Thank you, Bishop Graves, for your generous introduction.
Thanks also to President Ben Jealous and Chairman Roslyn Brock for the
opportunity to be here this morning, and for your hospitality. It is an honor
to address you.
I appreciate the chance to speak first – even before Vice
President Biden gets his turn tomorrow. I just hope the Obama campaign won't
think you're playing favorites.
You all know something of my background, and maybe you've
wondered how any Republican ever becomes governor of Massachusetts in the first
place. Well, in a state with 11 percent Republican registration, you don't get
there by just talking to Republicans. We have to make our case to every voter.
We don't count anybody out, and we sure don't make a habit of presuming
anyone's support. Support is asked for and earned – and that's why I'm here
today.
With 90 percent of African-Americans voting for Democrats,
some of you may wonder why a Republican would bother to campaign in the African
American community, and to address the NAACP. Of course, one reason is that I
hope to represent all Americans, of every race, creed or sexual orientation,
from the poorest to the richest and everyone in between.
But there is another reason: I believe that if you
understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully
communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African
American families, you would vote for me for president. I want you to know that
if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of
color -- and families of any color -- more than the policies and leadership of
President Obama, I would not be running for president.
The opposition charges that I and people in my party are
running for office to help the rich. Nonsense. The rich will do just fine
whether I am elected or not. The President wants to make this a campaign about
blaming the rich. I want to make this a campaign about helping the middle
class.
I am running for president because I know that my policies
and vision will help hundreds of millions of middle class Americans of all
races, will lift people from poverty, and will help prevent people from
becoming poor. My campaign is about helping the people who need help. The course
the President has set has not done that – and will not do that. My course will.
When President Obama called to congratulate me on becoming
the presumptive Republican nominee, he said that he, "looked forward to an
important and healthy debate about America's future." To date, I'm afraid
that his campaign has taken a different course than that.
But, in campaigns at their best, voters can expect a clear
choice, and candidates can expect a fair hearing – only more so from a
venerable organization like this one. So, it is that healthy debate about the
course of the nation that I want to discuss with you today.
If someone had told us in the 1950s or 1960s that a black
citizen would serve as the forty-fourth president, we would have been proud and
many would have been surprised. Picturing that day, we might have assumed that
the American presidency would be the very last door of opportunity to be
opened. Before that came to pass, every other barrier on the path to equal
opportunity would surely have come down.
Of course, it hasn't happened quite that way. Many barriers
remain. Old inequities persist. In some ways, the challenges are even more
complicated than before. And across America -- and even within your own ranks
-- there are serious, honest debates about the way forward.
If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact,
then a chronically bad economy would be equally bad for everyone. Instead, it's
worse for African Americans in almost every way. The unemployment rate, the
duration of unemployment, average income, and median family wealth are all
worse for the black community. In June, while the overall unemployment rate
remained stuck at 8.2 percent, the unemployment rate for African Americans
actually went up, from 13.6 percent to 14.4 percent.
Americans of every background are asking when this economy
will finally recover – and you, in particular, are entitled to an answer.
If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact,
black families could send their sons and daughters to public schools that truly
offer the hope of a better life. Instead, for generations, the African-American
community has been waiting and waiting for that promise to be kept. Today,
black children are 17 percent of students nationwide – but they are 42 percent
of the students in our worst-performing schools.
Our society sends them into mediocre schools and expects
them to perform with excellence, and that is not fair. Frederick Douglass
observed that, "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken
men." Yet, instead of preparing these children for life, too many schools
set them up for failure. Everyone in this room knows that we owe them better
than that.
The path of inequality often leads to lost opportunity.
College, graduate school, and first jobs should be milestones marking the
passage from childhood to adulthood. But for too many disadvantaged young
people, these goals seem unattainable – and their lives take a tragic turn.
Many live in neighborhoods filled with violence and fear, and
empty of opportunity. Their impatience for real change is understandable. They
are entitled to feel that life in America should be better than this. They are
told even now to wait for improvements in our economy and in our schools, but
it seems to me that these Americans have waited long enough.
The point is that when decades of the same promises keep
producing the same failures, then it's reasonable to rethink our approach – and
consider a new plan.
I'm hopeful that together we can set a new direction in
federal policy, starting where many of our problems do – with the family. A
study from the Brookings Institution has shown that for those who graduate from
high school, get a full-time job, and wait until 21 before they marry and then
have their first child, the probability of being poor is two percent. And if
those factors are absent, the probability of being poor is 76 percent.
Here at the NAACP, you understand the deep and lasting
difference the family makes. Your former executive director, Dr. Benjamin
Hooks, had it exactly right. The family, he said, "remains the bulwark and
the mainstay of the black community. That great truth must not be
overlooked."
Any policy that lifts up and honors the family is going to
be good for the country, and that must be our goal. As President, I will
promote strong families – and I will defend traditional marriage.
As you may have heard from my opponent, I am also a believer
in the free-enterprise system. I believe it can bring change where so many
well-meaning government programs have failed. I've never heard anyone look
around an impoverished neighborhood and say, "You know, there's too much
free enterprise around here. Too many shops, too many jobs, too many people
putting money in the bank."
What you hear, of course, is how do we bring in jobs? How do
we make good, honest employers want to move in and stay? And with the shape
this economy is in, we're asking that more than ever.
Free enterprise is still the greatest force for upward
mobility, economic security, and the expansion of the middle class. We have
seen in recent years what it's like to have less free enterprise. As President,
I will show the good things that can happen when we have more – more business
activity, more jobs, more opportunity, more paychecks, more savings accounts.
On Day One, I will begin turning this economy around with a
plan for the middle class. And I don't mean just those who are middle class now
– I also mean those who have waited so long for their chance to join the middle
class.
I know what it will take to put people back to work, to
bring more jobs and better wages. My jobs plan is based on 25 years of success
in business. It has five key steps.
First, I will take full advantage of our energy resources,
and I will approve the Keystone pipeline from Canada. Low cost, plentiful coal,
natural gas, oil, and renewables will bring over a million manufacturing jobs
back to the United States.
Second, I will open up new markets for American products. We
are the most productive major economy in the world, so trade means good jobs
for Americans. But trade must be free and fair, so I'll clamp down on cheaters
like China and make sure that they finally play by the rules.
Third, I will reduce government spending. Our high level of
debt slows GDP growth and that means fewer jobs. If our goal is jobs, we must,
must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn. To do this, I will
eliminate expensive non-essential programs like Obamacare, and I will work to
reform and save Medicare and Social Security, in part by means-testing their
benefits.
Fourth, I will focus on nurturing and developing the skilled
workers our economy so desperately needs and the future demands. This is the
human capital with which tomorrow's bright future will be built. Too many homes
and too many schools are failing to provide our children with the skills and
education that are essential for anything other than a minimum-wage job.
And finally and perhaps most importantly, I will restore
economic freedom. This nation's economy runs on freedom, on opportunity, on
entrepreneurs, on dreamers who innovate and build businesses. These
entrepreneurs are being crushed by high taxation, burdensome regulation,
hostile regulators, excessive healthcare costs, and destructive labor policies.
I will work to make America the best place in the world for innovators and
entrepreneurs and businesses small and large.
Do these five things – open up energy, expand trade, cut the
growth of government, focus on better educating tomorrow's workers today, and
restore economic freedom – and jobs will come back to America, and wages will
rise again. The President will say he will do those things, but he will not, he
cannot, and his record of the last four years proves it.
If I am president, job one for me will be creating jobs. I
have no hidden agenda. If you want a president who will make things better in
the African American community, you are looking at him.
Finally, I will address the institutionalized inequality in
our education system. And I know something about this from my time as governor.
In the years before I took office our state's leaders had
come together to pass bipartisan measures that were making a difference. In
reading and in math, our students were already among the best in the nation –
and during my term, they took over the top spot.
Those results revealed what good teachers can do if the
system will only let them. The problem was, this success wasn't shared. A
significant achievement gap between students of different races remained. So we
set out to close it.
I urged faster interventions in failing schools, and the
funding to go along with it. I promoted math and science excellence in schools,
and proposed paying bonuses to our best teachers.
I refused to weaken testing standards, and instead raised
them. To graduate from high school, students had to pass an exam in math and
English – I added a science requirement as well. And I put in place a merit
scholarship for those students who excelled: the top 25 percent of students in
each high school were awarded a John and Abigail Adams Scholarship – which
meant four years tuition-free at any Massachusetts public institution of higher
learning.
When I was governor, not only did test scores improve – we
also narrowed the achievement gap.
The teachers unions were not happy with a number of these
reforms. They especially did not like our emphasis on choice through charter
schools, particularly for our inner city kids. Accordingly, the legislature
passed a moratorium on any new charter schools.
As you know, in Boston, in Harlem, in Los Angeles, and all
across the country, charter schools are giving children a chance, children that
otherwise could be locked in failing schools. I was inspired just a few weeks
ago by the students in one of Kenny Gamble's charter schools in Philadelphia.
Right here in Houston is another success story: the Knowledge Is Power Program,
which has set the standard, thanks to the groundbreaking work of the late
Harriet Ball.
These charter schools are doing a lot more than closing the
achievement gap. They are bringing hope and opportunity to places where for
years there has been none.
Charter schools are so successful that almost every
politician can find something good to say about them. But, as we saw in Massachusetts,
true reform requires more than talk. As Governor, I vetoed the bill blocking
charter schools. But our legislature was 87 percent Democrat, and my veto could
have been easily over-ridden. So I joined with the Black Legislative Caucus,
and their votes helped preserve my veto, which meant that new charter schools,
including some in urban neighborhoods, would be opened.
When it comes to education reform, candidates cannot have it
both ways – talking up education reform, while indulging the same groups that
are blocking reform. You can be the voice of disadvantaged public-school
students, or you can be the protector of special interests like the teachers
unions, but you can't be both. I have made my choice: As president, I will be a
champion of real education reform in America, and I won't let any special
interest get in the way.
I will give the parents of every low-income and special
needs student the chance to choose where their child goes to school. For the
first time in history, federal education funds will be linked to a student, so
that parents can send their child to any public or charter school, or to a
private school, where permitted. And I will make that a true choice by ensuring
there are good options available to all.
Should I be elected President, I'll lead as I did when I was
governor. I am pleased today to be joined today by Reverend Jeffrey Brown, who
was a member of my kitchen cabinet in Massachusetts that helped guide my policy
and actions that affected the African American community. I will look for
support wherever there is good will and shared conviction. I will work with you
to help our children attend better schools and help our economy create good
jobs with better wages.
I can't promise that you and I will agree on every issue.
But I do promise that your hospitality to me today will be returned. We will
know one another, and work to common purposes. I will seek your counsel. And if
I am elected president, and you invite me to next year's convention, I would
count it as a privilege, and my answer will be yes.
The Republican Party's record, by the measures you rightly
apply, is not perfect. Any party that claims a perfect record doesn't know
history the way you know it.
Yet always, in both parties, there have been men and women
of integrity, decency, and humility who called injustice by its name. For every
one of us a particular person comes to mind, someone who set a standard of
conduct and made us better by their example. For me, that man is my father,
George Romney.
It wasn't just that my Dad helped write the civil rights
provision for the Michigan Constitution, though he did. It wasn't just that he
helped create Michigan's first civil rights commission, or that as governor he
marched for civil rights in Detroit – though he did those things, too.
More than these public acts, it was the kind of man he was,
and the way he dealt with every person, black or white. He was a man of the
fairest instincts, and a man of faith who knew that every person was a child of
God.
I'm grateful to him for so many things, and above all for
the knowledge of God, whose ways are not always our ways, but whose justice is
certain and whose mercy endures forever.
Every good cause on this earth relies in the end on a plan
bigger than ours. "Without dependence on God," as Dr. King said,
"our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrises into darkest night. Unless his
spirit pervades our lives, we find only what G. K. Chesterton called 'cures
that don't cure, blessings that don't bless, and solutions that don't
solve.'"
Of all that you bring to the work of today's civil rights
cause, no advantage counts for more than this abiding confidence in the name
above every name. Against cruelty, arrogance, and all the foolishness of man,
this spirit has carried the NAACP to many victories. More still are up ahead,
and with each one we will be a better nation.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
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