This has been one of the saddest weeks in the history of America.
We have seen our second highest official exposed as a common crook.
We have heard a vice president who promised law and order confess to breaking the law and betraying the public trust.
And we watched while Mr. Nixon announced the choice of a new vice president as though the moment were a cause for celebration, instead of an occasion for shame and sorrow. It was a necessary moment -- for the county could not keep a vice president who was a convicted felon. But it was not a joyful moment -- for who can find joy in a corruption which will stain our heritage for as long as men read or remember the history of this time?
Yet with hindsight they will see something else. They will see the truth -- that it is a self-serving lie to say that all politics is this way. In the wake of Watergate, we are told: “everybody does it.” and each month seems to bring more proof that this is an accurate statement -- about the Nixon administration. George McGovern never tapped a telephone in 1972.
Hubert Humphrey never took envelopes full of cash when he was vice president. Ed Muskie did not spy on his opponents in the primary. Those men were defeated last year, but they were not dishonored. They sought to gain the presidency by telling the truth as they saw it, not with a bag of dirty tricks and a bundle of dirty money.
I am not a professional politician, but i have seen enough to know that politics can be an honorable profession. Our system has not failed; our leaders have failed the system. They have secured special favors for some instead of fairness for everyone. They have poisoned the democratic character of our government and they have profited from economic injustice.
This is not just a matter of Watergate or Agnew or the White House horrors. It reaches to the security and livelihood of every family in America.
For example, loopholes in our tax code force millions of taxpayers to pay more because privileged tax avoiders pay little or nothing at all. Two years ago, 276 Americans with incomes above $100,000 paid no federal income taxes. 72 Americans with incomes above $200,000 paid no federal income taxes. And do know who almost made it into that category? The president of the United States. In 1970, Mr. Nixon’s salary was $200,000. He paid approximately $900 in income tax. In 1971, he made at least $200,000 in salary not counting profit on his property. He paid approximately $700 in taxes.
Is that fair? Is that democratic?
Is that the kind of leadership we want in this land?
And in almost every part of America, two or three powerful corporations -- or families -- rule entire cities or regions.
If Bethlehem Steel decides to cut its output in Johnstown by forty percent, do they take a vote among your parents and you? Do they ask the steel workers and the businessmen? What happens in a city this size when 4,700 men are laid off? Did you vote Bethlehem steel into power in Johnstown?
There is a side to this story some of you may be too young to remember. Bethlehem steel grew up with city. Many hundreds of Johnstown men lost their lives for Bethlehem steel. In the old days, before there were unions, men wore clothes that would burst into flames if they we too near the heat. Many workers fell into the molten steel were roasted to death. Practically every old man who worked in the mill can tell you stories of whose hands were caught in broken machinery -- or who were hit by flying chaff.
Some of the bitterest strikes in the entire world took peace in Pennsylvania, many of them in Johnstown. In the great strike of 1936, union men were tarred and feathered. Company police and mounted troopers beat workers on the head with stanchions. Probably relatives of yours can tell you vivid stories of what happened here in those days.
Your grandparents or great-grandparents came to these beautiful valleys in Pennsylvania to find the American dream -- to escape the poverty of Europe -- to find peace, and dignity, and a chance to work for themselves.
Suppose your grandparents came here in 1900. 73 years later, what have you to show for it?
You are much better off than they were. Many of you have cars -- there are rows of cars on the parking lots. You are here at school. Some of you are the first people in the entire history of your family to attend college.
But do you yet control your own destiny?
Do you and your families decide when there will be peace and war? When there will be boom or bust? When Bethlehem steel will hire or fire? Did you and your families decide to send young men to Vietnam?
Or do you and your families just sit there and take it passively, waiting for things to happen, -- letting other people decide -- people outside Johnstown far away?
If you are like most other Americans in most other Americans, you feel helpless and frustrated.
I used to be head of the Peace Corps. We sent young volunteers all around the world to help others help themselves. Peace corpsman would build schools, or teach, or open clinics, or dig latrines -- do whatever was needed. People in the meanest huts and poorest villages of this planet worked with representatives of a foreign government who really cared.
Today, Washington is almost a foreign government. In Washington, they don’t seem to care about the people of Johnstown, let alone the people of India. If I were going to start the Peace Corps today, I wouldn’t send everybody to Nigeria, or Turkey, or Indonesia. I would also try to find young people in Johnstown who want to work for Johnstown. I would tell them to stay at home. For here at home is where we need evidence that somebody cares.
Just look around in Johnstown -- and Portage – and South Fork -- and all the outlying towns. You see real poverty here. You see homes in need of paint, old people in need of medicine, young people in need of jobs with a future.
Johnstown is the place to fight for the future. Politics should begin with Johnstown and all the neighborhoods and cities like it. Politics begins where the people are.
The United States was supposed to be a government of the people -- a government of “the common man.”
“The common man” used to be a good phrase. People used it with pride. That was what made America different -- it was the country of the common man. Now they make fun of Archie Bunker and Joe Sixpack. They make fun of the common man. They have contempt for the common man. And they don’t deserve to govern the common man.
The common man in America is the greatest resource this country has. People in America love their families and enjoy their neighborhoods. They are generous – when the flood hit Johnstown, millions of dollars in aid poured in. People in America try to be decent. Most don’t lie. Most don’t cheat. And they don’t like those who do, even if he is the president of the United States.
The President of the United States should represent the people -- be the best side of the people, not the worst side. He should pay his fair share of taxes, not less than a fair share. We need a president we can try to live up to, not a man we look down on.
I know many of you are cynical about politics. You have reason to be. But you also have every reason not to abandon the struggle. If you let others take care of politics, too many of them will only take care of themselves.
If you want jobs in Johnstown, then take over the politics of Johnstown and make sure there are jobs. Don’t let Bethlehem steel run Johnstown -- or anybody else. This is your town and your country -- and you have the right to decide.
If you don’t become active in politics, you have no one to blame but yourselves.
President Nixon said not long ago: “the American people are like children.” he had it just backwards. Under our constitution, the people are the parents. The politicians and the presidents are the children. Here, the people are in charge.
It is time for the people to exert their power. If the politicians misbehave like Spiro Agnew, throw them out. If the president breaks the law, impeach him. If you want prices to come down, elect leaders who know how to run the economy. If you want corporations to honor their commitments to cities and to workers, elect leaders who will stand up against private greed.
When Agnew’s resignation was announced last week, i heard a woman on television say: “well, he just did what everyone else does. Even Abraham Lincoln was dishonest; he just didn’t get caught.”
That is the voice of someone who has finally given up on America. That is the voice of someone who has settled for the morality of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Agnew.
But there is another morality, a different vision, a truer tradition for America. You must work for it in the life of Johnstown and the nation. You and all of us must rededicate ourselves to what Abraham Lincoln truly represents -- not a government of dirty deals -- but the enduring of ideal of government of the people, for the people and by the people.
That is what every American must do for America in this troubled time.
