1) THE FAR RIGHT : overt racists, skins, neo-nazis, this group is not the subject of my discussion.

2) CHRISTIAN RIGHT: Evangelicals, protestant sects, Southern Baptist Convention.

3) NEOCONSERVATIVE RIGHT: Which can itself be divided into two seperate tendencies:

1] An Internationalist tendency made up of

A] "Goldwater and Nixon" Republicans, international sectors of industry and finance.
and
B] former socialists who, in reaction to Stalinism, concluded that the defense of modernity rested in the defense of a distinct American "culture"(e.g., Michael Novack, the writers centered around the New Republic), These focus on foreign policy: in terms of domestic policy, they only stability, which they say, is essential to effective foreign policy.

2] A Domestic tendency: comprised of neo-conservative secular intellectuals whose rhetoric centers on issues of education and civil welfare but also on government taxation and regulation. (again, the New Republic writers, the communitarians), working class Reagan democrats.

Now when I speak of the ideology of the New Right, I do not mean ideology as abstract "IDEAS." Ideology is a part of the materiality of the world. It carries weight. Ideological debates are never mere "theoretical discussions." We can never escape ideology. Ideology is the very way in which we order our existence. All our thinking is ideological. And ideology begins in reality, though it remains fragmentary. Ideology is one site where we find expressed the social relations of power and production. As Henri Lefevre says, ideology "refracts (rather than reflects) reality via preexisting representations, seleted by the dominant groups and acceptable to them." (Sociology of Marx:69)


To ideologically situate my own analysis, let me point out some of my assumptions:

First, I believe that to address the speech solely, or even primarily, as an attack upon women, or liberals, or the left, or this or that specific group would be to fall victim to the very diversionary techniques that constitute Quayle's use of "Murphy Brown." While it is true that the speech and his use of "Murphy Brown" contain such specific attacks, to view the speech in such a "negative" way would obscure what were, for Quayle and his audience, "positive" aspects. One such "positive" aspect of the speech was that it marked an important pivot in the New Right's bid to extend it's influence within the Republican Party and Republican campaign.

Second, as I will not analyze the speech as a specific attack, we will also avoid analyzing the "Family Values" about which Quayle speaks as if they were a logically coherent group of statements regarding "ethics" or "values." Consequently, "Family Values," as representative of New Right ideology, is not a coherent set of statements, but rather it is a hodge-podge of statements. It is therefore a weak, fluid, but also dynamic ideology linking "race," class, and gender across a broad field of social situations.

In New Right's ideology, the family serves as the basis of society, including labor itself. Because the New Right's ideology makes the family all important, the preservation of the "TRADITIONAL FAMILY" in the face of precieved social and economic threats becames for them an overarching social and political issue. It then becomes a justification for the politcal mobilization of the New Right, especially the Christian Right. A New York Times Magazine article from just over a year ago refered to the families like the Adkissions as "FOOT SOLDIERS" and they clearly see themselves involved in a life or death struggle.

Third, we will always keep in mind that the speech is not a point of origin for the "Family Values" debate. It is proceeded by innumerable other statements and situations that constitute the historical basis for the introduction of "Family Values" into the 1992 presidential campaign. "Family values" which were much discussed during the 1992 presidental campaign shows how the ideology of "family" like all ideology, is political.

Finally, psychological motivations are unimportant here. Therefore, Dan Quayle will not be addressed in terms of his assumed "essential" personhood, but rather as a media image not unlike "Murphy Brown" (e.g., they both have their speeches written for them). So when we speak of "Dan Quayle," we are really speaking of an image that covers a plethora of aides, speech writers, hangers-on, spin doctors, secretaries, clerks, advisors, etc., etc.

On May 19, 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California. In that speech, Quayle remarked upon many things, and used many words to conjure up images of the modern American city, of women in general and single mothers in particular, and the relations the state, the family, and the general socio-economic order. One image in particular superseded and obscured all of the others and that image was of a pregnant Murphy Brown. There were and are many potential uses of the image of Murphy Brown. Indeed, my paper is one. I will focus on how "Murphy Brown" was used both as a signal and as a diversion. The reference to Murphy Brown signaled certain audiences to listen to the speech. At the same time, the Murphy Brown remark diverted other potential audiences from attending to the message delivered to the primary audience. In other words, Quayle's oration was not a speech directed at that abstraction known as the "general public."

When we examine the text of Quayle's 30 minute speech, we find that the reference to "Murphy Brown" consists of a single sentence. It would seem, then, that in order to arrive at a social account of the controversy, we must examine not just the construction of media images, but also the external circumstances, the context, of the statement. The examination of this context will not simply establish the relation of the sentence to the rest of the text, but also situate the entire speech in its wider social context. In this paper, I will attempt to account for Quayle's statement regarding "Murphy Brown" and the specific circumstances that made possible its appearance and dispersion. By thus situating Quayle's speech, we might better account for the reason why the image of "Murphy Brown" was so powerful, so blinding in its intensity, that it appeared to overwhelm all others. We will see that Quayle used "Murphy Brown" as a diversion and as a signal to the New Right. It is in this dual capacity that an analysis of the speech can shed light on the ideology of the New Right. Quayle's speech and the resulting controversy serve as very good illustrations of both the ideology and tactics of the American New Right. In particular, Dan Quayle articulated the New Right's ideological and tactical response to the social contradictions the Los Angeles insurrection laid bare.

In the weeks and months before Quayle's so-called Murphy Brown speech, the Washington Post reported that seventy percent of those polled agreed with the statement that "the values and lifestyles shown in movies and television programs do not generally reflect the way most people live and think." Conservatives had long attacked the media in general and "Hollywood Liberals" as biased or "immoral." "Murphy Brown" had become pregnant and was shown each week grappling with her feelings about motherhood. While "Murphy Brown" went through her prime-time agony, Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings were underway. Many opposed Thomas because of his assumed views (which were later to prove absolutely correct) regarding abortion as well as his general extreme conservatism. Before Anita Hill's charges were brought, "Murphy Brown" was used at the hearing by Sarah Weddington, who argued for Roe in Roe v.Wade, as the archetype of women responding to the rising influence of the New Right.

But there is an overreaching legal framework that he [Thomas] has given no response to, and meanwhile, I think women in this country are feeling... such a [sense] of being in limbo, such a feeling of-----Murphy Brown. TV sometimes to me expresses the uncertainties and if you saw her, her friend came to her and said "Well if you're pregnant, I'll go with you to that back ally, I'll be there when you're butchered." And Murphy Brown said "Oh no, you don't understand, abortion is still legal. I haven't seen the paper today..." But it is that sense of hanging by such a slender tread, and this is the slender thread.

During this same period, fifty-four percent polled said that they had an unfavorable opinion of Quayle. R.W. Apple in the New York Times said of Quayle: "For months and years, he was all but invisible to the public, unless he made some foolish mistake. He was dismissed as a political cipher. People laughed at him in the spiteful way people laugh at the class geek." However, if there was one group that Quayle could hope to be taken seriously by, it was the New Right. The New Right craves legitimacy and is finding it in both grass roots organizations and in national campaigns. Pat Buchanan and, before him, Pat Robertson. For years Quayle had cultivated the favor of the New Right.

Of the events leading up to the speech, the Los Angeles insurrection figures most prominently in the text. Against this dramatic backdrop, Quayle first casts himself in the role not unlike that of the Homeric Greeks who wandered far and wide, gaining new knowledge and spoils, only to return home to turmoil. He had returned most importantly with Japanese commitment to "a global partnership in behalf of peace and economic growth." Quayle sought to convey the message that internationally, America was secure. The domestic situation was in worse shape and Quayle, on the strength of his trip, had the authority to speak about it. Like Nestor, Quayle was quick to offer a tale and a settlement. According to Quayle, his speech was written because of certain encounters he'd had while in Japan. The Japanese, seeing the fires of Los Angeles, asked Quayle if the cause might not be the ethnic diversity of the United States.

But in the midst of all of these discussions of international affairs, I was asked many times about the recent events in Los Angeles. From the perspective of many Japanese, the ethnic diversity of our culture is a weakness compared to their homogenous society.

Quayle followed with his assurance that he defended the United States.

I begged to differ with my hosts. I explained that our diversity is our strength. And I explained that the immigrants who come to our shores have made, and continue to make, vast contributions to our culture and in our economy.

However, Quayle immediately follows this ringing defense of the United States by stating his own topic of the day. Strangely, it is the same question that the Japanese allegedly asked.

It is wrong to imply that the Los Angeles riots were an inevitable outcome of our diversified society. But the question that I tried to answer in Japan is one that needs answering here: What happened? Why? And how do we prevent it in the future?

Quayle's answers to these questions illuminate his use of the image of "Murphy Brown," but equally important questions are: What was the 'here' of his speech? What was it about the setting that made the speech possible and what in the speech appealed to his audiences? The "here" of the speech in many ways explains Quayle's use of the image of "Murphy Brown" as a diversion. It also sheds light on much of Quayle's message to the New Right.

Quayle's speech was a luncheon address before the Commonwealth Club of California: a location far from the site of the riots that figure so prominently in the text. The Commonwealth Club has a membership of about twenty thousand and has been hosting what it calls "educational and public affairs speeches" since 1903. Originally, it was a male-only club. The executive director of the club is James Rosenthal, a former employee of the State Department. Rosenthal served in a great many diplomatic positions. He was political officer to the United States embassy in Vietnam from 1961-1965. He finished the war in Washington as deputy director of the Dept of State's Vietnam working group. He later served as the charge to the American Embassy in the Philippines during the last years of the Marcos dictatorship.

The President of the club is Robert Merrill, Associate Judge of the California Court or Appeals. Robert Merrill is noted for his decision in the case of People v. Rippberger. In this decision, Judge Merrill foreshadows Quayle's articulation of the Right's "Family Values" position. The Court upheld the conviction of a Christian Scientist couple in the meningitis death of their child. The couple was given five years probation. In addition to this, and most importantly for our purposes, Judge Merrill ruled that the family would be kept under surveillance. For any illness of one of their children lasting more than twenty-four hours, the probation officer was given the authority to make all health care decisions or to make all decisions in case of emergency or life-threatening illness. On the one hand, the Rippberger family was kept together, Merrill said, for the "good of all [the family]." On the other hand, the state declared the right to keep the family under strict surveillance in order to keep it functioning within the bounds of "normality." Merrill ruled that the family (that is to say, the traditional family), is so important that it is the obligation of the state to preserve it.

But there was something about the Commonwealth Club that was even better than the likelihood of a receptive audience. The setting of the speech allowed Quayle to deliver his message to various audiences over three different media and those messages were tailored to exploit specific elements of the media.

First, for the audience in the room, Quayle's speech was delivered to the like-minded and the similar circumstanced. Quayle says of his hosts, "I think that most of us in this room know that some things are good and other things wrong. Now is the time to make that discussion public." With such an expectation of a friendly audience, it is no wonder that Quayle used the setting of the club for his rhetorical coming out to the New Right. Obviously Quayle, by speaking anywhere to anyone, was making the discussion "public," but this would not appear to be what Quayle meant. There were, we soon find, other publics in attendance.

The second audience for Quayle's speech would hear him via radio. Speeches given at the Commonwealth Club are broadcast over 200 radio stations around the country. Quayle was not a popular Vice President. Generally, he was considered inept and his own television image was of an incompetent. Quayle, in so much as he was known to most Americans, was known to them as a television image not unlike "Murphy Brown" herself. Using the medium of radio, Quayle could speak directly to this second audience. His image obscured by what Marshall Macluhan called radio's "cloak of invisibility," Quayle's voice could then deliver the message that signaled the New Right that he would be their champion. On radio, Quayle's message could be delivered without interruption or news media intervention. But more importantly, his message could be delivered without the baggage of an image of a Vice President whose opinions few respected. In a very real sense, radio was the means through which Quayle could deliver his message without it being overwhelmed by his own television induced "persona." Radio is also the preferred medium for many conservative organizers, e.g., conservative talks shows, fundamentalist preachers, etc. It is estimated that fundamentalists and evangelicals own and operate 1300 radio and 40 television stations. Two weeks before the Commonwealth Club speech, Quayle urged the annual convention of Religious broadcasters to rally their listeners behind the Bush campaign. Then a month after his "Murphy Brown" speech, Quayle underscored the importance of radio during a speech before the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts.

....I'd like to hear what your listeners have to say....You've got great contacts and information....and you can give us a great deal of help here, and that is to encourage your listeners to contact those that actually can do something.... That is why the response to my speeches on values and family values has been overwhelmingly, from my perspective, positive, because people...American people don't take the discussion of values as a laughing matter. So have them [your audiences] join the crusade. Please encourage your listeners to help us out.

But paradoxically, television (and with it, the television audience) was the very media that Quayle sought to pull into the room with his remark about "Murphy Brown." Quayle's speech attacked one of the most popular characters on network television, a character almost universally liked by the same television viewers that said TV does not reflect their "values and lifestyles." On the one hand, television was the one media that Quayle could not hope to control because of his own television persona. On the other, by attacking television, Quayle could create a diversion. After all, how could the visual media resist watching one of its creations being attacked by another?

Quayle's remark was a carefully considered tactic designed to obscure his appeal to the New Right. Quayle said the day after: "We worked hard on that speech....It worked out well from our point of view." In fact, Quayle's aides spent much of the next day trying to convince the White House that the speech was not a serious blunder. Bush initially refused to take questions on the matter. White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater laughed it off by offering to marry Murphy Brown, until reminded that she is just a t.v. chararter and that Candice Bergen is alread married.

This is particularly interesting because it shows that Quayle's speech had little to do with the reelection campaign. Quayle's speech took Bush & Company by surprise, but if there was surprise in the White House, others were not at all surprised by the uproar over the remark. Kevin Phillips, a Republican strategist, said : "If it hadn't been Quayle, people wouldn't be dismissing it. But because it is Quayle, you tend to look for a humorous angle.... The speech was not as bad as the predictable reaction." Another Republican said "we're not surprised the Hollywood establishment is taking him on...We expect it to continue." The reaction to Quayle's one sentence remark in a thirty minute speech was "predictable" and "not surpris[ing]." That sentence was not a throwaway line, but a lure and hook. As Mike Murphy, Quayle's media advisor, said "Murphy Brown" isn't the issue. It was a pop-culture cite to make the speech interesting. The essence of the speech was right and wrong."

Just last week in the NYT, Quayle said

..." he did not regret that in a speech on values he mentioned a fictional television charater, Murphy Brown, who was having a baby out of wedlock. 'I put it in there to get attention,' he said."

On the surface, the remark was deliberately said in order to draw the media into the room and begin a "discussion of America's poverty of values." Obviously, any politician of Quayle's low stature would enjoy being taken seriously on the front pages of all the major papers. Just below the surface, it was intended to aid in the long running rehabilitation of Quayle into suitable Presidential material for 1996. But this implies a more clever purpose; the "Murphy Brown" comment was inserted to divert media attention away from equally important issues raised in the speech that concern the specific interpretive community within which Quayle exists. Quayle's speech provided the final justification for the march of the New Right into the 1992 Republican Convention.

On the one hand, the visual media could focus on the issue/image of "Murphy Brown." At the same time, Quayle's other audience, his interpretive community, would get the total picture via his presence in the room and through the radio broadcast of his speech. How you interpret the speech is dependent upon the interpretive community within which you exist and the medium through which you encounter it. The speech is structured to precisely exploit both the various medias and audiences available to it.

The Commonwealth Club is located far from the actual site of the violence that is the initial subject of the speech , both geographically and figuratively. However, the fact that speeches given there are broadcast over so many stations adds the possibility that Quayle's talk would get to his audience directly and not just through the filter of the media. Quayle's speech is full of oppositions: homogeneity v. diversity; Civil Rights v. "culture of poverty"; law and order v. rioting and looting; societal v. personal responsibility; good citizens v. feminists; the list goes on and on. In other words, you, like any listener, can take from it those elements that are most important to you, that speak to you. "Murphy Brown" spoke to the media in a "predictable" way. Quayle's other message, the message of contained in these oppositions, spoke to America's New Right in an equally predictable way.

Rhetoric and organization created the space for Quayle to speak with authority, an authority he has rarely been given. Ironically, Quayle's community turns out to be at least as homogenous as that of the Japanese Quayle credits with originating the questioning of America's diversity. The discussion that Quayle said he wanted to make public was not, as he maintained, one between middle America and Hollywood in the abstract; after all, that marriage was already firmly cemented by the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. The discussion that he wanted to engage in was between the New Right and more moderate social conservatives whose influence the Right will need in order to gain firm control over the Republican party. This aspect is further illustrated by the presence in the speech of three models of family: one being the Nation as a Family (a theme stolen from Mario Cuomo's 1984 Democratic convention speech), another the traditional nuclear family, and the third being the family of the street gang. All three types of families are objects of the speech and the debate which followed it. But the family of the street gang was the specter that Quayle wanted to haunt his interpretive community with; it is the real threat of the events in Los Angeles. In this speech, the "family" of the "underclass" is a direct threat to the National and Traditional families and to the very means of production. "We're for law and order because if property isn't protected, who will build businesses?... When families fail, society fails. The anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are testament to how quickly civilization falls apart when the family foundation cracks." As an alternative, he closed his speech by offering the New Right's route to utopia for all that could hear him:

So I think the time has come to renew our public commitment to our Judeo-Christian values-- in our churches and in our synagogues, our civic organizations and our schools. We are, as our children recite each morning, "one nation under God." That's a useful framework for acknowledging a duty and an authority higher than our own pleasures and personal ambitions. If we live more thoroughly by these values, we would live in a better society.

Quayle's speech is not "about" "Murphy Brown," nor is it an attack on Hollywood (though Quayle was to open an offensive in this area soon after the speech). The Commonwealth Club provided a setting within which Quayle might speak to his interpretive community while at the same time diverting his opposition. But the heart of his speech can not be understood in terms of falsification or lies, but in terms of "truth" taken as the "common sense notions of what is reasonable" within that community. Quayle's speech is well within the rhetorical context of New Right ideology.

Regarding "Murphy Brown," Quayle's statement in its entirety reads:

It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has "Murphy Brown"-- a character who supposedly epitomized today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman-- mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another life style choice.

Of course, "Murphy Brown" appears in the passage as a metaphor for the dangerous woman, a direct challenge to the patriarchal values that Quayle supports. (She "epitomizes" the danger.) But she is more. "Murphy Brown" is a television image and television images are desired, especially by television itself. I believe that we can now see that "Murphy Brown" is a rhetorical diversion, an image that like a siren lured the media away from Quayle's message to the New Right. What is more important than "Murphy Brown's" near absence from the speech is that the single mention of her came to "epitomize" the controversy over the speech. The reasons for this can be found in the context of the speech.

The so-called "Culture Wars," of which Murphy Brown served as a particular battlefield, are not new. Social meanings have always been the subject of intense struggle under capitalism. Unfortunately, the American Left has had an ambiguous critique of culture, especially "popular" or "mass" culture. On the one hand, Leftist interventions into culture are clear and range from the songs of the Industrial Workers of the World, to the social realism of Frank Norris and Sinclair Lewis. On the other hand, the Left has also produced the brilliant, though flawed, meditations of the Frankfurt School on the evils of "mass culture" and the "culture industry." The value of "mass culture" analysis is that it draws attention to culture as a site of struggle within Capital, but it retains the distinction between high and low culture. This view that still holds sway today with the left. David Trend, editor of the Socialist Review, has appropriately termed the Left's relationship to culture "elitist." However, even Trend, for all the value of his insights, refers to Quayle's attack on the so-called "Hollywood elite" as merely "one of the funniest subplots" of the 1992 Presidential campaign. Thus, the Left again removes itself from the struggle over social meaning by lowering its critique to the level of intellectualism, i.e., as merely an "end in itself." (Marx)

One result of the distancing of the Left from serious consideration of popular culture was that it was primarily journalists who examined Quayle's speech and its implications. "Serious" or critical writers, as evidenced by their silence, treated the controversy as peripheral to our project of the critical examination of Capitalist social relations. However, the truly critical question regarding Murphy Brown presents itself: was this occurrence, this blurring of fact and fiction, a unique event or was it an example of a praxis? Neither single motherhood, nor the interaction of real people with imaginary characters, are unusual on television. In fact, Murphy Brown regularly featured its imaginary namesake interacting with "real" journalists and politicians. Therefore, I conclude, Murphy Brown must be seen as part of a praxis, i.e., a deliberate intervention by the Right, and one that is instructive for the Left.

FOREIGN POLICY
As you may know, I've just returned from a week-long trip to Japan. I was there to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan by the United States, an act that has made a lasting impression on the Japanese. While I was there, Japan announced its commitment to join with the United States in assisting Eastern and Central Europe with a 400 million dollar aid package. We also announced a manufacturing technology initiative that will allow American engineers to gain experience working in Japanese businesses. Japan and the United States are allies and partners. Though we have our differences, especially in the area of trade, our two countries -- with 40 percent of the world's GNP -- are committed to a global partnership in behalf of peace and economic growth.

THE RIOT AND THE NATIONAL HEALTH
But in the midst of all of these discussions of international affairs, I was asked many times in Japan about the recent events in Los Angeles. From the perspective of many Japanese, the ethnic diversity of our culture is a weakness compared to their homogenous society. I begged to differ with my hosts. I explained that our diversity is our strength. And I explained that the immigrants who come to our shores have made, and continue to make, vast contributions to our culture and to our economy. It is wrong to imply that the Los Angeles riots were an inevitable outcome of our diversified society. But the question that I tried to answer in Japan is one that needs answering here: What happened? Why? And how do we prevent it in the future?

GOVERNMENT SPENDING
One response has been predictable: Instead of denouncing wrongdoing, some have shown tolerance for rioters; some have enjoyed saying, "I told you so;" and some have simply made excuses for what happened. All of this has been accompanied by pleas for more money. I'll readily accept that we need to understand what happened. But I reject the idea we should tolerate or excuse it.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing in LA, my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame. Yes, I can understand how people were shocked and outraged by the verdict in the Rodney King trial. But there is simply no excuse for the mayhem that followed. To apologize or in any way to excuse what happened is wrong. It is a betrayal of all these people equally outraged and equally disadvantaged who did not loot and did not riot -- and who were in many cases victims of the rioters. No matter how much you may disagree with the verdict, the riots were wrong. And if we as a society don't condemn what is wrong, how can we teach our children what is right.

CRIME AND THE FAMILY
But after condemning the riots, we do need to try to understand the underlying situation. In a nutshell: I believe the lawless social anarchy which we saw is directly related to the breakdown of family structure, personal responsibility and social order in too many areas of our society.

WELFARE
For the poor the situation is compounded by a welfare ethos that impedes individual efforts to move ahead in society, and hampers their ability to take advantage of the opportunities America offers. If we don't succeed in addressing these fundamental problems, and in restoring basic values, any attempt to fix what's broken will fail. But one reason I believe we won't fail is that we have come so far in the last 25 years.

RACE AND MIDDLE CLASS VIRTUE
There is no question that this country has had a terrible problem with race and racism. The evil of slavery has left a long legacy. But we have faced racism squarely, and we have made progress in the past quarter century. The landmark civil rights bills of the 1960's removed legal barriers to allow full participation by blacks in the economic, social and political life of the nation. By any measure the America of 1992 is more egalitarian, more integrated, and offers more opportunities to black Americans -- and all other minority group members -- than the America of 1964. There is more to be done. But I think that all of us can be proud of our progress. And let's be specific about one aspect of this progress: This country now has a black middle class that barely existed a quarter century ago. Since 1967 the median income of black two parent families has risen by 60 percent in real terms. The number of black college graduates has skyrocketed. Black men and women have achieved real political power -- black mayors head 48 of our largest cities, including Los Angeles. These are our achievements.

THE UNDERCLASS
But as we all know, there is another side to that bright landscape. During this period of progress, we have also developed a culture of poverty -- some call it an underclass -- that is far more violent and harder to escape than it was a generation ago.

BIBLICAL JUSTIFICATION OF POVERTY
, i.e. , the Underclass The poor you always have with you, scripture tells us. And in America we have always had poor people.

THE CREATION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UNDERCLASS: THE GREAT SOCIETY
But in this dynamic, prosperous nation, poverty has traditionally been a stage through which people pass on their way to joining the great middle class. And if one generation didn't get very far up the ladder, their ambitious, better-educated children would. But the underclass seems to be a new phenomenon. It is a group whose members are dependent on welfare for very long stretches, and whose men are often drawn into lives of crime. There is far too little upward mobility, because the underclass is disconnected from the rules of American society. And these problems have, unfortunately, been particularly acute for black Americans. Let me share with you a few statistics on the difference between black poverty in particular in the 1960s and now:
o In 1967 68 percent of black families were headed by married couples. In 1991 only 48 percent of black families were headed by both a husband and wife.
o In 1965 the illegitimacy rate among black families was 28 percent. In 1989, 65 percent -- two thirds -- of all black children were born to never-married mothers.
o In 1951 9.2 percent of black youth between 16-19 were unemployed. In 1965, it was 23 percent. In 1980 it was 35 percent. By 1989, the number had declined slightly, but was still 32 percent.
o The leading cause of death of young black males today is homicide.
It would be overly simplistic to blame this societal breakdown on the programs of the Great Society alone. It would be absolutely wrong to blame it on the growth and success most Americans enjoyed during the 1980s.

A PERSONAL NOTE
Rather, we are in large measure reaping the whirlwind of decades of changes in social mores. I was born in 1947, so I'm considered one of those "baby boomers" we keep reading about. But let's look at one unfortunate legacy of the "boomer" generation. When we were young, it was fashionable to declare war against traditional values. Indulgence and self-gratification seemed to have no consequences. Many of our generation glamorized casual sex and drug use, evaded responsibility and trashed authority. Today the "Boomers" are middle-aged and middle class. The responsibility of having families has helped many recover traditional values. And, of course, the great majority of those in the middle class survived the turbulent legacy of the 60s and 70s. But many of the poor, with less to fall back on, did not.

POVERTY, VALUES AND THE UNDERCLASS
The intergenerational poverty that troubles us so much today is predominantly a poverty of values. Our inner cities are filled with children having children; with people who have not been able to take advantage of educational opportunities; with people who are dependent on drugs or the narcotic of welfare. To be sure, many people in the ghettos struggle very hard against these tides -- and sometimes win. But too many feel they have no hope and nothing to lose. This poverty is, again, fundamentally a poverty of values. Unless we change the basic rules of society in our inner cities, we cannot expect anything else to change. We will simply get more of what we saw three weeks ago. New thinking, new ideas, new strategies are needed. For the government, transforming underclass culture means that our policies and programs must create a different incentive system. Our policies must be premised on and must reinforce such values as: family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
I think we can all agree that government's first obligation is to maintain order. We are a nation of laws, not looting. It has become clear that the riots were fueled by the vicious gangs that terrorize the inner cities. We are committed to breaking those gangs and restoring law and order. As James Q. Wilson has written, "Programs of economic restructuring will not work so long as gangs control the streets." Some people say, "law and order" are code words. Well, they are code words. Code words for safety, getting control of the streets, and freedom from fear. And let's not forget that in 1990, 84 percent of the crimes committed by blacks were committed against blacks. We are for law and order. If a single mother raising her children in the ghetto has to worry about drive-by shootings, drug deals, or whether her children will join gangs and die violently, her difficult task becomes impossible. We're for law and order because we can't expect children to learn in dangerous schools.

BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT
We're for law and order because if property isn't protected, who will build businesses? As one step on behalf of law and order -- and on behalf of opportunity as well -- the President has initiated the "Weed and Seed" program -- to "weed out" criminals and "seed" neighborhoods with programs that address root causes of crime. And we have encouraged community-based policing which gets the police on the street so they interact with citizens. Safety is absolutely necessary, but it's not sufficient. Our urban strategy is to empower the poor by giving them control over their lives. To do that, our urban agenda includes: -- Fully funding the Homeownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere
program. HOPE -- as we call it -- will help public housing residents become homeowners. Subsidized housing all too often merely made rich investors richer. Homeownership will give the poor a stake in their neighborhoods, and a chance to build equity
-- Creating enterprise zones by slashing taxes in targeted areas, including a zero capital gains tax, to spur entrepreneurship, economic development, and job creation in inner cities.
-- Instituting our education strategy, America 2000, to raise academic standards and to give the poor the same choices about how and where to educate their children that rich people have.
-- Promoting welfare reform to remove the penalties for marriage, create incentives for saving, and give communities greater control over how the programs are administered.
These programs are empowerment programs. They are based on the same principles as the Job Training Partnership Act, which aimed to help disadvantaged young people and dislocated workers to develop their skills to give them an opportunity to get ahead.

FAMILIES AND THE UNDERCLASS
Empowering the poor will strengthen families. And right now, the failure of our families is hurting America deeply. When families fail, society fails. The anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are testament to how quickly civilization falls apart when the family foundation cracks. Children need love and discipline. They need mothers and fathers. A welfare check is not a husband. The state is not a father. It is from parents that children learn how to behave in society; it is from parents above all that children come to understand values and themselves as men and women, mothers and fathers. And for those concerned about children growing up in poverty, we should know this: marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of all. Among families headed by married couples today, there is a poverty rate of 5.7 percent. But 33.4 percent of families headed by a single mother are in poverty today. Nature abhors a vacuum. Where there are no mature, responsible men around to teach boys how to be good men, gangs serve in their place. In fact, gangs have become a surrogate family for much of a generation of inner-city boys. I recently visited with some former gang members in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In a private meeting, they told me why they had joined gangs. These teenage boys said that gangs gave them a sense of security. They made them feel wanted, and useful. They got support from their friends. And, they said, "It was like having a family." "Like family" -- unfortunately, that says it all. The system perpetuates itself as these young men father children whom they have no intention of caring for, by women whose welfare checks support them. Teenage girls, mired in the same hopelessness, lack sufficient motive to say no to this trap.

QUAYLE'S SOLUTION
Answers to our problems won't be easy. We can start by dismantling a welfare system that encourages dependency and subsidizes broken families. We can attach conditions -- such as school attendance, or work -- to welfare. We can limit the time a recipient gets benefits We can stop penalizing marriage for welfare mothers. We can enforce child support payments. Ultimately, however, marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus, and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this.

MURPHY BROWN
It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has "Murphy Brown" -- a character who supposedly epitomized today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice." I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it. Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think that most of us in this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong. Now it's time to make the discussion public.

PETITE-BOURGEOIS/PROTESTANT ETHIC and biblical justifications
It's time to talk again bout family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility. We cannot be embarrassed out of our belief that two parents, married to each other, are better in most cases for children than one. That honest work is better than hand-outs -- or crime. That we are our brothers' keepers. That it's worth making an effort, even when the rewards aren't immediate. So I think the time has come to renew our public commitment to our Judeo-Christian values -- in our churches and synagogues, our civic organizations and our schools. We are, as our children recite each morning, "one nation under God." That's a useful framework for acknowledging a duty and an authority higher than our own pleasures and personal ambitions. If we lived more thoroughly by these values, we would live in a better society. For the poor, renewing these values will give people the strength to help themselves by acquiring the tools to achieve self-sufficiency, a good education, job training and property. Then they will move from permanent dependence to dignified independence.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
Shelby Steele, in his great book The Content of Our Character, writes, "Personal responsibility is the brick and mortar of power. The responsible person knows that the quality of life is something that he will have to make inside the limits of his fate...The quality of life will pretty much reflect his efforts."

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