 I just want a little something from you about politics, and reminisce a little about the good moments, maybe how you do it a little bit. You are certainly one of the most successful politicians of this age, and I just wanted to get your secret. Let me ask a few questions about it. It has been fun, hasn't it? This whole political life of yours that came after your other career. Yes, yes. I must say, I could give an example. I really was dragged kicking and screaming into it. It was contrary to anything I thought I'd ever want to do, and I was very happy in the entertainment world doing what I was doing, but only a few months after we found ourselves in Sacramento when I was the governor, Nancy and I found ourselves in the living room one night saying that all of a sudden this made anything we'd ever done before. Look, it's Dulles' Dishwater. What is it about it? You like the crowd, the audiences, or what? Well, if you're show people, you automatically like people, and that's the stock in trade. But no, I think it was that I'd always believed that you pay your way. So even when I was in show business, I campaigned for candidates and causes that I believed in and taking advantage of the fact that the recognition from being in show business meant that I could help attract people to fundraisers and so forth. And I thought that was that you participated. And I think one of the things that finally, because I inherited a bad situation in Sacramento when I took over some things that really needed was almost a kind of mess I inherited here. But to all of a sudden find yourself not, you know, I've always said to you that if you don't sing or dance in Hollywood, you wind up as an after-dinner speaker. So my personal appearances were usually speaking things. And I did my own speeches and spoke on the subjects I wanted to talk on. And more and more, I was being very critical of government and some of the policies. But then to find yourself able to deal with them instead of just talk about them, that's what I think created the excitement. What was your best, has been your best moment over these, I guess, almost 20 years? Is there any one thing that stands out where suddenly the gratification became apparent, the political life? Oh, golly, I think it's been such an ongoing thing that I can't... Any speech that you felt was better than that. Did you have a State of the Union or acceptance speech at a convention or what? Well, there was a speech before I ever believed that I would ever get involved in politics. And that was the speech that I made on behalf of Barry Goldwater. Oh, yes. That speech. And that was just very shortly before the election. And it was on a group of donors had asked me to make the campaign speech I'd been making and at gatherings throughout California on the air. So they bought the time and I went on NBC and did this speech. Was that before the convention? No, this was just a few days before the election. Before the election? I've been up and down the state campaigning for it. And they had heard this at a dinner, heard me speak and wanted me to make that speech nationwide. And I did. And I must say, yes, talk about a thrill. You know, there was some question of the part of some of his staff at that late point as if maybe that time could be better used with something that they had. And there wasn't anything I could do about that because this time had been bought by this group of citizens. And I couldn't cancel out, but then I went to bed after I'd done the speech, very concerned and worrying, you know, who was I in the face of the candidate and his staff and so forth to go on and do this when they thought there could be better use of the time. Right around midnight, which had to be about three o'clock in the morning here, I got a call from his campaign manager telling me that the switchboards were still lighted up and the pledges were coming in. And that had to be a high spot in my whole career. I see. How can you possibly like this matter of campaigning, the hours, the flights, such a grueling thing? Yes, it is. Has it gotten too much so? Well, there's no question about that. But at the same time, I have to tell you that here again, show business blessed me. For eight years, doing the General Electric Theater, a part of that job called for about ten weeks a year of personal appearances in the cities and the locales where General Electric was represented. They have plants in 139 plants in something like 39 states. And I visited every one of them. And I personally met a quarter of a million employees. And they would, in addition to my doing that and touring the plants, they liked Ralph Cordner, their chairman. He was one who believed in the decentralization. And he wanted his managers of those plants and those various communities to become part of the community of life. So they would make me available then on those tours for speeches, for appearances, for whatever they thought would be helpful in their areas and their communities. That's when you got in shape, huh? Eight years of it. And I learned an awful lot about traveling and doing that. And I used to take a lot of pride in the fact that sometimes before I left the town there, by that time the executive staff of the General Electric plant would be saying, when are you going to get out of here? But when you get up before an audience, particularly as president, do you still read the crowd? Do you have rules of behavior? Can you tell how to pitch your speech, your gestures? Well, no, I just always believe there's some sound rules about speech making. One of them, you try to open with an audience catcher. That's why I love to find a joke that can open a speech with. And then you tell them what you're going to tell them. And then you tell them. And then you tell them what you've told them. I love it. I love the rules of the road there. What would you advise George Bush to do about this campaign? Have you talked to him about how you present yourself and the tricks of the trade? No, not any. That's up to him. Yes, I think that would be kind of bold on my part. Do you see this campaign as being different from any that you've been through before? Well, I think the main difference as I see it is the fact that the conventions are going to be held and yet everybody knows of the candidate. And this is only fairly recent. We didn't used to have nationwide primaries. And so, yes, candidates would be out there campaigning, but they would be aiming themselves at the coming convention. And then most of those conventions would be suspenseful because that's where the decision was going to be made. And sometimes it was a very close call. But now, in this convention, there has to be a whole different tone. It's one of mobilizing your troops, but the decision has been made. You know in advance who the candidate is going to be. The only thing that's left undecided is who's going to be the Vice President. Yeah, a little suspense there on that sort of thing. Television bigger than ever, I gather. Yes, because I think television gives us back something that our size has taken away from us, and that is back when the term stump speaking, what did that mean? It meant that the candidate went out and he got up on a stump or whatever was handy or the back end of a wagon or something to speak face to face with the people to see them and get acquainted. But today, with 240 million Americans, there's no way a candidate can do that. But television offers you that. You can come right into their living rooms now and address them. And that, in my way of thinking, that has restored us back to the day where the candidate could actually meet the people face to face. There have been a good deal of kind of personal references in this campaign so far. Is it up to get bitter? I can't remember that yours was in the past. You didn't have. Your campaigns were fairly elevated, weren't they? They weren't personal references that much. Well, I've always believed in you talking about what it is you want to do and what you believe. But the out party kind of centers in on dragging down, well, for a time when it was the incumbent, but now our candidate. Well, does that to be worse this time? There seems to be something of a tone of that, but I don't think it's going to be on our side. Although I do believe that we have a legitimate right to correct the facts or the statements about the qualifications of the other candidate or his record if it has been misstated. What was the most important thing looking back over your campaigns? Was it to keep the theme pure or was it the pace of the campaign? What were some of those things that you concentrated on? Well, I thought that you had to sell the people on what it was you were going to do and what you believed should be done and campaign from that. That's why something out of those eight years of General Electric also happened to me when I first ran for governor. My campaign people came to me and they were telling me some things that the opposition was saying that I was an actor and therefore I was only used to reading scripts. And sure I made a good speech, but who wrote the speech? Well, at that time I always wrote the speech, I had plenty of time to do it and I always did that. They'd always been that mind when I was out of the mashed potato circuit. And they wanted to know how we were going to counter this. Well, I said you can't go around saying, hey, I write my speeches. So I said I'll tell you what we can do. This was my first experience out. I said whether the audience is 30 or 3,000, why don't I shorten my remarks and then open the session to question and answer. Now they may think that somebody wrote that speech, but they know that nobody can write the answers I have to give to questions that I'm hearing for the first time. And this is the way we campaigned. Well, the funny thing is we all learned something very special from that. Not only did I do this and I say give the answers, but very shortly I knew what the questions were from one end of the state to the other, speaking in the auditoriums and so forth. You'd find the same questions coming to you up in Northern California and thus you learned what the issues really were. These were the things of concern to the people. Does it concern you that on debates, for instance, like you and Mr. Mondale, that a single line can cause so much grief is when Mr. Mondale said, there you go again, Mr. Kresner. Remember that first debate in Louisville? Yes. In that first one, I think we were over. I was overcoached. I think we took it so seriously that we... You came back in the next one. Well, in the next one, we changed our policy a little bit there. But I mean, this idea that one-liners or a thrust like that has so much power in the campaign. Well, yes. Does that bother some? No. In fact, I profited by one of that second campaign. And that was when that first question came at me from the press. You remember we're asking the questions. And that first question about was age going to be a factor, a consideration in this campaign. Oh, I know you came back. You were ready for that. I said, no, sir, there's no way that I will make the youth of my opponent become an issue in this campaign and his lack of experience. Do you look at politics like a chess game, though? I mean, you must enjoy that sense of competition or going up against another person. Well, yes, there has to be some of that, yes. You can't just go out there with some kind of a standard thing and think that that's... You have to be... Maybe that's something again from show business. You have to be able to read the audience and respond where you think it's necessary. And sometimes you goof. Like I've just been penalized here recently for that joking statement that I made about someone's health. And sometimes that will happen. And it really was true. It slips out. It wasn't 15 minutes until I knew I shouldn't have said that. I see. You never quite get over that, huh? No. I see. Ms. President, the speeches are so important, can you do it with one speech or even two speeches or is it just the constant throughout all of those months, repeating the themes and that? Well, one thing is that, of course, for the most part, you're not on national television making a speech to the people and they're going to get the media's interpretation of it in a very limited way. So yes, you have to stick to what you know is the theme. You want the people to hear. And so if it's here in Chicago today and you're in Cincinnati tomorrow, pretty much, yes, the same speech. And I have to say here is where a bias in the media has to come into consideration. But for example, I made a speech some time ago that was on television. And our pollster, who I think is the best in the country, found that two-thirds of the people who heard that speech had a positive reaction to it. And about one-third, no, they weren't impressed. Then he did a poll of people who had not heard the speech but who had only read or heard about it in the media. Two-thirds of them didn't approve of it and one-third of them didn't approve of it. So that has to come from the way it is. Well, this comes back to your theory about television, where you can get on the stump and you see, look them in the eye. That's present. That's great. That's what I'm doing. Well, listen, my roommate told you to give you her very best. Okay, that's terrific. Yeah, I... And, incidentally, I don't want to accuse you of bias or anything, but recently some of the talk shows in which you participate, I have come away with a warm feeling in my heart for you. Well, Mr. President, it's just unbelievable, sometimes we'll talk about that there is a terrible bias about giving you credit for what's happening in the world. I know. About 30 years, I've never seen anything like this, all over the movement towards peace. And you know, we can't give any single person total credit, but your policy of strength and the willingness to use it, I think that's the main ingredient of why these people have finally changed their views about things. I mean, I just can't deny it. The bottom line is there. I think history is going to give you credit for it, but right now it's a little tough in a campaign, I'll tell you there. Yes. Well, pretty hard on it. I'm most grateful. You have been fair. Oh, I hope so. Yeah. No, I... I told... I wrote Cap Weinberger when he retired. I said, my dad was in World War I, and he used to tell stories about being on the front in the armistice. My uncle went through Bellowwood, you remember those names, you betcha. I was in the Army at the end of World War II. My brother was in it, my cousins. I had a cousin that went to Korea, and I had another cousin that flew in Vietnam. For the first time in 70 years, I got a kid who was a boy who turned 18. For the first time in 70 years in my family, no 18-year-old faces a war or the prospect of the draft or confrontation in this world. Now, I don't know who you credit with, but that's pretty good. I say the bottom line is good. Okay. Thank you. I know it. Yeah. Yep, right in behind. That's not bad though. Anyway, listen, good luck. I tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to fly down to New Orleans with you and listen to your speech and do a little piece on that and go on up to California a little bit, yeah. So I'll be... I'll be... Keep mine. I'm going to New Orleans to California myself. Is that right? Yeah. Okay.