Senator KENNEDY. Thank you, Governor, I am grateful to Governor Hodges, a distinguished Governor of North Carolina for the past 4 years, for being with us tonight in New Hampshire and also for his counsel and friendship and support in this campaign. This campaign is now coming to an end, and I imagine that many of you who have found your television screens taken up by it will be glad. But it is an important responsibility for us all. You have to make a choice tomorrow on who shall be the next President of the United States. The President is given great powers under the Constitution, and great powers by the force of events. Who that President will be, on his judgment, foresight, sense of responsibility, commitment, sense of vigor, will rest in great measure the future of the entire country, the education of your children, full employment for our people, medical care for our older citizens, development of our natural resources, the kind of agricultural program that we have, whether this country, in short, moves forward.

The President is the moral leader. He speaks for all the people. I speak in the Senate today for Massachusetts. Governor Hodges represents North Carolina. Other Senators represent other States. Only the President speaks for Massachusetts and North Carolina and California. It is the great office in the free world. All the issues come to rest on the desk of the President. So there is not a more sober responsibility that a free people have than to pick a President. I ask your support with full knowledge that this office will be extremely burdensome, extremely responsible; in many ways more difficult than it has been since Lincoln. But I served in the Congress for 14 years. I served the country in the Pacific 4 years before that. I am devoted to the interests of this country, and I think if this country is going to move ahead, I think if this country is going to maintain the peace, if we are going to be the leaders, I believe progress must be our most important ingredient. We must move ahead in America.

I believe that my party, the Democrats, are committed to that and have been, through Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Truman, and the others. And the Republican Party has stood still. I just don't believe that the 1960's is a time to stand still.

Every piece of important legislation of benefit to our people was opposed by the Republicans when they first came into being, away back to the Federal Reserve Board, all the reforms of the Roosevelt administration, social security, all the others, minimum wage, housing, benefits to the farmers, all opposed.

Now, with that long history, TVA, the development of our resources, all in opposition, with that long history, how can we expect that that party and that candidate can move this country ahead, with all the changes coming on, the prospects for unemployment, the recession possibly this winter in 1961, with our farm income down 25 percent, with 35 percent of our brightest boys and girls never seeing the inside of a college, who graduate from high school, our prestige in the world being affected, with Communists on the march, Castro on the march. I believe the United States has to make a decision. You have to make your decision tomorrow. What is your view of your country? What do you think ought to be done in the sixties?

If you think that the United States has to move ahead, if you are not satisfied today, if you think we must do better, on that basis I ask your su ...
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