In accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for
President, Mr. Carter told the Democratic National
Convention meeting at Madison Square Garden in
New York City on July 15, 1976:
"My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for President.
It’s been a long time since I said those words the first time, and now I’ve
come here after seeing our great country to accept your nomination.
I accept it, in the words of John F. Kennedy, with a full and grateful heart
and with only one obligation: to devote every effort of body, mind and spirit
to lead our party back to victory and our nation back
to greatness.
It’s a pleasure to be here with all you Democrats and
to see that our Bicentennial celebration and our
Bicentennial convention has been one of decorum and
order without any fights or free-for-alls.
Among Democrats that can only happen once every two
hundred years. With this kind of a united Democratic
Party, we are ready, and eager, to take on the
Republicans, whichever Republican Party they decide
to send against us in November.
Nineteen seventy-six will not be a year of politics
as usual. It can be a year of inspiration and hope,
and it will be a year of concern, of quiet and sober
reassessment of our nation’s character and purpose.
It has already been a year when voters have confounded
the experts. And I guarantee you that it will be the
year when we give the government of this country back
to the people of this country.
There is a new mood in America. We have been shaken
by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken
promises at home. Our people are searching for new
voices and new ideas and new leaders.
Although government has its limits and cannot solve
all our problems, we Americans reject the view that
we must be reconciled to failures and mediocrity,
or to an inferior quality of life. For I believe that
we can come through this time of trouble stronger
than ever. Like troops who have been in combat, we
have been tempered in the fire; we have been disciplined,
and we have been educated. Guided by lasting and
simple moral values, we have emerged idealists without
illusions, realists who still know the old dreams of
justice and liberty, of country and of community.
This year we have had thirty state primaries--more
than ever before making it possible to take our campaign
directly to the people of America: to homes and
shopping centers, to factory shift lines and colleges,
to beauty parlors and barbershops, to farmers’ markets
and union halls.
This has been a long and personal campaign, a humbling
experience, reminding us that ultimate political
influence rests not with the power brokers but with the
people. This has been a time of tough debate on the
important issues facing our country. This kind of debate
is part of our tradition, and as Democrats we are heirs
to a great tradition.
I have never met a Democratic President, but I have
always been a Democrat.
Years ago, as a farm boy sitting outdoors with my family
on the ground in the middle of the night, gathered close
around a battery radio connected to the automobile battery
and listening to the Democratic conventions in far-off
cities, I was a long way from the selection process. I
feel much closer to it tonight.
Ours is the party of the man who was nominated by those
distant conventions and who inspired and restored this
nation in its darkest hours, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Ours is the party of a fighting Democrat who showed us
that a common man could be an uncommon leader, Harry S. Truman.
Ours is the party of a brave young President who called
the young at heart, regardless of age, to seek a New Frontier,
of national greatness, John F. Kennedy.
And ours is also the party of a great-hearted Texan who
took office in a tragic hour and who went on to do more
than any other President in this century to advance the
cause of human rights, Lyndon Johnson.
Our Party was built out of the sweatshops of the old Lower
East Side, the dark mills of New Hampshire, the blazing hearths
of Illinois, the coal mines of Pennsylvania, the hard-scrabble
farms of the southern coastal plains, and the unlimited
frontiers of America.
Ours is the party that welcomed generations of immigrants, the
Jews, the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and all the
others, enlisted them in its ranks and fought the political
battles that helped bring them into the American mainstream.
And they have shaped the character of our party.
That is our heritage. Our party has not been perfect. We
have made mistakes, and we have paid for them. But ours
is a tradition of leadership and compassion and progress.
Our leaders have fought for every piece of progressive
legislation, from RFD and REA to Social Security and civil
rights. In times of need, the Democrats were there.
But in recent years our nation has seen a failure of leadership.
We have been hurt, and we have been disillusioned. We have
seen a wall go up that separates us from our own government.
We have lost some precious things that historically have
bound our people and our government together. We feel that
moral decay has weakened our country, that it is crippled
by a lack of goals and values, and that our public officials
have lost faith in us.
We have been a nation adrift too long. We have been without
leadership too long. We have had divided and deadlocked
government too long. We have been governed by veto too long.
We have suffered enough at the hands of a tired and worn-out
administration without new ideas, without youth or vitality,
without vision and without the confidence of the American
people. There is a fear that our best years are behind us.
But I say to you that our nation’s best is still ahead.
Our country has lived through a time of torment. It is
now a time for healing. We want to have faith again. We
want to be proud again. We just want the truth again.
It is time for the people to run the government, and not
the other way around.
It is the time to honor and strengthen our families and our
neighborhoods and our diverse cultures and customs.
We need a Democratic President and a Congress to work in
harmony for a change, with mutual respect for a change.
And next year we are going to have that new leadership.
You can depend on it!
It is time for America to move and to speak not with boasting
and belligerence but with a quiet strength, to depend in
world affairs not merely on the size of an arsenal but
on the nobility of ideas, and to govern at home not by
confusion and crisis but with grace and imagination and
common sense.
Too many have had to suffer at the hands of a political economic
elite who have shaped decisions and never had to account
for mistakes or to suffer from injustice. When unemployment
prevails, they never stand in line looking for a job.
When deprivation results from a confused and bewildering
welfare system, they never do without food or clothing or
a place to sleep. When the public schools are inferior or
torn by strife, their children go to exclusive private schools.
And when the bureaucracy is bloated and confused, the powerful
always manage to discover and occupy niches of special
influence and privilege. An unfair tax structure serves their
needs. And tight secrecy always seems to prevent reform.
All of us must be careful not to cheat each other. Too
often unholy, selfperpetuating alliances have been formed
between money and politics, and the average citizen has
been held at arm’s length.
Each time our nation has made a serious mistake the American people
have been excluded from the process. The tragedy of Vietnam and
Cambodia, the disgrace of Watergate, and the embarrassment of the
CIA revelations could have been avoided if our government
had simply reflected the sound judgement and good common
sense and the high moral character of the American people.
It is time for us to take a new look at our own government, to strip
away the secrecy, to expose the unwarranted pressure of lobbyists,
to eliminate waste, to release our civil servants from bureaucratic
chaos, to provide tough management, and always to remember that in
any town or city the mayor, the governor, and the
President represent exactly the same constituents.
As a governor, I had to deal each day with the complicated and
confused and overlapping and wasteful federal government bureaucracy.
As President, I want you to help me evolve an efficient, economical,
purposeful, and manageable government for our nation. Now, I recognize
the difficulty, but if I’m elected, it’s going to be done. And you
can depend on it!
We must strengthen the government closest to the people. Business,
labor, agriculture, education, science, and government should not
struggle in isolation from one another but should be able to strive
toward mutual goals and shared opportunities. We should make major
investments in people and not in buildings and weapons. The poor,
the aged, the weak, the afflicted must be treated with respect
and compassion and with love.
I have spoken a lot of times this year about love. But love must be
aggressively translated into simple justice. The test of any
government is not how popular it is with the powerful but how
honestly and fairly it deals with those who must depend on it.
It is time for a complete overhaul of our income tax system. I still
tell you: It is a disgrace to the human race. All my life I have heard
promises about tax reform, but it never quite happens. With your help,
we are finally going to make it happen.
And you can depend on it.
Here is something that can really help our country: It is time for
universal voter registration.
It is time for a nationwide comprehensive health program for all
our people.
It is time to guarantee an end to discrimination because of race
or sex by full involvement in the decision making process of
government by those who know what it is to suffer from
discrimination. And they’ll be in the government if I am
elected.
It is time for the law to be enforced. We cannot educate children,
we cannot create harmony among our people, we cannot preserve basic
human freedom unless we have an orderly society.
Crime and lack of justice are especially cruel to those who are least
able to protect themselves. Swift arrest and trial, fair and uniform
punishment, should be expected by anyone who would break our laws.
It is time for our government leaders to respect the law no less than
the humblest citizen, so that we can end once and for all a double
standard of justice.
I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free and the poor ones
go to jail.
A simple and a proper function of government is just to make it easy
for us to do good and difficult for us to do wrong.
As an engineer, a planner, a businessman, I see clearly the value
to our nation of a strong system of free enterprise based on
increase productivity and adequate wages. We Democrats believe
that competition is better than regulation, and we intend to
combine strong safeguards for consumers with minimal intrusion
of government in our free economic system.
I believe that anyone who is able to work ought to work--and ought
to have a chance to work. We will never have an end to the
inflationary spiral, we will never have a balanced budget,
which I am determined to see--as long as we have eight or
nine million Americans out of work who cannot find a job.
Any system of economics is bankrupt if it sees either value
or virtue in unemployment. We simply cannot check inflation
by keeping people out of work.
The foremost responsibility of any President, above all else,
is to guarantee the security of our nation, a guarantee of
freedom from the threat of successful attack or blackmail,
and the ability with our allies to maintain peace.
But peace is not the mere absence of war. Peace is action to
stamp out international terrorism. Peace is the unceasing effort
to preserve human rights. Peace is a combined demonstration of
strength and good will. We will pray for peace and we will work
for peace, until we have removed from all nations for all
time the threat of nuclear destruction.
America’s birth opened a new chapter in mankind’s history. Ours
was the first nation to dedicate itself clearly to basic moral
and philosophical principles: that all people are created equal
and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness, and that the power of government is
derived from the consent of the governed.
This national commitment was a singular act of wisdom and courage,
and it brought the best and the bravest from other nations to our
shores. It was a revolutionary development that captured the imagination
of mankind. It created a basis for a unique role of America—that
of a pioneer in shaping more decent and just relations among people
and among societies.
Today, two hundred years later, we must address ourselves to that role,
both in what we do at home and how we act abroad, among people
everywhere who have become politically more alert, socially more
congested, and increasingly impatient with global inequities, and
who are now organized, as you know, into some one hundred and fifty
different nations. This calls for nothing less than a
sustained architectural effort to shape an international framework
of peace within which our own ideals gradually can become a global
reality.
Our nation should always derive its character directly from the
people and let this be the strength and the image to be presented
to the world—the character of the American people.
To our friends and allies I say that what unites us through our
common dedication to democracy is much more important than that
which occasionally divides us on economics or politics. To the
nations that seek to lift themselves from poverty I say that
America shares your aspirations and extends its hand to
you. To those nation-states that wish to compete with us I say
that we neither fear competition nor see it as an obstacle to
wider cooperation. To all people I say that after two hundred
years America still remains confident and youthful in its
commitment to freedom and equality, and we always will be.
During this election year we candidates will ask you for your votes,
and from us will be demanded our vision.
My vision of this nation and its future has been deepened and matured
during the nineteen months that I have campaigned among you for President.
I have never had more faith in America than I do today. We have an
America that, in Bob Dylan’s phrase, is busy being born, not busy
dying.
We can have an America that has reconciled its economic needs with its
desire for an environment that we can pass on with pride to the next
generation. We can have an America that provides excellence in education
to my child and your child and every child. We can have an America that
encourages and takes pride in our ethnic diversity, our religious
diversity, our cultural diversity—knowing that out of this
pluralistic heritage has come the strength and the vitality and the
creativity that has made us great and will keep us great.
We can have an American government that does not oppress or spy on its
own people but respects our dignity and our privacy and our right to be
let alone. We can have an America where freedom, on the one hand, and
equality, on the other hand, are mutually supportive and not in conflict,
and where the dreams of our nation’s first leaders are fully realized in
our own day and age. And we can have an America which harnesses the idealism
of the student, the compassion of a nurse or the social worker, the
determination of a farmer, the wisdom of a teacher, the practicality
of the business leader, the experience of the senior citizen, and the
hope of a laborer to build a better life for us all. And we can
have it, and we’re going to have it!
As I’ve said many times before, we can have an American President who
does not govern with negativism and fear of the future, but with vigor
and vision and aggressive leadership—a President who’s not isolated
from the people, but who feels your pain and shares your dreams and
takes his strength and his wisdom and his courage from you.
I see an America on the move again, united, a diverse and vital and
tolerant nation, entering our third century with pride and confidence,
an America that lives up to the majesty of our Constitution and the
simple decency of our people.
This is the America we want. This is the America that we will have.
We will go forward from this convention with some differences of opinion
perhaps, but nevertheless united in a calm determination to make our country
large and driving and generous in spirit once again, ready to embark on great
national deeds. And once again, as brothers and sisters, our hearts will swell
with pride to call ourselves Americans.
"My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for President.
It’s been a long time since I said those words the first time, and now I’ve
come here after seeing our great country to accept your nomination.
I accept it, in the words of John F. Kennedy, with a full and grateful heart
and with only one obligation: to devote every effort of body, mind and spirit
to lead our party back to victory and our nation back
to greatness.
It’s a pleasure to be here with all you Democrats and
to see that our Bicentennial celebration and our
Bicentennial convention has been one of decorum and
order without any fights or free-for-alls.
Among Democrats that can only happen once every two
hundred years. With this kind of a united Democratic
Party, we are ready, and eager, to take on the
Republicans, whichever Republican Party they decide
to send against us in November.
Nineteen seventy-six will not be a year of politics
as usual. It can be a year of inspiration and hope,
and it will be a year of concern, of quiet and sober
reassessment of our nation’s character and purpose.
It has already been a year when voters have confounded
the experts. And I guarantee you that it will be the
year when we give the government of this country back
to the people of this country.
There is a new mood in America. We have been shaken
by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken
promises at home. Our people are searching for new
voices and new ideas and new leaders.
Although government has its limits and cannot solve
all our problems, we Americans reject the view that
we must be reconciled to failures and mediocrity,
or to an inferior quality of life. For I believe that
we can come through this time of trouble stronger
than ever. Like troops who have been in combat, we
have been tempered in the fire; we have been disciplined,
and we have been educated. Guided by lasting and
simple moral values, we have emerged idealists without
illusions, realists who still know the old dreams of
justice and liberty, of country and of community.
This year we have had thirty state primaries--more
than ever before making it possible to take our campaign
directly to the people of America: to homes and
shopping centers, to factory shift lines and colleges,
to beauty parlors and barbershops, to farmers’ markets
and union halls.
This has been a long and personal campaign, a humbling
experience, reminding us that ultimate political
influence rests not with the power brokers but with the
people. This has been a time of tough debate on the
important issues facing our country. This kind of debate
is part of our tradition, and as Democrats we are heirs
to a great tradition.
I have never met a Democratic President, but I have
always been a Democrat.
Years ago, as a farm boy sitting outdoors with my family
on the ground in the middle of the night, gathered close
around a battery radio connected to the automobile battery
and listening to the Democratic conventions in far-off
cities, I was a long way from the selection process. I
feel much closer to it tonight.
Ours is the party of the man who was nominated by those
distant conventions and who inspired and restored this
nation in its darkest hours, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Ours is the party of a fighting Democrat who showed us
that a common man could be an uncommon leader, Harry S. Truman.
Ours is the party of a brave young President who called
the young at heart, regardless of age, to seek a New Frontier,
of national greatness, John F. Kennedy.
And ours is also the party of a great-hearted Texan who
took office in a tragic hour and who went on to do more
than any other President in this century to advance the
cause of human rights, Lyndon Johnson.
Our Party was built out of the sweatshops of the old Lower
East Side, the dark mills of New Hampshire, the blazing hearths
of Illinois, the coal mines of Pennsylvania, the hard-scrabble
farms of the southern coastal plains, and the unlimited
frontiers of America.
Ours is the party that welcomed generations of immigrants, the
Jews, the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and all the
others, enlisted them in its ranks and fought the political
battles that helped bring them into the American mainstream.
And they have shaped the character of our party.
That is our heritage. Our party has not been perfect. We
have made mistakes, and we have paid for them. But ours
is a tradition of leadership and compassion and progress.
Our leaders have fought for every piece of progressive
legislation, from RFD and REA to Social Security and civil
rights. In times of need, the Democrats were there.
But in recent years our nation has seen a failure of leadership.
We have been hurt, and we have been disillusioned. We have
seen a wall go up that separates us from our own government.
We have lost some precious things that historically have
bound our people and our government together. We feel that
moral decay has weakened our country, that it is crippled
by a lack of goals and values, and that our public officials
have lost faith in us.
We have been a nation adrift too long. We have been without
leadership too long. We have had divided and deadlocked
government too long. We have been governed by veto too long.
We have suffered enough at the hands of a tired and worn-out
administration without new ideas, without youth or vitality,
without vision and without the confidence of the American
people. There is a fear that our best years are behind us.
But I say to you that our nation’s best is still ahead.
Our country has lived through a time of torment. It is
now a time for healing. We want to have faith again. We
want to be proud again. We just want the truth again.
It is time for the people to run the government, and not
the other way around.
It is the time to honor and strengthen our families and our
neighborhoods and our diverse cultures and customs.
We need a Democratic President and a Congress to work in
harmony for a change, with mutual respect for a change.
And next year we are going to have that new leadership.
You can depend on it!
It is time for America to move and to speak not with boasting
and belligerence but with a quiet strength, to depend in
world affairs not merely on the size of an arsenal but
on the nobility of ideas, and to govern at home not by
confusion and crisis but with grace and imagination and
common sense.
Too many have had to suffer at the hands of a political economic
elite who have shaped decisions and never had to account
for mistakes or to suffer from injustice. When unemployment
prevails, they never stand in line looking for a job.
When deprivation results from a confused and bewildering
welfare system, they never do without food or clothing or
a place to sleep. When the public schools are inferior or
torn by strife, their children go to exclusive private schools.
And when the bureaucracy is bloated and confused, the powerful
always manage to discover and occupy niches of special
influence and privilege. An unfair tax structure serves their
needs. And tight secrecy always seems to prevent reform.
All of us must be careful not to cheat each other. Too
often unholy, selfperpetuating alliances have been formed
between money and politics, and the average citizen has
been held at arm’s length.
Each time our nation has made a serious mistake the American people
have been excluded from the process. The tragedy of Vietnam and
Cambodia, the disgrace of Watergate, and the embarrassment of the
CIA revelations could have been avoided if our government
had simply reflected the sound judgement and good common
sense and the high moral character of the American people.
It is time for us to take a new look at our own government, to strip
away the secrecy, to expose the unwarranted pressure of lobbyists,
to eliminate waste, to release our civil servants from bureaucratic
chaos, to provide tough management, and always to remember that in
any town or city the mayor, the governor, and the
President represent exactly the same constituents.
As a governor, I had to deal each day with the complicated and
confused and overlapping and wasteful federal government bureaucracy.
As President, I want you to help me evolve an efficient, economical,
purposeful, and manageable government for our nation. Now, I recognize
the difficulty, but if I’m elected, it’s going to be done. And you
can depend on it!
We must strengthen the government closest to the people. Business,
labor, agriculture, education, science, and government should not
struggle in isolation from one another but should be able to strive
toward mutual goals and shared opportunities. We should make major
investments in people and not in buildings and weapons. The poor,
the aged, the weak, the afflicted must be treated with respect
and compassion and with love.
I have spoken a lot of times this year about love. But love must be
aggressively translated into simple justice. The test of any
government is not how popular it is with the powerful but how
honestly and fairly it deals with those who must depend on it.
It is time for a complete overhaul of our income tax system. I still
tell you: It is a disgrace to the human race. All my life I have heard
promises about tax reform, but it never quite happens. With your help,
we are finally going to make it happen.
And you can depend on it.
Here is something that can really help our country: It is time for
universal voter registration.
It is time for a nationwide comprehensive health program for all
our people.
It is time to guarantee an end to discrimination because of race
or sex by full involvement in the decision making process of
government by those who know what it is to suffer from
discrimination. And they’ll be in the government if I am
elected.
It is time for the law to be enforced. We cannot educate children,
we cannot create harmony among our people, we cannot preserve basic
human freedom unless we have an orderly society.
Crime and lack of justice are especially cruel to those who are least
able to protect themselves. Swift arrest and trial, fair and uniform
punishment, should be expected by anyone who would break our laws.
It is time for our government leaders to respect the law no less than
the humblest citizen, so that we can end once and for all a double
standard of justice.
I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free and the poor ones
go to jail.
A simple and a proper function of government is just to make it easy
for us to do good and difficult for us to do wrong.
As an engineer, a planner, a businessman, I see clearly the value
to our nation of a strong system of free enterprise based on
increase productivity and adequate wages. We Democrats believe
that competition is better than regulation, and we intend to
combine strong safeguards for consumers with minimal intrusion
of government in our free economic system.
I believe that anyone who is able to work ought to work--and ought
to have a chance to work. We will never have an end to the
inflationary spiral, we will never have a balanced budget,
which I am determined to see--as long as we have eight or
nine million Americans out of work who cannot find a job.
Any system of economics is bankrupt if it sees either value
or virtue in unemployment. We simply cannot check inflation
by keeping people out of work.
The foremost responsibility of any President, above all else,
is to guarantee the security of our nation, a guarantee of
freedom from the threat of successful attack or blackmail,
and the ability with our allies to maintain peace.
But peace is not the mere absence of war. Peace is action to
stamp out international terrorism. Peace is the unceasing effort
to preserve human rights. Peace is a combined demonstration of
strength and good will. We will pray for peace and we will work
for peace, until we have removed from all nations for all
time the threat of nuclear destruction.
America’s birth opened a new chapter in mankind’s history. Ours
was the first nation to dedicate itself clearly to basic moral
and philosophical principles: that all people are created equal
and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness, and that the power of government is
derived from the consent of the governed.
This national commitment was a singular act of wisdom and courage,
and it brought the best and the bravest from other nations to our
shores. It was a revolutionary development that captured the imagination
of mankind. It created a basis for a unique role of America—that
of a pioneer in shaping more decent and just relations among people
and among societies.
Today, two hundred years later, we must address ourselves to that role,
both in what we do at home and how we act abroad, among people
everywhere who have become politically more alert, socially more
congested, and increasingly impatient with global inequities, and
who are now organized, as you know, into some one hundred and fifty
different nations. This calls for nothing less than a
sustained architectural effort to shape an international framework
of peace within which our own ideals gradually can become a global
reality.
Our nation should always derive its character directly from the
people and let this be the strength and the image to be presented
to the world—the character of the American people.
To our friends and allies I say that what unites us through our
common dedication to democracy is much more important than that
which occasionally divides us on economics or politics. To the
nations that seek to lift themselves from poverty I say that
America shares your aspirations and extends its hand to
you. To those nation-states that wish to compete with us I say
that we neither fear competition nor see it as an obstacle to
wider cooperation. To all people I say that after two hundred
years America still remains confident and youthful in its
commitment to freedom and equality, and we always will be.
During this election year we candidates will ask you for your votes,
and from us will be demanded our vision.
My vision of this nation and its future has been deepened and matured
during the nineteen months that I have campaigned among you for President.
I have never had more faith in America than I do today. We have an
America that, in Bob Dylan’s phrase, is busy being born, not busy
dying.
We can have an America that has reconciled its economic needs with its
desire for an environment that we can pass on with pride to the next
generation. We can have an America that provides excellence in education
to my child and your child and every child. We can have an America that
encourages and takes pride in our ethnic diversity, our religious
diversity, our cultural diversity—knowing that out of this
pluralistic heritage has come the strength and the vitality and the
creativity that has made us great and will keep us great.
We can have an American government that does not oppress or spy on its
own people but respects our dignity and our privacy and our right to be
let alone. We can have an America where freedom, on the one hand, and
equality, on the other hand, are mutually supportive and not in conflict,
and where the dreams of our nation’s first leaders are fully realized in
our own day and age. And we can have an America which harnesses the idealism
of the student, the compassion of a nurse or the social worker, the
determination of a farmer, the wisdom of a teacher, the practicality
of the business leader, the experience of the senior citizen, and the
hope of a laborer to build a better life for us all. And we can
have it, and we’re going to have it!
As I’ve said many times before, we can have an American President who
does not govern with negativism and fear of the future, but with vigor
and vision and aggressive leadership—a President who’s not isolated
from the people, but who feels your pain and shares your dreams and
takes his strength and his wisdom and his courage from you.
I see an America on the move again, united, a diverse and vital and
tolerant nation, entering our third century with pride and confidence,
an America that lives up to the majesty of our Constitution and the
simple decency of our people.
This is the America we want. This is the America that we will have.
We will go forward from this convention with some differences of opinion
perhaps, but nevertheless united in a calm determination to make our country
large and driving and generous in spirit once again, ready to embark on great
national deeds. And once again, as brothers and sisters, our hearts will swell
with pride to call ourselves Americans.
