00:00:37.360 - 00:00:45.920

Good afternoon and welcome. I'm David Brown, the director of the Washington Semester program. Uh, the Washington semester

00:00:45.920 - 00:00:58.160

program is very pleased to be able to bring this program to you this afternoon. I'd like to introduce the president of American University to all of you, a man who, for the

00:00:58.160 - 00:01:16.640

last six years, first as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and later as the University Provost, and most recently as our president has, through his vision and leadership, been responsible for the direction and the planning of American

00:01:16.640 - 00:01:38.200

University. Doctor Richard Berenson. When we at the American University talk about our institution, we often stress the advantage of its location in the nation's capital.

00:01:38.920 - 00:01:54.720

The appearance of our guest today is just one more example of how in Washington, students can learn not only from books, but also from those about whom books are written. Our students here today are quite special.

00:01:55.120 - 00:02:09.280

They are high school students enrolled in American's Washington Semester Summer program, a two week program in which they learn firsthand about the federal government. To them, hailing from all over the country and to those of us who are

00:02:09.320 - 00:02:21.720

perhaps somewhat more familiar with Washington. Our speaker today obviously requires no introduction. He and I share many things in common. We both spent many years in Massachusetts.

00:02:22.040 - 00:02:35.320

We both graduated from Harvard, and we both wanted to have the title of president. I just beat him to it. Presidential candidate, the consummate senator, champion of

00:02:35.320 - 00:02:46.360

the common man. Democrat with both the small and large D founding father of legislation that's made it financially possible for many students across the land to

00:02:46.360 - 00:02:57.080

receive a college education. He is, of course, one of the great leaders of our country in the political arena, and it is indeed a pleasure to welcome him today, Senator Edward M Kennedy.

00:03:17.800 - 00:03:33.880

Thank you. Thank you very much. Richard Berenson, for your gracious introduction. I am glad to be standing here with an American president that I would

00:03:33.880 - 00:03:45.960

never dream of running against. An American president. I hope to be one myself. And they've had an interesting

00:03:45.960 - 00:03:55.920

Republican convention. It seems that Gerry Ford was willing to run with Ronald Reagan, but Reagan wasn't willing to have a co-president.

00:03:56.640 - 00:04:08.040

I don't see why not. They say Reagan only likes to work from 9 to 5, and he would have taken the first shift in the Oval Office, and then Ford could have taken the second.

00:04:10.760 - 00:04:19.000

But there was a sticking point in the negotiations. It wasn't so much that Ford wanted Henry Kissinger as secretary of State.

00:04:19.560 - 00:04:40.880

The real problem was that Ford wanted to bring Earl Butz back as Secretary of Agriculture. And Ford also fell to his only fair that if he got the job, he should also get the power to give

00:04:40.920 - 00:04:50.360

out presidential pardons. So the nomination went to George Bush. And when Reagan called Bush and

00:04:50.360 - 00:05:17.360

asked him to run, Bush gulped hard. But that's only because he had to swallow his support for the Equal Rights Amendment. It is a special honor for me to be

00:05:17.400 - 00:05:34.280

at the American University 17 years ago at this university. John Kennedy gave one of the most memorable speeches of his term or any term in the presidency. He called for a world safe for

00:05:34.280 - 00:05:43.720

diversity. And that call opened the way to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the era of détente, which now seems so endangered.

00:05:44.800 - 00:05:56.840

He spoke of an America with full freedom for all our citizens. And his words hastened a civil rights revolution which swept across the land in those

00:05:56.840 - 00:06:11.280

remarkable years, but which now seem to be a dream receding above all else. He asked his fellow citizens to deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been.

00:06:12.440 - 00:06:31.840

Two decades have turned since that day in 1963, but the same principles of peace and progress had still at stake. Now in our own nation and in our international relations. As we enter the 1980s, it is time for a Democratic party worthy of

00:06:31.840 - 00:06:45.160

its name to take a stand against the forces of reaction and retreat. And from that stand we shall not be moved.

00:06:47.120 - 00:07:00.720

This week in Detroit, the Republican convention summoned America backwards. The grand Old party harkened back to the bad old days of an unrelenting Cold War abroad and an unequal society at home.

00:07:01.560 - 00:07:13.480

For our economic distress, they offered nostrums and nonsense. For our foreign policy difficulties, they offered bluff and bluster. They saw the world as it might

00:07:13.520 - 00:07:26.240

have been. If there had been no Vietnam, no arms control, no new deal, and no progress of civil rights. The Republican nominee quoted Franklin Roosevelt's call to a

00:07:26.240 - 00:07:36.320

rendezvous with destiny. But the Reagan rendezvous is not with destiny. It is a rendezvous with nostalgia.

00:07:37.760 - 00:08:01.360

The 1980 Republican platform is hardly a progressive document unless we pretend that this is the 1880 campaign. All Americans now have to hope that the Republican nominee would not actually pursue in power the policies that the Republican

00:08:01.360 - 00:08:13.920

delegates wrote into their platform. It is a frail but necessary hope. For we must face the fact that the Republicans have emerged from this convention with a long lead in the

00:08:13.920 - 00:08:24.560

election. To regain the lead, the Democratic Party must reaffirm its own great traditions. We must recommit ourselves to serve the disadvantaged and the

00:08:24.560 - 00:08:38.840

disaffected, to advance humane and decent purposes, and to renew the quest for peace. Unless the Democratic Party changes its present course, 1980 could reshape the future of

00:08:38.840 - 00:08:52.200

America as profoundly for the worse as 1932 shaped it for the better. We have only four more months to convince the voters that America Is not Hollywood.

00:08:53.160 - 00:09:24.360

The Republicans are not the party of the future. And Ronald Wilson Reagan is not Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The new Republican popularity does not rest on any true representation of the people.

00:09:25.320 - 00:09:33.200

The lockstep unity of their convention reflected the relentless uniformity of their delegates. The millions of Americans who are

00:09:33.200 - 00:09:44.440

not white were treated as tokens to be sprinkled through the audience. In the Joe Louis Arena, where the Republicans gathered, there were almost no members of the entire

00:09:44.440 - 00:10:02.590

race to whom Joe Louis has given such a sense of pride. Almost none of the delegates were Hispanic. The majority, who are women, were a powerless minority. Perhaps the Republicans felt that too many women did not belong at a

00:10:02.590 - 00:10:18.830

convention, which seemed to believe that a woman's place is in the kitchen, and the blue collar workers, so ardently courted by Republican rhetoric, were hardly represented by the blue chip reality of the delegates.

00:10:19.310 - 00:10:32.710

Nearly half of whom receive an income of more than $50,000 a year. Nor does the new Republican popularity rest on the answers they offer to our national problems.

00:10:33.470 - 00:10:45.550

The policies of the Republican platform are largely irrelevant and often irresponsible. As Joe Louis would have said, they can run, but they can't hide.

00:10:46.630 - 00:10:59.830

Yet this year they are running but hiding their real identity as the party of special privilege. They are rushing to identify with our common concern about the economy.

00:11:00.990 - 00:11:12.750

Last night, Mr. Reagan assaulted current policies as indigestible, an economic stew that has turned the national stomach. But what is their recipe?

00:11:14.110 - 00:11:30.430

They have concocted a true Republican brew, a blend of single issue promises to narrow interest groups salted with appeals that play on the general frustration with recession, inflation and taxation.

00:11:31.390 - 00:11:45.430

How ironic it is that in the summer of national discontent, the Republican Party can seize the slogans of prosperity because a Democratic administration has surrendered the substance of prosperity.

00:11:46.990 - 00:12:02.270

Something has gone wrong when the most conservative Republican nominee since Barry Goldwater can campaign on the proud goals of a progressive Democratic Party. It is time for our party to

00:12:02.310 - 00:12:19.430

examine its record and its conscience. We dare not permit Ronald Reagan to run against us by running on the issues of full employment and economic recovery, the commitments that have been the heart and soul of democratic endeavor for half a

00:12:19.430 - 00:12:29.630

century. The sad truth is that the Republicans can run on these issues because the Democratic incumbent has walked away from them.

00:12:31.230 - 00:12:49.470

But there are some who complain that any attempt to restore democratic principles will divide the Democratic Party and hand this election to Ronald Reagan on a silver platter. They tell us to quiet our voices and disguise our views, and to

00:12:49.510 - 00:13:08.910

accept the inevitability of economic insecurity and injustice. But even if we did, the autoworkers of Detroit would see through the facade of a false party unity to the grim reality of assembly lines closed down through the sounds of of our silenced,

00:13:08.910 - 00:13:21.150

jobless and fearful Americans would hear the siren call of Reaganism. Blue collar workers may break with the Democratic Party, but only if the Democratic Party breaks faith

00:13:21.150 - 00:13:33.150

with them. If my campaign and my candidacy ended today, the anger and the anxiety of the people would continue tomorrow.

00:13:34.430 - 00:13:49.350

I did not invent our present difficulties when Republicans invoked my criticism. They are only capitalizing on a correct assessment of our national crises In reality, the way to hand this election to Ronald Reagan on

00:13:49.350 - 00:14:14.030

a silver platter is for Democrats to cling to the fool's gold of failing policies. There are Democratic strategists who assume that, bad as things are, the incumbent can gain

00:14:14.030 - 00:14:29.390

reelection by scaring the voters that a Reagan administration would be even worse. The Democratic Party must do better in 1980 than to offer itself as the lesser of two evils.

00:14:30.190 - 00:14:42.670

And the Republican nominee will not do us the favor of running as an extremist, even though Democrats may claim that in his heart he is a reactionary. The present administration has

00:14:42.670 - 00:14:59.390

learned too much from history. Ronald Reagan is not condemned to repeat the lesson of Barry Goldwater. 1980 is not 1964, when prosperity was a reality and a Democratic president could point

00:14:59.390 - 00:15:12.230

to the longest uninterrupted period of growth and price stability in our history. Americans are suffering now. It is hard for an administration that has brought record inflation,

00:15:12.750 - 00:15:32.870

record interest rates and a record misery index to frighten the voters about what more their opponents could do to the country. Surely Americans deserve more from the Democratic Party than alarms that the Republican nominee will deepen their suffering.

00:15:34.110 - 00:15:45.710

As Democrats, we do not have to depend on fear because we do not have to default on the economic issue. In 1980. We must demand of ourselves a

00:15:45.710 - 00:15:57.230

positive and a constructive campaign that offers real and specific measures to move our nation forward. Elections should be a contest of competing philosophies and policies.

00:15:57.870 - 00:16:22.110

If I am the Democratic nominee, that is the kind of campaign that I will wage. It will not be a campaign founded on fear. It will not be a campaign solely against Ronald Reagan, but a

00:16:22.110 - 00:16:39.430

campaign for the rebirth of democratic ideals, the ideals of America strong enough to keep the peace and economy sound enough to sustain prosperity, and a society fair enough to finish the work of freedom.

00:16:40.670 - 00:16:50.750

That is my commitment and a central purpose of my candidacy. And if there are those who wonder why I continue in this campaign, let them recall the Republican

00:16:50.750 - 00:17:01.550

convention. Let them hear the echo of a Republican nominee talking like a Democrat, pledging jobs for the jobless and housing for the homeless.

00:17:02.390 - 00:17:16.590

Let them listen as Ronald Reagan promises to put America back to work and to revive the inner city. The challenge for the Democratic convention is to nominate a Democrat, a person who not only

00:17:16.630 - 00:17:45.350

carries the party label, but who will take the case for the democratic principles to the American people. The only way for us to win in 1980 is to be worthy of winning. First of all, the Democratic Party must reclaim the economic issue as

00:17:45.350 - 00:17:55.990

its own. Mr. Reagan gives voice to the plight of the unemployed, but he provides no substance. No jobs program of any kind.

00:17:56.630 - 00:18:05.270

The Democratic Party must offer performance as well as promise. We must stand for an immediate anti-recession measures to create new jobs.

00:18:05.710 - 00:18:17.070

We must stand against a policy that knocks workers out of work in the fight against inflation. We must not yield the field on this issue to a Republican nominee who revealed his true feelings

00:18:17.070 - 00:18:33.390

long ago, when he announced that unemployment insurance is a prepaid vacation plan for free loaders. The Democratic Party has a different and a compassionate conviction.

00:18:34.030 - 00:18:45.670

No truly Democratic nominee can believe that a deep recession should be allowed to run its painful course of human misery. The Republicans pledge economic

00:18:45.670 - 00:18:59.110

revival. But their only answer to our complex problems is a simplistic tax cut of $120 billion. Their untargeted tax cut, pumped into an uncertain economy, would

00:18:59.110 - 00:19:20.430

create more inflation than investment. It is literal for the American economy. And it would operate in a wonderfully Republican way by giving far more to those who already have the most.

00:19:21.070 - 00:19:39.230

A bonus of $14,000 a year for those with incomes of more than $200,000 and a pittance of $150 for families earning less than $15,000. This is not an economic policy.

00:19:39.230 - 00:19:51.150

It's a scheme to trick the rest of America in order to reward the rich. The Democratic Party must stand for a fair and sensible program that effectively controls

00:19:51.150 - 00:20:04.350

inflation, and carefully targets incentives for investment, productivity and invention innovation. We must offer a plan to reindustrialize America. And it was a democratic administration that rebuilt

00:20:04.350 - 00:20:19.390

Germany and Japan after World War Two, and it is the Democratic Party that must take the lead in rebuilding the industries in inner cities of America in the 1980s. The Republicans also say that they

00:20:19.430 - 00:20:31.830

seek energy abundance, and they intend to find it, in their nominee's words, by turning the energy business loose in the marketplace. And they promise a proliferation

00:20:31.830 - 00:20:57.310

of nuclear plants across the country. It is a nother wonderfully Republican response and it must be rejected. We must not leave consumers to the

00:20:57.310 - 00:21:05.190

mercy of the oil monopoly. We must not leave whole communities shadowed with the threat of another Three mile island.

00:21:05.630 - 00:21:21.390

And we must not leave the environment to the unattended care of a Republican nominee, who said last year that 80% of air pollution comes from plants and trees.

00:21:23.590 - 00:21:34.550

Instead, the Democratic Party must protect the environment. And we must favor energy sources such as clean coal and solar power and the endless resource of all

00:21:34.590 - 00:21:44.750

the Earth. And no Democratic nominee should be reluctant to pledge a phase out of all nuclear plants in this nation as alternatives are phased in.

00:21:52.870 - 00:22:06.670

The Republicans also have a peculiar and impossible fantasy at one. In the same time, they want lower federal spending and bigger military budgets, smaller deficits

00:22:07.230 - 00:22:20.830

and bigger tax cuts, more social progress and fewer social policies. And they are even willing to throw in a repeal of the minimum wage, a return to the gold standard, and

00:22:20.830 - 00:22:43.430

the right to drive 75 miles an hour. All this is not a coherent or consistent program, but a random collection of contradictory Victory impulses. It is a puzzle where none of the pieces fit and it is all whole and

00:22:43.430 - 00:22:57.390

no donut. What Mr. Reagan really intends is what reaction always portends the rollback of social justice, the reduction of federal help for those who have no lobbies to

00:22:57.430 - 00:23:08.190

peddle their influence, the withdrawal of opportunity and the reinforcement of privilege. The Democratic Party cannot respond to the anti-government appeal by repeating it.

00:23:08.950 - 00:23:20.910

For if we to tear down government, we invite voters to rely on the party with the biggest wrecking ball. The Republicans already have the franchise on dismembering government.

00:23:21.430 - 00:23:34.710

If Democrats echo their voices now, next January will find us listening to their applause at the inauguration of President Reagan. Instead, the Democratic Party must

00:23:34.710 - 00:23:49.190

stand for both compassion and competence, and for the affirmative potential of public enterprise. The poor may be out of political fashion, but they are not without human needs.

00:23:49.910 - 00:24:00.070

The middle class may be alienated, but they are not ideological. Their demand is not small government or big government, but better government.

00:24:01.070 - 00:24:18.790

So we must challenge the Republicans to be specific. What waste will they eliminate? What bureaucrats will they fire? What programs will they cut? And who will be hurt? Do they want to cut Social Security benefits or policemen's

00:24:18.790 - 00:24:33.430

death benefits? Which health and safety regulations will they eliminate? Are they ready to multiply the number of love canals? Are they willing to tolerate factories where men and women breathe in cancer every minute of

00:24:33.430 - 00:24:45.510

every working day. We must not select a president to preside over the liquidation of government. We cannot run the government by electing candidates who run

00:24:45.510 - 00:24:53.870

against it. Democratic policies have not failed these last four years. They have not been tried.

00:25:20.510 - 00:25:33.790

We must debate them openly and restate them clearly at the Democratic convention. If we bend to the winds of Reaganism or sail in Reagan's wake, then we will finish behind

00:25:33.790 - 00:25:44.470

in the race this fall. Only if we keep our rudder true. Can we defeat the faded Republican economics now flying the flag of the false Reagan populism.

00:25:45.550 - 00:25:56.870

Our course must be set not only by the candidates, but by all those who speak for the troubled constituencies of our party. Those who speak for labor and

00:25:56.870 - 00:26:09.590

minority, for our cities and our farms, for the young and the old, must speak to the incumbent administration with clarity and urgency. Together, we must not only shape a

00:26:09.590 - 00:26:19.870

platform for the future, we must achieve a change in policy now. Not next year, but this year. Not only at the convention, but even before it.

00:26:20.510 - 00:26:31.590

And together we must speak out on other issues, for we have an obligation that reach beyond the central question of the economy. And here, too, we cannot succeed

00:26:31.590 - 00:26:47.550

by sounding like Republicans or tilting to the right. We must stand against the single issue appeals that exalt narrow interests above the national interest. The Republicans proclaim their opposition to the Equal Rights

00:26:47.550 - 00:26:58.310

Amendment. They surrendered unconditionally to the harsh ultimatum of a right wing lobbying, demanding the betrayal of past Republican support for ERA.

00:26:58.670 - 00:27:11.310

Over 40 years, the Democratic Party must stand proudly, publicly and persistently for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The Republicans felt that women

00:27:11.310 - 00:27:51.510

did not deserve an equal place at their convention. But Democrats must resolve that women will at last receive their rightful place in the Constitution of the United States. And in another unworthy appeal, the Republicans say that federal

00:27:51.510 - 00:28:05.110

judges and justices of the Supreme Court must pass a litmus test on a single social issue, whether the issue is abortion, integration, or reapportionment. The Democratic Party must stand

00:28:05.110 - 00:28:42.980

for the independence and integrity of the judicial system, and for the larger principle that it is the duty of judges to interpret the Constitution and the laws, not the 1980 Republican platform. Finally, we must stand for a policy of military realism, not

00:28:43.020 - 00:28:51.780

reflex militarism. Once again, on this issue, democratic attempts to walk the Republican hard line will be self-defeating.

00:28:52.540 - 00:29:10.340

It was the declaration of Cold War two after Afghanistan, that gave new plausibility to the candidacy of the Republican nominee, who recently proposed American military intervention three times in three months.

00:29:11.180 - 00:29:23.820

It was the demand for draft registration which created the atmosphere for Republican alarmism. And now they have it both ways. They are against a draft, but for

00:29:23.860 - 00:29:40.060

a massive build up, the Democratic Party must reject the peacetime draft and the present registration for the draft. Instead, we must call for strengthening conventional forces where they are weak, for correcting the condition in which

00:29:40.260 - 00:29:55.940

half of our planes cannot fly and half of our ships cannot sail on time. The Republicans also say they favour virtually every new weapon proposed or possible.

00:29:59.540 - 00:30:17.620

It has been, if it has been imagined, develop it. If it's on the drawing boards, build it. And if it's being tested, deploy it. The Democratic Party must pledge a strategic force second to none.

00:30:18.260 - 00:30:31.540

But we must oppose endless overkill. We must not make waste with our defence dollars or make haste with an mm weapon system that will provide the mass transit for missiles.

00:30:46.180 - 00:31:02.380

We do not need to talk of nuclear war as thinkable or winnable, and we do not need to adopt the new symbol of the GOP on weapons policy. A parade of white elephants feasting on tens of billions of

00:31:02.380 - 00:31:24.900

budget dollars without adding at all to our national security. The Republicans say they favor both military superiority and arms control, two goals that mutually exclude each other. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union will negotiate their

00:31:24.900 - 00:31:36.300

own inferiority. In 1980, the Democratic Party must renew the call to control nuclear arms before they consume the world in nuclear fire.

00:31:37.940 - 00:31:53.620

In his acceptance speech, Ronald Reagan spoke of a new compact for America. It is an old theme for him at the 1976 Republican convention, and again in announcing his candidacy last November.

00:31:54.140 - 00:32:09.540

He cited an earlier description of our country as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all America are upon us. But the city on the hill that Ronald Reagan envisioned has high walls to close out.

00:32:09.540 - 00:32:22.700

Women and the poor, blacks, Native Americans, those born to the Spanish tongue inside the underprivileged majority will be exploited, while a privileged minority will profit.

00:32:23.460 - 00:32:39.500

The ramparts will bristle with engines of destruction, but behind them group will be divided against group in a city with liberty and justice only. For some it will be a city built upon a hill of sand.

00:32:40.740 - 00:32:54.540

It is a grim vision on the horizon of the future. Its appeal is a measure of national frustration and democratic default. And this vision will come true

00:32:55.100 - 00:33:10.500

unless the Democratic Party offers a better and brighter one. A sprawl of democratic excuses and expedience will not attract the American people in 1980. Our party needs no new compact.

00:33:10.980 - 00:33:28.620

We need only to keep our historic compact with the people in the society that we see as our city on the hill. We offer a fair prosperity and a full of freedom. We offer hope, not malaise.

00:33:29.300 - 00:33:41.460

Progress. Not inaction or reaction. The prospect of peace and not war. For the Democratic Party, the issue is more than the outcome of

00:33:41.460 - 00:33:54.460

one election. This year will mark a turning point for our party and our country for a generation to come. For all of us, the issue is the future and the fate of the nation,

00:33:54.860 - 00:34:10.300

and perhaps of the world itself. There is a reactionary trend now only because there is a progressive retreat, but it is not too late to do our duty and to take our stand.

00:34:10.660 - 00:34:23.940

In 1980. So let all those who say that they are Democrats stand on the high ground of democratic principles. Let us rebuild the city on the hill whose foundations were laid

00:34:23.940 - 00:34:39.580

from the beginning of the Democratic Party. It must be built brick by brick, day by day, president by president, generation upon generation. For this I entered the 1980 campaign.

00:34:40.140 - 00:34:50.900

For this, I continue in it. And this is the cause and the challenge that I will carry to the 1980 Democratic Convention. Thank you.

00:34:53.300 - 00:35:59.700

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Senator, those of us at the American University are absolutely

00:35:59.700 - 00:36:12.180

delighted that you were here with us today to deliver this significant speech. One of the primary roles of this university in the capital city is to be a forum for important ideas.

00:36:12.460 - 00:36:23.300

And today, we have carried out that role well as a young man, Mr. Kennedy, not wanting to venture too far from his family to go to school. Elected to go to an obscure place

00:36:23.300 - 00:36:29.380

up in Cambridge. And we forgive him of that transgression. But nonetheless, we would like to

00:36:29.420 - 00:36:58.780

make him somewhat of an honorary member of the American University. I was wondering what I would wear when I made my acceptance speech. And I. Thank you very, very much. Thank you.

00:36:59.460 - 00:37:01.460

Thank you. Thank you.