Senator KENNEDY. Thank you, very much. Bernard
Boutin, Marie Devine, Mr. Mayor, Senator Muskie, Romeo Champagne, Joe Moyer,
Stuart Nims, our next Senator, Professor Hill, ladies and gentlemen, I
want to express on behalf of my wife and myself our appreciation to you.
This is really the beginning of this campaign. You cannot guess how glad
I am to leave the dust of Washington behind us and start in on this campaign
which will take us in the next 60 days to all parts of the United States.
I was anxious to come and start this campaign, however, in the State of
New Hampshire, where I was 6 months ago in 1 foot of snow beginning to
run for the nomination.
There is no doubt in my mind that the start
that we secured here in this State in the primary last March began the
road to the nomination in July. Therefore, I come again today and begin
this campaign in this month for the office of the Presidency of the United
States here in New Hampshire.
One by one the States of New England, which
30 years ago were all Republican - Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
then Maine - began to move into the Democratic column until now there stands
only two States, New Hampshire and Vermont, and they are going Democratic
in November.
New Hampshire will make a judgment on who
it should select for Governor, for Senator and for the Congress. But I
must say that I hope you secure as the representatives for you in Washington
and here, the men who sit with me on this platform. They are in every case
the kind of men that have brought victory to the Democratic Party in other
States. Ed Muskie is right, the Democratic Party is successful in New England
only so long as it presents for high office men of character and
responsibility, who have some understanding of the revolutionary and changing
times through which we move. I spoke in accepting the nomination in Los
Angeles of the new frontier that is coming into our country. I come here
today and speak in New Hampshire, one of the oldest sections of the United
States, a section of the United States that Bernard De Voto said 30 years
ago was a finished place. I talk in this State also of the new frontier.
I do not accept the idea at all that New England
is finished. I think in many ways that it is the youngest part of the United
States, and I think that it is possible, both in the State of New Hampshire
and in the Nation, to set a governmental climate which will permit us to
prosper. We don't have coal and iron and oil, but we have human talent.
We can clean our rivers, we can provide an atmosphere for business to move
ahead. We can reform our transportation system. We can protect our textile
and shoe industries. We can bring in new industries. We can perfect our
educational system to have the best trained people.
All these things can be done in partnership
of the State and the Government working together. I have spent 14 years
addressing myself to the same problem in Massachusetts that you face here
in the State of New Hampshire. But I have the greatest confidence. I think
the solution lies in recognizing the tremendous changes that are taking
place in this country and in this world, in grasping the future and not
letting the future pass us by, not permitting other countries and other
sections of this country to move ahead when we stand still.
The new frontier is in New Hampshire, just
as much as it is in Alaska, just as much as it is in any section of the
world.
I ask your support in this campaign. I ask
your support here in the State of New Hampshire. I think we can win this
election, and I think it is proper to start here in New Hampshire.
Thank you.