Mrs. Rabin
Ms. Green, Pioneer Women.
It is both an honor and a privilege for me to be here this evening at your Golden Jubilee Convention. There are many notable pioneer women, but one has captured my heart for many years -- Golda Meir.
(Then tell joke about sending Jewish Peace Corps volunteers to Arab countries)
To be more serious, I have a deep sense of community with Israel and the Jewish people. Long ago I found out that Israel was far ahead of the United States in social innovations and planning -- the work of pioneer women in Israel is a perfect example. When I took over the war on poverty, I even tried to contract out some of the planning for the job corps program to the state of Israel. But the law said “no.”
The lesson of Israeli leadership in this field should not be lost, but since 1967 the Middle East has either been at war... or poised on the brink of war. It is a tragedy that. Israel had to prepare for war rather than continue to lead the way in social innovation.
Peace in the Middle East is vital -- not just to Israel -- but to us all -- every American. I am heartened -- and I salute -- Israel’s willingness to take the risks necessary to move toward peace. And we shall stand by Israel’s side as she takes these risks.
I congratulate the Congress for acting quickly to support the new Middle East agreements.
I am appalled by those who equate support for Israel with our mistaken commitment to Vietnam. There is no comparison. Our commitment to Israel is not just economic or strategic. We have a profound moral commitment --a spiritual union we can abandon only at great peril to our nation. I will keep this commitment.
And I am appalled by those who obscenely equate Zionism and Israel with racism. Israel is a home for victims of racism and religious discrimination. The spirit of the U.N. will be perverted if the U.N. is turned into a weapon for hunting the victims of international oppression -- even in their homeland! Actions like those to expel Israel destroy the meaning of the U.N. threaten to destroy its very existence.
Tonight, as a candidate for president, I also want to talk to you about America. We are living in an extraordinary period of our history. For only the second time in this century, the forward movement of America has been reversed; we have retrogressed as a society. This reversal of momentum has generated the vast crisis of confidence we face today. Not since the Great Depression has America stood in fear of the future.
In terms of our problems here at home, the Ford administration is worse than expected. We have Nixonism without Nixon. The vetoes, the insensitivity to human problems, the dependence on big business -- all of Nixonism -- except for the lying and cheating -- are still ensconced in the White House.
Unemployment - 8.3%
Inflation - climbing
Deficits - skyrocketing
They spell incompetence.
The Ford administration says that no government is good government. That’s their way to turn America over to big business. That has always been the Republican way. Calvin Coolidge said: -- “the business of America is business"; and Charlie Wilson said, “What’s good for general motors is good for America.”
Mr. Ford is for no government all right -- no government for ITT, Firestone, IBM, for the big oil companies, the wheat exporters, the plutonium breeders, and the defense companies. Rely on free markets, he tells us, and everything will be like it was before. But we know many markets are not free. The price we pay for food, gasoline and hospital beds has skyrocketed because a few people wield great economic power, and because Nixon and Ford let Russia have our wheat to feed their beef before making sure there’s enough at home to feed America at prices we can afford.
I’m opposed to centralized, rigid, unresponsive bureaucracy. That’s why in the Peace Corps, Head Start and Community Action we put power into the hands of the people-- even into the hands of volunteers. Nut a purely negative approach to government will get us nowhere.
Instead of Republicanism we need Americanism. Putting government “on the side of the people”. This means at least 5 major commitments for a new America.
My number one commitment is jobs. The independence of men and women, of the young and old, and of every American family, depends on work -- and a Shriver administration would put people back to work, with tax cuts that don’t threaten to destroy as many jobs as they create, and with a job program that matches unmet needs with people who need work.
Last week, Pat Murphy -- he was Chief of Police in New York City and now heads the Police Foundation -- he was in my office. I asked him what he would do to end crime. The first thing he said was “end unemployment.”
Unemployment concerns every American, not just the unemployed themselves. We all suffer not only because crime increases, but because income from personal and corporate taxes decline; deficits go up; confidence goes down, so does the stock market; states and cities cut back on jobs and on public works; financial disaster overtakes W.T. Grant and New York City. Ford says he wants to cut the deficit. If we put all America to work, there won’t be a federal deficit:
My second commitment is justice -- and a new vision of justice -- not just “cops and robbers”, courts and prisons. I mean economic justice. Even if we have to break up whole industries -- oil, we can’t let Arab Sheiks control the prices we pay for Exxon. Prices at the market for food and meat have to be first in the administration’s mind. We’ve got to keep prices down.
I mean medical justice -- quality medical care - where we want it, when we want it, at prices we can afford. If we can’t do this with the system we have, then I’m prepared to change the system.
I mean racial justice -- the fight for an equal chance for all Americans has not been won. When the color of your skin determines whether you can buy a house, or get a bank loan or a job, we don’t have justice.
I mean sexual justice. I’ve got a daughter of 19. I don’t want her to be insulted by an inferior job or slow promotion -- just because she’s a woman -- not for my daughter and not for yours.
I mean legal justice -- white collar criminals with fancy lawyers get off scot free. I want their faces up in every post office -- along with car thieves and dope pushers.
We need a new commitment to “reunion” -- of neighborhoods and families. We must stop practices in housing, welfare, highway construction, which break up neighbors and families.
And I want reunion between government and the individual and the community. Only a governmental policy actively working for the small and the personal can turn this country away from the large and the anonymous; only a national commitment to the human scale can restore a sense of community. Government has to get out of tasks that individuals, families, and neighborhoods can do for themselves. But it must protect them so they can remain truly free and independent. We ought to learn more from the activities that you sponsor in Israel -- community centers, day care centers, day-night, homes -- efforts that speak of warmth and humanity.
We’ve learned that big government and big corporate bureaucracy. are no substitute for self-reliant individual effort. but we’ve learned also that the self-reliant individual and family can be reduced to myth if government while “getting off people’s backs” does not remain on their side!
I want a commitment to integrity in all our activities -- at home and abroad -- no more Watergates, no more secret wheat deals, no more CIA murder plans.
My fifth commitment is interdependence. We can’t separate domestic and foreign affairs anymore. Each time we go to the gas station, we know that if we don’t have a common world existence, we’ll never have a secure existence and maybe no existence at all.
Seeking dominion, we have meddled too much abroad. Just as we have interfered too deeply in the lives of our citizens. Cold War fears which led to fear of change in some places escalated until we opposed change in all places. As the descendants of the men who fired the shot heard round the world, we must stop acting like the redcoats of the 20th century. When our arms and aid go to reactionary tyrants abroad, when our food is used for politics instead of hunger, when we move toward closer relations with the racist regimes in Southern Africa, when the CIA lawlessly subverts governments abroad, when our military and intelligence establishments use dangerous drugs in unethical experiments at home -- it’s no wonder that foreigners, once our friends, conclude that our values have collapsed.
Leadership in America can no longer be left to those who have had the opportunity to lead -- and failed! Ideas, and experience in making them work, are far more important than political pedigree -- and political debts. Experience in winning elections doesn’t mean an ability to govern!
We’ve had lots of elected officials who have proved unable to govern. Instead of mere politicians we need proven executives in the public service.
But I do not intend to let skepticism about government destroy my belief in people... in what enlightened human action can achieve. I am convinced that people’s cynicism about politicians rises and falls with the politicians’ cynicism about people.
Well, I am no cynic. And I want to do as much listening as talking, as much questioning as answering. It’s time the president listened…not to technocrats and to closeted advisors, not the roar of the crowd, but to the concerns of people. The American people are the greatest teachers of all.
What we need is a rallying together, a mutual struggle, but not just a commitment to a candidate. The real commitment we need is the commitment to one another.
