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Partial Transcript of Remarks of the Vice President, Rear Train Platform, Huntingdon, PA

October 24, 1960

We know the right way, and our opponent offers a way which would have lost us our friends in Latin America - the tremendous outrage that they exploded with, once he made that very silly and foolish and immature suggestion of his that we ought to intervene directly in Cuba. Now, of course, he has jumped off it, just as he jumps off every position when we pin him down.

I'm going to have more to say about that in Pittsburgh tonight, but let me say just one thing with regard to that. Can America in this time afford a well-intentioned man, but a man who, frankly, doesn't know the situation and who says one thing today and another thing tomorrow? That kind of man Mr. Khrushchev will make mince-meat of.

That is what I'm talking about, because, believe me, what you need is consistency. Believe me, you cannot jump from one position to another. You can't say one thing one day and something else the other day.

And, so, the last point that I want to make: I say, in addition to the ability to keep the peace, we also will lead this Nation in a way that the people of this district want it led. We are going to see that America moves forward on every front, economically, educationally, and in every other way, but we are going to do it in the American way - and that means not by turning everything over to the Federal Government, but by giving people a chance to spend their own money and to develop their own country the way they have been doing.

That's why I say we are the ones who do not tell you: "Elect us, and we will give you promises that will mean raising your taxes, raising your prices and the like."

You know that - and our opponents can do nothing else than that, because the programs they offer - remember, he isn't going to pay for them with his money. He doesn't even have that much. But let me say he's got to pay for them with yours, and I just do not believe in going out and buying the people's votes with their own money, and I don't think you do either.

There is a way to progress, and it is the way my colleague, Cabot Lodge, and I offer. It is the way of responsibility. It is the way of telling the people the truth. It is the way America has always solved its great problems in the past, and it's the way, too, in which the American leaders, our Presidents and others, have faith in this country, faith in its deepest ideals, faith in our God, faith in the rights that men have, that those rights belong to not only us, but the people throughout the world - and I want to assure you that if we have the opportunity to lead this country in the next 4 years, we will never forget the thousands of people we have seen across this country, millions of them, to see your faces. We will remember you. We will remember in seeing you that you are the heart of America, that you stand for what is best in America, and we will see that America at its best is presented to the world - and America at its best is what the world wants, America at its best, standing for freedom, standing for peace, not wanting to conquer anybody else but wanting for other people only what we have for ourselves - the right to be independent, the right to be free, the right to progress.

This is what we want to present to the world, and if you feel that we are the ones who can do it, then let's have the biggest

majority in this county we have ever had.

Thank you very much.

Richard Nixon, Partial Transcript of Remarks of the Vice President, Rear Train Platform, Huntingdon, PA Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/273803