CSotD: Give’em hell, Barry!

Matt Wuerker's cartoon reminded me of what Harry Truman said when — trailing badly in the polls — he accepted his party's nomination at the 1948 Democratic Convention. It's not too late for the current occupant of the White House to issue the same challenge:

Now the Republicans came here a few weeks ago, and they wrote a
platform. I hope you have all read that platform. They adopted the
platform, and that platform had a lot of promises and statement of what
the Republican Party is for, and what they would do if they were in
power. They promised to do in that platform a lot of things I have been
asking them to do that they have refused to do when they had the power.

The Republican platform cries about cruelly high prices. I have been
trying to get them to do something about high prices ever since they met
the first time.

Now listen! This is equally bad, and as cynical. The Republican
platform comes out for slum clearance and low-rental housing. I have
been trying to get them to pass that housing bill ever since they met
the first time, and it is still resting in the Rules Committee, that
bill.

The Republican platform favors educational opportunity and promotion
of education. I have been trying to get Congress to do something about
that ever since they came there, and that bill is at rest in the House
of Representatives.

The Republican platform is for extending and increasing social
security benefits. Think of that! Increasing social security benefits!
Yet when they had the opportunity, they took 750,000 off the social
security rolls!

I wonder if they think they can fool the people of the United States with such poppycock as that!

There is a long list of these promises in that Republican platform.
If it weren't so late, I would tell you all about them. I have discussed
a number of these failures of the Republican 80th Congress. Every one
of them is important. Two of them are of major concern to nearly every
American family. They failed to do anything about high prices; they
failed to do anything about housing.

My duty as President requires that I use every means within my power
to get the laws the people need on matters of such importance and
urgency.

I am therefore calling this Congress back into session July 26th.

On the 26th day of July, which out in Missouri we call "Turnip Day," I
am going to call Congress back and ask them to pass laws to halt rising
prices, to meet the housing crisis — which they are saying they are
for in their platform.

At the same time I shall ask them to act upon other vitally needed
measures such as aid to education, which they say they are for; a
national health program; civil rights legislation, which they say they
are for; an increase in the minimum wage, which I doubt very much they
are for; extension of social security coverage and increased benefits,
which they say they are for; funds for projects needed in our program to
provide public power and cheap electricity. By indirection, this 80th
Congress has tried to sabotage the power policies the United States has
pursued for 14 years. That power lobby is as bad as the real estate
lobby, which is sitting on the housing bill.

I shall ask for adequate and decent laws for displaced persons in
place of this anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic law which this 80th Congress
passed.

Now, my friends, if there is any reality behind that Republican
platform, we ought to get some action from a short session of the 80th
Congress. They can do this job in 15 days, if they want to do it. They
will still have time to go out and run for office.

They are going to try to dodge their responsibility. They are going
to drag all the red herrings they can across this campaign, but I am
here to say that Senator Barkley and I are not going to let them get
away with it.

Now, what that worst 80th Congress does in this special session will
be the test. The American people will not decide by listening to mere
words, or by reading a mere platform. They will decide on the record,
the record as it has been written. And in the record is the stark truth,
that the battle lines of 1948 are the same as they were in 1932, when
the Nation lay prostrate and helpless as a result of Republican misrule
and inaction.

In 1932 we were attacking the citadel of special privilege and greed.
We were fighting to drive the money changers from the temple. Today, in
1948, we are now the defenders of the stronghold of democracy and of
equal opportunity, the haven of the ordinary people of this land and not
of the favored classes or the powerful few. The battle cry is just the
same now as it was in 1932, and I paraphrase the words of Franklin D.
Roosevelt as he issued the challenge, in accepting nomination in
Chicago: "This is more than a political call to arms. Give me your help,
not to win votes along, but to win in this new crusade to keep America
secure and safe for its own people."

Now my friends, with the help of God and the wholehearted push which
you can put behind this campaign, we can save this country from a
continuation of the 80th Congress, and from misrule from now on.

I must have your help. You must get in and push, and win this election. The country can't afford another Republican Congress.