 Is there a time that you've proposed March or five Geneva has that been accepted we've had no answers yet the you know what's going through the ambassadors and through that process and it was only a short time ago that we came together and said well that would be suitable for us and now it's up to them to let us know whether they want to do that or not. Do they look like they'll accept it? We don't know. What's your guess on the prospects of success? Well I don't think anyone looking back over history should be euphoric but I just have to cling to some optimism when you look at the situation and realize that this is literally the first time that they have ever publicly stated a desire to reduce the number of weapons and always before it seemed that we sat down and the negotiations were well how fast are we going to increase them and now here we're coming at this with both sides having said that their ultimate goal would be they'd like to that we'd all like to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely. You told you Sidi that you would like to see them push ahead on your own SDI? Yes. Why? Well because I think it could it could hasten the day when we would eliminate nuclear weapons. But if our research revealed that we can have a defensive weapon that can whether it is completely a hundred percent effective or not can reduce the real threat of anyone pushing the button because of they know that very few of their weapons would get through, then it just makes a lot of sense to say let's eliminate that weapon. Now if both sides have it this answers the argument of those who say well won't the other side just multiply the number of weapons hoping to increase the number that could get through a defense. As a matter of fact this is why we said all we want to do right now all we're asking is research and the time comes that that research leads to the development of a weapon that we're willing to meet and discuss deployment. Are you willing to abide by or keep in force all the past arms agreements with the Soviets while the negotiations are going on? Well we have been more or less doing that. I think we've been doing more of it than they have and in so too. But I just think as long as they know that in the absence of an agreement we are not going to sit back unilaterally disarming and let them carry on their great military buildup to an unquestioned superiority then there would be no point negotiating because they'd have no reason to negotiate. I think the reason we're coming to the table is that they know as we know that the choice now is have some legitimate agreement on the reduction of arms or phase in arms race. Well then you would be willing to abide by keeping the agreements in force? Yes we've made no effort to change that. On the summit you don't want to get acquainted why not when you went to China you noticed free enterprise in fact you call that shot very well and why not get acquainted with them size them up? You've never been to a Soviet Union? Well China was a little bit of a different thing. A little friendlier? Yes they had been here and we also had an agenda of legitimate things we were going to discuss with them and all I've said about the Soviet Union is and they have said the same thing. See we're not alone in that. They've said there must be an agenda. There must be some things that we're going to meet that require a summit to discuss and talk out. Aren't there a lot of things that you could talk about? Well there are things that at a ministry level talks that are going forward having to do with fishing agreements and trade agreements and things of that kind. The other point is, Alan look and I share this information with the others too. In the 48 years from the beginning of Roosevelt's first term to mine there had been eight presidents and those eight presidents over a period of 48 years only had to deal with three different Russian leaders. Well I had three in the first three years and I can see very well where they themselves were in no position to. For three years they were getting used to a new leader most of the time. I think they're still shaking down then. Well and now we have again apparently a health problem and I can understand that when a newcomer comes in particularly in their type of government and now has to set himself in there when it was Brezhnev who had been there longer whom I had met ten years before. My first year as a matter of fact from the hospital I sent him my handwritten letter discussing things that having to do with peace and so forth that I thought that we had discussed ten years before when I was a governor. General Hague said this place run by the troika was a zoo. Do you have any new cabinet officers in mind and are you going to get Reagan a full hand and free hand going all these vacancies? Well free hand to the extent that I have the ultimate responsibility so I don't think he'll be going on hiring people without he and I getting together on an agreeing on someone. But any new cabinet? Well there you know some of the changes that are being made right now I don't know of any other post where they're talking about leaving. I wouldn't be surprised because I think when you go outside of government as completely as we did and bring people from the private sector in which was what I wanted to do and what I'd done as governor. You recognize that there's going to come a time for most of them when they're going to have to say well that's all the time I can give. Do you have a White House job for Kirk Patrick? I am hopeful that we have something that she would enjoy doing. In the White House? Well it's not physically in the White House but it is a department of the executive branch that I'm not free to talk about yet but that I think that she would be very good at. Let me say it would be consistent with her field and her experience. Right. What about the zoo business do you think that's an unfair attack on your zoo calling it a zoo? Or is it just sour grape? I won't comment on that but there's been no troika or anything else here. Well in spite of all the stories to the contrary the buck really does stop right over there, that desk. And a lot of other things too, four more years. What is this love feast with O'Neill, how long will the honeymoon last this time? Well I don't know but I don't know but we had a meeting yesterday of the leadership of both houses and both parties leadership and it was, well there was a fine spirit in there and expressions of cooperation and so I'm going to take them at their word. Why do they have this newly sunlight bird? Well I think when you come down to it, Helen, actually the disagreements are not what they were years ago of one side wanting to go the opposite way. If you look at the debate, the debate basically is not whether we shall have from one side great spending on some new programs and the other side saying no let's not. The debate is about well how much shall we reduce spending? Everyone is united that we must reduce the deficit and there may be disagreements as the actual techniques or technicalities of getting at that problem. Well that makes for a lot different debate than we had in the past when one side was opposing the institution of a brand new social program. Are you prepared now to endorse the tax simplification that the Treasury Department drew up? Well, we can't say that item for item in it because of the budget problems that we've been dealing with for some long bloody hours. We have not dealt with the Treasury program or study in the same way. We're waiting until we get the budget out of the way. Then we'll sit down in the same manner around the same big table in there and start going at all the options that are presented in that program. But you go for the concept? Yes, the overall concept of tax simplification and actually the reduction of rates. Well, Wall Street Journal had you worrying about country club dues not being deductible is that unfair? There are some areas where here to for that has been recognized as a legitimate deduction because of the need for example in some non-advertising industries to make personal contacts. But what we're going to do about things like that with this new simplification, that'll remain to be seen. We haven't debated any of it yet. When FOD and Mubarak come almost following each other on heels, do you have a new Middle East plan or do you think there's any possibility of a breakthrough? Well, no, we still believe in the same plan that we proposed and the close proximity of their visits has nothing to do with it. No, that's the way it worked out. But what we're still trying to do is bring about the getting together of the moderate Arab states and Israel. In other words, to produce more Egypt's treaties of that kind to have peace once and for all between those countries. Is it more helpful? Well, I've never given up hope. It was certainly delayed by the whole Lebanon experience. We had been making progress before King Hussein and Arafat were meeting on how negotiations could be brought about with Israel. Then that was broken off, but they have been in communication again. Jordan has now recognized Egypt. You remember Egypt lost its recognition from the Arab League because of its treaty with Israel. So I have to believe that there are those on both sides who do want to find a settlement. And why did you break off talks with Nicaragua? I mean, the dual actions of the World Court and breaking off talks seem to indicate that you're going to put more military pressure on them. We didn't break off the talks. They have just, the talks came to an end and have not been, a date has not been set for any renewed talks with them. But it wasn't a breaking off. And this is very much still on the agenda for us. We would like a political settlement if that were possible down there. We recognize the issue is in Nicaragua that the people of Nicaragua who wholeheartedly supported the revolution, supported a revolution whose announced aims were the implementation of full democracy and instead one faction of the revolution took over and instituted a totalitarian regime. Well, at the same time this totalitarian regime is exporting subversion, is attempting to get to over... And they still are? Yes, they're still trying to get the overthrow of the Salvadoran government by way of support of the... And they aren't more conciliatory now. No. Have you stopped the arms from the Soviets to Nicaragua? No, they have not been completely headed off at all. And so we feel that's even in our own interest to be supportive of the people of Nicaragua. Mr. President, you want abortion to be made a crime. And what would be the proper punishment? I mean, would that be capital punishment if it was murder? Well, I haven't thought about it from that standpoint. I have only... I mean, somebody would have to pay the pipe or wouldn't they? Well, all I've said is and then we see what the legalities are from there. I have said that today the evidence, in my view, is so incontrovertible that the unborn child is a living human being. Now, there's only one way in our society in which we condone the taking of human life and that is in defense of our own as part of a Judeo-Christian tradition. And this is, I think, more of a civil rights problem right now than it is a certainly not a religious problem. It is a case of if this is a living entity, then how do we approve people just on whimmer because they don't want to be inconvenienced taking that human life? Well, sometimes it's deeper than that. But anyway, there would be punishment, wouldn't there? Yes, I'm sure there would have to be. Would it be jailed for a while? Well, I'm not going to get into those technicalities. I would like to call to your attention that even in medical circles now, instead of simply referring to the fetus as it, there are more and more doctors that are using the term the second patient, that in other words, as the mother is a patient of the prospective mother, that infant the mother is carrying is also a patient and a doctor's responsibility. So this recognition, the only way it seems to me that the pro-abortionists could make their case and justify it is if they could prove that this was not a living entity. And until they can, and I don't believe they can, but until and unless they could do that, then we're talking about an individual that has a right to the constitutional protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Do you feel freer now that you don't have to face another election? I mean, do you think that you can do more or have you had some sense of a burden being lifted? Well, there's always a little feeling of that for one thing, that the knowledge that no one will be looking at everything you do in saying it's political, but in the first four years, Helen, it's the same as when I was governor of California. I insisted in our cabinet process that we do not discuss the political ramifications of any issue before us, that it must be decided on the basis of what is right or wrong, good or bad for the people. And I think the one burden that is lifted is what I mentioned earlier, that no matter how much I refuse to consider politics in making a decision, I was always accused of having politics involved. Do you think you still will? Well, no, I don't think I will now, but they can't say the same thing. Do you have a candidate for 88 like George Bush? No, I'm not going to talk candidates for 88. I know, he's cutting me off. I've just been on the boat. Oh, what is it? Ah, you have a news. I will give you a news scoop. Yes. The Senate committee holding hearings on James Baker just voted unanimously to recommend his confirmation. That's wonderful. Boy, that's quick stuff. How about the merger between the trade and office and commerce? Well, no decision has been made on that yet. Are you supporting, I mean, are you favoring it? Well, I'm not. Are you favoring bulge or shorts, I should say? I'm the one that has to make the decision. And you haven't made a decision? So I don't want to comment, because I haven't made the decision yet. Do you have anything to regret besides that tax bill from the first term? I mean, that's the one you seem to have, the $9 billion. Is there anything you would have done differently? Well, yes, if I'd known what I know now. I definitely believe that increasing taxes endangers the recovery that we're having, that the great problem we face economically is the percentage of gross national product that the government is taking from the private sector. Now, it was true that most of the things in that bill were in the nature of closing loopholes and some of them were loopholes that we had never asked for in the beginning ourselves. But they were added onto our original tax cut bill. And they were, you'd have to consider them unfair. They were kind of special for some groups and denied to others. So from that standpoint, I could reconcile myself to that. But the proposal was that there was going to be $3 in additional cuts in spending for every dollar of increased tax. And that, I thought, I could live with that $1 in return for those three because we never did get all of the spending cuts that we thought were possible and that we'd asked for. Then, as it turned out, we didn't get the spending cuts. And frankly, I felt cheated. But any other things you could have regretted doing in the first term that you can make up for or pass a now? I think we fought as hard as we could for things like the cuts that we believe in. And we got enough of the percentage of our proposal that we've had this recovery. And now for three years, straight inflation has averaged 3.9 percent down from double digits. We know where the interest rates are, and I think they're going to come down further. And we know what happened to unemployment. And we have to say this is the first time in this history of recessions since World War II that we have brought unemployment and inflation both down at the same time. It is phenomenal. The whole thing. You think anything can go wrong? No. As a matter of fact, the latest economic indicators and the ones just released the other day are better than we ourselves had estimated. You told USA that you've never changed your views in the White House. Does that mean the presidency doesn't teach you anything? Oh, well, I was talking about my basic philosophy of believing, as I say, in that government has got to spend less. Government has been too intrusive in the private sector and in the lives of the people. I still believe that, and we still have a ways to go, although we've corrected many things. Some of the little things that aren't really little, but that escape notice. For example, Helen, we consolidated, based on our experience in state government when we were on the receiving end of categorical grants from the federal government, we consolidated some 52 categorical grants into, and there was eight or ten, I think, block grants. And in doing that, reduced the amount of administrative personnel in the Washington by 3,000 employees in simplifying that, but reduced 30,000 pages of regulations imposed on local government to 885 pages. And all of those are the things that I mean that I still believe in. So your goals are the same for the second term? Yeah. What are they really? To cut down the size of government and... And economic, continued economic expansion with low or no inflation and the international scene to pursue the goal of getting rid of nuclear weapons entirely and bringing about the possibility of peace in the world. Did your grandchildren have any observations about the White House? Well, one of them doesn't talk enough. One of them just could barely get out. For me, that's Ashley Cameron. You know, he seemed to be having a good time and he and I built that snowman that's in the Rose Garden. You had a house full? Yes. Was that enjoyable? Yes, it was. We had 14 all told. What was the highlight of the inauguration? Oh, my. I mean, what did you... I don't know, but there were two things that both involved young people that really turned me on. One was the pre-inaugural pageant with all those wonderful young people and seeing them with their obvious patriotism and the same thing, pretty much the same thing when we went out to the Capitol Center to meet with those who weren't going to be allowed to pray. I do think it eliminated a lot of the disappointment in that get-together but to see them again and their enthusiasm and all... Thank you very much. Do you feel all right? Well, he's making a lot of tests and things, isn't he? He may be a White House victim.