Date: Mon, 09 Dec 91 14:43 CST From: "Loomis Mayfield - TI0LFM1@NIU" Subject: Harkin's Presidential Announcement To: HARKIN@PSLU1.PSL.Wisc.EDU 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.