Keynote Address to the
Democratic National Convention
delivered 11 July
1960, Los Angeles, Californian
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A keynote speaker is often expected to perform like a cheerleader at a pep
rally. But these are solemn times that summon us to reason together. We are
Democrats, not because our party has always done everything right, but because
it has been the principal party of progress. We face the future with assurance,
because of the way our party has served the country in the past.
No other party, for example, has furnished so many great Presidents -- the
author of our liberties, Thomas Jefferson; the framer of frontier freedom,
Andrew Jackson; the sentinel of integrity in public office, Grover Cleveland;
the scholarly architect of world order, Woodrow Wilson; the giant of
humanitarian reform, Franklin Roosevelt; and that indomitable man of the people,
Harry Truman!
Nearly everybody now acclaims the liberal reforms that Democrats had to hammer
out, against determined Republican opposition, a few short years ago -- the
Social Security Act, to give a minimal retirement income to our senior citizens;
the minimum wage and hour laws, to upgrade menial wages to decent standards; the
R.E.A. [Railway Express Agency], bringing electric light to the countryside of America; and the federal
housing program, which has enabled the bulk of our people to become the owners
of their own homes.
I wish that time would permit a review of all the achievements of former
Democratic Administrations. But the laurels of the past alone do not entitle us
to the keys to the future. We will deserve to win the coming election, not on
account of yesterday's service, but on the basis of the programs we present for
today, and the plans we project for tomorrow. Therefore, I must speak to you
tonight of the grave crisis confronting us all.
Ours is an awesome age. We live anxiously in the shadow of the mushroom cloud,
and wonder whether the human race itself is to be consumed in the witchfire of
thermonuclear war. We see the world in upheaval, polarized about two gigantic
adversaries, the United States and the Soviet Union. At stake is the shape of
the future.
If the Soviet Union is Communism on exhibit, even more is the United States the
showcase of Democracy. How urgent it is for us to show all the watching world
that Democracy has the will to serve vital public needs. How ironic that our
National Administration should have fallen into the hands of the "hold-back"
party, during times that beseeched us to push ahead.
For the heralded "crusade" of 1952 brought only complacency back to Washington.
It was the same old "Keep-Cool-With-Coolidge" attitude of the Twenties; it was
the familiar "prosperity-is-just-around-the-corner" spirit which prevented
Herbert Hoover from ever coming to grips with the Great Depression. Once the new
Eisenhower "team" had been installed, Madison Avenue eagerly took charge, and a
barrage of bland ballyhoo soon filled the land. Like a drug, if you please, it
has tranquilized our leadership for over seven years!
Now we must be done with this addiction. We must seek candid answers to the hard
question!
Where do we really stand? Where are we headed? What must we do about it?
We are told by the Republicans to be content, that they have done as much about
our problems as we can afford, and that the present prosperity attests to their
prudent management of our affairs.
But do we have a wholesome prosperity? I submit it as a pitch-man prosperity,
the kind that results when government is run by hucksters not unaccustomed to
selling inferior products by wrapping them in bright packages.
It is no accident that big business profits are higher than ever, nor that small
business is failing at a record rate. The Republicans tell us that this is due
to the immutable law of "the survival of the fittest." The fittest, of course,
are the biggest, as anyone knows who has ever been in an alley fight. If small
business doesn't want to get licked, it will have to get out of the alley! In
any case, it is "paternalism," according to the Republican rule-book, for the
government to intervene as referee.
Who suffers from this pitch-man prosperity? Not just small business, but the
farmers as well.
This Administration, in dealing with the farm problem, has treated the American
people like the
fabled blind men of India who went to see the elephant. One felt
his side and thought him like a wall; one his tail and thought him like a rope;
one his ear and thought him like a fan:
"And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long...
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!"
To the
farmers, the Republicans have said: "Price supports have induced you to
overproduce. We will lower them. Less food will mean higher prices, and this
will make you prosperous.”
To the consumers, they have said: "We are lifting acreage restrictions and
reducing the farmers' price supports. This will mean more food at cheaper prices
in the market-place."
To all of us who are taxpayers, they have said: “We are paring down the farm
program to save you taxes."
With such conflicting arguments, the Administration won approval from a
Republican Congress, in 1954, of its
flexible price support program, and the use
of the veto has kept it alive ever since. With the same arguments, the program
is still defended, despite all the accumulated evidence of its failure.
Has it helped the consumer? The housewife will tell you that groceries are
higher than ever.
Has it helped the taxpayer? Why this Administration has spent more money on its
farm program than all previous Administrations combined, from the time the
Department of Agriculture was first established in 1862! Instead of declining,
our surpluses have grown mammoth. Just to maintain them, now costs us more than
a billion dollars a year! For some of those who own storage bins, this may be
the road to riches, but for the farmer, it is the road to ruin.
Farm income has dropped 23 percent since 1952, while costs have continued to
rise, in a squeeze that has driven nearly five million people off the farms. We
Democrats reject the proposition that the family farm is finished. The farmer is
entitled to a fair return on the food and fiber he raises, and no prosperity is
genuine that excludes him.
Yet those who pay for this pitch-man prosperity are not confined to either
farmers or small businessmen. Workingmen pay for it. Elderly people on pensions
pay for it. Everyone who has to borrow pays for it. The cost is exacted in
higher interest rates.
I swear Rip Van Winkle could have gone to sleep during any time in this century
past, and upon awakening, could readily have determined which party was in
control, merely by asking, "How high are the interest rates?" And, if they were
hovering up there close to the ceiling, he could bet his life that the
Republicans had taken over in Washington!1
One of the first acts of this Administration, in 1953, was to raise the interest
rates, a policy that has already cost the taxpayers 12 billion dollars, just to
pay the increased interest on the national debt. Imagine what the boosted tax
cost has been on money borrowed by the states, the cities, and the school
districts of the land.
But even this is not all. Pile on top of it the added money paid out by every
person who has had to buy his TV set, refrigerator, or automobile, on the
installment plan, and you can begin to understand how spiraling interest rates
have intensified the inflation, and lifted the cost-of-living to an all-time
high.
The fact is that the "tight money" policies of this Administration have sapped
our vitality and shackled our economic growth. Compare the past seven years
under this Republican Administration with the previous seven years under the
Democrats. During the Truman Administration, our Gross National Product
increased an average of 4.7% each year. Under the Eisenhower Administration, the
increase has averaged only 2.3%, less than half as much. And if our growing
population is taken into account, the per capita rate of growth for the seven
years under the Democrats was four times as great as under the Republicans.
Indeed, our economic vigor has been undermined to the point that our urgent
needs at home have been left untreated like festering sores.
Private slums are spreading through the rotting cores of our big cities, while
our urban renewal and public housing programs are "too little and too late." Our
private automobiles are stalled in traffic jams, while rapid public
transportation, for lack of funds, lags 20 years behind our needs. Private
dissipation flourishes, while public education flounders. The classroom shortage
has not been met, and we continue to spend more for liquor and tobacco, than for
public schools. To sweeten private life, our stores display a billion bottles of
deodorant, yet a modest bill to reduce the stench from our polluted public
rivers was vetoed, and the urban air -- thickening with contamination -- begins
to threaten the public health.
We have cared so much about "conspicuous consumption" that our lives are
cluttered with gadgets. Yet, we have cared so little about our public
responsibilities, that both young and old have been neglected; gangs of
switchblade delinquents haunt the public streets, while the lack of adequate
medical care for the aged is fast becoming a national disgrace.
What does all of this portend for America? Are we to become a modern Babylon of
public want amidst private glut? Is this to be the last port of call for the
great American Republic?
Such has been the direction of our course -- under this Republican
Administration.
I say to you: The issue in the coming election is not Dwight Eisenhower, whether
the "strong" or the "weak"; it is not Richard Nixon, whether the "new" or the
"old"; the issue is our country's course -- whether we can risk another
four-year ride on the Republican train.
For it's the same old train. He who sits in the cab up front can't change the
direction of the ride. The train runs on Republican tracks, and they are fixed
in place! To change direction, we must change trains, and that's just what the
American people plan to do in November!
What will be our new direction? Well, let's see what the Democrats in Congress
have done -- even in the face of veto, and the threat of veto -- these past few
years.
We have advanced the cause of good health through larger appropriations for
vital medical research against cancer, heart disease, tuberculosis, and a host
of other chronic ailments.
We have kept faith with our forefathers by overcoming 40 years of resistance, to
embrace Alaska and Hawaii within the Federal Union, as our 49th and 50th States.
We have broken a stalemate in the fight for full equality under law, by enacting
the first civil rights legislation in 80 years, to better protect the right to
vote for all our citizens, regardless of race or color. Much remains to be done,
but it is already clear that the Democratic Party is dealing most effectively
with the lingering problem of racial intolerance, even as we have rejected
religious bigotry. We are proud to count among our leading contenders for the
Presidency itself, both Protestant and Catholic alike!
But in other fields, the work of the Democratic Congress has been blocked by the
Republican veto. In the field of continued development of our water resources --
so important to my own state of Idaho, and the future of the country -- the
Republican Cabinet is split. One half wants "no new starts," the other half
demands "more new stops!" Four times in four years, Rivers and Harbors bills
have been vetoed.
Twice the Congress has tried to give aid to depressed areas of chronic
unemployment, and twice have the bills been vetoed. Twice, because of vetoes, we
have seen an adequate public housing program cut below our minimal needs, and
many have been the times that Congress has been frustrated in its efforts to
deal with the worsening farm problem. Half a dozen major farm bills have been
vetoed since 1956.
If only there had been a Democrat in the White House these past seven Republican
years, and we had continued to enjoy the same rate of economic growth we
experienced during the previous seven Democratic years, there would have been
plenty of revenue to enact all of these programs into law, plus urban renewal
and school construction besides, without deficit spending, and without need for
any increase in federal taxes.
This is why the American people are determined to put an end to divided
government. Not only are they going to re-elect a Democratic Congress, but they
are going to make sure that the man we nominate in this convention becomes the
next President of the United States!
We must make the change. Our problems at home call for it. Our predicament
abroad compels it.
The President and his representatives, under the Constitution, conduct our
foreign policy. For over seven years, they have staged it as though the world
were a grandstand, where showmanship might be the easy substitute for
statesmanship.
Before it's too late, we must begin to see the world realistically. We live on a
shrunken planet, where the prevailing order of the past three centuries has been
destroyed. New nations rise from the wreckage of old empires, so that our world,
like ancient Gaul, lies divided in three parts: one part consists of the Western
Nations, led by the United States; one part of the Communist Nations, dominated
by the Soviet Union; while the third part is made up of the newly emerging
nations in the old, colonial regions of Africa, Asia, and the southern seas.
These undeveloped and uncommitted nations are the "no-man's lands" on which the
destiny of the human race will be decided. For if the continents of Africa and
Asia are drawn behind the
Iron and
Bamboo Curtains, the economy of western
Europe is at once undermined. And if we yield Europe, Asia, and Africa to the
Communists, the balance of power will fatally shift against us, thus assuring
eventual Communist dominion of all the world.
Two ways of life -- Freedom and Communism -- are locked in mortal competition.
Until the debris has been cleared away from the wrecked Summit Conference in
Paris, until the tumult that turned the President back from Tokyo is better
understood, we cannot know, for sure, what form this competition may take. But
this we do know: We shall either win it or lose it. There is no way out of it.
History's verdict will be rendered. The days of our years will determine whether
freedom shall endure.
Accordingly, we must inquire: "How have the Communists been doing in this dire
contest?
A few months ago, my wife and I stood in a long line which moved slowly across
the Red Square in Moscow, into the marble mausoleum, beneath the Kremlin wall.
We went there to see the mortal
remains of Lenin and Stalin,2 laid out upon beds
of bronze. The mausoleum is the pagan cathedral of world Communism, and each day
the "Comrades" come there, three and four abreast, in a never-ending procession.
It is the same procession that emerged from the ruin of Russia at the end of the
Second World War to thrust up a Red Empire -- the only new empire of the 20th
Century. It now engulfs all of eastern Europe and vast China, and encloses a
third of the world's people within its spreading reach. Its method of expansion
has always been conquest, either from within or from without; in no Communist
land have the people ever freely voted the system in, and in no such land have
they ever been given a chance to vote it out.
Now the tyranny invades the Middle East, and plants its seeds in restless
Africa.
I have listened to
Nikita Khrushchev, behind the closed doors of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.3 I have heard his certain prediction that Communism
would win history's verdict. He has boasted that, although we may be free men,
our grandchildren will be Communists.
Is this an idle boast? The communists have seized a third of the world in 15
years! History does not record another conquest so large in so short a time. I
submit to you that the fateful decisions taken in Washington today and tomorrow
will determine whether or not our grandchildren shall be free.
These are the grave stakes deeply involved in the coming national election, and
the mission of the Democratic Party is to reawaken America to the mighty task
before her. The hinge of the future swings on the United States. The maintenance
of peace, the preservation of freedom, the fate of the world, all ultimately
depend upon American principle, American prestige, and American power.
What has been happening to American principle? Under Truman we had a
Marshall
Plan to restore economic strength to the free governments of Western Europe, but
of late we have courted tyrants, as though they were the friends of freedom.
We have carelessly furnished weapons to other petty tyrants, like
Batista in
Cuba, who turned them upon his own people, and now we are dismayed at the
vehemence of the "Hate America" rallies in Havana.
We have helped to arm a Fascist
Franco in Spain, and a Communist
Tito in
Yugoslavia, until the world has been left to wonder if we still stand for
freedom. And as traditional American principles have been obscured, a tide of
suspicion and hostility rises against us.
We must also ask: What has happened to American prestige? Long have we been
known as a generous people. Since the end of the Second World War, we have given
freely of our treasure to help raise standards in far-flung parts of the world.
To the needy, our hand has been extended in friendship. Yet, an over-emphasis on
military aid has caused the hand, in many places, to be mistaken for a fist.
Worse still, by allowing our surplus foods to pile up in massive quantities, by
failing for too long to implement an imaginative "food-for-peace" program, this
Administration has wrongfully permitted the ugly image to spread of a fat
America hoarding food in a hungry world.
But our prestige has suffered in yet another way. We live in an age of science,
when men equate national excellence with technological achievement. In such a
competition, how could this country -- the most highly industrialized and
technically this country advanced in history possibly stumble and fall behind?
Well, during these Republican years, we've done it!
Somehow we lost, and have yet to recapture, the initiative in space. The
Russians were the
first to launch a satellite, the first to strike, and then to
photograph the far side of the moon, the first to orbit the sun. So effectively
have they capitalized on these feats, that our own public opinion experts tell
us that the average citizen of the world believes today that the Soviet Union
has become the leading scientific nation. Don't ever discount the effect of this
upon people in primitive lands, where the promise of modern science alone seems
to hold out hope for a better life in the years ahead.
So we are left with the final question: What has happened to American power?
As long as the Russian and Chinese governments live by the sword, our military
strength must be second to none. We understand that arms alone can never
perpetuate the peace, but can only buy us time with which to supplant the rule
of force among nations with the rule of law.
Yet it must be clear by now that if this objective is ever to be won, if nuclear
weapons tests are ever to be suspended, if "open skies" for the prevention of
surprise attack is ever to be established, if enforceable arms control is ever
to commence, these complicated problems will be worked out -- not at ceremonial
summit conferences -- but through long, painstaking, and skillful negotiation.
At the conference table, our chances for success will depend upon our ability to
negotiate, not from weakness, but from strength.
What has happened to our strength? Our army has shrunk from 20 to 14 divisions.
Our navy has lost scores of fighting ships. We concede to the Russians superior
numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which we ourselves describe as
the "ultimate weapon." Still, we are told by this Administration that we need
not match the Soviet Union in missile strength, for this would impose too heavy
a strain upon us. Is it possible that the richest nation in history can no
longer afford to be the strongest?
In these many ways, we have watched our country shrink in stature, only to be
told that Mr. Nixon, the single aspirant in either party who upholds the very
policies that have led us into fiasco, is the man best qualified to lead us out!
Well, the American people won't be fooled. Remembering the famous admonition of
Theodore Roosevelt, "Speak softly and carry a
big stick," they are not about to
substitute, "Talk tough and carry a toothpick!"
They know that scowls will never scuttle the Communist thrust, that this can be
accomplished only by a mighty striving to revive American principle, to restore
American prestige, and to rebuild American power.
I shall never forget the words of a Polish lady, spoken to me last year on the
square of the inner city of old Warsaw. She spoke with a wisdom and perspective
forged in nearly a century of life. "Senator," she said to me, "America is truly
the hope of the world!"
It is the American Revolution -- not the Russian -- that has served as the
inspiration of all people who would be free.
It is the American industrial revolution – not the touted "class struggle" --
that has created, here in the United States, the world's most classless society.
It is the American technological revolution -- not the proletarian state -- that
has produced, here in the United States, a standard of living that is the marvel
of the world.
Nominate a man who will summon this priceless heritage to work. Give us a leader
with a program who – whose dimensions will match those of this atomic age, and
the Democratic Party -- true to its tradition – will lift this country once
again upon the high-road of destiny.
For only an awakened and rededicated America can raise a standard around which
the great fraternity of the free can rally, to summon from a new-found unity,
the resolution and the strength to make history's verdict ours.
This is the case for all America that the Democratic Party must carry to the
people.
2
Stalin's body was removed
from Lenin's Tomb in 1961 on the orders of Soviet Premier Khrushchev and reentombed near the Kremlin
wall. [Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/body-of-stalin-lenins-tomb-1779977]
3
The New York Times
published
this account of Khrushchev's meeting
with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
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