AmericanRhetoric.com
Mario Cuomo
1984 Democratic National Convention
Keynote Address
Delivered
16
July
1984, San
Francisco
AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED:
Text
version below
transcribed
directly
from
audio
Thank you
very much.
On behalf of the great
Empire State and the whole family of New
York, let me thank you
for
the great privilege of being able to address this convention. Please allow
me to skip the stories
and the poetry and the temptation to deal in
nice but
vague rhetoric. Let
me instead
use this
valuable opportunity to deal immediately with
the questions that should determine this
election and that we all know are vital
to the American people.
Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed
to be doing well
nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their
families, and their futures. The President
said that he didn't
understand that fear. He said,
"Why, this country is a shining city on a hill."
And the President
is right. In
many ways we are
a shining city on a hill.
But
the hard truth
is that
not everyone is sharing in
this city's splendor and glory. A shining
city is perhaps all the President
sees from the portico
of the White House and the veranda of
his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city. there's another
part
to the shining the city. the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most
young people can't afford one. where students can't afford the education
they need, and
middleclass
parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.
In
this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in
trouble,
more and
more people who need help but
can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who
tremble in the basements of the houses there.
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And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't
show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education,
give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in
the faces
that you don't see, in the places that
you don't
visit in your shining city.
Mr. President
you ought
to know that
this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than
it is just a
"Shining City on a Hill."
Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you
visited some more places. maybe if you went to
Appalachia where some people still live in sheds. maybe if you went to Lackawanna where
thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe, Mr.
President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there. maybe,
Mr. President, if you asked a woman who
had been denied the help she needed to feed her
children because you said you needed
the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a
missile we couldn't afford to
use.
Maybe, Mr. President. But I'm afraid not. Because the truth
is, ladies and gentlemen, that
this
is how we were warned it would be. President Reagan told us from the very beginning that
he
believed
in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival
of the fittest. "Government
can't do
everything," we were told,
so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that
economic ambition and charity will do
the rest. Make the rich richer, and what
falls from the
table will be enough
for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their
way into
the middle class.
You know, the Republicans called it "trickledown"
when Hoover tried it. Now
they call it
"supply side." But
it's the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough
to live
in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded, for the people who are locked
out, all they can do
is stare from a distance at
that city's glimmering towers.
It's an old story. It's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans
has always been
measured in courage and confidence.
The Republicans believe that
the
wagon train will
not
make it to the frontier unless some of the old,
some of the young, some
of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. "The strong," they tell us, "will inherit
the
land."
We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can
make it all the
way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt
lifted himself from his wheelchair to
lift this nation from its knees wagon
train after wagon
train to
new frontiers of education, housing, peace. the whole family aboard, constantly
reaching out
to extend and enlarge that family. lifting them up into the wagon on the way.
blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans all
those
struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America. For nearly 50 years
we carried them all
to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. And
remember this, some of us in
this room today are here only because this nation had that kind
of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget
that.
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So, here we are at
this convention
to remind ourselves where we come from and to claim the
future for ourselves and for our children. Today our great Democratic Party, which
has saved
this nation from depression, from fascism, from racism, from corruption, is called upon to do
it
again
this
time to
save the nation from confusion and division, from the threat of eventual
fiscal disaster, and most of all from the fear of a nuclear holocaust.
That's not going to be easy. Mo Udall is exactly
right it
won't be easy. And in order to
succeed, we must answer our opponent's polished and appealing rhetoric with a more telling
reasonableness and rationality.
We must win
this case on the merits.
We must get
the American public to
look past
the glitter,
beyond the showmanship to
the reality, the hard substance of things.
And we'll do
it not so
much with
speeches that sound good as with
speeches that are good and sound. not so
much
with speeches that will bring people to
their feet as with speeches that will bring people to
their senses. We must
make We
must make the American people hear our "Tale of Two
Cities."
We must convince them that we don't
have to settle for two
cities, that we can
have
one city, indivisible,
shining for all of its people.
Now, we will
have no
chance to do
that if what
comes out of this convention is a babel of
arguing voices. If that's what's heard
throughout
the campaign, dissident
sounds from all
sides, we will
have no chance to
tell our message. To succeed we will
have to surrender some
small parts of our individual
interests, to build a platform that we can all stand on, at once,
and comfortably proudly
singing out. We need a platform we can all agree to so
that we can
sing out
the truth for the nation to
hear, in
chorus, its logic so clear and commanding that no
slick Madison Avenue commercial, no amount of geniality, no martial music will be able to
muffle
the sound of the truth.
And we Democrats must
unite.
We Democrats
must
unite so that the entire nation can
unite,
because surely the Republicans won't bring this country together. Their policies divide the
nation
into
the lucky and the leftout,
into
the royalty and the rabble.
The Republicans are
willing to treat that division as victory. They would cut
this nation
in
half, into those
temporarily better off and those worse off than
before, and they would call
that division
recovery.
Now, we should not
be embarrassed or dismayed or chagrined if the process of unifying is
difficult, even wrenching at
times. Remember that, unlike any other Party, we embrace men
and women of every color, every creed, every orientation, every economic class. In our family
are gathered everyone from the abject poor of Essex County in New
York, to
the enlightened
affluent of the gold coasts at both
ends of the nation. And in between is the heart of our
constituency the
middle class, the people not
rich enough
to be worryfree,
but not poor
enough
to be on welfare. the middle class those
people who work for a living because they
have to, not because some psychiatrist
told them it was a convenient way to fill
the interval
between birth and eternity. White collar and blue collar. Young professionals. Men and women
in small business desperate for the capital and contracts that they need to prove their worth.
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We speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream. We speak for ethnics
who want
to add
their culture to the magnificent mosaic that
is America.
We speak We
speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch
into
its governmental
commandments the simple rule "thou shalt not
sin against equality," a rule so simple
I was going to
say, and I perhaps dare not but
I will. It's a commandment so
simple it can be
spelled in three letters: E.R.A.
We speak for young people demanding an education and a future. We speak for senior
citizens. We speak for senior citizens who are terrorized by the idea
that
their only security,
their Social Security, is being threatened. We speak for millions of reasoning people fighting to
preserve our environment from greed and from
stupidity. And we speak for reasonable people
who are fighting to preserve our very existence
from a macho intransigence that refuses to
make intelligent attempts to discuss the possibility of nuclear holocaust with our enemy. They
refuse. They refuse, because they believe we can pile missiles so high that
they will pierce the
clouds and the sight of them will frighten our enemies into submission.
Now we're proud of this diversity as Democrats. We're grateful for it. We don't have to
manufacture it the way the Republicans will next month
in Dallas, by propping up mannequin
delegates on
the convention floor. But we, while we're proud of this diversity, we pay a price
for it. The different people that we represent have different points of view. And sometimes
they compete and even debate, and even argue. That's what our primaries were all about. But
now the primaries are over and it is time, when
we pick our candidates and our platform here,
to lock arms and move into
this campaign
together.
If you
need any more inspiration
to put
some small part of your own difference aside to create
this consensus, then all
you need to do is to reflect on what the Republican policy of divide
and cajole has done to this land since 1980. Now the President
has asked the American people
to judge him on whether or not he's fulfilled the promises he made
four years ago. I believe,
as Democrats, we ought to accept
that challenge. And just
for a moment let us consider what
he has said and what
he's done.
Inflation is down since 1980, but
not because of the supplyside
miracle promised to us by the
President. Inflation was reduced the oldfashioned
way: with a recession, the worst since
1932. We could have brought
inflation down that way. How did he do
it? 55,000 bankruptcies.
two years of massive unemployment. 200,000 farmers and ranchers forced off the land. more
homeless than at any time since the Great Depression
in 1932. more hungry, in
this world of
enormous affluence, the United States of America, more hungry. more poor, most of them
women. And he paid one other thing, a nearly 200 billion dollar deficit threatening our future.
Now, we must
make the American people understand this deficit because they don't. The
President's deficit
is a direct and dramatic repudiation of his promise in
1980 to balance the
budget by 1983. How large is it?
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The deficit
is the largest in the history of the universe. It
President
Carter's last budget had
a deficit
less than onethird
of this deficit. It
is a deficit
that, according to
the President's own
fiscal adviser, may grow to as much
300 billion
dollars a year for "as far as the eye can see."
And,
ladies and gentlemen, it is a debt
so large that
is almost onehalf
of the money we
collect from the personal income tax each
year goes just
to pay the interest. It
is a mortgage
on our children's future that
can be paid only in pain and that could bring this nation
to its
knees.
Now don't take my word for it I'm
a Democrat. Ask the Republican investment bankers on
Wall
Street what
they think the chances of this recovery being permanent are. You
see, if
they're not too embarrassed to tell
you
the truth, they'll
say that
they're appalled and
frightened by the President's deficit. Ask them what they think of our economy, now
that it's
been driven by the distorted value of the dollar
back to its colonial condition. Now we're
exporting agricultural products and importing manufactured ones. Ask those Republican
investment bankers what
they expect
the rate of interest
to be a year from now. And ask
them if
they dare tell
you
the truth you'll
learn from them, what they predict
for the
inflation rate a year from now, because of the deficit.
Now, how important
is this question of the deficit. Think about
it
practically: What chance
would the Republican
candidate have had in 1980 if he had
told the American people that he
intended
to pay for his socalled
economic recovery with bankruptcies, unemployment, more
homeless, more hungry, and the largest government debt known
to humankind? If he had
told the voters in 1980 that truth, would American voters have signed the loan certificate for
him on Election Day? Of course not! That was an election won under false pretenses. It was
won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. And that's the kind of recovery we have now as
well.
But what about foreign policy? They said that
they would make us and the whole world safer.
They say they have.
By
creating the largest defense budget
in
history, one that even
they now
admit
is excessive by
escalating to a frenzy the nuclear arms race. by incendiary rhetoric.
by refusing to discuss peace with our enemies. by the loss of 279 young Americans in
Lebanon
in pursuit of a plan and a policy that
no one can find or describe.
We give money to Latin
American governments that
murder nuns, and then we lie about it.
We have been
less than zealous in support of our only real friend it
seems to
me, in the
Middle East
the
one democracy there, our flesh and blood ally, the state of Israel. Our
foreign policy drifts with
no real direction, other than an
hysterical commitment to an arms
race that
leads nowhere if
we're lucky. And if we're not, it
could lead
us into bankruptcy or
war.
Of course we must
have a strong defense! Of course Democrats are for a strong defense. Of
course Democrats believe that
there are times that we must
stand and fight. And we have.
Thousands of us have paid for freedom with our lives. But always when
this country has
been at
its best
our
purposes were clear. Now they're not. Now our allies are as confused as
our enemies.
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Now we have no
real commitment
to our friends or to our ideals not
to human
rights, not
to
the refuseniks, not
to
Sakharov, not to
Bishop Tutu and the others struggling for freedom in
South
Africa.
We have in
the last few years spent
more than
we can afford. We have pounded our chests
and made bold speeches. But we lost
279 young Americans in Lebanon and we live behind
sand bags in Washington. How
can anyone say that we are safer, stronger, or better?
That is the Republican record. That
its disastrous quality is not
more fully understood by the
American people I can only attribute to
the President's amiability and the failure by some to
separate the salesman
from the product.
And now
it's up to
us. Now it's up to you and to
me to make the case to America. And to
remind Americans that
if they are not happy with all
that the President
has done so far, they
should consider how
much worse it will be if he is left to
his radical proclivities for another four
years unrestrained. Unrestrained.
If July brings back Ann
Gorsuch
Burford what
can we expect of December? Where would Where
would another four years take us? Where would four years more take us? How much
larger will the deficit be? How much deeper the cuts in programs for the struggling middle
class and the poor to
limit
that deficit? How
high will
the interest rates be? How much
more
acid rain killing our forests and fouling our lakes?
And,
ladies and gentlemen, the nation
must think of this: What kind of Supreme Court will we
have?
We must ask ourselves what kind of court and country will
be fashioned by the man who
believes in having government
mandate people's religion and morality. the man who believes
that
trees pollute the environment. the man
that believes that the laws against discrimination
against people go too far. a man who threatens Social
Security and Medicaid and help for the
disabled.
How high will we pile the missiles? How much deeper will the gulf be between
us and
our enemies? And,
ladies and gentlemen, will
four years more make meaner the spirit of the
American people? This election will measure the record of the past
four years.
But
more than
that, it will answer the question of what kind of people we want
to be.
We Democrats still
have a dream.
We still believe in
this nation's future. And this is our
answer to
the question. This is our credo: We believe in only the government we need, but we
insist on all
the government we need.
We believe in a government
that
is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a
reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do
things that we
know we can't do.
We believe in a government strong enough
to use words like "love" and "compassion" and
smart enough
to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.
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We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may
be a good working description of the process of evolution, a
government of humans should
elevate itself to a higher order.
Our government should be able to
rise to the level where it
can fill
the gaps that are left by
chance or by a wisdom we don't fully understand. We would rather have laws written by the
patron of this great city, the man called the "world's most sincere Democrat," St. Francis of
Assisi, than
laws written by Darwin.
We believe, as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in
the world's history, one that
can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be
able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do
it,
room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the
destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can
the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and
the need for a nuclear freeze,
if only to affirm the simple truth
that peace is better than war
because life is better than death.
We believe in firm but fair law and order.
We believe proudly in the union movement.
We believe in privacy for people, openness by government.
We believe in civil rights, and we believe in
human rights.
We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than
most textbooks and any
speech
that
I could write what a proper government
should be: the idea of family, mutuality,
the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one
another's blessings reasonably,
honestly, fairly, without respect to
race, or sex, or
geography, or political affiliation.
We believe we must be the family of America,
recognizing that at
the heart of the matter we
are bound one to another, that
the problems of a retired school
teacher in Duluth are our
problems. that
the future of the child in Buffalo
is our future. that the struggle of a disabled
man
in Boston to
survive and live decently is our struggle. that the hunger of a woman
in
Little Rock is our hunger. that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to
avoid pain, is our failure.
For 50 years we Democrats created a better future for our children, using traditional
Democratic principles as a fixed beacon, giving
us direction and purpose, but
constantly
innovating, adapting to new realities: Roosevelt's alphabet programs
Truman's NATO and the
GI Bill of Rights. Kennedy's intelligent
tax incentives and the Alliance for Progress. Johnson's
civil rights. Carter's human rights and the nearly miraculous Camp David Peace Accord.
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Democrats did it and Democrats can do it again. We can build a future that deals with our
deficit. Remember this, that
50 years of progress under our principles never cost us what
the
last four years of stagnation
have. And we can deal with
the deficit intelligently, by shared
sacrifice, with all
parts of the nation's family contributing, building partnerships with the
private sector, providing a sound defense without depriving ourselves of what we need to feed
our children and care for our people.
We can have a future that provides for all
the young of
the present, by marrying common
sense and compassion.
We know we can, because we did it for nearly 50 years before 1980. And we can do
it again, if
we do not forget
that this entire nation
has profited by these progressive principles. that they
helped lift
up generations to the middle class and higher. that
they gave us a chance to work,
to go to
college,
to raise a family, to own a house, to be secure in our old age and, before
that, to reach
heights that our own parents would not have dared dream of.
That struggle to
live with dignity is the real story of the shining city. And it's a story, ladies
and gentlemen, that I didn't read in a book, or learn in a classroom. I saw
it and lived it, like
many of you. I watched a small
man with
thick
calluses on both
his hands work 15 and 16
hours a day. I saw
him once literally bleed from
the bottoms of his feet, a man who came
here uneducated, alone,
unable to
speak the language, who taught me all I needed
to know
about
faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.
I learned about our kind of
democracy from my father. And I learned about
our obligation to
each other from him and
from my mother. They asked only for a chance to work and to
make the world better for their
children, and they asked to be protected in those moments when
they would not be able to
protect
themselves. This nation and this nation's government did that for them.
And that they were able to build a family and live in dignity and see one of their children go
from behind their little grocery store in South Jamaica on the other side of the tracks where
he was born, to occupy the highest seat, in the greatest
State, in
the greatest
nation, in the
only world we would know, is an
ineffably beautiful tribute to the democratic process.
And ladies and gentlemen, on January 20, 1985, it will happen again only
on a much, much
grander scale.
We will have a new President of the United States, a Democrat born
not to
the
blood of kings but to
the blood of pioneers and immigrants. And we will
have America's first
woman
Vice President, the child of immigrants, and she will open with one magnificent stroke,
a whole new frontier for the United States.
Now, it will
happen. It will
happen
if we make it
happen. if you and I
make it
happen. And I
ask you
now, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, for the good of all of us, for the love
of this great
nation, for the family of America,
for the love of God: Please, make this nation
remember how futures are built.
Thank you and God bless you.
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