October 21, 1952
Mr. Mayor, distinguished candidates of the Democratic Party, ladies and gentlemen:
I am always glad to be in Philadelphia. I started my 1948 campaign here in your Convention Hall, when I told you I was going to bring that Republican 80th Congress back to Washington for a special session, and ask them to live up to their campaign platform promises. I called them back. They did nothing. They showed the whole country they didn't mean what they had put in their platform. And the Democrats won the election.
Now, today, I want to talk to you about some of the campaign promises of the Republicans in this campaign of 1952.
But before I get into that, I want to congratulate you people of Philadelphia.
Since 1948 you have had a change of administration in your city government. You have gone Democratic, you swept out of office the corrupt old Republican gang that held back your city for so long.
I hope you will keep up the good work this year and send a solid slate of good Democrats to represent this great State in the Congress. Send Judge Bard to the United States Senate. He has made a wonderful record and you can count on him to work and fight for all the people. You have some very fine Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives: William Barrett, William Granahan, Earl Chudoff, William Green, Harrington Herr, and James Byrne. I hope you will elect all of them, for we need men like that in Washington.
Now, I want to make it perfectly plain to you, if you don't know it already, this year I am not asking for anything for myself. I have had everything from the Democratic Party that the American people can give a man, or that he can desire. I know what the burdens of the Presidency are--and I think I know when a man ought to lay them down. With a party like ours, with leaders like those of the Democratic Party today, no man is indispensable. And I know I am not.
I am campaigning, therefore, not for myself, but for what I believe to be the good of this great Nation of ours.
I think the country ought to accept the competent leadership of Adlai Stevenson.
Furthermore, I think the country would be making a terrible mistake if it accepted the reactionary and divided leadership of the Republican Party. I have been deeply concerned over the campaign that is being waged by the Republican Party and its military candidate. Seldom have I seen a more fraudulent campaign. Seldom have I seen a more cynical appeal to the voters than that the Republican Party is making this year.
I have recently seen some particularly vicious attacks upon the Democratic candidate for Vice President with respect to his views on civil rights. I want to say simply this: John Sparkman has pledged himself to support the Democratic platform on civil rights. John Sparkman is an honorable man and he will honor that pledge. The Democratic platform is far better than the Republican platform and far better than even the promises of the Republican candidates for President and Vice President.
Now I think, my friends, with the scars I bear, there can be no doubt about my devotion to civil rights. With all the earnestness at my command, I say that I believe John Sparkman can and will do more for the cause of civil rights than either of the Republican candidates.
And in Adlai Stevenson we have a man who has made one of the best civil rights records of any Governor in the United States. His action in the State of Illinois, his statements in this campaign, mark him as a great and vigorous champion of civil rights.
Not only as a Democrat, but as a man with more than 30 years of experience in the difficult business of government, I have felt it my duty to go to the people and spell out to them the dangerous, destructive nature of the Republican campaign this year.
Now, in this country we have the two, party system. There is a clear and obvious difference between the two great parties-particularly at the level of the Federal Government-which is what we are most concerned with this year.
The Democratic Party believes in a national government that is directly concerned about the problems of the average man-the wage earner, the farmer, the consumer, the homeowner, the small businessman-and in taking action that will benefit him directly.
Now the Republican Party believes that the national welfare will be better served if the Government looks out first for the demands of the great corporations and the special interests that seek to control the economic power of this great country. The Republican Party believes that if this is done, everybody else will benefit indirectly, and that all will be well.
Now this, my friends, is a perfectly clear-cut difference in philosophy. It is a recognizable fact of life in Washington.
You run into it every time a bill goes to the Congress.
For 3 years and 11 months out of every 4 years, everybody accepts the rule-of-thumb way of determining where each of the two great parties will stand.
Is it a question of housing for low-income people ? The Democrats want to help local public bodies build the houses. The Republicans don't want any houses built unless they are built by those the real estate lobby represents.
Is it a question of social security insurance? The Democratic Party wants the people to provide a basic insurance system through their combined resources; the Republicans don't want it done at all unless the insurance companies are willing to do it.
Is it a question of the right of the wage earner to organize and bargain collectively? The Democrats want free collective bargaining on fair and even terms; the Republicans want to weight the scale in favor of the employers.
Is it a matter of aid to business? The Democrats believe that a worthy enterprise should always have a means of getting credit; the Republicans believe that the private bankers always ought to have the last word on who gets credit.
And so it goes--down through the whole list.
I happen to think that the Democratic philosophy is the right one. I believe it is what has made our country the strongest, most prosperous, and the most powerful nation in the world. I believe it is opening to every family in this country new and greater opportunities every day--for better homes, better standards of living, better education, and better lives.
And I believe the Republican philosophy is dead wrong. I believe their trickle-down theory is what led us into the Great Depression. I believe if they get back in power, with this wrong philosophy, they will sooner or later get us into another depression. And I further believe that this philosophy of big business first will get us into trouble with our foreign relations, and set up foreign trade barriers that will play into the hands of the Communists and weaken the free world.
Of course, the Republicans are entitled to stand up for their point of view, and ask the voters to adopt it. That is their right under the Constitution.
But that is not what they are doing.
Every election year they launch a great effort to try to make people believe they don't have this philosophy at all.
But this is strictly vote catching eyewash. Bear that in mind.
Now, that doesn't affect their conduct in Congress, where it really counts.
It didn't affect their conduct in the Both Congress, when I called them back after the conventions, and asked them to put their eyewash promises into effect.
It didn't affect them this year, when a majority of the House Republicans voted to kill price controls.
Every election year the Republican Party thinks it can deceive the people, or distract them, so that we won't remember what they really stand for.
Let's see what the pattern of the Republican campaign is this year. This is most interesting.
First of all, they picked a new candidate who had no record at all on any of these issues. They resorted to an old political trick--getting a general, whose career stands for a nonpartisan patriotism, to front for their very partisan purposes.
This general was supposed to be above the issues. He was supposed to ride into office on his glory, his glamor, and his smile.
But, my friends, we are campaigning on the issues.
Just a few days ago in New York, I predicted that we were going to smoke the Republican candidate out on some of the issues. I predicted we were about to see him change his tune to one of "me too."
Well, it has happened. We are getting a snowstorm of "me tons" lately.
But this year something new has been added. We are getting the fanciest brand of double-talk I have ever heard in my life.
This Republican candidate talks one way in the Midwest, another way in the South, a third way in New York. He talks one way in New Jersey, and another way in New York City--and both on the same day. Now beat that if you can.
The Republican candidate says he embraced Taft and McCarthy and Jenner in order to unify his party. I don't know whether it did that or not--nothing can unify the Republican Party, in my opinion-but it certainly diversified the candidate's speeches. He talks like Bricker in Ohio, he talks like McCarthy in Wisconsin, and he talks like Dewey in New York.
By this time the candidate has met himself coming back so many times that you can compare him with himself on almost every subject.
As Walter Lippmann put it the other day--and Mr. Lippmann is one of his supporters--this is Lippmann talking, "He has adjusted his position, State by State, section by section, to the demands of the local political machines."
When he has talked to audiences he thinks are in favor of world cooperation, he has talked eloquently of free world unity and declaimed loudly that isolationism is dead, Once or twice he has even dared to praise the Marshall plan, which has saved Western Europe from communism.
But when he has been before audiences he thinks are isolationist, he has said that we should not be fighting in Korea, that we should not spend so much on our Armed Forces and on foreign aid; and he has sneered at the action we have taken to meet Communist aggression all around the world.
He has talked of cutting the budget by anywhere from $20 to $40 billion--the great bulk coming from military expenditures. But when he talks in the cities near military installations, he has assured his listeners that civilian employees are not going to be laid off, and the pay of servicemen is not going to be cut.
He once compared social security to a prison, but more recently he has said he wants it extended.
When he thinks his audience is against public power, he's against it, too, as he was in Idaho. But when he thinks his audience is for it, then he's for it, as he was in Tennessee.
On farm programs, he said he was in favor of 100 percent parity--but he didn't say how he was going to help the farmers to get 100 percent parity. More recently he has been more careful on the farm program. At Memphis, he topped off his farm views with this sentence: "Most important, we must be prepared to do the right thing at the right time." There you have a good clear stand on a vital question.
He's in favor of civil rights but he's against enforcement by the Government. To prevent race discrimination in jobs, he promises to sit down and talk to the 48 Governors. He's sure that'11 fix everything. I wonder how well he knows Jimmy Byrnes.
In this part of the United States, the Republican candidate is talking a more liberal line. He thinks you will forget what he said in Wisconsin or in Texas.
But in case you are in any doubt, just remember one thing: The Republican candidate has asked the American people over and over again to give him a Congress, made up of Old Guard, dinosaur Republicans. He has committed himself to give the Old Guard its full share of positions, high and low, in the executive branch.
If the Republican candidate should be elected, he'd be completely surrounded, boxed in, and handcuffed by the Old Guard. And I don't think he would mind it a bit. He seems perfectly at home with them. The Old Guard in the Congress and the executive branch would be his advisers then, as they are on his campaign train now. They would be working night and day for the special interests, as they always have been. And they would set the tone of his administration.
Now, my friends, this is the picture of the Government if the Republicans are elected. You would have as President a man without experience in civil life, whose position on the great issues of our time has wavered with the political winds. Around him would be the men who have been against all that the New Deal and the Fair Deal have accomplished for the people of the United States in the past 20 years. In the Congress you would have reactionary leadership from one end to the other, and a rank and file that has proved itself to be isolationist in international affairs, and the tool of the special interests here at home.
You would be risking our chance at world peace, and you would be risking prosperity at home.
The Democratic Party offers you, by contrast, a candidate for President who has not wavered during his entire campaign, a man who has made you no false promises--the most distinguished Governor of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson. He heads the ticket of a party whose principles have been proved in 20 years of service to this country.
This election is a most important one-one of the most vital in the history of the country. Do not make your choice lightly. Look at the party as well as the candidate. Look at more than the surface of the man-look at the consistency of his principles and at .the record of what he believes.
And when you do, I know you will make the right choice. I know you will elect a strong Democratic Congress. I know you will elect John Sparkman and that you will send to the White House the great Governor, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
NOTE: The President spoke at 5:35 p.m., at Reyburn Plaza, Philadelphia, Pa. In his opening words he referred to Mayor Joseph S. Clark, Jr., of Philadelphia. Later he referred to Judge Guy K. Bard, Democratic candidate for Senator, Representatives William A. Barrett, William T. Granahan, Earl Chudoff, and William J. Green, Jr., Harrington Herr and James A. Byrne, Democratic candidates for Representative, all of Pennsylvania, Senators Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, and William E. Jenner of Indiana, Walter Lippmann of the New York Herald-Tribune, and Governor James F. Byrnes of South Carolina.
Mr. Mayor, distinguished candidates of the Democratic Party, ladies and gentlemen:
I am always glad to be in Philadelphia. I started my 1948 campaign here in your Convention Hall, when I told you I was going to bring that Republican 80th Congress back to Washington for a special session, and ask them to live up to their campaign platform promises. I called them back. They did nothing. They showed the whole country they didn't mean what they had put in their platform. And the Democrats won the election.
Now, today, I want to talk to you about some of the campaign promises of the Republicans in this campaign of 1952.
But before I get into that, I want to congratulate you people of Philadelphia.
Since 1948 you have had a change of administration in your city government. You have gone Democratic, you swept out of office the corrupt old Republican gang that held back your city for so long.
I hope you will keep up the good work this year and send a solid slate of good Democrats to represent this great State in the Congress. Send Judge Bard to the United States Senate. He has made a wonderful record and you can count on him to work and fight for all the people. You have some very fine Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives: William Barrett, William Granahan, Earl Chudoff, William Green, Harrington Herr, and James Byrne. I hope you will elect all of them, for we need men like that in Washington.
Now, I want to make it perfectly plain to you, if you don't know it already, this year I am not asking for anything for myself. I have had everything from the Democratic Party that the American people can give a man, or that he can desire. I know what the burdens of the Presidency are--and I think I know when a man ought to lay them down. With a party like ours, with leaders like those of the Democratic Party today, no man is indispensable. And I know I am not.
I am campaigning, therefore, not for myself, but for what I believe to be the good of this great Nation of ours.
I think the country ought to accept the competent leadership of Adlai Stevenson.
Furthermore, I think the country would be making a terrible mistake if it accepted the reactionary and divided leadership of the Republican Party. I have been deeply concerned over the campaign that is being waged by the Republican Party and its military candidate. Seldom have I seen a more fraudulent campaign. Seldom have I seen a more cynical appeal to the voters than that the Republican Party is making this year.
I have recently seen some particularly vicious attacks upon the Democratic candidate for Vice President with respect to his views on civil rights. I want to say simply this: John Sparkman has pledged himself to support the Democratic platform on civil rights. John Sparkman is an honorable man and he will honor that pledge. The Democratic platform is far better than the Republican platform and far better than even the promises of the Republican candidates for President and Vice President.
Now I think, my friends, with the scars I bear, there can be no doubt about my devotion to civil rights. With all the earnestness at my command, I say that I believe John Sparkman can and will do more for the cause of civil rights than either of the Republican candidates.
And in Adlai Stevenson we have a man who has made one of the best civil rights records of any Governor in the United States. His action in the State of Illinois, his statements in this campaign, mark him as a great and vigorous champion of civil rights.
Not only as a Democrat, but as a man with more than 30 years of experience in the difficult business of government, I have felt it my duty to go to the people and spell out to them the dangerous, destructive nature of the Republican campaign this year.
Now, in this country we have the two, party system. There is a clear and obvious difference between the two great parties-particularly at the level of the Federal Government-which is what we are most concerned with this year.
The Democratic Party believes in a national government that is directly concerned about the problems of the average man-the wage earner, the farmer, the consumer, the homeowner, the small businessman-and in taking action that will benefit him directly.
Now the Republican Party believes that the national welfare will be better served if the Government looks out first for the demands of the great corporations and the special interests that seek to control the economic power of this great country. The Republican Party believes that if this is done, everybody else will benefit indirectly, and that all will be well.
Now this, my friends, is a perfectly clear-cut difference in philosophy. It is a recognizable fact of life in Washington.
You run into it every time a bill goes to the Congress.
For 3 years and 11 months out of every 4 years, everybody accepts the rule-of-thumb way of determining where each of the two great parties will stand.
Is it a question of housing for low-income people ? The Democrats want to help local public bodies build the houses. The Republicans don't want any houses built unless they are built by those the real estate lobby represents.
Is it a question of social security insurance? The Democratic Party wants the people to provide a basic insurance system through their combined resources; the Republicans don't want it done at all unless the insurance companies are willing to do it.
Is it a question of the right of the wage earner to organize and bargain collectively? The Democrats want free collective bargaining on fair and even terms; the Republicans want to weight the scale in favor of the employers.
Is it a matter of aid to business? The Democrats believe that a worthy enterprise should always have a means of getting credit; the Republicans believe that the private bankers always ought to have the last word on who gets credit.
And so it goes--down through the whole list.
I happen to think that the Democratic philosophy is the right one. I believe it is what has made our country the strongest, most prosperous, and the most powerful nation in the world. I believe it is opening to every family in this country new and greater opportunities every day--for better homes, better standards of living, better education, and better lives.
And I believe the Republican philosophy is dead wrong. I believe their trickle-down theory is what led us into the Great Depression. I believe if they get back in power, with this wrong philosophy, they will sooner or later get us into another depression. And I further believe that this philosophy of big business first will get us into trouble with our foreign relations, and set up foreign trade barriers that will play into the hands of the Communists and weaken the free world.
Of course, the Republicans are entitled to stand up for their point of view, and ask the voters to adopt it. That is their right under the Constitution.
But that is not what they are doing.
Every election year they launch a great effort to try to make people believe they don't have this philosophy at all.
But this is strictly vote catching eyewash. Bear that in mind.
Now, that doesn't affect their conduct in Congress, where it really counts.
It didn't affect their conduct in the Both Congress, when I called them back after the conventions, and asked them to put their eyewash promises into effect.
It didn't affect them this year, when a majority of the House Republicans voted to kill price controls.
Every election year the Republican Party thinks it can deceive the people, or distract them, so that we won't remember what they really stand for.
Let's see what the pattern of the Republican campaign is this year. This is most interesting.
First of all, they picked a new candidate who had no record at all on any of these issues. They resorted to an old political trick--getting a general, whose career stands for a nonpartisan patriotism, to front for their very partisan purposes.
This general was supposed to be above the issues. He was supposed to ride into office on his glory, his glamor, and his smile.
But, my friends, we are campaigning on the issues.
Just a few days ago in New York, I predicted that we were going to smoke the Republican candidate out on some of the issues. I predicted we were about to see him change his tune to one of "me too."
Well, it has happened. We are getting a snowstorm of "me tons" lately.
But this year something new has been added. We are getting the fanciest brand of double-talk I have ever heard in my life.
This Republican candidate talks one way in the Midwest, another way in the South, a third way in New York. He talks one way in New Jersey, and another way in New York City--and both on the same day. Now beat that if you can.
The Republican candidate says he embraced Taft and McCarthy and Jenner in order to unify his party. I don't know whether it did that or not--nothing can unify the Republican Party, in my opinion-but it certainly diversified the candidate's speeches. He talks like Bricker in Ohio, he talks like McCarthy in Wisconsin, and he talks like Dewey in New York.
By this time the candidate has met himself coming back so many times that you can compare him with himself on almost every subject.
As Walter Lippmann put it the other day--and Mr. Lippmann is one of his supporters--this is Lippmann talking, "He has adjusted his position, State by State, section by section, to the demands of the local political machines."
When he has talked to audiences he thinks are in favor of world cooperation, he has talked eloquently of free world unity and declaimed loudly that isolationism is dead, Once or twice he has even dared to praise the Marshall plan, which has saved Western Europe from communism.
But when he has been before audiences he thinks are isolationist, he has said that we should not be fighting in Korea, that we should not spend so much on our Armed Forces and on foreign aid; and he has sneered at the action we have taken to meet Communist aggression all around the world.
He has talked of cutting the budget by anywhere from $20 to $40 billion--the great bulk coming from military expenditures. But when he talks in the cities near military installations, he has assured his listeners that civilian employees are not going to be laid off, and the pay of servicemen is not going to be cut.
He once compared social security to a prison, but more recently he has said he wants it extended.
When he thinks his audience is against public power, he's against it, too, as he was in Idaho. But when he thinks his audience is for it, then he's for it, as he was in Tennessee.
On farm programs, he said he was in favor of 100 percent parity--but he didn't say how he was going to help the farmers to get 100 percent parity. More recently he has been more careful on the farm program. At Memphis, he topped off his farm views with this sentence: "Most important, we must be prepared to do the right thing at the right time." There you have a good clear stand on a vital question.
He's in favor of civil rights but he's against enforcement by the Government. To prevent race discrimination in jobs, he promises to sit down and talk to the 48 Governors. He's sure that'11 fix everything. I wonder how well he knows Jimmy Byrnes.
In this part of the United States, the Republican candidate is talking a more liberal line. He thinks you will forget what he said in Wisconsin or in Texas.
But in case you are in any doubt, just remember one thing: The Republican candidate has asked the American people over and over again to give him a Congress, made up of Old Guard, dinosaur Republicans. He has committed himself to give the Old Guard its full share of positions, high and low, in the executive branch.
If the Republican candidate should be elected, he'd be completely surrounded, boxed in, and handcuffed by the Old Guard. And I don't think he would mind it a bit. He seems perfectly at home with them. The Old Guard in the Congress and the executive branch would be his advisers then, as they are on his campaign train now. They would be working night and day for the special interests, as they always have been. And they would set the tone of his administration.
Now, my friends, this is the picture of the Government if the Republicans are elected. You would have as President a man without experience in civil life, whose position on the great issues of our time has wavered with the political winds. Around him would be the men who have been against all that the New Deal and the Fair Deal have accomplished for the people of the United States in the past 20 years. In the Congress you would have reactionary leadership from one end to the other, and a rank and file that has proved itself to be isolationist in international affairs, and the tool of the special interests here at home.
You would be risking our chance at world peace, and you would be risking prosperity at home.
The Democratic Party offers you, by contrast, a candidate for President who has not wavered during his entire campaign, a man who has made you no false promises--the most distinguished Governor of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson. He heads the ticket of a party whose principles have been proved in 20 years of service to this country.
This election is a most important one-one of the most vital in the history of the country. Do not make your choice lightly. Look at the party as well as the candidate. Look at more than the surface of the man-look at the consistency of his principles and at .the record of what he believes.
And when you do, I know you will make the right choice. I know you will elect a strong Democratic Congress. I know you will elect John Sparkman and that you will send to the White House the great Governor, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
NOTE: The President spoke at 5:35 p.m., at Reyburn Plaza, Philadelphia, Pa. In his opening words he referred to Mayor Joseph S. Clark, Jr., of Philadelphia. Later he referred to Judge Guy K. Bard, Democratic candidate for Senator, Representatives William A. Barrett, William T. Granahan, Earl Chudoff, and William J. Green, Jr., Harrington Herr and James A. Byrne, Democratic candidates for Representative, all of Pennsylvania, Senators Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, and William E. Jenner of Indiana, Walter Lippmann of the New York Herald-Tribune, and Governor James F. Byrnes of South Carolina.