Words won't move us for long
/The Boston Herald
Beverly Beckham
They invoke God and quote Scripture and past presidents (Lincoln, FDR and Kennedy are the favorites). And include catch phrases like ``My fellow Americans'' and ``My friends.'' And they all talk about getting America back on track.
Democrat or Republican, the acceptance speeches by presidential nominees are the same. They're like milk. Hood or Garelick, who can tell the difference? Only the fat content varies. (Some are so thin you can see right through them.) And delivery. Delivery - with milk or speeches - is key.
John Kerry's acceptance speech is being analyzed, synthesized and crititicized this morning. It satisfied some. It left others still thirsty.
But tomorrow there will be more to drink. Next week, next year, 20 years from now, how much of any speech will we remember?
Here are some words from a few past acceptance speeches. (Who said them is at the end.)
1) ``A hundred years ago, Abraham Lincoln was asked during the dark days of the tragic War between the States whether he thought God was on his side. His answer was, `My concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God's side.' ''
2) ``I am guided by certain traditions. One is that there is a God and He is good, and his love, while free, has a self-imposed cost: We must be good to one another.''
3) ``There has also been a change - a slippage - in our intellectual and moral strength. Seven lean years of drought and famine have withered a field of ideas. Blight has descended on our regulatory agencies - and a dry rot, beginning in Washington, is seeping into every corner of America - in the payola mentality, the expense account way of life, the confusion between what is legal and what is right. Too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose.''
4) ``The Democratic Party has always embodied the hope of our people for justice, opportunity and a better life, and we've worked in every way possible to strengthen the American family, to encourage self-reliance, and to follow the Old Testament admonition: `Defend the poor and the fatherless; give justice to the afflicted and needy.' ''
5) ``When I am your President, the rest of the world will not look down on us with pity but up to us with respect again.''
6) ``Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elderly; and there's a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success toward the inner meaning of their lives. And where examples of morality, should be set, the opposite is seen.''
7) ``Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe freely.''
8) ``My fellow Americans, I like what I see. I have no fear for the future of this great country. And as we go forward together, I promise you once more what I promised before: to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best that I can for America.''
- 9) ``I believe in a God who calls us not to judge our neighbors but to love them.''
10) ``I have repeatedly asked the Congress to pass a health program. The nation suffers from lack of medical care.''
11) ``The good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free - not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism.''
12) ``Lincoln, speaking to the Republican State Convention in 1858, began with the biblical quotation, `A house divided against itself cannot stand.' Today the world is a house divided.' ''
Answers: 1) Richard Nixon; 2) George Bush; 3) John Kennedy; 4) Jimmy Carter; 5) Bill Clinton; 6) Barry Goldwater; 7) Ronald Reagan; 8) Gerald Ford; 9) George W. Bush; 10) Harry Truman; 11) Barry Goldwater; 12) Dwight Eisenhower.
