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From John Andrews to the President. RE: Acceptance Speech. 14 pgs. [Subject: Campaign] [Memo], 7/21/1972
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From John Andrews to the President. RE: Acceptance Speech. 14 pgs. [Subject: Campaign] [Memo], 7/21/1972
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Richard Nixon Presidential Library
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51
14
7/21/1972
Campaign
Memo
From John Andrews to the President. RE:
Acceptance Speech. 14pgs.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Page 1 of 1
DOCUMENT WITHDRAWAL RECORD [NIXON PROJECT]
DOCUMENT
DOCUMENT
NUMBER
TYPE
SUBJECT/TITLE OR CORRESPONDENTS
DATE
RESTRICTION
N-1
memo
John andrews c/o Price, re:
7/21/72
( caif )
[Doc 172]
acceptance Speech, with
attachments
FILE GROUP TITLE
BOX NUMBER
PPF
78
FOLDER TITLE Wednesday, august 23,1972, acceptance
speech, III
RESTRICTION CODES
A. Release would violate a Federal statute or Agency Policy.
E. Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or
B. National security classified information.
financial information.
C. Pending or approved claim that release would violate an individual's
F. Release would disclose investigatory information compiled for law
rights.
enforcement purposes.
D. Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy
G. Withdrawn and return private and personal material.
or a libel of a living person.
H. Withdrawn and returned non-historical material.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
NA FORM 1421 (4-85)
Presidential Materials Review Board
Review on Contested Documents
Collection: President's Personal Files
Box Number:
78
Folder:
Wednesday, August 23, 1972, Acceptance Speech, III
Document
Disposition
172
Return Private/Political
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 21, 1972
MEMORANDUM TO:
THE PRESIDENT
VIA:
RAY PRICE
FROM:
JOHN ANDREWS
SUBJECT:
Acceptance peech
Some of your more seasoned veterans already having submitted
full drafts and comprehensive theme/tone proposals, I will focus
on a few random notes and angles.
It would be most desirable to evoke in your audience a sense
of being swept along on the crest of a great wave in human history
a sense of the inevitability of the last four years, the inescapable
logic of the next four, and the continuity of all eight with the 20th
century's long drive for peace, freedom, plenty and social justice.
Something of this, though not as broad in the time-sweep as it
should be, is contained in the long 11 fragment" attached. (That is
really more an exercise in linking the 1960 and 1968 acceptances to
1972, and then paying the whole thing off with the quote from Timothy.
A better way to get at the same idea might be a thumbnail sketch
of the way RN's career overlays the whole postwar era, highlighting
the personal involvement in the national quest for peace each step
of the way. The subliminal message here is that America has found
its Churchill/DeGaulle, the man and the moment have come together,
but that America won't throw him away in 1972 as Britain and France
did with their great statesmen in 1945.
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optime 2
Five quarter
A good axis of contrast between the RN and McG offerings
might be this: The American spirit is expansive, generous, optimis-
tic, adventurous. out-reaching. Our policies, foreign and domestic,
fit this mold. McG, on the other hand, tailors everything to limitation,
scarcity, fear. His economics is a perfect example -- instead of
expanding the pie in order to give everyone a bigger piece, his
deficits, punitive taxation, etc. half economic growth and so naturally
lead to his confiscatory income redistribution with a static or
shrinking pie. Ditto the defense cuts in order to find money for
domestic needs. In Vietnam, the past burned us, so we try to punish
the past and end up punishing ourselves and 17 million SVNese, rather
than doing the best we can, carefully, and compassionately, from
where we are here and now. And SO on.
I would like to see a really open and daring approach to the
disarray of the Democrats. This could be more than just an invita-
tion for the homeless to join us this year only (suggested paragraphs
attached) -- it could even sketch the outlines of a new permanent
Fines
alignment, which in fact has already begun taking shape because RN
has not hesitated during the last four years to cross traditional
party boundaries in shaping the policies America needs for the
Seventies. In terms of years in power, the Dems dominated US's
first century, GOP our second; with the third now about to begin,
another "new" party may be in prospect actually a reborn GOP
when
with new elements, maybe even a new name.
A strong pitch for both young people and women would surprise
many people and I think be very well received. This could be cast
not in terms of an appeal for their votes, per se, but more as an
appreciation that both are coming into their own as participants in
need for
our society, with the observation that each group brings strengths
all
american
and sensitivities which have already begun to leaven the national
consciousness in needed and healthy ways, and which will be very
young
important to the vitality of the American spirit and the American
system in the time ahead.
were and
Been
itis Peper
Woman not
not
or
But
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- 3 -
As an anecdote typing in with SO many key themes -- youth,
the hope for peace, idealism, national unity, the calming of the
country, the personal side of the Presidency -- I think it is hard
to improve on your pre-dawn visit to the Lincoln Memorial at the
time of the Cambodia protests two years ago. This could figure
very powerfully into the acceptance recipe, and I will be working
on some specific language for that purpose.
For a close, I heartily concur with Safire's recommendation
of one more outing for the Tanya story. Best of all, we were given
a "dream partner" for Tanya when little Jessie, the 8-year-old
black girl, was photographed with you on your flood tour in
Pennsylvania.
By referring to the two of them, you could bridge naturally
from the international and peace emphasis over into the domestic
area. From an emotional standpoint, this would beat McG at his
own come-home game (see attached paragraphs). Not that we are
going to put an end to floods if given a second term, but that we
care, RN cares, about kids, black people, unfortunates of all
sorts, and from Leningrad to Harrisburg we are going to build a
}
better world for them. Having won that one for Ike, let's win
this one for Jessie and Tanya.
for the ehtdow of the would
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(Andrews)
July 21 1972
ACCEPTANCE (FRAGMENT)
The rhythm of our Presidential elections in this country tends
to make us think of American history in neat four-year cycles.
But as we look back across the span of decades, we find that no
such narrow perspective will do.
For there are larger forces at work, and they are working
across a longer sweep of time.
Election by election in the affairs of men, the tides may rise
and fall; but beneath it all, ceaselessly and silently, a deeper and
a steadier current runs. We must know that current and steer with
it, or we are no more than drifters on the trackless ocean
grand old Party
Many of you - - because this Party of the Open Door is not a
party which shuts its veterans out when it welcomes new participants
in - - many of you who are delegates here in Miami this week were
delegates too at Chicago 12 years ago. You remember our hopes
at that convention:
We did not want to see the peace Dwight Eisenhower had won
and kept for America dissolve into the tragedy of another distant
war. We did not want to see the prosperity Dwight Eisenhower had
fostered in our land run out of control and become a ruinous inflation.
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But in the contest that followed we did not prevail, and in the
eight years that followed we watched other men and women lead
this country ever deeper into the valley of shadow,
Through it all we held to our hopes, we stood by our standard,
we stayed the long and grueling course. Not because we felt that
God was on our side for the blind self-righteousness which can
believe that, which can threaten to bolt a party if someone else is
nominated, to abandon a foreign commitment if easy victory is not
achieved, to flee a homeland if military service is in prospect and
then demand forgiveness for that flight -- such self-righteousness,
my friends, M not our way; the Republican way, not the American
way.
No, the reason that we persevered as Republicans in defeat
and adversity through America's time of trial in the 1960's was
that we devoutly prayed and diligently sought to be sure that America
was on God's side as Lincoln put it in a dark hour of the Civil
War and as I echoed in acceptance of your nomination in 1960.
And SO as the Vietnam nightmare wore on as our own cities
burned, as our racial tensions worsened, as our government seemed
more and more impotent because of its very size and power, as our
prices and our taxes climbed, Republicans waited and watched and
built for the future.
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schotgo pears
who
The opposition which we offered the party in power on domestic
and especially on foreign policy was at all points a loyal and construc-
tive opposition a record whose contrast with some of the political
opportunism and partisanship of these last four years should be to us
a source of just and lasting pride.
that
We believed there was a better way to lead America, the American
people believed that there was a better way, and when the time came
in 1968 it was the Republican Party which pointed the better way.
Many of you here tonight were present in this same hall four
years ago when you gave me the high honor of a second nomination
for the Presidency, and when in accepting that great commission
called our party and our nation to a new and higher commitment to
the truth "to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth. 11
And it was when the people went to the polls in the fall that we
saw our faith confirmed. We saw that the current sweeping America
on to greatness was still flowing wide and strong, undiverted and
unchecked by the shallow ebb and flow in the fortunes of any one man,
any one party. For the voters that year spoke out for America. They
spoke out loud and clear, nearly 6 in every 10, writing a mandate for
change from the old leadership with its long record of well-intentioned
failure to a new set of leaders, leaders whose vision would be wider
and whose deeds would live up to their words.
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Tonight, looking back and looking ahead, we can say that we
have honored our mandate, we have kept our word, we have begun
to make our vision come true. Our stewardship is far from finished.
But all America and all the world know this: in its first years that
stewardship has been faithful; it has been forceful; it has been
fruitful.
We said we would find the truth, and we found it: the truth that
prosperity based on war and inflation was a fraud, that social change
which triggered anarchy was good for no one, that endh
war
hot
and cold, was an idea whose was goner
We said we would speak the truth, and we have spoken it: the
truth that good jobs, decent income, and a sound dollar car be made
available to every American, that life can be better when government
steps back and sets the people's energies free, that peace can be
achieved through negotiation and through strength.
We said we would live the truth, and we are living it: the truth
that prosperity is happening now, that reform and a rebirth of freedom
are taking place now, that peace is gathering strength now, all across
this land.
But there is SO much more to do. Much more truth than we have
yet discovered lies hidden we must find it
stands mute - we
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5
must speak it
waits unused - we must give it life.
Ours it is to find the true path from poverty and powerlessness
up to human dignity and fulfilment for all our brothers and sisters.
Ours it is to seek true equity, and true balance in the workings
of the free enterprise economy.
Ours it is to set and to achieve true standards for quality in the
lives we live and the surroundings we live them in.
Ours it is to build and to preserve a true structure of peace
above the mere absence of war.
Ours it is to be about the urgent business of alleviating tyranny,
suffering, and want wherever they afflict the family of man/
It is in this cause that we will take our case to the American
people over the weeks and months to come. We do SO confident of
the outcome and glad of the chance to submit once more to the Nation's
judgment at the polling place. For we trust that judgment, we revere
its wisdom, we cherish the democracy it represents.
But as I accept for the third time, in gratitude and deep humility,
your nomination for President of the United States, it is not to the
people alone not even to the people first that I feel our ticket,
our party, our Nation, and our great cause must turn.
No, my friends, I believe that our first prayer must be, as I
said from this platform in 1960, that the divine will be done. Or again
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- -6-
that prayer must be, as I said from this platform in 1968, that the
truth may rule in our hearts and SO govern in our land.
There is one verse from Scripture that captures all this, a
verse that has been much in my thoughts these last few days. In a
Quaker home, as my home was, the Bible is quoted often. But
abroad in the world, 18 is different. There the Quaker way is to live
the Word and let the lips be silent. Tonight I will break that rule,
because I feel that this one thought which my mother gave me SO
often is one which may serve to guide all Americans in this great
year of decision.
It comes from Paul's letter to Timothy, and this is what it says:
"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth
not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 11
There, my fellow Republicans and my fellow Americans, there
is where our confidence rests; there is where our salvation will be
found.
In a year when exotic panaceas are offered to lure the fleeting
approval of voting blocs and factions, let each of us SQ order our lives
lasting
and SO serve our nation as to merit the approval of preme wisdom
and goodness.
In a year when shame is in fashion and work is degraded, let
each of us take pride in the workmanship of a new America and a
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-7-
new world which we have well begun these last four years, and
which working steadily onward we shall mightily advance in the
years to come.
In a year when fantasies, errors, and outright falsehoods fill
the political air, let each of us rededicate ourselves to seeing and
serving the truth about the rights of man, the ways of nations, and
the price of a lasting peace.
This done, we shall not merely win an election though surely
we shall do that but above and beyond that landslide victory we
shall win a world, a world where mankind finds nothing to fear but
all things to achieve and to cherish.
Standing before this convention 4 years ago, I ventured the
prediction that ages to come will remember 1968 as the beginning
of the American generation in world history. Already we have seen
much to bear that prediction out. But now, with the first step taken,
there comes again a time to choose.
No one who knows the American spirit as you do and as I do can
doubt what that choice will be. It will be/a choice for the forward
and upward path, into peace, into plenty, into brotherhood for all
Americans, into a new golden age/for the common man and woman
in this uncommon land of ours
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It is with a full heart and a solemn resolve to carry high the
banner of that choice that I accept your nomination and take up your
trust tonight.
###
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(Andrews)
1972
ACCEPTANCE SUGGESTIONS:
Invitation to Democrats
The marvelous resiliency and cohesiveness of our American
political system come from the common bonds of shared beliefs
and convictions which tend to unite us all, far more powerfully
than partisan loyalties can divide us.
It was Jefferson, the father of the Democratic Party, coming
to the Presidency after a crucial and bitterly contested election
victory, who told his countrymen, "We are all Republicans - we
are all Federalists. 11
And it remains as true in our day as in his, that there are
no party lines when it comes to matters as fundamental as tolerance
and fair play in the political process; the workingman's right to
keep what he earns secure against arbitrary seizure by the state;
the need for sufficiency in national defense; and the imperatives of
honor, dignity, and good faith in the conduct of foreign affairs.
In these things, truly, we are all Republicans, we are all
Democrats. In their behalf we can all make common cause, for in
their absence we would all be in common danger -- in danger of losing
our liberties and our very lives themselves.
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- 2
As the Vice President and I stand for re-election this fall,
these are some of the cardinal principles and values we will be
standing on and standing for.
We ask every American who values the heritage and traditions
of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the two-party
system as a whole, to stand with us.
***
Come Home, America
I do not believe that the siren song, "Come home, come home, 11
will lure this country onto the shoals of a new isolationism. For
already, America is at home in the family of nations; Americans
are at home in the family of man.
There are still many languages and cultures, many governments
and ideologies, in the world of 1972. But there are no foreigners
inter
any more. The dependence of progress, of peace, and of survival
itself cannot be wished away.
Just as the environmental awakening has taught us that we cannot
"throw away" any more, because no place is "away, 11 in the same
sense it is no longer possible for a nation, especially the world's
most powerful nation, to "go away. 11 There is simply nowhere to go.
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3
Of course we could try. Like the Prodigal Son, we could
ask for our share of the inheritance, pack up our belongings, and
huddle down between our oceans for a while. But sooner or later
we would have to come home to the world again.
And in the meantime -- how selfish, how wasteful, how
cruelly destructive of all mankind's hopes for peace that escapist
indulgence would be!
###
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