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The original documents are located in Box D20, folder "2nd District Republican Dinner,
Cedar Rapids, IA, August 27, 1966" 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States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.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.
Digitized from Box D20 of The Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR RELEASE AT 6:30 P.M., SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1966
ADDRESS BY REP. GERALD R. FORD, R-MICH.
At
2ND DISTRICT REPUBLICAN DINNER, CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA
Iowa is a great farming state. It is fitting, therefore, that we pay
our respects to the agriculture expert of the Johnson-Humphrey Administration--
Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman.
I know you share the view that he is the most peculiar Secretary of Agriculture
we have had for a long, long time. I cannot salute him as a trail-blazing experimen-
ter or a social revolutionary, but I congratulate him for being a political phrase-
maker who was born with a foot in his mouth.
Secretary Freeman is the only Secretary of Agriculture who has ever asked the
Department of Defense to cut down on its purchases of beef and pork produced by the
American farmer.
He is the only Secretary of Agriculture who has ever publicly expressed
pleasure at a drop in farm prices.
He is the Cabinet officer who beamed his approval of an $8 million Export-
Import Bank deal to help Communist Rumania process 300,000 pigs a year with modern
American-made equipment and to sell millions of pounds of Communist pork in competi-
tion with American farmers.
Secretary Freeman has waged an undeclared war on American agriculture which
has driven parity prices from an average of 84.5 per cent under Eisenhower to barely
79 per cent this year. He, as the agriculture "boss man" on the Johnson-Humphrey-
Freeman team, has helped to increase beef imports and has dumped CCC-stored grains to
knock down market prices. This Democratic Administration, as you well know, also
tried to scuttle the school milk and school lunch programs.
This is what our fathers used to call "some punkins." But if Secretary Freeman
has hurt the farmers and wounded the Democrats, he is to be thanked for providing the
Republican campaign slogan for 1966. Recently, at a secret Democratic political
huddle at which he brushed off the housewives and the farmers, he gave this slick
advice to the desperate Democratic congressional candidates-and I quote:
"Slip, slide and duck any question of higher consumer prices if you
possibly can!"
That's Orbiting Orville. Right out of the horse's mouth. "Slip, slide and
duck!" Perhaps such advice would be helpful if the Democratic hopefuls were dodging
baseballs in a carnival concession. But candidates who "slip, slide and duck!" won't
(MORE
-2-
satisfy the American voters in 1966. In the political arena this fall Democrats will
be ducking when they should be slipping, and slipping when they should be sliding.
We have the opportunity to make this the year of the Elephant. Republicans
are on the right side of the issues, have the best candidates, real party unity, and
organization. The Democrats are saddled with higher prices, higher interest rates,
higher draft calls, higher crime rates. The Great Society is the High Society. Had
enough?
What is the state of the Union? Not good with a war in Vietnam and NATO in
disarray in Europe. At home we see prices skyrocketing to all-time highs, interest
rates going out of sight, mortgage money tight and getting tighter, federal spending
out of control, crime soaring and violence spreading across the land.
This is the time for leadership. America needs straight-from-the-shoulder
answers, not slip, slide and duck. Despite all the Johnson-Humphrey fanfare and
hoopla, this nation is not getting decisive and effective leadership at a time when
it's desperately needed. The "big daddy" Johnson-Democrat attitude will not solve
the frankenstein mess which is damaging our prestige and power abroad, and ravaging
our people at home. Democrats talk like Pollyanna. The White House blows with an
uncertain trumpet, with its credibility at an all-time low.
What are we to believe about Vietnam? There the stakes are high; the
consequences are great.
Americans are proud of our men in our armed forces. Many of you here have
husbands, fathers, sons and brothers fighting for freedom half-way around the world.
We must not, we cannot, we will not let them down. Republicans believe we must
forthrightly and steadfastly meet the challenge of Communist terror and aggression
in Vietnam, Berlin or elsewhere.
It is a grim and difficult war in the jungles, swamps and rice-paddies of
Southeast Asia. Already our combat losses have risen to over 30,000--including more
than 4,400 Americans killed in action.
But, we have the power to be successful on the battlefield and at the peace
table, and we should press more vigorously for solutions on both fronts. I commend
Illinois Senatorial Candidate Chuck Percy for calling for an All-Asian Peace
Conference, with the Asians themselves taking the lead in seeking an honorable peace
in war-torn Vietnam. This promising proposal is a Republican plan for peace.
Our soldiers are performing billiantly in Vietnam. But it is tragic that
more and more of our young menare being sent to fight and perhaps to die there.
(MORE)
-3-
We are told there will be 400,000 of our ground troops in Vietnam by the end
of this year. It is also reported it will take 750,000 Americans to end the Vietnam
War within five years.
These reports sound utterly fantastic when we recall what President Johnson
told the nation just two years ago, when he was seeking election.
"We don't want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys," Johnson
the campaigner said. "We don't want to get involved with a nation with 700 million
people and get tied down in a land war in Asia."
National Republican leaders urged the President in December, 1965, to make
more effective use of the superiority we enjoy in air and sea power to end the Vietnam
War more quickly and save our manpower.
But the President dilly-dallied and shilly-shallied until 6-1/2 months later
when the polls told him the American people wanted to win in Vietnam and get out.
Only then did the President order destruction of the oil depots near Hanoi and
Haiphong. In explaining the action, Defense Secretary McNamara said the bombings
would save American and South Vietnamese lives.
Apparently this Democratic Administration thought the oil depot bombings would
save lives in July but not in December.
The war in Vietnam is costly both in lives and in dollars. Yet, the Johnson
Administration persists in a spending-as-usual attitude. While pumping billions into
the Vietnam War, the Johnson-Humphrey-Freeman Administration dishes out billions more
in non-essential domestic spending. The result -- inflation.
Inflation is a big word. But you people know exactly what it means. You find
out every time you go into the market place and pay more and more for less and less.
Don't let Big Daddy or any other apologist for his Administration tell you
you never had it so good. That's a lot of hooey.
Mr. Johnson went to Nebraska and Des Moines to tell the farmers they never
had it so good.
He didn't tell them the farmer is caught in a cost-price squeeze. He didn't
tell them that the average parity ratio over the past five years is the lowest it
has ever been for any consecutive five-year period since the big depression.
He didn't tell them that farm production costs have gone up $4 billion since
1960, or that total farm debt stands 60 per cent higher than five years ago.
He didn't tell them that farmers are still earning only about 65 per cent as
much as non-farmers.
(MORE)
-4-
The truth is the Johnson-Humphrey-Freeman Administration has been spending
the American people silly. This is the chief reason your dollars are slipping away
in line with Freeman's stip-slide-and-duck philosophy.
The Democrats have been drowning this country in red ink for six long years
Do you know what the deficit for those six years adds up to? Thirty billion --
an average of $6 billion a year. The last time the Federal budget was balanced
was in 1960 under a Republican Administration.
President Johnson pretends to be an economizer. I say "pretends" because
I've got the figures to back up what I say. Mr. Johnson is planning to spend 47.5
per cent more in fiscal year 1967 than the federal government spent in 1960. Since
fiscal 1965 -- in just two years -- federal spending is up 17 per cent. That's
the great economy record compiled during Mr. Johnson's time in office.
It's this kind of reckless spending, the doling out of dollars by the
Johnson-Humphrey-Freeman Administration and its blank-check Democratic Congress,
which is the prime cause of inflation.
In their 1960 platform the Democrats promised to maintain price stability,
Have they kept this promise?
In 1960 the Democrats promised to place farmers on the same economic level
as automobile workers and the teamsters. What happened to that promise? Like all
the others, it was for the Democrats to get in on, not to deliver on.
And I ask you. Why does the Administration and its captive Democrat
Congress act as though there is no problem under the sun which can't be cured by
spending billions of taxpayer dollars?
Why, in short, does the Administration pretend that we can fight an all-
out war in Vietnam and still pay for any and every sociological brainstorm hatched
by the kept economists of the Great Society?
We're bogged down in Vietnam. We're in a mess with inflation. And now
we're getting kicked around by high interest rates.
Do you know that the Democrats in their 1960 platform had the unmitigated
gall to attack the Eisenhower Administration as a high-interest administration?
Well, after barely five years of Democratic control, interest rates in
this country have hit a 40-year high--that's right, a 40-year high--and they're
still going up.
This may be news to you, but the Adminsitration can't even be honest about
interest rates, much less keep them from going sky-high.
(MORE)
-5-
Here in my hand I hold a United States Savings Bond. My children and your
children are buying these bonds. So are farmers and industrial workers, people
who are demonstrating their faith in America. The U.S. Treasury pays them about
4.15 per cent interest for the use of their money.
But that's only when it comes to taking candy-money from school kids.
In contrast, when the Treasury turns to the big investors, it talks another
language. Here I hold a Participation Sales Certificate, which is an interest
in various mortgage assets that the federal government owns. Its issuance was
authorized by the Participation Sales Act of last May, another Democratic Congress
blank check.
Anyone who can afford the $5,000 minimum can buy one of these certificates
and will draw interest not at the rate of about 4.15 per cent but 5-3/4 or more.
That means the Democratic Administration pays over 40 per cent more to the rich
than it pays to the great number of Americans who don't have $5,000 in cash lying
around for a safe investment. This is Democrat policy - low interest returns
for the poor; high interest returns for the rich.
That's Robin Hood in reverse. He stole from the rich to give to the poor.
The Administration takes from the have-nots and gives to the haves.
What do we have today in the Democratic Party? We've got the Party of
Big Business, the Party of Big Government, the Party of Big Bureaucracy, the
Party of Big Spending, the Party of Big Deficits, the Party of Big Cost of Living,
the Party of Big Labor Troubles, the Party of Big Home Foreclosures, the Party of
Big Scandals, the Party with Big Riots in the Streets, the Party of Big Promises.
Riots in the Streets. The Democratic Party promised big but failed to
deliver.
There is an atmosphere of lawlessness in this country. It springs from the
attitude that Americans should only obey the laws that please them. It stems from
the feeling that if you've got more than I have, I can take from you whatever I
want. It's the old attitude of theeworld-owes-me-a-living gone wild.
You read about the riots, the arson, and the looting in our great cities
and you wonder if America has gone mad. This disregard for law and order breeds
anarchy.
I have said it before and I say it again. When high-ranking public figures
like Vice President Humphrey talk about leading a revolt themselves, they are
encouraging a defiance of the law which is inexcusable in a civilized society. Is
this a Great Society?
Some of our big cities are rapidly reverting to the jungle. Lawless
elements are threatening to make guerrilla warfare with the police a familiar pat-
-6-
tern of American life.
How long are we going to abdicate law and order--the backbone of any
civilization--in favor of a soft social theory that the man who heaves a brick
through your window, or tosses a fire bomb into your car, or snipes at firemen
is simply the misunderstood and underprivileged product of a broken home?
Vietnam. Inflation. High interest. Violence. These are the issues of
1966. We did not create them. They are simply there. We would prefer that the
Administration had not let them develop.
But that is where the two-party system comes in.
Winston Churchill once said that democracy had many and serious faults but
was better than any other system of government man had devised.
Democracy in America depends on two-party politics. One-party government
leads straight to tyranny. A vigorous two-party system is the simplest way of
bringing about necessary changes in our government without wrecking the country
or resorting to revolution.
Today we do not have two nearly-equal-in-strength political parties.
Lopsided government, if allowed to continue, leads only to disaster.
Competition is the secret of American economic freedom and social progress.
Competition between the two major political parties has been good for America.
In 1966 this competition will be re-established. The Democrats' stranglehold will
be broken at the polls in November.
The easiest and quickest way for the people of this country to clean up
Vietnam, stop inflation, bring down interest rates, and protect the lives, rights
and property of us all-including all minorities--is to vote Republicans in and
Democrats out. It's just as simple as that. It's not a matter of intrigue in
government, or of contributing $10,000 to the President's Club, or lobbying on
Capitol Hill.
Often when I ponder the great land that is America, I think of that day in
Philadelphia when Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention.
"Which have you given us," a bystander asked him, "a monarchy or a re-
public?" "A Republic," Franklin answered, "if you can keep it."
That republic has endured for 177 years because in every age there have
been Americans who gave of their time, of their treasure, and of their faith to
keep it.
It is for us, the living, to re-dedicate ourselves to that high purpose.
And it is my deep conviction that you--all of you--will pass on the torch of
freedom to your children because you dare stand up and be counted for America.
Thank you and God bless each of you.
###
FOR RELEASE AT 6:30 P.M., SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1966
ADDRESS BY REP. GERALD R. FORD, R-MICH.
At
2ND DISTRICT REPUBLICAN DINNER, CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA
Iowa is a great farming state. It is fitting, therefore, that we pay
our respects to the agriculture expert of the Johnson-Humphrey Administration--
Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman.
I know you share the view that he is the most peculiar Secretary of Agriculture
we have had for a long, long time. I cannot salute him as a trail-blazing experimen-
ter or a social revolutionary, but I congratulate him for being a political phrase-
maker who was born with a foot in his mouth.
Secretary Freeman is the only Secretary of Agriculture who has ever asked the
Department of Defense to cut down on its purchases of beef and pork produced by the
American farmer.
He is the only Secretary of Agriculture who has ever publicly expressed
pleasure at a drop in farm prices.
He is the Cabinet officer who beamed his approval of an $8 million Export-
Import Bank deal to help Communist Rumania process 300,000 pigs a year with modern
American-made equipment and to sell millions of pounds of Communist pork in competi-
tion with American farmers.
Secretary Freeman has waged an undeclared war on American agriculture which
has driven parity prices from an average of 84.5 per cent under Eisenhower to barely
79 per cent this year. He, as the agriculture "boss man" on the Johnson-Humphrey-
Freeman team, has helped to increase beef imports and has dumped CCC-stored grains to
knock down market prices. This Democratic Administration, as you well know, also
tried to scuttle the school milk and school lunch programs.
This is what our fathers used to call "some punkins." But if Secretary Freeman
has hurt the farmers and wounded the Democrats, he is to be thanked for providing the
Republican campaign slogan for 1966. Recently, at a secret Democratic political
huddle at which he brushed off the housewives and the farmers, he gave this slick
advice to the desperate Democratic congressional candidates-and I quote:
"Slip, slide and duck any question of higher consumer prices if you
possibly can!"
That's Orbiting Orville. Right out of the horse's mouth. "Slip, slide and
duck!" Perhaps such advice would be helpful if the Democratic hopefuls were dodging
baseballs in a carnival concession. But candidates who "slip, slide and duck!" won't
(MORE
-2-
satisfy the American voters in 1966. In the political arena this fall Democrats will
be ducking when they should be slipping, and slipping when they should be sliding.
We have the opportunity to make this the year of the Elephant. Republicans
are on the right side of the issues, have the best candidates, real party unity, and
organization. The Democrats are saddled with higher prices, higher interest rates,
higher draft calls, higher crime rates. The Great Society is the High Society. Had
enough?
What is the state of the Union? Not good with a war in Vietnam and NATO in
disarray in Europe. At home we see prices skyrocketing to all-time highs, interest
rates going out of sight, mortgage money tight and getting tighter, federal spending
out of control, crime soaring and violence spreading across the land.
This is the time for leadership. America needs straight-from-the-shoulder
answers, not slip, slide and duck. Despite all the Johnson-Humphrey fanfare and
hoopla, this nation is not getting decisive and effective leadership at a time when
it's desperately needed. The "big daddy" Johnson-Democrat attitude will not solve
the frankenstein mess which is damaging our prestige and power abroad, and ravaging
our people at home. Democrats talk like Pollyanna. The White House blows with an
uncertain trumpet, with its credibility at an all-time low.
What are we to believe about Vietnam? There the stakes are high; the
consequences are great.
Americans are proud of our men in our armed forces. Many of you here have
husbands, fathers, sons and brothers fighting for freedom half-way around the world.
We must not, we cannot, we will not let them down. Republicans believe we must
forthrightly and steadfastly meet the challenge of Communist terror and aggression
in Vietnam, Berlin or elsewhere.
It is a grim and difficult war in the jungles, swamps and rice-paddies of
Southeast Asia. Already our combat losses have risen to over 30,000--including more
than 4,400 Americans killed in action.
But, we have the power to be successful on the battlefield and at the peace
table, and we should press more vigorously for solutions on both fronts. I commend
Illinois Senatorial Candidate Chuck Percy for calling for an All-Asian Peace
Conference, with the Asians themselves taking the lead in seeking an honorable peace
in war-torn Vietnam. This promising proposal is a Republican plan for peace.
Our soldiers are performing billiantly in Vietnam. But it is tragic that
more and more of our young menare being sent to fight and perhaps to die there.
(MORE)
-3-
We are told there will be 400,000 of our ground troops in Vietnam by the end
of this year. It is also reported it will take 750,000 Americans to end the Vietnam
War within five years.
These reports sound utterly fantastic when we recall what President Johnson
told the nation just two years ago, when he was seeking election.
"We don't want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys," Johnson
the campaigner said. "We don't want to get involved with a nation with 700 million
people and get tied down in a land war in Asia."
National Republican leaders urged the President in December, 1965, to make
more effective use of the superiority we enjoy in air and sea power to end the Vietnam
War more quickly and save our manpower.
But the President dilly-dallied and shilly-shallied until 6-1/2 months later
when the polls told him the American people wanted to win in Vietnam and get out.
Only then did the President order destruction of the oil depots near Hanoi and
Haiphong. In explaining the action, Defense Secretary McNamara said the bombings
would save American and South Vietnamese lives.
Apparently this Democratic Administration thought the oil depot bombings would
save lives in July but not in December.
The war in Vietnam is costly both in lives and in dollars. Yet, the Johnson
Administration persists in a spending-as-usual attitude. While pumping billions into
the Vietnam War, the Johnson-Humphrey-Freeman Administration dishes out billions more
in non-essential domestic spending. The result -- inflation.
Inflation is a big word. But you people know exactly what it means. You find
out every time you go into the market place and pay more and more for less and less.
Don't let Big Daddy or any other apologist for his Administration tell you
you never had it so good. That's a lot of hooey.
Mr. Johnson went to Nebraska and Des Moines to tell the farmers they never
had it so good.
He didn't tell them the farmer is caught in a cost-price squeeze. He didn't
tell them that the average parity ratio over the past five years is the lowest it
has ever been for any consecutive five-year period since the big depression.
He didn't tell them that farm production costs have gone up $4 billion since
1960, or that total farm debt stands 60 per cent higher than five years ago.
He didn't tell them that farmers are still earning only about 65 per cent as
much as non-farmers.
(MORE)
-4-
The truth is the Johnson-Humphrey-Freeman Administration has been spending
the American people silly. This is the chief reason your dollars are slipping away
in line with Freeman's slip-slide-and-duck philosophy,
The Democrats have been drowning this country in red ink for six long years
Do you know what the deficit for those six years adds up to? Thirty billion -
an average of $6 billion a year. The last time the Federal budget was balanced
was in 1960 under a Republican Administration.
President Johnson pretends to be an economizer. I say "pretends" because
I've got the figures to back up what I say. Mr. Johnson is planning to spend 47.5
per cent more in fiscal year 1967 than the federal government spent in 1960. Since
fiscal 1965 -- in just two years --- federal spending is up 17 per cent. That's
the great economy record compiled during Mr. Johnson's time in office.
It's this kind of reckless spending, the doling out of dollars by the
Johnson-Humphrey-Freeman Administration and its blank-check Democratic Congress,
which is the prime cause of inflation.
In their 1960 platform the Democrats promised to maintain price stability.
Have they kept this promise?
In 1960 the Democrats promised to place farmers on the same economic level
as automobile workers and the taamsters. What happened to that promise? Like all
the others, it was for the Democrats to get in on, not to deliver on.
And I ask you. Why does the Administration and its captive Democrat
Congress act as though there is no problem under the sun which can't be cured by
spending billions of taxpayer dollars?
Why, in short, does the Administration pretend that we can fight an all-
out war in Vietnam and still pay for any and every sociological brainstorm hatched
by the kept economists of the Great Society?
We're bogged down in Vietnam. We're in a mess with inflation. And now
we're getting kicked around by high interest rates.
Do you know that the Democrats in their 1960 platform had the unmitigated
gall to attack the Eisenhower Administration as a high-interest administration?
Well, after barely five years of Democratic control, interest rates in
this country have hit a 40-year high--that's right, a 40-year high--and they're
still going up.
This may be news to you, but the Adminsitration can't even be honest about
interest rates, much less keep them from going sky-high.
(MORE)
-5-
Here in my hand I hold a United States Savings Bond. My children and your
children are buying these bonds. So are farmers and industrial workers, people
who are demonstrating their faith in America. The U.S. Treasury pays them about
4.15 per cent interest for the use of their money.
But that's only when it comes to taking candy-money from school kids.
In contrast, when the Treasury turns to the big investors, it talks another
language. Here I hold a Participation Sales Certificate, which is an interest
in various mortgage assets that the federal government owns. Its issuance was
authorized by the Participation Sales Act of last May, another Democratic Congress
blank check.
Anyone who can afford the $5,000 minimum can buy one of these certificates
and will draw interest not at the rate of about 4.15 per cent but 5-3/4 or more.
That means the Democratic Administration pays over 40 per cent more to the rich
than it pays to the great number of Americans who don't have $5,000 in cash lying
around for a safe investment. This is Democrat policy - low interest returns
for the poor; high interest returns for the rich.
That's Robin Hood in reverse. He stole from the rich to give to the poor.
The Administration takes from the have-nots and gives to the haves.
What do we have today in the Democratic Party? We've got the Party of
Big Business, the Party of Big Government, the Party of Big Bureaucracy, the
Party of Big Spending, the Party of Big Deficits, the Party of Big Cost of Living,
the Party of Big Labor Troubles, the Party of Big Home Foreclosures, the Party of
Big Scandals, the Party with Big Riots in the Streets, the Party of Big Promises.
Riots in the Streets. The Democratic Party promised big but failed to
deliver.
There is an atmosphere of lawlessness in this country. It springs from the
attitude that Americans should only obey the laws that please them. It stems from
the feeling that if you've got more than I have, I can take from you whatever I
want. It's the old attitude of the-world-owes-me-a-living gone wild.
You read about the riots, the arson, and the looting in our great cities
and you wonder if America has gone mad. This disregard for law and order breeds
enarchy.
I have said it before and I say it again. When high-ranking public figures
like Vice President Humphrey talk about leading a revolt themselves, they are
encouraging a defiance of the law which is inexcusable in a civilized society. Is
this a Great Society?
Some of our big cities are rapidly reverting to the jungle. Lawless
elements are threatening to make guerrilla warfare with the police a familiar pat-
-6-
tern of American life.
How long are we going to abdicate law and order--the backbone of any
civilization--in favor of a soft social theory that the man who heaves a brick
through your window, or tosses a fire bomb into your car, or snipes at firemen
is simply the misunderstood and underprivileged product of a broken home?
Vietnam. Inflation. High interest. Violence. These are the issues of
1966. We did not create them. They are simply there. We would prefer that the
Administration had not let them develop.
But that is where the two-party system comes in.
Winston Churchill once said that democracy had many and serious faults but
was better than any other system of government man had devised.
Democracy in America depends on two-party politics. One-party government
leads straight to tyranny. A vigorous two-party system is the simplest way of
bringing about necessary changes in our government without wrecking the country
or resorting to revolution.
Today we do not have two nearly-equal-in-strength political parties.
Lopsided government, if allowed to continue, leads only to disaster.
Competition is the secret of American economic freedom and social progress.
Competition between the two major political parties has been good for America.
In 1966 this competition will be re-established, The Democrats' stranglehold will
be broken at the polls in November.
The easiest and quickest way for the people of this country to clean up
Vietnam, stop inflation, bring down interest rates, and protect the lives, rights
and property of us all--including all minorities--is to vote Republicans in and
Democrats out. It's just as simple as that, It's not a matter of intrigue in
government, or of contributing $10,000 to the President's Club, or lobbying on
Capitol Hill.
Often when I ponder the great land that is America, I think of that day in
Philadelphia when Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention.
"Which have you given us," a bystander asked him, "a monarchy or a re-
public?" "A Republic," Franklin answered, "if you can keep it."
That republic has endured for 177 years because in every age there have
been Americans who gave of their time, of their treasure, and of their faith to
keep it.
It is for us, the living, to re-dedicate ourselves to that high purpose.
And it is my deep conviction that you--all of you--will pass on the torch of
freedom to your children because you dare stand up and be counted for America.
Thank you and God bless each of you.
###
Change negistration 8 L13 - Robt Johnson - Jack Miller
2ND DISTRICT REPUBLICAN DINNER--CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA
guy
Jim BROMWELL
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1966
IOWA IS A GREAT FARMING STATE. IT IS FITTING, THEREFORE,
THAT WE PAY OUR RESPECTS TO THE AGRICULTURE EXPERT OF THE
JOHNSON-HUMPHREY ADMINISTRATION--SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE
ORVILLE L. FREEMAN.
I KNOW YOU SHARE THE VIEW THAT HE IS THE MOST PECULIAR
SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE WE HAVE HAD FOR A LONG, LONG TIME.
I CANNOT SALUTE HIM AS A TRAIL-BLAZING EXPERIMENTER OR A
SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARY, BUT I CONGRATULATE HIM FOR BEING A
POLITICAL PHRASE-MAKER WHO WAS BORN WITH A FOOT IN HIS
MOUTH.
FORD
SECRETARY FREEMAN IS THE ONLY SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE
GERA
CARY
WASHINGTON POST - April 10, 1965
"CABBIE'S FARE TURNS OUT TO BE A REAL SLEEPER"
The big man in the back seat of his cab mumbled an address
to the cabbie and lost all further interest in the trip
home. At the address in upper Northwest Washington the
cabbie thought the big man had mumbled - nobody knew him.
At the second address the cabbie thought the big man gave
it was the same story. It was late in the evening of last
Friday night, when the cabbie pulled up in fromt of the
8th precinct with his problem. Hatless and in shirt sleeves
55-year-old Harold D. Bowers left his desk (sergeant at front)
to cope with "cabbie's problem." He tugged at the man but got
no response. Down the precinct steps came Robert Donnell and
Douglas C. Taylor. Bower, Donnell and Taylor tugged the cabbie's
problem and helped him to his feet on the sidewalk. " Before
I knew it, u Representative John Culver (D-Ia.)
said
at his press conference yesterday, "there were these three
guys I had never seen before pulling and hauling me
around." I thought I was being attaked and I resisted
accordingly. Briefly, the 32-year-old former Harvard graduate
recounted the
factivities of a hectic week which
had culminated for him on that hectic Friday. He had steady
rounds of subcommittee work on Foreign Affairs and Economic Policy
and after-hour meetings with constitutents had taken their
physical toll
kexBistre That night he had had dinner
at Le Bistro - couple of drinks afterwards - then he took a cab
home
Red lines were drewn through his name and address in the arrest
book
11I had quite a job explaining it to my wife and mother and if my
career is going to bearecked by this one incident that is they
way it is game going to be. It's the honest way of doing it.
It is the most difficult things I have had to do in my whole
life , but being in pub19 c life I must face it.
BERALD FORD LIBRARY
NOTES FOR CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA (Jerry: The last sentence is a reference to an
incident in which the incumbent, Rep. John Culver, was arrested for drunklenness
in April, 1965. See attachment. I assume you don't need anything on Ben Reifel.)
One of the reasons we're going to do verywwell at the polls in
November is because we have outstanding candidates. And one of those
outstanding candidates is your own Mayor Bob Johnson. As a
top-notch
salesman, he's a natural politician. In his work as a news reporter and
I'm sure
columnist, he developed a great respect for the truth and the people's right
to know. He's just the kind of fellow we need in running against an
Administration that misinforms the public, misleads the people and
thinks government has the right to lie. And the fact that he has been your
mayor since 1962 underscores the great esteem and affection
X
in
FORD is LIBRARY 076830
which he is held by everyone who knows him. I'm
sure you'll never find him cruising around Washington, passed out in a taxicab.