 You've learned about six, seven more figures. Just wondering if you had any, you know, profound thoughts about it all, any special thoughts about a last campaign, maybe a last hurrah or something. You've learned from the past, you might want it differently this time. Lessons learned. No, as a matter of fact, I haven't, and I didn't even give it a thought about the last until we're getting on the speech and reference to the fact that this would be the last time and I'll be doing this at a convention and then for the first time it dawned on me, but maybe that's one of the things that goes with my age. It's, no, I haven't any regrets or anything about that. Do you have any special feeling about a final campaign, a last campaign? Just that I hope it'll be successful. Assuming you win, what do you want to really get done in your second term? What's your last four years in office? Well, I think that's, I keep thinking how similar it is to the second term as governor that I want to follow the pattern that we've laid down. I want to continue until we have more than a beginning with regard to the economic problems and which I think can be laid to government, government becoming too big a part of the economy and to get government down and back to where it is supposed to be. I recognize it has very legitimate functions that it must perform. I think government always, any government as an institution has a tendency to go beyond those limits and to begin to see other things that things it should do without considering whether it is interfering with the natural processes. I want to continue along that line. Do you want to cut back some more? Well, I want to get government down to where I think it is at the most economical level it can get and perform the services that government is supposed to perform. I, over and above that, there are some social things that I would like to see government do and in the international area, I'm still determined that we must get a handle on nuclear weapons. I would like to believe that we could eventually get them completely eliminated in the world. You've dealt with three different Soviet leaders, two of whom have died in the office and you've sent some personal letters, I guess, gotten press releases back practically. Tell me a little bit about the frustrations you've had dealing with the Kremlin. Well, in some ways, I think they're the ones that are frustrated. They've, you know, three leaders in three years and they don't have, as we do, a really legitimate way of replacing leadership and so I think it's caused great traumas there and a certain amount of confusion and that's reflected in their relations with us and other countries, but we have to find an answer to our problems because the United States and the Soviet Union are the only two that could cause a war and we're not going to cause a war and therefore I look forward to being able to meet with them to if they are fearful of us and really fearful, not just to put on, I would like to do what could be done to eliminate that fear and prove to them that we have no designs on anyone and at the same time, if that's mixed up with their philosophy of a world revolution and their eventual domination, to let them know that that is the threat to world peace. When do you think you can meet with them? Well, I would assume that if there is a second administration or second term that it could be some time in that, we've announced our willingness to meet with them before but it appears that that's growing less likely. But how early in a second term do you think that you can meet with the Soviet Union? Well, I feel about that the same as I feel about right now that we're ready anytime and for any place. Do you expect to put out any special effort or anything or once we're elected to? We haven't gotten much credit for it but that's what we've been doing is putting out special effort. We have really been working at this. Yes, sir. Well, with the constant relations that we have, diplomatic relations with the, we have actually proposed a great number of agreements to them and some have now been recognized but they range all the way from the major arms negotiations and we are negotiations with them in two places but the chemical weapons, the testing, the space, all of these things, we have finally worked out with them, something we started with almost when we first came here. That was the agreement on a better hotline system to further reduce the possibility of accident and finally have agreement with them on that. So this thing that so many people seem to indicate that we're sitting back doing nothing and waiting for something, no, we have been, we're the ones that propose the meetings, we're the ones that have proposed reductions of arms. When we went for total elimination of intermediate range weapons in Europe and they were totally unwilling to do that, we said, all right, then are you willing to sit down and we can start negotiating about say at least a reduced number of them and they sat down at that and then walked out. Well, is this personally frustrating for you to try to work out a personal relationship with these people? Well, there's bound to be some frustration with it and yet it isn't totally unexpected. I've had a, well, I think I've been something of a student of international relations where our two countries are concerned for many years even before I became governor and I remember when some of your fraternity when I was running for governor said that if I didn't stop thinking about international problems and start thinking about domestic California problems, I wouldn't be governor. Let me ask a question that's difficult to ask but more and more now columnist TV commentators are talking about your age and saying that you may not be able to make it to a second term on all cylinders, that you may be physically well but mentally you may be slipping. What assurance do the American people have that that's not true and how do you say about that? Well, it's pretty hard to assure the American people if the means of communication, meaning the media have through some kind of journalistic incest decided to gang up on that subject. Now, let me give a classic example very recently of something that has appeared not once but several times by different writers in different forms of the media, the opening of the Olympics. Aha, they used an example that I couldn't even memorize the couple of sentences of the official statement opening the Olympics. Well, that's absolutely false. I looked at the statement sitting up there in the press box at the Coliseum and the line that I thought was the principle line they had first and then some just further words about the Olympics generally to follow the first that they had first the line I hereby declare these games are open. And Mr. Euberoth was there beside me and I said, do I have your permission to switch these two lines? And he kind of looked at question at me before he answered and I said, I think the applause line you have first. And I said, I think if that's the big line that's the one that should close. Whatever I say, he agreed immediately. He said, fine, go ahead. So I switched the two lines and then it took a week or two it seems before suddenly I was reading that I couldn't memorize those two sentences. But there's reports that you doze off during cabinet meetings. I think Mike when he was talking that was trying to say and what he did say that there are some meetings in which particularly if you're suffering a time lapse jet lag, you know if you're someplace where you're off your schedule that you kind of have to battle to stay with the meeting. I've had a lot of experience in that. And those four trips for President Nixon, three to Asia and one to several countries in Europe where immediately after landing with 10 hours time difference you find yourself sitting with the head of state and dealing with him. But I think enough number of people have said since they've never seen me asleep in a meeting. Do you have trouble keeping awake sometimes? No, the problem is the other way if you were interviewing Nancy she'd tell you that she is like a dutiful mother she is always after me to take naps. I can't take naps. I don't sleep on the airplane or when we're traveling. Didn't you used to take naps during campaigns and things like that? No, the only time I took naps was right after the shooting in March of 81. And when I was recovering from that and that all disappeared when I was finally recovered. When somebody asked you about this four years ago in New York Times, Ryder, you said that you would take tests, some sort of test of, you know. Well, I said that I took these annual physical examinations and if I ever thought that and the result of one of those I was not capable of performing the job but I said at the same time I think I would be the first to know if I had lost a capability to reason or to think and if so, obviously I would step down. Let me ask you about some of these social issues that you'd like to get done in the second term. You seem to be talking more about religion the last few months, the last couple of years and I remember you years ago and is that because you've become more religious or you think that it's more acceptable politically now or more popular or why is that? No, I'm certainly not more religious than I was. I was raised that way and I have a very great faith and I do. Like with many people, most people it was for a time not having been in this kind of public life it was difficult for me to talk about something that was so personal with me but in public life I feel there's a responsibility with regard to moral issues as well as whether you're going to raise or not raise the taxes and so forth and so I think it has come to be that I have overcome that personal privatization, if you will and felt that I have a responsibility to talk in this and I don't know that I made it the issue. I think also what has happened in these years has been what I spoke of this morning, the very busy activity of some people who are trying to so secularize government that we literally would have not freedom of religion meaning the protection by government of religion but that we would have government and adversary of religion. Let me ask you, what do you want your legacy to be? I mean that's a question I'm sure everybody asks but you've got four years left assuming you're re-elected in public office what do you want people to remember you for particularly and conversely not what don't you want to be, I mean remember, what failure do you want to escape? Well, just failure to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish what I would like to see accomplished and if there's going to be any remembering the remembered for is that I preserved or helped the people preserve and were necessary restore the original concept of this government and this country which was limited government, the utmost the ultimate in individual freedom and government retained at the levels closest to the people, to the furthest extent possible. The great secret of our freedom all these 200 years has been that we are a federation of sovereign states and that within the state, the community, the things that are of immediate interest to the people the education of their children, things of that kind those are decided at the community level than those that we call broader at the state. The federal government was to be the protector of our national security from outside forces and all. It had a number of things that the federal government should do and does very well. Those things that cross state lines and that become a multiple problem are for the federal government but we did go through a long period when the federal government was usurping power and authority that were never intended for it. You think it still is? Well, we haven't eliminated it to the extent possible. This is why I started the program called federalism but let me give you one example. In 1932, and I cast my first vote as a Democrat for a party that then was campaigning for a return to states and local communities of authority they said had been unjustly seized by the federal government. At that time, the governments of the United States were taking a dime out of every dollar earned. Total governments and only a third of that paid for the federal government. Two thirds did all the things at the state and local level and kept the schools and did all the things that we needed. Well, today, we're far above that. We're well above a third and sometimes it seems like gonna go halfway but two thirds of that now, that bigger amount is going to the federal government and only one third is going to the states and the local communities. By your answer it would seem that that would supersede a arms agreement or a continued peace with the Soviets on your priority list. Because remember, the first primary function of the federal government is the national security. And that's why strangely enough with all of the attack on our defense budgeting it seems strange to me because historically national defense was approaching half of the national budget, the federal budget. Well ours is only about 26 or 27% of the federal budget and yet suddenly there is this great furor and this uproar that we somehow have gone way overboard in a direction that this country has never taken. You've got this terrible deficit, okay. You've got this terrible deficit facing you. Yeah. How committed are you to getting that thing down? Oh, I've been committed for 30 years. You know, but it's going up. All right, yes. It's a little bit like guns and butters. Yes, just the same as the size of government has been inevitably rising and all. We have not been able to turn that to a decline yet. We have been able to have the rate of increase but these things that we're built in and then when you have a recession with the programs that we have and no one wants to do away with them of unemployment insurance and food stamps and so forth you increase the outgo in a recession at the same time you decrease the revenue because of the people that are now no longer paying taxes but are actually getting support from the government. But here again, the deficit, yes, it's a tremendous figure but for 50 years, ever since the new deal started the policy of the opposing party has been one that deficits were no problem. But you're in charge now. Yes, I'm in charge except there isn't one line in the Constitution that says a president can spend a nickel. The spending is dictated by the Congress and for the 20 years since World War II that there have been Republican presidents for 14 of those 20 years Republican presidents have had a Congress that both houses were controlled but the Democratic Party and for an additional four years they have had, we have had one house of the Congress but they have still had the people's house the House of Representatives. I think it'd be interesting once there was only two years that a Republican president out of these 20 had a Republican Congress that was two years of Dwight Eisenhower and incidentally inflation didn't go up penny during that time. But now let me just finish on the deficit though. We, you know, the old saying figures don't lie but liars configure. It depends on whether you're going to now determine it by the number of dollars. It is not all that horrendous if you look at it from the standpoint of what percentage is it of the gross national product? Because at the same time that the deficit is up the whole gross national product is up and that's the ratio that has to be figured. It's like when so many of you assailed me a couple of years ago when there was a 36 point drop in the stock market and you said it was the greatest drop since 1929, the big crash, when it dropped 38 points but no pointed out and one pointed out that when it dropped 38 points in 1929 the Dow Jones average was only 200. When it dropped 36 points in our administration the Dow Jones was over 1,000. 36 is not as big a percentage as that. The same is true of the deficit but we're going to with growth in the economy. Look, last year the deficit was 195 billion. It's more than $21 billion less already in the estimate for this year. Growth in the economy, further reductions of spending and not as our opponents say eliminating total programs that government possibly should perform. No. Taxes? No, the federal government has the highest ratio of overhead of any institution in the country. Local government can develop a dollar's worth of services or can deliver a dollar's worth of services to the people for only a fraction of a dollar. At the state level as government gets bigger it takes about twice as much to deliver a dollar. At the federal level, usually it takes more than a dollar in overhand to deliver a dollar to the people and I just happen to believe that government can be made more efficient, more economical and probably end up performing the services better. This is why we're studying the 2,478 recommendations of the Grace Commission. All of them are aimed at how can business or government be made more business-like. Let's take a look at the interview before that. Oh, all right.