Working together—­the Congress, the President and the people—­I am confident that we can translate these proposals into an action program that can reform and revitalize American Government and, even more important, build a better life for all Americans.

The White House,

February 2, 1973.

***

State of the Union Address
Richard Nixon
January 30, 1974

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, my colleagues in the Congress, our distinguished guests, my fellow Americans: 

We meet here tonight at a time of great challenge and great opportunities for America.  We meet at a time when we face great problems at home and abroad that will test the strength of our fiber as a nation.  But we also meet at a time when that fiber has been tested, and it has proved strong.

America is a great and good land, and we are a great and good land because we are a strong, free, creative people and because America is the single greatest force for peace anywhere in the world.  Today, as always in our history, we can base our confidence in what the American people will achieve in the future on the record of what the American people have achieved in the past.

Tonight, for the first time in 12 years, a President of the United States can report to the Congress on the state of a Union at peace with every nation of the world.  Because of this, in the 22,000-word message on the state of the Union that I have just handed to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, I have been able to deal primarily with the problems of peace with what we can do here at home in America for the American people—­rather than with the problems of war.

The measures I have outlined in this message set an agenda for truly significant progress for this Nation and the world in 1974.  Before we chart where we are going, let us see how far we have come.

It was 5 years ago on the steps of this Capitol that I took the oath of office as your President.  In those 5 years, because of the initiatives undertaken by this Administration, the world has changed.  America has changed.  As a result of those changes, America is safer today, more prosperous today, with greater opportunity for more of its people than ever before in our history.

Five years ago, America was at war in Southeast Asia.  We were locked in confrontation with the Soviet Union.  We were in hostile isolation from a quarter of the world’s people who lived in Mainland China.

Five years ago, our cities were burning and besieged.

Five years ago, our college campuses were a battleground.

Five years ago, crime was increasing at a rate that struck fear across the
Nation.

Five years ago, the spiraling rise in drug addiction was threatening human and social tragedy of massive proportion, and there was no program to deal with it.

Five years ago—­as young Americans had done for a generation before that—­America’s youth still lived under the shadow of the military draft.