cn you pls. make a comment on mario cuomo's speech in 1984?

Question

What can you say about Mario Cuomo's speech during the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco??

Answer 1

I like his most oft-quoted line at the convention:
“There is despair, Mr. President, in faces you never see.”

Governor Mario Cuomo, delivered a passionate keynote address on Democratic dreams and Reagan failures. It was a speech that rocketed Cuomo's political career to the national level.

Context:
Ronald Reagan was reelected as President in 1984 in an unexciting landslide over Walter Mondale, who had been Jimmy Carter's vice president. Mondale's only victory was in his home state, Minnesota.

Mondale had defeated the Reverend Jesse Jackson, former Colorado Senator Gary Hart, and Ohio Senator John Glenn in the Democratic primaries. When they met in July, Democrats wanted to show they were united behind Mondale in his uphill battle to unseat Reagan. Two New Yorkers played key roles at that convention in San Francisco: Representative Geraldine Ferraro, who became the first-ever female vice presidential candidate

His speech in part:

"Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, and even worried, about themselves, their families and their futures.

The President said he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining city on a hill."

A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the verandah of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well.

But there's another part of the city, the part where some people can't pay their mortgages and most young people can't afford one, where students can't afford the education they need and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble. More and more people who need help but can't find it.

There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without an education or a job, give their lives away to drug dealers every day.

There is despair, Mr. President, in faces you never see, in the places you never visit in your shining city.

Maybe if you visited more places, Mr. President, you'd understand.

Maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds and to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel while we surrender their dignity to unemployment and to welfare checks; maybe if you stepped into a shelter in Chicago and talked with some of the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who'd been denied the help she needs to feed her children because you say we need the money to give a tax break to a millionaire or to build a missile we can't even afford to use — maybe then you'd understand.

Maybe, Mr. President.

But I'm afraid not. . . .

The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of our old, some of our young, and some of our weak are left behind by the side of the trail.

We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact."


Good luck