Senator KENNEDY. My friend and colleague in
the Senate, Ted Moss, Congressman King, Senator McGee of Wyoming, your
next Governor of Utah, Governor-to-be Barlocker [applause], your next Congressman-to-be
Blaine Peterson [applause], Mrs. Price, distinguished guests, ladies and
gentlemen, I want to express my appreciation to all of you for your kindness
and generosity to the Democratic Party and its candidates. I am deeply
touched - not as deeply touched as you have been by coming to this dinner,
but nevertheless it is a sentimental occasion. [Laughter.]
I wish there were some other way to have a
party run, but there is no substitute than to call on our friends. I was
in New York last week. We were trying to raise some support for the party
and President Truman told me that in 1948 his train was pulled off the
tracks three times because they could not get up the carfare to keep it
moving. [Laughter.] But they got it up finally and they won.
I think we are going to win and we are grateful
to you for your help. [Applause.] In the last 2 days, we have traveled
from Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and
tonight Utah, and we leave later tonight for Chicago. I don't think we
have increased the wisdom, probably, of any of the audiences that have
listened, but, nevertheless, I do feel that here in the Western United
States there is a great recognition of what we are talking about, and that
is our great interest in seeing these States and our country strong. We
have engaged in some debate in recent weeks. We have been criticized because
the argument has been made that we are downgrading the United States. We
don't downgrade the United States. We have faith in the United States.
We feel it can do better and we feel it must do better if it is going to
maintain its own freedom and the freedom of those who look to us for leadership.
I think this is an important election. In
a sense, of course, every election is important. But I do think the election
of 1960 is particularly important, because what we are and what we do,
and the kind of leadership which we give, can make a decisive difference
not only to our own security, but to those who look to us for friendship
and help. We have serious problems that are facing us in the sixties in
the United States, but far more serious problems facing us around the world.
My chief disagreement with the Republicans in the field of foreign policy
has been that they have not been able to pierce the veil of the future,
to make a judgment as to what problems are coming, and then to offer solutions.
I was impressed and admired the speech that
the President of the United States made at the United Nations, and I have
been impressed by the effort that has been made in recent months to provide
a more effective policy toward Latin America. But in the case of both Africa
and Latin America, the hour is late, the world is moving fast, our role
and our position have changed, and I do think it is vitally important in
those areas and in other areas that we precede events; that we do not move
after them. In other words, I do not like to see the United States offer
assistance to Latin America as a result of difficulties in Cuba. I would
like to see us offer the hand of friendship to Latin America because of
a traditional conviction that the United States cannot maintain its freedom
unless Latin America is a strong and viable and growing hemisphere.
[Applause.]
The same is true of Africa. I am chairman
of the Subcommittee on Africa of the Foreign Relations Committee. We have
given comparatively few scholarships to students who come over from Africa
each year, less than 200 for the whole continent. If there is any great
need, far exceeding any great shortage, it is in educated men and women
who can maintain a free society. You are familiar with what
has happened in the Congo. But what is happening in the Congo is happening
in every country in Africa. Called on to maintain their freedom,
there are eight new countries in Africa in the last 2 months. The United
States does not have yet an ambassador in any of them. Four of them are
represented by one man, a chargé d'affaires who is a former consul.
Four of them have no representatives of the United States, even though
they have been independent for the last 2 months.
The world is moving and changing and I do
not think we have demonstrated an ability to keep up with it. Two hundred
scholarships for all of Africa, and yet when the crisis began in Africa
as a result of the Belgians leaving, we suddenly offered 300 scholarships
to the Congo alone. Couldn't it have been possible for us to make a determination
that freedom was moving through Africa as it is through the rest of the
world, that self-government was going to eventually come, and that the
United States should hold out the hand of friendship to these people so
that they could be prepared to maintain their freedom? What is true of
Africa, Latin America, and Asia, I think has been true of the conduct of
our foreign policy in the last 8 years. I think there is a basic difference
between us. It is that the domestic policies which great Democratic Presidents
have offered in this century have had their logical application in successful
foreign policy. Woodrow Wilson's new freedom had its logical application
in the 14 points. Franklin Roosevelt's good neighbor policy was the foreign
partner of his domestic policy, the New Deal, and Harry Truman's Fair Deal
had its application in foreign policy in point 4 and the Marshall plan
and NATO and the Truman doctrine. If a country is moving ahead here at
home, if it is solving its own problems, if it has been able to attract
people of imagination and vigor to the Government, then I think its foreign
policy is also on the move, because the same problems that face us here
at home face us in different forms abroad. The ability to predict with
some degree of certainty the problems that are just over the horizon, that
will be upon us 6 months from now or a year from now. I think through its
history, though there have been exceptions through its history, this is
a contribution which the Democratic Party has made, from the time of Jefferson,
through Jackson's administration, through that of Grover Cleveland, through
Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson's
candidacy, I think the Democrats have looked to the future. They have spoken
not for private interests but for the general good.
I think we are called on, I hope, for further
service in the coming days. This is not just a contest between Mr. Nixon
and myself. It is a contest between two parties. It is a contest between
your U.S. Senator, Ted Moss, and Senators who do not share his progressive
views. It is a contest between the Members of the House, Dave King and
the things he stands for, and the things which the Republican Party has
stood for. It is a contest between our intellectual vitality and curiosity
and a point of view which I think has dominated the thinking of this administration
for too many years in both domestic and foreign policy. We think the best
of this country and we want to do the best for it. We talk about a lack
of leadership only because we know that this
country has unbounded energy and a desire to be of service.
So I come tonight as the candidate for the
Democratic Party, asking your help in this State, in this campaign. Ted
Moss and Dave King has shown what can be done. The primary in this State
was most encouraging. I don't give any stakes to Mr. Nixon in this campaign.
They are all going to be fought over, and I think that Utah, which played
a great role in the convention last July, which was most helpful and generous
to me in nominating me, I think that this contest may be close enough so
as goes Utah, so goes the Nation, and if that is so we want to have it
go in the right direction. Thank you. [Applause.]
I suppose campaigns are really like parades;
the music and a lot of confetti and dust and then the candidates pass and
move on to another State. We are leaving you here, so the contest is really
in your hands in this State. Six weeks to go. I hope that it is possible
for us to try to communicate our desire to serve, our strong faith in this
country, our feeling on domestic policy and foreign policy; we can do better,
our feeling that the greatest days of this country are still ahead, and
that though we move through a difficult future, we are identified with
the best of causes.
My optimism for the future for the country
and for the United States and the cause of freedom really goes to our experiences
of the last few years in Eastern Europe, in Asia, and Africa. If there
is any lesson which the last 10 years has shown to me, and it is a lesson
that I have been particularly interested in in Algeria and Indochina, it
is that the strongest force in the world today is the desire to be independent.
This is going to cause us all kinds of trouble in the next 10 years. People
who used to support us will be neutral. But in the final analysis it is
our greatest source of strength. We desire to be independent; so do they.
They desire to be independent of us. They desire to be independent of Western
Europe, but they also desire to be independent of the Soviet Union and
the Chinese Communists. We do not desire to dominate them. They do.
Therefore, if we can associate ourselves with
this great tide, and it has been a source of regret to me since the end
of World War II that we have not associated ourselves with it, then I think
we can move with history and we can help form it and help shape it, and
by the year 2000 the tide will have turned against the communists and in
the direction of freedom. We, in other words, fit in with the basic movement
of our time. The Communists do not. Therefore, while there are a great
many clouds on the horizon, and there are a great many uncertainties about
Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and Eastern Europe, I think that we represent
the way to the future. If we associate with it, if we are identified with
it - and that is why I was particularly pleased with what the President
said yesterday - if we associate with it, if we become part of it, then
our security is assured and our leadership is assured. And I think that
is a contribution which the Democratic Party can make in the field of foreign
policy and the security of the United States. Thank you. [Standing
ovation.]