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The original documents are located in Box D34, folder "Clark County GOP Committee
Dinner, Las Vegas, NV, February 10, 1973" of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press
Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
20 capies with Mr. Ford only
Office Copy
NEWS
CONGRESSMAN
GERALD R. FORD
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER
RELEASE
--FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY--
Saturday, February 10, 1973
Remarks by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, House Republican Leader, at a GOP Dinner sponsored
by the Clark County GOP Committee in Las Vegas, Nevada, 6:30 p.m. Saturday,
Feb. 10, 1973.
We have come to the end of a long dark night. We have passed through a
fearful spiritual crisis in this country. Now that crisis is finished. The fever
is broken. The patient is growing ever stronger; in fact, he is well and flourishing
We have, in effect, suffered through a civil war in America in the years
just past.
This country was torn asunder, its national fabric rent by dissent and
divisions nad its character buffeted by winds of horrendous change.
A Republican President has seen us through this time of national crisis, just
as in another time the first Republican President used his great moral strength to
keep our country from permanently splitting apart and gave it the God-loving
leadership it so desperately needed.
Why do we love and revere Abraham Lincoln? We cherish him for his insight
and wisdom, his great courage and his tenderness, and most of all his devotion to
what he thought was right.
President Nixon is much like Lincoln. He has insight. He is sensitive. He
is determined to uphold that which he believes to be right.
I think it is because of this that Richard Nixon was able to lead us out of
the darkness of civil strife, out of the toils of a government so bogged down with
welfare state bureaucracy as to be almost immobile, and out of the nightmare of a
horrible little war halfway around the world in which there could be no hope of
victory.
Think how far we have come in the last four years--as a people and as a
Nation.
Four years ago serious thinkers, as well as millions of ordinary citizens,
were doubtful of America's ability to cope with the future.
Years of rioting had wracked our cities. Years of senseless war had robbed
our youth of respect for their own national birthright. An agonizing economic
dilemma existed, a dilemma that told us we would only have prosperity if the war
(more)
Digitized from Box D34 of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
-2-
continued to escalate. Guns and butter threatened to become a permanent part of
the American scene. Polls showed that more than half of the women in this country
were afraid to walk in their own neighborhoods at night. And it appeared that
breathing the air or drinking the water would soon become just as hazardous.
Above all, the cosmic cataclysm of nuclear war seemed all too possible.
Look around you now. Let's take stock of what America is like today.
For the first time since 1945, the threat of nuclear war is diminishing
rather than growing. Problems of air and water pollution are bieng dealt with.
Crime rates are coming down. All of our men are coming home from Vietnam. We
have achieved an honorable peace there. The synthetic wartime prosperity of the
1960s is being converted to the solid economic stability of the 1970s.
All this in four years. The Richard Nixon Years.
Think back to 1968. Don't you feel more at peace with yourself now than
in 1968? Don't you trust your neighbor and yourself a little more than in 1968?
Aren't you more proud of your country now than in 1968? Don't you sleep better
now than in 1968? Don't the other nuclear powers of the world seem a little more
like ordinary people than in 1968? Doesn't your paycheck go farther than in 1968?
Aren't you glad Richard Nixon won in 1968--and in 1972?
If the President could help bring us that far, that fast, is it not
sensible to surmise that his leadership will be even more effective in the next
four years?
Abraham Lincoln brought this Nation a great gift of leadership. And so,
too, has Richard Nixon.
Leadership like Richard Nixon's comes but once in a long time. Leadership
that persuades instead of commands. Leadership that demonstrates belief in the
basic goodness and decency of man. Leadership which expresses no brief for the
lawless, which insists upon order while striving to expand the general freedom of
us all. Leadership which offers the hand of friendship to other nations without
inviting the other side to interpret that offer as an act of weakness. Leadership
which abhors the thought and act of controlling the economy but does it to break
the psychology of inflation which is to the economic man what cancer is to the
physical being. Leadership which has kept our treaty commitments around the world
without engaging in new military adventures. And leadership which has ended
American involvement in Vietnam without abandoning either the living or the dead
prisoners of the violence.
(more)
--3-
More than a century ago, it was Abraham Lincoln that led this Nation out of
a vale of sorrows. It was his leadership that preserved the Union. And in the
closing days of the Civil War when that goal was in sight, Lincoln challenged the
American people to turn their strengths to healing the Nation's wounds and "to do
all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and
with all nations."
Built on Lincoln's leadership, the last third of the 19th century was a time
of peace--our last full generation of peace--in which America's energies turned
away from war and were devoted to nation building and the expansion of freedom.
Richard Nixon's leadership has given us the beginnings of another generation
of peace in the last third of this century.
Left to peaceful pursuits after the Civil War, American energies produced
the greatest nation in the world, firmly established in freedom.
Left once more at peace, American energies today can be devoted to the
further expansion of freedom--not only in this country but throughout the world.
President Nixon moved the entire world toward peace with his trips to
Moscow and Peking and the signing of the SALT Agreement. In view of developments
since those events, I say the Cold War as we came to know it has ended.
And now we are fortunate indeed that the American people in their wisdom
gave Richard Nixon another four years in the White House--for the decisions made
during the next few years will decide whether the remaining decades of this century
will be characterized by peace and prosperity and by peaceful change.
The probability of all-out aggression in the world has never been as low
as today as a result of recent developments and the effectiveness of U.S. deterrence
In my view, this is true solely because of Richard Nixon's firm leadership, his
insistence on a foreign policy based upon strong U.S. defenses, a realistic
partnership with our Free World allies, and a Yankee trader spirit in dealing with
the Soviet Union.
The United States has won the Cold War because of its military strength
and President Nixon's flexibility in international relations.
In both foreign and domestic policy, Richard Nixon has shown a remarkable
facility for abandoning a course proven to be wrong or inadequate and seizing upon
a fresh and workable course of action.
It is as though he has kept ever before him the declaration made by Lincoln
(more)
-4-
when he said: "I shall try to correct errors where shown to be errors, and I shall
adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views."
It was in that spirit that President Nixon adopted the New Economic Policy
which went into effect August 15, 1971--a policy which confounded his critics
because it seemed to run counter to Richard Nixon's basic philosophy.
Long a Cold Warrior, Richard Nixon also astounded friends and foes alike
when he opened the doors of diplomacy to Communist China and reached agreements
on strategic weapons control and other matters with the Soviet Union.
A pragmatic man, Richard Nixon is quick to reject that which will not work
and to make use of that which will. He exercises the powers of the White House in
line with these words of Abraham Lincoln: "I do not mean to say we are bound
implicitly to follow in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all
the lights of current experience--to reject all progress, all improvement."
The astounding aspect of Richard Nixon's first four years in the Oval Office
is that he accomplished what he did despite general obstructionism on the part of
the Democratic majority in the Congress and lack of support on foreign policy from
some leading Democrats.
This was reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln's situation in the early days of
his Presidency. He literally pleaded with leading Democrats of the time for
cooperation in restoring the Union. He offered to "make way" for Gov. Horatio
Seymour of New York "as my successor" if the governor would urge the Democratic
Party to help put down the rebellion. He stated he would "hold McClellan's horse"
if it would end the conflict. His attempts to win Democratic cooperation were met
not only with denouncement but with personal insult. The Democrats were fondest
of depicting Lincoln as a "baboon" or a "long-armed ape." Yet, immediately after
Lincoln's assassination, Democratic politicians went to great lengths to assume
his mantle--and they have ever since.
As it was with Lincoln, so it has been with Richard Nixon. The opposition
party, in control of the Congress, has sought either to block major Administration
measures or to take credit for them.
Yet we have made great progress, both at home and abroad. Besides advancing
the prospects for world peace, we have revitalized our economy while controlling
inflation.
Real growth in our economy exceeded the Administration's goal of 6 per cent
(more)
-5-
in 1972. Employment increased sharply. We are adding new jobs at the highest rate
since 1955. And, most importantly, Real Spendable Earnings-buying power--rose at
an annual rate of 4.1 per cent last year as compared with 1965-70 when buying power
did not increase at all. There is now and will be less inflation in the United
States than in any other major nation.
What is the U.S. economic outlook? It is for further substantial gains in
1973 on virtually all fronts--including real output, personal income, employment
and profits.
What we need to do now is to expand our new spirit of accomplishment to
include greater recognition of our unprecedented gains, so we can move ahead with
confidence to solve the problems which still face us.
At this point I would like to appeal to my Democratic friends in the Congress
to put country ahead of party and to support the President's major initiatives
in this time of challenge.
No nation has a greater capability for solving critical problems, if we all
work together to find the answers.
Let us all, Democrats and Republicans alike, support the President as he
moves toward his great goals--a lasting peace, prosperity without war or inflation,
and equal opportunity for all.
Let's help him to win the peace in Vietnam now that he has achieved an
honorable settlement there.
Let's help him to put a brake on Government spending, to make good on his
pledge to avoid new taxes and to keep the Federal bureaucracy under control.
I personally feel the President's task would have been much easier if the
people had only seen fit to elect a Republican majority in the Congressional and
senatorial elections last November. But the people decided otherwise.
Certainly Richard Nixon's landslide election meant something, even if it
was a lonely landslide.
It meant the people approved of the President's conduct of his office and his
innovative foreign policy. And I think the people want the Democratic majority in
the Congress to work with the President--not against him.
As Abraham Lincoln put it, "The most reliable indication of public purpose
in this country is derived through our popular elections.'
If the Democrats try to put the New Deal back together again, they will be
(more)
-6-
making a terrible mistake- in terms of the country's welfare and in terms of their
party's political future. The New Deal is dead. And yet for the last decade the
Democratic Party has been drifting to the left.
The American people, I am thoroughly convinced, reject all extremism-of the
right and the left.
If the Democrats try to keep the old New Deal gravy train running, the
American people will derail it. The Democrats may well continue to be inclined
leftward and so I see more Republican victories in 1974.
I am convinced that the Republican Party will still become the majority
party in the United States. I have never despaired of that because the Republican
Party is a party of principle--and that is our strongest point.
Abraham Lincoln put it this way: "Our principle, however baffled or delayed,
will finally triumph, I do not permit myself to doubt. The principle will remain,
and will reproduce another, and another, till the final triumph will come."
Let us hold true to our principles. If we do, the time will come as surely
as the night follows the day--we will prevail.
###
Distribution 20 copies with M.Fad
M Office Copy
NEWS
CONGRESSMAN
GERALD R. FORD
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER
RELEASE
--FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY--
Saturday, February 10, 1973
Remarks by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, House Republican Leader, at a GOP Dinner sponsored
by the Clark County GOP Committee in Las Vegas, Nevada, 6:30 p.m. Saturday,
Feb. 10, 1973.
We have come to the end of a long dark night. We have passed through a
fearful spiritual crisis in this country. Now that crisis is finished. The fever
is broken. The patient is growing ever stronger; in fact, he is well and flourishing
We have, in effect, suffered through a civil war in America in the years
just past.
This country was torn asunder, its national fabric rent by dissent and
divisions nad its character buffeted by winds of horrendous change.
A Republican President has seen us through this time of national crisis, just
as in another time the first Republican President used his great moral strength to
keep our country from permanently splitting apart and gave it the God-loving
leadership it so desperately needed.
Why do we love and revere Abraham Lincoln? We cherish him for his insight
and wisdom, his great courage and his tenderness, and most of all his devotion to
what he thought was right.
President Nixon is much like Lincoln. He has insight. He is sensitive. He
is determined to uphold that which he believes to be right.
I think it is because of this that Richard Nixon was able to lead us out of
the darkness of civil strife, out of the toils of a government so bogged down with
welfare state bureaucracy as to be almost immobile, and out of the nightmare of a
horrible little war halfway around the world in which there could be no hope of
victory.
Think how far we have come in the last four years--as a people and as a
Nation.
Four years ago serious thinkers, as well as millions of ordinary citizens,
were doubtful of America's ability to cope with the future.
Years of rioting had wracked our cities. Years of senseless war had robbed
our youth of respect for their own national birthright. An agonizing economic
dilemma existed, a dilemma that told us we would only have prosperity if the war
(more)
Distribution 20 copies with M. Fad
M Office Copy
CONGRESSMAN
NEWS
GERALD R. FORD
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER
RELEASE
--FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY--
Saturday, February 10, 1973
Remarks by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, House Republican Leader, at a GOP Dinner sponsored
by the Clark County GOP Committee in Las Vegas, Nevada, 6:30 p.m. Saturday,
Feb. 10, 1973.
We have come to the end of a long dark night. We have passed through a
fearful spiritual crisis in this country. Now that crisis is finished. The fever
is broken. The patient is growing ever stronger; in fact, he is well and flourishing
We have, in effect, suffered through a civil war in America in the years
just past.
This country was torn asunder, its national fabric rent by dissent and
divisions nad its character buffeted by winds of horrendous change.
A Republican President has seen us through this time of national crisis, just
as in another time the first Republican President used his great moral strength to
keep our country from permanently splitting apart and gave it the God-loving
leadership it so desperately needed.
Why do we love and revere Abraham Lincoln? We cherish him for his insight
and wisdom, his great courage and his tenderness, and most of all his devotion to
what he thought was right.
President Nixon is much like Lincoln. He has insight. He is sensitive. He
is determined to uphold that which he believes to be right.
I think it is because of this that Richard Nixon was able to lead us out of
the darkness of civil strife, out of the toils of a government so bogged down with
welfare state bureaucracy as to be almost immobile, and out of the nightmare of a
horrible little war halfway around the world in which there could be no hope of
victory.
Think how far we have come in the last four years--as a people and as a
Nation.
Four years ago serious thinkers, as well as millions of ordinary citizens,
were doubtful of America's ability to cope with the future.
Years of rioting had wracked our cities. Years of senseless war had robbed
our youth of respect for their own national birthright. An agonizing economic
FORD
dilemma existed, a dilemma that told us we would only have prosperity if the war
(more)
GERALD
LIBRARY
-2-
continued to escalate. Guns and butter threatened to become a permanent part of
the American scene. Polls showed that more than half of the women in this country
were afraid to walk in their own neighborhoods at night. And it appeared that
breathing the air or drinking the water would soon become just as hazardous.
Above all, the cosmic cataclysm of nuclear war seemed all too possible.
Look around you now. Let's take stock of what America is like today.
For the first time since 1945, the threat of nuclear war is diminishing
rather than growing. Problems of air and water pollution are bieng dealt with.
Crime rates are coming down. All of our men are coming home from Vietnam. We
have achieved an honorable peace there. The synthetic wartime prosperity of the
1960s is being converted to the solid economic stability of the 1970s.
All this in four years. The Richard Nixon Years.
Think back to 1968. Don't you feel more at peace with yourself now than
in 1968? Don't you trust your neighbor and yourself a little more than in 1968?
Aren't you more proud of your country now than in 1968? Don't you sleep better
now than in 1968? Don't the other nuclear powers of the world seem a little more
like ordinary people than in 1968? Doesn't your paycheck go farther than in 1968?
Aren't you glad Richard Nixon won in 1968--and in 1972?
If the President could help bring us that far, that fast, is it not
sensible to surmise that his leadership will be even more effective in the next
four years?
Abraham Lincoln brought this Nation a great gift of leadership. And so,
too, has Richard Nixon.
Leadership like Richard Nixon's comes but once in a long time. Leadership
that persuades instead of commands. Leadership that demonstrates belief in the
basic goodness and decency of man. Leadership which expresses no brief for the
lawless, which insists upon order while striving to expand the general freedom of
us all. Leadership which offers the hand of friendship to other nations without
inviting the other side to interpret that offer as an act of weakness. Leadership
which abhors the thought and act of controlling the economy but does it to break
the psychology of inflation which is to the economic man what cancer is to the
physical being. Leadership which has kept our treaty commitments around the world
without engaging in new military adventures. And leadership which has ended
American involvement in Vietnam without abandoning either the living or the dead
prisoners of the violence.
(more)
-3-
More than a century ago, it was Abraham Lincoln that led this Nation out of
a vale of sorrows. It was his leadership that preserved the Union. And in the
closing days of the Civil War when that goal was in sight, Lincoln challenged the
American people to turn their strengths to healing the Nation's wounds and "to do
all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and
with all nations.'
Built on Lincoln's leadership, the last third of the 19th century was a time
of peace--our last full generation of peace--in which America's energies turned
away from war and were devoted to nation building and the expansion of freedom.
Richard Nixon's leadership has given us the beginnings of another generation
of peace in the last third of this century.
Left to peaceful pursuits after the Civil War, American energies produced
the greatest nation in the world, firmly established in freedom.
Left once more at peace, American energies today can be devoted to the
further expansion of freedom-not only in this country but throughout the world.
President Nixon moved the entire world toward peace with his trips to
Mos cow and Peking and the signing of the SALT Agreement. In view of developments
since those events, I say the Cold War as we came to know it has ended.
And now we are fortunate indeed that the American people in their wisdom
gave Richard Nixon another four years in the White House--for the decisions made
during the next few years will decide whether the remaining decades of this century
will be characterized by peace and prosperity and by peaceful change.
The probability of all-out aggression in the world has never been as low
as today as a result of recent developments and the effectiveness of U.S. deterrence.
In my view, this is true solely because of Richard Nixon's firm leadership, his
insistence on a foreign policy based upon strong U.S. defenses, a realistic
partnership with our Free World allies, and a Yankee trader spirit in dealing with
the Soviet Union.
The United States has won the Cold War because of its military strength
and President Nixon's flexibility in international relations.
In both foreign and domestic policy, Richard Nixon has shown a remarkable
facility for abandoning a course proven to be wrong or inadequate and seizing upon
a fresh and workable course of action.
It is as though he has kept ever before him the declaration made by Lincoln
(more)
-4-
when he said: "I shall try to correct errors where shown to be errors, and I shall
adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views."
It was in that spirit that President Nixon adopted the New Economic Policy
which went into effect August 15, 1971--a policy which confounded his critics
because it seemed to run counter to Richard Nixon's basic philosophy.
Long a Cold Warrior, Richard Nixon also astounded friends and foes alike
when he opened the doors of diplomacy to Communist China and reached agreements
on strategic weapons control and other matters with the Soviet Union.
A pragmatic man, Richard Nixon is quick to reject that which will not work
and to make use of that which will. He exercises the powers of the White House in
line with these words of Abraham Lincoln: "I do not mean to say we are bound
implicitly to follow in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all
the lights of current experience--to reject all progress, all improvement."
The astounding aspect of Richard Nixon's first four years in the Oval Office
is that he accomplished what he did despite general obstructionism on the part of
the Democratic majority in the Congress and lack of support on foreign policy from
some leading Democrats.
This was reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln's situation in the early days of
his Presidency. He literally pleaded with leading Democrats of the time for
cooperation in restoring the Union. He offered to "make way" for Gov. Horatio
Seymour of New York "as my successor" if the governor would urge the Democratic
Party to help put down the rebellion. He stated he would "hold McClellan's horse"
if it would end the conflict. His attempts to win Democratic cooperation were met
not only with denouncement but with personal insult. The Democrats were fondest
of depicting Lincoln as a "baboon" or a "long-armed ape." Yet, immediately after
Lincoln's assassination, Democratic politicians went to great lengths to assume
his mantle--and they have ever since.
As it was with Lincoln, so it has been with Richard Nixon. The opposition
party, in control of the Congress, has sought either to block major Administration
measures or to take credit for them.
Yet we have made great progress, both at home and abroad. Besides advancing
the prospects for world peace, we have revitalized our economy while controlling
inflation.
Real growth in our economy exceeded the Administration's goal of 6 per cent
(more)
-5-
in 1972. Employment increased sharply. We are adding new jobs at the highest rate
since 1955. And, most importantly, Real Spendable Earnings-buying power--rose at
an annual rate of 4.1 per cent last year as compared with 1965-70 when buying power
did not increase at all. There is now and will be less inflation in the United
States than in any other major nation.
What is the U.S. economic outlook? It is for further substantial gains in
1973 on virtually all fronts--including real output, personal income, employment
and profits.
What we need to do now is to expand our new spirit of accomplishment to
include greater recognition of our unprecedented gains, so we can move ahead with
confidence to solve the problems which still face us.
At this point I would like to appeal to my Democratic friends in the Congress
to put country ahead of party and to support the President's major initiatives
in this time of challenge.
No nation has a greater capability for solving critical problems, if we all
work together to find the answers.
Let us all, Democrats and Republicans alike, support the President as he
moves toward his great goals--a lasting peace, prosperity without war or inflation,
and equal opportunity for all.
Let's help him to win the peace in Vietnam now that he has achieved an
honorable settlement there.
Let's help him to put a brake on Government spending, to make good on his
pledge to avoid new taxes and to keep the Federal bureaucracy under control.
I personally feel the President's task would have been much easier if the
people had only seen fit to elect a Republican majority in the Congressional and
senatorial elections last November. But the people decided otherwise.
Certainly Richard Nixon's landslide election meant something, even if it
was a lonely landslide.
It meant the people approved of the President's conduct of his office and his
innovative foreign policy. And I think the people want the Democratic majority in
the Congress to work with the President--not against him.
As Abraham Lincoln put it, "The most reliable indication of public purpose
in this country is derived through our popular elections."
If the Democrats try to put the New Deal back together again, they will be
(more)
-6-
making a terrible mistake--in terms of the country's welfare and in terms of their
party's political future. The New Deal is dead. And yet for the last decade the
Democratic Party has been drifting to the left.
The American people, I am thoroughly convinced, reject all extremism-of the
right and the left.
If the Democrats try to keep the old New Deal gravy train running, the
American people will derail it. The Democrats may well continue to be inclined
leftward and so I see more Republican victories in 1974.
I am convinced that the Republican Party will still become the majority
party in the United States. I have never despaired of that because the Republican
Party is a party of principle--and that is our strongest point.
Abraham Lincoln put it this way: "Our principle, however baffled or delayed,
will finally triumph, I do not permit myself to doubt. The principle will remain,
and will reproduce another, and another, till the final triumph will come."
Let us hold true to our principles. If we do, the time will come as surely
as the night follows the day--we will prevail.
###
CONGRESSMAN
NEWS
GERALD R. FORD
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER
RELEASE
--FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY--
Saturday, February 10, 1973
Remarks by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, House Republican Leader, at a GOP Dinner sponsored
by the Clark County GOP Committee in Las Vegas, Nevada, 6:30 p.m. Saturday,
Feb. 10, 1973.
We have come to the end of a long dark night. We have passed through a
fearful spiritual crisis in this country. Now that crisis is finished. The fever
is broken. The patient is growing ever stronger; in fact, he is well and flourishing.
We have, in effect, suffered through a civil war in America in the years
just past.
This country was torn asunder, its national fabric rent by dissent and
divisions nad its character buffeted by winds of horrendous change.
A Republican President has seen us through this time of national crisis, just
as in another time the first Republican President used his great moral strength to
keep our country from permanently splitting apart and gave it the God-loving
leadership it so desperately needed.
Why do we love and revere Abraham Lincoln? We cherish him for his insight
and wisdom, his great courage and his tenderness, and most of all his devotion to
what he thought was right.
President Nixon is much like Lincoln. He has insight. He is sensitive. He
is determined to uphold that which he believes to be right.
I think it is because of this that Richard Nixon was able to lead us out of
the darkness of civil strife, out of the toils of a government so bogged down with
welfare state bureaucracy as to be almost immobile, and out of the nightmare of a
horrible little war halfway around the world in which there could be no hope of
victory.
Think how far we have come in the last four years--as a people and as a
Nation.
Four years ago serious thinkers, as well as millions of ordinary citizens,
were doubtful of America's ability to cope with the future.
Years of rioting had wracked our cities. Years of senseless war had robbed
our youth of respect for their own national birthright. An agonizing economic
dilemma existed, a dilemma that told us we would only have prosperity if the war
(more)
-2-
continued to escalate. Guns and butter threatened to become a permanent part of
the American scene. Polls showed that more than half of the women in this country
were afraid to walk in their own neighborhoods at night. And it appeared that
breathing the air or drinking the water would soon become just as hazardous.
Above all, the cosmic cataclysm of nuclear war seemed all too possible.
Look around you now. Let's take stock of what America is like today.
For the first time since 1945, the threat of nuclear war is diminishing
rather than growing. Problems of air and water pollution are bieng dealt with.
Crime rates are coming down. All of our men are coming home from Vietnam. We
have achieved an honorable peace there. The synthetic wartime prosperity of the
1960s is being converted to the solid economic stability of the 1970s.
All this in four years. The Richard Nixon Years.
Think back to 1968. Don't you feel more at peace with yourself now than
in 1968? Don't you trust your neighbor and yourself a little more than in 1968?
Aren't you more proud of your country now than in 1968? Don't you sleep better
now than in 1968? Don't the other nuclear powers of the world seem a little more
like ordinary people than in 1968? Doesn't your paycheck go farther than in 1968?
Aren't you glad Richard Nixon won in 1968--and in 1972?
If the President could help bring us that far, that fast, is it not
sensible to surmise that his leadership will be even more effective in the next
four years?
Abraham Lincoln brought this Nation a great gift of leadership. And so,
too, has Richard Nixon.
Leadership like Richard Nixon's comes but once in a long time. Leadership
that persuades instead of commands. Leadership that demonstrates belief in the
basic goodness and decency of man. Leadership which expresses no brief for the
lawless, which insists upon order while striving to expand the general freedom of
us all. Leadership which offers the hand of friendship to other nations without
inviting the other side to interpret that offer as an act of weakness. Leadership
which abhors the thought and act of controlling the economy but does it to break
the psychology of inflation which is to the economic man what cancer is to the
physical being. Leadership which has kept our treaty commitments around the world
without engaging in new military adventures. And leadership which has ended
American involvement in Vietnam without abandoning either the living or the dead
prisoners of the violence.
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More than a century ago, it was Abraham Lincoln that led this Nation out of
a vale of sorrows. It was his leadership that preserved the Union. And in the
closing days of the Civil War when that goal was in sight, Lincoln challenged the
American people to turn their strengths to healing the Nation's wounds and "to do
all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and
with all nations."
Built on Lincoln's leadership, the last third of the 19th century was a time
of peace--our last full generation of peace--in which America's energies turned
away from war and were devoted to nation building and the expansion of freedom.
Richard Nixon's leadership has given us the beginnings of another generation
of peace in the last third of this century.
Left to peaceful pursuits after the Civil War, American energies produced
the greatest nation in the world, firmly established in freedom.
Left once more at peace, American energies today can be devoted to the
further expansion of freedom--not only in this country but throughout the world.
President Nixon moved the entire world toward peace with his trips to
Moscow and Peking and the signing of the SALT Agreement. In view of developments
since those events, I say the Cold War as we came to know it has ended.
And now we are fortunate indeed that the American people in their wisdom
gave Richard Nixon another four years in the White House--for the decisions made
during the next few years will decide whether the remaining decades of this century
will be characterized by peace and prosperity and by peaceful change.
The probability of all-out aggression in the world has never been as low
as today as a result of recent developments and the effectiveness of U.S. deterrence.
In my view, this is true solely because of Richard Nixon's firm leadership, his
insistence on a foreign policy based upon strong U.S. defenses, a realistic
partnership with our Free World allies, and a Yankee trader spirit in dealing with
the Soviet Union.
The United States has won the Cold War because of its military strength
and President Nixon's flexibility in international relations.
In both foreign and domestic policy, Richard Nixon has shown a remarkable
facility for abandoning a course proven to be wrong or inadequate and seizing upon
a fresh and workable course of action.
It is as though he has kept ever before him the declaration made by Lincoln
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when he said: "I shall try to correct errors where shown to be errors, and I shall
adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views."
It was in that spirit that President Nixon adopted the New Economic Policy
which went into effect August 15, 1971--a policy which confounded his critics
because it seemed to run counter to Richard Nixon's basic philosophy.
Long a Cold Warrior, Richard Nixon also astounded friends and foes alike
when he opened the doors of diplomacy to Communist China and reached agreements
on strategic weapons control and other matters with the Soviet Union.
A pragmatic man, Richard Nixon is quick to reject that which will not work
and to make use of that which will. He exercises the powers of the White House in
line with these words of Abraham Lincoln: "I do not mean to say we are bound
implicitly to follow in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all
the lights of current experience--to reject all progress, all improvement."
The astounding aspect of Richard Nixon's first four years in the Oval Office
is that he accomplished what he did despite general obstructionism on the part of
the Democratic majority in the Congress and lack of support on foreign policy from
some leading Democrats.
This was reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln's situation in the early days of
his Presidency. He literally pleaded with leading Democrats of the time for
cooperation in restoring the Union. He offered to "make way" for Gov. Horatio
Seymour of New York "as my successor" if the governor would urge the Democratic
Party to help put down the rebellion. He stated he would "hold McClellan's horse"
if it would end the conflict. His attempts to win Democratic cooperation were met
not only with denouncement but with personal insult. The Democrats were fondest
of depicting Lincoln as a "baboon" or a "long-armed ape." Yet, immediately after
Lincoln's assassination, Democratic politicians went to great lengths to assume
his mantle--and they have ever since.
As it was with Lincoln, so it has been with Richard Nixon. The opposition
party, in control of the Congress, has sought either to block major Administration
measures or to take credit for them.
Yet we have made great progress, both at home and abroad. Besides advancing
the prospects for world peace, we have revitalized our economy while controlling
inflation.
Real growth in our economy exceeded the Administration's goal of 6 per cent
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in 1972. Employment increased sharply. We are adding new jobs at the highest rate
since 1955. And, most importantly, Real Spendable Earnings--buying power--rose at
an annual rate of 4.1 per cent last year as compared with 1965-70 when buying power
did not increase at all. There is now and will be less inflation in the United
States than in any other major nation.
What is the U.S. economic outlook? It is for further substantial gains in
1973 on virtually all fronts--including real output, personal income, employment
and profits.
What we need to do now is to expand our new spirit of accomplishment to
include greater recognition of our unprecedented gains, so we can move ahead with
confidence to solve the problems which still face us.
At this point I would like to appeal to my Democratic friends in the Congress
to put country ahead of party and to support the President's major initiatives
in this time of challenge.
No nation has a greater capability for solving critical problems, if we all
work together to find the answers.
Let us all, Democrats and Republicans alike, support the President as he
moves toward his great goals--a lasting peace, prosperity without war or inflation,
and equal opportunity for all.
Let's help him to win the peace in Vietnam now that he has achieved an
honorable settlement there.
Let's help him to put a brake on Government spending, to make good on his
pledge to avoid new taxes and to keep the Federal bureaucracy under control.
I personally feel the President's task would have been much easier if the
people had only seen fit to elect a Republican majority in the Congressional and
senatorial elections last November. But the people decided otherwise.
Certainly Richard Nixon's landslide election meant something, even if it
was a lonely landslide.
It meant the people approved of the President's conduct of his office and his
innovative foreign policy. And I think the people want the Democratic majority in
the Congress to work with the President--not against him.
As Abraham Lincoln put it, "The most reliable indication of public purpose
in this country is derived through our popular elections."
If the Democrats try to put the New Deal back together again, they will be
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making a terrible mistake---- in terms of the country's welfare and in terms of their
party's political future. The New Deal is dead. And yet for the last decade the
Democratic Party has been drifting to the left.
The American people, I am thoroughly convinced, reject all extremism-of the
right and the left.
If the Democrats try to keep the old New Deal gravy train running, the
American people will derail it. The Democrats may well continue to be inclined
leftward and so I see more Republican victories in 1974.
I am convinced that the Republican Party will still become the majority
party in the United States. I have never despaired of that because the Republican
Party is a party of principle--and that is our strongest point.
Abraham Lincoln put it this way: "Our principle, however baffled or delayed,
will finally triumph, I do not permit myself to doubt. The principle will remain,
and will reproduce another, and another, till the final triumph will come."
Let us hold true to our principles. If we do, the time will come as surely
as the night follows the day--we will prevail.
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