I have chosen this forum and this time to make a very important announcement – I will not under any conditions or circumstances be a candidate in 1960 – of the Milwaukee Press Club.
The Press Club members, on the other hand, told me that my acceptance of their invitation would insure me the delegation from this state. It reminded of when Speaker Joe Cannon half a century ago was told by the AMPA that, in exchange for his opposition to the newsprint tariff, the publishers would deliver him the Presidency. And old Speaker Cannon removed his cigar and replied: "You know, 2,000 years ago or so, another fellow was tempted like this. And the tempter led him up on the highest mountain top; and showed him all the kingdom of the world, and all the valleys of milk and honey – and he said 'If you will fall down and worship me, all of this will I give you' …But the truth of the matter is," Speaker Cannon went on, "he didn't own one dam inch of it – and neither do you."
But in Wisconsin it is different, the press here is all-powerful. I remember my first visit here only 20 months ago. I was interviewed by the press and said this Republican state should have two-party government. I had no idea this message would have such – and so soon. Now Pat Lucey is begging me to keep quiet about two-party government in Wisconsin.
But I do hope to maintain these good relations with the Press and particularly the members of the Milwaukee Press Club. I will say this, as a preface to some off-the-record comments: no member of the National Press Club in Washington has ever violated a confidence with me. Never. This may be due in part to the fact that I have never confided in them.
But it is possible that I will be seeing you good, fine, wonderful Wisconsin people again in the next 12 months. There may be quite a few Democratic candidates coming in here, in fact – this state is going to look like a college campus telephone booth.
You'll probably have to see us all on television, too. Now some of the TV wrestling fans say that Senator Humphrey has an advantage – or at least a half-Nelson on the state. That may be – but as for me, I love Lucey.
As for members of the Party, I'm told that some Wisconsin Democrats favor Humphrey – some favor Kennedy – and some are neutral. They're the ones who aren't sure who's going to win.
Actually I've always felt very indebted to the Democrats of Wisconsin – particularly their delegation to the 1956 Convention. If I had been successful in obtaining their votes for the Vice Presidential nomination, I might have won that race with Senator Kefauver – and my political career would now be over.
Of course, the Democrats have many outstanding candidates – some of them more out than standing. We all have our handicaps – some are not well enough known – some are too well known.
Several of them are Senators. The AP conducted a survey asking each Senator to list his choice for the Presidency – and 98 Senators each received one vote.
Missouri is supporting Symington, complaining that they haven't had a President since Truman – but then, some people say, neither has the country.
One possible ticket is Lyndon Johnson and Bill Proxmire – that way the people could hear a real debate without ever tuning in on the Republicans.
Actually I don't think Senator Johnson is in the race for the Presidency – (why should he take a demotion?) (The Constitution prohibits him from seeking a third term.)
But some people say that the Proxmire-Johnson dispute has split our party right down the middle – and that gives us more unity than we've had in 20 years.
Senator Proxmire has moved his Washington office, you know – from Unter den Lyndon to Independence Avenue. I understand he's going to start calling his weekly television report "Maverick."
I was talking with both Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey in the Senate Cloakroom only yesterday, before coming out here, and telling them of a strange dream I had. I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head and said: "John Kennedy, I hereby appoint you President of the United states." Hubert Humphrey said: "That's strange, Jack, because i, too, had a similar dream last night, in which the Lord anointed m and declared me, Hubert Humphrey, President of the United States." And Lyndon Johnson said: "That's very interesting, gentlemen; because I, too, had a similar dream last night – and I don't remember anointing either one of you!"
Of course, Senator Humphrey has been doing very well since he returned from Moscow and appeared on "I've Got a Secret".
I tried to get Khrushchev to denounce me on equal time – but he wouldn't do it. That shows you how hard it is to do business with the Russians.
I do hear, however, that I've gained on Hubert in popularity among the Wisconsin dairy farmers – ever since Eleanor Roosevelt started those commercials for oleomargarine.
But whatever problem we Democrats have, just look at the Republicans. Their National Chairman Meade Alcorn quit when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted. He didn't want to win Maine and Vermont next year, and still be the first Chairman ever to lose 48 states.
But he's one Republican smart enough to quit when he's behind.
He also maintains his record of being ahead of his Party – quitting the national scene one jump ahead of the rest of them.
But it seems to me what the Repbulicans need is not so much another leader as a few more followers.
Senator Goldwater complains that Senator Morton won't be a full-time Republican Chairman. That strikes me as an advantage – he could only lose half as many elections.
Meanwhile Mr. Nixon was busy today at Griffith Stadium throwing out the first ball. Some Democrats are sure it was a sinker – all I know is he didn't use his left-wing.
My next speech back East, as a matter of fact, is delivering the first of the Richard M. Nixon Memorial lectures – a series sponsored, I believe by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Actually Mr. Nixon did very well last fall in what he called an "all-out" campaign in California. He put both Knight out and Knowland out.
And there's always one election he can win out there, whatever happens – as leader of the beat generation.
The Republicans, of course, are trying to make political hay out of Democratic Congressmen who hire their relatives. But doesn't this prove these members aren't reckless spenders? At least they keep it all within the family.
And what if these sons or daughters are still going to school – don't we believe in Federal aid to education?
But I suppose this kind of disagreement is inevitable in politics. Why is it, you may ask, politicians can't get along like newspapers do – the Journal and the Sentinel, for example, or the Capital Times and the State Journal?.
But I suppose every politician knows who the ugly American is – it is his political opponent.
Out here, you have such picturesque names in order to attract people into the Party – the Madison ring and the Milwaukee gang.
But I am disturbed to hear that Governor Nelson and Senator Proxmire have their differences – and I certainly hope they agree to bury the hatchet – just so they bury it is Hubert and not me.
But this can all be summarized by a slight variation of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" – when he said: "If you can keep your office when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you, then you are a politician, my son."
We have been speaking lightly here tonight about our political differences and disagreements. We have left no doubt that our parties and our politicians and our newspapers are not always in agreement with each other. There are some who would conceal these divisions – there are many who deplore them. For unity had become a popular goal of our times. Last week the NATO Council echoed the plea of Mr. MacMillan and Mr. Eisenhower for Western unity. Our nation’s leaders join in calling for national unity. Our party leaders repeatedly call for party unity. But it would be a tragedy, it seems to me, if in our quest for unity we chose the lowest common denominator of agreement in preference to a program of high enterprise in noble causes.
For we in this country have always placed our trust and respect in the people. We believe in proving our credentials and our principles in the open competition of ideas. We prefer sturdy dissent to timorous unity. So let the debate go on – and may the best ideas prevail. For what we need now in this nation, more than atomic power, or airpower, or financial, industrial or even manpower, is brainpower. The dinosaur was bigger and stronger than anyone else – he may have been more pious – but he was also dumber. And look what happened to him.
I do not confuse brainpower with word power. No age has ever been more prolific of words. Some people are said to have an instinct for the jugular. Official Washington today has an instinct for the windpipe.
But words are not enough. Missiles are not enough. Atoms are not enough. All of these may help us gain time to find a solution – but they are not a solution themselves.
What we need most of all is a constant flow of new ideas – ideas on how to break the deadlocks in Germany and the Middle East, the impasse in Algeria, the stalemate on disarmament – ideas on new defensive and deterrent strength and strategy. And we cannot obtain new ideas until we have a Government and a nation and a press and a public opinion which represent new ideas and respect the people who have them. Our country has surmounted great crises in the past, not because of our wealth, but because of our rhetoric, not because we had longer cars and whiter iceboxes and bigger television screens than anyone else, but because our ideas were more compelling and more penetrating and more wise and enduring.
A tired nation, said David Lloyd George, is always a Tory nation. And the United States today cannot afford to be either tired or Tory. For however difficult, however discouraging, however sensitive these issues must be – they must be faced. And I hope that you who represent the press and we who represent the public will always be willing to face them.
Let us reaffirm our belief in debating with dignity and differing with respect – a debate that is courteous but candid, friendly but frank, incisive without becoming inflammatory, constructive without sinking into mere caution.
If we are to live up to our national promise and live up to our national destiny, then we must forever remember this: If we are able to be the land of the free, then we must also be the home of the brave.
For the next year – the next decade – in all likelihood the next generation will require more bravery and more wisdom on our part than any period in our history. We will be face to face, in every day, in every part of our lives and times, with the real issue of our age – the issue of survival.
The hard, tough question for the next decade – for this or any other group of Americans – is whether any free society – with its freedom of choice – its breadth of opportunity – its range of alternatives – can meet the single-minded advance of the Communist system.
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 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 far side of space and the inside of men’s minds? We and the Russians now have the power to destroy with one blow one-quarter of the earth’s population – a feat not accomplished since Cain slew Abel.
For the Russian peasant has looked up from his hoe to fling Sputnik into outer space – opening not a new frontier of hope for all mankind, but a new and somber frontier of fear. We cannot hope to escape a prolonged and powerful competition with Soviet power – a competition which demands that we act from enlightened impulses but never act impulsively.
Can we meet this test of survival and still maintain this tradition of dissent? I think we can. It is the enduring faith of the American tradition that there is no real conflict between freedom and security – between liberty and abundance. Through centuries of crises, the American tradition has demonstrated, on the contrary, that freedom is the ally of security – and that liberty is the architect of abundance.
Too often, those of us who believe strongly in a free press and free speech and a free exchange of ideas are heard to express our concern over the erosion of those rights in times of clear and present danger. We insist, with impressive documentation from historical and literary sources, that liberty must be placed above security – that freedom comes before survival. But I am willing to predict that, as long as we couch the issue in those terms, we will lose that debate. Most of the people and most of their representatives will choose security and survival first, I am afraid, the Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding.
What we should be saying, it seems to me, is that there is no such conflict and no such choice to make. Freedom and security are but opposite sides of the same coin – and the free expression of ideas is not more expendable but far more essential in a period of challenge and crisis. I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant. If our people are to choose between political parties, between a balanced budget and a more adequate defense, between more bombs or fewer tests – if we are to know how we really stand in the eyes of the world, and in terms of our comparative strength – then we need to know all the available facts.
We need to hear all the relevant views on these subjects from whatever source. We need to receive reports from all parts of the world; and to know the facts in all agencies of the Government. We need to be able to go everywhere we can get in, to see things for ourselves. We need to keep our doors open to visitors from around the world. Above all, we must keep our minds open to criticism and to new ideas – to dissent and alternatives – to reconsideration and reflection.
Only in this way can we as a self-governing people choose wisely and thoughtfully in our task of self-government. And it is only in this way that we can demonstrate once again that freedom is the handmaiden of security – and that the truth will make us free.
The Communists, on the other hand, have no such inner strength – and this is one of our advantages. When a Russian novelist questions some of the basic tenets of Soviet society, his name is reviled and his book is banned. Foreign ideas are resisted like a plague, not considered on their merits. The world as it is reported in the Soviet press must correspond with the world as it is viewed through the eyes of the party. No critic of the regime, no independent thinker, is given a passport to travel. No citizen advanced in the Communist community without rigid adherence to party dogma. All this, in the long run, can only lead to weakness.
I want to make sure that never happens in this country. I want to make sure we know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty. Let us not be afraid of debate or dissent – let us not avoid criticism or non-conformity – let us encourage it. For if we should ever abandon these basic American traditions in the name of fighting Communism, what would it profit us to win the whole world when we would have lost our own soul?
But to keep that faith alive – to keep that message meaningful at a time of doubt and despair and disunity – will require more thought and more effort on your part in the press – and on our part in government – than ever before. It will require 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 crowd nor derided it – but seek sober counsel for it – and ourselves."
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 902, "Milwaukee Gridiron dinner, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 9 April 1959." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.