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Speeches - Miscellaneous (including scripts), 1964-1974 [November 1967-April 1969]
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Speeches - Miscellaneous (including scripts), 1964-1974 [November 1967-April 1969]
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Ronald Reagan's Governor's Papers of the Press Unit
Governor Ronald Reagan's Speeches
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Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Digital Library Collections
This is a PDF of a folder from our textual collections.
Collection: Reagan, Ronald: Gubernatorial Papers,
1966-74: Press Unit
Folder Title: Speeches - Miscellaneous (including scripts),
1964-1974 [November 1967-April 1969]
Box: P20
To see more digitized collections visit:
https://reaganlibrary.gov/archives/digital-library
To see all Ronald Reagan Presidential Library inventories visit:
https://reaganlibrary.gov/document-collection
Contact a reference archivist at: [email protected]
Citation Guidelines: https://reaganlibrary.gov/citing
National Archives Catalogue: https://catalog.archives.gov/
INDEX
1-11-72
Transcript
GOVERNOR'S PRAYER BREAKFAST
2-21-72
Transcript
FULTON LEWIS, III RADIO BROADCAST
Democratic myth
2-29-72
Transcript
THE ADVOCATES
Public school funds
3-29-72
Speech
TRUNK 'N TUSK CLUB (Ariz.)
172 Democratic dandidates' rhetoric: Vietnam
(Nixon peace proposal): Youth Party Registra-
tion: Republic VS. Demo. philosophy: minori-
ties: COPE: inflation: RMN Red China Trip
5-1-72
Speech
CHAMBER OF COMMISS OF THE UNITED STATES
Relationship of Government & Business:
free enterprise: government partnership:
efficiency & economy: welfare, tax loop-
hole critics: labor
0-21-72
Speech
SECOND SESSION, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION
Democratic Convention, Democratic platform
promises; socialized mediciner tax loopholes:
Nixon tax reform: Nixon Vietnam goals; Nixon
image with world leaders
11-10-72
Speech
L.A. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE BUSINESS OUTLOOK COMP
Vietnam War: War-time to peace-time economy:
inflation: stable economy: free enterprise
system; corporate taxes, business in America
12-8-72
Speech
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS
Free enterprise; foreign import threat to
economy: tax burden: efficiency and economy
in government
5-5-73
Transcript
AZUSA-PACIFIC COLLEGE COMMISCEMENT
6-9-73
Transcript
HT. ST. MARY'S COLLEGE GRADUATION
6-13-73
Transcript
JOHN P. KENNEDY HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION
Preparation for young people entering
societal responsibilities (texts identipl)
7-25-73
Transcript
ILLINOIS STATE SENATE FUNDRAISER
Party philosophical differences, exorbitant
government costs: tax limitation plan:
government-caused inflation: press nis-
statements
9-9-73
Transcript
REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF CALIF.
Watergate: free economic system; government
spending: withholding: property tax reform:
Proposition 1
11-26-73
Transcript
INSTITUTE OF DIRECTORS (Sydney)
Charity: government encroachment, economic
freedom: private industry leaders in govern-
ment; government efficiency and economy: tax
rebates: welfare: freedom
12-10-73
Transcript
SOUTHERN COP CONFERENCE
Watergate: Southeast Asia: inflation,
Democratic political demagoguery: party
philosophical differences: accomplishments;
U.S. 200th anniversary; Republican Party
responsibility, POWs (treatment)
1-20-74
Transcript
MEET THE PRESS
President Nixon (impeachment, taxes), RR
income taxes: Watergate (tapest logs) :
conservation: '76 candidacy; energy crieis
1-25-74
Transcript
CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ACTION CONFERENCE
American heritage; political philosophical
division: growth of government: America's
destiny
2-11-74
Transcript
OKLAHOMA GOP FUNDRAISER
Republican vs. Democratic Party philosophy:
Watergate: energy requirements; inflation
(profit increase); Nixon Doctrine: Southeast
Asia: government decentralization: adminis-
trative reforms) Party expenditures
2-22-74
Transcript
MEURI SAPARI FOUNDATION LUNCH
Wildlife preservation and management, gun
control, government decentralization: tree
marketplace
3-30-74
Speech
MIDWESTERN REPUBLICAN COMPERENCE
Excerpts
Republican VS. Democratic Party philosophy:
real issues; inflation & taxes: bureaucracy
in government
4-11-74
Transcript
TRUNK "N TUSK CLUB OF ARIZONA
Inflation: Watergate effect on Republican
candidates: Republican vs. Democratic Party
philosophy: Middle East: Vietnam: taxes;
bureaucracy in government: Party contribu-
tions (financial): welfare reform at national
level
O and 2
Arizona tax limit proposal; 55 m.p.h. speed
limit, Party influence through media purchase:
Gov./Lt. Gov. absence from state: non-support
of Watergate by Republicans imperative;
capital punishment, national defense (Panama
Canal sovereignty); Party campaign expendi-
tures, news media praise: Americans looking
beyond party labels: rendezvous with destiny
misc. SPEECHES
PSS
I-N-D-E-X
t SCRIPTS
1964-1974
1964
Speech
A TIME FOR CHOOSING
Planned economy; constitutional limitations
of government
1964, Ja
Speech
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY
Plan to curb government spending
1-4-66
Speech
A PLAN FOR ACTION
Announcement of candidacy for Governor of
California
4-19-66
Speech
THE CREATIVE SOCIETY
Citizen involvement in government
5-15-67
TV Transcript
TOWN MEETING OF THE WORLD
America's image; youth of the world; Vietnam
10-15-67
TV Transcript
ISSUES AND ANSWERS
Q & A - RR as potential candidate for
president
12-4-67
Transcript
PRESS CONFERENCE - YALE
Homosexuality; welfare; judicial appointments
Vietnam; civil rights; open housing; draft
12-7-67
Transcript
0 & A - YALE
Government-academic communication; Redwoods
statement; business approach to government
12-12-67
TV Transcript
CBS REPORT
"What About Ronald Reagan?"
5-26-68
TV Transcript
MEET THE PRESS
Oregon Primary; conservative philosophy;
open housing; right to work; Vietnam
6-5-68
TV Transcript
JOEY BISHOP SHOW
Law and order; individual responsibility;
gun registration; campus unrest
6-16-68
TV Transcript
FACE THE NATION
RR as potential presidential candidate;
Poor People's March; campus disorder
4-21-69
Speech
CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
Spiritual need of today's student; U.S.
position as a world power
5-4-69
TV Transcript
FACE THE NATION
ABM; "I am a Hawk"; Vietnam; student
appointments to Board of Regents?
pornography; sex education; prayer in
schools; campus disorder
5-23-69
Speech
NO GREATER INVESTMENT IN FREEDOM
(Speech to businessmen sponsored by
Independent Colleges of Southern Calif.)
Tax credits for tuition; comparison of
ancient Rome to America today; violence
and dissent in today's youth; academic
freedom
6-11-69
Eulogy
ROBERT TAYLOR FUNERAL SERVICES
6-13-69
Speech
COMMONWEALTH CLUB
The "People's Park", Berkeley
7-4-69
Speech
OPERATION PATRIOTISM
Independence Day Message
7-29-69
Speech
SEMINAR ON TRANSPORTATION & PUBLIC SAFETY
(Western Govs. Conference, Seattle)
9-28-69
Speech
BILLY GRAHAM CRUSADE
Welcoming remarks
10-22-69
Speech
EUREKA COLLEGE FUNDRAISING LUNCHEON
Tax credits for tuition; academic freedom;
student unrest
11-1-69
Speech
IN LESS THAN THREE YEARS
(RSCC, Anaheim)
Accomplishments of Reagan Administration
11-6-69
Speech
"THE NEW NOBLESSE OBLIGE"
(Institute of Directors - London)
Business-like approach toward economy in
/
government
11-10-69
Speech
BRITISH NATIONAL EXPORT COUNCIL
World trade; economic development
2-9-70
Speech
PEPPERDINE COLLEGE
Tax credit for tuition; the importance of
teaching; constructive participation of
youth in the Creative Society
2-12-70
Speech
LINCOLN DAY FUNDRAISER
Tax reform; welfare costs
6-5-70
Speech
ORME SCHOOL (Ariz.) COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES
Youth; generation gap; The Establishment;
environment; building America
10-18-70
Speech
FACE THE NATION
Crime; taxes, campus violence; regents;
law enforcement; campus unrest; teacher
tenure; conservative tide
11-30-70
Transcript
FILM INDUSTRY RALLY
Industry kudos; runaway films; tax exemption
12-1-70
Transcript
"THE ADVOCATES" #
Welfare (guaranteed annual income) i WIN
Program; welfare reform
1-24-71
Transcript
ISSUES AND ANSWERS
Revenue Sharing; welfare (pensioners; public
work force) ; taxes, off-track betting; CRLA;
Indo-China War: '72 presidential candidacy;
party image
9-5-71
Speech
TELEPHONE ADDRESS - YAF NATIONAL CONVENTION
National leadership; Red China trip
9-12-71
Transcript
MEET THE PRESS
Revenue sharing; Nixon economy program;
RR conservative image; welfare employables;
Agnew candidacy in '72
12-7-71
Transcript
NATIONAL FOOTBALL FOUNDATION DINNER
INDEX
1-11-72
Transcript
GOVERNOR'S PRAYER BREAKFAST
2-21-72
Transcript
FULTON LEWIS, III RADIO BROADCAST
Democratic myth
2-29-72
Transcript
THE ADVOCATES
Public school funds
3-29-72
Speech
TRUNK 'N TUSK CLUB (Ariz.)
'72 Democratic dandidates' rhetoric; Vietnam
(Nixon peace proposal) ; Youth Party Registra-
tion; Republic VS. Demo. philosophy; minori-
ties; COPE; inflation; RMN Red China Trip
5-1-72
Speech
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES
Relationship of Government & Business;
free enterprise; government partnership;
efficiency & economy; welfare, tax loop-
hole critics; labor
8-21-72
Speech
SECOND SESSION, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION
Democratic Convention; Democratic platform
promises; socialized medicine; tax loopholes;
Nixon tax reform; Nixon Vietnam goals; Nixon
image with world leaders
11-10-72
Speech
L.A. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE BUSINESS OUTLOOK CONF
Vietnam War; War-time to peace-time economy;
inflation; stable economy; free enterprise
system; corporate taxes; business in America
12-8-72
Speech
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS
Free enterprise; foreign import threat to
economy; tax burden; efficiency and economy
in government
5-5-73
Transcript
AZUSA-PACIFIC COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT
6-9-73
Transcript
MT. ST. MARY'S COLLEGE GRADUATION
6-13-73
Transcript
JOHN F. KENNEDY HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION
Preparation for young people entering
societal responsibilities (texts idential)
7-25-73
Transcript
ILLINOIS STATE SENATE FUNDRAISER
Party philosophical differences; exorbitant
government costs; tax limitation plan;
government-caused inflation; press mis-
statements
9-9-73
Transcript
REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF CALIF.
Watergate; free economic system; government
spending; withholding; property tax reform;
Proposition 1
11-26-73
Transcript
INSTITUTE OF DIRECTORS (Sydney)
Charity; government encroachment; economic
freedom; private industry leaders in govern-
ment; government efficiency and economy; tax
rebates; welfare; freedom
12-18-73
Transcript
SOUTHERN GOP CONFERENCE
Watergate; Southeast Asia; inflation;
Democratic political demagoguery; party
philosophical differences; accomplishments;
U.S. 200th anniversary; Republican Party
responsibility; POWs (treatment)
1-20-74
Transcript
MEET THE PRESS
President Nixon (impeachment; taxes) ; RR
income taxes; Watergate (tapes; logs) ;
conservatism; '76 candidacy; energy crisis
1-25-74
Transcript
CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ACTION CONFERENCE
American heritage; political philosophical
division; growth of government; America's
destiny
2-11-74
Transcript
OKLAHOMA GOP FUNDRAISER
Republican VS. Democratic Party philosophy;
Watergate; energy requirements; inflation
(profit increase) ; Nixon Doctrine; Southeast
Asia; government decentralization; adminis-
trative reforms; Party expenditures
2-22-74
Transcript
MZURI SAFARI FOUNDATION LUNCH
Wildlife preservation and management; gun
control; government decentralization; free
marketplace
3-30-74
Speech
MIDWESTERN REPUBLICAN CONFERENCE
Excerpts
Republican VS. Democratic Party philosophy;
real issues; inflation & taxes; bureaucracy
in government
4-11-74
Transcript
TRUNK 'N TUSK CLUB OF ARIZONA
Inflation; Watergate effect on Republican
candidates; Republican VS. Democratic Party
philosophy; Middle East; Vietnam; taxes;
bureaucracy in government; Party contribu-
tions (financial) ; welfare reform at national
level
Q and A
Arizona tax limit proposal; 55 m.p.h. speed
limit; Party influence through media purchase;
Gov./Lt. Gov. absence from state; non-support
of Watergate by Republicans imperative;
capital punishment; national defense (Panama
Canal sovereignty) ; Party campaign expendi-
tures; news media praise; Americans looking
beyond party labels; rendezvous with destiny
L9/1/161
SIDE 1, December 4, 1967, Press Conference at Yale T.D. on Arrival
There is no opening statement or anything so I amgoing
to suggest that some of the student editors open the
questioning because I think that this is what they want.
Q
Do you think that homosexuals should be barred from
holding public office in the United States?
A
Well, He wanted to know if he thought whether or not homo-
sexuals should be barred from holding public office in the United
States. I suppose I could only speak for my own state. I do not
know perhaps the Department of Parks and Recreation--
Q
Is homosexuality either imoral or should be illegal between
adualts?
A
Well, I think that we are getting into an area where we can
now debate what is an illness or whether it is an illness or
not. I happen to subscribe to the belief that it is a gragget
illness, a neurosis, the same as many other neurosis and I could
wish for a cure or good health for those people.
I
But do you think that it should be illegal?
A
You know I really would be speculating and thinking about
it for the first time right now. Yes, I do.
I
Mr. Reagan, the reputation that you administration has
from 3,000 miles away is perhaps unfortunately largely a negative
one on all the cut-backs that have been made on welfare or
with the universities, I wonder if you could tell us what you
have done positively to solve the problems in California
or, what programs you have put through?
A
Well, it is very easy to get that wrong impression not
only 3,000 miles away but 3½ feet away from the capitol
you can also find some disagreement. But what you have to
recognize that the impression that is usual given when
anyone seeks to restore the economy in government is of some
one a governor for example sitting on a treasurer chest.
Unilaterially deciding that he is not going to let this
money be spent in some cause or other. And this is not true.
The plain simply thing that we xxx all know if we take time
to think about it is that there are "x" number of dollars
coming in from the people of the state to a government body.
And the purpose of government or the function of government
is to allocate those monies for the services that the people
have decided are necessary and essential to them. And you
come to a point, you establish priorities of course, but
you come to a point in which you can give some agency or
department the money it request is to take it from someother
agency or department. And some place along the line someone
has to make a decision as to how far back you can cut. Let's
say police protection or public health. Something of this
kind to give more money as requested. And each department
requests more money than it ever ends up or winds up getting.
Now, if you have a state that is not asking the people for a
fair share to pay for the services that they have indicated
that they want, then government has a responsibility to simply
tell the people that they have to pay more money. But
Californians happen to be paying more for government per capita
than their fellow citizens in the rest of the country-very much
more. So I believe that we have reached virtuely the breaking
point. There is very little more that you can ask of the people
of California. Now it is pretty hard for me to reconcile the
criticism what we are doing with regard to cut-backs when at
the same time the same publications and the same individuals
are attacking me on the basis that I asked for the biggest single
tax increase that has ever been asked in the history of this
country in any state. And the same opposite or opposing
legislators who reduced my request by $100 million and then
handed me back a budget in which I had to blue pencil $46 million
worth of spending which they added into the budget after cutting
the taxes that I asked for. It makes it a little hard for me
to believe in their sincereity. Now you have asked what we have
done constructively. Well, in the first place, we took a state
that was spending more than a million dollars a day over and
above the revenue that was coming in. This was in violation
of our constitution. We can not have a deficit budget in our
state. We had to put the state on a sound financial basis.
There have been-let me give one example-get talk about cut-
backs in the area of mental health. But this ignores the fact
that California leads the nation in this regard and leads the
nation in the method of treating the mentally ill. In California
we have embarked some several years ago-I didn't start this-
embarked in a program of stopping this old fashion concept of
simply warehousing the mentally ill-storing them away for the
rest of their lives. And we started getting those people out
of the hospital that could be cured and made able to live with
the help of the new tranquilizer drugs and so-forth a normal
life in their home surroundings. To the extent in the last
several years, we have reduced the hospital population from
36,000 to around 20,000 and it is continuing to go down. And
the cut-back that we made was a cut-back in the staff at the
hospital level to more or less keep pace with this declining
number of patients but we made also the biggest increase in
the history of our state or any state in the funds available
to stimulate the development of more of this local and
regional health care centers so that we can even increase the
pace with which we get this people out of these institutions
and get them back to a normal life.
Q
Still though, it seems though you are planning to add on
any new programs that don't necessarily have to take the
form of increased taxes but people do not know what you want
to do or what new things that you want to propose for the
problems of the cities, lets say, are the really problems that
any state has.
A
Oh, no, this is not true. We have a great many programs.
We have a number of them which are buried in the committee in
the legislature now.
Q
What are some of them.
A
Well, for example there is going on at this time-right at
this moment in California-and has been since I took office, a
program with regard to putting the unemployed, particularly in
the poverty pockets of the minority areas, putting them to work
in private enterprise jobs in industry and in jobs with a future
instead of the "make-work" type of a thing that SO often is
characteristic of government aid to the unemployed. There was a
man, an industrialist, in California who right after the Watts
riot got a number of his fellow industrialist interested in the
problem and the excessive number of unemployed in the Watts
area. And he challenged that this was a problem for private
enterprise. Private enterprise may not be able to solve all
the social problems in the world, but certainly it had jobs
to offer. And they set out to match the worker or the unemployed
to the job. Through job training, they cooperated with govern-
ment job training programs. They worked through the state
employment office and in a matter of 16 months, they were able
to put 17,800 of the hard core unemployed in the Watts area
alone into free enterprise jobs. This man's name was McClellan.
After I was ellected and before I took office, I sought out
Mr. McClellan and asked him if he would take on this chore for
entire state on a state-wide basis. He is doing this with no
salary to the state. We have organized and Bob Finch, Lt. Governor
has been put in charge. He is the liason between government and
this private effort and Chad McClellan has organized the state
of California. He.has 2,600 industrialist in the Los Angeles
area; 1,500 in the bay area of San Francisco; additional hundreds
in San Diego and in other communities. They are organized-they
have set up recruiting offices in the proverty pockets-particularly
among the minority people. And they are busy seeking out training
and finding the employables and putting them to work.
Now, when they get through with this. They are dealing with
those people who can be trained and put to work on a job. When
they get through, there will be a social problem left then of
what could be called the unemployable. People for one reason
or another other are not ready at this moment that free enter-
prise or the private industry could not take on that chore.
This will be the task of all of us and we are not neglecting
it. We are not waiting. But it will be that much easier if
you have your problem down to that level. Now, we have done
a number of other things. First of all, I have told you of
the mental health thing. It is not true necessarily that we
are just cutting back. Our so-called Medi-Cal program-the
Medicaid program-this is article 19 of the Medicare program.
This as implemented in about half our state, half of the states
haven't as yet, we are all suppose to by 1975. There is not
a state in the union that has implemented this program that is
not facing bankruptcy with it and having great troubles. We
called a conference and held a conference with a number of those
states and together we are trying to work out and to impress on
the federal government what is necessary in their regulations
to change. To give us a flexibility to deal with this because
contrary to what a great many people might feel. I happen to
be committed to a belief that no one in this country-no one-
should be denied medical care because of the lack of funds. But
I do not believe, if we have embarked on a wrong course, that
we should be wasting our treasure to the point where one day
we will have to withdraw this service and not be able to help
the people. We have-you asked me in a vast state to start
going down the list of all the things that we have done. WE
have formed a-successfully formed a crime foundation that
brings together for the first time all the various factors
involved in fighting crime ranging from the legal and the
judiciary and to law enforcement and the penal institutions
to treat this whole problem because it is one of the greatest
problems confronting our nation today. Run away crime in
this country progressing at a rate that is unexplanable to
any one. I am trying to think of some-we have a program. We
tried to get it through last year and we are trying again-to
take the appointment of judges out of politics once and for
all. I do not believe that a man should wear the robes of
judge simply as the result of a pay-off for campaign favors
and so forth. Now I realize that to a governor this is a
great patronage thing. One of the greatest
the
en
governor can have to/trench himself is the appointment of
judges. I witnessed this for the last eight years under
my predecessor this kind of judicial appointment. In the
for
meantime, waiting/the legislation that will set up a plan
the
whereby a joint committee of citizens,/bar and the judiciary
will present qualified names to a governor for appointment.
In the meantime, I have voluntarily set such a system. Judges
in California are now appointed. They have to be appointed by
me but we have such a joint committee in every area and all
who are proposed as possibilities for judicial appointments are
turned over to this joint committee and are screened and they
send them back to us with a rating-a score of what
each group-the layman, the bar, the judiciary-has rated this
person and I have chosen from those-the one who gets the top
rating-in every instance, the judicial appointments that I have
made. We have-there are a number of things, but somehow in the
reporting of my doings, it does not seem to accent the positive.
Q
Governor, last night, former secretary of state, Dean
Atchinson, said he believed that the negotiations would not
necessarily be fruitful in terms of Vietnam, would you agree
with that or not?
A
Yes, as a matter of fact, I read and I assume that it
being the New York Times that Dean Atchinson was accurately
quoted. The-I agree completely with what he said. And I
think the long history of attempts for negotiations with the
communists have indicated that they are long on sound and talk
and little on accomplishment. He put in far better words than
I have ever been able to exactly what my views are about Vietnam.
And about the resolving of this conflict.
I
Does this mean that you think that a military solutions is
the only one?
A
Well, it is, in the extent and in the context in which
Dean Atchinson said it way. And this is that you simply make it
plain to them that to continue hurts them more than they want
to be hurt. And that if there is a setting down at a table
it is because it hurts too much not to and you make it evident
to them that their aggression-their military conquest-is not going
to succeed and then as he says, it does not always mean that you
come to a surrender with the generals marching forth under a
white flag or of something of that kind. The enemy simply gives
up the effort.
Q
You are talking about the fading away that we have been
told they are going to?
A
Yes, I believe that this is true and I do not believe
that you get them to the table by persuading them-appealing to
their better nature-I think that you get, if there is any--if
there is a negotiation as Dean Atchinson may claim. In the
negotiations that we have had in the past like at Pan-mu-chaum,
the negotiation is just when one way is hurting too much and
they are not succeeding they switch over and conduct the war
across the table in an effort to get what they could not get
by force of arms.
Q
Do you think that the departure of Mr. McNamara from the
Pentagon will lead to a kind of pressing of our military might
into this situation?
A
Oh, I would not be able to speculate what is behind this.
It could range all the way from Mr. McNamara just getting tired
of what has been going on to a difference of opinion.
Q
Would you call for a stronger action?
A
Yes, as a matter of fact I have. At the same time however,
I said that I think we are having that stronger action or a large
part of it in recent months. It was only a couple of months ago
or less, that I said I believe we had turned a corner. That the
military effort was giving us a far more optimistic outlook
than we are being told. I think all the signs indicate this.
My criticism of the conduct of the war has been that through
escallation over a period of a year and one-half or perhaps
two years, we have reached the point now, that some people
wanted us to reach in more of a solid trust. For example, the
Air Force victory bombing plan in which some time ago they
suggested 94 targets to be blitzed in a 16 day blitz. Now
all those targets or virtuely all of them, are now being
bombed. But their idea was and the military idea was, that
if this had been a sudden thrust, that this very well could
have brought the enemy around, because if it happens all at
once in the 16 days which is fater than they can repair, then
they may began to think what will happen in the next 16 days.
Q
Governor Reagan, Your public statements have established
your positions for intensifications of the Vietnam war against
civil rights legislation and against big government, on the
basis of this record, how do you distinguish your position XN from
that of another presidential-possible presidential candidate-
George Wallace?
A
Oh, I think that my positions are quite different from
those of George Wallace and the way that you put it, there is
a certain amount of over simplification there. Let me say that
perhaps this one difference is this. There seems to be a
say
téndency and those of the so-called liberal philosophy, as/so
called because I happen to be one who opposes this hyphenating
of all of us. I think that we have falling into a custom in
this country that everyone must be categorized and given a label
and he is a something hyphen this or that. But, the liberal is,
if he choses that name for himself, is the most guilty of
debating these issues, the solution to the racial problem, the
solutions to poverty, all the rest. He is guilty of charging
that any one who opposes the method that he suggests for
solving these problems, is opposed to the goal as well. I do
not think that this is worthy of our country. I think the
men and women of good will in this country, and I think that
means most of us, actually are united on goals. I have never
found any one who does not want a solution to this problem
of the minorities, equal opportunity. I have given you my
position with regard to medical health. The same is true of
poverty. It could be eliminated. The argument is the method
chosen to achieve these results. Now, why can't we as men and
women of good will and the times of great stress, as fellow
Americans, sit down in a room together and negotiate on the
basis, that we are debating methods proposed? Now, I can be
unalterably opposed to some particular program, but the-as
I say, the so-called liberal-greats you not with arguing-
defending his methods, he simply the moment you oppose him,
charges you want the poor to die in the streets, you want the
ill not to have a doctor and so forth.
&
Do you think the Rumford Fairhousing Act in California
is ineffective or bad method of assuring fair housing legislation
or of assuring open housing?
A
I think that the Rumford Fair-housing Act in California
runs a very great danger of risk. In attempting to achieve
something that I desire very much and all of should desire,
it runs the risk of giving the government the power that govern-
ment should not have and could some day come back to haunt us.
Can be used for other than worthy purposes and this is the
infringement on the right of the ********* individual to private
possessions and the control ownership of those possessions. Now,
there is a great difference between the restrictive convenent
idea and the individual being told what he can or cannot do with
his own home. Now, strangely enough, and I know that this will
sound strange to many of you in view of what you have read. You
happen to be looking at someone who spent a life time rather
militantly and emotionally opposed to discrimination and bigotry.
As a sports announcer many years ago, when baseball, organized
baseball, opened its rule book with a line that baseball is a
game for caucasian gentlemen. As a sports announcer, I editorialized
constantly against this. I can now point with I sort of told you
so pride, the wonderful progress that baseball has made because
Mr. Ricky had the courage to do what he did. As I say, I would
not knowingly patronize a place of business that conducted its
business with discrimination and bigotry or prejudice. I would
urge all right thinking people to do the same. But we must be
very careful trying to achieve a noble goal, solve the problem
that would at the same time initiate or give away completely,
some of the safe guards that have given us our individual
freedom.
2
Do yo u have any alternative methods of solving the
problem?
A
Yes, and they sound a little vague and indefinite I am
sure for those people who want positive answers. I believe that
there is a certain amount of this that must be solved simply
through leadership and through organizing the people of good
will to voluntarily do things. But let me just get back to this
one point. California does not have or allowed the restricted
covenent. There are no areas or no neighborhoods where people
can ban together and say this is restricted to only a certain
kind of people or people of another kind can't come in here.
This is far different. I heartedly favor that. Because the
same thing that makes a restricted covenent, not only morally
wrong, but legally in my opinion wrong, is the same thing that
makes me question the Rumford Act. And that, we have certain
are
rights that/ours from birth. Certain rights that cannot be
submitted to a majority rule or vote. And for an individual
in a neighborhood who ownes a home, to let his neighbors by
and
simply out numbering him, vote a restrictive convenent *x/making
him abide by it, is an infringement on his right to his own
property and his control of it. You can not make it any more
right by making it legal.
'Q
Sir, you say that you are worried about rights infringements
on individual rights, can you then tell us are you in favor of
the selective service as to being oblished?
A
Well, this has to be a yes and no answer. For quite some
time now, I have been opposed to the peace time draft. And I
would like to see, and have thought for some time and advocated,
that this country if it is fearful in the present state of the
world of suddenly cancelling the draft and the misunderstanding
that might follow from this in some other countries, that at
least this country with its great know how, could evolve a
program of incentives of enlistment and thenas this proved its
effectiveness eliminate the draft. No part of the answer is
with a conflict of the size that we are in now, I wonder if this
is the moment which we could do away with it without again
strengthening the enemies determination to continue that he
might xxxxxxxxxxpx misinterpret this. We have, and all of us
have agreed in this country to the draft time of war.
Q
War has not been declared!
A
I now it has not been declared. But the present president
himself in the Whitehouse several months ago made a public state-
ment in whichhe said-make no mistake about it, we are in a war.
Now the legal technicality of the non-declaration for whatever
reason, it is a non-declaration, should not blind us to the
fact that we are in a war. So perhaps this is not the best time
and I am not going to make a judgement on that to do away with
the draft.
2
Governor, (interruption)
A
But my answer is yes. I believe we should not have peace
time constriction in this country.
2
Governor, the selective service assistant is taking to
war
reclassifying the/demonstrators and others who are eligible for
hear of
the draft, the leading educators call it an outrageous usurpation
or power, can we have your view on this?
A
Well, I think what happens there, I can understand General
Hershey in his resentment saying it and emotionally I could go
along with him. On the other hand reasonably, intellectually,
you have to say wait a minute, we can't make military service
punitive, we can't use the military as a way of punishing
people that we may disagree with or who have done some wrong
doing. If we are in a conflict, I think that one of the things
that has happened is a kind that we have drifted into a
perversion of the draft deferment idea on the whole student
contexts. I realize that I am going to loose a lot of potential
andpossible friendships when I say this. But the idea in war
time-lets go back to world war II-the biggest most effective
use of the draft in our country-in the midst of an emergency,
certain
the government recognized that there were SEME/people who were
as essential to the war effort in various occupations and
professions as they would be in the military. And so the govern-
ment reserved for its self the right to hand pick and say this
person and that person are exempt from the draft because we need
them some place else. in this same war effort. This was the
context of the peace time draft behind exempting those getting
a higher education. In the peace time draft, it was recognized
that we did need and our country was going to be-what success was
going to be based on. The education with many of our young people
is possible. So we offered an incentive to education. But now
we are in combat. Now it is the case that some people are being
chosen for possible death and some are being exempted. puring on
the basis of getting an education. And I believe that we either
should eliminate completely, or we should recognize that this
kind of a choice when we are in combat, when we are in a war, and
that we should review the unfairness that we
presently have.
I
Governor, do you think that the criteria seems to be that
hear
these activities and anti-war activities are not of the national
interest, would you agree with that?
A
I do not think that they are in the national interest at
all. And I do not deny any one their rights to dissent. We
had dissentors in World War II. I myself was pretty intolerant
then. I believe that the inhumanity of Hitler and Mussolini
were such that it was pretty hard to justify neutrality. But
there were many Americans who did not believe that we had a
place in that war but the dissent took the form, the usual forms
of dissent, that had been made available to us in this country and
I say that when that dissent is carried into actively interferring
with the efficiency of the country in war, when it actually lends
comfort and aid to the country, then I do not believe that it can
be justified. It can certainly never be justified in breaking
the law.
Q
But can it be tolerated?
A
The dissent can be tolerated.
Q
No, the disruptive kind that you said-you say it can't
be tolerated.
A
No, I don't think that it should be-can be. I don't
think ; that there is anything in this country that justifies
the citizen taking the law into his own hands. Once you start
to let, each individual start determining which law he can obey,
we are back to the society based on who can carry the biggest
club.
I
But what about disruptive dissent who falls short of
breaking the law, but in your estimate buk still
the
war effort by giving comfort to the enemy?
A
Well
2
Should these people be classified?
A
Well, for some reason not known to any of us, the govern-
ment has decided that it is to our national interest to not
take the legal step of declaring a war a war. And if this was
legally declared a war within the next five minutes there are
certain rules of conduct that we have lived with throughout
the history of our nation almost guiding the citizens in a time of
war. Certain restrictions that for the war effort and for the
aid of those who are actually doing the fighting we recognize
are necessary. Now the fact that legally or technically we have
not declared it a war, should this technically allow people to
do what would under the other circumstances range all the way
from treason to obstructionism to lending comfort and aid to
the enemy. I question this. I think that the-I think that
once you ask young men to fight and die for their country, the
country has an obligation to those young men to do nothing that
further endangers them or makes it more difficult for them to
do what their country has asked them to do.
Ω
Governor, How do you regard the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy
as opposed to President Johnson as the democratic nomination?
A
I am delighted. I hope that there will be more McCarthy's
and it is a type of McCarthism that I heartedly approve of and I
Q
(can't understand - but very short)
A
Well, Oh, yes. I believe that anything that is devicive
and the opposing party is constructive for the country.
2
Governor, what kind of candidate do you think that the
Defense Secretary MacNamara might make since he is a republican?
A
I don't know. I know that a rose is a rose but it is hard
for me to conceive that Secretary MacNamara is a Republican.
Q
Time magazine has called the Rockerfellow-Reagan ticket
a green ticket. What do you think of Governor Rockerfellow as
a prospective Republican nominee and would you be willing to
accept the vice-presidential nomination?
A
No, I am not a candidate for any other office. I have said
talk about
that over and over again. It seems strange when you/pmixexx a
ticket linking those two names here are two outspoken non-
candidates being linked together. But I would say this about the
Republicans and all those who have been suggested, the Republican
party has a wealth of talen this year which I am sure the public
is going to recognize and almost any one of several, I think,
could successful lead this country and do a better job than we
are now getting.
I
can't understand but very short
A
That's
Ω
come to you and say they wanted you
as their vice-president, would you accept that nomination?
A
Well, you are asking me a kind of a hypothetical
question now. And if I give you a hypothetical answer, as I
have said before, I have written your lead for you and I do
what
not think that I should do that. Let me just give you/my
views are on the relative jobs. I have never been one who
vice
is greatly impressed as to how much the/presidential candidate
contributes to the ticket in winning votes for the number one
spot. And I think that your question might be a faxmrable fair
one for someone let's say doesn't hold public office as to
whether he could contribute or not contribute. But I would
think that my position now as governor of what is the most
populous state of the union that I can be perhaps has helpful
in a campaign in that position as I could any other. I would
certainly try to be helpful to whomever is the nominee of our
party and so I would be inclined to say that I could contribute
as much to the party or more right where I am insufax and certainly
I could do more to further by beliefs and these and the things
that made me become a candidate for the office that I now hold
in the first place.
Q
Suppose at the convention
came to you and asked
you to run for president, being the favorite son from California,
controlling a large block of convention votes, what would your
decision be then?
A
I still do not want to write your lead. There isn't any
way that I can answer that question without being in deep trouble
What you are getting around to is General Sherman and the state-
ment here. All I can say to you is, that I am not a candidate.
I am very happy in the job that I am doing. Well, there are days
when I am not. But, I do not foresee being a candidate.
Q
Mr. Wallace says that he is picking up a lot of votes and
a lot of Republicans are going his way, is this true?
A
Well, I am not one who normally believes in polls but
yesterday's poll as printed the Gallup Poll regard to the effect
that Governor Wallace might have on the presidential three-way
presidential race. I am one who believes that it could be
a more harmful to the Republicans than the Democrats. This I
think would be particularly true in the South. I think that
there are a number of Democrats in the South who are disapproving
of the present administration, but they just have an ingrain
reluctance to vote for that word Republican and if you gave them
an alternative choice, where they could register the disapproval
of the Democratic administration without voting Republican, they
would take it and to that extent would hurt us.
Q
Governor, do you expect to be talking to Reverand Kauffin
when you are here in New Haven about peace demonstrations?
A
Well, I do not know. That would be up to Reverand Kauffin.
Under the circumstances, I would feel a little self-conscious
about seeking him out for
&
Governor
Governor: One more question then we have got to quite
I
We have heard several variations about this Sherman like
statement from several other non-candidates. Do you have any
statement that you would like to make
Sherman like or
otherwise?
A
Oh, no. You mean about Sherman? I could quote former
President Eisenhower who told me once that he thought it was a
foolish statement and that Sherman shouldn't have made it.
I AM SORRY THAT HE HAS GOT TO GO TO A CLASS NOW. THE GOVERNOR
IS GOING TO WALK ACROSS THE CAMPUS AND WE CAN MEET HIM AT THE
OLD CAMPUS IF YOU WANT TO GET HIM ON THE OUTSIDE. THANK YOU
VERY MUCH GOVERNOR AND MRS. REAGAN.
29/4/61
12/7/67 FINAL ADDRESS AND Q&A AT YALE - RR
Would give the money to a worthy cause. I understand that cause
is a deserving young student who is now planning to work his way
through Berkeley. The Governor's visit has also vocused attention
on a number of campus issues and in this area the Governor's
charming wife has been most helpful. Those who have been campaign-
ing for the abolishing
have been greatly encouraged
that a Smithy has now spent the night on the campus. Finally,
in his talks with the Yale students, the Governor has had a
valuable opportunity to find out the opinion of 1968. And in
many parts of the country, Republicans are taking about
Rockerfellow and Reagan has the green ticket. Other Republicans
however seem to be dreaming about a Romney-Lindsey ticket on the
basis that it would be difficult of the Democrats to defeat God
and the Yale man. But whether or not the Governor is on the
green ticket, there are a few people who are now making such a
great impact on the discussion of issues in American politics
today. And Governor Reagan, quite seriously, we thank yo u for
taking time to discuss these issues here at Yale with us. You
have provide Yale students with an altogether valuable experience.
Now, I am proud to present to you the Governor of California,
Ronald Reagan.
Time is going by. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for that
wonderfully warm introduction and I want to thank, as a matter
of fact, I could even refer to it as heated at moments. But
I want to thank also all of you for this very warm welcome too.
I think that it is a memory that I shall cherish and probably
nothing could ever take it out of my mind unless perhaps one day
I should receive an honorary degree from Berkeley. REferences
to my past occupation, I am not self conscious about that and
the stand point that now I am in my present trade, I don't want
to remember that it is just that there are certain things that
for example I feel how much better it could have been if one of
my more eminent protrayals had not been George Gibb of Norte
Dame but had been Frank Merrywell of Yale. The other thing
of course is, you know, the business that I was in all of us
had to experience making some pictures that the studio didn't
want them good; it wanted them Tuxsday Thursday. And we always
in the past figured that time going by would remove those
pictures from your memory. And we could forget them also, But
now there is a thing called television and if you such stay
up late enough at night, they all come back to haunt us. Sometimes
when I see some of my own, it is like looking at a son you never
knew you had. I got a friend in the business who stays up late
to look at his old shows just to watch his hair line recede.
But modern communications, being what they are, I am aware that
certain of your fellow
didn't take kindly to the idea of
my being invited here. The Yale daily news which on casual
reading does not appear to be subsidized by the C.I.A. It is
still shuddering at the idea, the printers ink curdled, I am
not all together unfamiliar with the circumstances in which I
find myself, becuase, on previous occasions, and in my previous
occupations, there were any number of scripts in which I had to
square away, push open the back wing doors to the sekmann soloon
knowing that the fellows in the black hats were lined up against
the bar and I was going to have to confront them. or I walked
between
bravely down/the tepees into the stockade to engage in a pow-
WOW with the Apaches --part of the tape lost--In accepting the
hospitality, I wasn't SO naive as to think that I might make
any convert to my way of thinking or that the foundations of
this old and famous institution would collapse if you failed
to convert me to yours. But what is important in this juncture
is that such Americans as you and I, the politician and the
intellectual, now let me interject, that I have resisted at time
the application of that title politician when applied to myself
but I do grant you the application of your title without arguement.
But any way we should seriously try to understand each other and
all the while we try to understand what is happening to and within
the United States. The university is or should be concerned.
But the important business of making men masters of the fate.
One engaged in the political life has to ride the tiger. It is
another name for the realities which the intellectual community
is charged with identifying and domesticating. Politicians are
highly expendable if they are notably edible. And I have no
desire to end my career inside the tiger. But I think that I
can deplore a modern day philosophical hyphenating of each one
of us. This idea that we must be described with a hypen and then
a descriptive adjective. But yielding to the reality of common
usage, I must recognize that many of you, I bear the title or
label of conservative and yet I am as anxious as the next man
to recognize the new realities of human conditions. The
the
fundamental varities are no more/legacy reserved for the
conservative tradition than the recognition and insight are
gifts peculiar to the intellectual community. And all of a
sudden we Americans seemed to have lost our way. The political
search for consensus is not necessarily the last resort of a
compromise and a trimmer casting about for some workable base
for power. It looks to me to the action of a leader that is in
search for something that is willing to be lead. In a nation
that is no longer pure in its very parts where it is going or
where it wants to go. This question of how to maintain the
flow of ideas between the politicians and the intellectual
community, more specifically the university world is very much
in my mind by reason of a papers which I read on my way here.
these
With a talk given on *he/precincts one June morning five years
ago by a gifted politician who was at ease in the academic
world and his own creditials were respected there. The point
of the discourse was dialogue between the principle parties
and the American public, business or among government and
business and the public, were being closed by "illusion and
platitude". In consequence according to him, government was
unable to make the American people comprehend the vast changes
which we were already cut up. In the world, American life
had become the prisoner of mith. And the message, the new
trust simply was not getting through the Eog of dead cliches
and worn out slogans and crumbling generalizations on which
the past had been constructed. No sensible man can quarrel
in
with the point that American life has changed and a revolutionary
and explosive way. New words and new values must be minted.
New aspiration and new goals must be struck. Who among us
would knowingly be caught dead clinging to superstition. But
Americans have long been marked as a society in a permanent
revolutionary change and a change with us is a condition of life.
The only justification for government is the concern for the
defense and the improvement of the human lot through the hazards
and the opportunities of this change. But something called the
recognition factor has been brought into play. How real and
how useful is this fundamental change and how fundamental is it?
The look of change can be serious. There are certain varities
that do persist for better or ill. In the very recent past, we
Americans have witnessed any number of the imaginative and inspired
and even heroic efforts by government to demolish the illusions
unhorse the patitudes, dis-spell the mith and presumably to keep
us from agreeing on what's to be done and setting about doing it.
We have seen unveiled a bright new body of thought, called the
new economics. And this was to give us through skillful tuning
of monetary and fiscal policies. In economy it would achieve
full employment without inflation and at a consistently diminishing
cost of government. The happy outcome was to be a strong dollar,
full employment, full production and stable prices once we got
rid of the mith that the big federal deficit were mischievous
and in an other quarter, we had some experience with the creative
federalism. Which was to have finished off the mith that big
government means bad government. Creative federalism undertook
to clear the way for instant great society. To be constructed
by a generation having a special appointment with destiny. While
the computers blinked and the fine tuning went on, the fiscal
and monetary consule, there was to be a restoration among
us that the fading values of "community with neighbors and
communion with nature". With regards to the American position
in the outer world, new foreign policy was based on a pragmatism
proposed that we celebrate the end of the cold war and bury the
mith that communism was determined to bury us. We were to
throw bridges at a mellowing Russia and in various ways end the
shouting and the shooting that have filled our times with uproars.
Finally, the new foreign policy was undergurted by a new strategic
doctrine. That limited war fare would avoid the provocative
aspects of the higher technological weapons and would make less
hazardous and less arguist and less conclusive such wars as this
nation might be called upon to fight. And here the object was
in
to dispose of the idea the mith that victory and war was desirably
useful. And all of these ideas added up to a noble vision.
the vehicles
In one form or another they supplied/with some of the noblest
oratory and the brightest prose to issue from Washington. The
trouble is there has been no real dialogue. The Government
all this while has been talking pretty much to itself.
And in short of the short intervals of silence that were permitted
while the federalized thinkers stopped to catch their breath it
has become increasing difficult to tell where life and death
matters and old miths have been separated from the realities.
The new economics instead of producing an automatic balance of
federal accounts during idea conditions of full employment has
pilled up huge deficits. Inflation is with us again. Now,
the wage price spiral is setting in. The gold is flowing out.
The dollar is under attack. And the foreign friends and alias
who wanted America with house in order are worried. What ever
happened to the fine tuning, the careful orchestration that was
to have spared the great society the consequences of the mith
of fiscal descipline. Perhaps the federal orchestra was over
burdened with fidlers. Things are out of control. The federal
budget is out of control. The deficit is out of hand. Too many
of our people in the cities and the colleges are out of control.
De Gaul
is out of control and so alas is Britian.
and Hedlin sinks the fire. As we are still in Vietnam, the
limited war strategy far from persuading our enemies to
mend their ways has pulled us into the bottomless pit of wasteful
war, wasteful in men, wasteful in treasure, wasteful of the American
meaning in the world. lAnd the new realities remain with us. But
so do the prophesies. The old miths stubornly refuse to roll
over and play dead. In the chaos between the new reality and
the old reality problem solving just hasn't taken place. Hard
work that waits abroad for American hands will go for nothing.
Unless we settle among ourselves the question of what is the
United States to be? So lets pick up the dialogue and lets
make an exciting and serious one and let's not forget that
we, there is still something to be said about the eternal varities
however tired and abused they may be. You know, it has been
said very well by one of your our in this place on the eve of
another American testing back in 1917. He put it in a poetic
way discussing the mystery of moon light elms,
the flash of pigeon wings, tape lost-
These things shall be enchantment of our hearts rememberings
and these are more than memories of youth which earths four
winds of pain shall blow away. These are youth symbols of
eternal ***** truth. Symbol of dream and imagery and flames.
Symbols of the same varities that play bright through the
crumbling gold of a great name. And I hope and trust that
Archibald Mc Cleish whose words those were won't feel too
seriously that there has been serious miscasting in the performer
who chose to read them. Now, I think that before I should go on
any further in this, that the custom of the particular type of
meeting is that you now have at me anything that might still be
left of me. I have walked down the streets of New Haven look-
ing over my shouldérs to see how much blood is being shed so
far there is still a little left for this final performance.
Before the question period, there will be a short recess while
some of this electronic equipment is rearranged. The first three
questioners will proceed to the microphone. The chair will
recognize Charles Whitebread, Robert Beatti, and John Townsend.
Further questions will be recognized in a series of three.
Before the last of ****** these three questions is asked, the
chair will ask for the raising of hands and will recognize three
more. Questions according to the union standing rules must be
limited to one minute in the asking. Mr. Townsend -
I
Mr. Speaker, --
that the state universities was not a place to
A
I was incorrectly quoted. Or out of context. A distinquished
alumni of your university here, Bill Buckley has pointed out in
an article that perhaps my mistake was in using the word intellectual
curiosity and that I could've been understood if I had sand
intellectual frivolity and I accept the critizm because probably
the misunderstanding or the out of context quote couldnot have
taken place with out the later. I was not referring to the
university. I was referring at a time when certain members of
the academic community in California were denying that there
were any economies that could be affected in a time of very
stringent needs in California. Any economies in the university
that would not be harmful to the intellectual pursuts and to the
quality of education and I took a little exception to that when
I pointed out that in a number of instances there were things
that while they might be fine and admirable if you could afford
them, and they certainly were of interest to the individual.
But some individuals were being subsidized by the taxpayers and
intellectual curiosity when they could for example at the tax-
payers expense take a course at the university in fly-casting.
And I even mention that as an example of one prominent mid-
western university that can give you a masters degree in the
repair of band instruments. Now, I don't say that should not
take place but I wondered about the need of the taxpayer to
subsidize this. Now the second part of your question is the
function of the university. Well, I think for one thing, the
function of a university is to make sure that a generation of
young people will not only grow older in four years but they
grow up. And I think that at the same time, an university
function is to teach and not indoctrinate, to open to you, re-
gardless of the personal views of the instructor, for him
without bias to give you every view point and let you make your
decision, as to what you believe. If I had my
I would
quite now.
Q
Mr. Speaker, the Republicans in general and the
in particular have long been to cry as basically negative. I
heard very little positive in your opening remarks, and I wonder
if you could give us some indication on what positive programs
you would recommend first to remove of us of what you described
as a wasteful war and secondly, to deal with the suburban problems
of today?
A
On the first question. May I again--and I must say if
my remarks today seemed a little
from some of the things
that I have been talking about you must remember that in trying
to at least have something different to say at each gathering
and there have been several such each day, you finally get down
to where I thought perhaps this was the proper gathering for
just the kind of general and broad setting of the stage
philosophically. As to the war, again and I xexes realize
what great interest this is to you. You must realize that I can
not really and we have discussed it in almost every class that
I have been in and every seminar. I cannot really be discussing
this with you as a governor. I can be talking about it as a
citizen. California does not have a foreign policy. I didn't
declare the war and I can't call it off. But as a citizen, and
a personal
as a Republican, yes, I have/ax opinion on the war. I happen
to be one of those who subscribes to the belief that it is to
our national interest to be there. I happen to also believe
that it would not be to our national interest to simply pack
up and get out. I doubt that any one really should attempt to
answer in specifics as to what they would do. General
Eisenhower the other night from his great experience on television
and General Bradly were remarking about what they thought would
be the advantages of hot pursuit. Not an invasion. of the opposing
territory but a hot pursuit when an enemy retreated across the
line. These are men that are qualified to discuss that. But
I would say this, that I would think that the Republican party
would be safe in taking of what might seem indefinite but a
broad view point but which would illustrate the fact that you
and I cannot legitimately with the aim of arriving at a
conclusion discuss this war because the President of the United
States and a little
surrounding him have kept to many
of the facts surrounding this conflict to themselves without
wanting the people of this country to have access to that
information. It would seem to me that the Republicans in the
campaign year could take the position that against a little
16th rate kind of water buffalo economy country, we have been
engaged in the longest war in our history and the Republicans
could safely utter a generality and say, if we are elected when
we have access to the same information and facts that the
present information has, we shall take whatever action is
necessary to end this war as quickly as possible because the
other side has ak had several years and have not been able to do
it. Now briefly, you switched to another type of question, and
just let me briefly say, there are a many number of programs
being advocated for the so-called ghettos and the urban problems
and I am very proud and maybe a number of you have heard me say
this before, I have discussed one that we have embarked on in
California that is unique to us, I do not know of any one else
who is doing it. But in addition to all the programs of improving
education for example in the last several months. We were able
to get legislation in our state. Legislation that would
recognize the problem of one of our biggest minorities which
be
happens to/the Americans of Mexican desent who have a ***** higher
drop out rate than any other minority group, a lower educational
level and greater unemployment than any other minority group in
California. And we believe that part of this is because children
enter the primary grades in this particular minority having heard
nothing but Spanish at home and they get into language
difficulties and they are unable to keep up with their fellow
students. And so we have passed legislation that will now
provide for dual language teachers in these schools so a
teacher can find out in the childs native language why the
inability to understand the situation. But in these minority
area, the poverty pockets, Watts, Hunterspoint in San Francisco,
over in east Oakland, we have embarked on a program which we
have organized the industrialist and the businesses of California
and I have used these figures before to some of you-2,600 in
Los Angeles alone, 1,500 industries in San Francisco, several
hundred in San Diego and additional hundreds in other of our
prominent cities. These programs are aimed directly at and
our participating in poverty pockets to match men to jobs and
to put the hard core unemployed cooperating with government
retraining programs, with our state employment office to put
them into productive jobs out in the free economy to make them
self-sufficient, independent citizens. And in the Watts area
alone, in 16 months, the one figure that I can give you in a
month or two, I would be able here to give you state wide
figures but we are very careful, we do not let those figures
out until a long enough time has elapsed that we can not only
say that we got them jobs but they are still in the jobs. They
have made it work. We have put 17,800 unemployed from the
Watts area alone in to private industry jobs. And 5/6th of them
are still in those jobs or have been promoted to better jobs. already.
The chairman recognizes three questions from the floor.
I
Governor, at your press conference last month,
quoting from the L.A. News, and the New York Times,
I believe that you said homosexuality was "a traggic illness"
I would like to ask you if you think certain other traggic illness
like T.B., cancer and mental illness and heart diseases is also
A
No, your question is a fair one. I didn't discuss, I was
asked a couple of questions. Being a new kid in school, I
figured I should answer. I have never been asked the second one
before and actually and I have not given it much thought. But
when I had to think about it, I answered it not from the stand
point of the illness being ill but recognize this as a form of
illness. A neurosis. We have to recognize also, I am not a
private psychoanalysis, but we have to recognize that there are
certain illness which have with them as a result of that illness
a kind of prosolyting effect. They are not content to simply
suffer the illness themselves but they seek to get other who
catch the ailment. From that stand point, yes. I believe by
the same token that we reserve the right to have laws preventing
the contributing to the delinquency of the minor that we have a
right to a protection with the regard to the practice that follows.
such an illness.
I
Governor Reagan, would you support a Republican candidate
in 1968 who did not support Senator Goldwater in 1964?
A
I will support whoever is the nominee of the Replackman
Republican party.
Q
Yesterday you had lunch with the political science faculty
one member of the faculty noted that unlike other public figures
you asked no questions or in any other way attempted to learn
from these men. Does this mean that you are
?
A
Well, I do not know which member of the luncheon group that
was. But I think in all fairness he might also add that at no
time was I free of questions that have been asked of me to answer
and as a guest I felt that I should answer what was being asked.
He might have also pointed out that on a number of occasions, I
did remark.- because some of the questions dealt with higher
education and educational policies. That I did express the view
that I was quite sure that those who were asking the questions
were better able to answer them than I was and were better informed
on these particular subjects and knew more about it than I did.
The chair will recognize three more questions. at this time.
I
Governor, to what extent are you in favor of efforts to
reduce tension for the Soviet Union, for example the Counsular
Agreement, the
to make a non-liberalization treaty and direct Moscow to New
York air flights as examples to these efforts?
approach
A
Alright, well, I am in disagreement with the books we
are taken to some of those things. And the bridges we are attempt-
ing to build. I will tell you waxx why, I figured that a bridge
has two ends. And it seems like for quite some time now, we are
the only ones who are building the bridge and
We followed
understandably and I supported indeed I actively campaigned for
a president four times. Casting my first vote for him and so I
supported him in World War II when he began to make concessions
to our Rusian alia with the idea that we once proved to them our
friendly intent that some of the suspicion would disapear and
these two great powers emerging from the war would get along
together. Now, I believe that this country can and must and will
co-exist with the Soviet Union. But I do not believe that we
can co-exist on the basis on which we wake up every morning look-
ing to see whether they are smiling or frowning. We will co-exist
when we maintain our strength to the place and make it evident
to them, that as much as we love peace there is a price that we
will not pay for that peace. And that they should understand
that unless they inadvertently blunder across that line, and my
critizm of some of the bridges or the approaches that we are
building are that now we have икхихия proven that the overtures
have been made and they were not reciprocated, that we should do
a little more bargaining with those. That we should say yes to
the Consular Treaty if they want it so badly but we should say
yes if you have a few things that are abrasive to us. You give
up or stop that. For example when we are faced with the humanitary
choice
chose of providing wheat for the Soviet Union or knowing that
some of their citizens might starve, or go through a famin, what
would have been wrong is we had said to them you have erected a
wall through Berlin that is illegal and in violation of our
agreement. Yes, we will send the wheat but we could get it to
you easier if we did not have to go through that wall.
2
Governor Reagan, do you think that it is a threat to the
United States to be involved in Vietnam?
A
Now wait a minute. Do I believe that our commitment
in Vietnam makes it - now I got of the sled there. Please give
it to me again. I really didn't catch it.
Q
Do you think our presentcommitment in Vietnam
A
Again, remember we are talking in the area that none of
us really knowing all the factors about this. But I believe
that the outcome, how we elect to terminate this conflict, will
have a very great baring on whether we will have to do it again
someplace else. But what I have been concerned with in our
whole over all structure in what obviously is a cold war ideological
conflict with the forces of communism, unless they are keeping
more secrets from us than we know, there seems to be a fuzziness
about American policies. We dednik don't seem for example to
have any thing other than an idea that if we just avoid a
confrontation maybe with time the cold war will go away. And it
would seem to me that some place along the line--that's playing
pretty fast and loose with the security of all the free world--
it would seem that this country should sit down with its best
brains and best thinking, try to evolve what is the plan of the
enemy. What do we honestly believe is going to be his
By the same token, create a plan of our own. in which we say here
is the way we will resist and to our best thinking, what are
the sensitive spots. What are the areas we cannot relinquish
to the enemy? And what are the areas in which he makes a move
it is not too detrimental to us in our defense poster and he
can go by with them and then a question like Vietnam would answer
its self. You would be in Vietnam or would not be in Vietnam
on the basis of where did it fit in to our strategy of defense?
And along with this, just to prove that I am as mean and nasty
as some of you may think, I happen to think that in this kind of
******* a defense poster, where we are always reacting after
they first act, that sometimes when the enemy picks a spot and
stirs the pot and yekking get to cooking over there, that we
might react not necessarily by opposing him in that spot, but
we might have a few spots of our own picked out in their back
yard.
Q
I would like to ask to expand on your views of conservation
in the light of your phrase that has been reported
A
Well, first of all, I didn't say it. This was during the
campaign and you must recognize that during the campaign, both
sides are pretty busy trying to take certain phrases and words
that they think can be used to their advantage. I didn't
campaign that way of course. I was making a speech in San Francisco
when I think that you are entitled to know the back ground or the
basis for this remark that I just didn't make at all. We are
working very hard to have a national redwood park in California.
But what has irritated me is some Californians refusal to
recognize our own achievement. We do not need a national park
for the protection of the redwoods. California has lead any
one in the world with regard to the protection of those trees.
There are 115,000 acres. Now wait a minute. You are talking
to the fellow who had to dig up the figures. There are 115,000
acres of redwood trees preserved in 28 parks spread over a
450 miles area of the coast. There are only about 6,000 acres
of the truly cathedral like groves-the park like trees left in
private hands and we already have agreements that as we can
afford them the private owners are going to sell those additional
acres of that type of trees to us. NOw, irritated as I was at
this constant ignoring of the great conservation thing we have
done by way of Save the Redwoods League, the Sierra Club and
many private citizens who in many instancies bought these
groves of trees and gifted them--gave them to the state. I
was trying to explain to a city audience how much 115,000 acres
was. And I said that if you had it laid out in one park a mile
wide with a road down the middle, 115,000 acres you would have
to drive 200 milles to get through that park. And I said that
we a lot of trees. And I think that I am right. And I was
amazed the next day that a San Francisco Chronicle had reported
that I said "If you have seen one tree you have seen them all".
But I will tell you, the history of the negotiations now. I
think that we are going to have a national park. The federal
government recognizes that the only way that they can have it,
is by taking two and three of our choice parks that we already
have and changing the shingle and calling it a national park
and I just happen to feel that as long as the federal government
owns 42% of California's land including miles and miles of
beaches at Fort Ord and at Pendleton, the marine camp at San
some of the finest surfing beaches in America. I figure that
if we are going to change that shingle from the parks that we
put together and let them call it a national park, I want a
few miles of that beach and a few other acres of the federal
holdings transferred over to the state of California for other
state parks.
Because of the Governor's tight schedule and because you
would like a few minutes to sum up to this audience Mr. Hobb's
question must be the last.
Q
Governor Reagan, in view of the liberalism of the past
decade, how do you explain your increasing popularity and that
of George Wallace
A
No, and, Standing here trying to find out how do you get
out of a question of the association with someone else. First
of all George Wallace is a Democrat and I am a Republican.
Second of all, I could best refer you to the philosphy and the
policies that have been put into effect in the last 11 months
by my administration and ask you to compare them to the policies
of the Wallace administration of Alabama when he was not the
husband of the governor, but the governor. And as to his
rising popularity, whatever it may be, I am a little delighted
that he is still having trouble after three trips in getting
60,000 signatures to a petition in California which is the
only way that he can get on our balot for the primary. And I
do not wish him any good luck in getting the 60,000 names. But
now you come to the whole question of does this mean that we
are returning to a dark ages. Not at all, and it is true that
when a governor, a Republican governor, assumes the administration
of a state that is virtuely bankrupt, is in financial chaos after
eight years of an administration who has by fiscal gimictry
hiddening from the 'people the fact that in violation of its
state constitution they have year after year in
deficits
in the running of the state. It is true that most of the
attention that you seem to get. The news worthy idea is what
you have achieved or what you have accomplished in the area of
economy and try to put the state on a sound footing. Now, I am
not at all a shamed or ever reluctant to talk about what we
have done in that regard. We discovered that the state of
California, and I am afraid that this is all too true of too
many other states, have made no effort to employee even the
most rudimentary of modern business practices in the running
of the state. And we started imposing those modern business
practices. As a result by simply applying the floor space
requirements that are used in private industry, and private
enterprise, how many square feet of floor space does each
employee require of the employees doing the same kind of work?
We simply took what is common practice in private enterprise
and applied it to the floor space occupied by state employees
and this summer I was able to tear as up the contracts and
just not start building a $4,300,000 ten story office building
that was scheduled fro construction this summer because it is
not needed.now or in the foreseeable future. If you put the
employees in the proper
to position. We discovered for
example, that we had employees at adjoining desks who had
intercommunication systems. Now, this may not sound very
important to you, but the phone bill of the state of California
is $16,500,000 each year. We called the phone company in. We
figured we were a customer, paid our bills, had a right to some
service, and we said look, you have that department that tells
people what kind of a phone system they need. Tell us. And
a few weeks ago they informed me in writing that our phone bill
will be reduced $2 million. We discovered that a fellow sitting
here at a desk didn't need a light on his phone at $2.00 a month
extra per phone to tell him that the fellow besides him was
using the phone.
Now, if I may in recapping here. I know that we are
running out of time. Let me just tell you a few of the other
things that we did. You know everybody, all of the businessmen
and the professional people and everything, year in year out,
I've been one of them, go into the locker room after a game
and you start talking about government. And the latest stupidity
of government and why can't they run their government like we
run our business. Well, we took them up on it. We gathered in
a room like this several hundred very successful professional
and industrial business people in California. The most successful.
And we told them that this is what they had been complaining
about and we said that now you are going to have your chance.
We asked for volunteers but we reserved the right to specify
what qualifications we wanted. And we got 240 of the most
successful people in their particular lines. From data processing
to running hotels. To www.keex volunteer to leave their
occupations for at least a six month period full time and even
to leave their homes. To live in hotels and motels around the
state of California. And organized into teams based on their
special knowledge to go into every department and agency of our
government and come back and tell us how modern business
practices could be applied. to make government more efficient,
more economical, better able to do the job. But, we also said
if you find a department who needs more help not less, tell us
that too. We are now correlating 60 reports that they have
submitted. We have put some of them into effect already. Such
is the one about the floor space and so forth. We discovered
was
for example, we had large office space that WE virtuely vacant
throughout most of the year because these were the departments
that had to do with state licenses of various kinds. The licenses
all expired on the same date. And then at the end of the year
there would be a great big rush for temporary employees with
all the confusion and extra cost and the scramble to renew the
licenses. But we have just staggered the expiration date of the
licenses. They become due now throughout the entire year and
we have one work force with an even work load throughout the year.
Now out of all this, has come the greater and the increased
possibility of a state that was going bankrupt and that has no
more way to go once I finished asking them for another $900
million in taxes which I did, has no more way to go in asking
the people of ourstate for funds because the people of California
are paying more for government than anyother American in any
other state in the union. And there is a breaking point beyond
which you make it uneconomic and impossible to have a normal
climate and prosperity in your state if you go beyond that
point. We believe that by clearing out the dead wood and by
implementing this kind of government, for one example is, we
run certain departments that have to do with highways and
motor vehicles all out of the receipts from gasoline tax. And
the gasoline tax alone builds our highways and we have to
build 300 miles of highways a year just to keep up with the
growth and population in our state. Our department head, by
simply putting into effect, this reduction of administrative
over head, was able this year to announce that out of savings
alone, we were going to start $99 million worth of highway
projects. one year in advance than when they were scheduled.
This has never happened in the history of the state and it is
all out of savings. Our department of agriculture out of
savings has been able to institute a rabies research program
including the purchase of equipment out of the savings they
have made in less than ten months of this first year of our
administration. But out of all this, is going to come the
possibility for us to take some steps and particularly if
we can get some cooperation from the federal government in
releasing and relaxing some of the regulations that they have
imposed on us in connection with federal grants. In such
areas as in our cities and in our areas of welfare. Now, I
have said publically, so that you will know the context in
which I said it, I will say it again. That I believe, on the
record, welfare as we know it in America is a collisal if not
an almost complete failure. And I say that on the basis that
welfare's success should not be basis on how big does welfare
grow. Welfare if it is successful, should be reducing itself
in size because it is rehabilitating and salvaging human
beings and making them independent and self-sufficient and we
want to embark on that kind of a program. We want to carry on
with this thing that I told you about that is working now in
ghettos. We have a number of other plans in this regard. We
are the only state in the union for the first time in history
in the area of crime. We have now brought together every
phase of law enforcement from the judiciary to the local police
into a super crime council. WE are going to have a crime
laboratory. The aiding of the police in the smaller communities
but at the same time, we have linked for the first time, our
state crime information computer with the FBI computer in
Washington and with the offices of our principle cities. Local
law enforcement such a thing has never been done. But we now
have this exchange of crime information from the national right
through to the local level by way of our state. We have another
program. You know that California is moving more water farther
to more people than has ever been done. in man's history. In
doing this, we have a vast chain of lakes that have been created
behind the dams but they are not only for storage of water, we
want them for multiple purpose--recreation, sport fishing and
so forth and boating and swimming. But up until our administration
those lakes were surrounded by chain linked fenses and the
territory around those lakes had no access to the water, the
state confiscates a little peace of land through condemnation
and then has a state runned place where you can enter the lake
there through that one state facility. We are working out a
program to bring in private investment and capitol for the
development of housing and resorts and taking those chain linked
fenses down so that for every dollar of state investment will
be $2.00 of private capitol investment by resort operators and
SO forth to fully utilize these lakes. I could go on but I
would be taking far too much time. In telling you, that yes,
our approach is constructive. We have been a sailed for what
has been misread as economising the expense of mental health
but the truth of the matter is that California has embarked
on one of the newest and most experimental things or several
years ago we did the embarking, we are augmenting and adding
the treatment of
to the program for kreakingxkke mental health in which only
one side the reduction of the cost of hospital has been
emphasized and everyone failed to note that we made the biggest
increase of appropriation for the treatment at regional health
care centers of the mental ill so that they could be treated
in their own homessurroundings and live a normal life and even
be out and working in the community and we lead the nation
now, not only in the amount we are spending per capita per
patient, but we lead the nation also in percentage in the mentally
ill who are being cured and released to a normal life from our
institutions. We have some plans in mind with regard to
juvenile training or the juvenile delinquent problem in our
state, all of them involving as much as possible the independent
sector. This is just a little of the positive approach. I do
not believe that the election of people like myself as I say
has meant that we are going to abandon the past approach to
human welfare.
XXXXXX
I will tell you what I think it does mean. I think that it
means that we are going to stop destroying human beings in the
name of charity and try salvaging and saving them. Now, this
being the last appearance that I have an opportunity here and
I must say you have been SO receptive, so warm, believe me,
you send me away happy but the entire experience has been
most enjoyable, something that I will never forget and I am
going back to have an arguement with Jesse Unruh when he heard
that I was invited here said he understood that the Chub
fellowship was detexiating deteriorating in quality. I am
most grateful to all of you. This has been a happy experience.
You know my joke about Frank Merrywell. I happen to be so old,
that its true, that when I was a small boy I did read all the
Frank Merrywell books and that is way I have never yelled for
Harvard.
But, I do, Iwant to thank you again. It has been
provocative, it has been extremely interesting and I have to
tell you that Nancy and I have both talked about this since
we have been here, back when I was your age and sitting where
you know sit, at least in the academic halls at least not this
particular one, I must say we did not have your interest in
the affairs of the world nor did we have your fund of knowledge
your access to information about what is going on in the world
and you offer a very bright hope indeed for what is going to
take place in the coming days. We need you very much out in
that world. Thank you.
I
/
12/12/67
67
transcript and in be for the Inc
All permission of Produced of of This
CBS REPORTS
"What About Ronald Reagan?"
as broadcast over the
CBS TELEVISION NETWORK
Tuesday, December 12, 1967
10:00 - 11:00 PM, EST
REPORTERS: Harry Reasoner and Bill Stout
PRODUCER: Gene DePoris
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Sam Zelman
1
HARRY REASONER: Good evening. This is Harry Reasoner.
Americans like to make shrines of the birthplaces and hometowns of
their heroes. And if you think back it seems that they are usually
in unlikely places--West Branch, Iowa; Dennison, Texas; Brookline,
Massachusettes; Galena. Galena!!! So, if the candidacy of a place
called Tampico, Illinois sounds strange now, we could probably get
used to it.
Ronald Reagan was born in this house on February 6, 1911. In his
book "Where's the Rest of Me?" he says that's where the whole story
began. "My face was blue from screaming, my bottom was red from
whacking, and my father claimed afterwards that he was white and
shaken. Ever since my birth, I have been particularly fond of the
colors that were exhibited, red, white, and blue." Reagan's
detractors claim that he seems to think he has a patent on those
colors. His admirers find it nice that someone still feels strongly
about them.
JUDGE MARSHALL F. McCOMB: Do you swear that you do not now advocate,
nor are you a member of any party or organization, political or
otherwise, that advocates the overthrow of the Government of the
United States or of the State of California by force or violence or
other unlawful means?
RONALD REAGAN: I do. No exceptions.
JUDGE McCOMB: Governor Reagan, I now declare you to be duly installed
as Governor of the State of California.
REASONER: It's 1,666 miles from Tampico to Sacramento, A good deal
farther if you go by way of Des Moines, Hollywood and Schenectady,
New York. That's a long way.
CHANT: We want Reagan!
REAGAN: Thank you, Madam Chairman.
CHANT: Reagan '68: (Cheers)
REASONER: It's 2,379 miles from Sacramento to Washington, a still
longer way except that in the jet age you can get places pretty fast.
(ANNOUNCEMENT)
ANNOUNCER: Here now is CBS NEWS Correspondent Harry Reasoner.
REASONER: There's a very real possibility Ronald Reagan, an actor
who ran for his first public office just over a year ago, will be
the next Republican candidate for President. This frightens some
people and delights others. The people who are delighted and those
who are frightened are responding to the same feeling that the man
might go all the way. A lot of voters like him. Republicans like
him better than Democrats do, naturally, and Goldwater Republicans
2.
like him better than other Republicans do. But a lot of people who
didn't like Goldwater like Reagan. The message that came through
so strong in Barry Goldwater, seems muted and more widely acceptable
in Reagan. But the Republicans who want to hear the message hear
it from Reagan.
A CBS NEWS survey has found that he is more popular with potential
convention delegates than he is with the rank and file, and it is
the delegates who do the nominating. A special analysis of surveys
conducted by the Gallup Poll during August and September of 1967,
tells you some other things about Reagan. White Protestants like
him better than Catholics and Jews and Negroes do. The South likes
him better than the West and Midwest do and a lot better than the
East does. The people who like him the most as a group are described
as well-educated, but low-income, suggesting that Reagan finds a
response in people who feel frustrated about their lives. He is
not the front-runner in any broad-based poll of possible candidates,
but he is among the five serious contenders in all of them. And for
a lot of reasons - his Hollywood background, his rapid rise, his
strong statements - he is a natural for press attention.
Reagan came to politics out of Hollywood. He came to Hollywood out
radio. He used to broadcast the telegraphic reports of Chicago Cubs
games over WHO in Des Moines. He was pretty good at it. He was
called "Dutch" Reagan then, a nickname his Irish father gave him
because he was, Reagan says, "a fat Dutchman of a baby. As a
teenager he worked as a lifeguard for seven summers in Dixon,
Illinois, and saved 77 lives. These are home movies. The boy in
the black bathing suit is Dutch. He worked his way through Eureka
College, where he participated in a successful student strike against
administration economies, a biographical note that might surprise
California students who threatened a similar strike against their
new Governor this year. He also played football.
Reagan is married to the former Nancy Davis and they have two
children. It's a second marriage. He was married before to actress
Jane Wyman; they also have two children. Reagan's fitness and
robust handsomeness reflect his love of his ranch in the Malibu
Hills. He likes horses and the out-of-doors. It's an American
success story. Humble beginnings to a ranch of which he sold a
major part last year for $2,000,000. Small town and summer jobs to
the Governor's chair. He also owns a Pacific Palisades home worth
at least a quarter of a million dollars. He says he thinks he has
everything, including the beautiful wife. We asked him if he talks
to Nancy about major decisions.
REAGAN: Well, we have no secrets. She usually knows what's on my
mind and knows what's bothering me. She also, I think, knows by
now if I can talk about it, that a lot of my thinking is done by
talking out loud, so she usually hears a few different approaches
to it and suddenly one of them hits and that's the script we go with.
3
REASONER: Some men at 56, with all Reagan has, might be inclined
to relax. But somehow out of his own success story, he has
accumlated a concern about the way America is going. He expresses
it in his humor sometimes. He doesn't like hippies and way out
youth.
REAGAN: The last bunch of pickets were carrying signs that said
"Make love, not war." The only trouble was they didn't look like
they were capable of doing either. His hair was cut like Tarzan,
and he acted like Jane, and he smelled like Cheetah.
REASONER: He worries about the welfare state.
REAGAN: We have people out there who are in the third generation
of their families. Sometimes you might think they have a military-
style wedding - you know, crossed welfare checks.
REASONER: This then is the Governor of California. Already a long
way from Tampico, Illinois.
For a long time, America's sophisticates couldn't take Ronald Reagan
seriously. As an actor he had seemed corny to them, as a politician
he seemed improbable. When he ran for Governor, they told the story
about Jack Warner, the big movie man, coming home from Europe and
hearing the news and saying, "No, no, Jimmy Stewart for Governor,
Ronald Reagan for Best Friend." Warner declines to take credit for
this story, but he did tell CBS NEWS Correspondent Bill Stout how
Dutch Reagan became Ronald Reagan, perennial movie best friend.
JACK WARNER: I met him through our casting director then, a fellow
named Max Arnow. An agent called him and said, "There's a chap out
here from Des Moines, Iowa, who as I understood him to say, was a
sports radio announcer in Des Moines. His name is Ronald Reagan."
I said, "Fine, bring him over and let me say hello to him."
BILL STOUT: What was it, Mr. Warner, that caught your eye when you
looked at that first test of Reagan?
WARNER: Well, his personality projected, as I term it, off the
screen into the audience. It comes through. He had a good smile,
happy delivery, rather a little good sense of humor and also had a
dramatic quality--
REASONER: The charm that Jack Warner described led Ronald Reagan
into a long career as sort of journeyman juvenile. More than 50
movies over 27 years, 40 of them for Warner Brothers. Most of the
movies were class B, most of the roles were moral ones. He got into
trouble in a lot of them and people were mean to him. But he usually
came out all right. He was the kind of an actor who could wear a
uniform and he did, often and in great variety. He was very often
a best friend, steadfast and true. Sometimes, he loved the hero's
girl and didn't get her, but sometimes there was a subplot with a
girl for Reagan. It was a perfectly respectable and profitable career
for an actor but it lacked the dash and the ups and downs of more
4
flamboyant stars. He seldom got the girl. Sometimes he wound up
with the horse. Sometimes he didn't even get the horse. This
scene from "Dark Victory," which starred Bette Davis, George Brent,
and Humphrey Bogart, about says it:
GEORGE BRENT: Judy?
REAGAN: Yes. It's Judy. You know, Doc, I've loved her for a long
time but I can't help her now because - well, you're the one man,
so be nice to her, will you.
REASONER: Off into the sunset.
We talked to lots of associates and friends of Reagan's of that
period. Most of them were unwilling to talk to a camera. Some were:
not unwilling. This is Bryan Foy, executive producer of B movies
at Warners when Reagan acted in them.
BRYAN FOY: There's one nice thing about Ronald Reagan, he's really
an honest, decent fellow. In fact, he's just what he portrayed on
the screen most of the time; he's really that way.
A.C. LYLES (PRODUCER): Being around Ronnie for as long as I had
been and being exposed to his great personality and to his honesty,
I knew that if the general public ever had the opportunity that I
had had to see him and to see this great honesty I knew that would
come off to the people.
BOB WILLIAM (FORMER WARNERS PRESS AGENT): Ronald Reagan was a very
nice guy, so nice that you tended to disbelieve him. You might
classify him as the All American Square.
ALEX GOTTLEIB (PRODUCER): The main thing I discovered about Ronnie
Reagan, and I think I'm not the only one, is he was just a bore and
dull. You couldn't spend five minutes with him before you wanted
to run out.
REASONER: It would be wrong to give the impression that Reagan
languished unnoticed in B pictures exclusively. He was in some big
ones, Thinking back, he liked one role especially as the talented
football player George Gipp to Pat O'Brien's Knute Rockne of Notre Dame,
PAT O'BRIEN (AS KNUTE ROCKNE): Boys, this is Mr. George Gipp,
freshman from Calumet High School. Mr. Gipp has kindly consented
to carry the ball for the scrubs. Just call any play you like,
any at all. They're all the same to him. All right. Watch this,
it ought to be good. (Whistle, signals 48, 15, 72 hike) (Gipp
carries the ball down the field for a touchdown.)
REAGAN: I guess the boys are just tired.
REASONER: Reagan says the greatest demands ever made on him as an
actor were in "Kings Row," when he played a rather dissolute fellow
who got his legs cut off in an accident and woke up to find them
missing.
5
REAGAN: Randy, Randy, where's the rest of me?
REASONER: That was a famous scene, and years later it gave Reagan
a title for his autobiography, "Where's the Rest of Me? To some
people, the rest of Ronald Reagan is still a mystery. We 11 go
into that in a moment.
(ANNOUNCEMENT)
REASONER: It is very common for a man to change his social and
political views during his 40's, an almost routine part of the male
climacteric, and the change is almost always from left to right,
from liberal to conservative. In the case of Ronald Reagan, the
change was especially dramatic. Reagan had served three and a
If
years in the Air Force in World War II, making training films
as
an administrative officer. He came out fired up for action.
he
says in his book, "I was blindly and busily joining every or
zation
I could find that would guarantee to save the world." They included
some that would make current Reagan supporters wince. He was a
charter member of Americans for Democratic Action; he was in the
United World Federalists; the American Veterans Committee; the
Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and
Professions. He had always been active in the Screen Actors Guild.
In 1947, he became its president and served for six terms, during
which he led a major strike. As president of the Guild, he testified
in one of those inquiries the House Committee on Un-American
Activities was staging in those days into Communist influence in
the popular arts. What Reagan said was traditional enough, but in
those suspicious worried days it took courage to say.
REAGAN: I will be frank with you that as a citizen, I would
hesitate, or I would not like to see any political party outlawed
on the basis of its political ideology because we've spent 170
years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough
to stand up and fight for itself against the inroads of any ideology
no matter how much we may disagree with it.
REASONER: In 1948, Reagan supported Harry Truman and his embroilmemt
in political affairs by then was SO strong that his wife, Jane
Wyman, the actress, sued for divorce. "His concentration on politics
made home life impossible" she said. Reagan was still a Democrat
in 1950. Paul Ziffren, former Democratic National Committeeman
from California, remembers that year.
PAUL ZIFFREN: At that time I was the chairman of the Advisory
Committee for Helen Gahagan Douglas's campaign against Richard Nixon
for the United States Senate. Mr. Reagan was a very consistent
and vigorous supporter of Mrs. Douglas. Actually, at that time,
you recall, the Korean, War had started and because of the Korean War
and the beginning of McCarthyism, a good many of the Hollywood
personalities left the Douglas campaign, but Mr. Reagan stayed with
us throughout the campaign and was a great help.
6
REASONER: But in February, 1951, Ronald Reagan turned 40 and almost
immediately there were the signs of change. In 1952, he married for
the second time to Nancy Davis, an actress, who was the daughter of
a very conservative and eminent surgeon. He voted for Dwight
Eisenhower. And as the metamorphosis began, Reagan also found a
platform. In 1954, he signed with General Electric to be host and
occasional star of a weekly dramatic series on television. What made
the new job especially attractive to Reagan was not the acting but
the chance to tour G.E. plants and talk to employees and community
gatherings. In this process over eight years, his conservative views
crystalized. Those views were gradually hardened into what reporters
later called "The Speech," a standard address he soon knew by heart.
Executive Producer Stanley Rubin recalls one incident with Reagan
during the waning days of the G.E. series.
STANLEY RUBIN: One particular incident I remember very vividly with
Ronnie, the adaptation of the Marion Miller book for General Electric
Theater.
REAGAN: Good evening. We are proud to present this evening the
story of a truly loyal American, Marion Miller, who has been called
the most decorated woman in the United States. She won these honors
for her part in fighting the Communist conspiracy as an undercover
agent for the FBI.
RUBIN: One day I learned that the director and Ronnie had reached an
impasse, a total disagreement about the development of the teleplay,
the adaptation of the Marion Miller book. So they came into my office
to have that squabble - that impasse resolved. It concerned the
climactic scene in this particular adaptation, this episode that
Ronnie was going to make on the Marion Miller book, in which the
Communist party chief for whom Marion Miller was presumably working,
although actually working for the FBI, was to come into Mrs. Miller's
house and find her child praying, and this would reveal to the
Communist party chief that Marion Miller was suspicious as a Communist
agent, because if she were really a Communist agent her child would not
have been taught to pray. To the rest of us in the office this was an
oversimplification, but to Ronnie it was a plain simple fact, I
remember him saying, "Any atheist is a Communist and any American
family that doesn't teach its children to pray is a Communist family."
REASONER: The formal political change came in 1962. Reagan affiliated
with the California Republican party. He also joined in anti-Communist
television programs, spoke at the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade
rallies of Dr. Fred Schwarz, served on the advisory boards of right-
wing organizations like Young Americans for Freedom, and campaigned for
Representative John Rousselot, a member of the John Birch Society.
Amateur analysts have offered a number of explanations for the change
in Reagan, his own acceptance as a member of the Establishment, his
association with Republican executive types, even his resentment at
what welfare state taxes did to his substantial income. Some said his
wife changed his views.
NANCY- DAVIS REAGAN: No, that's just not true at all. My husband is
not that weak a man and I'm not that strong a woman.
7
REASONER: In any event, by 1964 the metamorphosis was complete. The
man who campaigned for Helen Douglas against Richard Nixon in 1950
was co-chairman of California Republicans for Goldwater.
Reagan's next regular employment was in the syndicated television
series, "Death Valley Days, If as host and part-time performer. The
show is controlled by the McCann-Erickson Advertising Agency, whose
West Coast vice president, Neil Reagan, provides some clinical insight
into his brother Ronald's charm.
NEIL REAGAN: Being in the advertising business and handling clients'
money we don't, we hope, spend clients' money foolishly. So, before
he did any commercials, we wanted to know what public acceptance would
be of those commercials and we did research - after making some test
commercials with him - we did research that would flip you, the
results of this research, the acceptance of the guy on the tube.
BILL STOUT: Can you define what he did to those people in the trial
audiences who watched him and reacted so favorably?
NEIL REAGAN: The first one that we researched, 96 women, in groups of
24 each. We ran the commercial, the research is done; the last line
in the research that we have to deliver to the client is, "In all of
our years of dealing with names and doing co-op ads or television spots
with them, we have never had anybody that wound up as high on the scale
in acceptance as this guy. 11 I said, "Look, we're going to go over to
the client and the client is going to say, "What did you do, have all
Goldwater women?" They said, "We thought this would be asked. so we
protected ourselves. We went back to the women and we said, 'How
many of you 96 women were registered Democrats in the last election
and voted for President Johnson?' And better than 70% raised their
hands.
"
Then they asked another question, "How many of you are registered
Republicans and voted for President Johnson in the last election?"
And there was another good percentage. By the time they got down to
the place where, "How many of you are registered Republicans and voted
for Goldwater?" the show of hands was about commensurate with the way
the vote went in the last election. Now, these women then began to
volunteer: "When he comes on and says something, we believe him. Even
if he tells us how to vote, I rather suspect that I would take his
word for it and vote that way. " Now, these are women who voted
Democrat in the last election.
STOUT: Credibility, is that how you would sum it up?
NEIL REAGAN: Right.
STOUT: If you had to pick one word?
NEIL REAGAN: Yes, very good word.
STOUT: That's fascinating.
8
NEIL REAGAN: It's also a little frightening, because, as I say, I can
pick some people right now who have the same kind of thing.
RONALD REAGAN: Well, now, if the government planning and welfare had
the answer and they' had
REASONER: A little while later, a national panel confirmed the
results of Neil Reagan's tests. Through the years in Hollywood union
affairs and speech tours for General Electric, Ronald Reagan was
getting ready for something. It came in the closing weeks of the
1964 campaign when he made this national television speech for
Goldwater.
REAGAN: We were told four years ago that 17,000,000 people went to
bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true; they were all
on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families
REASONER: It was essentially, "The Speech," the one he had given
over a thousand times. But, if you had to pick a point, this was the
point at which Ronald Reagan became a national political figure.
Henry Salvatori, president of a group called the Anti-Communist Voters
League, a millionaire from the oil industry, and a prominent backer of
Goldwater, told Bill Stout what happened next.
HENRY SALVATORI: He made his talk on national TV which was received
throughout the nation with tremendous enthusiasm and resulted in
millions of dollars coming into the campaign, so we knew that he had
a terrific capacity to move people. And shortly after the Goldwater
defeat, three or four of us got together and we decided that we had
to look for someone who had the qualifications that would make him an
electible candidate and Ronnie Reagan was the man we all agreed would
be that particular fellow. But Reagan had to be convinced that the
people really wanted him and at the beginning of '66, or shortly
before, that decision was made, at which time all of us agreed that
this fellow was the candidate that could arouse the people of
California.
REASONER: At the Los Angeles Biltmore, Reagan began his campaign
against Governor Brown after an easy primary victory over George
Christopher, a former Mayor of San Francisco.
REAGAN: It is a responsibility handed to our party to represent not
only our party but millions of Democrats and Independents in
California who like us say, "Ya basta, we've had it. If
REASONER: Pat Brown, who had fought off the best the Republicans
could throw at him, including Richard Nixon, began what he thought
would be the destruction of Ronald Reagan:
BROWN: The old - day, when they get in the poll and they have to make
a decision between a Governor that's been acting and an actor, I think
they're going to pull that down for Pat Brown. That's my opinion.
REASONER: At the time, Brown may still have belonged to the rather
9
touching group who didn't take Reagan seriously, They ignored the
fact that while Reagan may never have held office, he had been
rehearsing the role of campaigner for a long, long time. A 1941
incident recalled by former Warner Brothers press agent Bob William.
WILLIAM: I was sitting next to the late Al Hale Sr., and Ronald
Reagan as usual was standing there and holding forth and making a
speech and dominating the set and I noticed that Mr. Hale was fidgeting
and becoming more and more uncomfortable and finally he turned to me,
he was sitting on my left, and he said, "This guy and his speeches may
bring him to the White House some day, but if they don't get him off
the set right now, I'm going to quit this picture.'
LEO GUILD (FORMER WARNERS PRESS AGENT): There's always end-of-se
parties when a movie is finished and very often brass from other
cities, important people, are invited and certainly the press. The
head of publicity and advertising, Charlie Einfeld, would go around
to the stars and whisper in their ears, "Mix, mix. But no
one
ever
had to do that to Ronnie, because he would be going around from group
to group saying, "I'm Ronnie Reagan. How are you?"
REAGAN: Hi, hello, there.
REASONER: In 1961, as a right-wing Republican, Reagan was still
rehearsing. This time with G.E. Theater Executive Producer Stanley
Rubin.
RUBIN: We would start out talking about the host material or the
story but it would rapidly turn into a long political discussion on
Ronnie's part, usually with three favorite subjects. One was federal
aid to education, which he was vehemently opposed to. Another was the
overcentralization, that is, big, too big a government in Washington:
REAGAN: You know for a number of years I've been protesting the
growth of government, expressing a concern lest government grow so
complex as to become unmanageable and beyond the control of the people
RUBIN: And creeping socialism:
REAGAN: That one man, even in the White House was omnipotent, and
that a little intellectual elite in the nation's capital can engage
in social tinkering even to the extent of telling the working man and
woman in this land how and with whom they must share the fruit of
their labor.
RUBIN: And he was always armed with newspaper clippings, statistics,
and when I say statistics, I mean an avalanche. I was buried under
them.
REAGAN: Four hundred federal aid appropriations, 170 separate federal
150 aid programs administered by 21 federal departments and agencies,
REASONER: Back at the Biltmore election night, Reagan learned he had
beaten Brown by almost a million votes. The question was whether it
10
was the mystique of the man or his program or a little of both that
brought him such a stunning victory - or it could have been Governor
Brown.
BROWN: I don't think there's anything that I could have done in the
last campaign that would have elected me over any Republican candidate
unless he was an absolute dope. I don't believe it would have made
the slightest bit of difference. They had just gotten tired of Pat
Brown.
REASONER: Harry Ashmore, with the Center for the Study of Democratic
Institutions, and chairman of the Advisory Committee of the California
Democratic party:
HARRY ASHMORE: He's the first politician I've ever known in my time
who completely turned his campaign over to the experts, to the so-
called professional campaign. managers, public relations people, image
builders, people of great skill. As far as I could see, watching it
fairly closely, admittedly from a biased vantage point, since I was
supporting Governor Brown who was going down to defeat, it seemed to
me that one of the really remarkable things I'd seen in politics was
the way in which Ronald Reagan managed to change his image almost
completely between the time he announced for the office of Governor
and the time he came into the homestretch in the election, a period of
some two or three months. I would say that he came into the election
carrying the image of Barry Goldwater. He emerged at the end of that
campaign bearing the image of Nelson Rockefeller and he did this
apparently without losing the votes and perhaps even the fervor of his
right-wing supporters who were the original backers, the ones who put
him in the race.
JUDGE McCOMB: Do you solemnly swear
REASONER: Reagan took office at the earliest possible moment, just
after midnight on the day his term began.
REAGAN: Well, George, here we are on the Late Show again. I couldn't
help that, but I want you to know this moment isn't taken as lightly
as such a remark might indicate.
REASONER: A lot of people were realizing the time had passed to take
Ronald Reagan lightly. He was, with disconcerting suddenness, a man
in powerful office and a national political figure. We'll view him
in that role in a moment.
(ANNOUNCEMENT)
REASONER: Ronald Reagan as a new governor had no breathing space.
He had to deal with the state's well-known activist college students,
who began demonstrating against him almost as soon as he took the oath.
He had said he wanted tuition charges for the state colleges. The kids
thought Reagan was moving to enforce a philosophy,
STUDENT: Now, I want to tell you what Ronald Reagan's theory is.
It's the theory of a businessman. You see, you come here, you get
your education, you pay for it.
11
REASONER: To further stir up the liberals and the activists, Reagan
had voted with the majority of the Board of Regents to fire Clark
Kerr, the president of the State University. The students protested
all the way to the State House in Sacramento, where Reagan came out to
meet them in an unexpected appearance.
VOICE: Ladies and gentlemen, the Governor has come to see us. We
owe him a courtesy. I urge you to treat this man courteously. Let us
show the respect for the office.
REAGAN: Ladies and gentlemen, if there are any There is
nothing
that I could say that would in any way create an open mind in some of
you, but perhaps there are some who would respond
REASONER: The Board defeated the proposal for tuition charges but
considered raising fees. And Reagan himself shelved his proposal for
an investigation of student unrest at Berkeley. On the college front,
there was a lull. In the economic area, any new Governor of
California would have had real problems.
REAGAN: I ask your help in returning the State of California to
financial strength and confidence and I'm certain that working totether
we are equal to the challenge.
REASONER: A new Governor who had promised to cut the size of state
government, and to give local governments new aid so they could cut
property taxes had special problems. Reagan moved in two ways. He
put through a billion dollar tax increase to balance this year's
record budget.
REAGAN: It's not a happy picture. The study makes it plain that our
State has been looted and drained of its financial resources in a
manner unique in our history.
REASONER: He used a new technique to win support: 90-second
television messages such as this one paid for by leftover campaign
funds and private contributions and handed out to California stations.
But, he also had to make some big cuts in State commitments and he
chose to do it in the field of mental health, where a decrease in
patients had not produced a decrease in costs.
REAGAN: I don't think the people of California should be required to
maintain employees on the salary, or on the payroll, when there is
absolutely no justification or no longer any need for keeping them.
REASONER: The objective verdict on Reagan's first year as Governor
is mixed. He has not fallen on his face because of lack of experience.
But he has not revolutionized state government either. And while he
has kept some promises, he has made some powerful enemies. In August,
for instance, he told a conference on the State's Medi-Cal program
why he wanted to trim the program by 200 million dollars.
REAGAN: I'm frank to say that it is my belief that unless Medi-Cal,
which is our homegrown name for the Medicaid program, unless it is
revised and revamped, it not only can, but most assuredly will bankrupt
our state in a very few years.
12
REASONER: In Medi-Cal, and mental health and higher education, Reagan
has done less than some of his partisans would have hoped, but enough
so that supporters of these programs remain up in arms. When a judge
issued an injunction blocking the Medi-Cal cutbacks, Reagan warned
doctors who might perform services under the injunction that if his
Administration won the case on appeal, they risked not getting paid.
The very powerful Los Angeles Times, which had supported Reagan in his
campaign, now suggested Reagan was advocating disregard of the law.
As a matter of fact, the Los Angeles Times has continually criticized
Reagan on its editorial pages. But if Reagan has made the Times and
other California newspapers unhappy, the evidence is he's more popular
than ever with the people who read them, except there is some evidence
of disenchantment among the far right. Millionaire right-winger,
William Penn Patrick:
WILLIAM PENN PATRICK: Now, he's still talking the conservative
language but practically everything that he's doing is even more
liberal than the administration we had here under Pat Brown. And these
are the things that the conservatives are concerned about and they
have a right to be. We have, in my opinion, been betrayed by Mr.
Reagan.
STATE SENATOR JOHN G. SCHMITZ (REPUBLICAN, MEMBER OF JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY):
I don't know if betrayal would be the word for it, but I really think
that he's taken us for granted. Disappointed is perhaps the best word
to use. As far as I'm concerned, the words don't match up with the
action.
BILL STOUT: Give me a few specifics, the difference between what
he's said and what he's done.
SCHMITZ: Okay, let's just mark them off here. First of all, there's
the Rumford Act, repealing the Rumford forced housing act. He was all
for repealing it. He comes up with a compromise version that he backed
completely, that to the California Real Estate Association officers was
in many ways worse than the Rumford Act itself. He says we got to cut
our budget. We come up with the biggest budget in California history.
We've got to cut taxes or hold the line on taxes. We come up with a
billion dollar tax increase with no termination date on it. Another
big issue was the University of California and our higher education.
He's going to investigate the University and do something about it.
He calls off the investigation and gives the faculty administrators
a pay raise.
REAGAN: I think we've got some narrow groups on both sides of the
spectrum who are well-meant and sincere. But I think that sometimes
they would rather see someone go down in glorious defeat, jump off the
cliff with the flag flying than recognize the practicalities of trying
to promote your philosophy and get it a step at a time and I've tried
to point out to Republicans that it's taken the opposition 35 years to
accomplish many of the things we're opposed to. We can't believe that
some place out of the sunrise a man on a white horse is going to ride
along, wave a wand and if we get elected change everything all at once.
13
REASONER: California Assemblyman Rogert Monagan, the Republican
minority leader, who says he's satisfied with Reagan's performance
SO far, now wants to see what happens next.
ROBERT MONAGAN (MINORITY LEADER, ASSEMBLY): The essential thing now
is to develop programs that tackle the immense problems that we have
in California to put some so-called muscle and fiber onto the Creative
Society and do something about pollution, and our slum conditions,
minority group problems, education and a great number of the real
difficult things that hit a growing state like California.
REASONER: In a strange way, the talk in California about Reagan as
governor has a quaint historic sound. Reagan as a national political
force could still be tripped up by events in his administration of the
state, but the feeling is that he has gone beyond state boundaries.
Wherever he goes he cites his achievements as Governor.
REAGAN: We've just received within the last few days from the phone
company, in writing, a notification that our phone bill will be
reduced by $2,000,000. We put a freeze on out-of-state travel. And
we didn't really say they couldn't go, we just said they had to come
in and explain where they were going and why. And I remember four of
them came in, they wanted to go to a study seminar back East. We
sent one and told him to take notes for the other three. And when
I took office I found there was a stack of stationery about this high
with the other fellow's name on it. And then some fellow came in
with one of those wheel dollies to cart it out to be burned and I
said, "Whoops, wait a minute. Now I've got some stationery with my
own name on it, but I thought there must be a lot of letters that just
sort of go within the shop here, that we can use that up, it shouldn't
be destroyed. So now the girls are x-ing out that other name and they
type mine in.
REASONER: He is the Republican perhaps most in demand outside his
state as a crowd-drawer and fund-raiser.
REAGAN: Our own interests demand that we seek a long-range
determination of the vital interests of all concerned without depending
on the United Nations as it is presently constituted.
REASONER: He tells Republican audiences what they want to hear:
MALE VOICE: And when I saw him make a speech in 1964 for Goldwater
I said, "There's the man who should be running for President, and
there's the man that we need for President.'
FEMALE VOICE: I like the way he takes a firm stand on things and the
way he goes about them.
MALE VOICE: I think his views agree with mine.
FEMALE VOICE: He has the same type of feeling with the people that
John Kennedy had, I think.
MALE VOICE: He's the hope of America.
I't
FEMALE VOICE: I know most people think women like him because of his
good looks and charm and that he's a Hollywood personality, but I
don't think that's entirely true.
FEMALE: I like him as a movie star.
REASONER: He is greeted everywhere like a candidate and with the
obvious enthusiasm and the wide spectrum of people voicing it that go
with winning candidates. But he keeps saying that he is not a
candidate.
REAGAN: I am not a candidate
I am not a candidate
I am not a
candidate
I am not a candidate.
REASONER: The polite thing is to take a man at his word. But should
circumstances develop in which the Republicans demanded that he be a
candidate, nothing he has said would rule that out. And much of what
he has said would have paved the way to run against Lyndon Johnson.
REAGAN: You remember in 164, when he kept saying, "All the way with
LBJ," and we didn't know how far he really meant.
REASONER: And even should the unlikely event happen that Mr. Johnson
was not the opponent, Reagan has covered the next most possible
Democrat.
REAGAN: Bobby Kennedy. There is one of those rare people who can
always say exactly the right thing, at the right time, to the wrong
person.
SONG:
"Ronald Reagan is the guy
who will arouse the countryside.
Americans
11
REASONER: At the moment, however, Reagan disavows the supporters who
want him to run even when they open a headquarters in New Hampshire.
SONG:
"
a modern Paul Revere,
a modern Paul Revere,
Ronald Reagan is the guy who will arouse the
countryside.
Americans can point with pride to a modern
Paul Revere.
Americans can point with pride to a modern
Paul Revere. 11
REAGAN:
a guarahtee of every citizen's right to share in this
abundant society proportionate to his ability
REASONER: To a lot of people, Reagan does look like Paul Revere and
among these people, the idea delights some and frightens others,
depending on, I guess, whether they think right now Paul Revere is
what we need.
REAGAN:
that those who under the euphemism of social unrest or
15
civil disobedience who take to the streets in riot and mob violence
will not be tolerated in this land of ours.
REASONER: Crime in the streets. That's Reagan on one of the two
major national issues of 1968. Some of his critics say he is
implicitly anti-Negro - but he says no, that the Negroes have the
biggest interest of all in law and order. On the other major
national argument, Vietnam, Reagan is, more than any other prominent
Republican, the most convinced that we should do whatever we have to
do militarily to win.
REAGAN:
and somehow this brings no talk of escalation and yet
Russian-built munitions to kill American fighting men enter the
unmined harbor of Haiphong to the North. And we're told that if we
do there the same thing the enemy is doing in the South, if we put
mines in that harbor, the war will grow bigger and more terrible.
Well, to a man getting killed the war is already as big as it can
get.
REASONER: Reagan and his advisers know that some people think a man
on a horseback is a danger, not an inspiration. He knows, for
instance, that he is regarded as a dangerous lightweight by that
vague group of powerful people known as the Eastern Establishment.
That may be part of the reason he agreed this fall to come to Yale
as a Chubb Fellow and talk to Ivy League students, as did people
like Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman and Clement Attlee before him.
VOICE: Sir, you say that you are worried about infringements on
individual rights. Could you then tell us are you in favor of the
Selective Service System being abolished?
REAGAN: This has to be a yes and no answer. For quite some time now
I have been opposed to the peacetime draft, and have thought that at
least this country with its great know-how could evolve a program of
incentives and enlistment and then as this proved its effectiveness,
eliminate the draft. The "no" part of the answer is, with a conflict
of the size that we're in now, I wonder if this is the moment at which
we can do away with it.
REASONER: Most of the Chubb Fellow activities were closed to the
press. Reports of how things went in the lecture sessions and
observations of student reaction outside, indicated Reagan did at
least as well as he might have foreseen. He came advertised by the
campus' articulate liberals as a wrong man; probably not many changed
their minds. And, presumably, the Yale right wing liked him before
and after. But there is a large and uncommitted middle in the colleges,
and he made a favorable impression on them - not necessarily to
convince or convert, but to establish himself as a serious and capable
public figure.
REASONER: The verdict of the Yale students on Governor Reagan
will not be decisive - but even before his visit there he had begun
to impress some Easterners, as long ago as May 15, 1967, when he
appeared with Senator Robert Kennedy on the CBS NEWS TOWN MEETING OF
THE WORLD, answering questions from international groups of college
16
students. By then the feeling that Reagan was a creation of public
relations, a handsome accident who could work only from script, had
almost disappeared.
ENGLISH STUDENT: Would you say the Diem regime was a popular one,
or was it one that you imposed on a people and which the people
then rebelled against?
REAGAN: I doubt that you could make much of a case, I challenge
your history. In 1954
ENGLISH STUDENT:
the history of the Diem regime, sir.
REAGAN: I do. Because there was a referendum taken in, 1954, in which
90 per cent of the people voted in a referendum for Diem to take the
position that he took
REASONER: His confident, well-prepared performance on that broadcast
left no doubt that he could work without a script.
All in all, Governor Reagan's first year in office has been a
pretty glamorous one. There have been only a couple of untoward
incidents. One was the case of the purloined telegram. When the
nation's governors were meeting on the cruise ship Independence,
Reagan got hold of a confidential telegram from the White House to a
Democratic aide, and publicized it. Some people questioned the
propriety of that, others said all's fair in politics as well as in
other passionate activities. The other incident began with a column
by Drew Pearson, who said two members of the Governor's staff had
been forced to resign because they were members of a ring of
homosexuals. The Governor's top aide, Lyn Nofziger, had confirmed
this story to several newsmen privately, including two CBS NEWS
reporters, but on October 31, Reagan seemed to give a flat denial
to the whole story.
REAGAN: No, there is no truth to the report and I know where the
report comes from. I was informed last night, while most
Californians won't see it because I think that's the best clue as to
the veracity of the report is the fact, that as far as we know, most
of the major papers are refusing to run the Drew Pearson column in
which it appears.
VOICE: You've extracted from newspapers
REAGAN: I didn't extract
wait a minute (pounds on desk) come on,
I didn't extract any agreement. I simply said that at the time that
this - I was notified of this I was told that the major newspapers of
California were as they did with the scurrilous attacks on George
Christopher during the primary
REASONER: The story didn't die, but as reporters kept bringing it
up, the flat nature of the denial seemed to moderate.
REAGAN: I have never had and do not have any evidence or proof that
would warrant an accusation. No accusation or charge has ever been
17
made. Now, if there is a credibility gap, and I am responsible, it
is because I refuse to participate in trying to destroy human beings
with no factual evidence.
VOICE: Why then, Governor, would a Boston newspaper say you're no
longer to be believed?
REAGAN: Well, gentlemen, that's up to them if they want to say that.
I've told you if there's a credibility gap, all right; and I've told
you the reason for it. So now, which ones of you are going to write
up that I thumped the table and lost my temper and shouted angrily.
VOICE: Mr. Nofziger has been accused by six newsmen of not owning up
to telling them confidentially that people left the administration
because of immoral behavior.
REAGAN: Gentlemen, I don't know that that is true and I've told you
this subject is, as far as I'm concerned, closed. Now, do we want to
have a press conference or do we just want to stand here with me
refusing to talk.
REASONER: We asked Governor Reagan about the story and he answered
substantially the same way.
REAGAN: I made a statement the other day. I still stick with it.
The reasons given by the people who resigned were satisfactory to
them and to me.
REASONER: Has this been a salutary experience for you? Have you
learned anything of how the press operates on a story of this kind?
REAGAN: Yes, if I look back and if I learned something it was that I
tried to answer questions too long until I recognized that due to a
few individuals who do want to gossip and make charges, I had
descended into that kind of an exchange with them; and long ago I
should have said what I'm going to say now: there's nothing more to
be said on that subject.
REASONER: Do you sometimes wish you had a television teleprompter at
a news conference?
REAGAN: No. And I tell you - there's an old story from back in
the days when we used to do those plays like General Electric Theater
live, when they weren't on film, where you couldn't quit if you forgot
the lines and start over again. There's a story from that. This
fellow forgot his lines but to this day no one knows it, because in the
midst of doing a scene when he came to the point where he forgot his
lines - and what he was doing of course was just mouthing with no
sound, and all over America people were fiddling with their sets
trying to find out what happened to the sound on their set, when he
suddenly remembered the line, it came back to him, he just added the
voice to the lip movement and kept on talking. And I've been in a
few press conferences where I've thought that could come in pretty
handy.
18
REASONER: Like it or not, Reagan's every utterance will be examined
from now on. A feeling that a candidate has a credibility gap can
be as damaging as unpopular views on foreign policy. He may well
have learned something about the role of the goldfish in dealing with
the press. The thing is that while this may be Ronald Reagan's year,
this is probably his last chance at the White House. He is not alone
in this. For one reason or another, chiefly age, it's 1968 or never
for every avowed or mentioned Republican possibility except Charles
Percy and Harold Stassen. But there is a particular poignancy about
this in Reagan's case because his entry was as spectacular as it was
late. In geometry and politics, curves which ascend sharply fall by
the same equation. Reagan would say this is all speculation he does
not encourage, that he is already at the summit of his ambition. He
has disavowed the people who want to put him on the primary ballots
in New Hampshire and Wisconsin and Nebraska and Oregon, but he has
never said that if the party came to him with the big question he
would turn away. Turning away in the final scene was something he
did in the movies. Ronald Reagan is not in the movies any more.
This is Harry Reasoner. Good night.
6/26/68
PLEASE CREDIT ANY QUOTES OR EXCERPTS FROM THIS NBCTELEVISION AND
RADIO BROADCAST TO MEET THE PRESS. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT PRO-
VIDED FOR THE INFORMATION AND CONVENIENCE OF THE PRESS. ACCURACY IS
NOT GUARANTEED. IN CASE OF DOUBT PLEASE CHECK WITH MEET THE PRESS.
MEET THE PRESS
Sunday, May 26, 1968
NBC Television - 1:00 PM NYT
NBC Radio
- 6:30 PM NYT
MODERATOR: Edwin Newman
GUEST:
Gov. Ronald Reagan - (R. -California)
PANEL:
James J. Kilpatrick - Washington Star Syndicate
Robert Donovan - Los Angeles Times
Robert Abernathy - NBC News
Lawrence E. Spivak
NEWMAN: This is Edwin Newman inviting you to MEET THE PRESS.
(Commercial.) Our guest today on MEET THE PRESS is the Governor of
California, Ronald Reagan. Although Governor Reagan has repeatedly
said that he is not a candidate for the Republican Presidential nom-
ination, Reagan for President activity continues across the country.
Now 'll have the first questions for Gov. Reagan, who is in our
Burbank Studio, from Lawrence E. Spivak, permanent member of the
MEET THE PRESS Panel in Washington.
SPIVAK: Governor, the Citizens for Reagan Chairman in Oregon,
Robert Hazen, was reported as saying the other day that in order to
do well in the Oregon primaries you would have to announce your open
candidacy. Is there any chance that you will announce your candidacy
before the Oregon primary?
REAGAN: No. There will be no change in my present position.
I'm a favorite son candidate. I will be entered in nomination at
the convention, as will some others, and there will be no change,
2
nor have I any plans for going to Oregon.
SPIVAK: And you have no intention of announcing before the
convention?
REAGAN: No.
SPIVAK: Governor, since you're not a candidate, or an an-
nounced candidate, if I were a voter in the Oregon primary, a
Republican voter and said to you why should I vote for you, what
would your answer be?
REAGAN: Well, I don't know that I would have any answer.
I have said repeatedly that I believe this is going to be an open
convention. I believe that the grass roots Republican sentiment is
for waiting until the convention, until all the issues are in, until
all the information is in, and then a decision is going to be made
on the, I believe, the great factor is going to be the winnability
of the candidate; and I would think that a part of the factors would
be the sentiment of the grass roots. And if someone should be
voting on the basis of what he actually believes he has to be
voting his own conscience.
SPIVAK: Governor, obviously you'd like to win in Oregon,
or am I wrong? Will you tell us why you want to win in Oregon?
REAGAN: No. Let me simply say that those people in Oregon
who have been doing this on their own, a few of them came over to
see me in Idaho where I was speaking a short time ago, told me that
they would be gratified by 15% of the vote, because of the fact that
I was not campaigning and that they were doing this on their own. I
would have to be frank and say this, that naturally anyone would be
gratified and very proud to find that any sizeable group of citizens
held him in that regard.
3
Also I would have to say that any time you are injected into
a contest in this way in this business, it has a bearing on my own
job here in California. My ability, for example, to influence the
legislature which at the moment is dominated by the Democratic major-
ity, to get legislation that is important to me here, all of these
factors that weigh on whether you are accepted or not by the people,
these have a bearing on your ability to do the job here, and for
that reason pride alone would make me, now that I have been injected
into that race, want to at least hold my head up.
SPIVAK: Am I to understand by what you are saying that ycu
want to win in Oregon so that you can have more power in California,
Governor?
REAGAN: Well you can interpret it that way. I am only
saying
SPIVAK: I'm just asking.
REAGAN: I am saying what would be the adverse effect of, say,
not having anything that bore out the effort that's being made.
On the other hand, I must say, I have told you, that un-
doubtedly I will be entered in the national convention as a favorite
son candidate. At that time I'm quite sure that the convention
delegates, if it is an open convention and not sewed up, are going
to make a consideration of all possibilities that have been mentioned,
in addition to the avowed candidates.
SPIVAK: Governor, why do you continue to say nationally I
am not a candidate, say in Oregon I am a candidate, in Wisconsin I
am a candidate, in Nebraska I am a candidate, and when you and your
supporters are doing, when what you're doing so clearly indicates
to everybody, every political observer of any significance at all,
4
that you really are a candidate? Why do you continue to say I am
not a candidate?
REAGAN: Because I am not. I have no intention of declaring;
I am not campaigning. I have gone into a number of states at the
request of Ray Bliss and of Senator Murphy of the Senatorial campaign
committee, of Bob Wilson, the Congressional campaign committee, in
those areas where they believe Republicans have a chance, a good
chance. I have been helpful in raising funds. But you asked about
three specific states in addition to my own. The answer is very
simple. You can contrast the fact that I was on the ballot in
Wisconsin, Nebraska and Oregon with the fact that I've made every
effort and was successful in getting myself off the ballot in a
number of other states, including New Hampshire. But in California,
even though everyone understands what a favorite son candidacy is,
you have to sign an affidavit that in effect legally makes you a can-
didate. In those three states you've named you have to sign an
affidavit to get your name off the ballot that is a direct refutation
of the one that I had to sign here in California. Legally I could
not put myself in the position of signing conflicting affidavits and
thus, in effect either be a liar in California or in those three states.
They're the only three states in the Union that have such a law and
there was nothing I could do about it once people in those states
decided at the grass roots level to put my name on the ballot.
NEWMAN: Thank you, gentlemen. We'll be back with MEET THE
PRESS and more questions for our guest, Gov. Rona ld Reagan, but first
this message.
(Commercial.)
ANNOUNCER: Now back to MEET THE PRESS, an unrehearsed press
5
conference. Please remember, questions of the panel members do not
necessarily reflect their own point of view. Here is our Moderator,
Edwin Newman.
NEWMAN: Resuming our interview, our guest today is Republican
Governor, Ronald Reagan of California who is in our Burbank studio.
(Panel intro.) We'll continue the questions now with Mr. Kilpatrick.
KILPATRICK: Governor Reagan, four years ago, second only
to Mr. Goldwater, you were known as Mr. Conservative. In this period
have your views changed? Are you less conservative today than you
were then?
REAGAN: No. As a matter of fact, I deplore the use of
those labels as they have been applied in politics because I think
it's part of an image-making process that goes on. I don't believe
that anyone fits any of those labels completely. I haven't changed
in my views. I haven't changed for a great many years in the things
that I've thought about government and government's place in our
social structure.
KILPATRICK: Let me then inquire about two or three specific
issues if I could, Governor. Where do you now stand on open housing
occupancy housing legislation, either at the federal or state level?
REAGAN: I stand where I have stood all the time. I have
always been opposed to discrimination and prejudice. I have always
been opposed ,prior to the time that it was against the law, against
restrictive covenants. I'm opposed to them morally on the grounds
that I deplore anyone who does practice this.
On the other hand I have to tell you that I believe there's
a limit to what we can do in solving these problems with legislation
and I don't believe we serve any useful purpose either for the
6
people we're trying to help or for the rest of society here if we
embark on the dangerous precedent of allowing government to interfere
with the individual citizens' right to the control and the disposition
of his own personal property. And, as I say, this is something that
can come back to haunt us in the future. I am opposed to that.
KILPATRICK: Governor, another conservative issue has to do
with an individual's right to work. What is your position on state
right-to-work laws?
REAGAN: Well, I am opposed to the repeal of 14-B of the
Taft-Hartley Act. I believe that this issue should be decided at the
state level. Here in California several years ago we had the oppor-
tunity to meet that, and I was one of a group in my own union committee
that opposed the right-to-work laws for California.
At the same time, I think there are things that need to be
done with regard to organized labor. And I've been trying last year
and again in this session to get what I think is a far better thing
done for the rank and file of organized labor and for all of our
people than right to work. And that is the right of a secret ballot
within the union on all policy matters for each member of the union.
And so far I haven't been able to get this passed in our Democratic
legislature here in California, but I'm going to keep trying. We have
it in the union of which I was an officer and a member for so many
years, the Screen Actors Guild.
DONOVAN: Governor, if I may pursue the first question, apart
from style is there any significant difference in outlook between
you and Senator Goldwater?
REAGAN: Well, there are a lot of specific issues I'm
time
trying to recall, and frankly memory is failing me, that just a short/
7
ago I found he had made a statement, I was asked about it; I was in
disagreement with him on that particular statement. Again, as I
say, I don't think you can classify people in groups. One of the
characteristics of the people in the Republican Party is they 're all
pretty highly individual. That's why we have such difficulty heal-
ing our wounds as our opponents can once the fight is over and they
all go back to discovering hidden virtues in each other.
And when you say this, it would be very difficult in the
limited time we have also to explain to an audience that was subjected
a few years ago to probably the greatest job of image building that
we've seen in politics in many a decade in this country, to say,
well are you talking about the image of Goldwater that was falsely
created or are you talking about the real man that I happen to know
as a friend? Because I found very little resemblance between the man
I knew and the image that was constructed of him for the benefit of
the voting public.
DONOVAN: Well, I was thinking of military policy for one
thing. You suggested last week that if the Paris peace talks fail
we should threaten the invasion of North Vietnam. Now in light of
that what is your attitude toward a possible military confrontation
with Red China?
REAGAN: Well, I doubt that a military confrontation at this
time with Red China is imminent. As a matter of fact, most military
experts have agreed that it isn't. But my statements last week about
what should be done at the negotiating table were in reality quoting
some earlier remarks by former President Eisenhower to the effect
that when you sit down to negotiate with the communists we should
keep in mind that two years of negotiations in Korea in which during
8
that period of time more than twenty thousand Americans were killed,
and I think you have to recall that President Eisenhower, coming in
as a new President toward the end of that two-year period, brought
an end to the negotiations and a settlement of the conflict by simply
releasing the word that the United States was going to review its
options with regard to weapons, theaters of operation, manner of
fighting, et cetera. I've said the same thing I believe should be
true in these Paris negotiations. If at a given time -- and we
should let the enemy know -- that if at a given time ,certain reason-
able period, they have shown no evidence of a sincere desire to
settle this conflict and to bring peace, that they are procrastin-
ating and using the negotiations to gain what they couldn't gain on
the battlefield, then we must be prepared to threaten them with
force. And I would think that the same conditions that President
Eisenhower submitted would be the conditions here -- a review of our
strategy, review of targets, review of theaters of operation mean-
ing whether we're going to continue to fight this war and destroy
the cities of South Vietnam or fight this war on their own soil.
Whether you do this or not, once you make that statement
you must be prepared, in the last analysis, to do that. But I think
anything else is to go down the same lonely road that we followed
some years ago, and with the same tragic results. I would call to
your attention that in the first two weeks of these negotiations the
death rate for Americans in combat has gone up and set new records
for this entire long war.
ABERNATHY: Governor, pursuing that, how long do you think
we should wait for some sign of progress at Paris before we give a
specific time limit?
9
REAGAN: I don't think that anyone sitting on the outside
could pin that down that specifically. I know in one area in which
I am experienced is in the area of negotiations by reason of my
labor union experience; I was the negotiator for more than twenty
years, and led our negotiating committee for the Screen Actors Guild;
and I know there's a kind of an instinctive thing goes with it, but
it's also based on knowing what the enemy's demands are, knowing
what your own conditions are.
ABERNATHY: Are you talking about weeks, months, years, what?
REAGAN: Well, certainly not years. And I would think that
this country should be insisting that one of the first points of
negotiation if the enemy is sincere, is the arriving at a mutual
cease fire. I don't think we want to continue, or to go back to the
twenty thousand casualties or deaths after the negotiations start.
It seems to me that if both sides really want an end to the
ombat and want peace then it seems to me that when the talking
really gets under way the killing should stop.
ABERNATHY: Governor, you have suggested that if the talks
fail there be an invasion of North Vietnam. Do you mean by this a
U.S. invasion or a joint U.S. and South Vietnamese invasion? What
do you mean?
REAGAN: Well, the ideal if such a thing would come about
would be a South Vietnamese invasion, supported logistically by the
United States. This of course would take away some of the propaganda
effort of the enemy on the world scene about aggression on the part
of the United States.
But whatever is required, if that comes about, should be
done. In the meantime it would seem to me that the enemy should see
10
preparations -- you might never have to go that far, but the enemy
must believe and must see that you are willing to, that you are
amassing the landing craft, the weapons, mobilizing the forces that
are going to result in invasion.
SPIVAK: Governor, may I check what you said a minute ago
on the matter of open housing? I understood, at least there has
been a report that you've changed your position about repealing
California's open housing law, the Rumford Act; is that true?
REAGAN: No. Let me tell you what led to that confusion be--
cause there is some confusion on that and it's been of concern to me.
The Rumford Housing Act in California is an omnibus bill. There
is a great deal of legislation in there, incorporated in it that
were previous pieces of legislation, certainly satisfactory, and
certainly aimed at solving the problems of bigotry and discrimination
equality of opportunity. And all of us want that.
Now when it was talked of repealing the Rumford Act this
was done in simply the technical sense that if you have a piece of
legislation of this type that you're going to correct that sometimes
it's better to simply wipe that out and start with a new piece of
legislation. No one has ever advocated that you wipe this law off
the books completely and not replace it with necessary legislation
to make sure that you do all that can be done to curb the practice
of discrimination.
My only change is I believe now that we could do better --
and a great many other people in California believe that we could
do better -- simply making changes and modifications in the existing
legislation and not getting into the whole problem of wiping out
and starting over again. Now that is theonly change I've made.
11
The part of the bill that the people of California tried to change
has to do particularly with the individual owner, and governments
now having a control on that individual and his right to property.
And believe me, this is the issue in California, and I believe in
most people's minds, not racism or a desire to discriminate, but a
belief that there is something dangerous, that there is a great tie
between the right to personal property and individual freedom.
SPIVAK: Well, what would your position be on the open
housing section of the Rumford Act? Would you want to leave it in,
or would you want to revise it or would you repeal it? I'm not quite
clear.
REAGAN: I want to revise it, particularly where it comes to
the individual home and the individual's right to the ownership of
his home, disposition of that, rental of it, et cetera.
SPIVAK: Thank you, Governor. Governor, there are a great
many political observers who believe you're out to stop Richard
Nixon from getting the Republican Presidential nomination. In view
of the wide support he has received across the country, in view of
the fact that you yourself are not a candidate and have spoken a
great deal about unity why aren't you supporting him?
REAGAN: Well, at the moment this would be impossible for me
to do. We have put a delegation on the ballot that represents the
whole cross section of the Republican Party. I myself have asked
those delegates not to express publicly any opinion as to who their
personal choice might be. I certainly then am bound by that same
idea. The idea of a favorite son delegation and the idea of our
delegation is to come to the convention prepared to move in the direc-
tion that we think will best benefit the party and that will give
12
us the greatest chance for victory.
I might say with regard to this talk around the country it
was Richard Nixon himself just last summer who said to me that we
must be on guard against attempts on the part of some to drive
wedges between any of us in the leadership of the Republican Party.
KILPATRICK: Governor, Columnist Art Buchwald has written
that Governor Rockefeller came by your hotel room the other day just
to get your autograph for Happy. What did the Governor of New York
really have on his mind?
REAGAN: Well, I can tell you I didn't know until the night
before that he was going to arrive in New Orleans, and I was leaving
early the next morning. Early the next morning my own people woke
me and said that the Governor on his way to a breakfast that he had
scheduled and which was the reason for his being there with the
southern chairman, wanted to stop by the room and say hello. I at
least got into shirt and pants by the time he arrived at the door.
I had some coffee ordered up; we didn't get to finish the cup because
of his schedule; and his opening line when he came in the door was:
I couldn't be in the same hotel without at least coming by and saying
hello.
KILPATRICK: And that was all he said, hello?
REAGAN: Oh, we discussed a little politics, particularly of
the other party. Both of us were quite impressed with theability of
one of the candidates in the Democratic side to speak now in tones
that have not been familiar to him, making speeches out here that
sound a little like my last campaign speeches.
KILPATRICK: How would you feel about Mr. Rockefeller as a
running mate on your ticket?
13
REAGAN: Well, I don't have a ticket so I couldn't be
choosing anybody, and I don't know just exactly which way you meant
that; but if you're speaking about the rumors around that there's
been some kind of a deal for me to be the second spot on the ticket,
there is no such deal and no one has suggested such a thing, and I
have no intention of accepting if anyone should.
NEWMAN: Mr. Donovan. We have four minutes left, gentlemen.
DONOVAN: Governor, do you mean to say that if Nelson
Rockefeller were nominated for President by the Republican national
convention and asked you to be his running mate that you would not
run for Vice President?
REAGAN: No, I would not.
DONOVAN: I think only once in this century has anyone turned
down that position. Why would you turn it down?
REAGAN: Well, I've explained on a number of occasions that
I didn't aspire to a political career. And I sometimes wonder why
I find myself in the job I'm in. But I do have some very strong
beliefs about government, government's place and what can be done.
I believe we've been going down a dangerous road in this nation.
Now I have an opportunity to put these views into practice. If it
was personal ambition, I have no question but that the Vice Presidency
is a prestigious position, a great honor, and any man would be proud
to be remembered in history as having held that office. But I
believe that here in the most populous state in the Union we have an
opportunity to prove, to put into action and are putting into action
some of these ideas about government, and if we can succeed here I
think we can do a great service for the country and we can start
a prairie fire that will sweep across a number of states; indeed,
14
a number of states have already come to us for information on some
of the things we're doing and have put these things into practice.
DONOVAN: Governor, if that much can be done politically in
California why in the short space of the sixteen months you have
been in office have you travelled out of the state 44 times and
participated in political meetings in 26 other states?
REAGAN: Well, because this is an election year, and there
is no question about the responsibility of anyone holding public
office to his party. All of us have discovered that we're better
box office the farther away from home we get. I have been out of
my state, but incidentally, on those 40-odd days that you named I'd
like to call to your attention that these are far less than any of
my predecessors have been out of the state even in non-election years.
But most of that time has been for governors conferences which are
legitimate functions of this office I hold; and most of my speaking
for political fund raisers has been either on the way to or on the
way back from those governors conferences.
This last three-day trip was the only three working days in
which I specifically went out and simply on political fund raisers
and not in connection with one of these other functions. But I
have been successful in raising a considerable amount of money for
the party and I have gone to states, as I pointed out earlier, where
there were chances for Republican victories. I might add that in
exchange for that, in doing that, in our own state we have had the
pleasure for our own fund raisers of Governor Love, Governor Shafer,
Governor McCall, Governor Laxalt, Senator Percy of Illinois;
Senator Dirksen has been out here. A number of other Republican
leaders have on an exchange come here.
15
NEWMAN: Mr. Abernathy, you have about thirty seconds left.
ABERNATHY: Governor, in American history no divorced man
has ever been elected President. Do you think attitudes have changed
enough on this subject so a divorced man can now be elected President?
REAGAN: Oh, yes. I think the same thing was said with re-
gard to religion, or at least was implied, in the 1960 election.
The Democrats themselves ran a divorced candidate in the person of
Adlai Stevenson, and I doubt that this was any factor in this. So
I have to say that I believe this would not be a problem.
ABERNATHY: What about a ticket with two divorced men on it?
REAGAN: Well, I've just indicated that there's one way in
which that couldn't come about.
NEWMAN: Sorry to interrupt, but our time is up. Thank you,
Gov. Reagan, for being with us today on MEET THE PRESS.
Next week: Grayson L. Kirk, President of
Columbia University
55
6/5/68
TRANSCRIPT OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN'S REMARKS
JOEY BISHOP SHOW
June 5, 1968
Joey - Governor Reagan, are you there?
Governor - Yes, Joey.
Joey - Hi
Governor - How do you do?
Joey - I'm all right sir. I know that this is an imposition, I know
that you, as a matter of fact, cut short the staff meeting so that
you could afford us the opportunity of speaking to you as the governor
of the state of California in which a great tragedy has occurred. I
just wanted to get some of your viewpoints on how we abolish what is
happening, how do we prevent it, what do we do about it?
Governor - Well, Joey, never mind anything that I might have cut
short. I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak to all of you
and to speak to some of our fellow Californians and our fellow citi-
zens in other states about this- great tragedy that has occurred
here. A young man has been struck down in a senseless and savage act.
I am sure that all of us are praying not only for him but for his
family and for those others who were so senselessly struck down also
in the fusillade of bullets that came from the would-be assassin's gun.
There is a pall over our state; all of us feel it. At the same time,
though, I would like to say that I am in great disagreement with those
among us who are counseling that we should all feel a collective sense
of guilt. Two hundred million Americans did not do this. One young
man did it, and not even for an American reason. It developes now
that this young man believed that because the senator from New York
advocated our nation's support of Israel in their conflict with the
Arab nations, that he had to perform this vile act in some way for
his country, and that was not this country--that was Jordan. I have
to say to those people who would suggest that we are all guilty when-
ever a terrible thing of this kind happens that there can be no such
collective guilt. I am sure that all of the people in your studio,
all of the people there with you, all of the people here in this
studio, everyone that I have met so far, feels this great sense of
tragedy, this loss, and is deeply concerned not only about our nation,
but about this particular family and the tragedy that has struck.
As I say, all of us are praying and, I believe we should go on praying.
to the best of our ability, to ask for God's mercy in what has
happened to us.
The American people have seen lawlessness and violence come to
our nation over the past decade, and I do not believe this is some-
thing advocated by the majority of people or that Americans want it.
On the contrary, I think most Americans are deeply distrubed, deeply
distrubed by what seems to be a loss of principle and standard, a
loss of all our moral beliefs.
Now, we have known times in the past, in almost any period of
history, when people have broken the social code, broken the rules,
broken the laws. But always they knew they were breaking the law.
They knew what they were doing was against the moral and ethical
code. The distrubing thing in America is that we have had too many
people, people in high places, people in and out of our government,
who have been suggesting not that we are breaking the rules, but that
the rules no longer apply; that the moral standards by which we have
lived all these many years, no longer apply; that there has been a
change; that we are throwing out the code and saying that people
should do what they choose to do. And some of this began with some
leaders who, with the best of intentions, suggested that in order to
right certain wrongs, in order to correct certain things, it was
alright for some of us to choose the laws we would obey.
This can lead only to a law that exists on the basis of who can
carry the biggest club. We must return to a belief that no matter
how much we disagree with the law, we must follow the usual channels,
if we believe they are proper, in getting the law changed. But until
it is changed, we abide by and believe in, the law. We must return
-1-
to the principle that the individual is responsible for his misdeeds
and must pay the price. We must do away with this permissiveness,
this idea that society is to blame for all the wrongdoing, for all
the misdeeds that take place in our country. Now, I had my political
differences, of course, with Senator Kennedy, and yet, the funny
thing was to find out how much we all have in common in this country.
In recent days here in California, Senator Kennedy has been express-
ing the desire that this nation should do exactly what we have been
trying to do, what some of us have been saying here. The government
must become closer to the people; that we must do away with such
things as a meaningless welfare that simply perpetuates people in
poverty and keeps them on a dole. We must seek a way to give them a
hand-up instead of a hand-out; that we must lift them up to where
they can be self-sustaining. As a matter of fact, a great Jewish
philosopher of the 11th Century, Mamonides, suggested a number of
ways in which you can help those who need help. The poorest, he said,
is simply to give a man a hand-out. The best is to teach him to help
himself. The Talmud tells us that for a father not to teach his son
how to make a living is to teach him literally how to steal, because
that might be the inevitable result.
Joey - Well, Governor Reagan, I don't mean to interrupt you, but we
have Father Kaiser here. Would you like to give the New stament some
equal time?
Governor - Yes, the man from Galilee had a great deal to say about
individual responsibility, and that each man must find his own
salvation in his own soul. But, about this particular tragedy, as
I say, I think it began with those of us who did decide or who
admitted or agreed that it was alright for civil disobedience, for
the breaking of laws with which we were in disagreement. And, I say
that this is what has led us to this particular point. America is
not to blame as a society. I think the people of America are deeply
concerned by the course our country has been taking.
The enemy sits in Moscow. I call him an enemy because I believe
he has proven this, by deed, in the Middle East. The actions of the
enemy led to and precipitated the tragedy of last night. Tonight,
we find that this same Soviet power has impressed upon the world its
belief that the end justifies the means, that there is no morality
except/which furthers the cause we are trying to put over.
Yet, we must make up our minds as to where we stand, with regard
to our belief in morality, in law, and in individual responsibility.
I say again that all of us have a prayer in our hearts with regard to
this tragedy, I say again that the challenge to America is not to
castigate ourselves over something for which we were not responsible.
Rather, we must say that as of this moment, there will be an end to
Americans putting up with, or tolerating, those who advocate the tak-
ing of the law into their own hands; that we are, once again, going
to become a land in which we are not necessarily our brothers' keepers,
but our brothers' brothers; that we are going to become a land that
abides by the law, that believes in the sanctity of the law that
believes in morality.
Joey - We are speaking largely now about the majority, but I think
the president himself issued a statement that all presidential candi-
dates are now, I notice, put under the tight security ring, around
most of the presidential candidates. Is that true, sir?
Governor - Yes, as a matter of fact, I learned today that the declared
candidates have had secret service assigned to them.
Joey - Have you, governor?
Governor - No, I am not a declared candidate. But, Joey, I do not
think there is anyone serving in public office today who does not
realize that he is in a climate which is endangered by a very
dangerous faction in our country--that he is a potential target. He
recognizes that certain hazards go with his profession--the same as
a soldier,
Joey - Did this same climate hold true in 1864, and at the time when
Mayor Cermac of Chicago was shot when they were trying to assassin-
ate President Roosevelt? Was this, or is there, a certain era that
this country goes through which produces a kind of violence and
immorality over aperiod of years? Do we find ourselves almost
repeating it? Is that so? Does that happen?
Governor - No, Joey, I think we have always had the political assassin.
I think a certain segment of our society has always believed in tak-
ing the law into its own hands. That is why we have prisons, courts,
our entire judicial system. But I think what is coming upon us today
is a sort of permissiveness by society which says the criminal is no
longer a criminal--that he is some sort of psychological misfit, and
all of us are to blame for what happened to him, what made him this way.
The great tendency of some of our recent judical decisions has
been to overweigh the balance on the part of the accused, forgetting
that government's principal responsibility is to protect society from
the lawbreaker, and not the other way around. All I'm saying is that
the difference between those days and today is the difference between
the people who knew they were breaking the rules and people today who
are trying to foist off on us the philosophy that rules no longer
apply. that each one of us is sole judge, jury and decider of what
the rules are.
Joey - Governor Reagan, as governor of the state of California, do
you intend to pass some sort of legislation regarding how easy it is
to obtain a gun?
Governor - Joey, I think that the flurry over the gun law treats the
symptom, and not the cause.
Joey - I have some statistics I looked up today.
Governor - Alright, o.k.
Joey - And in this country, 56 hundred people were victims of gun-
shots. In England, because there was a law against it, there was
30. And I think it was France, there were only 12. But we were 56
hundred as opposed to 30 in one country and 12 in another. Does that
seem to have some bearing on the bearing of guns and the carrying of
guns?
Governor - Well Joey, how many other murders were committed by other
means? For example, this type of assassin last night showed a complete
disregard for his own safety. He wasn't hiding someplace to take a
shot. He walked right in, knowing that he had to be apprehended, and
yet he was willing to take the chance. Isn't this similar to the
assassination of the emperor of the Austria-Hungarian empire that
began World War I, who did it with a bomb? He walked up and tossed
a bomb into a carriage. Wouldn't this man, without a gun, have gone
with a knife instead? Isn't it true that this kind of man would
find a gun, would obtain a gun in some way, normally through theft?
The criminal has no trouble getting one. I don't see the point of
just registering firearms so we know who has them. I'm quite sure
that this young man was not a psychopath; I'm quite sure that he would
have had no trouble, under whatever law, in legitimately obtaining or
buying a gun.
are
No, I think what we've got to treat now / the causes. We have
to get down to "what is this atmosphere?" What is this atmosphere,
for example, that begins on a campus, that says that young hoodlums
can come in and, under the name of some cause they believe in, inter-
fere with the activities of thousands and thousands of students who
are legitimately bent on getting an education, who can vandalize the
property of the university or college, who can sit there in the office
and interrupt orderly processes. And we're denied, supposedly, the
right to exact any punishment or even expel them from school. I
believe that there is a principal, an inherited law that says that
crime must be followed by swift and certain justice, not necessarily
punishment. I think we have to review our permissive attitude.
I read a little pioce the other day by a psychology professor who
told of an incident in New York in which a young lady was being
attacked in an apartment building. A group of men holding a meeting or
the second floor came out on the landing. They saw what was going
on but never interfered. Then they went back into their meeting.
What makes this particularly newsworthy is the purpose of the meeting:
to pass some resolutions on how they as committee members could be of
more help to unfortunate people. Their help did not include going
down one flight of stairs to help a young lady who was the victim of
a terrible crime of violence.
Joey - Governor Reagan, I hate to interrupt, sir, but having done a
show of your own, some time back, I'm sure that you know that you
have to break away onco in a while for a commercial, and I must say
-3-
sir, in all fairness to myself, that when you did Death Valley Days,
I stayed with you through the commercial and after. I hope you 'll
do the same for me.
Governor - Well, I don't know that I've said all that needs to be
said.
Joey - I did want to ask you one more very important question, After
we come back from this, I'll hook you somehow.
Governor - I'll be here.
Joey - I do want to find out from you how all this looks to the rest
of the world, if you 11 just extend me the courtesy of doing this when
we come back, and then I will let you go. I will pardon you, governor.
(Commercial)
Joey - If you can, in a few words, or whatever amount of time it takes,
tell us how we look in the eyes of the rest of the world
with all
the violence that's taking place here.
Governor - Well, you know, Joey, that doesn't bother me too much
because I think there's a great deal of anti-Americanism in the world
--perhaps we have brought some of it on ourselves. I'm sure that
there are going to be writers sharpening their pencils right now all
over the world who are going to gleefully point at this, in spite of
its tragic nature, as another example of the supposed decadence of
America. Most of them wouldn't even be free to write what they
wanted to write if this country, ever since World War II, hadn't been
standing between them and the barbarians, if we hadn't been pouring
out our treasure and guaranteeing our strength, that they had the
right to autonomy and freedom. They would have been overwhelmed in
five minutes without us. So they don't bother me too much at all.
I think what we should be concerned about, and I have said this
before, is that it is time that this country assumes some leadership
from its governmental level, and say to the rest of the world:
"We're not going to buy your affection anymore, or try to. We're
going to demand your respect." We do this best when our government
recognizes that the prime function of government is to protect the
rights of the individual, to guarantee that he is secure in his
person and his property, and that he is safe in his home and his
place of business. I'll tell you this. As far as it can be done from
a state level, we're going to do that in California, so help me God.
Joey - Governor Reagan, I should like to take this opportunity of
thanking you for two occasions--once, for carrying on my opening
show, and once again for appearing tonight, and I do hope that next
time we meet, it will be under much happier circumstances. Thank
you, Governor Reagan.
Governor - Thank you.
# # #
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-
6/16/68
CBS NEWS
2020 M Street, N. W.
Washington, D. C. 20036
FOR RELEASE: 12:30 PM, EDT
transcriptmenthon transcriptand be for
SUNDAY, JUNE 16
All permission of of of the Inc.
FACE THE NATION
as broadcast over the
CBS Television Network
and the
CBS Radio Network
SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 1968 - 12:30-1:00 PM EDT
GUEST: HONORABLE RONALD REAGAN
Governor of California
NEWS CORRESPONDENTS:
Martin Agronsky
CBS News
Paul B. Hope
Washington Evening Star
Bill Stout
CBS News
DIRECTOR: Robert Vitarelli
PRODUCERS: Sylvia Westerman and Prentiss Childs
NOTE TO EDITORS: This broadcast was pre-recorded at KOTV, in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, Saturday, June 15.
1
1
MR. AGRONSKY: Governor Reagan, at the Republican Governors
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
Conference in Tulsa the consensus was that for two days you con-
3
ducted yourself like a candidate for your party's presidential
4
or vice presidential nomination. Do you still maintain you are
5
not a possible contender for either office?
6
GOVERNOR REAGAN: No. And I would be hard put to know where
7
anyone got that idea. I attended all of the meetings. I don't
8
know of anything I did on the outside except agree to a press
9
conference which was asked of me. And, other than that, I was
10
in the meetings where the press wasn't present or none of the
11
public.
12
ANNOUNCER: In Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the Republican Governors
WARD &.PAUL
13
Conference, in color, FACE THE NATION, a spontaneous and unre-
14
hearsed news interview with Governor Ronald Reagan of California.
15
Governor Reagan will be questioned by CBS News Correspondent Bill
16
Stout, Paul Hope of The Washington Star, and CBS News
17
Correspondent Martin Agronsky. We shall resume the interview
18
with Governor Reagan in a moment.
19
20
MR. AGRONSKY: Governor, I wonder if we can go back to that
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
question. Do you still maintain you are not a possible contender
22
for either the presidential or vice presidential office?
23
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I am certainly not a contender for the
24
latter, for the vice presidential office. I think technically
25
you would have to recognize that anyone who is a favorite son
2
1
candidate, even though he is a favorite son candidate only in
Phone (Area 20. 28-4266
2
the sense of directing a delegation or hoping to, that technically
3
at the convention he is a candidate. He is entered in nomination
4
and would be a candidate if the party chose to consider him as
5
such.
6
MR. HOPE: Well, now, really you are more than technically a
7
candidate, aren't you?
8
GOVERNOR REAGAN: You mean at the convention?
9
MR. HOPE: I mean now or at the convention, any time.
10
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I certainly am not now. I haven't in-
11
jected myself into this race, nor would I. But at the convention,
12
as I say, I use the word "technically" because it is true, that
WARD PAUL
13
you actually are placed in nomination. That is true of me as
14
well as a number of other favorite son candidates. And I have
15
said for some time that I believe this is going to be an open
16
convention and, therefore, if the delegates choose to consider
17
other than the announced candidates, they will do SO.
18
MR. STOUT: When you say that you haven't conducted yourself
19
here, Governor, as a possible contender, you are talking, perhaps
20
about your own attitude. But what do you think of the attitudes
21
25 N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
of the people? The people and the delegates decide who will run.
22
You don't really decide for yourself and no man going into a
23
convention --
24
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Bill, I have said this for a long time: I
25
think the people do -- this job seeks rather than someone seeking
3
1
it, and this you have very little control over. I am aware of
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
a great many people who have expressed this belief with regard
3
to me, and I am greatly honored, as I have said before, that
4
anyone should consider me in that light. But I can again say
5
that I have been doing my job and I have done nothing to
6
encourage or to try and set up any organization to promote that
7
sort of thing.
8
MR. AGRONSKY: Governor, let's carry you -- you carried yourself
9
a step further, at least. Now we have you saying you're not
10
considering yourself as a contender for the vice presidential
11
nomination but you can't help it if you go as a favorite son,
12
which makes you a contender for the presidential nomination.
WARD & PAUL
13
Now, could you address yourself to this: Which candidate, of
14
the two men who do say they want to be President, get the
15
presidential nomination on the Republican ticket, Nixon or
16
Rockefeller, with which of those two could you most easily make
17
common cause?
18
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, now I have to not only be evasive but I
19
just have to avoid the answer, because I have asked our own
20
delegation -- We have only had one organizing meeting so far,
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
and that was prior to the official placing of them on the ballot
22
or getting them recognized on the ballot as the delegation -- I
23
have asked all of our delegates to not give any opinion as to
24
who they might favor when and if the time comes to make a move
25
in some direction, in order to insure the very unity that caused
1
us to have a single delegation to begin with. Now, it would
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
hardly behoove me now to come on television nationwide and
3
announce a preference of my own. I just can't do it.
4
MR. HOPE: Well, as Governor of the largest State in the Uni
5
don't you feel some obligation to lead the people --
6
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Oh, yes.
7
MR. HOPE: -- to tell them who you're for?
8
GOVERNOR REAGAN: No. We ran on the basis of a broad-base de
9
gation in which if we were for someone in advance we would ha
10
sought a delegation of people who were pledged or who leaned
11
that same direction. We didn't. In the interest of unity,
12
which was the whole purpose of this, we have a delegation fro
WARD & PAUL
13
California that represents the whole spectrum of the Californ
14
party. We have people who were actively in support of various
15
candidates on that delegation and who have had past support f
16
those delegates. Now, the idea of not having an open primary
17
in the interest of unity, was SO that at the convention, when
18
the facts are in and it is time to make a decision for who we
19
think will be the winner and the next President of the United
20
States, to say nothing of platform decisions, that hopefully di
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
delegation can resolve its differences within itself and opera
22
as a unit .for the best interests not only ---
23
MR. HOPE: Well, aren't you really playing it a little cozy,
24
expecting that something is going to develop for you at the
25
convention?
5
1
GOVERNOR REAGAN: No, I don't think SO. As a matter of fact,
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
the only thing I can give you by way of proof of sincerity is --
3
and California knows this that I was the one who
4
was opposed to a favorite son candidacy, and this was announced
5
the day after I was elected at a joint press conference with
6
Bob Finch, the Lieutenant Governor, and Bob publicly stated then
7
he was going to do everything he could to convince me I should
8
be one in the interest of unity. And the result was the party
9
leaders and our State Central Committee officers were the ones
10
who persuaded me that I should be the favorite son candidate.
11
MR. AGRONSKY: Governor, could we get one thing -- perhaps you
12
could tell us -- would you say your political philosophy was
WARD & PAUL
13
closer to that of Mr. Nixon or Mr. Rockefeller?
14
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I think without my answering that you
15
could probably say that to me.
16
MR. AGRONSKY: No. Why should I answer the question?
17
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, because I think that on the basis of
18
views expressed, for example, right now on the Vietnam conflict
19
or on the approach of -- the involvement of government in the
20
solution of some problems yes, I would think that this would
21
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
be a fair statement.
22
MR. AGRONSKY: What would be a fair statement?
23
GOVERNOR REAGAN: That I have perhaps tended toward solutions of
24
national problems, more in the same context or vein that Richard
25
Nixon has than I have at times with Governor Rockefeller.
6
1
MR. STOUT: Well, let's take this a step further, Governor.
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
When we talk about the convention and the delegates, there are
3
estimates ranging from I have heard 38 per cent, I have
4
heard 60 per cent of Goldwater delegates returning this year and
5
alternates returning this year to Miami. Do you see yourself
6
as the only hope of the conservatives in the party? They cer-
7
tainly are not going to rally around Nelson Rockefeller, and
8
many of them may not around Richard Nixon. Where else do they
9
have to go except to you?
10
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, Bill, as you know, I won't go along any
11
more with using those labels. I have been working for two years
12
trying to get the party to drop the labels --
WARD & PAUL
13
MR. STOUT: But a great many people do use them.
14
GOVERNOR REAGAN: - and yet We have been very successful,
15
though, with getting them to. I think there is a different
16
philosophy or belief in the Republican Party today, at the grass
17
roots level and on up through the pros. I think you will find
18
the Republican Party today is far more willing to see good in
19
other Republicans, in the interest of unity and in the interest
20
of winning. There is a great desire -- we have had our blood
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
bath and learned a lesson from it. The party was virtually out
22
of existence just a few years ago, and I don't think that you
23
are going to have that problem. I don't think people are going
24
to this convention frozen into an ideological mold as they have
25
been at some times in the past.
7
1
MR. AGRONSKY: Governor, let's not talk about being frozen.
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
You do say that your political philosophy comes closer to that
3
of Mr. Nixon than to Mr. Rockefeller, that is one position you
4
have taken now. Now, the Nixon coordinator in the South, Mr.
5
Calloway, recently said perhaps We can get George Wallace on our
6
side, that is where he belongs. Would you feel that George
7
Wallace belongs on the Republican side and would you welcome
8
him in the Republican Party?
9
GOVERNOR REAGAON: Well, I think this is a decision -- if George
10
Wallace belongs on the Republican side, then he should re-
11
register, but he is still registered as a Democrat. And it
12
would seem to me that anyone -- I have always believed that
WARD & PAUL
13
anyone who wants to come into the Republican Party has come in
14
by virtue of buying our philosophy, but we don't go out after
15
someone by virtue of buying theirs. And, therefore, if he
16
found that he was compatible and could believe in the philosophy
17
of the Republican Party, then I think that his place was in our
18
party.
19
MR. AGRONSKY: You could welcome him to the party under those
20
circumstances?
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Under the circumstances that he subscribe to
22
our philosophy.
23
MR. HOPE: Well, do you think he is compatible with your phil-
24
osophy?
25
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I think if you look at his record as a
8
1
Governor, you will find a number of instances where on domestic
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
issues he has been right in line with the present Democratic
3
philosophy of government control and subsidy and regulation,
4
and so forth, which would be contrary to the Republican phil-
5
osophy. At the moment there is no question that he has ex-
6
pressed some views, particularly on the international scene,
7
regarding Americanism and patriotism, and so forth, that I am
8
sure few people disagree with.
9
MR. AGRONSKY: What about his position on racial problems?
10
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, he seems to have avoided that subject
11
pretty well?
12
MR. AGRONSKY: Avoided it?
WARD & PAUL
13
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I haven't heard too many statements -- not
14
that I have heard everything he says or pay too much attention
15
to it --- but I haven't heard much said that --
16
MR. AGRONSKY: Well, his position, I mean, against integration,
17
to make a specific point?
18
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I happen to be one who believes in --
19
first of all, I am incapable of feeling prejudice myself. I do
20
not believe in discrimination and I certainly believe in
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
equality of opportunity for all people. And I believe that the
22
answer to the problem will come some day when all of us in
23
America will stop using - just as we' ve stopped using the
24
labels in our party -- we will stop hyphenating ourselves and
25
using a word in front of American with a hyphen.
9
1
MR. STOUT: Let's go back to these labels, Governor, that you
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
object to but most people in this country employ in common talk,
3
liberal and conservative. Senator Kuchel lost to Max Rafferty,
4
and there doesn't seem much argument within the Republican
5
Party that Kuchel represented the moderate or liberal wing and
6
Rafferty the conservative or perhaps the right wing. What do
7
you make of that?
8
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I recall, during the campaign, hearing
9
both of them comparing--one contender comparing his views, and
10
the other comparing his vote record with the voting record of
11
Senator George Murphy. And they came out about even with the
12
support of the things that George Murphy had stood for. Now,
WARD & PAUL
13
I think the Kuchel-Rafferty campaign -- there were a number U.S.
14
factors. First of all, the contender in this case has been a
15
very successful campaigner in California, winner of two
16
elections by wide margins, one by a very large margin. He is
17
known to the people of California. And the other didn't campaig
18
as actively, spending a great deal of his time in Washington
19
because the Senate was in session. And I think that Max
20
Rafferty himself gave a view that cannot be discounted too
21
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
much. He said that he believed there is such dissatisfaction
22
on the party of the people today with what has been going on
23
that there is a kind of tendency against the incumbent instead
24
of the other way around.
25
MR. STOUT: Not just a swing to the right but against individual
10
1
incumbents?
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
GOVERNOR REAGAN:- That's right. There is a sort of let's have
3
a change
4
MR. HOPE: How much did party loyalty play in the Kuchel-
5
Rafferty race? Kuchel did not support you. He did not support
6
Nixon. He didn't support Goerge Murphy. Was that a major
7
factor?
8
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, you would have to ask the people who
9
voted and why they voted. I would have no way of knowing.
10
MR. HOPE: Well, do you think it was a favor?
11
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I honestly don't know. It was a hard-fought
12
campaign. They criticized each other. But I think there was a
WARD & PAUL
13
basically adherence to our 11th Commandment. There was no --
14
they didn't inject personalities and get into that kind of
15
bitterness at all.
16
MR. HOPE: Well, Rockefeller didn't support Barry Goldwater in
17
1964. Do you think this should be a factor in his candidacy
18
this year? Is he entitled to the nomination, not having sup-
19
ported the nominee in '64?
20
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I am opposed to anything that is going to
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
reopen old wounds or that is going to lessen our chances for
22
making a change. I think it is vitally important in America
23
today that we have a change. I think the present Democratic
24
leadership has taken this country or lack of leadership,
25
actually -- has taken this country down a road that can lead.
11
1
only to disaster and ruin for the country. And I think the
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
issue is far more important than dredging up or remembering an
3
past grudge.
4
MR. HOPE: Well, Republicans have to nominate a nominee. If
5
the people do not know where the Republicans stand, if they do
6
not talk about one another, how are they supposed to decide?
7
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, in California in 1966 we waged a
8
primary in which we campaigned our views and what we would do
9
as opposed to those of the incumbent Democratic administration
10
and the people made the decision on who they thought would be
11
the best replacement for that administration. This does not
12
mean that you take on the other -- you state your case. You
WARD & PAUL
13
run against the opposition. You know, this is a try-out for
14
who is going to run in the big race againstthe other school.
15
And I have likened it with a track meet. If on Wednesday
16
afternoon the kids go out on the track to do a hundred years
17
to determine who is going to run on Saturday against the other
18
school in the big track meet, you try to find out who is the
19
fastest. You don't go down the track spiking each other to SE
20
who can be the only survivor.
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
MR. STOUT; That is a different game, Governor, that is not
22
politics.
23
GOVERNOR REAGAN: No, I don't think it is a different game
24
What are We interested in? We are interested in the views of
25
the Republican candidates and what they would offer and what
12
1
they would propose in contrast to the leadership that we now
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
have in Washington. And thus there is no need to point a
3
finger at any other Republican candidate. You state your case,
4
what you would do.
5
MR. STOUT: It has always happened in every campaign, particu-
6
larly in primaries, and I am sure it happened in the '66 primary
7
between you and George Christopher.
8
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I would ask you to go back and find one
9
word that I ever said about him or he about me.
10
MR. STOUT: But it takes two, you know. He said a great many
11
things.
12
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, whether that had anything to do with
WARD & PAUL
13
the result or not, people made a decision.
14
MR. AGRONSKY: Governor, would you say that there is a funda-
15
mental difference between your position on Vietnam and that of
16
Nelson Rockefeller?
17
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I can't say that I am a complete authority on
18
his position. I used this just as an example a moment ago and,
19
incidentally, let me correct one if I gave an impression
20
there that this meant that I was supposed to be favoring one
21
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
over the other, no. You asked a question; I honestly tried
22
to answer it. But, at the same time, in governors conferences,
23
Governor Rockefeller and I have been in great agreement many
24
times across the table on issues that were confronting us.
25
I know that he has announced. whether he has stated it already
13
1
or not --- a position or that he is going to explain his position
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
on Vietnam. But it has been my -- when I said that I perhaps
3
was closer on that one, you were looking for an example. I
4
think that what I was actually trying to say was that both
5
Richard Nixon and I have over the period of the past year
6
spoken out against the limited war concept, against a win
7
policy and against the need to be there. Now, my impression --
8
MR. AGRONSKY: Against a win policy and against the need to be
9
there -- you mean you are willing to lose --
10
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Against the -- oh, no, did I say "against the
11
win" -- oh, no.
12
MR. AGRONSKY: A no-win policy?
WARD & PAUL
13
GOVERNOR REAGAN: A no-win policy. It has been my impression
14
that perhaps Nelson is placing a little more faith in the
15
negotiations or in some kind of compromise settlement than I
16
find myself able to.
17
MR. AGRONSKY: You have no faith in that prospect in Paris?
18
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Oh, I can hope for peace but I don't hope for
19
the kind of peace that would result in, say, a concession that
20
would allow the Viet Cong to be a part of the South Vietnamese
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
government. I think this would be about the same as the
22
United States government taking the Cosa Nostra in as partners.
23
MR. STOUT: Governor, if we can move to a different topic, the
24
day after Senator Kennedy died -- or perhaps it was the day he
25
died -- you blamed demagogic and irresponsible leaders in and
14
1
out of office. You said that their words had fed this attitude
Phone (Area 202) 028-4266
2
of lawlessness in our society. And, as I recall, after that
3
news conference in Sacramento you refused to identify any of
4
them, or you failed to identify them. Can you tell us now what
5
kind of people do you have in mind? What are their names?
6
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, Bill, let me straighten one thing out.
7
I didn't say demagogic leaders. I said demagogic statements by
8
people in and out of public office. Now, a demoagogic state-
9
ment can be deliberate. It can also be carelessness on the
10
part of the individual who didn't intend to be a demagogue. But
11
you can go back -- one of the reasons for not naming an indi-
12
vidual is to try and pick out and name one would be unfair
WARD & AUL
13
unless you were going to compile a list of all of them and
14
their statements and say, here, all of these statements we
15
think have contributed to this atmosphere. But we have had
16
statements --
17
MR. AGRONSKY: Did you have Senator Robert Kennedy's statements
18
in mind, his own statements?
19
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I can only tell you that Robert Kennedy, in
20
the last several weeks in California, has actually been campaign-
25 K Stre N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
ing on a basis of healing the wounds, restoring law and order,
22
stopping the violence in our country --
23
MR. AGRONSKY: You did not mean Senator Robert Kennedy?
24
GOVERNOR REAGAN: -- and stopping enflaming the --
25
MR. AGRONSKY: Whom did you mean, Governor?
1'
1
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I was talking about -- I wasn't talking al
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
individuals -- I was talking about statements. And I repeat
3
MR. AGRONSKY: Individuals make statements, Governor.
4
GOVERNOR REAGAN: All right, some of them might have been
5
attributed to him. But statements such as someone saying the
6
if he lived in a slum he too would join a rebellion or could
7
wage a --
8
MR. HOPE: Is that what you are talking about?
9
GOVERNOR REAGAN: This is the kind of statement I am talkin
10
about. I am talking about statements made several years ag
11
of a statement that perhaps a jail record would be a mark o
12
honor in this country with regard to being arrested for
WARD &-PAUL
13
demonstrations and so forth. I am talking about any statem
14
of a kind that encourages riots. Now, these could encompas
15
great many commencement speakers of the last week or so who
16
have appeared on a number of campuses, and they come from a
17
number of lines of activity, including academic, including
18
judicial and public figures who have talked about encouragi
19
supposedly just dissent but encouraging the type of rioting
20
that we have seen on our campuses. I claim these statement
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
are demagogic and I claim it is time for anyone who is goin
22
speak publicly to think twice with regard to his words and
23
word that he thinks might be used, even misinterpreted by
24
someone as to be a ticket or an admission for him to go out
25
take the law into his own hands, we had better think twice.
16
1
MR. AGRONSKY: Governor, you have talked about student protests
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
Where would you draw the line on student protests on our
3
campuses?
4
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, we have in this country a built-in
5
system for dissent. This is what we mean by freedom of speech,
6
freedom of assembly. We have a right to try and persuade our
7
fellow citizens, to try and persuade our elected officials.
8
But I think that dissent must stop short of interfering with
9
the rights of other individuals. When a group takes over the
10
administration building and other buildings of a campus, when
11
they interfere with the orderly processes of the administration
12
when they force the cancellation of classes and studies on the
WARD & PAUL
13
part of the ma jority who happens to disagree with them, when
14
they attempt by force to prevent recruiters from various indus-
15
trial firms from coming on a campus seeking future employees,
16
when they go out in the street and stage civil disobedience,
17
it is all well and good to say that they are staging a civil
18
disobedience with an idea that they will pay the price by being
19
arrested, but how do they repay the person who might have been
20
in an ambulance on their way to the hospital who was blocked
K Sweet, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
and held up by this demonstration in the street; how do they
22
repay the person perhaps whose house burned down because the
23
fire department couldn't get through the thousands of people,
24
let us say, in one of our California cities, who were attempting
25
to attack a draft center? Civil disobedience, in taking the
17
1
law into your own hands, you very rarely if at all can do thi
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
without interfering with the basic rights of someone else, and
3
this we have no right to do.
4
MR. HOPE: Do you think the President should have let the Poor
5
People's Campaign camp on public lands in Washington?
6
GOVERNOR REAGAN: No, I don't, unless they were grounds suitable
7
for camping, unless they were coming into an area where this
8
was the custom and where this was proper. Frankly, I am in
9
disagreement with this particular march and I am in disagree-
10
ment with the government's acceptance of it on the basis not of
11
disagreeing with their goals. I think all of us want to do
12
everything we can to lift the standard of living, to bring
WARD & PAUL
13
everyone up as high as they can be brought, to enjoy the things
14
that this society of ours can afford. But I think there is a
15
great disillusionment coming to many people. First of all, the
16
idea that by coming and staging such a demonstration they can
17
persuade the Congress to pass some law that is going to
18
eliminate poverty or alleviate it, even, is a falsehood, and
19
many people are deluded into believing that this can take place
20
There is nothing wrong with the American people or the American
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
government's attitude toward poverty. Our record provès -- we
22
have spent billions of dollars in hundreds of programs in a
23
legitimate effort to try and find an answer to these problems
24
but the truth is it is the manner in which we have done it
25
that has failed. There is no lack of intent. They don't have,
18
1
to persuade Congress to feel a sympathy for the poor. We already
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
have that.
3
MR. AGRONSKY: Governor, they are poor. They feel that the
4
remedy is not in sight immediately for them and they sought
5
this way, apparently, to dramatize their position. This was
6
under the aegis, really, of the right of a public demonstration,
7
the effort of people to seek redress from the Congress itself.
8
But you would disagree with the President in having permitted
9
them to take the position that they did in the shadows, as it
10
were, of the Lincoln Memorial, on public grounds?
11
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Yes. Again, I must say that I think a great
12
many people are going to be disillusioned. We are deluded into
WARD & PAUL
13
believing that this could result in some immediate answer to
14
their problem. Now, again, you get back to dissent and what is
15
needed in this country. There are a great many voices that
16
have been heard -- one of them was the late Senator Robert
17
Kennedy's - saying virtually the same things that I have been
18
saying in California. As a matter of fact, in California he was
19
advocating what we are doing in California, a program to provide
20
jobs for the poor, the minority element. And here, in other
25 K Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
words, was a place proper leaders of the poor should be telling
22
them "support those people today who are advocating a change in
23
the programs that are a failure."
24
MR. STOUT: But, Governor, even before the horror at the
25
Ambassador Hotel, Robert Kennedy also spoke for tougher gun
;
19
1
control laws. And you have said we probably have the best laws
Phone (Area 202) 628-4266
2
in the Nation in California now.
3
GOVERNOR REAGAN: We do. You think We don't? Yes, we do.
4
MR. AGRONSKY: Gentlemen, I really regret our time is up. Thank
5
you very much, Governor Reagan, for being here to FACE THE
6
NATION. A word about next week's guest in a moment.
7
8
ANNOUNCER: Today on FACE THE NATION, Governor Ronald Reagan, of
9
California, was interviewed by CBS News Correspondent Bill Stout,
10
Paul Hope of The Washington Star, CBS News Correspondent Martin
11
Agronsky led. the questioning. Next week, Senator Thomas Dodd, of
12
Connecticut, leader in the fight for a strong gun control bill,
WARD & AUL
13
and Harold Glassen, President of the National Rifle Association,
14
which is fighting additional gun control legislation, will FACE
15
THE NATION. FACE THE NATION was recorded yesterday at Station
16
KOTV, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
17
18
19
20
25 k act, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002
21
22
23
24
25
4/21/69
Excerpts of Remarks
by Governor Ronald Reagan
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
Anaheim, April 21, 1969
In setting down some thoughts for my remarks to you this
evening, I reviewed several of the recent reports concerning the
California Association of Christian Schools. I was especially
pleased to learn that your enrollment is now well past the 26,000
mark.
Private schools have always had a tremendously important
role in our nation's -- and our State's -- educational system.
It is essential to our total education system that private schools
thrive. The private institution often serves as a pace setter,
and today, particularly, is 8 vital link to reality. Private in-
stitutions are an educational whetstone --- helping to hone the
educational process, forcing the public system to compete in the
drive for excellence -- making possible wider educational opportunities
and thus improving both the private and the public school systems.
They are, in fact, full partners in the pursuit of knowledge.
I believe there are some very valid reasons -- some compelling
factors -- for your splendid growth these past years
reasons over
and above the outstanding capabilities, dedication and hard work
of your leadership, your faculties and your supporters.
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
-2-
First, because you are private institutions -- free enter-
prise schools, as it were -- you know you must produce. It is a
real sacrifice for parents to spend the extra money to pay for this
education for their children -- especially when it is over and above
the heavy costs they must also pay for the public education system;
and therefore, they must expect a better product. The fact that
you are growing indicates your schools are producing that superior
product.
Second, I think your growth is due to the academic environ-
ment you provide in and through your schools. In today's sea of
campus turmoil, your schools are like an island of dedication and
purpose. You are a part of the bulwark of morality which is essen-
tial to the foundation of freedom -- history shows that we cannot
have one without the other.
And, most importantly of all, I think your growth is due to
the fact the God-oriented atmosphere of your classrooms and your
activities. God is not dead on your campuses -- he is not forgotten,
not shut out
he is very much a living, motivating force. And
this is the key.
Just as our forefather wove God, into the very fabric of
government, so we must reweave God into our government if we are to
build any kind of an acceptable future. "Where the spirit of the
Lord is, there is liberty". As Dr. Louis Evans said, if we are to
go anywhere tomorrow, we must add God to gold and Christ to commerce
and soul to science.
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
-3-
And, as Milton Mayer wrote, today's education sometimes
teaches us how to say "no" to our enemies but very seldom teaches
us how to say no to our friends -- and almost never teaches us how
to say "no" to ourselves. Through your association and its member
schools, comes an education which not only teaches you when and
how to say "No" to your enemies, your friends and yourself, it is
an education which also teaches you how to give the right "Yes" the
challenges of life.
We remember how Christ feed the multitudes with the youngsters'
loaves and fishes -- how he magnified the seven loaves, and the few
little fishes, to feed the thousands. In that parable there is 2
message for your schools -- and for each one of you. In these days,
when the world is hungry for morality -- if only someone will speak
out; when the world is searching for integrity, if only some will
speak the truth; when the world is crying for leadership ---- if only
someone will give it
you can be the loaves, you can be the fishes,
to multiply and help feed the spirit of man.
The most significant dimension of the future -- the future of
this nation, and your future -- will be spiritual. For the real
challenge of tomorrow is not simply how many bathtubs or how many
TV sets, or how many two-car families we produce or own -- the real
challenge of tomorrow is whether we will rediscover America's
spiritual heritage and reapply morality and virtue to our national
life. It will profit us little if we gain the whole material world
and lose our soul.
Calif. Assn, of Christian Schools
-4-
Economics and greatness of spirit need not be imcompatible.
We have spent decades applying ourselves and our resources through
a free enterprise system based on spiritual commitment -- and this
free enterprise system has built a mighty material foundation for
this nation. It is the task of coming generations to maintain, and
build, that material foundation -- but to give the greatest attention
to a future of spiritual greatness. If we are to really go anywhere
tomorrow, it must be not simply outward and upward
but inward
and upward.
We have abandoned at our peril some of the basic rules and
spiritual nature of freedom in these last few decades -- and,
strangely enough, we have done this in the name of social progress,
claiming all the time the most humane of motives. In the effort to
meet the material needs of those who fell behind in the economic race,
we have somehow found ourselves not only striving to meet their needs,
but also their wants -- while too often ignoring the needs or encouragin
the wants of their spirit.
Years ago, during the great depression, a mother scrimped and
saved and, with a scholarship, managed to send her son off to college.
As he was getting ready to leave, she handed him a Bible and
said, "Son, keep in touch with the Lord. No matter how hard you work
on other things, spend a little time each day reading the scriptures.
Seek first the kingdom of the Lord, and all things will be added unto
you. 11
Sometime later, the sen wrote home and as most students do at
one time or another asked for some extra money to help him over a
rough spot. His mother wrote back, "Read your Bible. Downhearted
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
-5-
and bewildered at his mother's heartlessness, the boy finally turned
to his Bible and there, tucked between its pages, was a ten dollar
bill.
You see, somewhere along the line -- without realizing it --
we seem to have discarded some of the important answers which are
so important if this nation and this way of life is to endure. And,
if we will go back and find those answers -- we'll find the solution
to our other problems.
We have discarded, for example, the factor of incentive; in our
desire to be humane, we have helped people without requiring that
they also do what they can to help themselves, and so it became easy
to pass over incentive, to think we're doing everything we could to
help our fellow man when, in reality, we were being a party to his
gradual self destruction.
There was a mother who raised her daughters -- and she had
an incentive system. She used to put a $5 bill under the papers on
the pantry shelves. The daughter who was industrious enough ---
diligent enough -- to find theflve dollars was allowed to keep it.
When the daughters were grown, one of them was telling HER daughters
how their grandmother had raised her. One of the girls asked, "Why
didn't you ever do that with us?" And she said, "I did." 11
We have lived more than three decades with an ever-increasing
assumption by government of those functions which were once performed
by the people themselves
and we've become too accustomed to the
style of government doing for the people some of the things they
should be doing for themselves.
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
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During the floods that devastated so many areas of California
last winter, I made a tour of the State. In addition to checking on
the various government public works programs such as road repair
and so forth, I saw many people like ourselves and our neighbors
who had suffered grieviously -- and for whom there were no govern-
ment programs. And I started talking about the need for us to return
to something we drifted away from in this country of ours -- the old
fashioned concept of helping your neighbor; the Christian admonition
to "love thy neighbor as thyself."
Coming back to Sacramento after the trip, we called a meeting
of government and civic leaders from around the State and asked them
what could be done to organize a program of person-to-person, neighb
to-neighbor help. During the course of the moeting, we were told
that this idea of helping one another in such situations was not only
out-of-date, it was prehistoric and furthermore, we were told
(and I quote) "that the system obviates the need for individual
assistance.
"
Can this be true? Can this be true without also obviating
the need for the individual, as well? And, if this is the way it is,
or the way it comes to pass, then don't we become people of the
government rather than a government of the people (and there is a
vast difference)?
Can you imagine what would have happened if that social system
had existed back in the days of the Good Samaritan who voluntarily
crossed the road to help the poor, set-upon, broken and bleeding
pilgrim? Under the "new" philosophy, I guess he would have taken
a look at the poor man lying there and said, "cool it, Mac. When I
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
-7-
get to the next town, I'll call Caesar and they'll see if the welfare
department can do something for you.
Has the system obviated the need for the individual, and for
the individual's personal effort? I think not. No government, no
agency, no system at any level can possibly be big enough --- in size
or soul -- to match the great potential of the people. And those
who would try to substitute the system for the individual -- as well
as those who would accept the system as a substitute for individual
effort, would do well to go back to the scriptures, to Paul's first
letter to the Corinthians. Paul had a message for today -- for the
bureaucrat and for the un-involved
for the person who would have
the State be our shepherd; it should be printed and framed and placed
in every capitol, every office, every home.
"And though I bestow my goods upon the poor and though I give
my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing."
Love doesn't need a middle man --- there is little love in a govern-
ment program. Love requires personal effort; love is a personal
thing.
We haven't lost it yet, this love -- this desire to help.
Two hundred and fifty million man-hours a week are contributed
in this country --- given voluntarily by our people in church work,
in charitable causes, in youth work. And just recently a Gallup
Poll showed that 70 percent of the people in this country said,
"Yes," they would be willing to give up four hours each week to help
their fellowmen
if they were just asked, just shown what to do.
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
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But, too often they aren't asked -- because there are too
many who ignore them and let the system obviate the need for in-
dividual participation.
Now, no one can prove that this robbing of the people of their
opportunity to help -- to participate in community affairs -- is
responsible for the problems of today -- the crime problem, for
example; the subtle erosion of compassion and honor, the disinte-
gration of honesty and ethics, the compromise with truth -- the
easy-way-out, the comfortable anonymity of the faceless crowd; the
erosion of public standards which make it easier and easier to
accept an erosion of personal standards and vice versa --- standards
which once compelled us to follow the same rules when we weren't
being observed that we followed when we were; this ease in which
we substitute the public norms for the unyielding, uncompromising
personal values of the Judaic-Christian conviction.
How has this come about -- this rise in crime and this crashing
decent of morals, this disintegration of ethics, this transposition
of love into lust -- how has it come to pass that we lost our way?
What is turning our dream into a nightmare?
I think it is due, in large part, to the fact we have lost
the faith of our fathers. In a recent column about General Eisenhower's
funeral services, James Reston worried about this, too. He wrote:
"The choir at the National Cathedral in Washington sang the
old hymn. The opening line is: Faith of our fathers, living still',
and despite all the modern denials of the point, it is probably still
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
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true.. The first line of the chorus, however, is different: 'Faith
of our fathers, holy faith, we will be true to thee till death' --
and that clearly is not true for most Americans.
"Nevertheless", Reston goes on, "for believers and nonbelievers
alike, some facts are plain. The political life and spirit of this
country were based on religious convictions. America's view of the
individual was grounded on principle, clearly expressed by the
founding fathers, that man was a symbol of his Creator, and therefore
possessed certain inalienable rights which no temporal authority
had the right to violate.
"That this conviction helped shape our laws and sustained
American men and women in their struggle to discipline themselves
and conquer a continent even the most atheistic historian would
defend. And this raises a question which cannot be avoided. If
religion was so important in the building of the republic, how could
it be irrelevant to the maintenance of the republic? And if it is
irrelevant for the nonbelievers, what will they put in its place?"
Yes, and for those for whom God is dead -- just what will
they put in His place? From what we've seen during recent months
and years -- not very much, and not very good.
General of the Armies, Omar Bradley, put it this way:
We have many men of science; we have too few men of God.
11 We have mastered the theory of the atom; and we have rejected
the Sermon on the Mount.
POSSIBLE INSERT FOR SPEECH, MONDAY, APRIL 21,1969
CALIF. ASSOCIATION OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
ORANGE COUNTY CONVENTION CENTER
Just recently, in a town not far from here, a seventeen year old
boy died from an overdose of drugs -- he was a pill dropper, as they say.
This is in itself a tragedy. But the real tragedy is that his friends --
the boys and girls with whom he travelled -- knew he was on dope, and
did nothing to help him; in effect, they let him die. Oh, not that
they sat around and said, "Well, he's going to die -- let him. " But
they watched him getting worse and worse, they watched his sickness and
his torment, and they did nothing to help him.
They said they loved him -- at the funeral they shed their tears.
But that was too late -- they didn't love him enough to help him when
he needed it.
If they had found him cut and bleeding and broken in the street
or on the sidewalk, they would have nursed his wounds and rushed him to
a hospital. But, they saw him broken by drugs and dying in body and
soul from drugs; and they did nothing. They didn't go to the police,
they didn't go to the medical authorities, they didn't go to the school
authorities -- because they love him and they didn't want to get him in
trouble
and, I suppose, they didn't want to get themselves in trouble.
And so this young man -- who the year before had been a star
athlete and a good student --- went down' and down, and last week he
came to the end of his road -- in part the victim of a system which
obviated the need for individual assistance, a system which in this
case finally obviated the individual:
RW:dg
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
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"We are nuclear giants and ethical infants.
"We have achieved brilliance without wisdom, and power with-
out conscience
11
Sometimes, it seems, we are in a position similar to that
in which the rich merchant found himself - you'll remember the
scripture. The harvest was rich and his barns were overflowing
and there were still more fields to be picked. And so he leaned
back and smiled and said: "Tonight I will eat and drink and take
mine ease and tomorrow -- tomorrow I will build bigger barns! "
Thou fool, said the Lord, Thou Fool. This night thy soul
shall be required of thee.
Well, I wonder when the soul of America will be required of
us.
In this moment in history we you and I -- find ourselves
in the position of being a vehicle for those who believe in human
dignity as it was endowed by our Creator
an instrument for those
to whom God can be very much alive -- for those who view with under-
standing the idealism of our times and who want to move with com-
passion to solve the pressing problems
who want to exercise the
love spoken of by St. Paul, who want to use common sense and disciplined
imagination to build the balance between reality and desire, who
want to discard the fraudulent theory that we are our brother's
brother
and to revitalize the precept that each individual is
entitled to the full rewards of his labor, and that the initiative
of free citizens in a free, competitive enterprise is the mainspring
of human progress
Calif. Assn. of Christian Schools
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and to do these things -- not because they may be politi- -
cally smart, or popular, but because they are the morally right thing
to do.
No nation in history has ever denied God and continued to
write on the pages of history that have been allotted to them;
this lesson from the past should be our guiding torch for the future.
Private schools -- Christian schools -- will be a very
important part of that future -- coming generations may rise or
fall -- feed the multitudes the food of the spirit as well as the
mind and the body
be the leaven in a glorious tomorrow.
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