Address at the Democratic Women's Club

"Young people have a right to expect high standards of their government, of their political leaders. The National Administration, the Presidency and Vice Presidency, the highest offices in our land, have a duty, a responsibility, to inspire the best that is in us, to encourage compassion and generosity in us."
Washington, DC • June 04, 1973

When I told Eunice I would be here today, she suggested that I make it perfectly clear that women are not now -- and will not become -- second-class citizens in the Democratic Party.

And Eunice is right. Our party cannot afford that waste of talent and energy.

In fact, I hope that the next election sees a lot more women as Democratic candidates.

I was asked to run for office myself once, and I can assure you that it is an interesting experience.

I won’t discuss that particular experience in any depth today, except to say of all the rhetoric that was spilled in the course of action, the most memorable to me was produced not by a candidate, but by a young couple I saw at an airport rally in Iowa. They carried a sign that read:

“Help us be what we can be.”

The eloquence of that stayed with me throughout the campaign, and I’m constantly reminded of it as I read today’s headlines. How powerful men have made a mockery of that simple request: “Help us be what we can be.”

Americans, it has been said, have always loved their country—not for what it is, but for what it ought to be.

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past,” Thomas Jefferson once said.

Young people have a right to expect high standards of their government, of their political leaders.

The National Administration, the Presidency and Vice Presidency, the highest offices in our land, have a duty, a responsibility, to inspire the best that is in us, to encourage compassion and generosity in us.

Some Administrations do it better than others.

The present Administration is the first in our modern history to do it not at all.

I am saddened, as you are, at Watergate.

Morality in government is something the managers and manipulators in this Administration know nothing about. It is apparently something they never learned in peddling soap.

The moral force the White House should bring to bear in the human struggle is absent in this Administration.

When the helping hand does go out, it’s under the table.

The real tragedy of Watergate is its deadly impact on everything its touches. Consider the FBI.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was created to replace a Federal police agency which had become not only politicized but corrupted. It had become a private police force that did little more than gather evidence against enemies of an earlier Republican Administration, also racked by scandal - the Teapot Dome Case.

But now, Watergate makes Teapot Dome look like a gas station holdup. And I haven`t heard any sermons from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue lately about law and order. Have you?

So we have all these wonderful soap salesmen guiding the ship of state. And it’s another Poseidon Adventure. I like the way Scoop Jackson put it the other day in his recital of a typical week under Nixon’s leadership:

On Monday, the Secretary of Agriculture announced another increase in food prices and blamed housewives for people eating too much.

On Tuesday, the Secretary of Labor suggested that maybe we should all start growing Victory gardens.

On Wednesday, the price board said people should stop eating meat.

On Thursday, the Secretary of the Treasury announced another devaluation of the dollar.

On Friday, the chief economic advisor said interest rates will have to go up.

On Saturday, another of the boys said we may have to ration gasoline.

On Sunday, Nixon reported that the hour of crisis had passed. And then he rested.

Perhaps as disturbing as the lack of moral leadership on the part of this administration is its conscious, deliberate, painstaking, well-programmed striving for mediocrity.

Ralph Barton Perry said society must maintain “an express insistence upon quality and distinction.” When it does not, we leave ourselves open to the tyranny of the lowest common denominator. That has been the tone, the style of this administration.

John Gardner observed that the ideas for which this nation stands will not survive, if the highest goals we set for ourselves is an amiable mediocrity.

Mr. Nixon’s appointments to high office have been, by and large, disappointments. His cabinet is a gray, faceless lot, brought on board as mere caretakers of agencies that have ceased to serve the vital needs of people, to provide the cutting edge to mounting problems of inflation, crime, and poverty.

When I was director of OEO, we were getting the best brains in this country to work for us, for an idea, to innovate, to create, to solve problems that had never been tackled before. These were not faceless bureaucrats content to preside over feasibility studies. They were men and women superior in quality who responded to a challenge, demanding their best effort. Most of them gave up secure and important positions to join the program. Let me name just a few of them:

  • Glenn Olds, who headed the-task force on VISTA, came from the Presidency of Springfield College and is now the President of Kent State University.
  • Verne Alden came from the Presidency of Ohio University to lead the task force on the Job Corps; he is now President of the multi-billion dollar Boston Company.
  • Otis, Singletary, who was Director of the Job Corps, came from the President’s office at the University of Texas and is now the President of the University of Kentucky.
  • Ted Berry, who ran Community Action, gave up a successful private law practice and is now Mayor of Cincinnati.
  • Clinton Bamburger who left private law practice to be the first director of Legal Services is now Dean of Catholic University’s School of Law.
  • Dr. Julius Richmond left the Deanship of Syracuse Medical School to direct Head Start; he is now Professor of Child Psychiatry at Harvard University.
  • Dr. Joseph Kershaw resigned as Provost of Williams College to inaugurate OEO’s budgeting and evaluation office.

And the list could go on and on. It could include a Republican Attorney General of Pennsylvania who came to Washington to head up Legal Services in the Nixon Administration and quit in disgust when his efforts were subverted from on high.

Now, what’s the point of all this? The point is that there is a difference -- a very big difference -- between being a Republican and being a Democrat. A difference of approach, of expectation, of trust in people, of being unashamed to have and to pursue ideals. And it is because of this difference that it is absolutely essential that our party pull itself together, because it is only our party than can address the gut needs of this nation.

It seems to me that Republicans tend to look on all human problems as something that can be analyzed with slide rules and adding machines.

Slide rules can’t measure the hurt of people.

Efficiency experts can’t apply the same standards to social programs as they do to corporate profits expecting a. dividend every six months. When Democrats look at programs, the question is, “Will it help people?” When people are hurting, or forgotten, the Democrats try to reach through to them.

Make no mistake that many of our party’s programs and attempts to help people have had only partial success. And some have failed.

But it was not because nobody cared, or nobody tried. And we will continue to try. Rather than despair at problems that seem insoluble, or at efforts that fall short of aspirations, recall the words of Franklin Roosevelt in his Second Inaugural Address:

“Governments can err” he said. “Presidents do make mistakes. But the immortal Dante tells us that Divine Justice weighs the sins of the cold blooded, and the sins of the warm hearted, on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government living in the spirit of charity, than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

We are by history an optimistic people. We cherish what Whitehead called “the habitual vision of greatness.” As a nation, we need to speak of aspirations and challenges. Somebody must -- and that has always been the role of the Democratic Party.

Now, to those who left our party, we need to bring them back. And those who remain in our party, we need to reinforce their reason for being there.

Party unity does not mean that we all run to the middle and think alike. It does not mean that we all take a step to the left or a step to, the right in unison.

But it does mean that we all share that “habitual vision of greatness” and the ideal of a people who reject brute power and cherish a good and generous heart Like that young couple in Iowa, who are counting on us to “help us be what we can be.”

Watergate will undoubtedly create a problem for Democratic candidates in 1974. In the first place, we won’t be able to mention the opposition -- that might jeopardize their right to a fair trial.

The opposition won’t have campaign managers -- just defense attorneys.

And one phrase we know the opposition won’t use this time around -- you won’t hear them saying, “We are the party of our convictions.”

Peace requires the simple but powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us.
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Sargent Shriver
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