Remarks at a Campaign Reception for Southern Supporters in Atlanta, Georgia

Ladies and gentlemen:

As I am sure all of you know who are here from the various States represented, this is a meeting which covers the entire South, and, consequently, the remarks I will make at the outset, before having the opportunity, with Mrs. Nixon, to meet each of you, will be directed not just to this State but to the whole South and, as a matter of fact, to the whole Nation, as you will soon see.

Before, however, referring to the South in general, I would like to say a word about the reception we have had in Atlanta today.

It is a very great privilege, of course, to represent this country as Mrs. Nixon and I have in various capacities, as Vice President for 8 years and then as President. We have seen many very big crowds. We have seen some that are bigger. However, I have never seen a bigger crowd in Atlanta. I understand it is the biggest crowd in Atlanta's history.

While there are some cities that are larger than Atlanta, and that would only account for a larger crowd in some places, I have never seen a crowd that had what I call a higher "E.Q." We all hear about "I.Q." That is very important. But "E.Q." sometimes is even more important. That means "Enthusiasm Quotient," and there was enthusiasm in that crowd.

Now, to all of you ladies and gentlemen, and to the ladies and gentlemen of the press who are here from the Washington press corps and from all over the South, let me direct my remarks to this campaign-what it means to the South, what it means to the Nation.

This election marks the beginning of a new era in the political alignment of the South and of the Nation. For 100 years, one party took the South for granted, and the other party, as a matter of fact, wrote it off. Now that is entirely changed. Neither party is going to take the South for granted, and neither party can afford to write it off.

This is going to be good for the South. It is going to be good for the Nation. I have seen this develop. This is not the first time that we have had a motorcade in Atlanta; the first was in 1960. It was one of the most exciting motorcades of the entire campaign. It was a huge crowd, an enthusiastic crowd, not as big as today, but big.

Afterwards, some members of the press said, "Why did you go; you know you are not going to carry Georgia?" I said, "I am quite aware of that." But I went to all 50 States in 1960, and then in 1968 I visited almost all of the States, and many, many States in the South. As President of the United States, I have visited every one of the 50 States. And in the next 4 years I am planning, to the extent that my schedule will permit, to visit every one of the 50 States.

There is a reason for that. I do not believe in dividing this Nation--region against region, young versus old, black versus white, race versus race, religion versus religion. I believe this is one country. I believe this is one Nation. And I believe that while we are all proud of our backgrounds--some are westerners, some are southerners, some are northerners, some are black, some are white, some are of Italian background, some are of American stock, as they call it--but whatever we may be and whatever our backgrounds may be, we are Americans first, and that is what we must always remember.

Now, it has been suggested that my campaigning the South in 1960, and then again in 1968, and now again in 1972, means that we have, I have, a so-called Southern strategy. It is not a Southern strategy; it is an American strategy. That is what it is, and that is what the South believes in and that is what America believes in.

I must admit, more than many recent American Presidents I perhaps have a closer affinity to the South because of my education. I took my law at Duke University. It was a fine law school. I learned a lot of law. I also met a lot of fine young men and women who came from the South. I learned a lot about law and I learned also a lot about this Nation's background, and the differences, and I learned some of the things I had thought were right when I got there might not be right.

I remember, since I was somewhat of a student of history, that when I went to Duke University in 1934, after a very good college education at Whittier in California, I was utterly convinced that Ulysses S. Grant was the best general produced on either side in the Civil War. After rooming for 2 years with Bill Perdue of Macon, Georgia, I found, and was almost convinced by Bill Perdue's constant hammering on it, that Ulysses S. Grant would be lucky to be about fourth behind Robert E. Lee, Joseph Johnston, and Stonewall Jackson.

Who was the better general or the best general in the Civil War, fortunately, is something that is not important now. What is more important now is that we find a way to make this one Nation, that we find a way to work together, that we find the way in this campaign and in this election to be guided by our hopes and by our ideals, and not by our fears and our hates.

That is why I am campaigning in all regions, among all races, among all religions, among all age groups. People don't have to be for me for me to talk to them. What I am trying to do is to appeal to all.

That is why we seek what I call a new American majority. Let me talk about that majority, if I can, in terms of the South. Many southerners will be part of that majority. They will be part of it for reasons that their fathers and grandfathers could never have accepted.

There was a time in the South--and this is still true among some, as it is in some Northern States with regard to Republicans but there was a time in the South when any southerner would vote for any Democrat and never vote for a Republican.

What this new political development is that we see in this election, and I think will be reflected in this election in Georgia and throughout the Southern States, is that that is no longer going to be true. Candidates of either party are going to have to seek support not on the basis of the party label, but on the basis of what they believe, and people of the South are going to vote for the man or the woman, rather than the party.

Now let me come fight down to the issues. What are the so-called Southern issues? This answer is going to surprise you. They are the same here as they are in America. Let me take the one that everybody assumes is a Southern issue--I say everybody, everybody who takes a superficial view of politics and thinks of the old politics and the old South, rather than the new politics and the new South---it is said that the major issue in the South is race.

Let me tell you something. I was looking at some polls recently. I know, too, that the issue of busing is one that is a very hot one fight here in this State. But as I was looking at some polls of various issues in the State of Michigan and the State of Alabama, did you know that busing is a much hotter issue in Michigan today than it is in Alabama?

Now, what does that mean? It does not mean that the majority of the people in Michigan are racist, any more than the majority of the people of Alabama, because they happen to be opposed to busing. It simply means this: It means parents in Michigan, like parents in Alabama and parents in Georgia and parents all over this country, want better education for their children, and that better education is going to come in the schools that are closer to home and not those clear across town.

That is why our approach is better education, better education for all and equal opportunity for all, but not inviting into this particular matter the kind of an approach that might, in the name of so-called racial balance, produce inferior education and racial strife.

We need better education for white children, for black children, for all children. And the way we can get it, I think, is through the approach that I have suggested.

Now, getting that issue out of the way, let me tell you what the number one issues, based on the polls that we have seen, national polls Gallup, Harris, all the rest, they all come out the same--the number one issues in the South are, and the number one issues in the Nation. These are the issues that make most southerners potential members of what we call the new American majority.

First, they want this country to be strong, not because they want the United States to be strong for jingoistic reasons, although southerners have a great deal of national pride, but because they know that a strong United States is the guardian of peace in the world and the guardian of freedom.

Southerners know, as do other Americans, that the day the United States becomes the second strongest nation in the world, freedom and peace will be in deadly danger around the world, and we are not going to let that happen.

The second issue, and this is true of the South and it is true of the Nation, is that you want peace, you want it now, you want it in the future, but you want peace with honor. Not simply because honor is something that you have to be for because this Nation got committed, but because you realize that if we do not have peace with honor we really are planting the seeds for war in the future. We are really inviting the aggression that none of us want in the future.

And that is why the peace with honor we seek in Vietnam and that peace that we have made so much progress in obtaining over these past 4 years, that peace with honor is supported by most southerners and that is why the peace with honor that we seek is one that rejects betraying our allies, abandoning our POW's, or providing amnesty for draft dodgers and deserters who leave this country.

The third issue: It is a Southern issue, it is a national issue--the people of the South want an opportunity for good jobs, high wages, and cost of living kept under control so that you are not on a treadmill.

High prices are an issue in the South. Taxes are an issue in the South. Jobs are an issue in the South. That is why most southerners I have found approve of this Administration's policies that have cut the rate of inflation in half and that will cut it even more if we are given the chance. And second, they approve this Administration's policies that have made it possible for us to have the highest rate of growth of any major industrial nation in the world and why they approve of an Administration's policies that will go forward until we achieve a goal we haven't had in this country since President Eisenhower was President in 1955 and '56, and that means full employment without inflation, without war. That is what we are for, and that is what southerners are for.

Issue number four: Most southerners and most Americans, East, West, North, and South, want respect for law, respect for order, and they want justice, justice to all people. And in wanting respect for law and order and justice, they realize that in 1968 we were on an escalating trend toward massive crime in this country, drugs, narcotics, going up and up and up. They realize that we have launched an all-out offensive in this Administration against the forces of crime, against the forces of drugs, and we are beginning to win.

The rate of crime increase in 1968, in the last 6 months, was 28 percent. We brought that almost to a standstill. In the first 6 months of this year it was only one percent. If we get the chance, we can turn it around, and one way we can turn it around that I want to mention right here today is this: I have made some appointments to the Supreme Court. I have made appointments to other courts. I have selected men and women that I consider to be good lawyers.

But one thing that I insist upon for all appointees is this: They must recognize that the first civil right of every American, whatever he may be, what he wants is to be free from domestic violence, and that it is necessary in our decisions in this country that we strengthen the peace forces against the criminal forces. We have appointed judges like that, and I want to say that if we have the opportunity in the next 4 years, I am going to appoint more judges like that so that we can strengthen the peace forces in this country.

Issue number five: The people of the South are just like the rest of the country in wanting progress. They don't want to stand still. It is a myth. It was a myth in 1934 to '37 when I was in law school, when I talked to these young law students and they spoke with such idealism of the future of the South and how they wanted to get up with the rest of the country. They were proud of it, but they wanted to come up.

You look at this great skyline of the city of Atlanta. Look at New Orleans, look at Texas, look across this whole area, Florida, for example, North Carolina, Tennessee, and you can see that the progress in this part of the country, along with the West, is probably the greatest of all in the Nation.

They want more of that progress, and, in order to have that progress, they know that we need the kind of a government that will avoid confiscatory taxes. That is one of the reasons why they support the proposals I have made to put a spending ceiling on spending in Washington, so that we don't raise taxes for the American people.

That is why also they support the historic movement--and of course we sometimes perhaps overuse that word, but in this instance it is historic, because it is a great change in the approach to our constitutional responsibilities in this country--which provides for revenue sharing.

Let me tell you what it means. Sure-as I told the mayor of Atlanta today--it is going to mean money for the city of Atlanta. It is going to be money for the counties and cities of this State and all the States of the Nation. It is going to be money for the State governments that they can use to deal with local problems. But what is involved that is far more significant is this:

It means that after 180 years of power flowing from the people and the States and the cities to Washington, we have finally turned it around, and the money and the power is going to go back to the States and back to the cities so that the people can decide what they want for themselves rather than having it done in Washington, D.C.

Think what this means: This means better education. It means an opportunity in the future to lower the burden of property taxes. It means better opportunity. It means the kind of progress that the people of this part of the country want just like the people in all parts of the country.

One other point that I would make before concluding is that sometimes there is a tendency to speak of the South as being sort of the Bible belt, and that is said by some in a complimentary way and some in, shall we say, a rather derogatory way.

I would only suggest I would put it in a broader sense. There is, in this part of the country, a deep religious faith. There is a great respect for moral values. There is a great devotion to what we call character. But let me say that in that religious faith and in that devotion to moral values and in that respect for character, while it exists in the South, it exists throughout this Nation.

My Indiana mother and my Ohio father--they put it in me just as your mothers and fathers put it in you. And I see it, for example, when I visit an Italian picnic and I see new people, first generation Americans, who are proud of their national backgrounds, with deep religious ties, who have faith in this country, faith in their God, and who believe in moral virtues.

Oh, you can call them old-fashioned, but the day America loses its moral values, its dedication to idealism and religion, this will cease to be a great country. We are not going to let that happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, related to that point is the final one, and this is something that is somewhat at times derided as patriotism, as if patriotism were a bad thing. Let me quote two southerners, one known to the people of Georgia and the people of the South as a southerner, and one, of course, who was born in Virginia and, therefore, was the last President of the United States really to have a Southern background, Woodrow Wilson.

I remember when I first became President, Dick Russell ¹ and I had a talk about the Vietnam war. He hated war as much as I did. He wanted to find a way to end this war honorably as much as I did. But when there were demonstrators by the hundreds of thousands marching around the White House, he came down to see me and he said, "When my flag is committed, I am committed." That was his attitude.

And Woodrow Wilson put it all in context and at a different level when he spoke at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia in 1912, on the Fourth of July, and he said: A patriotic American is never so proud of the flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to others, as well as to himself, a symbol of hope and liberty and freedom.

That is the message I would leave with you finally today. I would only say we are proud of our record. We are proud not only of what we have done in moving toward a more peaceful world, in moving toward a new prosperity without inflation, without war, in moving toward progress and toward opportunity for all, but there is much left to be done.

I want you to know that as I saw the thousands of young people on the street today--high school, grade school, some college students, some were white, some were black, all were American--I thought my obligation and yours is to them and to future generations.

As I see it, what I want is a world in which the United States leads the way toward peace and, remember, if we don't, no other nation has the power to do so. That is why I went to Peking. That is why I went to Moscow. That is why I ask the chance to continue on those great initiatives, so that we can build a world in which young men will not have to fight in another Vietnam or another Korea or something like that.

And at home it means that we need to continue, to continue to build a nation in which the hatreds that divide us are put aside, in which we have our differences but we discuss them in an intelligent, rational way, and in which we can be lifted by our dreams and by our hopes rather than divided by our fears and our hatreds. That is the legacy we want to leave.

I want to say to all of you, from all over the South, some of you are Democrats, some of you are Republicans, all of you are Americans, all that I ask, as you go back to your States, is take this message: Join the new American majority. Join it not as region against region or party against party or class against class, but join it in order to build a better, freer America for every person in this country.

Thank you.