Ronald Reagan
Remarks Accepting the Presidential Nomination
Republican National Convention
Dallas, Texas
August 23, 1984
The President. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President, delegates to this convention, and fellow citizens: In 75 days, I hope we enjoy a victory that is the size of the heart of Texas. Nancy and I extend our deep thanks to the Lone Star State and the ``Big D'' -- the city of Dallas -- for all their warmth and hospitality.
Four years ago I didn't know precisely every duty of this office, and not too long ago, I learned about some new ones from the first graders of Corpus Christi School in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Little Leah Kline was asked by her teacher to describe my duties. She said: ``The President goes to meetings. He helps the animals. The President gets frustrated. He talks to other Presidents.'' How does wisdom begin at such an early age?
Tonight, with a full heart and deep gratitude for your trust, I accept your nomination for the Presidency of the United States. I will campaign on behalf of the principles of our party which lift America confidently into the future.
America is presented with the clearest political choice of half a century. The distinction between our two parties and the different philosophy of our political opponents are at the heart of this campaign and America's future.
I've been campaigning long enough to know that a political party and its leadership can't change their colors in 4 days. We won't, and no matter how hard they tried, our opponents didn't in San Francisco. We didn't discover our values in a poll taken a week before the convention. And we didn't set a weathervane on top of the Golden Gate Bridge before we started talking about the American family.
The choices this year are not just between two different personalities or between two political parties. They're between two different visions of the future, two fundamentally different ways of governing -- their government of pessimism, fear, and limits, or ours of hope, confidence, and growth.
Their government sees people only as members of groups; ours serves all the people of America as individuals. Theirs lives in the past, seeking to apply the old and failed policies to an era that has passed them by. Ours learns from the past and strives to change by boldly charting a new course for the future. Theirs lives by promises, the bigger, the better. We offer proven, workable answers.
Our opponents began this campaign hoping that America has a poor memory. Well, let's take them on a little stroll down memory lane. Let's remind them of how a 4.8-percent inflation rate in 1976 became back-to-back years of double-digit inflation -- the worst since World War I -- punishing the poor and the elderly, young couples striving to start their new lives, and working people struggling to make ends meet.
Inflation was not some plague borne on the wind; it was a deliberate part of their official economic policy, needed, they said, to maintain prosperity. They didn't tell us that with it would come the highest interest rates since the Civil War. As average monthly mortgage payments more than doubled, home building nearly ground to a halt; tens of thousands of carpenters and others were thrown out of work. And who controlled both Houses of the Congress and the executive branch at that time? Not us, not us.
Campaigning across America in 1980, we saw evidence everywhere of industrial decline. And in rural America, farmers' costs were driven up by inflation. They were devastated by a wrongheaded grain embargo and were forced to borrow money at exorbitant interest rates just to get by. And many of them didn't get by. Farmers have to fight insects, weather, and the marketplace; they shouldn't have to fight their own government.
The high interest rates of 1980 were not talked about in San Francisco. But how about taxes? They were talked about in San Francisco. Will Rogers once said he never met a man he didn't like. Well, if I could paraphrase Will, our friends in the other party have never met a tax they didn't like or hike.
Under their policies, tax rates have gone up three times as much for families with children as they have for everyone else over these past three decades. In just the 5 years before we came into office, taxes roughly doubled.
Some who spoke so loudly in San Francisco of fairness were among those who brought about the biggest single, individual tax increase in our history in 1977, calling for a series of increases in the Social Security payroll tax and in the amount of pay subject to that tax. The bill they passed called for two additional increases between now and 1990, increases that bear down hardest on those at the lower income levels.
The Census Bureau confirms that, because of the tax laws we inherited, the number of households at or below the poverty level paying Federal income tax more than doubled between 1980 and 1982. Well, they received some relief in 1983, when our across-the-board tax cut was fully in place. And they'll get more help when indexing goes into effect this January.
Our opponents have repeatedly advocated eliminating indexing. Would that really hurt the rich? No, because the rich are already in the top brackets. But those working men and women who depend on a cost-of-living adjustment just to keep abreast of inflation would find themselves pushed into higher tax brackets and wouldn't even be able to keep even with inflation because they'd be paying a higher income tax. That's bracket creep; and our opponents are for it, and we're against it.
It's up to us to see that all our fellow citizens understand that confiscatory taxes, costly social experiments, and economic tinkering were not just the policies of a single administration. For the 26 years prior to January of 1981, the opposition party controlled both Houses of Congress. Every spending bill and every tax for more than a quarter of a century has been of their doing.
About a decade ago, they said Federal spending was out of control, so they passed a budget control act and, in the next 5 years, ran up deficits of $260 billion. Some control.
In 1981 we gained control of the Senate and the executive branch. With the help of some concerned Democrats in the House we started a policy of tightening the Federal budget instead of the family budget.
A task force chaired by Vice President George Bush -- the finest Vice President this country has ever had -- it eliminated unnecessary regulations that had been strangling business and industry.
And while we have our friends down memory lane, maybe they'd like to recall a gimmick they designed for their 1976 campaign. As President Ford told us the night before last, adding the unemployment and inflation rates, they got what they called a misery index. In '76 it came to 121/2 percent. They declared the incumbent had no right to seek reelection with that kind of a misery index. Well, 4 years ago, in the 1980 election, they didn't mention the misery index, possibly because it was then over 20 percent. And do you know something? They won't mention it in this election either. It's down to 11.6 and dropping.
By nearly every measure, the position of poor Americans worsened under the leadership of our opponents. Teenage drug use, out-of-wedlock births, and crime increased dramatically. Urban neighborhoods and schools deteriorated. Those whom government intended to help discovered a cycle of dependency that could not be broken. Government became a drug, providing temporary relief, but addiction as well.
And let's get some facts on the table that our opponents don't want to hear. The biggest annual increase in poverty took place between 1978 and 1981 -- over 9 percent each year, in the first 2 years of our administration. Well, I should -- pardon me -- I didn't put a period in there. In the first 2 years of our administration, that annual increase fell to 5.3 percent. And 1983 was the first year since 1978 that there was no appreciable increase in poverty at all.
Pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into programs in order to make people worse off was irrational and unfair. It was time we ended this reliance on the government process and renewed our faith in the human process.
In 1980 the people decided with us that the economic crisis was not caused by the fact that they lived too well. Government lived too well. It was time for tax increases to be an act of last resort, not of first resort.
The people told the liberal leadership in Washington, ``Try shrinking the size of government before you shrink the size of our paychecks.''
Our government was also in serious trouble abroad. We had aircraft that couldn't fly and ships that couldn't leave port. Many of our military were on food stamps because of meager earnings, and reenlistments were down. Ammunition was low, and spare parts were in short supply.
Many of our allies mistrusted us. In the 4 years before we took office, country after country fell under the Soviet yoke. Since January 20th, 1981, not 1 inch of soil has fallen to the Communists.
Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!
The President. All right.
Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!
The President. But worst of all, Americans were losing the confidence and optimism about the future that has made us unique in the world. Parents were beginning to doubt that their children would have the better life that has been the dream of every American generation.
We can all be proud that pessimism is ended. America is coming back and is more confident than ever about the future. Tonight, we thank the citizens of the United States whose faith and unwillingness to give up on themselves or this country saved us all.
Together, we began the task of controlling the size and activities of the government by reducing the growth of its spending while passing a tax program to provide incentives to increase productivity for both workers and industry. Today, a working family earning $25,000 has about $2,900 more in purchasing power than if tax and inflation rates were still at the 1980 level.
Today, of all the major industrial nations of the world, America has the strongest economic growth; one of the lowest inflation rates; the fastest rate of job creation -- 61/2 million jobs in the last year and a half -- a record 600,000 business incorporations in 1983; and the largest increase in real, after-tax personal income since World War II. We're enjoying the highest level of business investment in history, and America has renewed its leadership in developing the vast new opportunities in science and high technology. America is on the move again and expanding toward new eras of opportunity for everyone.
Now, we're accused of having a secret. Well, if we have, it is that we're going to keep the mighty engine of this nation revved up. And that means a future of sustained economic growth without inflation that's going to create for our children and grandchildren a prosperity that finally will last.
Today our troops have newer and better equipment; their morale is higher. The better armed they are, the less likely it is they will have to use that equipment. But if, heaven forbid, they're ever called upon to defend this nation, nothing would be more immoral than asking them to do so with weapons inferior to those of any possible opponent.
We have also begun to repair our valuable alliances, especially our historic NATO alliance. Extensive discussions in Asia have enabled us to start a new round of diplomatic progress there.
In the Middle East, it remains difficult to bring an end to historic conflicts, but we're not discouraged. And we shall always maintain our pledge never to sell out one of our closest friends, the State of Israel.
Closer to home, there remains a struggle for survival for free Latin American States, allies of ours. They valiantly struggle to prevent Communist takeovers fueled massively by the Soviet Union and Cuba. Our policy is simple: We are not going to betray our friends, reward the enemies of freedom, or permit fear and retreat to become American policies -- especially in this hemisphere.
None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong. It's weakness that invites adventurous adversaries to make mistaken judgments. America is the most peaceful, least warlike nation in modern history. We are not the cause of all the ills of the world. We're a patient and generous people. But for the sake of our freedom and that of others, we cannot permit our reserve to be confused with a lack of resolve.
Ten months ago, we displayed this resolve in a mission to rescue American students on the imprisoned island of Grenada. Democratic candidates have suggested that this could be likened to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- --
Audience. Boo-o-o!
The President. -- -- the crushing of human rights in Poland or the genocide in Cambodia.
Audience. Boo-o-o!
The President. Could you imagine Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, or Scoop Jackson making such a shocking comparison?
Audience. No!
The President. Nineteen of our fine young men lost their lives on Grenada, and to even remotely compare their sacrifice to the murderous actions taking place in Afghanistan is unconscionable.
There are some obvious and important differences. First, we were invited in by six East Caribbean States. Does anyone seriously believe the people of Eastern Europe or Afghanistan invited the Russians?
Audience. No!
The President. Second, there are hundreds of thousands of Soviets occupying captive nations across the world. Today, our combat troops have come home. Our students are safe, and freedom is what we left behind in Grenada.
There are some who've forgotten why we have a military. It's not to promote war; it's to be prepared for peace. There's a sign over the entrance to Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington State, and that sign says it all: ``Peace is our profession.''
Our next administration -- --
Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!
The President. All right.
Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!
The President. I heard you. And that administration will be committed to completing the unfinished agenda that we've placed before the Congress and the Nation. It is an agenda which calls upon the national Democratic leadership to cease its obstructionist ways.
We've heard a lot about deficits this year from those on the other side of the aisle. Well, they should be experts on budget deficits. They've spent most of their political careers creating deficits. For 42 of the last 50 years, they have controlled both Houses of the Congress.
Audience. Boo-o-o!
The President. And for almost all of those 50 years, deficit spending has been their deliberate policy. Now, however, they call for an end to deficits. They call them ours. Yet, at the same time, the leadership of their party resists our every effort to bring Federal spending under control. For 3 years straight, they have prevented us from adopting a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We will continue to fight for that amendment, mandating that government spend no more than government takes in.
And we will fight, as the Vice President told you, for the right of a President to veto items in appropriations bills without having to veto the entire bill. There is no better way than the line-item veto, now used by Governors in 43 States to cut out waste in government. I know. As Governor of California, I successfully made such vetos over 900 times.
Now, their candidate, it would appear, has only recently found deficits alarming. Nearly 10 years ago he insisted that a $52 billion deficit should be allowed to get much bigger in order to lower unemployment, and he said that sometimes ``we need a deficit in order to stimulate the economy.''
Audience. Boo-o-o!
The President. As a Senator, he voted to override President Ford's veto of billions of dollars in spending bills and then voted no on a proposal to cut the 1976 deficit in half.
Audience. Boo-o-o!
The President. Was anyone surprised by his pledge to raise your taxes next year if given the chance?
Audience. No!
The President. In the Senate, he voted time and again for new taxes, including a 10-percent income tax surcharge, higher taxes on certain consumer items. He also voted against cutting the excise tax on automobiles. And he was part and parcel of that biggest single, individual tax increase in history -- the Social Security payroll tax of 1977. It tripled the maximum tax and still didn't make the system solvent.
Audience. Boo-o-o!
The President. If our opponents were as vigorous in supporting our voluntary prayer amendment as they are in raising taxes, maybe we could get the Lord back in the schoolrooms and drugs and violence out.
Something else illustrates the nature of the choice Americans must make. While we've been hearing a lot of tough talk on crime from our opponents, the House Democratic leadership continues to block a critical anticrime bill that passed the Republican Senate by a 91-to-1 vote. Their burial of this bill means that you and your families will have to wait for even safer homes and streets.
There's no longer any good reason to hold back passage of tuition tax credit legislation. Millions of average parents pay their full share of taxes to support public schools while choosing to send their children to parochial or other independent schools. Doesn't fairness dictate that they should have some help in carrying a double burden?
When we talk of the plight of our cities, what would help more than our enterprise zones bill, which provides tax incentives for private industry to help rebuild and restore decayed areas in 75 sites all across America? If they really wanted a future of boundless new opportunities for our citizens, why have they buried enterprise zones over the years in committee?
Our opponents are openly committed to increasing our tax burden.
Audience. Boo-o-o!
The President. We are committed to stopping them, and we will.
They call their policy the new realism, but their new realism is just the old liberalism. They will place higher and higher taxes on small businesses, on family farms, and on other working families so that government may once again grow at the people's expense. You know, we could say they spend money like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors -- [laughter] -- --
Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!
The President. All right. I agree.
Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!
The President. I was going to say, it would be unfair, because the sailors are spending their own money. [Laughter]
Our tax policies are and will remain prowork, progrowth, and profamily. We intend to simplify the entire tax system -- to make taxes more fair, easier to understand, and, most important, to bring the tax rates of every American further down, not up. Now, if we bring them down far enough, growth will continue strong; the underground economy will shrink; the world will beat a path to our door; and no one will be able to hold America back; and the future will be ours.
Audience. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
The President. All right. Another part of our future, the greatest challenge of all, is to reduce the risk of nuclear war by reducing the levels of nuclear arms. I have addressed parliaments, have spoken to parliaments in Europe and Asia during these last 31/2 years, declaring that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And those words, in those assemblies, were greeted with spontaneous applause.
There are only two nations who by their agreement can rid the world of those doomsday weapons -- the United States of America and the Soviet Union. For the sake of our children and the safety of this Earth, we ask the Soviets -- who have walked out of our negotiations -- to join us in reducing and, yes, ridding the Earth of this awful threat.
When we leave this hall tonight, we begin to place those clear choices before our fellow citizens. We must not let them be confused by those who still think that GNP stands for gross national promises. [Laughter] But after the debates, the position papers, the speeches, the conventions, the television commercials, primaries, caucuses, and slogans -- after all this, is there really any doubt at all about what will happen if we let them win this November?
Audience. No!
The President. Is there any doubt that they will raise our taxes?
Audience. No!
The President. That they will send inflation into orbit again?
Audience. No!
The President. That they will make government bigger then ever?
Audience. No!
The President. And deficits even worse?
Audience. No!
The President. Raise unemployment?
Audience. No!
The President. Cut back our defense preparedness?
Audience. No!
The President. Raise interest rates?
Audience. No!
The President. Make unilaterial and unwise concessions to the Soviet Union?
Audience. No!
The President. And they'll do all that in the name of compassion.
Audience. Boo-o-o!
The President. It's what they've done to America in the past. But if we do our job right, they won't be able to do it again.
Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!
The President. It's getting late.
Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!
The President. All right. In 1980 we asked the people of America, ``Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?'' Well, the people answered then by choosing us to bring about a change. We have every reason now, 4 years later, to ask that same question again, for we have made a change.
The American people joined us and helped us. Let us ask for their help again to renew the mandate of 1980, to move us further forward on the road we presently travel, the road of common sense, of people in control of their own destiny; the road leading to prosperity and economic expansion in a world at peace.
As we ask for their help, we should also answer the central question of public service: Why are we here? What do we believe in? Well for one thing, we're here to see that government continues to serve the people and not the other way around. Yes, government should do all that is necessary, but only that which is necessary.
We don't lump people by groups or special interests. And let me add, in the party of Lincoln, there is no room for intolerance and not even a small corner for anti-Semitism or bigotry of any kind. Many people are welcome in our house, but not the bigots.
We believe in the uniqueness of each individual. We believe in the sacredness of human life. For some time now we've all fallen into a pattern of describing our choice as left or right. It's become standard rhetoric in discussions of political philosophy. But is that really an accurate description of the choice before us?
Go back a few years to the origin of the terms and see where left or right would take us if we continued far enough in either direction. Stalin. Hitler. One would take us to Communist totalitarianism; the other to the totalitarianism of Hitler.
Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty and, ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.
We don't celebrate dependence day on the Fourth of July. We celebrate Independence Day.
Audience. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
The President. We celebrate the right of each individual to be recognized as unique, possessed of dignity and the sacred right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At the same time, with our independence goes a generosity of spirit more evident here than in almost any other part of the world. Recognizing the equality of all men and women, we're willing and able to lift the weak, cradle those who hurt, and nurture the bonds that tie us together as one nation under God.
Finally, we're here to shield our liberties, not just for now or for a few years but forever.
Could I share a personal thought with you tonight, because tonight's kind of special to me. It's the last time, of course, that I will address you under these same circumstances. I hope you'll invite me back to future conventions. Nancy and I will be forever grateful for the honor you've done us, for the opportunity to serve, and for your friendship and trust.
I began political life as a Democrat, casting my first vote in 1932 for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That year, the Democrats called for a 25-percent reduction in the cost of government by abolishing useless commissions and offices and consolidating departments and bureaus, and giving more authority to State governments. As the years went by and those promises were forgotten, did I leave the Democratic Party, or did the leadership of that party leave not just me but millions of patriotic Democrats who believed in the principles and philosophy of that platform?
One of the first to declare this was a former Democratic nominee for President -- Al Smith, the Happy Warrior, who went before the Nation in 1936 to say, on television -- or on radio that he could no longer follow his party's leadership and that he was ``taking a walk.'' As Democratic leaders have taken their party further and further away from its first principles, it's no surprise that so many responsible Democrats feel that our platform is closer to their views, and we welcome them to our side.
Four years ago we raised a banner of bold colors -- no pale pastels. We proclaimed a dream of an America that would be ``a shining city on a hill.''
We promised that we'd reduce the growth of the Federal Government, and we have. We said we intended to reduce interest rates and inflation, and we have. We said we would reduce taxes to provide incentives for individuals and business to get our economy moving again, and we have. We said there must be jobs with a future for our people, not government make-work programs, and, in the last 19 months, as I've said, 61/2 million new jobs in the private sector have been created. We said we would once again be respected throughout the world, and we are. We said we would restore our ability to protect our freedom on land, sea, and in the air, and we have.
We bring to the American citizens in this election year a record of accomplishment and the promise of continuation.
We came together in a national crusade to make America great again, and to make a new beginning. Well, now it's all coming together. With our beloved nation at peace, we're in the midst of a springtime of hope for America. Greatness lies ahead of us.
Holding the Olympic games here in the United States began defining the promise of this season.
Audience. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
The President. All through the spring and summer, we marveled at the journey of the Olympic torch as it made its passage east to west. Over 9,000 miles, by some 4,000 runners, that flame crossed a portrait of our nation.
From our Gotham City, New York, to the Cradle of Liberty, Boston, across the Appalachian springtime, to the City of the Big Shoulders, Chicago. Moving south toward Atlanta, over to St. Louis, past its Gateway Arch, across wheatfields into the stark beauty of the Southwest and then up into the still, snowcapped Rockies. And, after circling the greening Northwest, it came down to California, across the Golden Gate and finally into Los Angeles. And all along the way, that torch became a celebration of America. And we all became participants in the celebration.
Each new story was typical of this land of ours. There was Ansel Stubbs, a youngster of 99, who passed the torch in Kansas to 4-year-old Katie Johnson. In Pineville, Kentucky, it came at 1 a.m., so hundreds of people lined the streets with candles. At Tupelo, Mississippi, at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, a robed church choir sang ``God Bless America'' as the torch went by.
That torch went through the Cumberland Gap, past the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial, down the Santa Fe Trail, and alongside Billy the Kid's grave.
In Richardson, Texas, it was carried by a 14-year-old boy in a special wheelchair. In West Virginia the runner came across a line of deaf children and let each one pass the torch for a few feet, and at the end these youngsters' hands talked excitedly in their sign language. Crowds spontaneously began singing ``America the Beautiful'' or ``The Battle Hymn of the Republic.''
And then, in San Francisco a Vietnamese immigrant, his little son held on his shoulders, dodged photographers and policemen to cheer a 19-year-old black man pushing an 88-year-old white woman in a wheelchair as she carried the torch.
My friends, that's America.
Audience. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
The President. We cheered in Los Angeles as the flame was carried in and the giant Olympic torch burst into a billowing fire in front of the teams, the youth of 140 nations assembled on the floor of the Coliseum. And in that moment, maybe you were struck as I was with the uniqueness of what was taking place before a hundred thousand people in the stadium, most of them citizens of our country, and over a billion worldwide watching on television. There were athletes representing 140 countries here to compete in the one country in all the world whose people carry the bloodlines of all those 140 countries and more. Only in the United States is there such a rich mixture of races, creeds, and nationalities -- only in our melting pot.
And that brings to mind another torch, the one that greeted so many of our parents and grandparents. Just this past Fourth of July, the torch atop the Statue of Liberty was hoisted down for replacement. We can be forgiven for thinking that maybe it was just worn out from lighting the way to freedom for 17 million new Americans. So, now we'll put up a new one.
The poet called Miss Liberty's torch the ``lamp beside the golden door.'' Well, that was the entrance to America, and it still is. And now you really know why we're here tonight.
The glistening hope of that lamp is still ours. Every promise, every opportunity is still golden in this land. And through that golden door our children can walk into tomorrow with the knowledge that no one can be denied the promise that is America.
Her heart is full; her door is still golden, her future bright. She has arms big enough to comfort and strong enough to support, for the strength in her arms is the strength of her people. She will carry on in the eighties unafraid, unashamed, and unsurpassed.
In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
Note: The President spoke at 9:11 p.m. at the Dallas Convention Center. Prior to the President's speech, the delegates watched a film which concluded with the introduction of the President.
Source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum
FOR RELEASE UPON DELIVERY
(APPROX. 7:10 PM. PDT. THURS. JULY 19) JULY 1984
SAN FRANCISCO, July 19--Following is the text of Walter F. Mondale's acceptance speech before the Democrats' 1984 national convention at the Moscone Convention Center here,
My fellow Americans:
I accept your nomination -- and I welcome the fight that comes with it.
Behind us now is the most wide-open race in political history.
It was noisy -- but our voices were heard. It was long -- but our stamina was tested. It was hot -- but the heat was passion, and not anger. It was a roller coaster -- but it made me a better candidate, and it will make me a stronger President.
I do not envy the drowsy harmony of the Republican Party. They squelch debate; we welcome it. They deny differences; we bridge them. They are uniform; we are united. They are a portrait of privilege; we are a mirror of America.
Just look at us: black and white, Asian and Hispanic, Native and immigrant, young and old, urban and rural, male and female -- from yuppy to lunchpail, from sea to shining sea.
When we in this hall speak for America -- it is America that is speaking.
When we speak of family, the voice is Mario Cuomo's.
When we speak of change, the words are Gary Hart's.
When we speak of hope, the fire is Jesse Jackson's.
When we speak of caring, the spirit is Ted Kennedy's.
When we speak of patriotism, the strength is John Glenn's.
When we speak of the future, the message is Geraldine Ferraro.
And now we leave San Francisco -- together.
Over the next hundred days, in every word we say, and every life we touch, we will be fighting for the American future.
Joan and I are parents of three wonderful children who will live much of their lives in the twenty-first century.
This election is a referendum on their future -- and on ours.
So tonight I'd like to speak to the young people of America -- and to their parents and grandparents.
I'm Walter Mondale. You may have heard of me -- but you may not really know me.
I grew up in the farm towns of southern Minnesota. My dad was a preacher, and my mom taught music. We never had a dime. But we were rich in love and faith, and they taught me the values I've carried ever since.
They taught me to work hard; to stand on my own; to play by the rules; to tell the truth; to obey the law; to care for others; to love our country; to cherish our faith.
My story isn't unique.
In the last few weeks, I've deepened my admiration for someone who shares those same values. Her immigrant father loved our country. Her widowed mother sacrificed for her family. And her own career is an American classic: Doing your work. Earning your way. Paying your dues. Rising on merit.
My presidency will be about those values. My Vice President will be Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro.
Tonight, we open a new door to the future. Mr. Reagan calls it "tokenism." We call it America.
Ever since I graduated from Elmore High, I've been a Democrat.
I was Attorney General of my state; then a U.S. Senator. In 1976, an honest, caring man -- Jimmy Carter -- picked me as his running mate and I was elected vice president.
And in 1980, Ronald Reagan beat the pants off us.
So tonight, I want to say something to those of you across our country who voted for Mr. Reagan -- Republicans, to Independents, and yes, to some Democrats:
I heard you. And our party heard you.
After we lost we didn't tell the American people that they were wrong. Instead, we began asking you what our mistakes had been.
And for four years, I listened to the American people -- all of you. I traveled what seemed every acre of America.
It wasn't easy. I remember late one night, as I headed from a speech in one city to a hotel a thousand miles away, someone said to me, "Fritz, I saw you on TV. Are those bags under your eyes natural?" And I said, "No, I got them the old-fashioned way. I earned them."
To the thousands of Americans who welcomed me into your homes and into your businesses, your churches and synagogues: I thank you.
You confirmed my belief in our country's values. And you helped me learn and grow.
Tonight we come to you with a new realism: Ready for the future, and recapturing the best in our tradition.
We know that America must have a strong defense, and a sober view of the Soviets.
We know that government must be as well-managed as it is well-meaning.
We know that a healthy, growing private economy is the key to the future.
We know that Harry Truman spoke the truth when he said: "A President ... has to be able to say yes and no, and more often no."
Look at our platform. There are no defense cuts that weaken our security; no business taxes that weaken our economy; no laundry lists that raid our Treasury.
We are wiser, stronger, and focused on the future. If Mr. Reagan wants to re-run the 1980 campaign: fine. Let them fight over the past. We're fighting for the American future -- and that's why we're going to win this campaign.
One last word to those who voted for Mr. Reagan.
I know what you were saying. But I also know what you were not saying.
You did not vote for a $200 billion deficit.
You did not vote for an arms race.
You did not vote to turn the heavens into a battleground.
You did not vote to savage Social Security and Medicare.
You did not vote to trash the civil rights laws.
You did not vote to poison the environment.
You did not vote to assault the poor, the sick, and the disabled.
And you did not vote to pay fifty bucks for a fifty-cent light bulb.
Four years ago, many of you voted for Mr. Reagan because he promised you'd be better off. And today, the rich are better off. But working Americans are worse off, and the middle class is standing on a trap door.
Lincoln once said that ours is to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. What we have today is a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
First, there was Mr. Reagan's tax program. What happened was, he gave each of his rich friends enough tax relief to buy a Rolls Royce -- and then he asked your family to pay for the hub caps.
Then they looked the other way at the rip-offs, soaring utility bills, phone bills, medical bills.
Then they crimped our future. They let us be routed in international competition, and now the help-wanted ads are full of listings for executives, and for dishwashers -- but not much in between.
Then they socked it to workers. They encouraged executives to vote themselves huge bonuses -- while using King Kong tactics to make workers take Hong Kong wages.
Mr. Reagan believes that the genius of America is in the boardrooms and exclusive country clubs. I believe that the greatness can be found in the men and women who built our nation; do its work; and defend our freedom.
If this administration has a plan for a better future, they're keeping it a secret.
Here is the truth about the future: We are living on borrowed money and borrowed time. These deficits hike interest rates, clobber exports, stunt investment, kill jobs, undermine growth, cheat our kids, and shrink our future.
Whoever is inaugurated in January, the American people will have to pay Mr. Reagan's bills. The budget will be squeezed. Taxes will go up. And anyone who says they won't is not telling the truth to the American people.
I mean business. By the end of my first term, I will cut the deficit by two-thirds.
Let's tell the truth. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did.
There's another difference. When he raises taxes, it won't be done fairly. He will sock it to average-income families again, and leave his rich friends alone. And I won't.
To the corporations and freeloaders who play the loopholes or pay no taxes, my message is: Your free ride is over.
To the Congress, my message is: We must cut spending and pay as we go. If you don't hold the line, I will: That's what the veto is for.
Now that's my plan to cut the deficit. Mr. Reagan is keeping his a secret until after the election. That's not leadership; that's salesmanship.
I challenge Mr. Reagan to put his plan on the table next to mine -- and debate it with me on national television. Americans want the truth about the future -- not after the election,but now.
When the American economy leads the world, the jobs and prosperity flow here. That's not happening today. This is the worst trade year in our history. Three million of our best jobs have gone overseas.
Mr. Reagan has no plan to get our competitive edge back, we do.
We will cut the deficits, reduce interest rates, make our exports affordable, and make America number one again.
We will launch a renaissance in education, science, and learning. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. And this must be the best-educated, best-trained generation in American history.
It is time for a season of excellence. Parents must turn off the television; students must do their homework; teachers must teach; America must compete.
To big companies that send our best jobs overseas, my message is: We need those jobs here at home. And our country won't help your business --unless your business helps our country.
To countries that close their markets to us, my message is: We will not be pushed around any more. We will have a President who stands up for American workers and American businesses and American farmers.
When I grew up, and people asked us to imagine the future, we talked about the great days ahead. But a few months ago, when I asked some fifth-graders in Texas to imagine the future, they talked to me about nuclear war.
Lately, as we've neared the election, this administration has beeen talking about a safer world. There's a difference: as president, I will work for peace and strrength from my first day in office -- not from my first day campaigning for re-election.
As President, I will reassert American values. I'll press for human rights in Central America, and for the removal of all foreign forces from the region. And in my first hundred days, I will stop the illegal war in Nicaragua.
We know our deep differences with the Soviets. America condemns their repression of dissidents and Jews; their suppression of Solidarity; their invasion of Afghanistan; their meddling around the world.
But the truth is that between us, we can destroy the planet. Every president since the bomb went off understood that. Every other President talked with the Soviets and negotiated arms control. Why not this one?
Why can't we meet in summits at least once a year? Why can't we reach agreements to save this earth? The truth is, we can.
President Kennedy was right when he said: We must never negotiate out of fear. But we must never fear to negotiate. For the sake of civilization we must negotiate a mutual, verifiable nuclear freeze before those weapons destroy us all.
The second term of the Mondale-Ferraro Administration will begin in 1989.
By the start of the next decade, I want to ask our children their dreams, and hear not one word about nuclear nightmares.
By the start of the next decade, I want to walk into any classroom in America and hear some of the brightest students say, "I want to be a teacher."
By the start of the next decade, I want to walk into any public health clinic in America and hear the doctor say, "We haven't seen a single hungry child this year."
By the start of the next decade, I want to walk into any store in America and pick up the best product, of the best quality, at the best price; turn it over; and read, "Made in the U.S.A."
By the start of the next decade, I want to meet with the most successful business leaders anywhere in America, and see as many minorities and women in that room as there are in this room tonight.
By the start of the next decade, I want to point to the Supreme Court and say, "Justice is in good hands."
Before the start of the next decade, I want to go to my second Inaugural, and raise my right hand, and swear to "preserve, protect, and defend" a Constitution that includes the Equal Rights Amendment.
My friends, America is a future each generation must enlarge; a door each generation must open; a promise each generation must keep.
For the rest of my life, I want to talk to young people about their future.
And whatever their race, whatever their religion, whatever their sex, I want to hear some of them say what I say -- with joy and reverence -- tonight: "I want to be P resident of the United States."
Thank you very much.
****
Source: Walter F. Mondale Papers, Minnesota Historical Society
Jesse Jackson Presidential Campaign Announcement in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 16, 1984.
There are eight Democrats running for the nomination this time around: You got a chance, and you got a choice.
You want somebody who marched for you to get the right to vote, you got a choice. Want somebody who challenged corporate America to hire and give you contracts, you got a choice. It's choice time! [Loud applause.]
All this talk about qualifications..."What do blacks know about foreign policy?" It's an insult. I was three years old, I came into my consciousness, my Daddy was coming home from the war. Foreign policy. If he was so dumb, how did he get over there and get back? If he didn't know foreign policy, why did they give him a gun? And when they gave it to him he knew which way to shoot. [Cheers and laughter.]
We know foreign policy. When you buy Honda and Toyota, that's foreign policy. Russian Vodka, that's foreign policy. Panasonic and Sony, that's foreign policy. Mercedes Benz, that's foreign policy, and a matter of fact, we came here on a foreign policy!
Yeah! [extended applause and cheers]
I know ya'll are in a hurry, I'm going to leave you now. [crowd shouts, "No!"] It's time for a new course, a new coalition, a new leadership.
Red, yellow, black and white, we are all precious in God's sight!
Somebody got to rise above race, rise above sex, a new leadership, a choice, a chance. Don't cry about what you don't have, use what you got. Reagan won the last time not by genius. Reagan won when we were asleep. He won by the margin of despair. He won by the margin, the fracture of our coalition, he won by the margin of racial division, he won by default.
I close with another story of a little shepherd boy named David. Everybody in town was scared of Goliath.
Philadelphia, your time has come. Don't stop at the Mayor's office, go on higher.
Because you must never forget that about the time we began to take over the cities, Nixon shifted the power to the suburbs. Now Reagan has shifted it to the states. So you have mayors who have more and more responsibility and less and less power. We got more and more votes and fewer and fewer services. We can not stop. We got to rise on higher.
Little David, little David, little David. Took off his unnecessary garments, Little David. Didn't want to get weighted down with a lot of foolishness, little David Too. k what God gave him, a sling shot and a God biscuit, a rock.
Our problem today is that David-- [Jackson's interrupts himself]-- What we need, we need to organize Pennsylvania and win because we are going to stop the rocks that's been lying around and pick them up.
In 1980, Reagan won Massachusetts by 2,500 votes! There were over a hundred thousand students unregistered, over 50,000 blacks, over 50,000 Hispanics. He won by 2,500. Ted Kennedy's state. Rocks just laying around.
He won Illinois by 300,000 votes--800,000 unregistered blacks, 500,000 Hispanics, rocks just laying around! He won. In 1980 three million high school students unregistered to vote. Now they've registered to draft. Rocks still laying around! [Crowd cheers.]
[There were] 11-million college students who could have chosen jobs over jails, peace over war, that didn't vote. Now they're crying. Rocks just laying around! [More cheers.]
Reagan won eight southern states by 182,000 votes when there were three million unregistered blacks in those same eight states. Rocks just laying around! [More cheers.]
He won New York by 165,000 votes. 600,000 students unregistered, 900,000 blacks, 600,000 Hispanics. Rocks just laying around! [Cheers]
In 1980, Reagan won Pennsylvania by 300,000 votes, 400,000 students unregistered. More than 600,000 blacks unregistered! Reagan won Pennsylvania by the margin of despair, by margin of the fracture of our coalition. [Members of the crowd shout "Yeah!"]
[Jackson concludes, shouting over thunderous applause and cheers] Philadelphia, your time has come! Pick up your sling shot, pick up your rock, declare our time has come, a new day has begun! Red, yellow, black and white, we are all precious in God's sight! Our time has come!
THE NEW REALISM: A REVIVAL OF THE OLD COMMON SENSE
PRESIDENTIAL ANNOUNCEMENT SPEECH
OF
GEORGE McGOVERN
GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC
11 a.m., TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1983
I have decided to seek the Presidency of the United States. I shall make that effort on a platform of realism and common sense. Fantasy may be good entertainment on the movie screen; it is not good policy for a great nation.
The new realism calls for a revival of the old common sense that has guided our greatest leaders since George Washington who gave this University its proud name.
In the course of the campaign and I will set forth what I believe to be common sense positions on the major issues before the country, but I shall concentrate on these three propositions:
PROPOSITION I: There is no longer any alternative to what president Eisenhower described as “peaceful coexistence” except no existence.
PROPOSITION II: The age of intervention in the internal affairs of small countries is over. It does not work anymore.
PROPOSITION III: American prosperity and power rest on faithfulness to our founding ideals including equal rights and equal opportunities for all Americans.
As for the first proposition, the system of war as a means of settling international conflict is now obsolete. Both nuclear and conventional weapons have become so costly and so destructive that a peacetime arms race bankrupts the participants and a wartime use of modern weapons destroys the combatants. Modern warfare has erased the distinction between losers and winners: if war comes, all of us lose.
As a combat bomber pilot in the Second World War.., I knew the horrors of war firsthand. Many of my young friends, including the navigator on my own crew, died before my eyes.
A decade ago I came to national prominence as a leader in the effort to end the war in Vietnam. After one of the longest and most wide-ranging campaigns in American history, I won the Democratic Presidential nomination on a platform to end the war. Although the Vietnam struggle was the transcendent issue of that decade, both the Democratic Party and the nation were painfully divided on the question. In a sense that division led to my defeat by Mr. Nixon in the fall.
But I believed then as I do now that my candidacy helped in ending a conflict that nearly all Americans now realize was a dreadful mistake.
We conducted a campaign of which we can all be proud because it was an honorable campaign of candor, common sense and compassion. the funding of that campaign under the direction of my old friend Henry Kimelman has become a textbook model -- not one dollar of deficit -- not one hint of dishonesty.
History has already rendered its verdict upon the distortion, deceit, and shameful behavior of our opponents who were driven from office in disgrace a few months after the election.
But, my dear friends, now a decade later the issues before us are far more grave than in 1972. All men, women, and children now face the most awful decision which God has put to them since Creation -- the question of whether human life can survive on this planet.
The recent outrageous shooting down of a passenger airliner that had strayed over Soviet territory underscores the folly of the present Cold War tension between Washington and Moscow. The present hair-trigger relationship is too risky. The next blunder might involve the explosion of a nuclear weapon.
Are we to be incinerated in a global war that begins with the folly of a single trigger-happy pilot, or an over-wrought field commander? Will Russians and Americans continue to squander their resources and exhaust their treasuries in manufacturing more and more engines of destruction in the fear that the other side is about to strike?
The President's most substantive reaction to the loss of the Korean airliner has been to renew his call for the MX missile. Is there any thoughtful person who believes that either commercial air travel or America itself will be more secure after we have gone another $100 billion into debt far yet another highly controversial new weapons system?
While the nation must preserve an adequate military deterrence against attack, there is neither security nor victory in either an open-ended arms race or in the actual use of the weapons of deterrence. The only realistic, common sense course for the United States and the Soviet Union is to relentlessly pursue the discussion and settlement of disputes at the conference table. Better that old men lose their tempers at the conference table than that young men lose their lives on the battle field.
Instead of increasing military spending at a pace of ten percent annually above the inflation rate as advocated by Mr. Reagan or a five to seven percent increase as advocated by the other Democratic Presidential contenders, we should reduce military spending substantially after ratifying a verifiable arms control agreement with the Soviet Union.
President Eisenhower expressed the hope twenty-seven years ago that “…we will have sense enough to meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended and the human race must conform its actions to this truth or die.”
This is the common sense realism of a man who knew war firsthand -- not just the glamourized wars of Hollywood.
I do not advocate unilateral disarmament. But I have no doubt that as President I could work out a realistic agreement with the Russian leaders that would stop the arms race and safely reduce arms spending.
I would not be seeking the Presidency a second time if I did not believe with all my heart and soul that I have the God-given capacity to lead this great nation away from the abyss into the ways that make for peace. I am speaking about hard- headed negotiations with the tough-minded leaders of the Soviet Union. I am speaking about having the informed judgment to end our deepening military involvement in Central America. I am speaking about having the sense of justice and prudence to tell the warring parties of the Middle East that there will be no more American aid and no more American soldiers unless Arabs and Israelis and Palestinians get to the conference table and begin at long last serious negotiations for peace.
As a student of history since childhood and as a seasoned public man who has grappled with political and international issues nearly all of my life, I believe that I am ready now as at no previous time in my life to lead this nation toward justice, honor and peace.
And now for the second Proposition: It is no longer possible at acceptable cost for either Washington or Moscow to impose its will against the revolutionary currents of Central America, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Poland, Africa and the Middle East.
We Americans love freedom and hate oppression. But we came to greatness not by whimpering what we were against but by boldly proclaiming what we were for -- the liberating, revolutionary ideals of Jefferson and Washington, Jackson and Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt.
Yet, we have trembled at and attempted to turn back the revolutionary currents which have convulsed countries from Vietnam and Angola, to Nicaragua and El Salvador. Of course Communists are involved in some of these revolutions. Of course the Russians may support them. But let it never be forgotten that these revolutions, misguided though they sometimes are, are revolts against centuries of oppression and exploitation.
We Americans dislike Communist governments. But we have also learned that with a little hard-headed common sense and imagination we can live at peace with them and even influence of their behavior and a limited way. Yugoslavia is an example of a Communist country that we approached in a practical and effective manner. President Nixon’s decision to begin dealing with Communist China is another case in point. Diplomacy and trade are less costly than the shipment of American arms and less precious than American blood.
To be specific, as President, I would cease forthwith the so-called “covert war” against Nicaragua and end all United States military involvement in Central America. Not one drop of American blood would be shed on that soil. And America would not be extract one drop of blood from the sons and daughters of Central America.
Certain persons now in power believe that the Russians and Cubans are causing all the trouble in Central America. But remove all Russians and Cubans and Central America would still be caught up in struggle and strife. And which side will we be on? On the side of oppression and a short-sighted dictators? Or on the side of desperate people’s trying to find social and economic justice?
To be specific ones more, I call for a new day in our relations with Cuba. Our present policy of boycotting Cuba economically and isolating her diplomatically has been a disastrous failure for more than twenty years. We have done nothing but drive Cuba into the arms of the Soviet Union and into of hated dependence upon that country.
I have endorsed President Reagan’s decision to sell American grain to the Soviet Union. I have endorsed former president Nixon’s decision to open up the doors of diplomacy and trade to China. But if it makes sense to deal with the two major Communist powers, why do we back away and fear from diplomacy in trade with Cuba? Would dealing with Cuba really jeopardize American security?
In addressing the third and final proposition of this campaign, let me assert that there must at long last be an end to unequal treatment of any American and especially of that majority of Americans who are women.
The polling analysts have reported that in 1980 women voters were more opposed to Mr. Reagan’s policies then were the men. The same analyst’s report that the “gender gap” verdict on Mr. Reagan is now widening. Thank god for the women of America! I believe that in 1984 women voters will lead us out of the wilderness of unfairness into that promised land of equality and justice for all Americans.
As for our economic problems, I flatly reject Reaganomics and the Reagan budget priorities. I do not blame Mr. Reagan for all the economic problems that face the country. The economy was in trouble before the present administration came into power. But I am equally sure that Mr. Reagan’s prescription is not the cure for our economic illness. The Reagan supply side tax plan will cost the government an average of $125 billion annually in lost revenues with very little benefit to the average taxpayer. Nor has the tax cut achieved its announced objective of stimulating savings and investment in job of creating enterprises. Savings have declined from 5% of GNP to 3% during the last three years and the tax cuts has apparently been used more to finance corporate mergers then to create new jobs.
The Reagan program of military spending is not really a program. It is not practical defense. It is a wasteful binge, and it threatens i the very vitality of our economy. Until 1965, it cost less than $100 billion to run the entire United States government. Current arms spending has now pushed military outlays alone beyond $200 billion a year. The man who promised a balanced budget has combined an unworkable tax scheme with the foolishly conceived arms spending explosion to produce a $200 billion annual federal deficit.
Of the total national debt accumulated since the days of George Washington, forty-one percent will have been added by the present Administration. By any test, Mr. Reagan is the most reckless deficit financer in American history. He claims to be a conservative, but these are the facts. He sat in the past that I was too liberal, but if I had said in 1972 that at $200 billion annual deficit was acceptable, I wouldn’t even have carried Massachusetts!
We must face the reality that no matter who is President there will be no end to rising deficits and recurring inflation until we end the terrible strain of an open-ended arms race. We must also cancel the unwise tax formula of 1981 and then go on to devise a simplified system of taxation such as the Bradley-Gephardt Fair Tax Bill that will be fair to income receivers of all categories.
Let us recognize, too, that there will be no end to the federal deficit and no increase in our productivity until we educate and train our people for productive work. So let us create a “Second Chance GI Bill of Rights,“ patterned along the lines of the program after the Second World War but open to all people.
Every American should have the opportunity, through low-cost government guaranteed loans, to have additional education and job training.
Nor will we end federal deficits while twelve million Americans are unemployed and therefore paying no taxes while collecting unemployment compensation or welfare. Each one percent of unemployment costs the national treasury $25 billion in lost revenues and paid out compensation. With ten percent of our people unemployed, the cost to the taxpayers is $250 billion each year. High deficits will not end until high unemployment ends.
So let us develop a carefully designed, businesslike program of public and private works to provide jobs for the balance of this century in rebuilding our railways, roads, water and sewage systems, alternative systems of energy, and the protection of our precious environment. Specifically, with industry and government cooperation let us commit America to building by the year 2000 the finest railway system in the world. Let us undertake an industry-government research effort to find safe and clean methods of utilizing America’s vast coal reserves so that we can revitalize our cold industry and strengthen our energy security. Let us undertake a major tree planting and conserving program by our farmers and by a new Civilian Conservation Corps to halt the erosion of life sustaining top-soil. Let us also get the construction industry going again with a concerted effort to bring down interest rates so that the dream of home ownership will once again be a reality. I would recommend the availability of a one-time government-backed mortgage loan below ten percent for any American family.
Believing that the United States Government can be a mighty force for human progress. I shall outline additional proposals for strengthening the economy as the campaign progresses. Mr. Reagan seems to believe that government is the enemy of the people. In truth, Democratic government is strength in our hands and hope in our hearts, not a burden on our backs.
American Democracy at its best has been undergirded by the spiritual insight of the Hebrew Prophets and the Christian Gospel. Conversely, we have learned again in our time that politics devoid of a moral compass is a destructive enterprise. It is still true that “where there is no vision the people perish.”
I believe that the American people want to see the light of this nation shine once again in all its grandeur. Let the light shines on those who long for peace; let the light shine on the despairing unemployed and the discouraged farmer; on the hungry and the homeless; on those who are old and lonely; on the troubled veterans of the Vietnam conflict; let the light shine on the dark recesses of discrimination; and let the light shine on our crime-ridden, drug infested cities until once again it is safe to walk the streets of America.
And now an exciting and what can be a victorious campaign lies before us. No candidate can protect the public reaction to his appeal. Indeed, as Emerson has written, “None but he knows what he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. “ I don’t know if I can win this campaign, but I do know that with all my heart and strength I am going to try.
But let me remind you: the success of this campaign lies in your hands. Please, those of you at George Washington University and those who watch on television, if you will volunteer send your name, and if you can contribute send your dollars to the McGovern for President campaign. And let us now as Democrats and as Americans join hands around the table of common purpose and then go forward with a strong and active faith.
# # #
Source: McGovern for President News Release
REMARKS OF SENATOR JOHN GLENN
DECLARATION OF CANDIDACY FOR THE
OFFICE OF PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1983
NEW CONCORD, OHIO
This is one of the most important days of my life -- and I want to begin by saying it's good to be home.
New Concord is a very special place to me. It was here that I grew up; here that I went to school; and here, forty years ago this month, that I married the most courageous woman I've ever known, my wife Annie.
It was also here in New Concord that I learned the values that have guided me through life.
My father was a plumber, and he taught me the value of hard work. But after a few summers of swinging a pick, helping him dig water lines, I came to agree with Abe Lincoln, who said that while his father taught him to work, he never taught him to like it.
My mother was a schoolteacher. She taught me the value of one of the great experiments in human history. It's called American public education, and it's based on the revolutionary belief that all the children of this land deserve an opportunity: an opportunity to rise as high and go as far as their ambitions, talents and good fortune combine to take them.
I was given that chance. And I stand before you today because I believe that this generation of Americans deserves the same precious, priceless opportunity.
Here in New Concord, I also learned the value of community and compassion. The conviction that neighbors should help each other arose naturally from our religious beliefs. When money was short during the Depression, my dad sometimes took payment for his work in sides of beef and bushels of potatoes.
But when the Depression deepened, he kept us together by going to work for the WPA installing a new town water system. That was after Franklin Roosevelt became President and began a new American tradition: a tradition of concerned, compassionate government. And I stand before you today because I believe in that tradition; and because I believe America must never turn her back on those in need of help.
Patriotism was something else we learned here in New Concord. On Memorial Day, my father played Taps on his bugle at the cemetery -- and I would echo him from over the hill. We were proud of our flag and ready to defend it. In two wars, I saw good men die so democracy could live. I've seen the awful destructiveness of man --and the awesome courage of individual men. And I stand before you today because I believe that the highest form of patriotism is the unrelenting pursuit of peace.
In the forty years since I left New Concord, I've seen much of our country and the world -- and I've experienced much, first as a military officer and astronaut, and later as a businessman and United States Senator.
As I travel this land of ours, I'm humbled by its grandeur and the vastness of its natural resources. I've seen our wheat fields and our oil fields, our timberlines and our coastlines -- and no nation on earth is more blessed with splendor and abundance.
But America is more than our resources.
America is people -- 233 million men, women and children of every race, creed and color. And America is the shared dream of freedom and opportunity that brings us together.
America is democracy -- the radical belief that free men and women can express a common vision, unite for a common purpose, and elect a government that will faithfully represent them.
America is free enterprise, a tough, competitive system that offers great rewards to those with ability and initiative.
But America is also compassion; the conviction that we will never move this country ahead by leaving some of our people behind.
America is more diverse --and infinitely more complex than one community. Yet all Americans share the simple values we learned in this small town -- the values of excellence, honesty, fairness, compassion for those who have less, and confidence in facing the future. Those values are truly the heart of the American experiment, and they must be the soul of our government as well.
Two years ago, we elected an Administration which likes to talk about those values. Unfortunately, its deeds have fallen far short of its words.
The policies of this Administration aren't expanding opportunity, they're diminishing it.
They aren't promoting excellence, they're discouraging it.
They aren't fostering compassion, they're reducing it.
In our schools, children from poorer families are getting neither the help they need nor the skills they deserve. In our colleges, the Administration's shortsighted cutbacks in government loan programs -- our finest investments in the future -- are keeping many students from enrolling, and forcing others to drop out.
In our laboratories, vital, long-term research that could be producing new jobs and technologies is too often abandoned for lack of Federal support.
In our communities, elderly Americans have their golden years tarnished by growing fears of lost dignity and social insecurity.
In our cities, blacks, hispanics and other minorities have seen two decades of progress replaced by two years of retreat.
American women see an Administration that applauds the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment -- and that shrugs its shoulders at economic discrimination.
All across this great country, we've seen millions thrown out of work --and millions more thrown into despair. We've seen factories close, small businesses bankrupted, and farms sold at auction. We've seen bread lines and cheese lines, soup lines and shantytowns. We've seen people sleeping on grates and families living in cars. It's a national tragedy and a national disgrace -- and I say we're going to put an end to it in November of 1984.
The issue is leadership.
We're the same people who tamed a continent, crossed frontiers, won wars, and built the greatest, strongest nation on earth. We see a problem, think up an idea, test it, adjust it, and finally succeed with it.
I deeply believe in that process -- because I have been part of it. In this country, the sky is not the limit. I say we can rise above the depths of this recession. And I say that given the right leadership, the American people can still outwork, outinvent, outproduce and outcompete any nation on the face of this earth.
In foreign policy, too, the issue is leadership.
Cold war rhetoric and public relations offensives won't end the arms race, but visionary leadership will.
A flip-flop foreign policy that alienates our allies won't enhance America's security, but consistent leadership will.
A policy on human rights that ignores inhuman wrongs won't restore our moral authority, but principled leadership will.
At home and abroad, the issue is leadership.
But instead of a renewal of old values, we see a return to old inequities.
And instead of a confident advance into the world of the future, we see a nostalgic retreat into the myths of the past.
Two decades ago, I served a young President who promised to get America moving again. He asked us for sacrifice and repaid us in courage. John Kennedy was struck down, but his legacy lives -- and I believe that courageous leadership can once again unite this country to meet the challenges of anew generation.
The President says America is on the mend. I say it's time America was on the march.
Together, we can put our people back to work. We can reduce the deficits that keep interest rates and unemployment high by deferring this year's tax cut and repealing indexing. Those measures alone would save 225 billion dollars over the next four years.
Together, we can prepare the children of today for the challenges of tomorrow – and do it by restoring funding for basic education, incentives for science education, and loans for higher education.
Together, we can give industry the help it needs and still treat our environment with the respect it deserves. We can't pit one region's ecology against another's economy, and that's why problems like acid rain must be addressed at the national level.
Together, we can enact a sensible farm bill that preserves fair prices at home and promotes expanded exports abroad. And we can end the disgrace of soup lines by feeding the hungry with some of the surplus food we're paying to store.
Together, we can reduce the uncertainty and doubt of older Americans by making Medicare solvent and retirement secure. In our national life -- as in our personal lives -- we must observe the ancient admonition to honor our fathers and mothers.
Together, we can reform our criminal justice system so law-abiding citizens can walk the streets and victims of crime will have rights.
Together, we can protect women's economic rights by passing the Economic Equity Act, and we can guarantee their Constitutional rights by getting the ERA passed by the Congress, ratified by the states, and written into our Constitution.
Together, we shall overcome racism and bigotry -- not through legislation alone, but through the even more difficult struggle to change the hearts and minds of men and women, so that finally -- and at long last -- we can turn the old dream of justice into a new American reality.
Together, we can keep America's defense the strongest on earth, because we know the first duty of government is to keep our people alive, independent and free. Yes, I'll stand up for the military -- and I'll also stand to the military when that is what our national interest demands.
But we must also look beyond the problems of today and raise our sights to the challenges of tomorrow.
We stand at a changepoint in history. New technologies are changing our world as dramatically as the Industrial Revolution did two centuries ago. Our children and grandchildren will hold jobs, use technologies, and compete in a world that we can barely imagine. We cannot, should not, and must not retreat from these challenges, nor can we allow them to overwhelm us.
New technologies promise great opportunities and pose great dangers. They promise greater prosperity, elimination of hunger and disease, a more secure defense, and expanded personal freedom. But they can also cause lost jobs, environmental destruction, nuclear disaster and an Orwellian nightmare of government control.
That is one reason the next election is so crucial. We must have leadership that understands the potential of modern science both for good and for ill. We must have an educated citizenry that can make informed decisions --and can never be controlled by a technocratic elite.
In short, we must be masters of the new technology, not its servants or victims.
Nowhere is this more clear than on the critical issue of our planet’s survival.
In today's world, all our greatness, all our dreams, and all that we cherish can vanish in the blink of an eye. In today's world, every word and deed of the President of the United States can move us closer to annihilation, or closer to peace.
Once again, the issue is leadership. As a first step toward peace, we must work for an immediate, mutual and verifiable freeze on nuclear weapons. But then we must go further --and negotiate a reduction in existing nuclear stockpiles. Then we must go further -- and halt the worldwide spread of nuclear arms. Then we must go further still -- and involve all nations possessing nuclear weapons in the arms control process. And then we must go further yet --and work to reduce conventional weapons as well.
In an age when the next war could well be the last war, our task is clear: this generation must seek not just to end war once it has started, but to end war once and for all.
During his 1980 election campaign, President Reagan often spoke of a shining city on a hill.
It is no shining city that denies education, destroys jobs, and diminishes opportunities.
We will not reach that dreamed-of city following roadmaps of the past that direct us back into the valleys from which we've already climbed.
No one person or party has all the answers. But I believe we can start by:
--Summoning our Nation's best minds to chart a bipartisan Agenda for the Future: a statement of national purpose that can be our roadmap to the next century:
--By guaranteeing a first-rate education to every young person; and
--By revitalizing our old industries and, with research, invention and innovation, paving the way for new jobs and industries as yet unknown.
This Nation gave my generation the gift of opportunity, the chance to be all that we could be, even to reach for greatness. In the final analysis, our lives will count for little unless we pass that gift on, to this generation and to generations yet unborn. That is my goal --and I believe it is America's destiny.
Twenty-one years ago, after my flight in Friendship 7, I spoke to a joint session of Congress and closed with these words:
"As our knowledge of the universe in which we live increases, may God grant us the wisdom and guidance to use it wisely."
Today, as I stand at the threshold of an even greater journey, my feelings are the same. I seek your support and God's guidance as once more I ask to serve my country.
With confidence that my life has prepared me for this challenge,
With dedication to the promise of opportunity and the pursuit of peace,
And with a firm belief that guided by the light of old values we can again reach new horizons,
I declare my candidacy for President of the United States.
Source: John Glenn Senate Office Press Release John Glenn Archives at The Ohio State University
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT
SENATOR ERNEST F. HOLLINGS
APRIL 18, 1983
We’re in trouble, deep trouble. And we’ve got work to do, lots of it.
In the last few years, we have stalled, lost our unity, lost our purpose, and stopped pulling together for the common good. We have become a nation of single issues and special interests.
Everywhere we look – in business and labor, law and medicine, education and entertainment, government and politics - -mediocrity is commonplace. America’s leaders have failed to lead. It’s no surprise that our people are worried about the future and full of questions. Why are we in this mess? Does anyone know the way out? Who calls for shared sacrifice? Who talks about our common enterprise?
We’re stalled for two basic reasons: all our leaders manage to sleep through important ships in the world economy; and we allowed the Reagan administration to carry out fundamental changes that will eventually bankrupt our treasury, destroy our government, and subvert our morale. We can no longer afford self-indulgence, and we can no longer afford Ronald Reagan.
To turn to the first reason, I believe our extended period of post-war prosperity and world dominance lulled us to sleep. In Why England Slept, Jack Kennedy described British complacency in the face of the growing Nazi threat; Like the British, we reward ourselves with the good life while the rest of the world recovered from the war and began the hard work of economic expansion. We assumed that prosperity was the inevitable result of our splendid character and indomitable cheerfulness. All of us silently conspired in a dream-like denial of the new realities.
Corporate managers indulged in the wildest of fantasies - - million-dollar salaries, the trappings of royalty, even golden parachutes to cushion the unfortunate side effects of disasterous failures. They dreamed of endless conferences in fashionable watering holes in private jets swooping around the world at their convenience. Their secret desire, in short, was no-risk management.
Incredibly enough, the fantasy became reality, and so did expense of layers of corporate bureaucracy that focused undue attention on quantitative games of “leveraging “ and “positioning.” Craftsmanship and long-term growth carried no prestige when corporate leaders focused on the quarterly report. “Paper entrepreneurship” replaced real entrepreneurship, and outfoxing the tax code became more rewarding than outworking the competition.
Meanwhile, parts of the labor movement became narrow and self-centered. They came to expect ever-increasing wages and ever-decreasing hours, without regard for the cumulative effect on productivity. Work rules became overly detailed, contributing to the inflated cost of doing business.
Meanwhile, the Federal government went off on a tangent of its own. As an attack of our ignorance and our prejudices, it became a burden in other ways. Its costs shot through the ceiling. Some of those regulations became elaborated to the point of absurdity. And this excessive regulation help to prepare the way for the triumphs of the know-nothings in 1980.
In the international economy, the role of our government has been catastrophic. As other countries decided to play football, our government decided we would continue to play by the rules of baseball. Inevitably, we became a non-participant. We sat on the bench. By endlessly mumbling the sacred Chan “free market, free market,” we put ourselves to sleep while the rest of the world learned to run its economic affairs through government collaboration and involvement. It will prove to be a costly siesta.
Finally, we politicians began to ignore the long-term interest of the country. We became narrowly focused on the next election and lost sight of our common enterprise. Worst of all, we allowed the American people to grow cynical about politics, which is, after all, the very essence of democracy.
America’s leaders did not ask nearly enough of themselves.
The Reagan administration has accelerated these destructive trends. Not since Groucho Marx took over the reins of Freedonia has such a destructive group occupied a nation’s capital. The Reagan crew is worse, however, because it is driven by malicious intent.
It is now obvious that when the American people asked for a leader in 1980, they were given a public-relations officer. Behind the public-relations façade, the Reagan appointees are destroying our government, our instrument for working together on common concerns. At EPA they seem to have concentrated all their considerable energies on suborning the agency and its laws. At Defense all thoughts of military strategy have been swamped by oceans of money.
At Interior a man of extremes has made a religion of desecrating the wilderness and dismantling the national parks. At Labor nobody talks to the sat shadowy figure at the helm. An energy, education, and at housing and urban development policymaking is a lost art. And just as they’ve forgotten how to bring a lawsuit. And every agency and the Federal government, the Reagan administration has scorched the earth and left smoldering ruins.
But this administration’s servility toward the rich borders on the obscene. The President listens almost exclusively to the special pleadings of the wealthy and the well-born. While the special interests enjoy Carte Blanche, the rest of us push the cart. For those who are not already rich, already established, and already educated, the future is already bleaker. But to ask Ronald Reagan to stop favoring the rich is to ask the fly to stop buzzing and the fish to stop swimming. The man can’t help himself. That’s what he does.
Look around at the wasteland the President’s policies have brought forth. Tweleve million Americans on the bricks looking for a job. Heavy industry operating at less than 50% capacity. The Japanese, the Europeans, and the third world countries putting us out of business. Budget deficits reaching $200 billion, with $300 billion looming on the horizon. The government going broke, the tax base washing out to sea. Foreign policy in a shambles, with friends frightened and enemies laughing. And business holding tight on investments, knowing interest rates are going back up.
How does Ronald Reagan respond? He says our government is the problem. Imagine that. The world is going to hell in a handbasket made in Taiwan, and the President of the United States of America says our government is the problem. Or sometimes he blames Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter for this wasteland. Clearly, the Reagan administration, however feverish and busy it looks, has exhausted its small store of ideas, has exhausted the patience of the American people, and must be replaced.
The fiftieth anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural offers a unique perspective on the failures of the incumbent President and on the reasons for my candidacy today.
Our 32nd President looked out on a similar wasteland, an economic disaster smothered in hopelessness. But through hard work, sound judgment, and a wide-ranging imagination, Roosevelt transformed that bleak landscape. The wasteland became the most abundant economy in the history of the world. The hopelessness became a robust self confidence that defeated charities and they explored the universe.
How did Roosevelt do it? Some say it was his unique flair for leadership. Others point to the army of alphabet agencies he created to attack entrenched problems.
I think he did it by appealing to deeper reserves and the American character - - enterprise, patriotism, fairness, generosity, community, and common sense. When we use these reserves - - these deep pools that temper and refresh our vision - -we see ourselves as a single people, as a family linked together in a common enterprise. And it is our government - - yes, our national government - - that takes these deeper reserves and shapes them into a useful, supple tool.
American history is the story of how that tool has been used to guide our destiny. Canals, harbors, railroads, homesteads, dams, irrigation, education, roads, and dozens of other key factors in our national development were started in shape by government intervention. Industrial policy is nothing new under the sun. Only the name is new.
The American people know all of this. They know that to weaken the government is to handicap one self needlessly, to diminish oneself in the international arena, to inflict pain and punishment on one’s own kind. The American people are ready to sacrifice again and to tap into these deeper reserves again. We have done so in our lifetimes, and we can do so again.
We suffer through the agony of Pearl Harbor, and then we crushed the dictatorships.
We saw Europea in ruins, and then we rebuilt it with the Marshall Plan.
We watch communism spread, and then we stopped it.
We were challenged by Sputnik, and then we won the race to the Moon.
We felt overwhelmed by racial discrimination, and then we dismantled its structure.
We retreated before the onslaught of air and water pollution, and then we turned them back.
There is no easy formula, no magical set of new ideas, no magical set of old ideas, no cluster of all-powerful interest groups. There is just work. But when we work together, sacrifice together, and pull together, there is no force on earth that can stop us. And when we look closely at our victories, we always find the government channeling our energies and pointing us in the right direction.
My campaign, then, offers little in the wake of comfort, it rejects the politics of supply-side gimmickry. It rejects the politics of special-interest conservatism and interest-group liberalism. It disdains that the politics of neo-this and neo-that.
My campaign offers the politics of work., Share the work. Share the sacrifice. Share the benefit.
We Americans have a lot of work to do. For starters, we must get our financial house in order. Then, we must reestablish standards of excellence in our schools and workplaces; train, and retrain, large parts of our workforce; rearrange our organizations to make them more flexible and to release entrepreneurial talents; relearn the techniques of international competition; and recommit ourselves to a decent respect for the environment, and an honorable role in world politics, in the spirit of one-for-all in all-for-one. Finally, we must reeducate America’s leaders and managers to the realities of the modern world, equip our basic industries with the latest and computers and robots, and rediscover the high art and craft of governance.
Governance, in fact, will emerge as the underlying issue in this campaign. Everyone needs a government, and the debate will focus on a series of related questions: What kind of government do we want? How much do we want? What limits do we place on it? How do we pay for it? How do we make it work better? How do we make it accountable? Which basic values and visions of the future will guide governmental activities?
Here, for example, are a few specifics that suggest the approach a Hollings administration would bring to government.
First, our basic problem is the lack of a job - - not the lack of a skill, not the lack of training for a high-technology future. We also know budget deficits and jobs are interlocked. Therefore, as President, I would freeze our current level of taxes and spending. Everyone would share the sacrifice in an across-the-boards freeze. No cuts in programs. No cuts in taxes. Under this approach, we would have saved $100 billion last year and $700 billion over the next five years. Then, with the government borrowing less to cover the deficits, basic industries and high-echnology enterprises would find the capital to invest in modernization and jobs. Finally we would train workers to fill the newly available jobs. When I was governor of South Carolina, we train rule people for high-technology jobs and only 100 days. When used in the right way, government is a subtle and highly effective tool; but only a President who is experienced and willing can use it on a continental scale.
A second example is defense. While we need to rebuild, we need not wreck the economy. We’re overprepared for nuclear war, underprepared for conventional war. As President, I would target readiness, rapid deployment, the Reserves, and the National Guard. We would save $70 billion by canceling the MX Missile and the B-1 bomber and moving ahead with the Stealth Bomber. By using these defense savings to stabilize the economy, we stand a better chance of having an economy to defend. We simply cannot afford Ronald Reagan’s grotesque, nation-destroying fantasies.
As a third of specific, I would try to install a measure of credibility in our arms control efforts and our foreign policy. Ronald Reagan came to town threatening to invade El Salvador, to blockade Cuba, to plan a limited nuclear war, to fire nuclear warning shots, and to use boycotts to force our European Allies to reject the Soviet pipeline. He said American was in a prewar posture. Over 700,000 frightened Americans spilled out into the streets of New York in fear of their own President. Today on one believes him when he talks about arms limitation. Meanwhile, delicate relationships with countries in Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Near East, and the Far East have been sledgehammered to the point of severance. We need to work with our Allies in a spirit of equal collaboration. Calmly and deliberately, we need to fashion international policies on economic growth and low interest rates. The enemy in Latin America is not Russia or Cuba - - it is our own stupidity. We never arrive with sufficient economic aid until there is an emergency that also requires “advisers” and military hardware. Will we never learn? Will we never be on the side of the people? Food, land reform, cooperation - - these must form our priorities. We must encourage the other countries in Latin America to find a solution for El Salvador. Beyond a nuclear-weapons freeze, we must seek a worldwide show of public opinion against the use of nuclear weapons. Perhaps we should agree with the Soviet Union to subtract two warheads each time a new one is deployed. Credibility, not empty rhetorical flourishes, is the key to foreign policy.
Fourth, I would, as President, reinvigorate the consensus on social justice that grew out of the turmoil of the 1960s. Affirmative action works. And the president must symbolize our national commitment to social justice for minorities, women, and the disadvantaged. Reagan doesn’t, and that’s a national disgrace.
Fifth, the global economy has changed, and that means we need a President who is willing to lead our government onto the field of play. For our private companies to compete with other companies, we need our government to compete with other governments. Trade policy should be: even under a single Department of Trade and Development. Business, abor, agriculture, and government must work together on strategic issues. Offshore, the government must encourage business, not police it. Once again government sets the tone and points that direction.
Finally, a Hollings administration would underwrite the basic health and education of every American kid. As Edmund Burke wrote, “Education is a cheap defense of nations. “ If you think health and education are expensive, try disease and ignorance. President Reagan would have us try both. And I say we can‘t afford this President any longer. We cannot raise the economic level of any until we raised education level of all. While the President either pleads with us to stay the course, he forces millions of our kids to drop the course. Meanwhile, high school graduates in Japan have the equivalent of four more years of schooling than our graduates. If we leave the next generation unprepared for international competition that will resemble war, then we will richly deserve the obscurity in reduced circumstances we will receive. But only the national government can underwrite our human infrastructure. And only president who sees government as a useful tool for achieving human progress can undertake this fundamental responsibility.
In the coming campaign, I will remain true to certain basic, underlying values: a love of diversity and free discourse; a belief that people learn from history; a faith in the inevitability of progress; a conviction that the true civilized nation reduces the gap between its poorest and its wealthiest members; and an insistence that honesty, compassion, and fairness have a secure place in American politics.
President Reagan asks “Are you better off than you were four years ago? “ I ask, “Are we as a nation better off?” The distinction is important. President Reagan and the other candidates continue to address the individual interests at the expense of the common good. They continue to overlook the true strength of America, which was captured in the closing lines of the Declaration of Independence: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” It was really a Declaration of Dependence. In that spirit, let us once again declare unity of purpose and roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Source: South Carolina Political Collections, Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library, University of South Carolina Libraries
DECLARATION OF CANDIDACY
BY
REUBIN O'DONOVAN ASKEW
National Press Club
Washington, D.C.
February 23, 1983
I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.
I will seek the nomination of the Democratic Party in every caucus and every primary in every state.
With the help of the American people, I hope to be elected to lead this nation.
And I hope to forge a new union of the American people that will create new hope for all people for freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and peace.
For two centuries, America has worked because we Americans have united again and again to form a more perfect union. And today we must unite once more. Today we must come together and work together in an entirely new way.
For ours is a time of change, of change as basic and as profound as any since you the Industrial Revolution. Ours is a time of transition, for America and for the world.
Our national economy has become international. We face fierce competition, here at home and around the world. And our growing lack of competitiveness with other nations is robbing many of us of jobs, our profits, and our futures.
Computers, robots, and other new technologies are changing their very nature of the work we do. They threaten to put many of us out of work and demand new skills that many of us don’t have.
This know sweeping transition is straining our democratic institutions, endangering our standard of living, and sorely testing the friendships we’ve shared for many years with the nations of Western Europe, with Japan, and with other democratic nations. And, throughout the world, many are eager to exploit the tensions caused by this great global transition.
Yet, here in America, ours is becoming a house divided. The hopes of still another administration are fading away. And not even an end to a long recession will be enough to restore a lasting vitality to an economy in transition.
After two centuries, some Americans are beginning to wonder whether America can still work.
But I have faith that we can not only survive, but we can prosper from the current transition.
My faith is founded on nearly twenty-five years of experience in every level of American government. And I seek the Presidency because I truly believe my experience qualifies me to lead this nation during this time of transition.
For, as Governor for eight years, I helped lead Florida during a rapid and remarkable transition from a promising southern state into a great and growing metropolitan state of increasing international importance.
As chief trade negotiator for the United States, I dealt daily with many of the causes and the consequences of the much more profound transition that is now transforming our economy and our world.
And, as President, I believe I can provide practical and progressive leadership that will unite the American people and help make America work again.
But I know I’ll need help.
And I’ll reach out to the American people to ask for their help during this campaign.
I will reach out to the broad majority of the American people – to the middle class, to the working people, to business and agriculture as well as labor, to the vital central mainstream of American life that is apprehensive to change.
I will reach out to all Americans.
I’ll ask them to help me create a constituency for candor.
I will ask them to help me forge that consensus for change.
I won’t ask the people just to trust me. I will ask them to trust themselves, trust their neighbors, trust the ideals and the dreams we’ve long shared as a nation.
I won’t ask the people just to follow me. I will ask them to follow our proven national tradition of shared sacrifice for the sake of the common good,
And I will try not to create unrealistic expectations by making promises I can’t keep. There have been more than enough promises in recent years.
But this one promise I do make, and this one promise I will keep, to every American:
As president of United States, I won’t belong to any one person. I won’t belong to any one group. I will belong to each and every one of you as Americans.
To demonstrate this commitment I will today continue my longstanding practice of making full and public disclosure of my personal finances by filing copies of my recent income tax returns, together with those I disclosed as Governor, with the Federal Election Commission.
I will also file the current statement of my net worth when I complete and file my tax returns from last year.
In. keeping with the example I set last year while exploring the possibility of becoming a candidate, I will not accept any contributions from the political action committees of business, labor, or any other interest groups.
And I will take risks in this campaign.
I will risk of losing some votes by being candid about the hard realities of the world transition.
But I’m no stranger to such risks.
And they won’t really be risks to me.
For I don’t want to become President if, to get elected, I have to tie my hands so tightly that I won’t be free to govern the right way.
And I don’t want to become President by pretending that we live in a world that no longer exists.
Some Republicans seem to believe this is still the 1950’s. Some Democrats seem to believe that this is still the 1960’s. But I’ve been out representing Americans abroad in the 1980’s. And I know that the future of freedom itself may well depend on our willingness and our ability to accept and adjust to the changed the nature of the world.
We must not underestimate our great strength as a nation and our great resiliency as a people. We must regain our self-confidence and restore our clarity of purpose in the eyes of the world.
For, even now, America remains the single strongest economic power in the world. And, even now, only America can lead the free economies of the world safely through the current transition.
But we can’t remain strong ourselves and we can’t lead the world safely if we leap into the quicksand of protectionism.
We must face our competitors, is not flee from them. We must make change work for us, and not against us. And we must shape the future ourselves, or we’ll be shaped by the future in ways we won’t like.
Our ability to pursue our often competing individual interests has been one of our greatest strengths as a nation. But we have educated ourselves too much in the adversarial tradition. We have taught ourselves how to compete with one another but not always how to work with one another. We have spent countless millions of dollars making the partial interest of America greater than the overriding public interest.
And now you must learn anew the lesson of unity.
For America will work again only if we address the real root cause of our continuing economic decline -- which is the growing lack of competitiveness of much of American industry.
And this can best be done by a President who has credibility with both business and labor and who is free to challenge them both to abandon their adversarial relationship and work together to improve American products, increase American productivity, and assure lasting jobs for the American people.
Therefore, as President of United States, I will challenge business and labor, along with the agriculture, education, and government, to enter into a fundamentally new relationship, a new union, with one another and with all the American people.
As President, I will challenge the Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, and the executive agencies of the Federal government to join in this new union by working together to ensure fair and far-sighted fiscal and monetary policies that will help shape a more competitive future for the American economy.
From our new union will emerge new structures and a new national strategy for making America work again. We will define the new role the government must play as a catalyst for competitiveness. And we will use government in new ways that will assure capital formation and enable business and labor to come together and work together as they must.
Among the goals of our new union will be:
A trade policy that opposes both undue protectionism and unfair trade practices while seeking expanded opportunities for American commerce on freer and fairer terms.
A renewed national commitment to education as a key to growth.
New investments in scientific research and development.
New incentives for training, retraining, and relocating our work force.
New incentives for small business that create the vast majority of new jobs.
A domestic Marshall plan to modernize and revitalize our vital industrial base and to assure the continued growth of advanced technologies.
An effective response to agricultural problems that recognizes that agriculture is equally vital to our economy and to our security.
A public works program to put many of our people back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, ports, and other public assets.
An urban policy that recognizes the essential role our cities must play in recovery and growth.
A voluntary program of both military and non-military national service to give young Americans a chance to learn new skills and earn educational benefits as they serve their country.
An environmental policy that protects our natural resources while allowing for proper growth.
An energy policy that stresses the significance of conservation and the importance of developing safe domestic alternatives to the uncertain flow of foreign oil.
A fairer and simpler tax code that offers incentives for investment and growth.
And a renewed national allegiance to social justice as an essential ingredient of growth, including especially the approval of the Equal Rights Amendment.
None of these goals will be achieved easily or overnight. Not four years, and perhaps not even eight years, will be enough to achieve them all.
But all these, and more, must be among the ambitions of our new union -- ambitions I will outline more specifically during the course of the coming campaign.
And, just as I will seek a new union here at home, so too will I challenge our friends among other democracies to enter into a new partnership as members of the family of freedom.
I will encourage those nations to work more closely with us, so that together we will find new ways to restore the health of our economies, redefine our common goals, and reassure the longing millions of humanity that hope still lives and freedom still flourishes on this troubled planet.
For the sake of our very survival, I will challenge the leaders of the Soviet Union to negotiate with us, not just a freeze, but mutual, verifiable, and substantial reduction in the development and deployment of nuclear arms.
And from a position of national strength, and consistent with the protection of our vital interests abroad, I will challenge the Soviet Union to work with us, and with other nations, to secure, not just arms control, but an enduring peace.
I will have no higher priority as President.
But, most of all, as a candidate, and as President, I will challenge the American people.
I will challenge them to turn to one another, and not away from one another, and to work with one another in a new and generous spirit of harmony and affirmation.
I will challenge them to make the union more perfect than ever before.
Then, united, we will answer the challenge of the great global transition.
And, united we will prove, to ourselves and to all the world, that America can work again.
* * *
Source: Askew for President Committee Press Release
February 21, 1983
Mondale for President Committee
ANNOUNCEMENT SPEECH
Today I declare my candidacy for President of the United States.
I do so with thanks to the people of Minnesota. Because of you, for twenty years I have been privileged to serve in this Capitol, in the United States Senate, and in the second highest office in the land. Today I ask your help again.
In the small communities of southern Minnesota where I grew up, we believed in some old American value's that don't need any updating.
When I look back on all the troubles my parents had losing the farm, the Depression, sickness--what strikes me is how our beliefs pulled us through. My dad was a minister. And my mother filled our home and our church with love and music.
We were rural people: we knew that hard work was the only way to make it. And we knew, as O. E. Rolvaag put it, "No matter where we've come from, we all have the same job--to push together for the goal that mankind has been seeking ever since it was the first day…We're here to build for a greater justice among men and women."
That's what Minnesota is all about.
Our country, too, is built on community. We depend on one another--children on parents; cities on farmers; civilians on soldiers; seniors on workers; citizens on public servants; the sick, the handicapped, and the unemployed on us all.
With these values, we've accomplished miracles. Each new challenge--rebuilding Europe, conquering space, defeating hunger--we’ve met
But now we in this generation must meet our own challenges.
A generation ago, this country stocked the shelves of the world. Now it's hard to find a basic American industry in shape for the future.
Once we were building the most ambitious highway system on earth. Now our economy is dodging potholes.
Once our scientists were sending us to the moon. Now there are fewer physics teachers than school districts.
Once this abundant country was nearly self-sufficient. Now our energy supply depends too much on a foreign cartel.
Once we were rich, and our allies were poor. Now they are strong, too, and to lead them, we must persuade them.
Once the nuclear age was dominated by us. Now the arms race threatens the fate of the earth.
We know we can't solve our own problems by repeating our parents' answers. As John Gardner once said, "A nation is never finished. You can't build it and then leave it standing like the pharoahs did the pyramids. It has to be built and rebuilt. It has to be re-created in each generation by believing, caring men and women. It is our turn now. If we don't believe or don't care, nothing can save the nation. If we believe and care, nothing can stop us.
Nothing will stop us. Because the future is made for America--Name an advantage that the future requires, and you'll see an asset we already have.
In the years ahead, everything will depend on economic growth: our jobs, our defense, our fight for social justice.
To get our economy growing again will take people--the skills, discoveries, creativity, and the spirit of all Americans.
We must become an America where children master basic skills again; whose parents are partners with schools again; whose teachers are rewarded and raise standards again; whose students get the financial aid they need again; whose graduates have tools for a lifetime of learning; whose employers invest in a lifetime of training; and whose educators steer this generation toward excellence.
We must become an America where students speak the language of science; whose engineers invent the future; where the arts and humanities enrich our spirit; where libraries and laboratories are the best in the world; and where scientists train the next generation of genius.
We must have an America whose schools teach the languages of the globe; whose colleges teach the cultures of the world; whose diplomats speak the languages of their hosts; whose exporters speak the languages of their markets; and whose fluency launches a new generation of growth.
Next, the future will require international competitiveness. And our nation has the capacity to compete again.
The heart of competitiveness must be a strong new national policy to strengthen entrepreneurship, small business, and free enterprise.
We must have an America where entrepreneurs have the capital to get going; inventors have the risk-takers to back them; businesses have the talent to staff them; products have the foreign markets they need; and capitalists create a new generation of jobs.
I offer a Presidency that promotes exports aggressively, tears down barriers to the sales of our services, and insists that our trading partners open their markets as wide to us as we open ours to them.
I propose an era when harbors are being deepened, bridges strengthened, highways repaved, and railroads rebuilt.
I propose a nation whose factories are the most efficient in the world; whose merger barons stop shuffling assets, and start modernizing equipment; and whose short-term profits become long-term investments.
I propose an America where labor and management put the old bitterness behind them; workers are retrained for the jobs of the future; quality is rising, and absenteeism is falling; and government is a force for restructuring and renewal.
Next, I seek the Presidency to restore our global leadership.
Our President must understand and bolster all our real advantages: military effectiveness, economic strength, energy independence, moral authority, alliances that no enemy can weaken, and defenses that no nation dare challenge.
We must be an America whose social justice at home attracts friendship abroad, and whose voice condemns repression--from the camps of the Russian Gulag to the jails of the Latin generals.
We must see the world as it really is--an arena for a competition America can win, where our freedom, our values, and our achievements are a magnet for all the world.
Finally, I enter this race not just to seek a victory, but to point toward sanity.
Our determination to reduce the nuclear risk must be unquestioned in Europe and around the world again.
We must stand by the ABM treaty, resubmit the SALT treaty, and negotiate a comprehensive test ban treaty.
We must block the spread of nuclear weapons to new nations, and control exports that can be turned into bomb factories.
We must have a President who masters the arms control process, does the hard bargaining with the Soviets, negotiates a mutual and verifiable nuclear freeze, and at long last reverses this mindless, wasteful madness.
This is the nation's agenda--and mine. I ask for your mandate to seize the American advantage--to invest in our values, our talent, our competitiveness, our strength, and our survival.
No President can do that alone, and so I ask for something more: I ask the American people to give their best.
I call for stronger families. There isn't a single problem that can be solved without the values we learn at home: to work hard, tell the truth, obey the law, and cherish our faith.
I call for tougher discipline. You can't become a biochemist by osmosis: it takes excellence. You can't deter crime by ignoring it: it takes punishment.
I call for cooperation. Everyone must contribute; all must sacrifice.
And I call for realism. There is a long haul ahead. Politicians must stop peddling quick fixes, and all of us must remember that education, training, research, enterprise, and all things that count take time.
Americans have not lost their knack for greatness. As Barbara Tuchman has written, "The urge for the best is an element of humankind as inherent as the heartbeat."
But when people do their best, their effort must be rewarded. Today that bargain is not being honored enough.
Too many families are suffering the consequences of high deficits--record real interest rates, rising taxes, unemployment, and bankruptcy. All across the nation, our states are being cruelly forced to raise taxes and slash services, weakening our federal system.
We must have an America where working people don't have to pay more so that the privileged can pay less. I call on Congress to chop those deficits down, scale the defense budget to reality, repeal the scheduled tax cuts for the wealthy, repeal indexing, and keep our tax system progressive.
Too many Americans are losing their trust in government. They expect their President to faithfully execute the laws of the land. Yet they see this Administration cynically undermining and betraying the laws protecting our air, our water, and our land.
To earn public trust, our government must be on the side of the vulnerable. We must continue the long American march to broader liberties. Before this decade is over, I want to go to an inauguration where a President swears to "preserve, protect, and defend" a Constitution that contains the Equal Rights Amendment.
Too many people tell me they feel swept away by the tidal wave of special interest money that is swamping our political system. And I agree.
To dramatize the need for change, my campaign will accept no contributions from political action committees. And I will work to slap controls on PACs, clamp ceilings on campaign spending, close the independent committee loopholes and finance Congressional campaigns publicly.
Ours must be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I say it is time to declare that the government of the United States is not up for sale. It belongs to the American people, and we want it back.
If we restore trust, government can act.
While government can be a problem, it is not the problem. Human suffering, a faltering economy, a dangerous arms race, a divided America: these are the problems.
Today, there are American families sleeping in cars, searching for work, and lasting the grapes of wrath: these are our true problems. I believe in social decency, not social Darwinism.
What I am saying is this: If we are to pursue the goals that strengthen our nation, we must have a strong, effective, caring government, worthy of public trust.
I know I do not begin this journey alone. I begin it here with you, my friends who started me in public life and who have sustained me over the years. I start it with my wife, Joan, and our children, and my family. You've helped me before; please help me once again.
I know we will win. We have a plan for the future. We have everything we need to renew our country. But the American people understand that we also need a President who knows what he's doing.
I do--thanks to you. I served as Attorney-General for four years, and I know state government. I served in the United States Senate for twelve years. Thanks to you, and the American people, I was proud to serve under President Carter as Vice President.
I have the experience. I know where the talent is. I know the White House. I know how to shape a government. I know how to manage. I know the Congress. I know how to defend this country. I know how to search for peace. I know who our friends are. I'm on to our enemies. I know our people. And I know myself: I am ready. I am ready to be President of the United States.
I am ready, and so are the American people.
I've travelled this country more than any living American. I know what our people want. They want to get on with it.
We've had Vietnam; it's over. We've had Watergate; it's behind us. We've tried quick fixes; they don't work. We want our edge back. Schools must teach again. Americans must work again. Convicted criminals must go to jail again. Our nation must lead the world again.
Americans want to get going. They're confident. They're ready. And so am I.
Thank you very much.
I am ready, and so are the American people.
Source: Mondale for President Committee Press Release
For Release
11:30 a.m., MST
February 17, 1983
STATEMENT OF CANDIDACY
Senator Gary Hart
Denver, Colorado
I am a candidate for President of the United States in 1984.
I take this step out of a deep concern about the condition of our country -- and a deep commitment to a new vision of a better, stronger America.
We now face a stark choice between national renewal or national decline. Our problems worsen while some retreat to an unfair past and others debate old remedies and contend over shop-worn policies. In this decade -- in the term of the next President --we must build a bridge to a new era and master its possibilities.
That task is the legacy of our national character.
Our forebears launched covered wagons to conquer the frontier. In World War II, we led the free world in defeating Fascism and in preserving democracy. And the Americans of the 1960's launched rockets into space to conquer the skies.
The course of history has continually tested the creativity of our people. That test has taken different forms at different times, but at heart it is always the same. We must preserve our enduring ideals by replacing tired assumptions with fresh ideas.
So now that challenge confronts us again. As America was in the years of Franklin Roosevelt, facing economic collapse and the passing of an isolationist world, we must once more become a bold, adventurous, and pioneering nation.
In the 1930's, the task was to break the grip of paralyzing ideas about a do-nothing government and a see-nothing foreign policy.
Half a century later, in the 1980's, the task is to break the grip of narrow, negative agendas and special interest government in Washington. Today the center of national interest has been made a center of insensitivity, inaction and special favor.
While a few in our nation enjoy unprecedented wealth, too many others endure unnecessary suffering. Homeless people wander our streets and sleep in cars or boxes and huddle on grates to find a breath of heat. Middle class families cannot pay the interest rates to buy a house. Workers cannot find a job. Farmers feel hopeless and helpless as their land is foreclosed and auctioned at forced sales.
At best, the Administration offers a recovery which will enrich the wealthy, make a portion of us a little better off, and do nothing at all for the tens of millions of our people who are the worst off.
This is divisive and dangerous. It is economically wasteful and morally wrong. I refuse to accept it. I believe that, as Americans, we can and must move this nation forward while leaving none behind.
To create true progress, we must first reject the myth that we can return to a simpler, easier time of public inattention and neglect. Far too many candidates and too many presidents have been running against the very government they seek to...lead. So let me state my view plainly: We live in a complex period of advancing technology and accelerating events, where mistakes of public policy can unemploy millions or unleash nuclear conflict.
Government is the instrument by which we solve our collective problems. As Americans, we cannot claim to love our country if we hate our government.
The next President must challenge us to positive change and to a new democracy. We must begin by rejecting the false choice between an inefficient government frozen in the ice of ineffective programs -- and an insensitive government which warms only to the claims of money and privilege.
I am the first candidate for President in history to reject contributions from political action committees.
Because, as President, I do not intend to be in debt to countless lobbies with narrow and conflicting agendas.
For a President who owes his election to narrow interests risks an Administration that is owned by them.
The best government money can buy is the worst government we can have.
A President must do more than negotiate, bargain and compromise with an array of interests. He must have the vision to see the national interest and achieve national renewal --to see what is best for America, and how all of us together can do better.
The next President must shape domestic policies that actually achieve progress -- instead of perpetuating programs merely because there is a pressure group for them. Every dollar wasted on a program that does not work represents something better we cannot do. We can afford to be more compassionate only if we also have the courage to set rational priorities. We can be tender-hearted if we are also tough-minded.
The next President must match our armed forces to the real needs of our national security. And he must guarantee our defenses are the most effective -- not the most expensive. Too often, there is a constituency for the most costly new weapons, but not for the maintenance of weapons we already have -- or the retention of talented men and women in our armed forces. Our national defense deserves better.
And the next President must look beyond the demands of the moment to the foundations of a lasting prosperity. We must cease fighting among ourselves for the pieces of a shrinking economic pie. We cannot have the East and the West, the South and the North, the sunbelt and the snowbelt, waging a second civil war over their share of a declining economy. Instead, we can and must act together to achieve steady economic growth -- not just next year, but across the next generation.
We must create the best education system in the world -- a system that teaches students how to master the machinery and technology of tomorrow and how to promote humanitarian principles on a contentious globe. To an Administration which says education is too expensive, I say: Wait until you see how much ignorance costs.
We must forge a new and innovative consortium of labor, business and government to make America once again the first economy in the world. We must modernize our industrial capacity and reject economic isolationism as clearly as we once rejected military isolation.
Our auto, steel, and textile workers have been victims of deficient management and planning. We must re-employ them by making their industries modern and competitive. The answer is not to make other workers and farmers casualties in a worldwide trade war. The answer is to insist aggressivelly on fair trade rules and to become the most competitive open market nation in the world.
For more than a decade, our people have been crying out for change -- yet nothing seems to change except for the worse. The fault is not with the American system itself, but a government of, by, and for, narrow interests -- locked in the past and unable to respond to a changing world. We will have a fair and responsive society only when we have a President who is on the side of the vast, unorganized majority of Americans and who can lift our sights to a higher national purpose.
I believe the American people are ready to respond again to a President who does not promise what government can do for each separate group --but who asks anew what all of us can do for our country and our common good.
I intend to be a President on the people's side. I intend to be a President who fights to protect the rights of minorities and of women and who fights to provide opportunities and jobs for all at a fair wage.
I intend to be a President who works to conserve the natural gifts and beauty of this land -- "from sea to shining sea" -- and who resists attempts to put our environment on the auction block.
I intend to be a President who cares about the truly needy -- not a President who only speaks about them. I would like to be remembered for reducing unemployment, instead of reducing unemployment compensation. I would like to be remembered for helping to house the homeless, instead of trying to house the MX missile.
And I intend to be a President who -- as a matter of the highest priority -- negotiates a freeze on nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union -- and then achieves major and mutual reductions in the arsenals of nuclear overkill. And I intend to go further -- I intend to do everything within my power to see that nuclear weapons are never again used on the face of the Earth.
I yield to no one in my commitment on this issue.
The demand for real arms control came from the people. While experts in Washington quarreled over theories,
Americans across the country took control of the question for themselves. The madness of the nuclear arms race must end. And, as President, I intend to see that it does.
And I intend to be a President who listens to the people. A national leader should do more than hold occasional press conferences. He should go out in the country regularly to meet informally with ordinary citizens.
I believe Americans are ready to go on the march again. They sense the passage we must make between two worlds -- the world of our parents and the one we will leave to our children. They are prepared to give of themselves to make our country what it must become. They yearn to be patriotic -- to be confident about our prospects, and proud of our role in the world.
I share that hope. And as the son of dust bowl farm parents who never finished high school, but who always had the greatest love and the highest hopes for their children, I want to see the American dream live and flourish for my children and the next generation. I want to see a world safe from nuclear extinction, where, nonetheless, we will be called upon to continue the ceaseless effort to defend democratic values against those who would suppress and collectivize the human spirit.
I ask you to join in this campaign --not just for a candidate but for a vision of America. We begin here at home in Colorado at the edge of the Continental Divide. We know once again, that our great nation stands at a great divide --and that we must set our course toward a new era. My message is not one of permanent limits, but of potential breakthroughs. Breakthroughs in health and science, in communication and understanding, in instruments of peace not weapons of war.
Let us break the deadlock of old systems and old doctrines. Let us renew the order of progress and of caring for one another. Let us move this great nation into the future.
For that purpose, I undertake this campaign. For that cause, I will carry our campaign into every state. And with your help, we will win the Democractic nomination, and then the Presidency -- and then we will win back our nation for all the people.
# # #
Source: Gary Hart for President Press Release
Courtesy: Archives University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries
Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA.) announced his candidacy for President of the United States on February 2, 1983 with the following statement read to an overflow crowd in the historic Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.
I come here today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States.
I have given this decision long and careful consideration.
I discussed it with citizens in every part of the country.
I do not make it lightly.
Nor do I act with reluctance.
Indeed, I have no other choice...not if I am to remain loyal to the principles which I have developed during four decades of public life.
In my early 20s, as a foreign correspondent, I covered Hitler and Mussolini in the dark days of conquest and appeasement that preceded the Second World War.
As I witnessed the brutality, the intolerance and the tyranny of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany – I felt that I must come home and help arouse America to the need to thwart Hitler’s ambition.
Returning to an America which was still hoping to avoid any participation in Europe's war. I joined my efforts to those who were trying to educate our people to the need for increased military strength in preparation for our inevitable involvement. The war came. I declined deferment and enlisted in the army.
Then I turned it to history for an understanding of the forces and follies which incite war among nations.
From my studies, I wrote a book about the struggle between President Wilson and Senator Lodge – a struggle which ultimately destroyed the League of Nations in the peace that followed World War I.
Shortly after World War II ended, in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I was one of 50 Americans who gathered in Dublin, New Hampshire, to discuss the meaning of the nuclear age.
I came away from that conference convinced that the threat of nuclear war was the dominant problem of our age.
And ever since – through my years in business, and my experience in building the Democratic Party in California and in my 14 years in the Senate – I have concentrated on arms control, defense and foreign policy so that I could work, constructively and creatively, against the holocaust of modern war.
Many Americans – I believe an overwhelming majority – share my concerns about a nuclear arms race that is undermining our economy and our society and threatening our very existence.
Yet today we maintain the most powerful military machine in the history of the world.
And, the demands of this insatiable monster cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
The cost is the steady closing of the doors to American economic opportunity.
For let there be no mistake, there can be no cure for growing unemployment, decreasing productivity, the diminishing opportunity for individual Americans to enhance their well-being, if we continue to pour a mounting portion of our national resources – our money, our technological skills, the energies of our people and government – into a race to build arms.
The arms race can never end unless men are wise enough to call a halt or mad enough to destroy the world.
I believe in the necessities of defense.
I learned firsthand that in an uncertain and violent world, rational men and women must be prepared to defend themselves.
But we have overleaped at the bounds of reason.
The Soviet Union and the United States frantically compete to prepare themselves for a war which – should it come -will totally destroy civilization.
And we do so knowing there can be no limited nuclear war – no winnable nuclear war – no survivable nuclear war – only a devastation of such horror that even a Soviet leader warned, “The living will envy the dead.”
The cost of this insane policy – for both America and Russia – is that neither of us can meet the most basic aspirations of our people.
There are some who claim that increasing our power to destroy increases our security.
They are wrong.
For three decades – since 1950 – all our power has increased until it towers above the imagination of human kind.
Yet we are no more secure, no less vulnerable, no closer to peace.
There are also many who tell you that we can restore our economic health while continuing to heap new weapons upon the old.
They, too, are wrong.
Our economy has been in decline ever since the war in Vietnam.
There have been temporary upturns.
But our long -term course is clear.
It is a downward path.- A path toward depression, the destruction of human dreams, ambitions – the fair expectations which are the birthright of all Americans.
It is stifling the fair demands of justice – to provide equal opportunity without regard to race or sex, to extend that compassion to the helpless and the impoverished, to close the widening rift which is separating many of us from those denied the blessings of American society.
It is leading us to abandon the aim of an excellent education for every young American – not just for the sons and daughters of the well born.
It is causing us to violate the very continent – that fruitful soil – on which we built a country.
This lesson of experience is reinforced by simple common sense.
Countries like individuals -even the greatest among them -have their limits.
We cannot take vast resources, our most highly skilled citizens, our creative talent, away from the structure of American production – which creates both wealth and opportunity – without suffering the inevitable consequence.
There's much I would do immediately as President to rescue our nation from prolonged recession and possible depression.
In the course of my campaign, I will spell out my vision of full employment and prosperity for America.
But I am convinced that in the long run we can not revive our economy – or save our society – until we end the incredibly dangerous, shamefully expensive arms race.
And therefore, my first to act as president will be to challenge of the leader of the Soviet Union to join with me, not to sign a proposal he’s already rejected, but in making peace.
I will tell him:
“You and I have a solemn responsibility.
“We have a common affliction ravaging both our economies and threatening to ravage the entire world.
"Let us face this issue together – and solve it in a practical, sensible way."
I will seek, first of all, a mutual and verifiable freeze on the production, testing, and deployment of nuclear weapons.
I will propose that we meet again and again and again – until we agree on substantial reductions in our arsenals of debt.
Our aim must be to end the threat of nuclear war – a purpose for which will be the dominating goal of my presidency.
It will take precedence over all others.
Indeed, it must, if there is to be any hope of success.
No president has ever given the task of ending the arms race the priority attention it demands, I will.
A president must concentrate the powers of his mind and his office on one or two principle purposes, else he will squander his strength and his substance on the demand of the moment and the crisis of the hour and his years at the center will waste away.
He will leave the White House having achieved nothing truly enduring or significant.
With luck, he and our country will have survived, and little more will be remembered -or be worth remembering – about his presidency.
It will not be easy to reach agreement with the Russians.
Years of failure, suspicion and mistrust lie behind us.
Yet we are not asking for favors or privileges -only for action that serves that the most urgent needs of both nations.
The Soviets are hostile to our concept of freedom -willing to forcibly repress the peoples of other countries as they repress their own.
But they, their families, their economy, are held hostage by the nuclear peril – as we are.
Peace is in their interest – as in ours.
President john Kennedy never failed to face the Russians when they were wrong – or negotiate with them when the cause was right.
His words, 20 years ago, are as true and compelling today as they were then:
"Let us not be blind to our differences. But in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet.
"We all breathe the same air.
"We all cherish our children's future.
"And we are all mortal."
In 1983, the doomsday clock is racing ahead, faster than ever.
Albert Einstein warned that nuclear war could destroy the environment that sustains life upon this planet and thus annihilate the human race.
That would surrender us to absolute and total darkness, as Jonathan Schell put it:
"A darkness in which no nation, no society, no ideology, no civilization will remain; in which never again will a child be born; in which never again will human beings appear on the earth; and there will be no one to remember that they ever did."
At the heart of all my convictions always has been the belief that American freedom can only flourish in world at peace.
I have not given so many years of my life and so much energy to fulfilling that belief, that I can now stand by while this country – which Jefferson called the hope of all mankind – abandons its justifying creed: the right of every citizen to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness and to life itself.
I will not let this happen.
I know the American people do not want it to happen.
They share my values. They share my concerns.
And, once united in purpose, they will be a mighty – indeed, an irresistible force.
I cannot forge that unity of purpose from my seat in the Senate.
It can be done only from the White House.
And so, today, I set out for the White House for the same reasons that, years ago, led me into public life.
I am – at 68 – older than many of the other candidates.
Some have said that my age is a handicap.
I don't believe so.
Principles and values don't decline with age.
They just grow stronger.
There's one claim I can make: I have lived in another America – a country that rose against depression and brought the armed powers of tyranny to their knees.
That America is still here.
I see it, feel it, hear it in the voices of a hundred meetings, as I make my way across the continent.
And that is why I believe I can attain such difficult goals – with confidence, not in myself alone, but in the people from whom I come.
So, today, I leave the starting line.
The finish line is not Election Day, November 6, 1984.
That will only be the starting line of the campaign that really counts – to heal our nation – and to bring ourselves and our children out from under the dark shadow of nuclear war.
It is essential and it is possible to win this campaign – and to banish nuclear weapons from the face of God's earth.
Thank you.
Source: Cranston For President Committee (Courtesy Mike Swickey)