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Introductions by Cooper Union President George Campbell and Harold Holzer
Gingrich-Cuomo Cooper Union Debate Transcripts
- Introductions by Cooper Union President George Campbell and Harold Holzer
- Remarks by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia)
- Remarks by former New York Governor Mario Cuomo (D)
- Q&A with Gingrich and Cuomo moderated by NBC’s Tim Russert
George Campbell: Good evening. I'm George Campbell, President of Cooper Union. It's my great pleasure to welcome all of you to the College and to our historic Great Hall. This dialogue that you are going to hear tonight is the first of what we expect to be a number of serious reflective conversations, public conversations to take place here in the Great Hall, leading up to the 2008 presidential election.
Now, as many of you know, for almost 150 years, the Great Hall has provided a platform for a number of presidents and presidential hopefuls that have taken that opportunity to provide critical analyses of important issues of the day, and may of them have offered major and in some cases defining policy statements. The Great Hall has provided a forum for discussion and debate of perhaps the most critical social justice questions of the 19th and 20th century.
So these walls are reverberating with the voices of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull and Clara Lemlich, W.E.B. Du Bois and most recently, Wangari Maathai. Of course, back in 1860, Abraham Lincoln here in the Great Hall, established a paradigm of political campaign statements that have yet to be surpassed. It was a two-hour speech. It was comprehensive, carefully researched, in-depth analytical discussion of the complex crises that the nation was facing. But most importantly, it provided an intellectual foundation, a set of values and principles and policies that defined his presidency and that defined the decisions he made during his presidency.
As we begin this series of conversations that we're planning, our goal is to invite all of the candidates, the serious candidates for the 2008 election and to stimulate the kind of discourse that was epitomized by the Lincoln conversation.
So we issue a call to all of the candidates to come to the Great Hall, to put aside their marketing strategies, to put behind them the sound bites, to set aside the advertising slogans, to step away from their handlers, and to engage this new York audience as Abraham Lincoln did, in a serious conversation about the serious issues that we're facing, about critical foreign and domestic policy issues. And we ask the press also to step away from the discussions about personality conflicts between donors in one camp and candidates in other camps, and to focus their attention on questions of the Middle East, on health care, on the economy, and preserving the planet.
Now, we don't have Lincoln any more, but what we do have, I believe, is the making of another historic moment here in the Great Hall. It's quite fitting that we begin with two of the leading political thinkers in our midst today who also happen to be the two of the great orators of our time. And we're very fortunate also to have with us one of the most respected American journalists today.
But before we bring the Panel, I'd like to bring to the podium one of our distinguished Lincoln scholars, author of my books, including Lincoln at Cooper Union, the speech that made Abraham president, Harold Holzer, who will introduce the program. Thank you. [Applause].
Harold Holzer: Thank you, Dr. Campbell and good evening, everyone. Governor, Mr. Speaker and Tim, it's always a thrill to stand at the same lectern that Abraham Lincoln stood at 147 years and one day ago, to deliver the speech that I've argued made Lincoln president. Before I discuss that, I have to say that someone is in the audience today who spoke from this spot and brought those words alive three years ago. Maybe you can all join me in greeting Sam Watertson. [Applause].
What that night did for Lincoln, or more accurately, what Lincoln accomplished that night, was to convince a dubious Eastern audience – I know you're not going to believe that a New York audience was dubious – that a westerner who was rumored only capable of crude jokes and Prairie gestures, could produce serious analysis and dazzling logic. Well, he delivered all of the above from this very same spot. Then as now, I think New Yorkers are the most demanding audience on the planet. I always say that Lincoln succeeded in what might be called a Kander and Ebb theory of American politics. "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." [Laughter].
His was a triumph of ideas over image, history over hype, and substance over style. Members of the audience sitting out there in 1860 all remarked, or many remarked that for the first ten minutes all they could notice were Lincoln's large hands and feet, his bouncing Adam's apple, his strange gestures. But then the power and conviction of his words, the ideas he laid out, overcame the distraction.
We all know, as Dr. Campbell pointed out, that the culture has changed since 1860, and maybe where political campaigning is concerned, not for the better. Abraham Lincoln spoke here in February. Eleven weeks later he was nominated. That was all the time the pre-convention campaign occupied, not two years, three months. And once he became his party standard bearer, moreover, Lincoln stayed home and refused to speak publicly. We're not advocating that, but what Lincoln did was publish his debates in full, the debates with Stephen Douglas, publish the Cooper Union address, so things have changed. One of other thing, the man who introduced Abraham Lincoln here in 1860 was the editor of the most liberal newspaper in New York City, the New York Post. [Laughing].
We all know the challenges facing today's candidates are more complicated. Lincoln focused on one issue, slavery; today our candidates are focusing on foreign policy, domestic policy, and it's no wonder in some regard that some of them hide behind bloggers and handlers. But I'd like to suggest that we not only blame the politicians for what's been lost in the discourse, because we as audiences demand less. Our national attention span has faded; we don't demand much more than sound bites. And some of us bemoan partisanship routinely to explain it, but when things were most partisan in 1860, 82 percent of the people turned out to vote. That's a lot more than turned out in 2004. Lincoln spoke here for two hours, as Dr. Campbell said, from this podium. When it was over, by the way, people didn't rush for their cars or their horses or whatever they were waiting for; they demanded more speeches. That's a change. Think about that when you're rushing for the train tonight. [Laughing].
And as we have mentioned, this is not intended as a one-off, nor was Lincoln's speech a one-off. Organizers also invited Cassius Clay, the first Cassius Clay, Thomas Corwin, Frank Blair, politicians who flocked here to plead their cases for the same eastern support that Lincoln came after. Salmon P. Chase, it might be noted, was invited and declined. William H. Stewart they say didn't even open the invitation. We all know what happened to them; they became supporting players in Lincoln's team of rivals. That's why it's so wonderful to be associated with this evening, not an attempt to recreate the Cooper Union event or the Lincoln-Douglas debates necessarily, but to meet in the Lincoln spirit and invite others to do what Governor Cuomo and Speaker Gingrich are doing. It's a casting director's dream, isn't it?
As we heard earlier this month in the Congressional debates over Iraq where Lincoln was quoted and misquoted with alarming frequency and again in one candidate's recent announcement in Lincoln's home town, Lincoln does remain a national touchstone, as he has for decades, admired by both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Karl Marx and Karl Rove, and it's gratifying to know, Mario Cuomo and Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich has been arguing for expansive Cooper Union-like political discourse ever since my book came out, and I'm honored that he made a book about 1860 into a rallying cry for 2008, especially because he's not only a political leader but a historian, someone who routinely consults the past to illuminate the future, so thank you, Mr. Speaker. [Applause.]
Mario Cuomo has admired and studied Lincoln for all of the 30 years that I've had the privilege of knowing him. He even let me spend one of those eight years working with him on a book called Lincoln on Democracy, which in one of its 1990 editions, supplied Lincoln's inspiring words to the emerging democracy in Poland. But I have to mention that I actually first met Mario Cuomo in this room about 30 years ago, the night he engaged my then-boss, Bella Abzug, and five other candidates for mayor in the first great debate of that unforgettable campaign. We try to forget it, but it's unforgettable. [Laughing]. Governor, I have to admit I don't remember what you said here, but to paraphrase Lincoln, I'll never forget what you did here. When a crasher rushed down the aisle and threw a cream pie at Mayor Abraham Beam, slightly smaller than Abraham Lincoln, but the pie hit Abraham Bean, virtually at the same time the pie flew up, Mario Cuomo flew off the stage and tackled the guy. [Applause] I can still see one object coming this way and one object going that way. I thought, this is an amazing way to win a debate. [Laughing]. Beam is wiping the pie out of his face, Bella is licking the pie to see how it tastes. But anyway, thank you, gentlemen, for revising the spirit of Abraham Lincoln at Cooper Union. Lincoln said it best right here, Right makes Might, and a century and a half later, the search for that right may constitute the realization of another phrase of Lincoln's, "This may be our last best hope, at least of debate."
In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, each man spoke for 90 minutes in total, no interruptions except from a very engaged crowd. The format tonight, as you'll hear, gives each speaker 30 minutes, and then they'll be confronted with questions by one of the best ever probers after the truth, and one who already has a link to Lincoln, because in the Abraham Lincoln presidential library in Springfield, Illinois, an entire gallery is devoted to I guess a mock TV room where Lincoln and his 1860 rivals get a 21st century going over from this gentleman here. [Laughing]. Who knows, had the living Lincoln been subjected to Meet the Press, he might never have spoken about Malice toward None, I'm not sure. [Applause].
But I would like to close by saying that after Cooper Union President Elect Abraham Lincoln came back to New York. First place he stopped was the city of Buffalo, which I know is near and ear to your heart, and thanked the people there for what he called their "magnificent welcome to that city." So today, Buffalos' magnificent favorite song returns the favor to Lincoln. Ladies and gentlemen, Tim Russert.