But it was an awareness of what it meant in my life, and i mean an awareness of the importance of the occasion. And at the same time, a great prayer in my mind that i could meet the responsibilities. Godfrey a lot of people have told us that one of your greatest strengths was that you had an agenda of just a few big things that you wanted to change. Can you tell me what your goals were . Pres. Reagan yes, the country was in the economic doldrums. It doubled inflation, great unemployment, the economy stagnating, the people of the country seems to have lost a belief in themselves and in the country. Also, there was a matter of National Security. On any given day, half of our military planes couldnt take off for lack of spare parts. Half of our naval vessels had that or lack of crew. So i was determined that we had to restore the economy, and i have been asked many times, and campaigning if i ran into the deficit problem because we have been deficit spending for almost half a century, with only a few years scattered here and there where there was not an annual deficit. I would be asked questions about what what i do about National Security and the spending for that in the face of a deficit . I said, i would have to choose National Security. So, we set out to restore the economy. I had some definite ideas on that. One of them was a very controversial one and that was i had a degree in economics. I believed and from experience and our own history, that the best way to increase government revenues was to cut the taxes, not spend them. To restore incentive. We had a wide range of tax cuts, and it worked. There was a sizable increase in our revenues as those tax cuts to affect, and there still is today. So, it was to get that done. Then, i always believed there was a hunger for a spiritual revival in our country. Not only a revival in those things of morality and family and so forth, but in our nation as a whole. And we set out to do that. I hear it from a great many people who say it, that they now have a restored belief in our country. Godfrey some people speak about the United States is moving forward as being number one when you speak about american pride. Thats not easy for other americans to relate to. Do you worry about that . Pres. Reagan there is something you have to remember about america. This is the melting pot. All of us, by the will of ourselves or by our ancestors, came to this country from someplace else. You dont quit loving your mother because you have taken a wife. All of us still have a feeling of attachment to our original sources. So, i think that still is a part of our makeup. It does not mean we are denigrating whats happening anyplace else, it just means that we want to live up to the heritage that has been given us. Created a new climate of business for the early years of an ministration. Some of the stock market is down, some of the businesses and Economic Data is not so good, how confident are you that the country is truly contested . That competitive . Pres. Reagan all of the things we had to deal with there, and i know i have not explained them well, but we are in the 65th month of a sustained economic expansion. That is the longest period of expansion in our nations history. There is a thing in our country called the potential employment pool. All the people who wanted the job are available for work. The highest percentage of that pool is employed today and has ever been true in our nations history. Never mind the stock slump or something in the market. I learned in economics that there is nothing so timid as 1 million. I think all the signs are there, from employment and the fact that we have gotten inflation under control, down from the double digits of what it was. So i believe that our economy is on a sound basis. Godfrey we went with you when you made your speech at notre dame. You said that the Manufacturing Industry was not in difficulty. Its impossible not to notice that the plants have moved to mexico or abroad. Do you think government should be doing something about restoring the competitiveness of american industry . Pres. Reagan we have a program of trying to restore competitiveness because our standard is so high that cost of production is higher than and many countries. We are not going to lower our standard of living to be a little bit more competitiveness. All we ask is a fair Playing Field with other nations. But i would like to point out that, in this broad nation of ours, average figures for the nation do not apply to every sector. There are going to be pockets of unemployment or the manufacturing plant closed because there is no longer a market with product. I think back to some earlier days of what happened. They had to find a new job someplace. This is true, there are signs of actual economic decline nationwide. There are areas where they were concentrated around a particular industry and that industry has changed. In some instances, it has changed because of technology. They find that they can produce with the development of many machines and so forth that they have developed something where they dont require as many employees. But as a result of that we have a mobile society. If people are accustomed in this country of moving and going to other areas, then we find areas in this country where we are begging for employees. Right now, in the nations capitol here. Last sunday, the local papers had ads. Those are the ads where there are hundreds on one page. 74 full pages last sunday of employers looking for employees. Godfrey in general, over the past eight years in the United States, there have been winners and there have been losers. How do you feel yourself about the losers . Pres. Reagan i think that anyone who is faced with need, and to no fault of his own or her own, yes, government can play a part in helping them. My criticism, one of the things change seeking to get change is the nature of welfare reform is that its one thing to help someone, to once again become selfsustaining, but its another thing when government then introduces a Welfare Program that actually preserves the jobs for the bureaucrats and it makes the dependence of that individual permanent rather than seeking to get them out of that to where they could earn their own livelihood. Godfrey you mentioned the buzz the budget deficit earlier, it was one of your serious mandates when you were elected to balance the government. U. S. Is the biggest debtor nation in the world. How do you feel about that . Pres. Reagan i am just as critical of it as i was before i got here. The budget by that time was 1 trillion. I knew that there was no way you could balance the budget in one year without pulling the rug out from any number of institutions. But i said that we must set out to get us on a downward path to when we can look ahead and make sure that we would be balanced. And at that point also, i advocated an amendment to our constitution that would be a permanent necessity of a balanced budget. But the budget had been getting out of control for a number of years, as i said earlier. We have not been balancing for more than a half a century. Now, what happened back about 15 years before 1980, the middle 1960s. President johnsons administration adopted a program called war on poverty. It was a Great Program of Government Programs to help one kind or another. Poverty won in that war because beginning in 1965 to 1980, in those 15 years, the budget multiplied to almost five times what it had been. The budget deficit multiplied to 52 times what it had been. So that when we came here, it was built in to the structure, and it has just kept on doing this. Our fight with the legislature in all those years has been to working at the cuts and bring this down in a way we can balance it. Godfrey are you frustrated by the difficulties that every president has with working with the congress when it is controlled by the other party . There are frustrations. There has always been that kind of contest. Years when congress has sought to restrain constitutional powers of the president. That has continued. There are areas they have restricted the president , in such a way, i think, it acts against the best interests of the country. Do you feel you are losing that battle with the congress . Well, there may be some things here or there where they have increased their attempt to control but the fight goes on. A lot of people would never have believed back in 1981 that you would be flying to moscow, that you would be negotiating with the soviet leadership and getting on quite well with the soviet leadership. When did you decide, when did you change your mind about negotiating . I have always felt there should be negotiations. I have always felt that that was the answer, not an eventual war, as so many think built into their thinking that it is inevitable someday. You must remember, when i first came here in the first two years i was here, soviet leaders kept dying on me. I met with some. We will be having a fourth summit when i go to moscow. I came here with a belief that what was needed was realism and strength. Do not be lured into a detente because it sounds good or to make a treaty in which you shake hands and yet you know that the evils are still going on. Realism was to make evidence that i had a career view of what the differences were. Strength was in the building up of our defense structure and some things such as when i came here, they had leveled were aimed at europe and the great targets of europe, nuclear missiles. There was no counter weapon in europe against that. The nato nations had asked this country prior to my arrival for us to provide a counter weapon. So it fell to me to begin the installation of this. The soviet union protested about our installing these weapons. I offered an alternative. I said, look, we are willing to not put those weapons in there if you would eliminate yours. Lets have a 00 agreement between us and those weapons. Well, they walked away from the table. They would not even discuss it. We went ahead and installed the weapons, and one day, they came back and said they would like to talk 00 with us and i think this is another evidence that strength, you have to deal from strength. Do you still think of the soviet union as an evil empire . Fmr. Pred. Reagan i have to because of the many things that are being done there to their own people, not just to other countries where they sought to influence them and make them communist allies, but in looking at their own people and denying people the right to practice religion. Virtually the taking away of the children from the family with regard to its raising of education. All of the things of that kind, the person whose career can be destroyed in the soviet union simply if they express a desire to emigrate. Among the downtrodden and unemployed, the labor camps for Political Prisoners that are there just simply because they do not agree with some of the governments policies. Yes, i find that evil. I think they are violating some of the principles in the helsinki pact with regards to human rights. Reporter many of your closest conservative supporters are troubled by your policy. They assert it could seriously put the security of the United States and the west at risk. What do you say to them . Fmr. Pres. Reagan they dont know what they are talking about. I have said many times a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought. I was very interested to hear a foreign minister of the soviet union repeat those words himself not too long ago. The present the policy that existed when i came in called the mutual assured instruction, destruction, was a policy based on both of us having enough Nuclear Weapons. When the other one started a war with Nuclear Weapons, you could retaliate. Well, what kind of a defense is that . In a nuclear war, how could there be a victor after those Nuclear Weapons exploded all over the country and made it radioactive . The people who once lived in chernobyl still cannot go back there to live because of the poison. My feeling is we start eliminating these Nuclear Weapons and getting rid of them. I am also very determined that after the present treaty before we proceed any further, such as the tactical battlefield weapons, then we must negotiate. Before we do that, we must negotiate a reduction of the conventional weapons down to parity to make sure that one country will not have an advantage over the other. Reporter why have you insisted on keeping the capability to build a Strategic Defense Initiative as opposed to detente . Fmr. Pres. Reagan because that is the ultimate way to get rid of Nuclear Weapons. To make them obsolete. If you have to face shooting them with no knowledge as to whether you can get one through to its target, then why go on with those costly weapons . I asked in the very beginning i am not a scientist. I brought in our people and our military leaders, and i said is it worthwhile . Is it possible to look and see if there cannot be developed a defensive weapon, there has been one for every other offensive weapon since history began. A defensive weapon that could actually intercept those missiles as they came out of their silos on the way . They came back to me after talking it all over and said, yes, they think this is worth investigating. We have made great progress now. We know we are on the way to such a defensive program. I have never considered a bargaining chip to giveaway and return for eliminating a certain number of missiles my thought is that once such a thing is proven and practical, then we can all take a look at our Nuclear Weapons and say we do not need these anymore. In fact, i told general secretary gorbachev that if and when we were able to establish there is such a weapon, they have been working on such a thing for 15 years longer than us. If we should get it first, i would be willing to share the information with them. On the basis that we all get rid of our Nuclear Weapons. Are you afraid that im sorry. Thats wonderful, mr. President. [indiscernible] i can understand the argument for this strategic defense. Is there a danger that insisting on this would miss a historic opportunity of doing a deal with the soviets on this missile . Fmr. Pres. Reagan no, it seemed perhaps that way at reykjavik when we finally found ourselves agreeing completely on the eventual elimination of all the weapons. And then, the general secretary put the price on that as our stopping the development of sdi, so i came home. We are now back negotiating on a treaty to cut in half the strategic ballistic missiles. Reporter many people in europe are afraidthat that sdi might be a sign of a weakening american commitment because the United States could defend itself but also others could be a sign of a weakening commitment. What do you say to those people . Fmr. Pres. Reagan i have said it to them. I met with our nato allies and made it plain exactly what i see as the goal is not just for us but for all of us. All of them, too. I think they see now i can understand it. They have been led to believe that maybe this Nuclear Umbrella which was part of the basis for nato was going to be eliminated and leave them facing that gigantic conventional force there. And i convinced them that we have nothing of that kind in mind and that there would have to be the inclusion of conventional weapons as we went further in any agreements. I think they are all very satisfied now because that is our first line of defense. Reporter before we leave this subject to Nuclear Weapons, can you Say Something about the personal burden of being president in the nuclear age . How conscious are you of the fact that that decision is ultimately yours . Fmr. Pres. Reagan i think you are conscious of what can happen. You certainly would not want to be presiding when such a thing takes place. I have always felt that it is you do not become president. You are given temporary custody over an institution called the presidency, and with that goes some responsibilities. And if you are willing to raise your hand and say i do, so help me god, you have to accept that these are now your responsibilities. Reporter do you literally lose sleep over it . Fmr. Pres. Reagan no, i sleep pretty well. After i have said my prayers. Reporter what do you understand by what is called the reagan doctrine . Fmr. Pres. Reagan well, the reagan doctrine was based on the recovery of that economic slump we were in and putting it on a firm basis such as reductions in tax and so forth. It was also based on my belief that one of the great strengths of america is that it is a federation of sovereign states, and our constitution from the beginning provided certain rights and laws that belong at the state level, where they were in charge. And over the years, again, the Congress Passed bills that invaded that right and was taking more and more federal power to where it almost looked as if the federal government was trying to make the states just administrative districts of the federal government, so i pledged also a return to this federal system, and we have been working at that. There is also a part of that, this need for the people. To once again recognize their responsibility as citizens because our constitution is different from most all of those in the rest of the world. It is not a document in which the government says with the people can do. We the people tell you the government what you can do. I wanted to restore all of that, so that was part of it, including dealing with the nations abroad and seeking to help wherever we could, developing nations throughout the world to understand democracy and to choose democracy and Free Enterprise as their path. Reporter mr. President , perhaps one of the worst crises of your presidency rose over what is called the iran contra affair. What was the driving force behind that . Fmr. Pres. Reagan it is something that with all of the investigations by the committees and the special investigators and so forth, has been completely missed, overlooked, and distorted. We have been trying for a long time behind the scenes to bring about peace between iran and iraq. We knew we were not the favorite people of the houmani because of our relationships with the shah. Let me put it this way. It started with this. By way of a third co