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1、Mario Cuomo: A Tale of Two CitiesOn behalf of the Empire State and the family of New York, I thank you for the great privilege of being able to address this convention. Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the temptation to deal in nice but vague rhetoric. Let me instead use this v
2、aluable opportunity to deal immediately with questions that should determine this election and that we all know are vital to the American people.Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, abou
3、t themselves, their families and their futures. The president said that he didnt understand that fear. He said, Why, this country is a shining city on a hill. And the president is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this citys spl
4、endor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But theres another city; theres another part to the shining the city; the part where some people cant pay their mortgages, and mo
5、st young people cant afford one, where students cant 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 cant find it.
6、 Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesnt show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug de
7、alers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you dont see, in the places that you dont visit in your shining city.In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation -. Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a Tale of Two Cities than it is just a Shining City on a Hill.
8、Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places. Maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds, maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a
9、 shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldnt afford to use. Maybe, maybe, Mr. President.
10、 But Im afraid not.Because, the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that this is how we were warned it would be. President Reagan told us from very the beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Government cant do everything, we were told. So it should settle for
11、taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer - and what falls from their table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.You know, the Republicans called it trickle-
12、down when Hoover tried it. Now they call it supply side. But its the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded - for the people who are locked out - all they can do is to stare from a distance at that citys gl
13、immering towers.Its an old story. Its as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak
14、are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us will inherit the land.We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact. And, we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself fro
15、m his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees - wagon train after wagon train - to new frontiers of education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon on the way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of ever
16、y ethnic group, and native Americans - all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America.For nearly 50 years we carried them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. And remember this, some of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget that. So, here we are at this convention to remind ourselves w
