Date: Mon, 09 Dec 91 14:43 CST
From: "Loomis Mayfield - TI0LFM1@NIU" <
[email protected]>
Subject: Harkin's Presidential Announcement
To:
[email protected]
Senator Tom Harkin's New Vision
by Loomis Mayfield
"Are you ready?... Are you ready for a new direction in this
country?... Are you ready for a president who will give you star
schools instead of Star Wars? Are you ready for a president who
will give the middle class a break instead of tax breaks to the
rich? Are you ready for a president who will make America our most
favored nation and educated children our most important product? If
that's the kind of leader you want, let me introduce myself:
***_I'm_Tom Harkin.__And_I'm_running_for_president._***"
With these words, a new candidate entered the race for the
Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. The
fighting spirit of his speech and his campaign was set when
he went on to say "George Herbert Walker Bush has feet of clay and
I'm going to take a hammer to them!"
I had worked with the senator and his staff while I was in
Washington and was well familiar with his record of accomplishments.
Knowing his commitment to peace, human rights, and economic justice,
I was happy to see him run for president and planned to attend his
September 15 announcement in Winterset, Iowa, at his annual cookout.
It was only a five hour drive from my home and I figured it would be
well worth the time. I was not disappointed.
While it was in Iowa, I expected to find the typical D.C.
political crowd of suits and manicures. After all, Harkin would be
the most experienced candidate and had to be considered the front
runner at this point. I figured the usual crowd of the cocktail
circuit would show up. But I was pleasantly surprised to find the
rally, 3,000 strong, made up predominantly of families that could
have come from any town in the nation. Children were scattered
throughout the meadow, playing and riding horses. Many in the crowd
wore t-shirts with the messages "Give'em Hell, Harkin" and "Tom
Harkin - George Bush's Worst Nightmare". These were people just
like the farmers and workers I knew growing up in southeast
Missouri.
The rally lasted all afternoon and had the traditional
political appearances of a high school band and local politicians,
as well as unexpected participants like the cloggers performing to
bluegrass music. Three clowns showed up in full costume to have
their picture taken with Harkin, who quipped, "I'm glad Bush,
Quayle, and Roger Ailes could show up for my announcement,"
referring to his Republican opponents and their political director.
Harkin gave a passionate address interrupted frequently by
cheers and applause. He invoked traditional American values of hard
work, frugality, faith, and family as the centerpiece of his life
and his campaign, calling for a rejection of the "greed and
selfishness" that has marked Republican rule. "I'm running for
president because I believe there is a hunger in America, a hunger
for a new vision," he said to the cheering throng. "A vision based
upon values -- strong, fundamental and enduring values.... But for
the last four years we've had a vision of an America where you're
supposed to get what you can, get it in the shortest amount of time.
Don't ask how you do it, just get it and to hell with everybody
else."
"I say that what's wrong with this country today," he
continued, "is that there are too many people making money on money,
and not enough people making money in agriculture and mining and
manufacturing and transportation and doing the things that create
real wealth in our society." He pledged to throw supply-side,
trickle down economics on the trash heap of history because the
failed system helped only the privileged few at the top. "I say
it's time for a new economic agenda," he continued. "We need a new
economic system that is resource-based, that invests in people.
Don't put it in at the top. Put it in at the bottom and let it
percolate up for a while. I say it's time to invest in the people
of America, to make them the smartest, healthiest, most productive
work force in the world!"
The climax of his speech described his life and called for a
return to the fundamentals of the American Dream. As a coal miner's
son, he had to work his way through school and served in a
non-combat role as a jet pilot in the Navy during Vietnam. Then he
and his wife, Ruth Radeneuz Harkin, both worked and went to night
school to become lawyers, helped by the G.I. Bill. He served as a
staff assistant to a congressional committee and helped expose the
brutal conditions political prisoners were kept under in South
Vietnam. The committee report was a whitewash and when he refused
to turn his pictures over to his boss, and instead published them to
publicly expose the conditions, he lost his job.
But the hard work and sacrifice of the Harkins paid off. They
finished law school. In Iowa, Ruth Harkin became the first woman to
be elected county attorney, and Tom was later elected to Congress in
1974 from the most conservative, Republican district in the state.
In 1984 he defeated an incumbent Republican senator and last year he
became the first Iowa Democrat to be reelected to the Senate.
But the American Dream where work is rewarded has been replaced
by one where success depends on luck and chance. "But now I read
there's a new American Dream," he shouted. "I read about it in the
paper.... It said: 'Vietnamese Couple Achieve American Dream. Win
New Jersey State Lottery....' That's the American Dream of George
Herbert Walker Bush. One in a million chance. And if you don't
win, so long, adios sucker. Well, I say it's time to get back to
our parent's American Dream, where if you work hard, and you save,
and you study, that you get rewarded." The crowd ended his speech
with thunderous applause and a chant of "Harkin! Harkin! Harkin!
Harkin!"
I thought about how the public opinion experts say any Democrat
who runs this time is a long shot, that Bush's popularity makes him
unbeatable. But public opinion polls also report a deep anxiety
over the direction of this country and the economy, over the rising
costs of housing, health care, child care, and over how their
children can't hope to get started on their own. These are all
essentials in the new family economy where parents work two or three
jobs to make ends meet, and they are all concerns the Republicans
say are too expensive to be bothered with. Yet at the same time
they tell the average worker to sacrifice, they shovel billions of
dollars to prop up the rich in scandals involving Wall Street stock
brokers, savings and loans failures, HUD scandals, BCCI, and the
looming bank failures. They have no trouble finding tens of
billions of dollars to fight the Gulf War. And then they put it all
off budget to keep the deficit artificially low during Bush's
re-election campaign. The middle and working class pay while the
wealthiest prosper from these fiascoes, and about the only domestic
policy that Bush has pushed as president is another tax give away to
the wealthy in capital gains.
As I was driving home, I saw a sign touting an Iowa historic
site, the presidential library of Herbert Hoover, and I stopped in.
Hoover was the last Iowan elected to the presidency, and was the
last Republican that was held accountable for the regressive
economic policies that favored the rich at the expense of everyone
else. I don't have a crystal ball to see if Harkin will win the
nomination and if he will really turn out to be Bush's worst
nightmare by speaking his convictions, but I hope my coincidental
stop was a harbinger for what awaits Bush next year. I hope the
"education president" will soon be taught a lesson. For one, I came
back from Iowa rejuvenated in my political faith and energized to
fight the good fight.
**********************
Loomis Mayfield is a Research Associate at the Social Science
Research Institute of Northern Illinois University. He was a
staff assistant with Countdown '87: Campaign to End Contra Aid
and served as Legislative Coordinator of Americans for Democratic
Action in Washington, DC. He lives in Malta, Illinois.
