Address at the Inaugural Anniversary Dinner, 20 January 1962
This folder contains materials collected by the office of President John F. Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, concerning President Kennedy's address at the Inaugural Anniversary Dinner. In his speech the President refers to his inaugural address to discuss the federal defic...
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OCR Page 1 of 25IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 20, 1962
Office of the White House Press Secretary
THE WHITE HOUSE
ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT
AT THE
INAUGURAL ANNIVERSARY DINNER
NATIONAL GUARD ARMORY
WASHINGTON, D. C.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Rosenbloom and Mrs. Freeman,
Mr. Bailey and Mr. McCloskey -- Mr. Speaker: I first of all want to
express, I know, on behalf of all of us, our great appreciation to
Miss Clooney, Miss Remick and Danny Thomas for coming from a far
distance to help us tonight. I wish we could all just applaud them.
I want to also express my appreciation to President Truman.
I must say it is nice to have a former President who speaks well of you,
and we are glad to have him here tonight. His only request has been,
since I have been President, to get his piano up from the cellar, and we
have done that and we are going to run on it.
And I also want to express my appreciation, and the appreciation
of us all, to the Vice President for his tribute to Speaker Rayburn. I
must say that the merger of Boston and Austin, as he said today, was
really the last merger that the Attorney General has allowed, but it has
been one of the most successful. And as a loyal and faithful friend, I
think we have worked together better than any President and Vice
Presidential team in history, at least since Roosevelt and Truman.
I spoke a year ago today, to take the Inaugural, and I would like
to paraphrase a couple of statements I made that day by saying that we
observe tonight not a celebration of freedom but a victory of Party, for
we have sworn to pay off the same party debt our forebears ran up nearly
a year and three months ago.
Our deficit will not be paid off in the next hundred days, nor will
it be paid off in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Admin-
istration. Nor, perhaps even in our lifetime on this planet, but let us
begin - - remembering that generosity is not a sign of weakness and that
Ambassadors are always subject to Senate confirmation, for if the
Democratic Party cannot be helped by the many who are poor, it cannot
be saved by the few who are rich. So let us begin.
I want to express our thanks to all of you for helping. What we
are attempting to do tonight is to lay the groundwork for the Congressional
campaigns of 1962, and we realize, I think, all the Members of the House
and Senate, that history is not with us, that in this century only in 1934,
during the periods of the great pre-eminence of the Democratic Party did
the Party in power ever win seats, let alone hold its own. But we believe
in 1962 that the Democratic Party, both at home and abroad, is best fitted
to lead this country - - and therefore we start tonight on the campaigns of
1962.
This is - - though we like to think of ourselves as a young country
--
this is the oldest Republic in the world. When the United States was
founded there was a King in France, and a Czar in Russia, and an Emperor
in Peking. They have all been wiped away, but the United States has still
survived. We are also members of the oldest political party on earth,
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