Remarks in Salt Lake City, Utah

Senator Bennett, President Tanner, President Smith, all of the distinguished guests here on the platform, and all of the distinguished members of this audience in this historic room, and all of you listening on television and radio tonight:

This is, as you perhaps are aware, the last appearance that I will be making during the campaign of 1970, and I am very honored--I am very honored that it could take place in this historic room that has, for me, so many memories and which has meant so much, not only to the people of this area, and those of this faith, but to all of America.

I am honored because I remember the meetings that I have attended here previously, and I can tell you that having been here previously, and being particularly impressed by the fact that I was allowed to speak here as a candidate on two previous occasions, I am particularly honored to stand here for the first time as the President of the United States.

I would like to pay my respects, too, to those who have preceded me on the program, to the magnificent Tabernacle Choir. I was so honored that they came to our inauguration. And I hope they sing another number at the conclusion of my speech. I am going to quit a little early so they can have the time.

And also, I want to pay my respects, too, to a very, very great American, David Kennedy, a man, who incidentally, is one who has contributed enormously to this administration, a man who is sound, a man who is strong, a man who is honest and---and I say this emphatically--a man who always tells the truth.

And, of course, to Secretary Romney, who has rendered such enormous service to his country as Governor of Michigan and then as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; and to my longtime friend, Wallace Bennett, who introduced me a moment ago.

He is a tower of strength in the United States Senate for me, I should say--not me personally, but for the policies of our administration, particularly with his great expertise in the field of finance and in business.
I therefore was very honored to be introduced on this occasion by Wallace Bennett.

I have been told that it is accepted in the heat of a campaign that whoever appears here is given the opportunity or the right to speak in somewhat political terms. I intend to use that right. I want to use it responsibly.

I want to use it, however, in the context that I am sure all of you in this great Tabernacle will appreciate and understand, and that all of my friends in Utah will appreciate and understand.

In 1968, when I appeared in this room, I made some promises to the people of Utah and to the people of the United States. Those promises were well known. They were made by a man as a candidate for President of the United States.

When a President makes promises, the people expect him to keep the promises. And they should expect the promises to be kept.

All of you are keenly aware of the fact that the President is a very powerful man. As a matter of fact, because of the wealth of this country and the strength of this country, the President is probably the most powerful man in the world.

But the President of the United States, I should say, has limits on his powers, and one of those limits is that the President, when it comes to keeping the promises that he makes, can only do what the Congress will support him in.

Therefore, the issue is very simple: Where the President makes a promise and the people want him to keep the promise, if the Congress votes with him he keeps the promise; if the Congress votes against him, he cannot keep it. That is the issue. It is a very simple issue in 1970. It is the issue particularly in the races for the United States Senate.

And in speaking of the United States Senate race, I particularly selected to talk about tonight because Utah is one of the key States, and it is one in which, interestingly enough, one of the clearest distinctions and differences occur in whole country.

Let me be quite precise. Two good men are running for the United States Senate in Utah; two men who want to be the next United States Senator. Two men, however, who are diametrically opposed to each other on a fundamental issue; one, on the great issues which I will now describe, has a record of opposing the President approximately 100 percent of the time. The other does not support the President all the time. The other in his record in the House has not been a rubber stamp. I would not respect him if he were. As a matter of fact, he has voted to override two of my vetoes.

But, on the other hand, on the four great issues that I will mention tonight, he has voted to support the President. So the question before the people of Utah tonight is this: In the next 2 years, do you want the President to keep his promises?

If you want him to keep his promises, do you want to give him a Senator who will vote with him or against him? And Larry Burton will vote with me. That is why I am here, for Larry Burton.

Now to the issues, and let's understand clearly what they are.

The first issue is this: Right here in this great Tabernacle, I remember in 1968 I pledged to the people of Utah and to the people of America that I would work for a lasting peace in the world. I have been trying to keep that pledge. We have made some progress.

Let me tell you what has happened. This is what I found when I became President: There were 550,000 Americans in Vietnam with no plans to bring them home; casualties were at 300 a week; we had no peace plan at the conference table. I went to work.

Instead of sending more men to Vietnam, which had been the case for 5 years before I got there, we have been bringing them home by the tens of thousands and they will continue to be brought home.

And then by the strong action that I took in Cambodia, we were able to destroy the enemy's capacity to kill Americans and, as a result, our casualties have been reduced to the lowest in 4 1/2 years, and they are going to continue to go down.

And then, third, and most important, as a result, again, of the success of what we had done previously in destroying the enemy's capabilities, we have presented a peace plan, a very generous peace plan, as it should be: a cease-fire, an exchange of prisoners, a negotiated settlement in which we will accept the result of whatever the people of South Vietnam determine for their future.

Now, here is where we are and here are the differences between the two candidates in the State of Utah on this great issue of Vietnam and peace in the world.

We are on the way to ending the war in Vietnam. The question is how you end it. And there are those who say, "We are on the way, but we should end it faster." They say, "Peace now," or they say, "Why not set a deadline? Why not 6 months from now?"

Let me tell you why. The problem, my friends, is not ending a war. I see plenty of people in this room that will remember that in this century we have been in four wars. We ended World War I. Remember? We ended World War II. We ended the Korean war. And yet, the younger people here should know that never in the history of this century, in this entire century, have the American people had a full generation of peace. That is why I say let's end this war in a way that will discourage the warmakers so that we can have a generation of peace. Let's have that kind of end to the war.

We are doing that. I believe that that is the policy that the American people will support. It is the policy that Larry Burton supports. It is the policy that his opponent opposes.

They honestly disagree. You have to decide.

And then we go to the larger area. If we are going to have peace in the world, it isn't just ending the war in Vietnam. It is a question of working out the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Here I have implemented an era of negotiation as distinguished from confrontation.

There will be, as there have been over the past 2 years, more negotiations with the Soviet Union, particularly in the field of limiting nuclear arms.

And now the very simple question is: How do we negotiate?

I can only say this: Don't send your President to the negotiating table with the Soviet leaders, or don't send his advisers to the negotiating table with the Soviet leaders, in a position of weakness. Let's be sure we negotiate from strength and not from weakness with the Soviet leaders.

And here again, we have a very precise difference between the two candidates. One has consistently supported those appropriations, those measures, which would maintain the strength of the United States, that would build, for example, a system, an antiballistic missile system, which the Soviets have already, and which would give us a bargaining position as we attempt to negotiate the reduction in nuclear arms. The other opposes it.

My point is this: I know the Soviet leaders. I know them not personally, but I know, certainly, what their attitudes are in such negotiations. And it is vitally important, if we want negotiations to succeed, if we want to reduce this burden of nuclear arms on ourselves and the danger of nuclear war for the years ahead.

Let us see to it that the United States is not weaker than they are at the conference table.

And then, finally, if we are to have peace in the world, the strength of the United States is needed to guarantee it, because remember this about our strength: Our strength is not kept for the purpose of destroying the peace; it is kept for the purpose of keeping the peace. A strong United States that is respected will guarantee peace.

My friends, I will put it very simply: I deeply believe, more deeply than in any other thing I believe in all my life, my political life, my personal life, that we need, that we want for the young people, for all the people of America and the world, a generation of peace.

I think we are on the road to a generation of peace. But I need a man in the United States Senate who will work with Wally Bennett rather than work against him, and with me rather than against me on the policies that are necessary to have a generation of peace. And that is Larry Burton.

Now, let's come down to a precise issue at home. I know the people of Utah are very sophisticated politically. I know that you study these issues and you are extremely interested in all of the nuances.

So I am going to take one that many audiences, frankly, are not particularly interested in because they do not see the enormous importance of it. Let's look at it this way.

The United States has an enormous budget, in the magnitude of around $200 billion, as you know. And we all are interested in--we want better education, we want better housing, we want better welfare for all of our people.

And we are a rich country. We want to do everything that we can for people who need it.

But, on the other hand, I determined when I became President, and I made this promise when I stood right in this place 2 years ago, I promised that instead of putting good money into bad programs, which means you end up with bad money and bad programs, we would reform the institutions of government.

So, I have asked the Congress for a historic program of reform--reform of education, reform of health, reform of housing, and reform of welfare.

Now, I want you to look at welfare as an example of why reform is necessary.

This is what I found when we came in. I found that in the city of New York, for example, in 1966--and listen to this number--there were 600,00 people on welfare. That is more than live in Salt Lake City.

And yet, in just 4 years, there are 1,200,000 people on welfare in New York City. By 1980, there will be 2.5 million people on welfare in New York City unless we change the program.

I will put it very simply to you. When a system makes it more profitable for a man not to work than to work, when a system encourages a man to desert his family rather than stay with his family, I say it is time to get rid of that system and get another one in its place.

Our program provides for assistance to all those that need it. It does not provide for a guaranteed annual income, because we do not stand for that. It provides for assistance to all needy families.

But it has a work requirement and a work incentive.

I will put it very bluntly: If a man is able to work, if he is trained for a job, and if he is offered a job, and if he refuses to work, that man should not be paid to loaf by a hard-working taxpayer in Utah or any place else in the country.

So there is another very clear difference between your two candidates: One honestly believing we should continue to pour billions of dollars into the old welfare program, and another saying and supporting by his vote, as Wally Bennett does in the Senate, a new program, reforming it, so that we can have work requirement and work incentive, and help for all those that need it.

I say on that issue, again, there is a clear choice. Do you want to support change or do you want to go back to the old way or continue it?

Now we come to the third great issue. The third great issue involves peace at home. We have heard some discussion of that tonight, and I am going to discuss one aspect of that a little later in my remarks, but I want to tell you what I found when I came into office almost 2 years ago.

I found that crime had gone up in the previous 8 years, 158 percent in this country. And that included everything--organized crime, street crime, drugs and narcotics, and obscenity and pornography flowing into the homes of our children.

And the reason it had gone up, one of the major reasons, was an attitude of permissiveness-permissiveness in the courts, permissiveness in high places in the Congress, in the Senate, permissiveness, even, in some of the educational institutions, and I must say some of the churches.

That had to change. So, I pledged in the campaign, I remember pledging it standing right in this place. I remember saying that if I were elected President I would appoint stronger judges. I remember saying that I would appoint a stronger Attorney General of the United States who would not be permissive. And I remember saying that I would ask for stronger laws.

I tried to keep the promises. I have appointed a stronger Attorney General. I have asked for stronger judges.

And here we come to a difference between the two candidates again. When those judges have come up for consideration, delay, delay, delay has occurred. And finally two have been rejected. And yet those judges were two men who were absolutely opposed to the permissiveness of the past.

I say we need judges on every court in this land who will recognize that the time has come to strengthen the peace forces as against the criminal forces in this country. The laws were debated for 18 months before any of the laws came to my desk for signature just before the election time.

What we need are men in the House and men in the Senate who, not just in the 2 months before election, but all year round, talk and work and fight for the kind of laws and the kind of men that will see that the wave of crime does not be come the wave of the future.

Mention has been made of the fact that there was in San Jose, my home State, a days ago, a rather ugly incident--you remember it; you probably saw it on television-an incident in which there were 3,000 people inside the hall listening to the President of the United States, the Governor of California, and the senior Senator from California, and 1,000 ugly demonstrators outside shouting their four-letter obscenities at those who went in, terrorizing the people that were going in, throwing bricks and rocks and chains at the cars that went by, damaging the Presidential limousine, breaking windows in the press buses and in the police cars.

And after that incident, the question is: What does it mean?

I will tell you what it does not mean. Don't blame the people of San Jose. I heard from the mayor of San Jose. I heard from the president of the student body of San Jose State College. And they pointed out that the very few that were there did not represent what the people of San Jose thought or the people of that university thought.

But, my friends, what it does mean, and what we have to recognize, is this: These people were carrying signs saying "Peace," and we are all for peace. But I say that those who carry a "Peace" sign in one hand and who throw a bomb or a brick with the other hand are the super hypocrites of our time.

But, my friends, don't get the wrong impression. Don't let what those violent few do give you a bad impression of all of American youth. Oh, I know on television night after night you see what the bad young people do, and not enough about what the good ones are doing.

Let me say, my friends, if you were to just look at television and read the newspaper accounts, you might gain the impression that the radical few among our youth are a majority of American youth today and may be the leaders tomorrow.

Well, I have news for you. I have been around this country. The violent and radical few are neither a majority of youth today, and they will not be the leaders of America tomorrow.

I say to you, I believe in American youth. You should believe in American youth. The great majority, to their great credit, they are idealistic. They care. They want peace, just as we all want peace. They want a better life for all people. They are concerned about people that don't have the chance that they have had, and this is to their credit.

And they also recognize this fundamental point: They believe in change. They want change. And all younger generations should. But they realize that we have to have peaceful change. And that in our society, a society that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resort to Violence or lawlessness.

And to the young people today, could I say to you: Don't you lose your faith in America. You may get the impression that this is a sick country. You may get the impression that America has a foreign policy that is imperialistic. But I have traveled around this world and I can tell you, my friends, what I find.

When I find hundreds of thousands of people on the streets in a Communist city like Bucharest, Romania; when I find hundreds of thousands in the street in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, as well as in the free countries, the others that I visited, just let me say these people are out cheering. What are they cheering? Not the President of the United States as an individual. They are cheering the United States of America and what we stand for--not because we are rich and not because we are strong, but because this is a good country.

The United States of America is the strongest nation in the world, but everyone abroad knows that we do not threaten the peace or the freedom of any other country.

And they all know abroad that the United States of America in this great, good country--it has faults; it has problems. But there is more freedom, there is more opportunity, there is more progress than in any country in the world.

My friends, we must recognize, as we look at America's faults, that we are very, very fortunate to live in this country, to enjoy it.

One hundred and ten years ago, in one of the most tragic incidents in American history, after the bloody raid at Harper's Ferry, John Brown was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. He was taken to the gallows in a wagon, and the coffin was fight by him on the wagon.

As he was going through the countryside, and as he looked out at the Virginia countryside, speaking to no one in particular, he was heard to say, "This is a beautiful country."

If John Brown, at that time, with his own death imminent, and with a terrible civil war just to come--if he could say that, let us, with all the problems that America has--let us truly recognize today, this is a beautiful country, and we in America are so fortunate that we have in our powers, through our votes, in a free election, to make America an even more beautiful country in the future for our children.

I understand that we now have to leave to go back to our home in California. And I wonder if I could just say one word in a very personal vein to those in this Tabernacle with regard to one aspect of our work that is completely without partisanship and has no political considerations whatever in the usual sense.

As you know, we have instituted a custom of having worship services in the White House, and we have taken a little heat for that, as you do for making any new breakthrough or new decision. We have done it because I felt it was important to bring to the Nation's Capital representatives of various faiths, and most have been represented, but particularly to bring right to the White House, where the President, members of the Cabinet, the members of the diplomatic corps, the Members of the Congress, Democrat and Republican, could be reminded of the fact that while this Nation is the strongest nation in the world and the richest nation in the world, that all the wealth and the strength in the world is as nothing unless the spirit of America is sound and good.

And I do not know of any group in America--and I would say this not only here, but in other places in this country-who have contributed more to that strong, moral leadership and high moral standards, the spirit that has kept America going through bad times as well as good times--no group has done more than those who are members of this church.

I want to thank you for what you have done for the spirit of America. And however the outcome of elections, if you can continue to emphasize those spiritual values, I am sure America is going to go ahead and do very well.

Thank you.