Remarks by Senator John F. Kennedy, Democratic Dinner, Casper, Wyoming, June 14, 1958, are relevant today.
It is a great privilege for me to have this opportunity to address the Democrats of Wyoming who are assembled here in Casper today. I say it is a privilege because of the importance of this occasion – because of the importance of Wyoming in the 1958 elections.
Democrats across the country are watching Wyoming – watching and hoping that this is the year for a great Democratic victory in this state.
Today, the Democrats control the Senate by one vote. We are going to pick up at least 10 more seats in November – and we are counting on one of those coming from Wyoming, and you can do a similar job in the House of Representatives.
The importance of increasing our margin in both Houses of Congress is not simply a matter of party pride. It is also a matter of party responsibility. To carry out the platform and program of your party – to take effective measures against a recession – to block undesirable Presidential appointments and override arbitrary Presidential vetoes – to do all of this and more, we cannot rely upon a margin of one or two votes. A few will not always vote with their party on particular issues. Consequently, we are able to secure passage today of only those measures which can pick up the support of a few Republicans – and those measures must of necessity be watered down to secure that broad base of support. If Wyoming can send us another Democratic senator – if we can pick up a dozen or more new Senate seats in November and a comparable gain in the House – the Democratic Party will be able to fulfill its role of progressive, effective leadership and its responsibilities to the people who look to us for that leadership.
But the election of two Democratic senators is not only important in the realm of national affairs – it is also, it seems to me, of the utmost importance to you here in Wyoming.
I would not attempt to tell the voters of another state their business. But it seems to me that Wyoming – this year in particular – would want to send a Democratic senator back to Washington.
The primary reason is that Wyoming will want to share in the Democratic sweep of 1958. There can be no doubt about it – victory is in the air – the handwriting is on the wall – this is going to be the greatest Democratic year since 1936.
In short, the Congressional policies that shape the future of this state will be shaped largely in the councils of the Democratic Party. Wyoming is a long way from Washington. You do not want the fate of your mines, your ranches, your mills, and all your other problems to be decided by those unfamiliar with your needs. You have one strong Democratic voice now – you want to have another. That is one reason I am confident that Wyoming will see the wisdom of sending another outstanding Democratic senator back to Washington, to join Joe O’Mahoney, and a Democrat to the House of Representatives.
But there is more to the need for a Democratic victory than this. The citizens of Wyoming know the meaning of economic crisis – and as citizens of the United States, they know the meaning of international crisis. I would remind them – I hope you will remind them – of one great historical truth – that in the most critical periods of our nation’s history, the Democratic Party has come through with competent, courageous, responsible leadership.
I was sharply reminded of this Democratic tradition on another Saturday night earlier this year. I was in New York to see the opening of a play about Franklin Roosevelt called “Sunrise at Campobello.”
It is not a play about politics. It is not about the Presidency or the Democratic Party. It is a play about the triumph of one man and his family over disaster – the disaster of physical illness.
But I thought, as I left the theatre, that this play portrays more than this stirring personal triumph. It also brought to mind all the great qualities of leadership in times of crisis for which FDR was famous – not only the personal crisis of his paralysis, but the crisis of a chaotic economy, of a world at war, and all the rest.
We urgently need real leadership again in Washington today. For this nation now enters a period of crisis of greater proportion than any we have ever endured. We are confronted with a deepening crisis in world affairs, in our relations with our allies, in our prestige with the uncommitted nations, in our military, scientific, political, and economic race with the Soviets. The Soviets have outshown [sic]us in scientific achievement. They have outmaneuvered us in trade and aid. They have outstripped us in the race for ultimate weapons and outer space. The Middle East, North Africa, Indonesia, Cyprus, Latin America – every part of the world is in flames or in ferment. The Republicans in 1956 may have cried “Peace, peace” – but there is no peace – no stable peace in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, in North Africa and elsewhere. And what the Republicans did not tell us was that our position in the world – our security – our very hopes for survival could be drastically diminished without a single shot being fired.
We will only be deceiving ourselves if we attribute all of our troubles around the world to Communist agitators. There are Communists in Latin America, to be sure – but they are successful because they exploit our government’s neglect of our former good neighbors. There are provocateurs in Lebanon and Algeria, to be sure – but their strength results from the massive decline of our prestige in North Africa and the Middle East.
These crises are not new. The fires have been smouldering for years in Latin America, North Africa, the Middle East, and all over the world. They have cried out for action, for decision, for leadership, but there has been no leadership, there has been no decision – only drift and postponement, vacillation and indecision.
I do not pretend to say that these were all easy decisions. They will require some new burdens, some unpopular actions, some breaks with the traditional policies of the past. But I trust that the Democratic Party, when it assumes responsibility, will not hesitate to act, whatever the sacrifice required.
Here at home, where they promised prosperity to match their peace, the economic situation also remains stagnant. Some five million workers are unemployed. Millions of others are working only a few days a week. This month, hundreds of thousands of college and high school graduates will be walking the streets looking for work. And yet the cost of living continues to break all records.
Indeed, since the end of World War II, we have never had so deep a recession – we have never had so high an inflation – and we have never had so much recession and so much inflation at the very same time.
We may still prevent continuing in a long period of economic inactivity – but only if we can obtain effective, imaginary [sic], tireless leadership. That kind of leadership is sorely lacking in this administration.
We need something more in the way of leadership than those who talk blithely of a “breather” in the economy … or those who say everything will get better if we wait until the end of the year … or those who say reassuringly with Vice President Nixon: “There is nothing wrong with the economy that a good dose of confidence won’t cure,” and “It’s time to quit running America down.” Well, my friends – we of the Democratic Party say it’s time to start building America up.
Contrast, for example, Franklin Roosevelt’s vigorous attack on the depression in 1933 with the current Republican response to the slump. In 1933, the same kind of contrast was offered between the hesitant, moribund, outgoing Republican Administration and the new dynamic drive of the New Deal.
And as the Republicans packed to move out, Robert E. Sherwood contrasted the old and the new administrations in a brief, sardonic poem:
“Plodding feet
Tramp – tramp
The Grand Old Party’s
Breaking Camp.
Blare of bugles
Din – din
The New Deal is moving in.”
What we need in America today is not so much confidence in the economy, but confidence in our leadership.
We were told when the recession increased in January to wait for the upturn in March. We waited – March arrived – and our confidence was diminished further. We see no new ideas, no bold action, no “blare of bugles.” We see only “plodding feet … tramp, tramp” – and “the Grand Old Party … breaking camp.”
When an Administration lets fall the reins of leadership, they must be firmly held by the Congress – today a Democratic Congress. We must exercise that leadership.
We must pass measures effectively assisting our unemployed workers and our labor surplus areas.
We must restore the vitality of our anti-recession weapons – minimum wages, social security, jobless insurance.
We must restore the purchasing power of our consumers, and our small businessmen.
We must build the public works our nation needs – schools, homes, hospitals, urban renewal projects.
We must raise the nation’s standard of living instead of the cost of living – for the aged and the handicapped, for the unorganized and the underpaid and the underprivileged.
And above all, in the words of Justice Holmes, whether we sail with the wind or against the wind, let us set sail – and not drift or lie at anchor.
There is one problem of particular interest to your state, and in which I am especially interested, that cries out for imaginative, visionary leadership in Washington today. That is the problem of water.
There is not much concern about water in my state except to keep it from flooding us out. Though we have not kept pace with the West in the relative development of water power, we are accustomed to water itself in abundance. We have no serious shortages. We have no lack of streams. We see great reservoirs along our highways – we read of government warehouses already stacked with surplus foods. Why, then, many of my fellow Easterners will ask, do we concern ourselves about water and about more arable land?
The answer does not lie only in the needs of the West – water is a coming problem for all the nation. It affects the future of our economy, of our industrial potential, of our standard of living. It affects perhaps even more the future of the whole free world and our race with the Soviets.
It is quite true that water appears to be plentiful in many parts of the country today. But our estimated total withdrawal of fresh water every day totals some 1800 billion gallons – enough to cover the entire state of Massachusetts with one foot of water. Demand is way beyond supply especially here in the West – a supply which has not kept pace with the growth in our population and standard of living.
And the increase in our population is certain to strain existing water resources beyond capacity. I recall very clearly the Congressional debate in 1951 over our shipment of wheat to India. Drought and famine were plaguing that country teeming with more than 350 million people. I am certain that you recall the picture described to us at that time – a nation which lacked the soil and water resources to provide the necessities of life for its own growing population – a nation which had not conserved its water resources or fully developed its arable land, and which as a result faced a long period of pitiful living standards and economic stagnation. I hope we will continue to remember that picture in the years ahead – for the population of this country at the end of this century will approximately equal that of India in 1951. If today every man, woman and child in America needs an estimated 1700 gallons of water a day as his share of our domestic and commercial needs, where will we find the water for a nation of 350 million people?
Consider, also, the implications of the population growth abroad. The astounding explosive growth of the world’s population, expected to double in this century, is centered largely on those nations of the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America least able to support it. Mexico, for example, will double its population during the next twenty-three years, largely because it has decreased its death rate in the last decade by an astonishing 43%. Water is becoming more precious than gold in these underdeveloped, highly populated countries. To feed each day’s increase in world population requires that we find 150 square miles of new arable land every day.
The American economic system in 1958 is too intimately a part of a larger economic structure to permit an endless increase in the gap between our standard of living and that of other peoples. The world, it is said, cannot permanently remain half-slave and half-free, as it is today – but neither can the economy of the free world remain half rich and half poor.
We have based our foreign policy upon the objective of building strength and freedom in the non-Communist world – strength and freedom which can never flourish in nations shackled by a depressed standard of living and chronic economic crises.
The new nations of the world – Ghana, Tunisia, Indonesia, and other key areas – with new hopes and new aspirations and new governments, become quickly disillusioned, if not chaotic, when they find themselves saddled with the same economic problems and handicaps.
Water, in short, is without question one of the keys to our future security and survival, as well as to our well-being. I do not say there is any single answer or simple solution. But I do say we are not getting the kind of vision needed on this long-range problem from an administration which has consistently halted and hamstrung water development projects, restricted the progress of soil conservation, reclamation, and irrigation works, and opposed the initiative of the legislative branch in seeking ways of converting sea and other salt waters into usable fresh water. If we are to end the waste of our water resources, if we are to develop more fully the use of our available supply, if we are to pioneer in the conversion of the vast and virtually untapped supplies of the sea, if we are to build more dams, more pipelines, more projects large and small both at home and abroad – we cannot begin 20 or 30 or 50 years from now. We must begin today.
You here in the West know better than any of us the importance of water – you know the importance of obtaining imaginative, dynamic leadership on this as on so many other issues. I think the American people will demonstrate in November that they must turn to the Democratic Party to obtain that kind of leadership.
I do not pretend to say that the future will always be easy under a Democratic administration. There will be crises, there will be problems. But I say it is the Democratic Party that has the enthusiasm and the determination and the new ideas necessary to meet those problems.
We can build the schools and the hospitals and the homes and the dams that our nation needs. We can wage unrelenting war against drought and poverty and illiteracy and illness and economic insecurity.
We can build, through strength and justice and realistic leadership, a lasting peace.
The hard, tough question is whether a free society – with its freedom of choice – its breadth of opportunity – its range of alternatives – can meet the single-minded advance of the Communists.
Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure? That is the real question. Have we the nerve and the will? Can we carry through in an age where – as never before – our very survival is at stake – where we and the Russians have the power to destroy one-quarter of the earth’s population – a feat not accomplished since Cain slew Abel? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new break-throughs in weapons of destruction – but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the inside of the earth and the inside of men’s minds?
We travel today along a knife-edged path which requires leadership better equipped than any since Lincoln’s day to make clear to our people the vast spectrum of our challenges.
In the words of Woodrow Wilson: “We must neither run with the crowd nor deride it – but seek sober counsel for it – and for ourselves.”
—Candles
—Fellow Democrats: As we face a dark and uncertain future, we ask that you, too, bring candles to help illuminate the way.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 901, “Democratic dinner, Caspar, Wyoming, 14 June 1958.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
