1988 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address

Ann Richards: 1988 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, very much.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Buenas noches, mis amigos.

I'm delighted to be here with you this evening, because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like.

Twelve years ago Barbara Jordan, another Texas woman, Barbara made the keynote address to this convention, and two women in a hundred and sixty years is about par for the course.

But, if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.

I want to announce to this Nation that in a little more than 100 days, the Reagan-Meese-Deaver-Nofziger-Poindexter-North-Weinberger-Watt-Gorsuch-Lavelle-Stockman-Haig-Bork-Noriega-George Bush [era] will be over!

You know, tonight I feel a little like I did when I played basketball in the 8th grade. I thought I looked real cute in my uniform. And then I heard a boy yell from the bleachers, "Make that basket, Birdlegs!"

And my greatest fear is that same guy is somewhere out there in the audience tonight, and he's going to cut me down to size.  Because where I grew up there really wasn’t much tolerance for self-importance, people who put on airs.

I was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.  Well, it was back then that I came to understand the small truths and the hardships that bind neighbors together. Those were real people with real problems and they had real dreams about getting out of the Depression.  I can remember summer nights when we’d put down what we called the Baptist pallet, and we listened to the grown-ups talk.  I can still hear the sound of the dominoes clicking on the marble slab my daddy had found for a tabletop.  I can still hear the laughter of the man telling jokes you weren’t supposed to hear – talkin' about how big that old buck deer was, laughin' about mama puttin' Clorox in the well when the frog fell in. 

They talked about war and Washington and what this country needed.  They talked the straight talk.  And it came from people who were living their lives as best they could. And that’s what we’re going to do tonight.  We’re going to tell how the cow ate the cabbage.

I got a letter last week from a young mother in Lorena, Texas, and I wanna read part of it to you.  She writes,

“Our worries go from pay day to pay day, just like millions of others.  And we have two fairly decent incomes, but I worry how I’m going to pay the rising car insurance and food.  I pray my kids don’t have a growth spurt from August to December, so I don’t have to buy new jeans.  We buy clothes at the budget stores and we have them fray and fade and stretch in the first wash.  We ponder and try to figure out how we're gonna pay for college and braces and tennis shoes.  We don’t take vacations and we don’t go out to eat.  Please don’t think me ungrateful.  We have jobs and a nice place to live, and we’re healthy.  We're the people you see every day in the grocery stores, and we obey the laws and pay our taxes.  We fly our flags on holidays and we plod along trying to make it better for ourselves and our children and our parents.  We aren’t vocal any more. I think maybe we’re too tired. I believe that people like us are forgotten in America.”

Well, of course you believe you’re forgotten, because you have been.

This Republican Administration treats us as if we were pieces of a puzzle that can’t fit together. They've tried to put us into compartments and separate us from each other.  Their political theory is “divide and conquer.” They’ve suggested time and time again that what is of interest to one group of Americans is not of interest to any one else.  We’ve been isolated.  We’ve been lumped into that sad phraseology called “special interests.”  They’ve told farmers that they were selfish, that they would drive up food prices if they asked the government to intervene on behalf of the family farm, and we watched farms go on the auction block while we bought food from foreign countries.  Well, that’s wrong!

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