Remarks in Louisville, Ky., at a Breakfast for Indiana and Kentucky State Party Leaders

Mr. Chairman; Governor Breathitt; my old friends and great Kentucky patriots, Happy Chandler and Bert Combs, Keen Johnson, Governor Wetherby, Lawrence Wetherby, Earle Clements; my old friend the courageous Governor of North Carolina, who happens to be over here doing some missionary work, Terry Sanford; one of Kentucky's ablest Congressmen, to whom I am deeply indebted, Bill Natcher; Congressman Stubblefield; Congressman Watts; Congressman Perkins; Congressman Chelf; and the man and woman that Kentuckians are going to send to Congress, Charles Farnsley and Mrs. Frances Mills; my friend Congressman Denton of Indiana; and all of you, my fellow Americans, who have done so much for so long in order that the Democratic Party could have an opportunity to lead this State and lead this Nation:

In less than 4 weeks we will be at the end of another campaign. How well we do between now and then will largely depend upon you, your experience, your know-how, your heart, your energy, your willingness to neglect your own private affairs and to give up part of your family obligations and go out and work for your party.

I believe that you will do for me and the Democratic Party between now and November what Kentucky has done for the Democratic Party in this State for many years.

I don't want this to be a long, rambling, political speech this morning because you are professionals, and you have listened to them through the years. That is one of the things that has earned for you that medal of honor that you are entitled to wear. But we do have a very simple situation before us this November.

There are only two men running for President Lyndon Johnson and the Republican nominee.

We only have two men running for Vice President--Hubert Humphrey and the Republican nominee.

We have very definite, clear-cut issues and we could spell them out at great length, but you know them perhaps better than you need to know them. In short, there are two policies that are to be decided: One is our foreign policy, our relation with other nations. What will it be the next 4 years? Who will direct it? Who will be the spokesman for this country? If that telephone rings, who answers it? If that conference comes, who attends it? If that treaty is indicated to be desirable, who submits it and who advocates it?

In short, do we continue the bipartisan efforts that we have made over the last 20 years since World War II, to try to preserve peace in the world, or do we junk it and start off on a new direction and what I think is a dangerously deep departure from what we have known since World War II ?

It isn't easy to get Republicans and Democrats to agree, but most of the time when their country is at stake and they think the danger is big enough, they always submerge their party differences and try to pull together.

Since that tragic day in November, I have done my best to unite the people of this country--business, labor, farmers, the Government-and I have not tried to harass them or humiliate them. I have tried to pull them together and get them to see that if they all did well, each of them would do well, and that we ought to spend more of our time trying to unite our people than to divide them.

I have tried to do the same thing on the world front. I have seen the leaders of 85 of the 120 nations, and I am very stimulated and pleased at the treatment that has been accorded me by most of the leaders of the world. I think at this time the respect for our country and the affection for our country is one that we can take pride in.

President Truman met the forces of communism in Greece and Turkey, and Arthur Vandenberg, a great Republican, reversed a lifetime record of isolationism and joined with him, and they successfully stopped communism in Greece and Turkey.

President Eisenhower came along, and during the period he was President I was Democratic leader. I looked at the record the other day, the last year of our service. I supported the Republican President more than 90 percent of the time in the field of foreign policy, and that was about four times as much as the Republican leader supported him. He supported him about 25 percent of the time.

Then after President Eisenhower came President Kennedy, and we had the Cuban missile crisis, and men like Senator Hickenlooper and others stood up with a Democratic President and they presented a united front. Khrushchev had to take his missiles and load them on his boats and take them out of the country, very much to his humiliation.

I am very sorry and I am saddened at what has been said about that in recent days. I sat in every one of those meetings on the Cuban missile crisis, 37. I never left home in the morning that I was sure I would see my wife and babies when I got back that evening. It was as tense a situation as I have ever been in--I have been scared a lot of times, from the time they took me snipe hunting on down.

But through all that rather terrifying experience, the coolest man that sat at either end of that table was our late beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And now when he is not here to answer for himself, and he can't speak up as he did so effectively in every State of the Union when he was here, to have it said of him, your President and your leader, that he manufactured all this for political purposes, is sufficient indictment of the author of that statement to let everyone know who they ought to vote for for President.

I have been in office a little less than 11 months. We have had several test tubes run on us. They have put a thermometer in my mouth several times.

One of the first experiences was that they shot four of our men, our soldiers, in Panama, and they demanded we negotiate an agreement and sign a blank check. Well, we didn't do it. We said we would make no precommitments; we would sit down and do what was right and just. In a period of 2 months, they finally agreed to the terms we submitted the first day of the meeting.

We had a little flare-up at Guantanamo, at our base in Cuba. The bearded dictator went out one day and decided to cut the water off for that base. I got a lot of advice, free advice, from specialized quarters, and some of them said, "Rush in the Marines. Send in the Marines." It is mighty easy to start a fight, get into a war mighty quick.

We got the recommendation of the Marines, the Army, Navy, and the Air Force, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, and we unanimously concluded that instead of acting impulsively and sending in the Marines to turn the water on, it would be wiser to send in one little admiral to turn it off, and to tell them we were going to make that base self-sufficient where we wouldn't have to depend on them any more, that we would make our own water.

A lot of new nations have been born in this world. There are more than 120 of them now, and a lot of them are going through a perilous period. They are like children learning to walk.

Some of the nations, Khrushchev says, have grown up like children and now they are too big to spank. So he has a lot of problems with some of his satellites.

But we have a varying situation all over the world. During this period we have done our best to advance the cause of freedom and to make free men a little bit stronger. We have had to help some of them, we have had to prop them up, we have had to lift them up, we have had to put them in a toddler to teach them to walk, teach them to govern.

They have changed overnight and they have had this explosion and that one, but the last nation that we lost to communism, to the Communist cause, was Cuba in 1959. President Kennedy was rather proud, and I am rather proud, and I think the American Nation can be proud, not of Democrats, not of Republicans, but of Americans, that the cause of freedom in the world is not a backward cause and it is not one that is receding, and it is not one that is diminishing.

The Communists, with their problems between Russia and China now--if you think we have some headaches just think about their problems among themselves. So the big question you have to decide, then, is: do you want to try to hold the country together and provide a bipartisan, nonpartisan foreign policy that will face up to these problems as Americans and not as party people, or do you want to change and go off in this new direction?

You will have to be the judges of that, and your people will have to be the judges of it. That is the first big issue, though, whether you are going to have responsibility in the conduct of your foreign affairs, or whether you are going to have irresponsibility.

The second thing is your domestic affairs. We could spend all day talking about that. But we have 72½ million people working this morning. That is more than ever worked anywhere. They are making $60 billion more after taxes than they were making 4 years ago. The corporations of this country are making the highest profits in their history. They made $12 billion more after taxes than they did 4 years ago. Our farm income is up. We have farm programs and we are trying to improve them.

We are told that we ought to turn all of these things back to the States, we ought to sell the TVA, we ought to take no more interest in these various programs that we allocate for the States, whether it is health, schools, highways, or the other things; that we have too much government in Washington, and you ought to do away with all of that. Well, you can do away with it.

You can do away with our farm programs and the first thing you do away with is you reduce the farm income to the farmers of this country from $12 billion to $6 billion. If you want to do away with it, you can do it and you can outvote the farmers because they are in the minority, but I don't think the people of Kentucky are ever going to do that, because we have memories and we know that depressions are farm-led and farm-fed, and if you neglect the farmer, you neglect yourself.

On social security, when that was first passed, some of the Republicans said it was a "cruel hoax." That is their language. Today we have 20 million people on social security, one out of every 10 in this country. All through New England my Republican opponent campaigned on making it voluntary. He has moderated and modified some since then.

My judgment is as time goes along he is going to adjust himself to the needs of the occasion, but if you make a program like that voluntary, you kill it.

Now, if you want to kill social security, you can do it, if you have a majority. But I don't think they will ever get a majority of people in Kentucky to make social security voluntary. You have unemployment insurance, you have collective bargaining, you have minimum wages.

When I was a youngster and went to Washington, Happy Chandler served in Congress in those days, Senator Barkley was there, a good many of the folks in this room remember that period. They submitted a minimum wage law. Women in my district, mothers of children, who lost their husbands, were down at work every morning at daylight and worked until dark and made 7 cents an hour.

That is in my lifetime, and I am not an old man. I am getting a little thin on top, but I am not eligible for a pension yet.

But they recommended a 25-cent-an-hour minimum wage, and they called it socialism. They said it would ruin this country, that it was socialistic.

I was one of three from the southern part of the country that signed a petition forcing a caucus to act on minimum wages. They said it was governmental interference, and it was. It interfered with that fellow that was running that pecan shelling plant. It told him he couldn't pay that little widow 7 cents any more, that he would have to pay her a quarter.

It was governmental interference. They said it would ruin my political career if I voted for it. Well, they are going to have a chance to ruin it November 3d. It hasn't ruined it up to now, anyway.

If you want to, do away with these gains that you have made, this progress that we have made, over 30 years.

In this country I believe in full employment. I think that every man and woman who wants to work and is willing to work ought to have a chance to work. I believe in full education.

I think that when our working people can make $60 billion more after taxes, and our corporations can make $12 billion more after taxes, and our auto manufacturers can make over 20 percent on their equity--I think that every boy and girl who is delivered into this world ought to have the right to get all the education they can take, because in this technological age, in this space age, they are going to need something besides reading, writing, and arithmetic.

I am not one that thinks that you can just ignore this general subject of education, or that you can ignore this general subject of poverty and just say, "Well, if they are poor, they ought to have done better for themselves."

A lot of people would do better for themselves if they could, and if they knew how. Nobody really wants to be poor. But a lot of them have problems trying to meet these things.

I want the Government to be a compassionate government and an understanding government, and a government that wants to do something about them.

The hardhearted and the heavy-handed and the ruthless dynasties that have led some of the States in this Union have never led the people of Kentucky. You have had differences of opinion in the party, and you have had some good, real, knockdown dragouts. I have looked down here a time or two since I have been talking just to be sure I wasn't standing in any blood.

But there is not anything that has happened to me in this campaign that makes me quite as proud of the patriotism and the Americanism and the love of country as these distinguished former Governors and former Lieutenant Governors that put on the Democratic uniform and marched in there.

When this terrible tragedy occurred, I didn't have any chance to consult any books in the library. I had to get down in the back seat of a Ford police car and rush to an airplane so I could get it in the air as soon as I could, because they didn't know how deep the conspiracy was, and whether it was to wipe out all the Government or not.

I didn't have any long speech for the people of this country. I just as humbly as I knew how said that I was going to pick up and try to carry on for our fallen leader:

"I don't know how well I will do; we will have to let time decide that. But the eyes of the world are on the United States right this moment and they don't know which way we are going to go. They have seen governments fall before and they have seen leaders change before, and I want to try to give the people of this country some confidence and I want the people of the world to settle down just a little bit and not get too excited.

"I want to have a transition period where we can show that our system can carry on-it is not the man, but it is the system in this country. So all I can say to you is, I will just do the very best with what the good Lord gave me.

"I have been in Washington since Mr. Hoover's days, 1931, and I have had a lot of association and experience in that period of time that my people have been good enough to give me. I will take that experience and I will use it to the best I can with it. With God's help and with your help, we will see how we come out."

President Truman got on the train in Kansas City and he came to Washington to tell me what he would like to do to help. President Eisenhower got in a helicopter and he came down from Gettysburg. President Hoover called up from the Waldorf-Astoria and said that he would like to give me his ideas and he would help.

And people from all over the country came in to try--even my opponent wrote some very friendly columns and said the way we were picking up and carrying on was very good. So the people did their best to help hold me up, prop me up, and go along.

I looked at that program that was left to me. The tax bill hadn't moved in a year. It was in committee and Senator Byrd hadn't reported it out. He was one of the first visitors that I had.

Men who served with him like Happy and Earle know that Senator Byrd is not a man to change his mind easily. He never changed it. He voted against the bill. But I let him take a peep at my budget and instead of increasing the budget $5 billion, I reduced it $1 billion. He allowed me to report my tax bill and we passed it.

That tax bill put $12 billion back in the people's pockets and in the companies' pockets that we have used to provide extra jobs and expenditures.

But there were 50 other bills besides the tax bill on President Kennedy's list. Of those 51 bills--last Friday night I sat there in the White House and looked at them-we passed every single one of the 51 in the Senate of the United States. We passed most of them in the House of Representatives, all but 2 or 3.

We appreciate the Congress and the people working with us.

We had our problems in Cyprus and we still have them.

We had our problems in Viet-Nam and we still have them. I didn't get us into Viet-Nam. I didn't ring up out there and say, "I want some trouble." I was out there in '61, one of the first things that I did. President Kennedy sent me out there when we were worried about the stability of the government there. We can't pick other people's governments. We have enough trouble picking our own.

If I had my way, I would just tell you all how to select this Government here without even asking you to ratify it. But it looks like 50 States are going to tell me what to do November 3d, instead of me telling them. That is the way it is out there. We just can't tell every country or mash a button. It is not that simple.

These folks who think you can have government by ultimatum are wrong. You better get a little closer to prophet Isaiah and the Good Book and "Come now, let us reason together," because there is not an ultimatum that any President can issue that could have produced one of these former Governors on this platform, not a single ultimatum. You could take all the tanks in our combat divisions and all the planes in the sky, and all the Polaris missiles, and you couldn't have made a one of them come up here. But you can reason with them.

So that is our problem right out there in Viet-Nam. Mr. Eisenhower sat down and wrote the President of Viet-Nam after they were divided, after the agreements in 1954, and said to them, "We want to help you help yourselves, and we will provide you advice and military assistance to preserve your country and keep the Communists from enveloping it if you will help yourselves."

For 10 years we have been doing that, and sometimes it goes from bad to worse, and they have changed governments three or four times in the last few months. You know what a problem we have had here at home just changing it once and getting adjusted.

We are trying as best we can not to enlarge that war, not to get the United States tied down in a land war in Asia, and not for American boys starting to do the fighting that Asian boys ought to be doing to protect themselves. We don't want to pull out and come home and say, "We will turn it all over to you."

So if you don't want to enlarge it and you seek no larger war, and you don't want to pull out and run home, the only thing you can do is what we are doing. We let them know that when they shoot at us as they did in the Tonkin Gulf, we will make prompt, adequate, and sufficient reply.

So as we go into campaign now, we have those two big issues:

Do we undo everything we have done in the field of foreign affairs for 20 years in a bipartisan way? There are some that want to do it. Some are just frothing at the mouth to do it.

Do we want to junk all of the advances we have made in 30 years in social security, minimum wages, collective bargaining, education, roads, all these programs where we have worked together ? If you do, you can. But you will have to answer that on November 3d.

This State has always had a peculiar spot in my affection. Kentucky has done more for me than any State in the Union, I think, except Texas, and sometimes more than Texas. Even if at some time every Democrat in the State wasn't for me, I don't know any of them that really did anything against me or hated me. Most of them were for me.

I never forget your loyalty through the years in the House and Senate to Mr. Rayburn, when Fred Vinson was there.

When Fred Vinson put me on the Naval Affairs Committee against California, against Oregon, and against Washington, all of them that had a coastline, I wasn't within 400 miles of water. But if you had a Kentuckian running the Ways and Means Committee, you didn't have to have merit on your side. So that is where I got interested in military affairs.

I just want to say this to you: You are mighty good to come up here to breakfast and to be so attentive.

Mr. Rayburn went back home one time after he had been in the Congress 50 years. He went to the little place where he had taught school, where no one would take him in, board him. The banker, the preacher, and the rest of them didn't have room. But the old blacksmith gave him a place to board.

They all came around this night--when he was Speaker--and said they wanted him to go home and stay all night. "No," he said, "I'll stay with the blacksmith, if he invites me--old man James."

So, sure enough, old man James came up--with his blue overalls on--and asked him to stay all night with him and Mr. Rayburn said, "Yes."

They went out and he said they talked until 2 o'clock; about 1 o'clock the wife and daughter went on to bed. Finally, Mr. Rayburn said, "James, I have to make seven speeches tomorrow. I'm in a campaign. I'm going to have to go to bed."

Old man James said, "Well, Sammy, if that's the way you feel about it I guess you'll just have to do it. But I'd like to stay here and talk to you 'til daylight.

"Because," he said, "Sammy, if the momma and the girls and me ain't your friends, it's just because we ain't got sense enough!"

That is the way I feel about all the people of Kentucky, regardless of any differences any of us may have ever had about anything: I would just like to stay here and talk to you 'til daylight, because if I am not your friend, it's just because I haven't got sense enough!