1992 Nominating Speech, Democratic National Convention
Shortly before the Democratic convention in 1992, Bill Clinton asked me to nominate him. I was honored by the invitation but concerned about my ability to prepare because I was then heavily involved with state problems. In fact, there were only about ten days before the convention. I was not able to free up much time, so preparing the speech became a matter of finding space at night and on the one weekend I had before the convention.
The objective was to portray Governor Clinton as the kind of person America needed as president and his prescriptions as the right ones for what was ailing our country.
The speech took all the time I had—including the two hours between rehearsals at the TelePrompTer on the day it was given when I changed significant portions of it. In the end I was satisfied that I had adequately described both the message and the messenger.
It was a different kind of challenge than the keynote of 1984, which allowed me to describe my personal views of things without reference to any specific candidate or even platform. Fortunately, there was enough coincidence between my views of the issues and our candidate’s, so I could endorse him comfortably. That surprised some people who had been taken in by the “labels game” and thought that somehow we were ideologically incompatible.
In the end he was nominated, and I eventually had the honor of having participated in the election of a president of the greatest country in the world.
-Mario Cuomo More than Words, The Speeches of Mario Cuomo, 1993
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Maynard Jackson, Mayor Atlanta, GA: Our next figure is a giant in the Democratic Party, a leader whose voice rings strong and true for the people of America, the governor of the great state of New York, Mario Cuomo. Governor Cuomo has inspired all of us with his words and deeds that tell us America is capable of more that is good, that all Americans share a common destiny. As governor of New York, he has brought new responsiveness to state government. And while the policies of George Bush and Dan Quayle seek to divide and to exclude with a vision that has pinched and unkind, Mario Cuomo's message summons us to greatness. Please turn your attention to the video screens for a film introducing Governor Mario Cuomo.
Video: More than two centuries ago, George Washington predicted that New York state would become nothing less than the seat of our empire. Here, just as he imagined, man's miracles and God's miracles have soared, side-by-side, dazzling the eye, invigorating the spirit and embracing generations of huddled masses in search of liberty and prosperity. The nation's welcome mat. Here is where America began and where it still inspires and challenges even as it remains, just as one of its earliest visitors saw it, "a land flowing with milk and honey." Or as Henry Hudson first described it, "as pleasant to land as one can tread upon anywhere in the world." Now, as then, for the millions of people who followed Henry Hudson to these shores, New York remains the symbolic land of milk and much more. For those yearning to breathe free, America's gateway to freedom. For those rejoicing in the spirit, the state of the arts. For those celebrating the past, the vivid mirror of our history. For those on the cutting edge, the state of the future. And for those competing in the global marketplace, nothing less than the state of the world. A kaleidoscopic, diverse, exhilarating tapestry that has inspired ordinary people to be great and great people to be even greater, offering not only hope, but opportunity. Just as it once gave hope to Andrea and Immaculata Cuomo, welcoming them from Italy. Offering him the precious chance for work, first as a ditch digger, then giving both the opportunity to start their own small grocery store, to educate their children and to see one of them become, in his own words, the governor of a great state, in the greatest nation, in the only world we know. New York, the Empire State, still the symbolic laboratory of the American experiment, an ongoing celebration of all America has done and all we can do. Leading the triumphant march into the 21st century and still lifting its lamp to light the golden door.
Governor Mario Cuomo: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't want to go over time, they warned me I might wind up playing the accordion on The Arsenio Hall Show. So let's. Tonight, tonight, I will have the great privilege and honor of placing before you the name of the next president of the United States of America, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. It seems to me that this is not a matter of our wanting Bill Clinton, it is much, much more than that. We need Bill Clinton because he is our only hope for change from this nation's current disastrous course.
Eight years ago, in San Francisco, some of us tried to convince America that while President Reagan was telling us we were all one shining city on a hill, there was another city where people were struggling, many of them living in pain. And we tried to tell America that unless we changed policy, unless we expanded opportunity, the deterioration of the other city would spread. Well, we Democrats failed to reach enough Americans with that message, and now the nation has paid an awful price. We cannot afford to fail again.
The price is too high. For the first time in their lives, millions of Americans who took for granted the basic right to make a living with one's own hands and mind and heart have been denied the dignity of earning their own bread. Today, a 50 year old father lives nearly in terror at the prospect that if he is laid off now, as so many people around him have been, in addition to losing everything else, he'll lose his health insurance, too. What if I'm struck by cancer? My God. What about the mortgage? What about my son in college and my daughter who's graduating high school? How will they get an education? And when will they find a job, even if they get an education?
How could it have happened? In a country where the executives of companies that fail, the presidents and chairmen of companies that make profits by trading solid American jobs for cheap labor overseas can make five million, 10 million, 15 million dollars a year. How did it happen? How can our middle class workers be in such terrible jeopardy?
A million children a year leaving school for the mean streets. A million a year surrounded by prostitutes and drug dealers, by violence and degradation of all kinds. Some of them growing up familiar with the sound of gunfire before they've ever heard an orchestra. Becoming young adults, only to be instructed by the powerful evidence of their surroundings that there is little hope for them, even in America. Nearly a whole generation surrendering in despair to drugs, to having children while they're still children, to hopelessness. How did it happen here in the most powerful nation in the world? It's a terrible tragedy, not only for our children, but for all of America. They are not my children,perhaps, perhaps they are not your children either. But Jesse is right. They are our children and we should love them. We should, we should love them. That's compassion. But there's common sense at work here as well, because even if we were hard enough to choose not to love them, we would still need them to be sound and productive because they are the nation's future. It would be bad enough.
It would be bad enough, if we could believe that all of this unhappiness and failure is the result of a terrible but only a temporary recession. But this, ladies and gentlemen, is more than a recession.
Our economy has been weakened fundamentally by 12 years of conservative Republicans' supply side policies, so-called. In fact, in fact, supply side was just another version of the failed Republican dogma of sixty-five years ago, then called trickle down, which led to the Great Depression. And it has failed us again. Think about supply side. Supply side operated from the naive Republican assumption that if we fed the wealthiest Americans with huge income tax cuts, they would eventually produce loaves and fishes for everyone. Instead, it made a small group of our wealthiest Americans wealthier than ever and left the rest of the country the crumbs from their table. Unemployment, bankruptcies, economic stagnation.
Today, today, as we've heard so many times, of four hundred billion dollar annual deficit and a four trillion dollar national debt hanging like great albatrosses around our nation's neck, strangling our economy, menacing our future. Remember, we became a great nation by making things and selling them to others for their marks and their yen. But today we buy from Japan and Germany and other nations, the things we used to make and sell to them. Automobiles and radios and televisions and clothing, giving them our dollars for their goods. And then at the end of the year, because we spend so much more than we collect in these reduced taxes, we borrow back those dollars, paying billions more of our dollars in interest, increasing our debt, decreasing our ability to invest in our children, our schools, perpetuating a mad economic cycle that threatens to spin us totally out of control. In no time at all,in no time at all, we have gone from the greatest seller nation, the greatest lender nation, the greatest creditor nation to today the world's largest buyer, the world's largest borrower and the world's largest debtor nation. That is Republican supply side.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, that is the legacy of the Bush years, the slowest economic growth for any four year presidential term since Herbert Hoover. An economy crippled by debt and deficit. The fading of the American dream. Working class families sliding back down toward poverty again. Deprivation in explicable violence. And after 12 years, Americans are disillusioned and they are angry and they are fearful. And Americans showed that with a quick embrace they gave to the sudden appearance on television of a provocative, wealthy businessman who said he'd like to be president, before he told anyone what he intended to do or how he would do it. He used one word and applause broke out all over America.
The word was change. Of course, the American people want change. Of course, we want something better than George Bush and the politics of decline, decay and deception. And beginning with this convention, we, you and I, must demonstrate to all the American people that change for the better is at hand, ready, able, eager to serve, in the person of, yes, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. This time, we can not afford to fail to deliver the message not just to Democrats, but to the whole nation, because the ship of state is headed for the rocks.
The crew knows it. The passengers know it. Only the captain of the ship. President Bush appears not to know it. He seems to think, no, no, no. You see, the president seems to think that the ship will be saved by imperceptible undercurrents, directed by the invisible hand of some cyclical economic God that will gradually move the ship so that at the last moment it will miraculously glide past the rock.
Prayer. Prayer is always a good idea. But our prayers must be accompanied by good works. We need a captain who understands that and who will seize the wheel before it's too late. I am here tonight to offer America that new captain, with a new course before it is too late. And he is Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas.
Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton understands that a great political party must apply the best of its accumulated wisdom to the new configurations of a changing reality. He cherishes the ideals of justice and liberty and opportunity and fairness and compassion that Robert Kennedy died for. But he knows that these ideals require new implementations, new ways to provide incentive to reward achievement, to encourage entrepreneurship, to develop jobs. Bill Clinton believes, as we all here do, in the first principle of our Democratic commitment, the politics of inclusion. The solemn obligation to create opportunity for all of our people, not just the fit and the fortunate. For the aging factory worker in Pittsburgh and the school child in Atlanta, for the family farmer in Des Moines and the eager immigrants sweating to make their place alongside of us here in New York City and in San Francisco. For all the people, for the bright young businesswoman in Chicago. All the people from whereever. No matter how recently of whatever color, of whatever creed, of whatever sex, of whatever sexual orientation, all of them equal members of the American family and the neediest of them, the neediest of them, deserving the most help from the rest of us. That is the fundamental Democratic predicate, surrender that democratic principle and we might just as well take the donkeys from our lapels, pin elephants on instead, and retreat to elegant estates behind ivy covered walls where when they detect the callus on their palms, they conclude it's time to put down their polo mallet.
Bill Clinton believes that the closest thing to a panacea that we have is described by a simple four letter word: work. He has been living that truth all of his life, so Bill Clinton believes that what we most need now is to create jobs by investing in the rebuilding of our cities, the shoring up of our agricultural strength, by investing to produce well-trained workers, new technologies, safe energy, entrepreneurship, laying the foundations for economic growth into the next century with free enterprise for the many, not free enterprise for the few, pulling people off welfare, off unemployment, giving people back their dignity and their confidence. And unlike the other candidates, unlike the other candidates, and they all talk about jobs. Bill Clinton has a solid, intelligent, workable plan to produce these jobs.
But President Bush disagrees with Bill Clinton. President Bush says we cannot afford to do all that needs to be done. He says we have the will, but not the wallet. Bill Clinton knows that we have the wealth available. We have proven it over and over every time the dramatic catastrophe strikes. Remember the savings and loans? Governors and mayors had gone to Washington, and I was among them, to plead for help, for education, for job training, for roads and bridges, for drug treatment. Sorry, there is none, said the president. We're broke. We have the will, but not the wallet. And we put our heads down. And then Americans discovered that wealthy bankers educated in the most exquisite forms of conservative Republican banking, through their incompetence and thievery, and the government's neglect, had stolen or squandered everything inside. The world's greatest bank robbery and we heard no moralizing about values then from our Republican leaders, did we?
Instead, mirabile dictu - all of a sudden- the heavens opened and out of the blue, billions of dollars appeared. Not for children, not for jobs, not for drug treatment or for the ill, or for health care. But hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out failed savings and loans, billions for war, billions for earthquakes if they strike, God forbid, and hurricanes. And Bill Clinton asks if we can do all of this for these spectacular catastrophes when they occur, why can we not find the wealth to respond to the quiet catastrophes that every day or press the lives of thousands that destroy our children with drugs? The quiet catastrophes that killed thousands with terrible new diseases like AIDS, that deprive our people of the sureness of adequate health care, that stifle our future.
Bill Clinton asks the question. Bill Clinton has the answer. And America needs Bill Clinton to because he understands that we must deal with what could be eventually the most lethal problem of all, a degraded environment. One that kills life in our lakes with acid rain, allows cancer causing rays to pierce the deteriorated ozone shield, and threatens to convert the entire planet into a cosmic hothouse. Bill Clinton made clear how well he understands that when he announced Senator Al Gore would be the next vice president of the United States of America.
America needs Bill Clinton. America needs Bill Clinton for still another reason. We need a leader who will stop the Republican attempt through laws and through the courts to tell us what God to believe in and how to apply that God's judgment to our schoolrooms, our bedrooms and our bodies.
Bill Clinton knows the course from here, past peril to a new era of growth and progress for this nation that will enable us to share our power and our abundance with the whole world community. He was born and raisedm, fortunately for us, with all the personal attributes needed for leadership. God given intelligence, vitality and an extraordinary quality of character that allowed him to survive the buffeting and the trauma of a difficult youth. He was born poor in Hope, Arkansas. Now the accents, even the colors, may have been a tint different, but the feelings were the same that many of us experienced on the asphalt streets of some of the nation's great cities. The same pain, the same anguish, the same hopes. He has lived through years of hard challenges since that difficult youth. And with each new challenge, he has grown wiser and stronger, as he demonstrated so well with his remarkable resiliency in the recent bruising Democratic primaries. I will tell you this, in a world of fragile and thin skinned politicians, he was an admirable aberration.
Bill Clinton has always been driven by the desire to lift himself above his own immediate concerns, to give himself to something larger than himself, his entire life has been devoted to helping others through public service. And for 11 years now, he has been the governor of his beloved state, protecting Arkansas from a federal government that has been depriving the states and cities for over a decade, balancing 11 budgets in a row. Doing the things that governors and presidents are supposed to do, enforcing the laws, providing education and opportunities for children and young adults, expanding health care, attracting new jobs and reaching out to heal wounds caused by 300 years of unfairness and oppression. He has done it so well that the nation's other governors, both Democratic and Republican, have repeatedly acknowledged him to be a national leader. All this time. All this time, Bill Clinton has worked to relieve other people's discomfort, because he remembers his own struggle. That's why we need Bill Clinton.
Because Bill Clinton still remembers. Because, he is equipped to break the awful gridlock in Washington to deliver effective government, finally. Because he will remind the nation that we are too good to make war our most successful enterprise. That's why we need Bill Clinton, because he does not believe that the way to win political support is to pit one group against another. Bill Clinton does not believe in the cynical political arithmetic that says you can add by subtracting, you can multiply by dividing. He rejects that.
Instead, instead, he will work to make the whole nation stronger by bringing people together, showing us our commonality, instructing us in cooperation, making us not a collection of competing special interests, but one great special family. The family of America.For all these reasons, we must make Bill Clinton the next president of the United States of America.
Ladies and gentlemen, a year ago, in this great city led by our great mayor, Mayor Dinkins, we had a great parade in New York City to celebrate the return of our armed forces from the Persian Gulf. I'm sure you had one, too. But as joyous as those parades were, I'd like to march with you in a different kind of celebration. One, regrettably, that we cannot hold yet.
I'd like to march with you behind President Bill Clinton through cities and rural villages where all the people have safe streets and affordable housing and health care when they need it. I want to clap my hands and throw my fist in the air. Cheering neighborhoods where children can be children, where they can grow up and get the chance to go to college and one day own their own home. I want to sing proud songs. Happy songs, arm in arm with workers, who have a real stake in their company's success, who once again have the assurance that a lifetime of hard work will make life better for their children than it had been for them. I want to march behind President Bill Clinton in a victory parade that sends up fireworks celebrating the triumph of our technology centers and factories, outproducing and out selling our overseas competitors. I want to march with you. I want to march with you knowing that we are selecting justices to the Supreme Court who are really qualified to be there. And justices, justices who understand the basic American right of each individual to make his or her own private, moral and religious judgment. I want to look around and feel the warmth, the pride, the profound gratitude of knowing that we are making America surer, stronger and sweeter. I want to shout out our thanks because President Bill Clinton has helped us to make the greatest nation in the world better than it's ever been.
So step aside, Mr. Bush. You've had your parade!
It's time, it's time for change. It's time for someone smart enough to know, strong enough to do, sure enough to lead, the comeback kid. A new voice for a new America. Because I love New York. Because I love America. I nominate for the office of the president of the United States, the man from Hope, Arkansas. Governor Bill Clinton!
