I see an America on the move again, united, a diverse and vital and tolerant nation, entering our third century with pride and confidence, an America that lives up to the majesty of our Constitution and the simple decency of our people.
This is the America we want. This is the America that we will have.
We will go forward from this convention with some differences of opinion perhaps, but nevertheless united in a calm determination to make our country large and driving and generous in spirit once again, ready to embark on great national deeds. And once again, as brothers and sisters, our hearts will swell with pride to call ourselves Americans.
Source: Jimmy Carter Library and Museum
President Gerald R. Ford's Remarks in Kansas City Upon Accepting the 1976 Republican Presidential Nomination
August 19, 1976
Mr. Chairman, delegates and alternates to this Republican Convention:
I am honored by your nomination, and I accept it with pride, with gratitude, and with a total will to win a great victory for the American people. We will wage a winning campaign in every region of this country, from the snowy banks of Minnesota to the sandy plains of Georgia. We concede not a single State. We concede not a single vote.
This evening I am proud to stand before this great convention as the first incumbent President since Dwight D. Eisenhower who can tell the American people America is at peace.
Tonight I can tell you straightaway this Nation is sound, this Nation is secure, this Nation is on the march to full economic recovery and a better quality of life for all Americans.
And I will tell you one more thing: This year the issues are on our side. I am ready, I am eager to go before the American people and debate the real issues face to face with Jimmy Carter.
The American people have a right to know firsthand exactly where both of us stand.
I am deeply grateful to those who stood with me in winning the nomination of the party whose cause I have served all of my adult life. I respect the convictions of those who want a change in Washington. I want a change, too. After 22 long years of majority misrule, let's change the United States Congress.
My gratitude tonight reaches far beyond this arena to countless friends whose confidence, hard work, and unselfish support have brought me to this moment. It would be unfair to single out anyone, but may I make an exception for my wonderful family-Mike, Jack, Steve, and Susan and especially my dear wife, Betty.
We Republicans have had some tough competition. We not only preach the virtues of competition, we practice them. But to- night we come together not on a battlefield to conclude a cease- fire, but to join forces on a training field that has conditioned us all for the rugged contest ahead. Let me say this from the bottom of my heart: After the scrimmages of the past few months, it really feels good to have Ron Reagan on the same side of the line.
To strengthen our championship lineup, the convention has wisely chosen one of the ablest Americans as our next Vice President, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. With his help, with your help, with the help of millions of Americans who cherish peace, who want freedom preserved, prosperity shared, and pride in America, we will win this election. I speak not of a Republican victory, but a victory for the American people.
You at home listening tonight, you are the people who pay the taxes and obey the laws. You are the people who make our system work. You are the people who make America what it is. It is from your ranks that I come and on your side that I stand.
Something wonderful happened to this country of ours the past 2 years. We all came to realize it on the Fourth of July. Together, out of years of turmoil and tragedy, wars and riots, assassinations and wrongdoing in high places, Americans recaptured the spirit of 1776. We saw again the pioneer vision of our revolutionary founders and our immigrant ancestors. Their vision was of free men and free women enjoying limited government and unlimited opportunity. The mandate I want in 1976 is to make this vision a reality, but it will take the voices and the votes of many more Americans who are not Republicans to make that mandate binding and my mission possible.
I have been called an unelected President, an accidental President. We may even hear that again from the other party, despite the fact that I was welcomed and endorsed by an overwhelming majority of their elected representatives in the Congress who certified my fitness to our highest office. Having become Vice President and President without expecting or seeking either, I have a special feeling toward these high offices. To me, the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency were not prizes to be won, but a duty to be done.
So, tonight it is not the power and the glamour of the Presidency that leads me to ask for another 4 years; it is something every hard-working American will understand-the challenge of a job well begun, but far from finished.
Two years ago, on August 9,1974, 1 placed my hand on the Bible, which Betty held, and took the same constitutional oath that was administered to George Washington. I had faith in our people, in our institutions, and in myself. "My fellow Americans," I said, "our long national nightmare is over."
It was an hour in our history that troubled our minds and tore at our hearts. Anger and hatred had risen to dangerous levels, dividing friends and families. The polarization -of our political order had aroused unworthy passions of reprisal and revenge. Our governmental system was closer to stalemate than at any time since Abraham Lincoln took the same oath of office. Our economy was in the throes of runaway inflation, taking us headlong into the worst recession since Franklin D. Roosevelt took the same oath.
On that dark day I told my fellow countrymen, "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers."
On a marble fireplace in the -White House is carved a prayer which John Adams wrote. It concludes, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." Since I have resided in that historic house, I have tried to live by that prayer. I faced many tough problems. I probably made some mistakes, but on balance, America and Americans have made an incredible comeback since August 1974. Nobody can honestly say otherwise. And the plain truth is that the great progress we have made at home and abroad was in spite of the majority who run the Congress of the United States.
For 2 years I have stood for all the people against a vote- hungry, free-spending congressional majority on Capitol Hill. Fifty-five times I vetoed extravagant and unwise legislation; 45 times I made those vetoes stick. Those vetoes have saved American taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. I am against the big tax spender and for the little taxpayer.
I called for a permanent tax cut, coupled with spending reductions, to stimulate the economy and relieve hard-pressed, middle-income taxpayers. Your personal exemption must be raised from $750 to $1,000. The other party's platform talks about tax reform, but there is one big problem-their own Congress won't act.
I called for reasonable constitutional restrictions on court-ordered busing of schoolchildren, but the other party's platform concedes that busing should be a last resort. But there is the same problem-their own Congress won't act.
I called for a major overhaul of criminal laws to crack down on crime and illegal drugs. The other party's platform deplores America's $90 billion cost of crime. There is the problem again- their own Congress won't act.
The other party's platform talks about a strong defense. Now, here is the other side of the problem-their own Congress did act. They slashed $50 billion from our national defense needs in the last 10 years.
My friends, Washington is not the problem; their Congress is the problem.
You know, the President of the United States is not a magician who can wave a wand or sign a paper that will instantly end a war, cure a recession, or make bureaucracy disappear. A President has immense powers under the Constitution, but all of them ultimately come from the American people and their mandate to him. That is why, tonight, I turn to the American people and ask not only for your prayers but also for your strength and your support, for your voice, and for your vote.
I come before you with a 2-year record of performance without your mandate. I offer you a 4-year pledge of greater performance with your mandate. As Governor Al Smith used to say, "Let's look at the record."
Two years ago inflation was 12 percent. Sales were off. Plants were shut down. Thousands were being laid off every week.
Fear of the future was throttling .down our economy and threatening millions of families.
Let's look at the record since August 1974. Inflation has been cut in half. Payrolls are up. Profits are up. Production is up. Purchases are up. Since the recession was turned around, almost 4 million of our fellow Americans have found new jobs or got their old jobs back. This year more men and women have jobs than ever before in the history of the United States. Confidence has returned, and we are in the full surge of sound recovery to steady prosperity.
Two years ago America was mired in withdrawal from Southeast Asia. A decade of Congresses had shortchanged our global defenses and threatened our strategic posture. Mounting tension between Israel and the Arab nations made another war seem inevitable. The whole world watched and wondered where America was going. Did we in our domestic turmoil have the will, the stamina, and the unity to stand up for freedom?
Look at the record since August, 2 years ago. Today America is at peace and seeks peace for all nations. Not a single American is at war anywhere on the face of this Earth tonight.
Our ties with Western Europe and Japan, economic as well as military, were never stronger. Our relations with Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and mainland China are firm, vigilant, and forward looking. Policies I have initiated offer sound progress for the peoples of the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. Israel and Egypt, both trusting the United States, have taken an historic step that promises an eventual just settlement for the whole Middle East.
The world now respects America's policy of peace through strength. The United States is again the confident leader of the free world. Nobody questions our dedication to peace, but nobody doubts our willingness to use our strength when our vital interests are at stake, and we will. I called for an up-to-date, powerful Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines that will keep America secure for decades. A strong military posture is always the best insurance for peace. But America's strength has never rested on arms alone. It is rooted in our mutual commitment of our citizens and leaders in the highest standards of ethics and morality and in the spiritual renewal which our Nation is under- going right now.
Two years ago people's confidence in their highest officials, to whom they had overwhelmingly entrusted power, had twice been shattered. Losing faith in the word of their elected leaders, Americans lost some of their own faith in themselves.
Again, let's look at the record since August 1974. From the start my administration has been open, candid, forthright. While my entire public and private life was under searching examination for the Vice-Presidency, I reaffirmed my lifelong conviction that truth is the glue that holds government together-not only government but civilization itself. I have demanded honesty, decency, and personal integrity from everybody in the executive branch of the Government. The House and Senate have the same duty.
The American people will not accept a double standard in the United States Congress. Those who make our laws today must not debase the reputation of our great legislative bodies that have given us such giants as Daniel Webster Henry Clay, Sam Rayburn, and Robert A. Taft. Whether in the Nation's Capital, the State capital, or city hall, private morality and public trust must go together.
From August of 1974 to August of 1976, the record shows steady progress upward toward prosperity, peace, and public trust. My record is one of progress, not platitudes. My record is one of specifics, not smiles. My record is one of performance, not promises. It is a record I am proud to run on. It is a record the American people-Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike-will support on November 2.
For the next 4 years I pledge to you that I will hold to the steady course we have begun. But I have no intention of standing on the record alone.
We will continue winning the fight against inflation. We will go on reducing the dead weight and impudence of bureaucracy.
We will submit a balanced budget by 1978.
We will improve the quality of life at work, at play, and in our homes and in our neighborhoods. We will not abandon our cities. We will encourage urban programs which assure safety in the streets, create healthy environments, and restore neighborhood pride. We will return control of our children's education to parents and local school authorities.
We will make sure that the party of Lincoln remains the party of equal rights.
We will create a tax structure that is fair for all our citizens, one that preserves the continuity of the family home, the family farm, and the family business.
We will ensure the integrity of the social security system and improve Medicare so that our older citizens can enjoy the health and the happiness that they have earned. There is no reason they should have to go broke just to get well.
We will make sure that this rich Nation does not neglect citizens who are less fortunate, but provides for their needs with compassion and with dignity.
We will reduce the growth and the cost of government and allow individual breadwinners and businesses to keep more of the money that they earn.
We will create a climate in which our economy will provide a meaningful job for everyone who wants to work and a decent standard of life for all Americans. We will ensure that all of our young people have a better chance in life than we had, an education they can use, and a career they can be proud of.
We will carry out a farm policy that assures a fair market price for the farmer, encourages full production, leads to record exports, and eases the hunger within the human family. We will never use the bounty of America's farmers as a pawn in international diplomacy. There will be no embargoes.
We will continue our strong leadership to bring peace, justice, and economic progress where there is turmoil, especially in the Middle East. We will build a safer and saner world through patient negotiations and dependable arms agreements which reduce the danger of conflict and horror of thermonuclear war. While I am President, we will not return to a collision course that could reduce civilization to ashes.
We will build an America where people feel rich in spirit as well as in worldly goods. We will build an America where people feel proud about themselves and about their country.
We will build on performance, not promises; experience, not expediency; real progress instead of mysterious plans to be revealed in some dim and distant future. The American people are wise, wiser than our opponents think. They know who pays for every campaign promise. They are not afraid of the truth. We will tell them the truth.
From start to finish, our campaign will be credible; it will be responsible. We will come out fighting, and we will win. Yes, we, have all seen the polls and the pundits who say our party is dead. I have heard that before. So did Harry Truman. I will tell you what I think. The only polls that count are the polls the American people go to on November 2. And right now, I predict that the American people are going to say that night, "Jerry, you have done a good job, keep right on doing it."
As I try in my imagination to look into the homes where families are watching the end of this great convention, I can't tell which faces are Republicans, which are Democrats, and which are Independents. I cannot see their color or their creed. I see only Americans.
I see Americans who love their husbands, their wives, and their children. I see Americans who love their country for what it has been and what it must become. I see Americans who work hard ' but who are willing to sacrifice all they have worked for to keep their children and their country free. I see Americans who in their own quiet way pray for peace among nations and peace among themselves. We do love our neighbors, and we do forgive those who have trespassed against us.
I see a new generation that knows what is right and knows itself, a generation determined to preserve its ideals, its environment, our Nation, and the world.
My fellow Americans, I like what I see. I have no fear for the future of this great country. And as we go forward together, I promise you once more what I promised before: to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best that I can for America.
God helping me, I won't let you down.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 10:45 p.m. in Kemper Arena. His remarks were broadcast live on radio and television.
Source: Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum
Announcement of Candidacy for President of the United States
By
Frank Church of Idaho
Delivered Idaho City, Idaho
March 18, 1976
The best roads in life lead home again. Today, in the company of my wife and family, I come home again to Idaho City, where my grandfather first settled during the Gold Rush, and where my father was born before Idaho had yet become at State.
So it is for personal, as well as symbolic reasons, that I come back to this historic place, this frontier town which furnished most of the gold needed to preserve the Union.
The pioneers of the early West were men and women of uncommon strength and faith. They had the strength to endure the hardships of life in the wilderness. And they had faith enough in themselves and the future to overcome their fears.
Our tragedy in recent years springs from a leadership principally motivated by fear, from men of little faith.
It is a leadership of weakness and fear that produces “enemy lists” of American citizens whose only offense is that of disagreeing with presidential policies.
It is a leadership of weakness and fear that grants a full pardon to a former President for whatever crimes he committed in the White House, but looks the other way while his subordinates stand trial.
It is a leadership of weakness and fear which insists that we must imitate the Russians in our treatment of foreign peoples, adopting their methods of bribery, blackmail, abduction, and coercion, as if they were our own.
And it is a leadership of weakness and fear which permits the most powerful agencies of our government -- the CIA, the FBI, and the IRS – to systematically ignore the very laws intended to protect the liberties of the people.
These are crimes against freedom, and they won’t be cured by the cosmetic changes proposed by President Ford. He is clearly most concerned about the exposure of such crimes. I am most concerned about their commission.
In stark contrast with contemporary presidents, our Founding Fathers were a different breed. They acted on their faith, not their fear. They did not believe in fighting fire with fire; crime with crime; evil with evil; or delinquency by becoming delinquents.
They set themselves against the terrors of a totalitarian state by structuring a government that would obey the law. They knew that the only way to escape a closed society was to accept the risk of living in an open one.
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety,” said Benjamin Franklin, “deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
I accept the risks of freedom gladly. For these are the true principles upon which we founded our Republic. In the days of our infancy, we had the courage to live by them, when their impact on the outside world made even the most entrenched monarchs tremble. Let us not shrink from them now, in the days of our maturity and might.
In this of all years – as we commemorate our Bicentennial – let us reaffirm the faith of our fathers and reject the apostles of fear!
I enter the campaign at this late date, because of my conviction that the most important issues are being ignored. Peripheral questions pre-empt the debate. There is no sense of overriding purpose; no serious discussion of the fundamental choices which will determine our future course.
The first priority on our political agenda is the restoration of the Federal Government to legitimacy in the eyes of the people. The vast majority of Federal employees are honest, law-abiding citizens. But nobody – no matter how highly placed in the government – has the right to break the law; to open our mail; to photograph our cables; to spread false propaganda for the purpose of discrediting decent citizens in their own communities; to open tax investigations against persons not even suspected of tax delinquency but targeted for political harassment, instead. These illegal and indecent practices must stop! Runaway bureaucracy must be harnessed once more to the reins of the law. For let it be remembered that, in America, the people are sovereign, and the government is their servant still!
Next, we must strive for better, not bigger, government. There is no excuse for having to wait six weeks just to get a reply from a Federal agency, or for having to endure many months – even years – for a decision to be made determining a citizen’s eligibility for some government service. Decisions delayed are decisions denied, and the people have a right to demand timely and efficient response from those whom they pay to serve them.
The problem lies not with the refusal or reluctance of Federal employees to do their best, but rather with a system grown too remote and complex. Today, there are more that a thousand Federal Grant – in – Aid programs, run from Washington. Together, they account for more than $50-billion in annual expenditures. Nearly all of these programs centralize decision-making at the top, and operate on uniform, national standards that frequently do not fit the localities intended to be served.
Federal funding, matched by state and local money, is essential if our housing and transportation problems are to be solved, street crime abated, and essential social services performed. But the present method of administrating these programs is too costly and cumbersome. Far more flexibility in managing these programs must be given to state, county, and municipal officials, the people best acquainted with their particular community needs.
By turning the decision making homeward again, we shall not only assure more efficient use of our tax dollars, but we shall replenish the well-springs of democracy itself. The people can and will participate when the options are brought back within their reach. I reject the doctrine that all decisions must be made in Washington!
As I would strive to revitalize democracy at the grassroots of America, so I would seek rejuvenate the free enterprise system. Competition must be restored to the role it once played as chief regulator of the marketplace, holding prices down, and parceling out its rewards to best-managed businesses.
I would let bankruptcy winnow out the losers with an even hand. Under my administration, the doors of the Treasury would not be thrown open to handouts for huge corporations in financial distress. There is no justice in catering to the rich at the expense of the poor.
In like manner, I would stop stimulating the movement of American capital to foreign lands. During the past two decades, American multi-national corporations have invested $200-billion abroad, in the most modern manufacturing plants that American technology can design. In the process, older plants in our own country have been displaced, at an annual average loss of 150,000 jobs a year. It is no accident that the United States is presently victimized by unemployment twice as high as that of any other industrial nation.
I am not against big business. Indeed, a wise public policy would create a climate favorable to larger, big business investment inside the United States. Instead, public policy does just the reverse: it encourages investment outside the United States. Profits earned in foreign countries receive more favorable tax treatment than profits earned at home. And the American taxpayer underwrites Federal insurance to protect big business against losses incurred in high-risk areas abroad, when there is no comparable insurance investment in high-risk areas here at home.
If big businesses wish to invest in foreign lands, where labor is cheap and special arrangements can be made with the host government – even by bribes and payoffs of the kind exposed by my recent investigations – I say let them do it at their own risk. We need their investment here – to provide jobs for American workers and to speed the recovery of our own economy. The time has come for us to stop paying them to leave!
For small businesses, I would prescribe a program designed to give them a fighting chance to survive and prosper. Such a program would make government the friend, not the enemy, of struggling, independent enterprise. Tax rates should be adjusted to benefit small businesses, the paperwork imposed by Federal bureaus should be drastically reduced. There are reasonable limits which should apply to the scope of government regulation. The national government reaches too far when it attempts to regulate the conditions of work in every mom-and-pop store and every family farm.
Give free enterprise some breathing room. That is what is needed. Retain those controls essential to the public interest; up-date and vigorously enforce the anti-trust laws; but abolish those regulations that stifle competition, and dismantle the commissions that enforce them. Many a vested interest survives today on the protection given by regulatory agencies which have been pre-empted by the very industries they are supposed to regulate, rather than by the needs of the people they were created to serve.
I would not presume to run for President without the twenty years of training you – the people of Idaho – have enabled me to accumulate in the Senate of United States.
There, on the Interior Committee, I have learned the importance of cleansing and conserving our elemental resources: the soil, the water and the air. There, also, I have come to know the complexities of the energy problems we face, and the need for a genuine crash program, if we are to grow less dependent on foreign sources for our vital fuel supplies. But no program will be sufficient unless we begin to discipline ourselves. We must curb our habits of waste in the cause of strengthening our country.
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging, I have also come to understand the hardships of life for millions of our senior citizens. It is time they found a champion in the White House.
As a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I have had a unique opportunity to develop an intimate knowledge of American foreign policy. Here, I learned, long ago, that in the conduct of our relations abroad, there is little that is foreign in our policy. Every decision a President makes sends its ripples or waves back across America.
The mistakes in foreign policy during the past decade have had more to do with spreading divisiveness at home, with the spawning a generation of cynicism and resentment, than any Presidential decision on domestic affairs.
When it comes to dealing with a hundred foreign governments, or negotiating with Russia or China in this dangerous world, I suggest to you that the Presidency is no place for on-the-job training!
As a critic of our foreign policy in recent years, I would strive, as President, to keep this country sufficiently strong, that the safety of our people will be assured against any foreign threat, and our vital interests in other parts of the world will be adequately protected.
But I would call for a discriminating foreign policy which recognizes that the post-war period is over; that we are no longer the one rich patron of a war-wrecked world. We should continue to stand fast in those places, like Western Europe and the Middle East, where our stakes are large, but there is no justification any longer for us to subsidize half a hundred foreign governments scattered all over the globe.
In Africa and Asia, new societies are emerging from the grip of 19th Century colonialism. This Third World will be filled with revolution and upheaval for the balance of this century. A volcano cannot be capped. The United States can abide much ferment in distant places. But we cannot successfully serve as trustee for the broken empires of Europe. The foreign policy of this country must be wrested from the hands of that fraternity of compulsive interventionists who have involved us in so many futile, foreign wars!
I reject the siege mentality that kept us locked so long in the straitjacket of the Cold War, and I would work diligently to bring an end to the insanity of the nuclear arms race which makes both sides potential targets for mutual extinction. But this I assure you: in the rational pursuit of improved relations with any adversary, I would observe one cardinal standard – that we get in return fully as much as we give!
There are those, I know, who say it is to late to enter the race for the Presidency. But I had a difficult assignment to discharge first – the completion of the Senate’s investigation of our intelligence agencies. It would not have commended me to the American people to have abandoned that task in order to run for higher office. So, to those who say it is too late, I reply that it’s never too late – nor are the odds ever too great – to try.
In that spirit the West was won, and in that spirit I now declare my candidacy for President of United States.
Source: Frank Church Collection, Boise State University Library
Announcement of Candidacy for President of the United States
By
Frank Church of Idaho
Delivered Idaho City, Idaho
March 18, 1976
The best roads in life lead home again. Today, in the company of my wife and family, I come home again to Idaho City, where my grandfather first settled during the Gold Rush, and where my father was born before Idaho had yet become at State.
So it is for personal, as well as symbolic reasons, that I come back to this historic place, this frontier town which furnished most of the gold needed to preserve the Union.
The pioneers of the early West were men and women of uncommon strength and faith. They had the strength to endure the hardships of life in the wilderness. And they had faith enough in themselves and the future to overcome their fears.
Our tragedy in recent years springs from a leadership principally motivated by fear, from men of little faith.
It is a leadership of weakness and fear that produces “enemy lists” of American citizens whose only offense is that of disagreeing with presidential policies.
It is a leadership of weakness and fear that grants a full pardon to a former President for whatever crimes he committed in the White House, but looks the other way while his subordinates stand trial.
It is a leadership of weakness and fear which insists that we must imitate the Russians in our treatment of foreign peoples, adopting their methods of bribery, blackmail, abduction, and coercion, as if they were our own.
And it is a leadership of weakness and fear which permits the most powerful agencies of our government -- the CIA, the FBI, and the IRS – to systematically ignore the very laws intended to protect the liberties of the people.
These are crimes against freedom, and they won’t be cured by the cosmetic changes proposed by President Ford. He is clearly most concerned about the exposure of such crimes. I am most concerned about their commission.
In stark contrast with contemporary presidents, our Founding Fathers were a different breed. They acted on their faith, not their fear. They did not believe in fighting fire with fire; crime with crime; evil with evil; or delinquency by becoming delinquents.
They set themselves against the terrors of a totalitarian state by structuring a government that would obey the law. They knew that the only way to escape a closed society was to accept the risk of living in an open one.
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety,” said Benjamin Franklin, “deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
I accept the risks of freedom gladly. For these are the true principles upon which we founded our Republic. In the days of our infancy, we had the courage to live by them, when their impact on the outside world made even the most entrenched monarchs tremble. Let us not shrink from them now, in the days of our maturity and might.
In this of all years – as we commemorate our Bicentennial – let us reaffirm the faith of our fathers and reject the apostles of fear!
I enter the campaign at this late date, because of my conviction that the most important issues are being ignored. Peripheral questions pre-empt the debate. There is no sense of overriding purpose; no serious discussion of the fundamental choices which will determine our future course.
The first priority on our political agenda is the restoration of the Federal Government to legitimacy in the eyes of the people. The vast majority of Federal employees are honest, law-abiding citizens. But nobody – no matter how highly placed in the government – has the right to break the law; to open our mail; to photograph our cables; to spread false propaganda for the purpose of discrediting decent citizens in their own communities; to open tax investigations against persons not even suspected of tax delinquency but targeted for political harassment, instead. These illegal and indecent practices must stop! Runaway bureaucracy must be harnessed once more to the reins of the law. For let it be remembered that, in America, the people are sovereign, and the government is their servant still!
Next, we must strive for better, not bigger, government. There is no excuse for having to wait six weeks just to get a reply from a Federal agency, or for having to endure many months – even years – for a decision to be made determining a citizen’s eligibility for some government service. Decisions delayed are decisions denied, and the people have a right to demand timely and efficient response from those whom they pay to serve them.
The problem lies not with the refusal or reluctance of Federal employees to do their best, but rather with a system grown too remote and complex. Today, there are more that a thousand Federal Grant – in – Aid programs, run from Washington. Together, they account for more than $50-billion in annual expenditures. Nearly all of these programs centralize decision-making at the top, and operate on uniform, national standards that frequently do not fit the localities intended to be served.
Federal funding, matched by state and local money, is essential if our housing and transportation problems are to be solved, street crime abated, and essential social services performed. But the present method of administrating these programs is too costly and cumbersome. Far more flexibility in managing these programs must be given to state, county, and municipal officials, the people best acquainted with their particular community needs.
By turning the decision making homeward again, we shall not only assure more efficient use of our tax dollars, but we shall replenish the well-springs of democracy itself. The people can and will participate when the options are brought back within their reach. I reject the doctrine that all decisions must be made in Washington!
As I would strive to revitalize democracy at the grassroots of America, so I would seek rejuvenate the free enterprise system. Competition must be restored to the role it once played as chief regulator of the marketplace, holding prices down, and parceling out its rewards to best-managed businesses.
I would let bankruptcy winnow out the losers with an even hand. Under my administration, the doors of the Treasury would not be thrown open to handouts for huge corporations in financial distress. There is no justice in catering to the rich at the expense of the poor.
In like manner, I would stop stimulating the movement of American capital to foreign lands. During the past two decades, American multi-national corporations have invested $200-billion abroad, in the most modern manufacturing plants that American technology can design. In the process, older plants in our own country have been displaced, at an annual average loss of 150,000 jobs a year. It is no accident that the United States is presently victimized by unemployment twice as high as that of any other industrial nation.
I am not against big business. Indeed, a wise public policy would create a climate favorable to larger, big business investment inside the United States. Instead, public policy does just the reverse: it encourages investment outside the United States. Profits earned in foreign countries receive more favorable tax treatment than profits earned at home. And the American taxpayer underwrites Federal insurance to protect big business against losses incurred in high-risk areas abroad, when there is no comparable insurance investment in high-risk areas here at home.
If big businesses wish to invest in foreign lands, where labor is cheap and special arrangements can be made with the host government – even by bribes and payoffs of the kind exposed by my recent investigations – I say let them do it at their own risk. We need their investment here – to provide jobs for American workers and to speed the recovery of our own economy. The time has come for us to stop paying them to leave!
For small businesses, I would prescribe a program designed to give them a fighting chance to survive and prosper. Such a program would make government the friend, not the enemy, of struggling, independent enterprise. Tax rates should be adjusted to benefit small businesses, the paperwork imposed by Federal bureaus should be drastically reduced. There are reasonable limits which should apply to the scope of government regulation. The national government reaches too far when it attempts to regulate the conditions of work in every mom-and-pop store and every family farm.
Give free enterprise some breathing room. That is what is needed. Retain those controls essential to the public interest; up-date and vigorously enforce the anti-trust laws; but abolish those regulations that stifle competition, and dismantle the commissions that enforce them. Many a vested interest survives today on the protection given by regulatory agencies which have been pre-empted by the very industries they are supposed to regulate, rather than by the needs of the people they were created to serve.
I would not presume to run for President without the twenty years of training you – the people of Idaho – have enabled me to accumulate in the Senate of United States.
There, on the Interior Committee, I have learned the importance of cleansing and conserving our elemental resources: the soil, the water and the air. There, also, I have come to know the complexities of the energy problems we face, and the need for a genuine crash program, if we are to grow less dependent on foreign sources for our vital fuel supplies. But no program will be sufficient unless we begin to discipline ourselves. We must curb our habits of waste in the cause of strengthening our country.
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging, I have also come to understand the hardships of life for millions of our senior citizens. It is time they found a champion in the White House.
As a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I have had a unique opportunity to develop an intimate knowledge of American foreign policy. Here, I learned, long ago, that in the conduct of our relations abroad, there is little that is foreign in our policy. Every decision a President makes sends its ripples or waves back across America.
The mistakes in foreign policy during the past decade have had more to do with spreading divisiveness at home, with the spawning a generation of cynicism and resentment, than any Presidential decision on domestic affairs.
When it comes to dealing with a hundred foreign governments, or negotiating with Russia or China in this dangerous world, I suggest to you that the Presidency is no place for on-the-job training!
As a critic of our foreign policy in recent years, I would strive, as President, to keep this country sufficiently strong, that the safety of our people will be assured against any foreign threat, and our vital interests in other parts of the world will be adequately protected.
But I would call for a discriminating foreign policy which recognizes that the post-war period is over; that we are no longer the one rich patron of a war-wrecked world. We should continue to stand fast in those places, like Western Europe and the Middle East, where our stakes are large, but there is no justification any longer for us to subsidize half a hundred foreign governments scattered all over the globe.
In Africa and Asia, new societies are emerging from the grip of 19th Century colonialism. This Third World will be filled with revolution and upheaval for the balance of this century. A volcano cannot be capped. The United States can abide much ferment in distant places. But we cannot successfully serve as trustee for the broken empires of Europe. The foreign policy of this country must be wrested from the hands of that fraternity of compulsive interventionists who have involved us in so many futile, foreign wars!
I reject the siege mentality that kept us locked so long in the straitjacket of the Cold War, and I would work diligently to bring an end to the insanity of the nuclear arms race which makes both sides potential targets for mutual extinction. But this I assure you: in the rational pursuit of improved relations with any adversary, I would observe one cardinal standard – that we get in return fully as much as we give!
There are those, I know, who say it is to late to enter the race for the Presidency. But I had a difficult assignment to discharge first – the completion of the Senate’s investigation of our intelligence agencies. It would not have commended me to the American people to have abandoned that task in order to run for higher office. So, to those who say it is too late, I reply that it’s never too late – nor are the odds ever too great – to try.
In that spirit the West was won, and in that spirit I now declare my candidacy for President of United States.
Source: Frank Church Collection, Boise State University Library
BIRCH BAYH in 1976
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, OCTOBER 21-Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “The Presidency is preeminently a place of moral leadership."
It is to restore moral leadership to the White House that I am today declaring my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States.
I am running for the Presidency to provide leadership to once again establish excellence as the American standard.
I am running for the Presidency to provide the kind of leadership that will not be content to tell the country what we can't do, but instead will tell the country what we can do. . . and show the way to get it done.
Moral leadership demands not the fear that too many jobs will cause inflation, but the conviction that too few jobs will cause human suffering.
Moral leadership demands a national commitment that every man and woman who wants to work will have a job.
I am running for the Presidency to provide the kind of leadership that places the full weight of the White House behind efforts to meet the needs of our people; to once again put government to work in the hope of realizing the potential of all of our people.
Moral leadership will not rest so long as there are hungry children, elderly citizens who cannot pay their fuel bills, and families that are forced to sell their modest homes to provide life—giving medical care to their loved ones.
I am running. for the Presidency to provide the kind of leadership that demonstrates in action and deeds the courage to make hard decisions, to face difficult choices, and to deal honestly and openly with the American people.
The President who leads us into our third century must understand that the nature of the problems we face has changed and we cannot end the decade of the '70's with the institutions of the '30's, the priorities the ‘50's, and the programs of the '60's.
Where old programs are not working, they must be changed or eliminated.
Spending more money alone will only increase expectations, increase the cost of failure, and increase the disillusionment that follows.
I am running for the Presidency to prove to those who have lost confidence that government can control those forces that often appear more powerful than government itself.
Moral leadership demands that tax loopholes be closed.
Moral leadership demands that monopolistic oil companies be broken up.
Moral leadership demands that our anti—trust laws be enforced vigorously.
Moral leadership demands that a federal reserve system whose high interest rate, tight money policies threaten economic recovery be reformed.
Moral leadership demands that the bigotry and discrimination that have denied full citizenship to many Americans be opposed strenuously.
I am running for the Presidency to provide the kind of leadership that recognizes we are living in an increasingly small and dangerous world.
Moral Leadership demands a willingness to work with all our partners on this planet, not as an arrogant force dictating to more than 150 nations, but as an enlightened power prepared to seek global solutions to global problems.
Moral leadership requires a willingness to acknowledge that world wide food shortages, over—population, nuclear proliferation, deterioration of the world environment, and the growing needs of less developed nations threaten all on this planet.
I am running for the Presidency to provide the kind of leadership that restores trust.
Moral leadership requires honesty between the President and the people. Those who offer one—word solutions are blind to the magnitude of the task ahead, or irresponsibly misleading the American people.
There are no instant, simple solutions to today's complex problems. But at least we must try. For only by trying can we do better.
I have no misconceptions about the enormity of the burdens facing any President, nor about my own strengths and weaknesses. But the role of presidential leadership is not one of unilaterally solving problems.
One citizen or one President fighting alone is helpless against the obstacles facing us today. But positive presidential leadership that can enlist the best minds in pursuit of answers to human problems, positive presidential leadership that can challenge 215 million Americans to selflessly give of themselves, to strive for to unite behind common goals, can create an irresistible force which will once again put America on the road to greatness.
I ask for your help so that together we can accomplish this goal.
Paid for by Committee for Birch Bayh in '76, Matthew E. Welsh, Chairman, and Myer Feldman, Treasurer.
Transcribed by Mike Dec
Source: “Birch Bayh in ‘76” Press Release, October 21, 1975, Announcement of Candidacy (Oversize), Campaigns – President: 1976, Political Files, Birch Bayh Senatorial Papers, Modern Political Papers Collection, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, Indiana.
Presidential Announcement
of
Governor Milton J. Shapp
Thursday, September 25, 1975
10 A.M.
Statler-Hilton, Washington, D. C.
America needs new leadership…
Leadership that balances a humane understanding of people's needs with fiscal responsibility.
America needs new leadership…
Leadership that will open new opportunities for improved quality of life for all citizens.
America needs new leadership…
Leadership willing to utilize the best of our past but not afraid to move forward to explore new methods to attain great success in the future.
America needs new leadership to make this nation truly one in which all people are treated as equals and have equal opportunity to enjoy the higher quality of life now enjoyed by but a small percentage of our population.
We need a new spirit in 1976 to match that of two centuries ago, and a new zeal to match that of FDR two score and two years ago when hopelessness last engulfed this land.
I seek the presidency of this great country to supply that kind of leadership, to build a new spirit among our people, and to give new impetus to the forward motion given by Franklin Roosevelt in the 30s and by John F Kennedy after the doldrums of the 50s.
The task of the next president will be enormous - to lift us out of the national and international morass in which we presently wallow.
Today, as I announced my candidacy for President of the United States, I do so, knowing full well the difficulties of the office but confident that I can supply the kind of leadership the United States needs to restore confidence in itself.
We have many problems, but the worst is economic stagnation.
it is absolutely essential that the next President of the United states be a person with sound ideas for turning the economy around, and with the executive ability to get things done.
As a professional engineer, I've been solving problems all my life.
I demonstrated some of my ability right here in this hotel, nearly two years ago, when I successfully mediated the national truck strike.
I have had twenty – five years chief executive experience in business.
Now as a two term governor of one of our largest states, I have obtained governmental experience to translate my executive ability into practical political action.
And, deeply concerned about the future, I have devised specific economic programs designed to move this country ahead.
I do not claim to have all the answers.
Nor do I believe that all my answers are necessarily the only answers.
But, if the next president does not have creative programs in new directions to offer the American people, economic stagnation will continue and our relative position in the world will continue to decline.
In 1976, the last thing American people need is another smiling politician or spellbinding orator spewing political rhetoric.
What we need is a leader with deep concern for people and their problems and determination to carry out a sound program to resolve those problems.
Attend to that kind of leadership to the American people.
This nation has enormous wealth, great untapped resources, and above all tremendous human talent.
Yet, under present mismanagement, we have become a huge, groping muscle bound giant, incapable of finding solutions and unable to act positively and progressively.
The American people will not tolerate any further lip service about full employment. They want action.
President of these states, I pledge to implement in spirit and in action, the mandate of the full employment act of 1946, which has not been acknowledged in Washington since its enactment.
Full employment is no idle promise.
It can be achieved. The dollars invested to achieve this goal can be returned many times over. That is the way with any sound business investment, and I deeply believe investing for growth in this country is a sound investment.
It is incredible that we tolerate a condition where millions and unemployed when there are so many unmet needs across the land.
It is sheer folly not to use the efforts and talents of all people - young and old - to turn both urban and rural areas into better, healthier places in which to live.
New housing, slum clearance, land reclamation, water and sewage systems, railroad modernization:
These, and many more essential programs demand attention and action. The key to placing the American economy on a firm basis for the future is the establishment of a modern, business like, federal budgetary system.
And a national investment policy similar to that described by President John Kennedy at Yale University in June of 1962.
Such a program, when implemented, will provide sufficient public funds to invest in modernizing the productive capacity of this nation while simultaneously cutting the operating costs of government.
The establishment of businesslike federal budgetary system in which a balance sheet is prepared to compare our national assets with our national debt, and in which long term capital investment funds are identified and separated from the operating costs of government, will make it possible to initiate major housing programs, to rebuild railroads, to invest in major energy program into finance a comprehensive educational system with emphasis on job training.
How ironic it is that we worry so much today about the tremendous cost increases we face for crime prevention and welfare, but refused to take the intelligent humane way out of the crime and dependency cycle.
Our primary goal should be the building of a nation in which all men and women have equal opportunity to develop their talents to the maximum so they can become productive, satisfied members of society and participate fully in the mainstream of national life.
These are the investments that really count.
Yet, we continue, under our present leadership, to squander our most previous asset, our people, and their earning power.
Indeed, this country has so much to offer that the only thing we have that's greater than present wealth is our future potential.
I'm not describing a planned society.
My program will invigorate the private sector.
Studies show that as we make required public investments in our resources, transportation systems and our people, we stimulate greater private sector investment which will and must provide the great bulk of employment and economic growth.
These studies indicate that each dollar of public sector investment will stimulate about $2.50 worth of private sector investment and that these in turn will increase Groos National Product by $8 to $10.
I do not fear that the program I have outlined would fan the fires of inflation as it stimulates the economy.
That a stock response given by every stand-pat economist whenever anyone suggests that this country really can get moving.
The prime cause of inflation today is not federal spending to take care of human needs. The prime cause is that insufficient investment in this nation has driven our productivity rate down to 66 percent.
And it is the cozy relationship that presently exists between the White House and the special interests which is driving up the price of food, housing and fuel, in relentless search for excessive profits.
We can have economic growth while controlling inflation if we are willing to stand up to these those mega businesses which profit excessively from our present misfortune.
And I pledge to the American people that I will take such a stance while urging the Congress to adopt this new investment and budgeting policy which will free us, once and for all, from the old myths, while effectively utilizing public funds for investment purposes to propel us on the road to innovation and renewed prosperity.
In this statement, I have chosen to deal almost exclusively with the economic threat facing our nation. It is the key issue before the American people.
During this campaign, I shall not overlook the many other areas of concern facing the nation.
But no other issues will really be solved unless we have a healthy economic base.
Our position in the world is entirely dependent upon our strength at home.
Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy understood this.
They understood fully that our position in the world is related to the health and stability of our internal situation.
And, perhaps, at no time in our history, has our international position so been threatened by doubts and uncertainty about our domestic condition.
The rest of the world today, looks to the United States.
Some look to us for leadership.
Others seek out our weaknesses.
But nuclear arsenals and bloated military budgets, will not protect America from itself.
Nor can ambassadors and statesman settle the problems of the world if our national leadership cannot solve the internal problems of our country.
So, first and foremost, I intend to come to Washington to put America back to work.
Only then will America regain its preeminent position in the world.
I have chosen to begin my campaign in this hotel because as I indicated before, it was here... in February of 1974... that I mediated the national truckers’ strike in March 1974.
Helped avert a national gasoline service station dealers’ strike at the height of the Energy Crisis.
The vacuum which existed in Washington then, still exists today. If anything it is worse.
I have proven that I can fill that vacuum, and provide the leadership in America needs in this urgent period.
I am running for president because the time has finally come when the federal government must be run on a businesslike basis with executive leadership and managerial skill.
I am running for president because it's time for sensible but substantive revisions in our national policies and programs, both domestic and foreign.
I intend to avoid rhetoric and appeal instead to the good judgment and concern of the American people.
As this campaign continues, I fully expect to impress upon the minds of the American voters the very real need for solutions I propose.
I sense the people are seeking something new, and better.
I am, therefore, confident that they will respond and join me in turning this country around to build a better future for themselves and their children before it is too late.
Thank you.
Transcribed by Mike Dec
Source:
1975/9/25, Speech, Presidential Announcement
Shapp, Milton J. Papers
Collection MG-309, circa 1971-1979
Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg
Announcement Statement
Of
Sargent Shriver
Mayflower Hotel
Washington, D.C.
September 20, 1975
I am happy to announce my candidacy for President of the United States. I seek an open nomination openly arrived at, earned in the primaries and local caucuses and state conventions. I want to tell you why I am running and why I am asking people to join in running with me.
It may be hard for some to believe, but it is not lust for elective office or power. I know too well, and in ways too personal, the sadness and isolation associated with the Presidency. So I do not approach this campaign in a spirit of compulsive ambition or naive exhilaration.
The reason I am running is simply this: Given what I believe; what I have worked for throughout the last 30 years; what I see happening in this country and the world, and what I want to see happen; and given the lack of leadership to deal with our problems at home and abroad -- I could not stand aside.
Every candidate for the office of the presidency in recent memory has believed that his was the critical hour. So, it is difficult to find language undebased by the rhetoric of the past to express how I feel about where we are as a people today.
But we know -- all of us in this room and the millions of Americans who are not here --that this time is different. There are many reasons, but not more compelling than this: for only the second time in this century, the forward movement of America has been reversed; we have retrogressed as a society. And it is this sudden, overwhelming reversal of momentum, that has generated the vast crisis of confidence we face today. We face problems of character that confronted FDR, but none of his successors. Not since the great depression has America stood in fear of the future.
Is it any wonder that we have lost our way? Beliefs fundamental to American society have been confounded -- the beliefs:
that America fights only in just wars -- and wins because our cause is right;
that all presidents are righteous man worthy of public trust;
that all who seek work in this country can find it;
that continuous economic growth is our natural heritage;
that, alone among countries, the American economy has the strength to prosper in isolation.
I could go on but you know the litany.
How do we find a way forward? There are clear choices to be made.
The Republicans propose their favorite solution; -- blame the Government for everything. They claim somehow to get rid of government. And then; they say, we will return to normalcy. Rely on free markets, and everything will be again the way it was before… but we all that’s not true.
We know many markets are not free. The price we pay for food and gasoline, for a hospital bed or for heating oil, has climbed almost beyond sight, not because of competition but because a few people and a few organizations wield great economic power, and because Nixon and Ford have permitted huge sales of wheat to Russia before making sure there’s enough at home to feed America at reasonable prices.
In the name of a free market, the Administration has vetoed price controls on oil, while trying to stop an education bill that will have no effect on prices. The Republican strategy has been to fight inflation by putting people out of work. But the insecurity of double-digit inflation hasn’t been stopped by unemployment, by forcing men and women to suffer the indignity of no work while our society suffers from lack of what work alone can provide.
The Administration’s strategy has given us the worst depression since Herbert Hoover’s. Worse, it hasn’t even managed to keep prices down. American families deserve a better break than that.
Some Democrats say there’s nothing wrong that more money and more programs in Washington won’t cure. We need only rely on government, and all will be well.
In my judgment, this approach and the Republican approach are both dead wrong. In the words of Adlai Stephenson, “Let’s talk sense to the American people.” Let’s discuss the realities we all can see rather than repeating outdated phrases. What are those realities?
Mankind has entered a new era. But philosophic, religious and political beliefs can still provide the framework for our activity in the years ahead. But the problems we all face are different in nature, not just in size, from those we faced before. They will not respond to the old shibboleths and nostrums. Nationalism, jingoism, great power chauvinism, individualism, old-fashioned liberalism, populism, conservatism – none of these alone is sufficient for the future. Instead we must seek a common existence, rooted in our common humanity, which faces worldwide problems requiring common solutions. And, the first place where we must bring our common efforts to bear on our common human problems is here at home.
Common existence at home starts with putting the government -- as the expression of our common will -- on the side of the consumer, the taxpayer, the individual and the community. Government must abandon tasks that individuals, families, and neighborhoods can do for themselves. But, it must protect the condition in which they can remain truly free and independent.
We have learned -- through welfare waste, through schooling that does not educate, through houses we can’t afford, through products that don’t last -- that government and corporate bureaucracy are no substitute for self-reliant individual effort. But we have learned also -- through medical tragedy turned into economic disaster -- through joblessness that persists even while prices soar -- that the self-reliant individual and family can be reduced to myth if government, while “getting off people’s backs,” does not remain on their side.
I’m opposed to centralized, rigid, unresponsive bureaucracy; I worked to combat that kind of bureaucracy in business, as head of Chicago’s school board, and later in Washington and in the Foreign Service. In the Peace Corps, in Headstart, in Legal Services for the Poor, in Foster Grandparents, we created the least bureaucratic public enterprises in modern governmental history. But a purely negative approach to government will get us nowhere. Only a governmental policy actively working for the small and the personal can turn this country away from the large and the anonymous; only national commitment to the human scale can restore a sense of community.
Such a commitment means many things:
To millions of Americans who want work and cannot find it, my commitment is jobs. The independence of Americans and their families depends on work and there is much work to do. As Bob Kennedy said:
“It is the impulse of America that neither faith in nature, nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our hands, managed to reason and principal determine our destiny. “
To the tens of millions who see the fruits of their work consumed by uncontrollable inflation, my philosophy is limits on the forces that produce spiraling prices. To talk of “free markets” as the solution to inflation in fuel is a fraud. A market dominated by a handful of giant oil companies is not free. And, the domination of other markets by concentrated private power must be ended.
To the many whose hopes are suddenly shattered by economic collapse or unanticipated need -- whether in health or education, whether victims of crime or of misfortune – my philosophy is to provide a net beneath which we will not let one other fall and above which we will encourage all to rise. Each paying his fair share of the cost, all of us should be able to turn a community when faced by risks too large for anyone to bear alone. We need financially sound programs of health insurance, and ways of extending taxes downward to provide credit to those who have too little income, while fairly taxing those who have much. By prudent combinations of government stockpiling and regulation, we can control the most extreme fluctuations in economic life – maintaining a stability in food, fuel and other basic prices that will enable people to plan their lives without fear of uncontrollable financial disruptions.
To the millions of families who see their children fail and their neighborhoods collapse, the meaning of this philosophy is reunion -- reunion with the most basic sources of our national strength. Anti-neighborhood practices like red-lining and block-busing must be reversed. Anti-family practices like forced separation of parents on welfare must be ended. Discrimination against working women must be stopped. And, we need flexible work schedules to permit parents, fathers and mothers both, to care for their children. Finally, we must find ways to redesign our housing, tax, and other policies to allow families to live together, rather than in generational ghettos.
I do not pretend to have all the answers. But we can find answers together only if we are guided by some vision of where we want to go; it is a vision of freedom, of fairness, and fulfilling work that shapes the policies I favor.
Those policies cannot stop at the water’s edge. Domestic and foreign affairs are inseparable. A century ago Kierkegaard wrote: “The individual no longer belongs to his god, to himself, his beloved, to his art, or his science…“ Today no nation belongs to any one God or science, or solely to its citizens of its ideology. By circumstance, we belong to a still separated but now seamless world. In such a world, the shaping of a common existence is the precondition of a secure existence -- and perhaps of any existence at all.
We have ignored this truth to long. Seeking dominion, we have meddled too much abroad, as we have interfered too deeply in the lives of our citizens. Our indiscriminate interventions abroad came from fear. Cold war fears which led to a fear of change in some places escalated until we opposed change in all places. That’s not the American tradition.
We can best fight for the freedoms in which we believe by ceasing to act like international Tories -- the Redcoats of the 20th century. We are descendants of the men who fired the shot heard around the world. But when our arms and aid go to reactionary tyrants abroad, when our food is used for politics instead of hunger, when we move toward closer relations with the racist regime in Southern Africa, when the CIA lawlessly subverts government abroad, when our military and intelligence establishment use dangerous drugs in unethical experiments at home, it is anyone wonder that foreigners, once our friends, conclude that our values have collapsed?
And when our government for so many years acted as if the regime in Saigon was as worthy of support as our friends and allies in Europe, Japan and Israel, is it any wonder that our citizens began to wonder if commitments of any kind make sense?
Abroad, as at home, our challenge is to redefine the role of government. And the first step is to recognize our commitment to a common existence.
Our founders made a declaration of independence. Ours must be a declaration of interdependence. The United States must play a more positive role with our European and Japanese partners in resolving international recession. And, we must turn away from a pattern of confrontation and grudging negotiation with the governments of the Southern Hemisphere.
We were once a symbol of hope not because we manipulated events abroad but because we embrace the ideals that moved nations and shook the world. We can be a symbol of hope again.
The irony of America today is that we have everything to achieve our objectives: we have the people and the resources -- no nation has freer, better people or richer natural resources -- we have the highest political, religious and philosophical traditions; we have everything we need today … but leadership.
The test of leadership now, as it was for Lincoln, is to reach and bring into action the better angels of our nature. No poll can prove this, but I am convinced that people’s cynicism about politicians rises and falls with politicians’ cynicism about people. There are many frustrations and modern life, even the best of times, which a demagogue can invoke. He may win some passing applause and perhaps even votes, but if he releases the worst instincts of people, we will reap the whirlwind.
How do we decide who will lead the American people? The truth is that no one man and woman is qualified to lead single-handedly. From the experience of 30 years in public and private life, I know it is vital to do as much listening as talking, as much questioning as answering. For the American people are the greatest teachers of all. What we will need is a rallying together, a mutual struggle, not just a commitment to a candidate but commitment to one another.
So I look forward to a people’s campaign. And I’m grateful to the many who are here to start with me, including planeloads and busloads of friends and associates who have known me most of my life; people committed to justice and community, regardless of region, race, religion, and all the a conventional divisions of left, right and center.
Finally, I’m fortified by my family -- by my mother who has seen 23 presidential campaigns, by my wife, Eunice, and our sons and daughter, by my brother Herbert, by Rose Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy and Jackie, by Jean, and Pat, and Joan, and when my most admirable sister-in-law, Willa Shriver of Baltimore. In peace and war, in public and private life, they know the demands and duties, the joys and sorrows of the kind of course I’m taking, and have encouraged me to take it.
When my own family came to Maryland over 250 years ago, they came with dreams that millions of Americans have come to share. Those dreams nourish me today. They will inspire all of us in the days and months ahead.
Whenever Washington lacks positive direction, it has been remarked, you may be sure that something is struggling to be born in the nation. There is a wind coming. It can be a good wind or an ill wind; it is up to us, together, to set its direction.
Let us remember there is no conservative or liberal remedy for the sickness of the national spirit. The cure will come from honest, truthful leadership that summons the best in us – as we remember John Kennedy once did. His legacy awaits the leader who can claim it.
I intend to claim it, not for myself alone, but for the family that first brought it into being, for the millions who joyfully and hopefully entered public service in those days in order to produce a better life for all, and to those billions of unknown, uncounted human beings who I’ve seen all over the world -- in Asia, South America, Western Europe and the Soviet Union -- for whom the memory of those days and of John Kennedy is still an inspiration to their minds and a lift to their hearts. That’s what we must all be proud of once again.
Source: John F. Kennedy Library and Museum
Gerald R. Ford
Remarks Announcing Candidacy for the 1976 Republican Presidential Nomination
July 8, 1975
TODAY, I am officially announcing that I am a candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 1976. I do this with the strong support of my family and my friends.
My campaign will be conducted by outstanding Americans on whose integrity both my supporters and all others can depend. I have found these leaders in Bo Callaway of Georgia, Dave Packard of California, Dean Burch and Bob Moot, and many others from every State and from every walk of life who have volunteered to help.
I have given them authority to seek my nomination with three qualifications, which I want all Americans to know.
First, I intend to conduct an open and aboveboard campaign, both for the nomination and for the Presidency. I want every delegate and every vote that I can get that can be won to my cause within the spirit and the letter of the law and without compromising the principles for which I have stood all of my political and public life.
Secondly, I will not forget my initial pledge to be President of all of the people. I believe I can best represent my party, but this will be futile unless I unite the majority of Americans who acknowledge no absolute party loyalty. Therefore, I will seek the support of all who believe in the fundamental values of duty, decency, and constructive debate on the great issues we face together as free people.
Third, I am determined never to neglect my first duty as President. After 11 months in this office, I know full well that the obligations of the Presidency require most of the stamina and concentration one human being can muster. But it is also the duty of all Americans to participate fully in our free elective process, and I will do so enthusiastically.
In all the 13 election campaigns I have undertaken, my basic conviction has been that the best politics is always to do the best job I can for all the people. I see no reason to change that successful philosophy.
I expect to work hard, campaign forthrightly, and do the very best I can for America in order to finish the job I have begun.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 12:03 p.m. to reporters assembled in the Oval Office at the White House. Present for the announcement were Howard H. Callaway, chairman of the President Ford Committee, Robert C. Moot, treasurer of the committee, David Packard, national finance chairman, and Dean Burch, chairman of the advisory committee for the campaign.
Source: Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum
Terry Sanford's declaration of candidacy for the Presidency of the United States
May 19, 1975
Washington, D.C.
Two hundred years and a month ago, a shot rang out across the spring soil of young American farmland. As a great American poet said later, that shot was heard around the world. It has also been heard down the ages since, because it was the signal that the world and human history had been listening for – the signal that an old era was ending, and a new one had begun.
Today, right now, people around the world are listening again, listening hard, for a new signal – the signal that another whole new era has begun. People around this country, like other people around the world, know that a new era is not only imminent; it is imperative. The only question is, can America again provide that signal? Next year, in our national elections, America will answer that momentous question for the world, and for human history.
I come here today because I know that we can do it, we must do it, we will do it – just as America did it before.
In 1777, Benjamin Franklin wrote from Paris, “It is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty and defending our own.” It was the success of the American Revolution. America, two centuries ago, fought for something that transcended national interest. We fought then for the human interest.
In 1977, we will do it again. We will turn this nation around, back to the original ideal, not a narrowly selfish national policy, but a human policy. And that can be the signal to the waiting world.
The Revolution that brought independence to the United States of America was more than a war. It was an exciting promise for people throughout the world. It was a radical change in determination and will, an assertion of the boundless spirit of the people. They were tired of tyranny beyond their reach, tired of oppression, tired of old world rules that classified them and limited their opportunities. The rights of the individual, human dignity, the worth of each person, freedom, opportunity for everybody – these were the ideals that made the new nation a shining light for people everywhere.
The Revolution was not to end with independence. Independence was merely the first act of a great world drama. The people of the new nation were wise enough to know that there is never any end to the quest for freedom, for human rights, for broadening of opportunities. They even put on the Great Seal of the United States the symbol of perfectibility, the unfinished pyramid, reminding us that the American dream is always to be unfinished, that we’re always trying to protect and perfect it.
But somewhere along the road from 1776 to now the vision became clouded. We reach for the torch that was supposed to be passed from hand to hand only to find that some politicians or bureaucrat has lost in our filed it away.
What went wrong, I believe, is that in our determined pursuit and of happiness for all, we have lost sight of the individual – and in the broader sense, of humanity. A massive, remote, out-of-touch government began to run our lives. People became statistics: nine million of jobs, fifty thousand lost in the war; countless thousands of refugees.
Today, 200 years later, we are insisting that the American Revolution be re-instated. We are at a turnaround point in the history of our nation. We are tired of the uncertainty of our jobs, an overcentralized and often insensitive government, of spying on citizens, of crime in dark streets and high places, of empty promises and costly mistakes by those we elect.
We are insisting on decent housing, rewarding jobs, proper health care, security in our old age, and better education for our children. We can have these.
We are tired of negative leaders, timid proposals, hopeless situations, tired of feeling that no matter what we do, the system never changes. We the people will tolerate this no longer.
Surely we are not doomed to continue to slide as a nation, as a world leader, and as a government of the people. We are determined to gain back our faith, our hopes, our confidence in ourselves and our nation to do whatever needs to be done to send our country on true course again.
That is why I’m here today. I come with the experience, the will, and the toughness of mind, the spirit to which we can gather enough people to turn this nation around. I know I am not one of those driven men who lust for power and glory of the Presidency; we have had enough of that. But I have always felt that when you see things that need to be done, feel that you can do them, you ought to try.
If you believe as I do, that the people are the ones who must govern, then you are running with the people and not with the ambition. That is an important distinction, especially today, for it is not the imperial president we need, but many people united to choose a spokesman who can provide the focus for bold, determined, and honest self government.
That is why I made the preparation and today announced that through the Democratic Party I seek the Presidency of the United States.
I promise a bold campaign and a bold administration, determined to put into practice again the radical promise of the American Revolution, but determined to talk sense and issues, openly and candidly, pledged to make the government join the people, to put people first in all our affairs and aspirations.
As the most urgent demands of the next administration, 1) we will give jobs and job security top place and we will get our economic house in order; 2) we will make the cumbersome and ineffective government work; 3) we will give more attention to education and medical care; 4) we will not retreat as a world leader, but will lead with greater strength and confidence; 5) we will involve people, and the guided by the sure knowledge that government is for the people, not the opposite which so often seems to be the practice.
To these challenges I bring experience not born in Washington, and not tainted by Washington. We need freshness. We need change.
To these challenges I bring a firm record of helping people to greater opportunities, fighting discrimination, resolutely resisting appeals to prejudiced and racial hatreds.
To these challenges I bring for examination a public record of innovations, of responsibilities, of willingness to change and improve to make government serve better.
An announcement of a Presidential campaign does not lend itself to a complete and detailed program and platform, but neither should it fade into generalities.
At least I can be specific and some illustrated areas.
I
For the economy, I would flatly change the philosophy we now practice. We would adopt an absolute policy of full employment. Everyone who wanted to work could get a job.
Jobs are not merely statistics in an economist’s report. Jobs mean family security and happiness, the sense of purpose, self-respect, the home mortgage payments, vacations, the future, education of the children, the promise to young people and even a hedge against crime.
One of my major themes is that we will manage money for the people, not people for money. We cannot tolerate any level of unemployment for the purpose of reigning in the economy. That is not only cruel and insensitive; it doesn’t work. People come first. Full employment must be adopted as a firm national policy.
II
I did some things in North Carolina that had never been done before, things that helped turn the state around and steer away from the easy course of hatred that others were tempted into following. I believe the government needed to fill a void in people’s lives, a void created by generations of neglect. We were willing to improvise, to see what works, and then to put into practice the things that worked.
The federal government is too remote, too unresponsive, too inaccessible, too populated with civil servants who are more concerned with their own turf battle with the service they are supposed to be performing. The formulas are too rigid; its vision too limited. Power and responsibility must be returned to the people.
I am not talking about some warmed-over brand of states’ rights. I know all about that fraud. I’m talking about revolution in the way citizens use their local government and states to accomplish this very special, real things that need to be accomplished. Local communities and the states – not Washington – can best come to grips with the issues that are closest to the people – health, education, employment, highway safety, the environment. Congress still has the duty to establish national policies, but the most of the implementation must be left to the cities and states – to us.
Furthermore, we need to place these responsibilities squarely in the hands of elected officials that we can see and touch and call to task. If they do their jobs, we know who they are; if they fail, we know who they are.
III
The federal government has not provided its share of the cost of education, and has exceeded its share of interference. Education is an American hope not fully realized because it has not been adequately supported financially. I would fight for additional funds.
IV
In the field of foreign policy and international leadership, I would start the deliberate and careful return to our original strengths of the American Revolution, the posture which Benjamin Franklin called “the cause of all mankind.”
I do not suggest dismantling our military strength. I do insist that the military is for defense, and that we can no longer rely on confidently on military and economic might to impose our will on the rest of the world. This doesn’t work, not anymore. We must develop a far greater strength, that which I call our moral strength, our belief in freedom and human dignity and opportunity as spelled out in our own Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Our military is not as efficient as it should be. The military budget is far too large. We can actually have a far better defense with much less money, and a balanced budget to vote.
The assertion of a moral leadership cannot be attained by proclamation. It is a difficult road that must be pursued with both boldness and caution. We are too powerful, both industrially and in our historic concepts of freedom, to be conquered. But unfortunately we live in a world where there are still pirates and buccaneers called nations. We cannot allow our moral leadership to be mistaken for weakness or lack of resolve, and yet we can better defend our principles and the hopes of civilization by not posing as the biggest bully on the block.
Leadership from moral strength is the direction, but it must not be understood as a withdrawal from the world or a new name for isolationism or a return to the unilateral disarmament of the Thirties. I would insist, for instance, on a continuing commitment to our European Allies. Turning to a more intelligent strength does not mean turning weak in terms of real defense capability.
At the campaign progresses, I will elaborate on the details of foreign policy, including detente, the mid-east, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and emerging nations, Russian Jewry, Cuba, the Panama Canal, China, Europe and Central Europe, nuclear non-proliferation, food and energy policies.
V
We need, in our attitudes, practices and policies, to restore the faith of our nation in making positive improvements in our lives. I do not accept for myself any of the conventional political labels – conservative, liberal or anything else. I believe in the principles of the Democratic Party that has opened its doors to the citizenry at large, that is willing to talk issues and believes in people and their hopes, that moves constantly toward the fulfillment of the unfinished agenda of the people of this revolutionary American nation.
I am not afraid of change. I am not afraid of people.
I am different in many ways from the other candidates who have announced. Those differences can be seen as the campaign progresses. It is not for me to assert finally that my concept of America is better. But it is different. It demands boldness, faith in ourselves, creative change, and a focus on opportunity for all people.
I am different from the other candidates in background and experience and temperament. It takes confidence and dedication and determination to seek the Presidency. It takes belief that you can do what needs to be done. I don’t mind saying that this country in 1976 needs what North Carolina needed in 1960.
It needs faith in itself, strong new moral direction, boldness and courage in the executive leadership. I don’t mind saying that the country in 1976 needs what the Democratic Party needed in 1973. It needed an all-encompassing and unifying leadership. I cite my record as chairman of the Charter Commission in putting together the elements of the Party to achieve remarkable progress with unprecedented harmony and good will. I cite for the closest scrutiny my record as Governor of a Southern state in the second most difficult period in our history.
I will not be a President that allows us to make the same old mistakes. I will not be a President that resigns himself to our shortcomings and neglects. I will not be a President that is afraid of the audacious vision of what the United States America can dare to be. I seek the Presidency because there is so much to be done .
I do not trade on fear or hatreds or scare tactics. In that respect I stand in stark contrast to one candidate. My mission in life is not to eliminate the George Wallaces from the political scene. However, I came up at the same time and similar climate, region, and crucial times, and it is my responsibility to challenge him. I go about America’s business with an entirely different view. It does us so much harm to inflame racial differences, and it is so out of keeping with humanity to stand in the schoolhouse door to keep little children from their rightful opportunities and life. George Wallace has fooled the people who have believed in him by calling forth the easy fears, and avoiding the complex and tough-minded solutions. He even fooled them when he stood in the door by begging leave of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, promising to depart immediately after making his phony show.
George Wallace has preached that he is for “little man,” and has convinced a lot of people that he is, but the record in Alabama shows otherwise. Now it turns out that George Wallace’s little man is George Wallace himself.
To trade on the easy fear of communism, Wallace has asserted recently that we were fighting on the wrong side when we were at war with Hitler and Tojo. He had forgotten Pearl Harbor, Dunkirk, and Nazi atrocities. What kind of nonsense is that!
I do not find fault with the people who have supported Wallace. It is so easy to be fooled by a political candidate. Look how many Richard Nixon fooled and disappointed. George Wallace, too, as Nixon, claims there is a “new Wallace,” but new means that the old appeal to racism is no longer useful, so now he moves to yet other fears and doubts.
The negative approach is not in keeping with the American tradition of self confidence. We don’t knock something; we fix it. The negative approach is not what we need. We need to chart new directions, not exhaust ourselves complaining about old mistakes. I expect to talk sense about positive matters.
I expect to be running for the Presidency, with a positive program, but I have a duty of also to show the Nation that the South stands for more than the politics of fear. I want the people of this country to be given a clear choice between what I see as the politics of fear and the politics of hope.
I’m going to campaign in all the caucus states, and will enter 17 to 20 primary campaigns, not expecting to win them all, but expecting to lay out in all of them the creative tasks that lie before us.
I will always respond directly to questions.
I will be available to the press always.
I have nothing to conceal. I’ll be open and candid about all things.
I will draw more and more people into the discussion of the important issues starting right now with the Sanford Citizen Assemblies.
There are some who say the problems America can never be solved. I know they can. Nathaniel Macon, North Carolina revolutionary patriot and legislator, said, “Half a revolution is no good.” We must complete and fulfill the promise of the American Revolution, drawing our confidence from the greatest resourcefulness, the firm courage and the historic faith of the American people themselves.
Edward R. Murrow said John F. Kennedy recognized that “difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.”
These are difficult days. There also days of great promise.
Source: Terry Sanford, "To reinstate the American Revolution..." Brochure, Sanford for President Committee
ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE PRESIDENCY, JANUARY 11, 1975
Both the economy and the politics of our country are in deep trouble. Too few people have all the money and power, and most people have little or none.
Yet, we have a rare chance in 1976 to help return America to its most traditional principle: the right of all of our people to a fair chance and a fair share by their own efforts.
What stands in the way is privilege. Privilege is the issue. It prevents full employment and fair taxes. It drives up prices and corrupts Democracy.
The basic question in 1976 is whether our government will look after the interests of the average family or continue to protect the super rich and the giant corporations.
I am a candidate for President because I want to make a difference in this country. I will enter the Democratic Primary in New Hampshire. LaDonna and I are deeply grateful for the warm friendship and support which we have found in New Hampshire already.
This campaign will be a people's campaign --both in strategy and in beliefs. The strategy is simply this: we will go to the people. The beliefs are these: people are smart enough to govern themselves; and a widespread diffusion of economic and political power ought to be the express goal of government.
Some speak of unifying the Democratic Party. I call for the unity of America, unity around principle and national purpose. We must lower taxes for most Americans and raise them for the Nelson Rockefellers and the J. Paul Gettys. We must stop the EXXONs and the Safeways from using their monopoly power to squeeze out competitors and then overcharge consumers. The government must stop emptying the pockets of those who have to work for a living in order to subsidize the Lockheeds and the Penn-Centrals.
1976 can be the year of the people – because several vital things have occurred.
--Most people now know how they are victimized by money and power. It is tragic that it took Watergate, inflation and recession for some of them to see it. But they now do see it.
--The change in the Presidential campaign financing laws mean that a few rich people won't choose our President in 1976. Federal financing, including federal matching funds in the primaries, together with severe restrictions of contributions and spending, mean that the people now have a fighting chance against the ITTs and the Gulf Oils.
--We have kept the reforms which democratized the Democratic Party. So, no few powerful politicians can annoint a nominee.
It is up to us. The power is in us -- the people of the Country – as our founders intended. I ask Americans to join in this effort to return America to its people. Let’s get to work for America!
Source: Fred Harris for President News Release
Courtesy: Fred Harris Collection, Carl Albert Congressional Archives,
University of Oklahoma
ANNOUNCEMENT SPEECH
ADDRESS BY JIMMY CARTER ANNOUNCING HIS CANDIDACY
FOR THE 1976 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION
TO THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
December 12, 1974
We Americans are a great and diverse people. We take full advantage of our right to develop wide-ranging interests and responsibilities. For instance, I am a farmer, an engineer, a businessman, a planner, a scientist, a governor and a Christian. Each of you is an individual and different from all the others.
Yet we Americans have shared one thing in common: a belief in the greatness of our Country.
We have dared to dream great dreams for our Nation. We have taken quite literally the promises of decency, equality, and freedom - of an honest and responsible government.
What has now become of these great dreams? That all Americans stand equal before the law? That we enjoy a right to pursue health, happiness and prosperity in privacy and safety? That government be controlled by its citizens and not the other way around ? That this Country set a standard within the community of nations of courage, compassion, integrity, and dedication to basic human rights and freedoms?
Our commitment to these dreams has been sapped by debilitating compromise, acceptance of mediocrity, subservience to special interests, and an absence of executive vision and direction.
Having worked during the last twenty years in local, state and national affairs, I have learned a great deal about our people.
I tell you that their great dreams still live within the collective heart of this Nation.
Recently we have discovered that our trust has been betrayed. The veils of secrecy have seemed to thicken around Washington. The purposes and goals of our country are uncertain and sometimes even suspect.
Our people are understandably concerned about this lack of competence and integrity. The root of the problem is not so much that our people have lost confidence in government, but that government has demonstrated time and again its lack of confidence in the people.
Our political leaders have simply underestimated the innate quality of our people.
With the shame of Watergate still with us and our 200th birthday just ahead, it is time for us to reaffirm and to strengthen our ethical and spiritual and political beliefs.
There must be no lowering of these standards, no acceptance of mediocrity in any aspect of our private or public lives.
In Our homes or at worship we are ever reminded of what we ought to do and what we ought to be. Our government can and must represent the best and the highest ideals of those of us who voluntarily submit to its authority.
Politicians who seek to further their political careers through appeals to our doubts, fears and prejudices will be exposed and rejected.
For too long political leaders have been isolated from the people. They have made decisions from an ivory tower. Few have ever seen personally the direct impact of government programs involving welfare, prisons, mental institutions, unemployment, school busing or public housing. Our people feel that hey have little access to the core of government and little influence with elected officials.
Now it is time for this chasm between people and government to be bridged, and for American citizens to join in shaping our Nation's future.
Now is the time for new leadership and new ideas to make a reality of these dreams, still held by our people.
To begin with, the confidence of people in our own government must be restored. But too many officials do not deserve that confidence.
There is a simple and effective way for public officials to regain public trust - be trustworthy!
But there are also specific steps that must be taken.
We need an all-inclusive sunshine law in Washington so that special interests will not retain their exclusive access behind closed doors. Except in a few rare cases, there is no reason for secret meetings of regulatory agencies, other executive departments or congressional committees. Such meetings must be opened to the public, all votes recorded, and complete news media coverage authorized and encouraged.
Absolutely no gifts of value should ever again be permitted to a public official.
Complete revelation of all business and financial involvements of major officials should be required, and none should be continued which constitute a possible conflict with the public interest.
Regulatory agencies must not be managed by representatives of the industry being regulated, and no personnel transfers between agency and the industry should be made within a period of four full years.
Public financing of campaigns should be extended to members of Congress.
The activities of lobbyists must be more thoroughly revealed and controlled.
Minimum secrecy within government should be matched with maximum personal privacy for private citizens.
All federal judges, diplomats and other major officials should be selected on a strict basis of merit.
For many years in the State Department we have chosen from among almost 16,000 applicants about 110 of our Nation's finest young leaders to represent us in the international world. But we top this off with the disgraceful and counterproductive policy of appointing unqualified persons to major diplomatic posts as political payoffs. This must be stopped immediately.
Every effort should be extended to encourage full participation by our people in their own governments' processes, including universal voter registration for elections.
We must insure better public understanding of executive policy, and better exchange of ideas between Congress and the White House. To do this, Cabinet members representing the President should meet in scheduled public interrogation sessions with the full bodies of Congress.
All our citizens must know that they will be treated fairly.
To quote from my own inauguration speech of four years ago: "The time for racial discrimination is over. Our people have already made this major and difficult decision, but we cannot underestimate the challenge of hundreds of minor decisions yet to be made. No poor, rural, weak or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job or simple justice."
We must meet this firm national commitment without equivocation or timidity in every aspect of private and public life.
As important as honesty and openness are -they are not enough. There must also be substance and logical direction in government.
The mechanism of our government should be understandable, efficient and economical...and it can be.
We must give top priority to a drastic and thorough revision of the federal bureaucracy, to its budgeting system and to the procedures for analyzing the effectiveness of its many varied services. Tight businesslike management and planning techniques must be instituted and maintained, utilizing the full authority and personal involvement of the President himself.
This is no job for the fainthearted. It will be met with violent opposition from those who now enjoy a special privilege, those who prefer to work in the dark, or those whose private fiefdoms are threatened.
In Georgia we met that opposition head on -and we won! We abolished 278 of our 300 agencies. We evolved clearly defined goals and policies in every part of government. We developed and implemented a remarkably effective system of zero base budgeting. We instituted tough performance auditing to insure proper conduct and efficient delivery of services.
Steps like these can insure a full return on our hard-earned tax dollars. These procedures are working in state capitols around the Nation and in our successful businesses, both large and small. They can and they will work in Washington.
Our Nation now has no understandable national purpose, no clearly defined goals, and no organizational mechanism to develop or achieve such purposes or goals. We move from one crisis to the next as if they were fads, even though the previous one hasn't been solved.
The Bible says: "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle." As a planner and a businessman, and a chief executive, I know from experience that uncertainty is also a devastating affliction in private life and in government. Coordination of different programs is impossible. There is no clear vision of what is to be accomplished, everyone struggles for temporary advantage, and there is no way to monitor how effectively services are delivered.
What is our national policy for the production, acquisition, distribution or consumption of energy in times of shortage or doubtful supply? There is no policy! What are our long-range goals in health care, transportation, land use, economic development, waste disposal or housing? There are no goals!
The tremendous resources of our people and of our chosen leaders can be harnessed to devise effective, understandable and practical goals and policies in every realm of public life.
A government that is honest and competent, with clear purpose and strong leadership can work with the American people to meet the challenges of the present and the future.
We can then face together the tough long-range solutions to our economic woes. Our people are ready to make personal sacrifices when clear national economic policies are devised and understood.
We are grossly wasting our energy resources and other precious raw materials as though their supply was infinite. We must even face the prospect of changing our basic ways of living. This change will either be made on our own initiative in a planned and rational way, or forced on us with chaos and suffering by the inexorable laws of nature.
Energy imports and consumption must be reduced, free competition enhanced by rigid enforcement of antitrust laws, and general monetary growth restrained. Pinpointed federal programs can ease the more acute pains of recession, such as now exist in the construction industry. We should consider extension of unemployment compensation, the stimulation of investments, public subsidizing of employment, and surtaxes on excess profits.
We are still floundering and equivocating about protection of our environment. Neither designers of automobiles, mayors of cities, power companies, farmers, nor those of us who simply have to breathe the air, love beauty, and would like to fish or swim in pure water have the slightest idea in God's world what is coming out of Washington next! What does come next must be a firm commitment to pure air, clean water and unspoiled land.
Almost twenty years after its conception we have not finished the basic interstate highway system. To many lobbyists who haunt the capitol buildings of the Nation, ground transportation still means only more highways and more automobiles - the bigger, the better. We must have a national commitment to transportation capabilities which will encourage the most efficient movement of American people and cargo.
Gross tax inequities are being perpetuated. The most surely taxed income is that which is derived from the sweat of manual labor. Carefully contrived loopholes let the total tax burden shift more and more toward the average wage earner. The largest corporations pay the lowest tax rates and some with very high profits pay no tax at all.
When a business executive can charge off a $50 luncheon on a tax return and a truck driver cannot deduct his $1.50 sandwich - when oil companies pay less than 5% on their earnings while employees of the company pay at least three times this rate - when many pay no taxes on incomes of more than $100,000 - then we need basic tax reform!
Every American has a right to expect that laws will be administered in an evenhanded manner, but it seems that something is wrong even with our system of justice. Defendants who are repeatedly out on bail commit more crimes. Aggravating trial delays and endless litigation are common.
Citizens without influence often bear the brunt of prosecution while violators of antitrust laws and other white collar criminals are ignored and go unpunished. .
Following recent presidential elections, our U.S. Attorney General has replaced the Postmaster General as the chief political appointee; and we have recently witnessed the prostitution of this most important law enforcement office. Special prosecutors had to be appointed simply to insure enforcement of the law! The Attorney General should be removed from politics.
The vast bureaucracy of government often fails to deliver needed social services to our people. High ideals and good intentions are not matched with rational, businesslike administration. The predictable result is frustration and discouragement among dedicated employees, recipients of services, and the American taxpayers.
There are about 25 million Americans who are classified as poor, two-thirds of whom happen to be white and half of whom receive welfare benefits. At least 10% of these are able to work. A massive bureaucracy of 2 million employees at all levels of government is attempting to administer more than 100 different programs of bewildering complexity. Case workers shuffle papers in a morass of red tape. Often it is financially profitable not to work and even to have a family disrupted by forcing the father to leave home. Some combined welfare payments exceed the average working family's income, while other needy families have difficulty obtaining a bare subsistence.
The word "welfare" no longer signifies how much we care, but often arouses feelings of contempt and even hatred.
Is a simplified, fair and compassionate welfare program beyond the capacity of our American government? I think not.
The quality of health care in this Nation depends largely on economic status. It is often unavailable or costs too much. There is little commonality of effort between private and public health agencies or between physicians and other trained medical personnel. I expect the next Congress to pass a national health insurance law. But present government interest seems to be in merely shifting the costs of existing services to the federal taxpayer or to the employers. There is little interest in preventing the cripplers and killers of our people and providing improved health care for those who still need it most.
Is a practical and comprehensive national health program beyond the capacity of our American government? I think not.
Federal education laws must be simplified to substitute education for paper-shuffling grantsmanship. Local systems need federal funds to supplement their programs for students where wealth and tax base are inadequate.
Is a comprehensive education program beyond the capacity of the American people? I think not.
As a farmer, I have been appalled at the maladministration of our Nation's agricultural economy. We have seen the elimination of our valuable food reserves, which has contributed to wild fluctuations in commodity prices and wiped out dependable trade and export capabilities. Grain speculators and monopolistic processors have profited, while farmers are going bankrupt trying to produce food that consumers are going broke trying to buy.
I know this Nation can develop an agricultural policy which will insure a fair profit to our farmers and a fair price to consumers.
It is obvious that domestic and foreign affairs are directly interrelated. A necessary base for effective implementation of any foreign policy is to get our domestic house in order.
Coordination of effort among the leaders of our Nation should be established so that our farm production, industrial development, foreign trade, defense, energy and diplomatic policies are mutually supportive and not in conflict.
The time for American intervention in all the problems of the world is over. But we cannot retreat into isolationism. Ties of friendship and cooperation with our friends and neighbors must be strengthened. Our common interests must be understood and pursued. The integrity of Israel must be preserved. Highly personalized and narrowly focused diplomatic efforts, although sometimes successful, should be balanced with a more wide-ranging implementation of foreign policy by competent foreign service officers.
Our Nation's security is obviously of paramount importance, and everything must be done to insure adequate military preparedness. But there is no reason why our national defense establishment cannot also be efficient.
Waste and inefficiency are both costly to taxpayers and a danger to our own national existence. Strict management and budgetary control over the Pentagon should reduce the ratio of officers to men and of support forces to combat troops. I see no reason why the Chief of Naval Operations needs more Navy captains on his staff than we have serving on ships!
Misdirected efforts such as the construction of unnecessary pork-barrel projects by the Corps of Engineers must be terminated.
The biggest waste and danger of all is the unnecessary proliferation of atomic weapons throughout the world. Our ultimate goal should be the elimination of nuclear weapon capability among all nations. In the meantime, simple, careful and fim1 proposals to implement this mutual arms reduction should be pursued as a prime national purpose in all our negotiations with nuclear powers -present or potential.
Is the achievement of these and other goals beyond the capacity of our American government? I think not.
Our people are hungry for integrity and competence in government. In this confused and fast-changing, technological world we still have within us the capability for national greatness.
About three months ago I met with the governors of the other twelve original states in Philadelphia. Exactly 200 years after the convening of the First Continental Congress we walked down the same streets, then turned left and entered a small building named Carpenter's Hall. There we heard exactly the same prayer and sat in the same chairs occupied in September of 1774 by Samuel Adams, John Jay, John Adams, Patrick Henry, George Washington, and about forty-five other strong and opinionated leaders.
They held widely divergent views and they debated for weeks. They and others who joined them for the Second Continental Congress avoided the production of timid compromise resolutions. They were somehow inspired, and they reached for greatness. Their written premises formed the basis on which our Nation was begun.
I don't know whose chair I occupied, but sitting there I thought soberly about their times and ours. Their people were also discouraged, disillusioned and confused. But these early leaders acted with purpose and conviction.
I wondered to myself: Were they more competent, more intelligent or better educated than we? Were they more courageous? Did they have more compassion or love for their neighbors? Did they have deeper religious convictions? Were they more concerned about the future of their children than we? I think not.
We are equally capable of correcting our faults, overcoming difficulties, managing our own affairs and facing the future with justifiable confidence.
I am convinced that among us 200 million Americans there is a willingness - even eagerness - to restore in our Country what has been lost - if we have understandable purposes and goals and a modicum of bold and inspired leadership.
Our government can express the highest common ideals of human .beings - if we demand of it standards of excellence.
It is now time to stop and to ask ourselves the question which my last commanding officer, Admiral Hyman Rickover, asked me and every other young naval officer who serves or has served in an atomic submarine.
For our Nation - for all of us - that question is: "Why not the best?"
Source: Jimmy Carter Presidential Campaign Announcement Speech Flyer