Remarks at the Convention Center in Las Vegas

Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

When I was a boy, we used to get up in the morning and go down the road to church, and then when the services were over we would have dinner-on-the-ground on the river bank and have a real reunion with our neighbors.

This morning, this Sunday morning, we got up early, we got in a jet plane to have our breakfast over Texas, we went to church in Phoenix, Ariz., we had dinner-on-the-ground over in Long Beach, Calif., and here I am in Grant Sawyer, Alan Bible, and Howard Cannon country for supper!

I am so sorry I am late. I apologize for being late. I frankly must tell you I usually am late. I spend most of my life trying not to be. Today I meant to just do some quiet Sunday visiting among some old and good friends, and I guess I did do that. But the number of my friends who turned out was just, to put it mildly, larger than I anticipated.

From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, everywhere we have been in this country we have been seeing good Americans, smiling, happy people--and the reception has been the same.

The American people this year are standing up and being counted as they have never been counted before. And I have never seen them stronger for their Government or their country, or for peace or prosperity, than they are now. The people are being counted for unity. The people are being counted for strength. The people are being counted for prosperity. The people are being counted for peace. And, above all else, the people are being counted for the kind of America that they know and they trust, and they want their children to enjoy.

I hope to set before the Congress early next year a broad program of important legislation. I came out here tonight to do two things: first, to thank each of you, and all the other good people of Nevada, for being one of the two States in the West that went Democratic and voted for John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in 1960.

The second thing I wanted to thank you for, and talk to you about, is this: I need your help because I need Howard Cannon there in the Senate next year to help me with my program. One time someone called me the third Senator from Nevada.

I just want to say this for Nevada: Nevada knows how to vote, Nevada does vote, Nevada votes right. It supported Senator Kennedy and me in 1960. It sent us two strong Democratic Senators.

Alan Bible is one of the ablest and one of the strongest men in the Senate. He serves on the Appropriations Committee, and this year we appropriated for expenditures $1 billion less than we did the preceding year, and that is only the second time in 10 years that we have cut back from the year before. He is a member of the Small Business Committee that has helped the small businessman and provided jobs all over this Nation. He is a member of the Interior Committee that this year produced more conservation legislation than any Congress in 30 years that I have served in Washington-so much legislation for the good of the people, for the recreation of the people, for the good of their children, that we call it the conservation Congress.

We owe no one a greater debt than that honored statesman that sits here, Alan Bible.

Yes, we have much to do in this country, and Nevada has been helping us to do it.

You do have two Democratic Senators there to help me. When President Kennedy was taken from us, on that tragic day in November, on a moment's notice I had to become President, and I took his program and said to the people, "With God's help and with your help and your prayers, I will do my best." Now, I have done that. I have done the very best I knew how.

You are going to have a chance to either approve what I have done, or to turn me out after 11 months next month, 3 weeks from today. You will make that decision, but last Friday night I sat in the White House and I looked at the program that was pending in the Congress when I became President that tragic day. There were 51 major pieces of legislation that the Congress had yet to dispose of.

Last Friday night, the Congress had come and gone, and they had passed every single one of those 51 bills in the Senate of the United States, and all but three or four of them in the House of Representatives.

Nevada had a lot to do with passing that program, and except for these two strong men, there were times when some of those bills would have failed. A number of times we just won by 1, 2, or 3 votes, and Texas couldn't even help me as much as Nevada, and Texas, you know, used to be the largest State in the Union. It is still the largest State in the Union south of the North Pole. But Texas can only give me 1 Democratic vote.

We went off and wandered around and they elected a Republican Senator down there. So the smallest State in the Union can give the President 2 votes to help him keep the peace in the world and keep prosperity at home. And the biggest State in the Union can only give him 1 vote, because the other Senator is just against anything or everything.

Your Governor has been mighty helpful to me and I am grateful to Grant Sawyer. He has been head of the Governors' Conference. He has been cooperative. He has been a great leader. He has worked with the administration. He has worked with the President. For those of you who made that possible, again I thank the people of Nevada.

We have much to do in this country. I do not intend to meet the problems of our growing population with inaction or with a policy of standing pat, or looking the other direction, or turning back on reality, because if we do not act now, our children are going to be neglected and they will not get the best education in the world. If we do not act now our highways will become clogged with traffic. Our cities will decay. Our streams will be poisoned. Our dwindling natural resources will be wasted. The consequences of apathy and indifference will be severe. We would face mounting unemployment, a faltering economy, and growing tension between our people.

I have been in 33 States in the Union, and I can honestly and genuinely tell you that I believe the American people want their Government to be prudent and careful, but progressive. And I know they want action.

We also have challenges abroad that must be met by action that seeks to end the cold war and reduce international conflicts; and to create the conditions of peace and freedom and justice. I believe that you want your Government to pursue peace with every possible means at our command.

The issues are clear: Are we going to work together to resolve the problems that we face at home? Are we going to close our eyes and just hope they go away? Are we going to keep on seeking ways of easing world tensions and thereby reducing the dangers of nuclear war? Or are we going to repudiate those policies and walk an unknown, an uncertain and dangerous path down through the edge of darkness?

Well, you are going to have to decide whether you support the foreign policy that has maintained freedom since World War II, when Harry Truman worked with the Republicans led by Arthur Vandenberg; when Dwight Eisenhower worked with the Democrats led by Lyndon Johnson in the Senate; when John Fitzgerald Kennedy worked with the Republicans led by Everett Dirksen.

We have had a bipartisan foreign policy. We have taken the position that what was good for America was good for us. And you are going to have to decide whether you want to junk that long, successful program and chart an unknown course that leads you to you know not where.

Well, I have been out traveling in the country. We have had a great trip across this lovely land in the past week. We started in the Midwest last Wednesday. Then we spent Saturday at the ranch. Today we started in Phoenix, and then we went to Long Beach, and San Francisco, and now we are here in Nevada. Tomorrow we are going to criss-cross the great West--Nevada, Reno; Montana, Butte; Wyoming, Casper; Colorado, Denver; Idaho, Boise.

We are going to demonstrate tomorrow how the great West can be won. And we hope to be back in Washington tomorrow night, back at work again. And we will return there with a sense of renewal that always comes from the sun and wind of the West.

I can tell you this, and it is no secret, and it is not off the record: The West is on the move. The West is the "Go-Go" section of America.

In my grandfather's time, and my father's time, the West was an isolated, neglected region of this Nation. Tonight the windows of the West are open to the world. Tonight this region is pushing forward to realize its real greatness. And I came out here to Nevada to thank you for '60, to ask you to send me Howard Cannon, and to promise you that the region is pushing forward and that we are going to keep it that way in Washington.

I know some people don't like what Washington does. As a matter of fact, when things don't go to suit me, I don't like it myself, sometimes. But your National Government that leads you in fighting our wars and preserving our peace is your friend. Your two great Senators are part of it, a big part of it. It is your friend; it is not your enemy.

When I came into this great State tonight, I landed on a beautiful airstrip that was built by the Federal Government, that brings a lot of people to Nevada. They land there. I came down a beautiful highway that the Federal Government helped to construct. I came here to a beautiful city made up of fine, progressive people, and I was just thinking when Howard Cannon sat back there on the Space Committee with me, and we worked and planned and thought and deliberated and tried to help with the Nevada test site.

And I think my service as chairman of that committee, and Howard's service on that committee with me, had some little something to do, with Alan's help and others, with employing 9,500 people in this State.

Now, I wouldn't talk about a mean old man that provided that many jobs. In the first place, you are not mean people; you are happy people. You are hopeful people. You are pioneers. You have faith. You look to the future. You are not looking back to the last century. You are looking forward to the next one. Your grandpa wasn't a cry baby and your daddy wasn't either, or they wouldn't be out here in the land of the West.

Some people get upset and frustrated, and when they go to talking about the other party, and they want to get the ins out and they want to get a man's job, like Howard, and have them take their place, well, they find a lot of things that are wrong, and they have a lot of ugly things to say about it. But I hope you all won't hold that against them too much or pay too much attention to it. You learn to expect that.

When a man is challenging your Senator, you don't expect him to recommend him very highly. He has to try to find something wrong.

You know, I remember back when I was a boy in the early 1930's, when we had a lot of relief kitchens and a lot of soup lines, and a lot of CCC camps, and our people didn't have any jobs. They worked for a dollar a day. We had to give our wool away, and our cotton sold for 5 cents a pound. We had some things to say about the Government then, too. But it was a different kind of government then. And if it ever gets back in that shape again, I am going to have something to say about it.

But from what I read in the papers about what some of these fellows say about the Presidency, it looks like they are running against it instead of running for it.

I think what you ought to do with Howard is what we did down in my country one time. A little boy was picking cotton and he left in the middle of the day and he didn't show up until weighing-in time late that evening. The boss said to him when he came back, "Where in the dickens have you been all afternoon?" And he said, "Well, I have been over to the Old Settlers Reunion." The boss said, "What were you doing over there?" He said, "I was listening to United States Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey make a speech."

The boss said, "The Senator didn't speak all afternoon, did he?" The boy said, "No, but mighty near, mighty near all afternoon."

The boss said, "Well, what did the Senator speak about all afternoon?" The little boy scratched his head and said, "Well, boss, I can't recall precisely everything the Senator said, but the general tenor of his remarks and the general impression that I got from what he said was that the Senator was recommending himself most highly."

Now, I want to recommend Senator Cannon most highly, and if you will just allow me, I would like to put in a little recommendation for myself as I go along.

You really have just two things you have to decide, but you are the boss and you are going to decide. I am not going to tell you how to decide them. I could, if I wanted to, but I don't want to. I am going to tell you the two big issues, though.

The biggest issue in your life is peace, whether we are able to live with the other people in the world. You are either going to have a responsible foreign policy or an irresponsible one. Since I have been President just 10 months, they have killed our soldiers in Panama.

We have had an incident at Guantanamo where they took our base and turned our water off so our boys couldn't get any water. You will remember I got a lot of advice on how to handle the situation. Some of them jumped up and hollered, mighty upset and frustrated, and said, "Send in the Marines."

Well, I talked to the Marines, and I talked to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all the smart men we had around Washington, and they deliberated, and we carefully looked at the problem we had. We finally decided that it would be a lot wiser and more prudent to tell one little admiral to go over there and cut that water off than to send in all the Marines. And that is what we did.

And we told Mr. Castro we were going to make that base self-sufficient. We brought in our own machinery and now we make our own water and we don't have to depend on him for the water, and we don't have to depend on the Marines either to go down there and turn it on or off.

We have some problems out in Viet-Nam. We have had them for 10 years out there. We are doing the best we can with them. We are trying to help those people save their freedom.

And freedom is on the march. We have a bunch of new nations that have their independence that have thrown off colonialism. And not one single new nation has embraced communism, not one. And the last nation to go Communist was Cuba in 1959.

As long as I am head of your Government, we are going to press forward to build a better life for all of our people. We are going to keep our Nation standing strong and steadfast at the gate of freedom. We are the mightiest nation in all the world, and we are going to stay there. But we are going to keep our guard up, but our hand out. We are willing to go anywhere, anytime, talk to anyone, to try to reason together for peace. We would rather talk than fight.

To do these things, I can't do them alone. No one man can lead all this Nation. All I can do is the best I can. I need you. I need your help. I need your hand. I need your heart. I need your prayers. Because we are living with 120 other nations, different colors, different religions, different customs, different habits, different incomes.

Do you know half of the nations in the world have an income of less than $8 a month, and the ancient enemies of mankind have their hands around their necks--disease, illiteracy, ignorance, impoverishment.

We have to do something to try to lead the rest of the world because if a peaceful revolution is impossible, a violent revolution is inevitable. And that is what we are trying to do, because we are the most powerful nation in the world. We have the moral obligation to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

It is mighty easy to issue an ultimatum and tell them to do this or else. You can rattle your rockets. We have more than anyone--twice as many. You can talk about your bombers, with the nuclear weapon on them. We have more than twice as many as anyone.

But rattling your rockets and boasting about your bombers and issuing ultimatums is not going to really scare anybody or threaten anybody, or really bring peace to the world. I sat there in the National Security Council's 37 meetings when Mr. Khrushchev had his missiles in Cuba, and I never left my home in the morning knowing whether I would see my wife and daughters when I got back that night, or whether I would get back or riot.

But I am proud to tell you that during that period we were cautious and we were careful, and we were firm, and we were mighty, and we had our men on guard and our planes in the air and our bombs loaded and our ships at sea going in the right direction. And the coolest man at that Cabinet table in Washington was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the President of the United States.

You know what happened there. I don't know what tomorrow offers, or the next week, or the next month. I wish I could give you assurance for the days ahead. I do know that we have much to preserve and much to protect and much to be thankful for, that we are a blessed people, and we ought to get down on our knees and thank the good Lord for the opportunity that we have here in America and the freedom that we have here in America.

I sometimes wonder about all these folks that talk so much about how terrible things are in America--where it is they would rather live than here. I like people that have faith instead of fear. I like people that love instead of hate. I like people that can find something good about their country instead of always talking about things that are bad about their country. I guess that is why I like Nevada, and I hope that is why Nevada likes me.

In 3 weeks you have to determine whether you follow a policy of bipartisanship that has worked for 20 years and has saved Western Europe, that has maintained our position in Asia, that has helped the African Continent, that has made us the leader of the world, or whether you will abandon it and go to evils that you know not of.

You will determine policy, whether you will follow the policy that has 72.5 million men working, the largest number in the history of the world, at the highest wages they have ever been paid; that has 20 million drawing social security in this country and living in decency and dignity; that has corporations that are making $12 billion more after taxes this year than when you Nevadans elected John Kennedy; paying $60 billion more to workers in this country after taxes than they were paying when you elected John Kennedy.

You have to determine whether you want the government that saved $676 million in the month of July and the month of August under what we spent last July and August a year ago; a government that had 25,000 less Federal employees this July than we had last July a year ago.

You have to decide whether you want to keep that kind of management or whether you want to turn them out. That is your decision. Whatever your decision is, I know it will be the right one, and I know it will be according to your heart, what is best for your country.

Thank you.