In the 1980s, as the nation reeled in the aftermath of Watergate and the Vietnam War as well as the more immediate crises of oil shortages and stagflation, Ronald Reagan promised voters that better times were coming. In his first inaugural address, Reagan reasserted his pledges to lower taxes, reduce the size of the federal government, and restore American pride. By 1984 Reagan and his supporters were ready to claim victory, seeing in the return of economic growth vindication of their ideas and optimism. New York governor Mario Cuomo’s keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, however, portrays a very different picture.
| 27.3 | Ronald Reagan | First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981 |
The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.
Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity. . . .
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time, we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price. . . .
It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.
Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work—work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.
Source: Michael Waldman, ed., My Fellow Americans: The Most Important Speeches of America’s Presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2003), 247–49.
| 27.4 | Mario Cuomo | Speech to the Democratic National Convention, July 16, 1984 |
Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, and even worried, about themselves, their families, and their futures.
The president said he didn’t understand that fear. He said, “Why, this country is a shining city on a hill.”
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 part of 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 middle-class 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.
There are people who sleep in the city’s streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn’t show. . . .
In fact, Mr. President, this nation is more a “Tale of Two Cities” than it is a “shining city on a hill.”
Maybe if you visited more places, Mr. President, you’d understand.
Maybe if you went to Appalachia, where some people still live in sheds, and to Lackawanna, where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel while we surrender their dignity to unemployment and welfare checks. . . .
Maybe, Mr. President.
But I’m afraid not.
Because, the truth is, 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 their table will be enough for the middle class and those trying to make it into the middle class.”
Source: Mario Cuomo, More Than Words: The Speeches of Mario Cuomo (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 21–23.
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