After coming here tonight I can now report back to Washington that there is hope to solve the Berlin crisis. If Governor Nelson and Pat Lucey can settle their differences, certainly the Russians and the Americans can do the same.
Although I’ll talk about a lot of things here tonight, one thing I won’t talk about is the calling up of the Wisconsin National Guard, or the sales tax.
Wisconsin is a state every Kennedy supporter knows well. I remember working in this state against the best campaigner that ever came down the pike: Senator Hubert Humphrey. You remember all those newspaper reports that said we had it made? We kept wondering where they got their information. Everyone we met in the state had already met two other politicians, Senator Estes Kefauver and Senator Hubert Humphrey. By the time Senator Kennedy came around, they felt they had enough politicians.
It is a wonder how the tables turn. You know the old political saying about the spoils of victory. The Kennedy team won, but it was Senator Humphrey who got me a job in Washington. He was the one who pushed the Peace Corps bill through the Senate. Without his help, and Congressman Reuss’ help in the House, I’d be back at the Chicago Merchandise Mart.
I don’t mind telling you here that it is a hard job running a non-partisan agency with fine partisans like Pat Lucey working for the good Democrats. Every time a top spot in government goes to a Republican, Democrats remind me that there were thirty-four million who voted for us and thirty-four million who voted against us. They want to know why I couldn’t find a good Democrat from the thirty-four million who were with us.
All I can say is that the last election was too close. This time we want a few more of those thirty-four million votes that didn’t vote for us last time --- and not all of them from Illinois either.
I remember a party we had for Ambassador Bill Blair before he was married. Blair as you know, was a law partner of Adlai Stevenson. At the party a Democrat who worked hard for Kennedy in West Virginia was wondering when he could come to work for the administration. I was being very non-committal. Frustrated, he finally pointed around the room to all the Stevenson’s law partners who now have top jobs in government. Then he asked: “What do you have to do to get a job in this administration, be against Kennedy?”
In Kansas City last week someone asked me what has changed in this country in the last nine months. They wanted to know what President Kennedy has done to distinguish his administration from those that proceeded his.
In my mind there is one singular change in this country, and that is the national unity that now binds us to a determination to preserve freedom not only in terms of abstract general sacrifice, but of personal sacrifice. How was this unity achieved? In this time of national crisis, the President has sought the best men in the country to carry out his policies. This has been particularly true in foreign affairs and singularly true in the Peace Corps.
The test, in these areas of national need, is not a political label, but a willingness to carry out a Kennedy program. The talent search following the campaign encouraged into government men like McNamara, one of the finest Secretaries of Defense this nation has seen. The President didn’t ask the politics of Secretary of State Rusk, or whether Rusk had campaigned for him. He sought Rusk out as the best man to do the job.
In CIA, the President has appointed McCone to head up this vitally important operation. Foster is heading up the disarmament agency, an agency that enjoyed the support of the entire Wisconsin democratic delegation. Dillon has the important job of carrying out the Kennedy policies at the Treasury-Department.
There are Democrats, too, mind you. They are men picked without regard to race or religion. The true meaning of the opportunities for all in this country were accented when Ribicoff and Goldberg were added to the Cabinet and when Robert Weaver was appointed as Housing and Home Administrator, a position which may soon turn into a cabinet post.
This same pattern has spread throughout government. Clifton R. Wharton is our Ambassador to Norway and Carl Rowan is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Andy Hatcher is at the White House and Prank Williams is my assistant at the Peace Corps.
These men were not selected because of their politics, or their religion, or their race. They were chosen because they were the best men to do the job.
These men have agreed to serve, to put country above party, and, unlike the trend in previous years, they have stayed with the administration.
At home this bi-partisanship has highlighted the urgency we place on the foreign situation. Abroad it has underlined our countries willingness to close ranks in time of trouble. There are other factors that go into this national unity. Conditions have improved considerably here at home. The gross product has risen from an annual rate of $501 billion to $516 billion between the first and second quarters--a faster climb than in any of the three previous postwar recoveries.
Industrial production took just five months to climb from the trough of the recession in February to a new mark in September, the fastest recovery since the war.
Personal income began setting new records-in March. Non-farm employment, allowing for the seasonal adjustments, rose by more than a million between February and March.
Unemployment is down.
I won’t elaborate on the domestic improvements that make up this feeling of national unity because I don’t intend to make a political speech here tonight.
What is important is the fact that, in the foreign policy field, this same national unity, encouraged by bi-partisanship, has allowed this country to present a new frontier to the world.
The Peace Corps has been in the middle of this for the last seven months. At this point in history, the President and the Congress gambled that the American people were willing to respond to a call for personal sacrifice.
On one hand the response has been gratifying. On another, it has not. There are still some people in this country who continue to drag their feet and left others to do their work. They present the clear danger to this new routine unity in time of peace.
The gratifying response is the 14,000 Americans who have volunteered their services. It is the 600 we have in training or serving overseas. In personal terms it is the 13 men and women now in the Peace Corps from Wisconsin.
It is the purple heart, bronze star negro officer who has been working with southern farmers and now will go to Sierre Leone to work with these people. It is Ed Bayley who you all know, who left his job with Governor Nelson to come to Washington to help set up the Peace Corps.
It is Richard Graham, a high-salaried -business executive from Milwaukee who is giving up a luxury life to serve with us overseas.
It is Marshall Erdman, a Wisconsin builder, who interrupted his work to help us when, we needed his consultation.
And it is Pat Kennedy who left the University of Wisconsin to join our training staff
These and others have uprooted their lives to serve at a personal and financial sacrifice. These are the people who make the Peace Corps.
But there is a negative side to the response to our mission that troubles and worries me. It troubles and worries me because its implications are broader than the Peace Corps and go right to the heart of what some people think of this country.
I detect, in some of the critics of the Peace Corps a distrust of patriotism.
In these critics, I also sense a lack of confidence and faith in our young people, both in what they can do and what they are willing to do.
And I detect a growing cynicism with the values that made this country strong.
To some a faith in this country and its ideals and a willingness to do something to implement these beliefs, makes one a little suspect.
More than one friend has confided to me his suspicions about the dedicated men and women who have joined the Peace Corps. “Aren’t they a little odd?” is a typical comment. When you tell them “No, they are not” they don’t seem relieved at all. They want to believe that anyone who thought enough of the world’s problems to go to Africa to teach for two years must be a little off. Their arguments revolve around the fact that the Volunteer can live in comparative luxury at home and earn a good salary. Why give it up?
Let’s carry this comment and sentiment to its logical conclusion: that the values of this nation are not real, only Madison Avenue puff --- the things we teach children in our schools are inflated versions of traditional children’s stories.
Another group with a surprising response to the Peace Corps are the self-styled super-patriots. They think that anyone who joins the Peace Corps is a pinko, a beatnik or a communist.
They have no faith in their alleged conviction that dedication is required to fight communism. Instead, when someone steps into the arena to do something the shout their insults from the sidelines.
It is these two-hundred percent of Americans that have helped to make “patriotism” suspect for the group that I first talked about.
This combination of misguided patriotism on one hand, and the suspicion of patriotism on the other hand, is the complex of opinion that causes me concern in this time of crisis.
Those who join the Peace Corps with true conviction are not affected by these negative attitudes. They know why they have come and they know the job they must do. Last week I asked a Volunteer why he joined, “The world is going to pot.” he said, land the Peace Corps was the first time anyone asked me to do something about it.”
There are some Americans that demand that demand that this young man go overseas with a soapbox to preach the Christian superiority of democracy and to impugn the atheism of communism. There are others who think the American Volunteer should subvert institutions in the host nation.
They reason the communists are doing it, so we must do it also. They even quote the bible to justify their position.
When I tell them the mission of the Peace Corps is to do specific jobs on a people-to-people level, without proselytizing about religion or politics, they write-off the entire operation as another do-gooder scheme.
First of all, our volunteers would not go over on a mission such as they describe not because they are soft on communism but because they know enough about the world to realize that their worl would be doomed to failure if this were their mission.
Second, they have the belief that the strengthening of democratic institutions and the alleviation of poverty and want are surer ways to combat communism than the soapbox orator.
Our Volunteers are doing with their hands what too many Americans are doing with their mouths.
I speak to you tonight about these things because this is a political audience. You think enough of the democratic process to come here tonight to participate in a Democratic convention. You are willing to make that sacrifice.
It is through people like yourself that, we can reverse what may be a trend in American life, the reaction to the super patriots of non—patriotism.
Here in Wisconsin, where some of the super-patriotism started in our generation, is the place to respond, not with the negation of service to your country, but with a mature realization that we will not let either the communists nor the super-patriots usurp our vocabulary of freedom.
If the people of this country begin to frown on the pioneer spirit of its young people, and the dedication of a segment of its citizenry, then we are headed for the troubles that have crumbled nations mightier than ours.
This is not the age to preach faith, but I see the faith and strength that made America every time I visit with a group of Peace Corps Volunteers.
They understand clearly what this country needs and they are willing to go that extra mile to see that their help can fulfill that need.
I don’t ask the critics of the Peace Corps to stop their criticisms. All I ask is that they re-examine some of the reasons on which their criticisms are based. I fear that they are too deeply rooted in attitudes that only find the Peace Corps as one form of expression.
Whether these Americans will ever become convinced of the need for a national unity remains doubtful. All I can do is hope. For those whose minds are still, open, I urge that they make an attempt to meet the men and women who have joined the Peace Corps. They are the best advertisement for our way of life and for the ideals of our society. Thank you.
