We meet today in an atmosphere of victory. We cannot help but exult as the prospects for November look brighter and brighter. In the Senate, for example, I do not believe the Democrats can lose a single seat – and I believe our chances are excellent to pick up a dozen or more – from Maine to California.
But let us not take victory for granted. I do not say that it will be easy. It will come to us only if we deserve it.
We have to offer more than the old slogans and policies of the past. We have to offer more than charges we cannot prove or promises we cannot fulfill.
We must prove our capacity for responsible leadership. We must demonstrate competence for tackling the difficult issues of our times.
And we will. For courageous, responsible leadership has been in the great moments of our history the trademark of the Democratic Party.
I was sharply reminded of this Democratic tradition six weeks ago. 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 very deeply moved, 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. Whether or not one always agreed with his views and decisions, there was never any doubt about the vigor of his action in the face of crisis – not only the personal crisis of his paralysis, but the crisis of a country in economic chaos, the crisis of world at war, and all the rest.
We urgently need those qualities in Washington today. For this nation now enters a period of crisis of greater proportions 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. The soviets have out-shown us in scientific achievement. They have out-maneuvered 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.
Here at home, where they promised prosperity to match their peace, the economic situation is also approaching the crisis stage. More than five million workers are unemployed. Millions of others are working only a few days a week. Millions more are leaving the farm. In June, high school and college graduates will be walking the streets looking for work.
The question is: What are we going to do about it? The President has offered a variety of statements and proposals. But implementing and even interpreting those statements and proposals is a difficult task. "I am always filled with alarm," T. S. Eliot once said, "when I read a public statement by anyone in authority – the sense of which I fail utterly to grasp." Well, I am alarmed. I tried to understand these Presidential messages and news conference statements. But they sounded like the exhortation from King Lear that goes:
"I will do such things –
What they are yet I know not –
But they shall be
The terrors of the earth."
And I think the President would have added:
"And they shall be without cost to the taxpayer."
In short, the Administration’s program to meet the recession has lacked a certain clarity and vigor. When all has been said and done, much has been said.
Exactly twenty-five years ago this month the nation waited for the kind of leadership we need today. Exactly twenty-five years ago this month President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt boarded the train for Washington. He was figuratively watched, with hope and fear, by millions of unemployed workers – dispossessed farmers – panicky bankers – and pessimistic businessmen. The nation was in a state of collapse. His predecessor insisted that everything that could be done had been done – that "the major difficulty is in the state of public mind" – that the primary need was for "confidence" – and that the new President-elect could best secure this through balancing the budget and abandoning his schemes for public works and mortgage guarantees.
Twenty-five years ago tonight Franklin Roosevelt faced a crisis of paralyzing proportions. Twenty-five years ago tomorrow he boarded that B & O train with the weight of an anxious nation on his shoulders. As President, he travelled alone. The responsibility, the decisions, the opportunity were his alone.
But Franklin Roosevelt brought down to Washington with him something more than confidence. He brought imagination and ideas. He brought leadership – articulate, thoughtful, visionary, resourceful leadership.
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."
"The Presidency," FDR had told a reporter the previous year, "is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. Without leadership, alert and sensitive to change, we are bogged up or lose our way, as we have lost it in the past decade"
What we need in America today is not so much the confidence in the economy we keep hearing about – but confidence in our leadership. We want "leadership alert and sensitive," in Roosevelt’s words, to the harsh changes occurring in the economy. That is necessarily the role of the Chief Executive in modern America. That is the role fulfilled by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. That role is not being fulfilled today.
We are told instead to wait for the upturn in March. We have waited – March has arrived – and our confidence is 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’s … 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 assisting our unemployed workers and our labor surplus areas.
We must restore the vitality of our anti-recession weapons, now rusting from neglect and depreciation – minimum wages, social security, jobless insurance.
We must restore the purchasing power of our hard-pressed small farmers and small businessmen.
We must build the public works our nation needs – schools, homes, hospitals, reclamation projects, power dams, urban renewal.
We must give help where help is needed – in our allocations of defense contracts, in our tax and fiscal policies, in our programs of aid to agriculture and business.
We must raise the nation’s standard of living instead of the cost of living – for the aged and the handicapped, for the migrant farm worker, for the unorganized and the underpaid and the underprivileged – and we must give them their full and equal opportunity regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin.
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.
If we turn our attention to the dangers we face abroad, the theme once again is our crying need for leadership, for fresh ideas and action.
Interestingly enough, the challenge we face abroad is also primarily economic in nature – if we talk in terms of the most dangerous threat to our position. One hundred years ago great Constitutional lawyers and issues dominated the Senate, in both domestic and foreign affairs: slavery, secession, nullification, treaties with Canada, the acquisition of new territory and all the rest. Now, in foreign as well as domestic affairs, we face complex economic issues.
Let us consider the economic challenge abroad. The economic decline, the political chaos and the ideological disillusionment upon which Communism breeds and spreads are all on the increase. 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%. To feed each day’s increase in world population requires that we find 150 square miles of new arable land every day. To feed one year’s gain alone would require a new farm as large as the state of Illinois.
As a result, in the midst of this age of prosperity and abundance, the standard of living for much of the world is actually declining. In the world community of nations, the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. Per capita income in the United States may have climbed to some $2,000 a year for every man, woman and child – but it is $110 a year in Egypt, $54 in India and $25 a year in Libya. The world may be enjoying more prosperity than ever before – but strange as it may seem, it has also never seen so much poverty in all its history.
Into the disorder and distress caused by these trends march Messrs. Khrushchev and company. They arrive able to conclude arrangements for foreign aid and trade without respecting the wishes of Congressional Committees, consumers, and taxpayers. They have purchased commodities they did not need from wavering nations. They have sold expensive equipment at a loss to an uncommitted state. They have purchased raw materials at a level far above the world price from an under-developed nation. And they have provided loans to potential allies at a rate of interest well below the world bank and other normal levels.
How do we meet this challenge? It seems to me the following are of prime importance:
First, we should shift the balance of this year’s foreign aid program from military to economic aid. Military arms and alliances offer few, if any, solutions to the problems of economic stagnation. On the contrary, they may only throw things further out of balance. Military assistance may sometimes be necessary. But we should avoid making this the pivot of action whenever possible. The arms race in the Middle East, the festering lesion between India and Pakistan, the painful paralysis in the North Africa all illustrate the dangers of equating friendship with military alliances or "voting the Western ticket."
Secondly, in areas where military assistance is necessary over the long pull, it might serve a second purpose – local capital development. A strong tradition within our own Army is that of engineering. Traditionally only the top graduates of West Point have been eligible for the Corps of Engineers. Could not our military assistance programs induce somewhat the same bent among local troops in underdeveloped nations? In Laos, for example, village development has been taken over by the military. If we could get more local soldiers to work on irrigation works, housing, bridges – somewhat like our own CCC in the 1930’s – then our large commitment in military aid might harvest some more lasting and constructive benefit.
Third, in economic assistance, we must expand the small beginnings made last year in establishing the International Development Fund. This revolving fund recognizes the longer cycle of economic development. It recognizes the need for more rational and more flexible planning. It can get us away from the fruitless project-by-project, year-by-year, country-by-country approach which has mostly governed our aid. Its capitalization must be increased; its life must be extended on a long-term basis. This is the most flexible tool in our entire foreign aid program. Yet we have given it too few funds, too short a lease, and too little support.
Fourth to cite a specific example, we must give greater aid to India. That stricken nation’s appeal for help cannot receive only the half-hearted response with which it has been greeted thus far. We have here an extraordinary opportunity to match systems with the Soviet Union on favorable terms – to show our genuine concern for economic development – and to push India ahead in its historic competition with China.
India is the most important of all uncommitted states. India is the showcase of the democratic "experiment" in Asia. India is a world power with a world audience. It has a better prospect than any of its neighbors for making a real attack on poverty and economic stagnation. Today its democratic future is delicately and dangerously poised. It would be catastrophic if its leadership were now humiliated in its quest for western assistance. It would be catastrophic if India should join China – with a population of nearly a billion between them – in the Communist camp
Fifth, our economic aid to the world’s newest nations must not be restricted by our Western alliances – and I refer specifically to Tunisia. Tunisia’s Bourguiba is a man who has earnestly sought to merge the future of North Africa with that of the West. He has persistently rejected large Soviet offers of economic and military assistance. But 40 percent of the Tunisian labor force is unemployed. The government faces a budgetary gap of close to $100 million. Bourguiba sees the French attacking his border villages with American planes. He sees American aid going to those Mid-East countries that hover between the United States and the USSR. But he – the first Mid-East leader to endorse the Eisenhower Doctrine – cannot obtain even $15 million a year in American assistance. We are leaving him no alternative but to turn to Cairo or even Moscow for aid.
But the situation in North Africa is not merely an economic problem. Whatever the legal and political niceties may be, it has assumed international proportions. The war in Algeria is sapping France economically. It is implicating our own country more deeply every day – not only because our arms are used to suppress rebels, but also because our funds make it possible for the French to continue. Western relations with Tunisia and Morocco cannot help but deteriorate further under this strain.
It is easy to say that this is none of our affair – but it is no longer safe or right or accurate to do so. This inflamed controversy must be treated, not choked, within NATO or the UN. To be sure, this may cause some discomfort to our leaders. It may bring some hostility from our friends. But a true partnership cannot imply that each ally will support every policy of every member – wherever it leads, anywhere in the world.
Sixth, and finally, let us be prepared to negotiate with the Russians – at the Summit or anywhere else. If we refuse to negotiate we damage our prestige in those Western European and other nations whose favor we need for the location of our missile bases. If we refuse to negotiate, we are labeled war-mongers in the homelands of the uncommitted peoples. If we refuse to negotiate, other nations will reach the stage of nuclear powers – endangering our existence and possibly poisoning the air we breathe.
It is not true that we have nothing to discuss. Such a position may have been justifiable when we held all the cards – when we were the paramount power in arms, aid, trade, and appeal to the underdeveloped world. But now the game is more even.
We should be willing, certainly, to reopen disarmament talks, without being too rigid about our single package proposal. Our inspection proposals may need to be recast in light of missile and satellite developments.
We should be willing, as a further example, to discuss the Middle East. We cannot pretend that the Soviet Union does not exist there or that its influences are not being felt. No other area stands more in need of a real disarmament effort. The mutual advantages for gradual demilitarization – rather than an explosive arms race – are unequalled. Already we have used the area for a pilot test of the United Nations Emergency Force; and this might well be supplemented by a similar international device to regulate arms traffic.
These are some of my thoughts on how to meet the global challenge we face, and the economic crisis here at home. But the need is for action, not words, nor complacency, nor alarm. There is no doubt about our agenda – there is no doubt about its urgency. In the words of the first Queen Elizabeth: "Of them to whom much is committed, much is required." The Democratic Party governs both Houses of Congress; it has a great wealth of talent, a great heritage of leadership. There can be no doubt that to us much is committed. There can be no doubt that of us much is required.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 900, "Women's Democratic Club Luncheon, Washington, D.C., 13 March 1958." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.