Ann Richards 1988 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ANN RICHARDS: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. [SPANISH] I'm delighted to be here with you this evening, because after listening to George Bush all these years I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like.

[APPLAUSE]

12 years ago, Barbara Jordan, another Texas woman--

[CHEERS]

--Barbara made the keynote address to this convention and two women in 160 years is about par for the course. But if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.

[CHEERS]

I want to announce to this nation that in a little more than 100 days the Reagan, Meese, Deaver, Nofziger, Poindexter, North, Weinberger, Watt, [INAUDIBLE], Stockman, Haig, Bork, Noriega, George Bush will be over.

[CHEERS]

You know tonight I feel a little like I did when I played basketball in the eighth grade. I thought I looked real cute in my uniform, and then I heard a boy yell from the bleachers "make that basket bird legs." And my greatest fear is that same guy is somewhere out there in the audience tonight, and he's going to cut me down to size. Because where I grew up, there really wasn't much tolerance for self-importance, people who put on airs. I was born during the depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.

[CHEERS]

It was back then that I came to understand the small truths and the hardships that bind neighbors together. Those were real people with real problems, and they had real dreams about getting out of the depression. I can remember summer nights when we had put down what we call the Baptist palette, and we listened to the grownups talk.

I can still hear the sound of the dominoes clicking on the marble slab my daddy had found for a tabletop. I can still hear the laughter of the man telling jokes you weren't supposed to hear talking about how big that ole buck deer was, laughing about momma putting Clorox in the well when the frog fell in. They talked about war and Washington and what this country needed. They talked straight talk, and it came from people who were living their lives as best they could. And that's what we're going to do tonight. We're going to tell how the cow ate the cabbage.

I got a letter last week from a young mother-in-law Laredo, Texas, and I want to read part of it to you. She writes, our worries go from payday to payday just like millions of others, and we have two fairly decent incomes. But I worry how I'm going to pay the rising car insurance and food. I pray my kids don't have a growth spurt from August to December, so I don't have to buy new jeans.

We buy clothes at the budget stores, and we have them fray and fade and stretch in the first wash. We ponder and try to figure out how we're going to pay for college and braces and tennis shoes. We don't take vacations, and we don't go out to eat.

Please don't think me ungrateful. We have jobs and a nice place to live, and we're healthy. We're the people you see every day in the grocery stores. We obey the laws. We pay our taxes. We fly our flags on the holidays, and we plod along trying to make it better for ourselves and our children and our parents.

We aren't vocal anymore. I think maybe we're too tired. I believe that people like us are forgotten in America. Well, of course, you believe you're forgotten, because you have been.