Richard Nixon

The chances for real and lasting peace in the world are better today than they have ever been at any time since the end of World War II.

This Nation is getting together.

Back up the men on our peace forces in the United States, whether they are abroad or whether they are home.

That is what we are, and I speak to you in that vein today.

Thank you very much for being here and introducing us as you have to this wonderful crowd in Albuquerque.

Peace cannot be wished into being.

You can go home again--to California.

We are working toward it.

The political voices of gloom who were so quick to give up, the political prophets of doom who said that American society was falling apart, and the American economy along with it--these misguided pessimists have been proven wrong.

This morning I made a call to a distinguished Senator from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith.

Your taxes are already too high, and that is why you are not hearing promises that are going to raise your taxes from me on this occasion.

We are going to win California and the Nation.

Nineteen hundred seventy-two has been a year of more achievement for peace than any year since the end of World War II.

Throughout the world today America is respected.

We want peace that will last, not peace that will be simply for a little while.

Finally we have had a breakthrough in the negotiations.

Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz has announced that farm exports will reach our $10 billion goal during this fiscal year--a goal once scoffed at by our opponents.

Jobs are still increasing at the fastest rate since 1956--at a rate twice as fast as the rate of growth of the population.

It is on that basis, then, that I present the case.

As long as I am President, I will never let America become the second strongest nation in the world.

The prospects for a full generation of peace are brighter than at any time since the end of World War II.

Let me say every one of us is proud of our background, whatever it is, but most of all, we are proud to be Americans.

That allows me to say something that in all the years I have been in the Oval Office has meant more to me than almost anything else in terms of telling me what America really is.

A structure of peace has to be built in such a way that all those who might be tempted to destroy it will instead have a stake in preserving it.

We have made a good beginning.