Mario Cuomo's 1984 Democratic Convention Address Analyzed

Although Walter Mondale was resoundingly defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1984, Mario Cuomo's opening address to the Democratic convention that same year remains indelibly imprinted in the minds of all those who heard it — and those who re-hear it today. It is a clarion cry for a different vision of America and a demand that all the voices of Americans be heard. In an era when liberals were often criticized as anti-American, Cuomo makes inventive use of that notion, reversing common tropes of patriotism. As someone who believes in the American Dream, Cuomo argues he must therefore support a more progressive vision than the one currently on offer. He supports an America where all citizens are cared for — not simply a race in which only the strongest are rewarded.

He recalls stirring images from America's past to render this point: "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 from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees" (Cuomo 1984). The great American president who led the nation through World War II and created socially progressive programs to liberate America from the Great Depression was himself, Cuomo reminds us, weak in his own way.

In the arrangement of his text, Cuomo's speech begins with a reasoned but fierce attack on the ruling administration. As a supporter of the challenger, it is his job as a speaker to make the case for why Americans should vote a new president into office. "But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor 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 there's another city; there's another part to the shining 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" (Cuomo 1984).

Cuomo dwells upon the middle class as well as the poor to illustrate that the Democrats are indeed part of mainstream America and speak for most of its citizens.

In the first half of his speech, Cuomo conjures a series of representative images to demonstrate how President Reagan is out of touch with America, and to illustrate that true American values are values of compassion. "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" (Cuomo 1984). In this passage, Cuomo critiques both Reagan's cuts to social welfare programs and his foreign policy on imports — a reference that earns one of his most sustained rounds of applause.

"Maybe — maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a 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 couldn't afford to use" (Cuomo 1984). President Reagan's infamous supply-side economic policies, which stressed tax cuts for the wealthy in the hope that their spending and investment would "trickle down" to the poorest, are shown here to have cruel human consequences, as does Reagan's fixation on expanding the military budget.

The second half of Cuomo's speech (since this is a convention address) is directed at the party faithful, rallying them in their uphill struggle: "We must win this case on the merits. We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship to the reality, the hard substance of things" (Cuomo 1984). Cuomo urges Democrats — famously fractious and contentious — to unite. Despite his impressive rhetoric and relatively flowery language about the shining city on the hill, he insists that the Democrats will win based on substance over style, a covert reference to the contrast between the relatively uncharismatic Walter Mondale and the beloved former actor Ronald Reagan.

At the beginning of his speech, Cuomo says: "Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the temptation to deal in nice but vague rhetoric," before immediately launching into an attack on Reagan's optimistic vision (Cuomo 1984). This opening is striking given the degree to which poetry and metaphor — rather than facts and statistics — dominate the style of what follows. Even in his most compelling anecdotes, Cuomo's focus rests on representative images, such as the woman in the homeless shelter, rather than on a specific individual he has met. This is not necessarily a weakness; the speech is rhetorically effective and is being made to the party faithful rather than to a hostile audience during a debate. Nevertheless, the opening disclaimer about poetry sits incongruously with the tone of the rest of the speech.