Mario Cuomo - 1984 DNC Keynote

这是Mario Cuomo 在1984年的演讲，让我们大家来听听是什么吧。

Thank you 
very much.

On behalf of the great 
Empire State and the whole family of New 
York, let me thank you for the great privilege of being able to address this convention. 
Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the temptation to deal in nice but 
vague rhetoric. Let me instead use this valuable opportunity to deal immediately with 
the questions that should determine this election and that we all know are vital 
to the American people.


Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed 
to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their 
families, and their futures. The President said that he didn't 
understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining city on a hill." 
And the President is right.
In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.

But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in 
this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President 
sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of 
his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city. there's another 
part to the shining the city. the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most 
young people can't afford one. where students can't afford the education they need, and 
middleclass parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in 
trouble, more and more people who need help but 
can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who 
tremble in the basements of the houses there.


And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't 
show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, 
give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces 
that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.

Mr. President you ought to know that 
this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a 
"Shining City on a Hill."


Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you 
visited some more places. maybe if you went to 
Appalachia where some people still live in sheds. maybe if you went to Lackawanna where 
thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe, Mr. 
President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there. maybe, 
Mr. President, if you asked a woman who 
had been denied the help she needed to feed her 
children because you said you needed 
the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.

Maybe, Mr. President. But I'm afraid not. Because the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that 
this is how we were warned it would be. President Reagan told us from the very beginning that 
he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival 
of the fittest. "Government can't do 
everything," we were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that 
economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer, and what 
falls from the table will be enough 
for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their 
way into the middle class.

You know, the Republicans called it "trickledown" 
when Hoover tried it. Now they call it 
"supply side." 
But it's the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough 
to live in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded, for the people who are locked 
out, all they can do is stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers.



It's an old story. It's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans 
has always been measured in courage and confidence. 
The Republicans believe that 
the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, 
some of the young, some 
of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. "The strong," they tell us, "will inherit the 
land."


We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can 
make it all the 
way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt 
lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees wagon 
train after wagon train to 
new frontiers of education, housing, peace. the whole family aboard, constantly 
reaching out to extend and enlarge that family. lifting them up into the wagon on the way. 
blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans all 
those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America.


For nearly 50 years we carried them all 
to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. And 
remember this, some of us in 
this room today are here only because this nation had that kind 
of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget that.


So, here we are at 
this convention to remind ourselves where we come from and to claim the 
future for ourselves and for our children. Today our great Democratic Party, which 
has saved this nation from depression, from fascism, from racism, from corruption
is called upon to do it again this time to 
save the nation from confusion and division, from the threat of eventual 
fiscal disaster, and most of all from the fear of a nuclear holocaust.

That's not going to be easy. Mo Udall is exactly 
right it won't be easy. And in order to 
succeed, we must answer our opponent's polished and appealing rhetoric with a more telling 
reasonableness and rationality.

We must win this case on the merits. 
We must get the American public to 
look past the glitter, 
beyond the showmanship to 
the reality, the hard substance of things. 
And we'll do it not so much with 
speeches that sound good as with 
speeches that are good and sound. not so 
much with speeches that will bring people to 
their feet as with speeches that will bring people to 
their senses. We must make We 
must make the American people hear our "Tale of Two Cities." 
We must convince them that we don't have to settle for two cities, that we can have 
one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people.


Now, we will have no chance to do that if what 
comes out of this convention is a babel of 
arguing voices. If that's what's heard throughout the campaign, dissident 
sounds from all sides, we will have no chance to 
tell our message. To succeed we will have to surrender some 
small parts of our individual 
interests, to build a platform that we can all stand on, at once, 
and comfortably proudly 
singing out. We need a platform we can all agree to so that we can 
sing out the truth for the nation to hear, in 
chorus, its logic so clear and commanding that no 
slick Madison Avenue commercial, no amount of geniality, no martial music will be able to 
muffle the sound of the truth.

And we Democrats must unite. 
We Democrats must 
unite so that the entire nation can unite, 
because surely the Republicans won't bring this country together. Their policies divide the 
nation into the lucky and the leftout, into the royalty and the rabble. 
The Republicans are 
willing to treat that division as victory. They would cut this nation 
in half, into those temporarily better off and those worse off than before, and they would call 
that division recovery.

Now, we should not be embarrassed or dismayed or chagrined if the process of unifying is 
difficult, even wrenching at 
times. Remember that, unlike any other Party, we embrace men 
and women of every color, every creed, every orientation, every economic class. In our family 
are gathered everyone from the abject poor of Essex County in New 
York, to the enlightened affluent of the gold coasts at both 
ends of the nation. And in between is the heart of our 
constituency the middle class, the people not rich enough to be worryfree, 
but not poor enough to be on welfare. the middle class those 
people who work for a living because they 
have to, not because some psychiatrist 
told them it was a convenient way to fill 
the interval between birth and eternity. White collar and blue collar. Young professionals. Men and women in small business desperate for the capital and contracts that they need to prove their worth.



We speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream. We speak for ethnics 
who want to add their culture to the magnificent mosaic that is America. 
We speak We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule "thou shalt not 
sin against equality," a rule so simple


I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but 
I will. It's a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: E.R.A.


We speak for young people demanding an education and a future. We speak for senior 
citizens. We speak for senior citizens who are terrorized by the idea 
that their only security, 
their Social Security, is being threatened. We speak for millions of reasoning people fighting to 
preserve our environment from greed and from 
stupidity. And we speak for reasonable people who are fighting to preserve our very existence 
from a macho intransigence that refuses to 
make intelligent attempts to discuss the possibility of nuclear holocaust with our enemy. They 
refuse. They refuse, because they believe we can pile missiles so high that 
they will pierce the clouds and the sight of them will frighten our enemies into submission.

Now we're proud of this diversity as Democrats. We're grateful for it. We don't have to 
manufacture it the way the Republicans will next month 
in Dallas, by propping up mannequin 
delegates on 
the convention floor. But we, while we're proud of this diversity, we pay a price 
for it. The different people that we represent have different points of view. And sometimes 
they compete and even debate, and even argue. That's what our primaries were all about. But 
now the primaries are over and it is time, when 
we pick our candidates and our platform here, to lock arms and move into 
this campaign together.

If you need any more inspiration 
to put some small part of your own difference aside to create 
this consensus, then all 
you need to do is to reflect on what the Republican policy of divide 
and cajole has done to this land since 1980. Now the President 
has asked the American people 
to judge him on whether or not he's fulfilled the promises he made 
four years ago. I believe, as Democrats, we ought to accept that challenge. And just 
for a moment let us consider what he has said and what 
he's done.


Inflation is down since 1980, but not because of the supplyside 
miracle promised to us by the President. Inflation was reduced the oldfashioned 
way: with a recession, the worst since 
1932. We could have brought inflation down that way. How did he do 
it? 55,000 bankruptcies. 
two years of massive unemployment. 200,000 farmers and ranchers forced off the land. more 
homeless than at any time since the Great Depression 
in 1932. more hungry, in this world of 
enormous affluence, the United States of America, more hungry. more poor, most of them 
women. And he paid one other thing, a nearly 200 billion dollar deficit threatening our future.

Now, we must make the American people understand this deficit because they don't. The 
President's deficit is a direct and dramatic repudiation of his promise in 
1980 to balance the budget by 1983. How large is it?



The deficit is the largest in the history of the universe. It 
President Carter's last budget had 
a deficit less than onethird of this deficit. It is a deficit 
that, according to the President's own 
fiscal adviser, may grow to as much 300 billion dollars a year for "as far as the eye can see." 
And, ladies and gentlemen, it is a debt so large that 
is almost onehalf of the money we collect from the personal income tax each 
year goes just to pay the interest. It is a mortgage 
on our children's future that can be paid only in pain and that could bring this nation 
to its knees.

Now don't take my word for it I'm 
a Democrat. Ask the Republican investment bankers on Wall Street what 
they think the chances of this recovery being permanent are. You 
see, if they're not too embarrassed to tell you the truth, they'll say that 
they're appalled and 
frightened by the President's deficit. Ask them what they think of our economy, now 
that it's been driven by the distorted value of the dollar 
back to its colonial condition. Now we're 
exporting agricultural products and importing manufactured ones. Ask those Republican 
investment bankers what they expect the rate of interest 
to be a year from now. And ask them if they dare tell 
you the truth you'll learn from them, what they predict for the 
inflation rate a year from now, because of the deficit.


Now, how important 
is this question of the deficit. Think about 
it practically: What chance would the Republican candidate have had in 1980 if he had 
told the American people that he 
intended to pay for his socalled 
economic recovery with bankruptcies, unemployment, more 
homeless, more hungry, and the largest government debt known 
to humankind? If he had 
told the voters in 1980 that truth, would American voters have signed the loan certificate for 
him on Election Day? Of course not! That was an election won under false pretenses. It was 
won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. And that's the kind of recovery we have now as 
well.


But what about foreign policy? They said that they would make us and the whole world safer. 
They say they have. 
By creating the largest defense budget in history, one that even 
they now admit is excessive by 
escalating to a frenzy the nuclear arms race. by incendiary rhetoric. 
by refusing to discuss peace with our enemies. by the loss of 279 young Americans in 
Lebanon in pursuit of a plan and a policy that 
no one can find or describe.


We give money to Latin American governments that murder nuns, and then we lie about it. 
We have been less than zealous in support of our only real friend it 
seems to me, in the Middle East 
the one democracy there, our flesh and blood ally, the state of Israel. Our 
foreign policy drifts with no real direction, other than an 
hysterical commitment to an arms race that 
leads nowhere if we're lucky. And if we're not, it 
could lead us into bankruptcy or 
war.


Of course we must 
have a strong defense! Of course Democrats are for a strong defense. Of 
course Democrats believe that there are times that we must 
stand and fight. And we have. 
Thousands of us have paid for freedom with our lives. But always when 
this country has been at its best 
our purposes were clear. Now they're not. Now our allies are as confused as 
our enemies.


Now we have no real commitment 
to our friends or to our ideals not to human rights, not 
to the refuseniks, not to Sakharov, not to 
Bishop Tutu and the others struggling for freedom in South Africa.


We have in the last few years spent more than 
we can afford. We have pounded our chests and made bold speeches. But we lost 
279 young Americans in Lebanon and we live behind 
sand bags in Washington. How can anyone say that we are safer, stronger, or better?

That is the Republican record. That 
its disastrous quality is not more fully understood by the 
American people I can only attribute to the President's amiability and the failure by some to 
separate the salesman from the product.

And now it's up to us. Now it's up to you and to 
me to make the case to America. And to 
remind Americans that if they are not happy with all 
that the President has done so far, they 
should consider how much worse it will be if he is left to 
his radical proclivities for another four years unrestrained. Unrestrained.


If July brings back Ann Gorsuch Burford what 
can we expect of December? Where would Where 
would another four years take us? Where would four years more take us? How much 
larger will the deficit be? How much deeper the cuts in programs for the struggling middle 
class and the poor to limit that deficit? How high will the interest rates be? How much 
more acid rain killing our forests and fouling our lakes?

And, ladies and gentlemen, the nation must think of this: What kind of Supreme Court will we 
have?


We must ask ourselves what kind of court and country will 
be fashioned by the man who believes in having government 
mandate people's religion and morality. the man who believes 
that trees pollute the environment. the man that believes that the laws against discrimination 
against people go too far. a man who threatens Social 
Security and Medicaid and help for the 
disabled. 
How high will we pile the missiles? How much deeper will the gulf be between 
us and our enemies? And, ladies and gentlemen, will 
four years more make meaner the spirit of the 
American people? This election will measure the record of the past four years. 
But more than that, it will answer the question of what kind of people we want 
to be.


We Democrats still have a dream. 
We still believe in this nation's future. And this is our 
answer to the question. This is our credo: We believe in only the government we need, but we 
insist on all the government we need.


We believe in a government 
that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a 
reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do 
things that we know we can't do.

We believe in a government strong enough 
to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough 
to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.


We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may 
be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should 
elevate itself to a higher order.

Our government should be able to rise to the level where it 
can fill the gaps that are left by 
chance or by a wisdom we don't fully understand. We would rather have laws written by the 
patron of this great city, the man called the "world's most sincere Democrat," St. Francis of 
Assisi, than laws written by Darwin.

We believe, as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in 
the world's history, one that 
can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be 
able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do 
it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the 
destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can 
the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, 
if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war 
because life is better than death.

We believe in firm but fair law and order.

We believe proudly in the union movement.

We believe in privacy for people, openness by government.

We believe in civil rights, and we believe in 
human rights.

We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than 
most textbooks and any 
speech 
that I could write what a proper government 
should be: the idea of family, mutuality, 
the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one 
another's blessings reasonably, 
honestly, fairly, without respect to 
race, or sex, or 
geography, or political affiliation.

We believe we must be the family of America, 
recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that 
the problems of a retired school 
teacher in Duluth are our 
problems. that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future. that the struggle of a disabled 
man 
in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle. that the hunger of a woman 
in Little Rock is our hunger. that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to 
avoid pain, is our failure.

For 50 years we Democrats created a better future for our children, using traditional 
Democratic principles as a fixed beacon, giving 
us direction and purpose, but constantly 
innovating, adapting to new realities: Roosevelt's alphabet programs 
Truman's NATO and the 
GI Bill of Rights. Kennedy's intelligent 
tax incentives and the Alliance for Progress. Johnson's 
civil rights. Carter's human rights and the nearly miraculous Camp David Peace Accord.



Democrats did it and Democrats can do it again. We can build a future that deals with our 
deficit. Remember this, that 
50 years of progress under our principles never cost us what 
the last four years of stagnation 
have. And we can deal with 
the deficit intelligently, by shared sacrifice, with all 
parts of the nation's family contributing, building partnerships with the 
private sector, providing a sound defense without depriving ourselves of what we need to feed 
our children and care for our people. 
We can have a future that provides for all 
the young of the present, by marrying common 
sense and compassion.

We know we can, because we did it for nearly 50 years before 1980. And we can do 
it again, if we do not forget 
that this entire nation 
has profited by these progressive principles. that they helped lift 
up generations to the middle class and higher. that 
they gave us a chance to work, 
to go to college, 
to raise a family, to own a house, to be secure in our old age and, before 
that, to reach heights that our own parents would not have dared dream of.

That struggle to 
live with dignity is the real story of the shining city. And it's a story, ladies 
and gentlemen, that I didn't read in a book, or learn in a classroom. I saw 
it and lived it, like many of you. I watched a small 
man with 
thick calluses on both 
his hands work 15 and 16 
hours a day. I saw 
him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came 
here uneducated, alone, 
unable to 
speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know 
about 
faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example. 
I learned about our kind of democracy from my father. And I learned about 
our obligation to 
each other from him and 
from my mother. They asked only for a chance to work and to 
make the world better for their 
children, and they asked to be protected in those moments when 
they would not be able to protect 
themselves. This nation and this nation's government did that for them.

And that they were able to build a family and live in dignity and see one of their children go 
from behind their little grocery store in South Jamaica on the other side of the tracks where 
he was born, to occupy the highest seat, in the greatest 
State, in the greatest nation, in the only world we would know, is an 
ineffably beautiful tribute to the democratic process.

And ladies and gentlemen, on January 20, 1985, it will happen again only 
on a much, much grander scale. 
We will have a new President of the United States, a Democrat born 
not to the blood of kings but to 
the blood of pioneers and immigrants. And we will 
have America's first woman Vice President, the child of immigrants, and she will open with one magnificent stroke, 
a whole new frontier for the United States.

Now, it will happen. It will happen if we make it happen. if you and I make it 
happen. And I ask you 
now, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, for the good of all of us, for the love 
of this great nation, for the family of America, 
for the love of God: Please, make this nation remember how futures are built.

Thank you and God bless you.