 I don't see that you get where you're supposed to go on time, Ampsis, in the many years before this job, there was a great deal of travel in my life. Why that is a significant difference. Where would I like to go? Santa Barbara, there is a ranch. I understand. But this is another people magazine question. We're curious, who shops for you? Who buys your socks, shoes, underwear, and ties? Well, some things, like the shoes and suits and so forth, I can do by telephone because I'm the same person making those things for years and years. Asking someone to do it for me. And sometimes it's here, people that I know can go out and won't get to a store. Well, having a ranch, yes. There's a certain amount that you can do by catalog because various farm equipment companies and suppliers of horse gear and all of that, they do have catalogs. They all have something that interests me. I'm a horse woman myself. And we see these photographs of you with Chiefs of the state, other chiefs of state walking here today, you know, with horses. And I would like to ask you when you go to Ponicana where you drive, tell me to do canvities, galleys, junk fences. Can you tell me the pledge and sort of what you do? Well, mainly it's kind of trail riding. and trail riding is, there's a lot of walking and that's very pleasant on a horse. Some trotting and some cantering. Like for example, if we ride up the Cam David trail, it's rather rough. And up hill and down, so there are stretches where you can kick them into a trotter or a canter, and there's a lot of rock and dirt with it. And that's also true at our range. One thing I do miss is that for years my riding was over fences and so forth. I had hundreds of jumpers and the last one, about years ago, a boat attendant and an operation in California there could restore that so it could be ridden. It was a black thoroughbred and I never felt that I could ask him to jump. So for these years, I haven't, I miss it. I can still feel a sensation of going at one, but the years have gone by and now I don't have any jumpers. He incidentally marked the end of 36 years of a single family. I rode his mother. I rode his half sister out of the same mare until she died. And then I had to say goodbye to him and I ended it up the other day for 36 years. It's not like you were changing the ground as your government hasn't grounded you though. If you were given a horse, the LaLonga horse, that was a good jump, or would you put the seat? Yeah. What I've really been thinking about is someone told me that some of the winter days coming on here, where we won't be able to ride back here, that it's possible that I might be able to go out some afternoons to the riding, the enclosed riding hall, the police where they do have them. And I thought out there would be the place to start again, in those nice circumstances, and set up a jump and get my timing back if I know what it was like again. And Mr. President, in a sense that's sad to have been a law. Since the living security crisis, they've really tightened security here. I remember when you put Mrs. Dragon's first cake down in the evenings when you went to Watergate, to see your friends, or occasionally to the jogging club. Do you feel isolating now? Well, no, we could still do that. Do you do it? Yes. How? Well, not to them, because there's a pretty heavy schedule. But no, we can do that. The things that are restricted now are those things where I think, possibly, as you said, the Libyan threat. Those things where I am self-conscious because I think I might be a threat to others, such as going to a crowded place. Well, do you ever leave this place in the evenings, or visit some of your friends, that I think about in some areas? Yes. Okay. Well, we've had invitations here in town to our friends. I think the most recent time we were at the Deaver's House. Did he serve you a good dinner? Yes. What did you get? You know that? Yes. Can you ask him? I couldn't remember what the name was. That's like a mean thing to me. I wanted to ask you, how often did you get to see a movie? Of the movies you've seen this year, tell me good morning if you think it was best, and perhaps you can tell me the performance you think it was best. Well, now let me say among those perks that you asked about, that's another nice one. It is possible. For example, when we go to Camp David on the weekends, we run, for the two nights we're out there, we run a movie. And we can also run them here in the White House. I know that some people in the industry are going to be very angry at me, but I'll tell you. We have taken to running some of what I call the Golden Oldies, and you see Carol Lombard and Kerry Grant up there on the screen again, and a number of others. And I have to tell you, I think they were better. I think the writing was better, I think the dialogue was better, and you don't ever see anything that makes you squirm or embarrass you as you do today in some of the movies that are made. We do like them. Now, the most recent movie that we've seen was the result of the kindness of Father Hesburgh in Notre Dame. You know, a lot of the old movies have been on television so much that it's hard to get a print that hasn't been hacked all the pieces to get the commercials in. Father Hesburgh and the coach of the Notre Dame football team and the group of people interested in that sort of thing came here recently and presented me with one of the two prints that is still left intact, which I now have of the Rotney film, which I played the gibber. And I'm not going to say it was the best picture that we've seen. I'm going to say I enjoyed it with many others. It's not your all-time favorite, Mr. President. In one way it really is. It's the sentimental favorite that every actor has, the one that broke me out of those pictures that they didn't want them good, they wanted them thirsty, and put me in pictures like King's Row and so forth that I think was probably half the best movie I was ever in. Speaking of King's Row, I was just reading your biography, whereas the rest of the week. And you talk about your movie career and working our days and you had this quote in it where you wrote, I became a sunny automaton creating a character someone else had written doing still what other people told me to do. Do you ever feel that way now as a person in the United States? No, not really. In this job you do seek counsel and advice. Our cabinet meetings are kind of like a board of directors meet. I want to hear all the viewpoints and so forth. There are some things in which you're told, for example, when security comes in and says you're going to do this or you're not going to do that, I don't argue with them. I wouldn't be saying it if there wasn't a good reason. And sometimes I get into an argument here when they tell me whether I can or cannot talk to the press about it. Do you ever feel over-scheduled when you hear them? No. No, I know it's a busy schedule, but I also know it has to be. I remember I learned my lesson as governor when the young lady was doing the schedule for me. And there were so many appointments that I finally, I think I got a little rebellious and I said, when do I have time to be governor? And then I said, come on, how many, how many of these requests do you have to turn down for everyone I do? And when she said 40 for everyone, I quit writing. Would you ask the guests to come in and out? I never asked. I don't know if there's more or less. I'd like to ask you one thing. I think once you were reported saying, felt so isolated sometimes in this place, that if someone turns you loose in the heart of Washington you might not be able to find a way home. I wondered if that was the case still. And the other part of the question was, do you ever get a longing to put on a disguise or to, in some other way, make a sub-rosion trip around town so that you can see what's going on outside the gates? Well, let me just answer that this way, that yes, there's a feeling of confinement. I think that's why Camp David looms as such a promise on the free weekends because you're in a normal size house where you can walk out the door and take a walk if you want to. Sometimes I look out there in Pennsylvania Avenue and it isn't so much a disguise or something. You see the people bustling along and walking along this street and it suddenly dawns on you that probably never again can you just say, hey, I'm going down to the drug store, look at the magazines or something of that kind and walk out the door and go walking down to a store in something of that kind. And I'm not going to say it depresses you greatly, but you do find yourself remembering when in your life you could do that and knowing that it is gone. There was another... I was going to ask you, had you ever put on a disguise or a sub-rosion going around town and had one of your Secret Service take your unmarked car? Could you do that? No, I don't think so. I had an adventure in this town once while I was still governor of California. It was the time of the great riots of the Arthur Woodman King. And we were trapped in an auto and we owned a traffic jam just two blocks from our hotel where I knew Nancy was waiting and around us we could see and then Windows breaking and the rioting and everything was going on. And I insisted that we obviously couldn't get there in the car that we get out and go to the hotel on foot. And the head of my state security then finally very disturbed about this, finally agreed if I would wear his sunglasses. And so I said, okay, and I put on his dark glasses. We got just to the curb from the car and a great thing found stopped me and said, Ronald Reagan, can I have your autograph? Glasses all came back here. So I haven't tried it in the sky since. But you'd ask something else there that I was going to answer in that question. Could you be lost in the city? Oh, the losing in the city. Yes, now that I discovered even Sacramento. But what it comes from is riding in the back seat with someone else driving. I've been to Washington a number of times. But as time goes on and when you're back you don't bother to watch where you're going. And right now, as many times as I've been to say some of the hotels here in town where they make speeches or something. If you suddenly turned me out of here at the wheel of a car and said, try that I wouldn't be able to do it. Mr. President, you spoke a moment ago about looking down in Pennsylvania Avenue. I was wondering, do you ever look down in the family quarters and look off the street or off the other part? There's a suit kitchen set up there now. We're about four years, 15 of the city's homeless and hungry or getting sued. Have you ever noticed the people? I didn't know that, but I'll make a point now that you told me I didn't know that was going on. But you see the living quarters are really on the opposite side of the White House. So the rooms on that side, there's very little occasion on the Pennsylvania Avenue side to go there. The one room that I do go on when I've said that I now and then look down there at the street is the exercise room. When you're a divisible. I wanted to ask you, do you think the price was unfair in pointing at your son's seeking unemployment benefits? Well, I think by this time and after all the years in Sacramento I was sure it was going to happen. This is one of the things that isn't a desirable program and that is the knowledge that you've imposed some of this fishbowl existence on. We did call him, not worried about ourselves, but that he might be embarrassed of doing this, but he said the rest of the group all laid off were doing the same thing. No, he'd rather do it on his own. In one way I had to agree that would make some emotions. You have to worry about that happening that did happen, but at the same time I had to have a grudging respect. When you were running for president and often there were many photographs of you worshipping at the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church at the Moon Island. Do you go to church often here? Have you had this change? No, we did regularly when we started and I miss it very much and I have intended lately to have some conversations again with security but with the terrorist type threat that became an impossibility because again that would be one of the places where I could represent a threat to many others because they don't just pick you out individually those people may take all the surrounding territory with you. Do you ever have any kind of worship service here? No one has been offered. I just, I have been religious all my life. I just feel that he understands the situation and he knows that I and maybe I talk to a more friend than he likes. Oh no, that was what we were curious about. Has your religious outlook changed since the assassination of women? Do you read the Bible here? Well I've been quite familiar with the Bible and have been because I was raised to my mother was the religious mentor in our family and she left me, rest her with a very deep and abiding faith and I'd feel very lonely if I couldn't know there was someone I could know Lincoln for the best he said I would be the most stupid man on this full stone earth if I thought I could but it's for after being the shooting which is my faith alone but what I learned afterwards about that it was something of a close call I didn't at the time know that I have a feeling I'm just going to say that I have a feeling that whenever times left me he's got a first claim. I wanted to ask you what's the best moment of your week? The thing that you really look forward to. Climbing on that helicopter to go to camp. This week in Time Magazine your wife's love and affection for you just really walked off the pages of that magazine where she was on cover. I'd like to ask you I've heard your quote from Clark Gable but I'd like to ask you to talk about agency and what she means to you and what she means to you to help me when we go to my house. I think I could just sum it up in a few words I can't imagine life without her. Well that's good. I wanted to ask you I'm a person who's responsible for people taking the 25 miles to treating the people of the year and I wanted to ask you of the people that you've met or dealt with this year for better or for worse who would you say is the most intriguing individual it's probably not in our selection some of it would strike you as intriguing? I don't know whether I could could answer that because that is one of the other things that happens in this job the people you meet in the course of the job first of all you could start with national leaders and I found out with Sadat's assassination that maybe it's because you have so much in common with regard to problems and so forth he had been here as you know and shortly thereafter the assassination that Nancy and I were both amazed and our great sense of personal loss it seems that you get acquainted so quickly with them and as I say having so much in common that you find that you think of them as friends but beyond that there is the other thing people that come in here for sometimes special causes so forth a little girl that was in here recently that has an ailment from birth that she's no taller than my knee and walks in a little walker but the most cheerful, happy young lady who can speak in more than one language that is only 80 years old and yet that tiny person maybe like a ray of sunshine but the young lady that spent all the way from the starting gun till the dark of night doing the marathon on the crutches in here people of that kind people that have shown you what the indomitable human spirit can do I can't pick one up but let me just say that well let me sum it up and say this that my faith in and belief in people has been so strengthened just from what I've had the people I've had the privilege of meeting here of that kind of leadership kind of people who are doing great humanitarian deeds on their own speaking of the people you've had the privilege of meeting here we were also very curious of how you deal with someone particularly safe in the northern bay and how do you hear when you're younger we know that Mrs. Rayden takes one bath she has told us in her biography do you pump iron what do you do when you get mad Mr. President and how do you handle that well the staff tells me that I throw my glasses I wasn't aware of that but then I heard one of them saying sometime that he'd watch out and he throws his glasses and now I've gotten kind of self-conscious about it but you know I get angry and usually I try to swallow it so I won't do anything that will be ashamed of for the rest of the day but Monaca Bacon and I think struck up a very close and warm friendship and now there seems to be an estrangement over things that have been going on and differences that we had I had a meeting scheduled with him in the tragedy of his wife's death occurred I was able to call him he was in California at the time and then was to come here and of course we couldn't meet then we were going to meet later on is there something about the press accounts of the man that struck you that the press has captured the quality of it well there is a there is a single mindedness in his dedication and devotion to what he's trying to do that I think does sometimes making intolerant of other views but when you stop to think I've read his autobiography when you stop to think that here is a man who suffered the persecution under the Nazis and then when freed from that found himself suffering the persecution under the Soviets and that experience and finally then in a country for the people that had known the Holocaust and his dedication to what he thinks is right for them yes we can we can have discussions and we'll have a meeting again because sometimes no matter how well intentioned he is sometimes I think that single mindedness makes him unaware that you might be trying to help and if you would give you a little more leeway you could be more helpful you mentioned reading his biography tell me what it looks like what do you enjoy reading and you're not reading your pages this is one of the purposes not so much fun I am a voracious reader and I could no more go to bed without reading myself to sleep and I could fly and and I have loved every kind of reading from nonfiction to fiction to novels and so forth I've got more books well this is what I was going to say there are more books that are lying there with a stick with a piece of paper in them where I got to but most of the night and last night was another one in which by the time bedtime comes not only what I take with me from here but during the evening what the ushers bring in that has come in from the offices that's why the last thing I say to everybody when I leave here instead of saying goodnight I say go home and evidently they don't but you'd be surprised most evenings you're reading really is interrupted by that you have to read for the next day briefing papers and so forth and if there's going to be a visitor you get a whole briefing book some head of state that you don't know and the issues that are to be discussed and so forth and I've got one book by the bed that someone sent me that is my history of the bloodlines of Ireland and have you read this strange book? I have I read some of it literally from the script not from the finished book but I know pretty much what's in it because I know what her feelings are about the program you haven't caught any of the reviews some of them have been very good some of them have been wounding of the book I haven't seen those I don't know … … … … … … … … … … … … And I guess I got used to the idea when I left California and found out what a record there was. And my California papers are the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. And I was amazed in eight years that I think they said there was 27 tons of them. But I also know that scholars do go and researchers, and in fact I know of a couple from the University of California, various campuses who went there and frankly admitted they were going to get confirmation for the unkind thoughts that they had about me. And turned around and wrote to them after they saw the records and wrote the other way. That's good. So am I very specific? Yes. Where would you hazard a guess? Would you hazard a guess as to where you might possibly be? You read that? Well, as much as I have tried to keep them supplied with many mementos and so forth, as I have a great feeling about that little school, and it did so much for me, I don't think, however, that having seen residential libraries and the extent of them what they are, I think it would require a more accessible and a bigger institution than that. Okay. And this is really a Christmas question and a fair Christmas question, but your follow-up difference is on my blue slip on Christmas Day. Yes. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. Well, they're 10.8% Americans on the road this Christmas Eve. And what would you have to say to them? Well, I know it doesn't do much good to tell them. I understand that I know how they feel. I know how much worse they feel at a time like this. But I'd rather say it's to a lot of other people. And that is for everyone who's unemployed in this country. There are 10 who aren't. And most people forget that we have more than 100 million people working. And it would seem to me that if Christmas means anything, that at the community level, those 10 for one are living around. They must know the people in the neighborhoods, fellow union members, the people in their churches who are in that plight. And I think it's time for the 100 million or more to make sure that the 10 million do have Christmas. It's not actually Republican mother. She was 82. She said, first of all, she said to me, you shouldn't be taking... Sometimes someone tells a story or something, and one I haven't heard for over 20 years, but it's back in my mind. And how it comes. Of course, they may have to be of a certain kind. Maybe she'd be a little bit of an honest about, I'll take the time to tell us about the fellow with the one-legged pig. The pig with a wooden leg and a man's service. And he said, what's with the wooden leg and the pig? He said, this is the most remarkable pig in the world. He said, I was plowing one day. The tractor ticked over. I was trapped under the tractor. This pig came, rooted the earth away, and got me out and saved my life. Well, he says, yes, but what about the wooden leg? And he said, let me tell you, this pig, one night, my wife and I were asleep a coal from the fireplace fell out on the floor, set the house apart. This pig came in, woke us, rescued us, got us out to save our lives. He says, what about the wooden leg? Well, he says, you can't eat a remarkable pig like this all at once. Mr. President, we have time for one more question. Okay. Mr. President, Jimmy Connor, Linda Johnson, Jack Kennedy, all aged very noticeably in August. And you look wonderful. It's like another line has not been added to your face. And I wonder why. Is there some inner serenity? What do you attribute this to, the fact that you have not aged in August? Well, I know there have been those stories, and I've told them. And when I first became governor, I think I could feel it happening to me to start with, because it seemed like, I didn't hear the situation just about as bad as the one here. And it seemed like every morning there was someone standing in front of my desk when I got in there saying, we have a problem. And I think faith has something to do with it. But also, I made myself a promise. I'm still going to keep it here. And that is that I would not let anyone consul or advise me on any issue facing me as to what the political repercussions might do or what it might be in the next election that went out of my effect. That I would only, I only wanted to hear what was good and bad. Was it good or bad for the people to do it? And I wanted to make no decision based on political considerations. And I've kept that promise. And I think maybe that might have something to do with it. Not worry about your political future. That's right. Mr. President. That's one of the nice things about being my age. We're being where you are. Thank you. I'm sure you kind of decided, probably you haven't decided. I should have loaded the question. In time you said you hadn't made up your mind about the next running again. Have you changed your mind in three or four days? No, no. I think this is too early to say anything like that. Part of the answer also to what you said is I have a great belief in some of the things I do. I work at physically doing things but there's an old cavalry rule that there is nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse. And maybe that's part of it. That's wonderful. Thanks for taking the time. Well, it's been a pleasure. It's been so lovely to be here. Well, I'm sure you'll be excited. Well, Merry Christmas to you. And give my best to your mother. I'll say it again. Europeans, I don't think this is the right answer. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm sure you'll be able to do it. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye.