 President of the United States and Mrs. Reagan. Ladies and gentlemen, I have been given perhaps the most useless job that has ever come down the pike to introduce to this group the President of the United States. But in this group, I think it might be important to know, almost as important to know, that he is the first honorary fellow of the Hoover Institution. Ladies and gentlemen, the President. Mr. Ambassador, thank you and welcome everyone. It's wonderful for Nancy and me to see so many old friends and allies again. I'm starting to believe you've been around this town for so long now that you're beginning to look like you belong here. And we've come a long way since we all met in Washington three years ago. Then, after only a year in office, our programs remained largely untested and still vigorously opposed with the old guard. But politics, as much as anything else, is a battle of ideas. And it was ideas many of them originating at the Hoover Institution that helped to overthrow what Milton Friedman has called the status of the, or the tyranny of the status quo. After last November's election, very many people were talking about realignment. I think reconciliation would be a better word. A reconciliation in which both parties, despite continuing differences, come together on the common ground of economic growth. It's my deepest hope that forward-looking members on the other side of the aisle will join with us on the path of economic progress and expansion. The real division today is between those who see the economy full of problems and those who see it full of possibilities. It's between the pessimists calling for retreat in the face of progress and the optimists seeking to build on our successes to ensure an even more permanent and far-reaching prosperity. I knew that we had a recovery when they stopped calling it rigonomics. Tax cuts, incentive economics, and inflation-free growth are working too well for us to go back to the bad old days of more taxing and spending, bigger government, and no growth. There's something else working in favor of freedom and incentive economics, and that's the stark failure around the world of the ideas of the left. Even in China, the talk today is all of freer markets. And throughout Europe, high-tax governments are slowly but surely trying to pull themselves out of the socialist trap and emulate what has become known as the American miracle. And we're beginning to see that the same ideas that liberated the U.S. economy from stagnation can also liberate the underdeveloped countries from poverty. The wealth of nations, whether they're developing or underdeveloped, springs from a common source, their people. And whether we're talking about a farmer in Africa or an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, it's freedom and opportunity that inspire the creative energies of man. Incentives can and will make dry sands bloom, and lack of incentive can turn gardens into deserts. Which reminds me of a story I may have told it before, if I have, forgive me, because you know after you pass 40, you suffer from lumbago and the tendency to tell stories over and over again. This has to do with an old country boy that took over some creek-bottom land that was all rutted and covered with rocks and brushed, but he went to work hauling away the rocks and working on it and cultivating and fertilizing, and pretty soon he had a really blooming garden. And he was so proud of what he'd done that one Sunday morning after church, he asked the minister to come out and see what he'd done. Well, the Reverend was impressed. He said, this is the tallest corn I've ever seen. He said, the Lord certainly has blessed this land. And then he said, those melons, I've never seen any bigger than that. Praise the Lord for what he's done. And he went on that way with tomatoes and squash and beans, praising the Lord and his fine work, and the old boy was getting pretty restive. And finally, he couldn't take it any longer. And he said, Reverend, I wish you could have seen it when the Lord was doing it by himself. We've got a few boulders to clear ourselves before we get our programs through the hill. But I know I can always look to Glenn Campbell and the scholars at the Hoover Institution for some of the best advice around. And I want to thank you all again for being here and for all your support and help over the years. The intellectual seeds that you've sown at Hoover are now beginning to bear fruit. And I predict that in the next four years we're going to see a bumper harvest. Now, before I leave, I'm going to tell you again about being careful in this town and not to get inoculated with some of what goes on. I can give you an incident of three politicians. You see, that kind of ethnic joke I can tell now, because I'm in the fraternity. But three of them one day, and they locked themselves out of the car. So the one of them said, we can get a wire coat hanger and reach down. And the other one said, no, we can't. Somebody will see us and they'll think we're stealing the car. And the other one said, well, what if I take my pen knife and cut a little of the rubber away from around the window and we can reach in and raise the lock? And the other one says, no, then they'd see us and they'd think we were too stupid to know we could do it with a coat hanger. And the third one standing there said, well, look, we better do something that's starting to rain in the tops down. Well, thank you. I think the, as I say, I predict that in the next four years the seeds that were sown at Hoover are now bearing fruit and we're going to see a bumper harvest. So thank you. God bless you and may we work together for these next four years, the best years and make them the best years yet for our country. Thank you all very much. Mr. President, Mr. Reagan, I can't say enough to thank you on behalf of everyone here tonight for taking time in this busy week, the busiest possible week at the beginning of those four years. God bless and good luck. Thank you very much.