 Well, listen, we really want to do something sort of a little reflective as you prepare to be for your second term here, and we'll just have some domestic things. There seem to be some signs that you intend to stay on the sidelines and let Congress wrestle with a lot of the touchy things like the budget social security callers and that sort of thing, at least in the beginning of this second term. Is that your intent? No, and how that story has been concocted or what it's based on, I don't know. We've been putting in long and bloody hours on this budget matter, and in a few weeks we will be ready. But we've been keeping our people up there in the Congress posted on this, keeping them as well informed as we can of where we are, the type of things that we're talking about doing, and in a short time, as I say in just a matter of a few weeks, we will be delivering to Congress our proposal, and we think it will be on target with what we're trying to do for 1986. Are you so content that you have a Senate Republican's right of budget, which is very different from the way you acted your first term? Well, except that those same leaders have been, we've been in touch with them. They know what we're talking about, and frankly we're glad to have that, and if they've got any ideas that we haven't had, but this is their version, but it's based on what we've been doing. And you don't feel in any sense that you have abdicated your leadership responsibility? Oh, no. No. All these lines as if, well, when the election was over, I sat back and disappeared or something. I disappeared into the cabinet room where we've been having these meetings for endless hours. There wasn't anything to go out and wave a flag about until we have it put together. And then after you have it put together, you've got to allow your cabinet officers and department heads to come in on their own and present their views as to whether we can do better or whether we've done too much. Despite the work that you've been doing on the budget, it seems likely from what David Stockman has said and others have said that you will go out of office as a president presided over the biggest deficits in history. Are you resigned to that? Well I almost have to be, although if I also go out of office with having us put us for the first time in 50 years on a declining deficit pattern to where we can target a date certain that the budget will be balanced and put us on a program that is of a permanent nature so that that's the end of deficit spending, you have to realize how much this has been built in. This increase is not anything that we created. This was the built in pattern from 1965 to 1980. This was when the war on poverty and the great society really got underway and came into effect. Well in those 15 years, the budget increased almost five times what it was 15 years before, but the deficit increased to 38 times what it was before. 1974, the Congress came up with a whole new budget plan. They had a new procedure and since they did that I don't think we've had a budget. All they do is tear apart the budget that you send up, but in those several years from 1974 on up to past 1980 there were more than $500 billion in deficit. The pattern was set. The first part of your, you said if you go out of office with a date cert when the budget will be balanced that would mitigate somewhat against all of that. What is that date? My understanding is it doesn't show up in any of the documents I've seen, not 1989. Well what we're aiming at right now is a program in which we can project, in other words a three-year program, 86 through 88, which is about all that I can be responsible for. And as I say, you can't be too certain about projections as a matter of fact, most of the projections that we inherited were far more pessimistic than they turned out to be. You are no fan of economic projections, I know. No, not at all. In the struggle to balance or reduce the deficit, how much are you thinking about your role in history? Actually, I know I get that question an awful lot as if you sit over here and that's all you think about is when they go right in the history books. You know what the truth of the matter is, I don't think about it at all. I think about trying to get the job done. And I came here with an idea in mind of what I felt should be done, that it was time that something should be done both in the international scene but also domestically. I've been out of the mashed potato circuit talking about it for three or four decades. And so we started in with the plan. And as you know, the only thing that has remained constant are the pessimists. They're still around. They said the plan wouldn't work. And now that it's working, they say it won't last. Well, they were wrong the first time and they're wrong the second time. This is the first recovery in eight recessions since World War II that has been a real recovery based on solid principles in which unemployment has come down, at the same time inflation has come down, the same time the interest rates have come down. If you look back in the history of previous recessions, you'll find that usually they brought about what they said was a recovery artificially. And you'd have, well, if unemployment came down, some inflation went up. This is a recovery based on solid principles where all these things are happening. There were three years before we got here of double digit inflation. We've now had the last three years of inflation down in the 4% range. The interest rate, prime rate was 21%. It's now 10.5%. So we're down to half of what that was. And I think we're going to see it continue to go lower. Unemployment, 3.3 million people got jobs just in the last year. There are more people, close to 108 million people working, more people employed than ever in the history of our country. So all of these, I think, are solid gains that show that what we came into office to do has been accomplished except that it takes time. It'll have to continue. In referring to those, those are a lot of that, a lot of your legislative excess in the beginnings of those kind of successes occurred early in your first term and then picked up, particularly in the legislative area. Historically, second terms for presidents have not been roaring successes. They sort of trickle off. What are your expectations? Do you expect to be as successful legislatively as you were the first term? I think there's a very good chance of it, because I think that the very thing you were talking about, the size of the deficits, has finally caught everybody's attention. And I think that there's a possibility that we'll see one of those moments when we forget we're Democrats and Republicans and realize that we're citizens of this country and we've got a job to do, that it is, in other words, it's of crisis proportions. And it is based on built-in spending increases that must be altered and altered permanently. Mr. President, some people say that recovery has benefited primarily white people, that the we, the people inaugural we are about to witness is a we, the white people inaugural. Given your meeting this week with some black representatives, do you have any thoughts about how to reach out to the majority of blacks who are not in your column? Well, I know that there are a number of leaders of various organizations that are coming forth all the time with reports that build this idea that somehow we've relegated the black community to a second-class status. Well, that's not our intent and that's not our practice. First of all, of the people, since we came here who got jobs, more than a million of them are blacks who have been left the unemployment ranks, it's true that they've got farther to go. There was no question of that, that based on some of our past history and all, they have, they're on an upward climb, but as I say, they have further to go. What we have done, we have some things before the Congress that we haven't gotten yet that would be further of benefit to them. The Enterprise Zones Program would benefit them disproportionately to others. It's been there three years and we haven't been able to get it through the House. The very fact of reducing inflation has been of benefit to people who are in the lower earning scale, because it means a lot more to them. We've, in education, the number of blacks who are now getting college and university educations is far higher than it has ever been in our history. There must be specific things. This is what we talked about with this group of very fine people who came in, these black leaders from every kind of calling you can imagine. We have done more than has ever been done with regard to stimulating in a small business community, entrepreneurship, business among, that are black owned. We have, in aiding that, we have made sure that government contracts definitely are aimed to make sure that minority owned businesses get a fair crack at those. Now, all of this is aimed at a problem that has been ignored by too many people in the various ethnic communities in our country. And we have them, as you know, the Irish and South Boston and so forth. You find that their standard of living, their prosperity, is based on how many times a dollar that comes into that community by way of pay, the individual goes out to work and brings home his paycheck, how many times that dollar turns over before it gets back out into the general economy out of that community. Now, in most communities that can be up to seven or eight times and that means that's the equivalent of seven or eight dollars in the economy that it produces. In the black communities, it has been barely one. In other words, they have in the past been behind with having professionals and businesses that are owned and performed by blacks within their own community when they go down to buy groceries in their own neighborhood, they've been buying them from a white-owned business. Well, that is changing and that's what we're aiming at is to get them into the same framework of being able to turn the dollars over. They don't seem in general to accept the idea that you're aiming at helping them at all. In terms of the election, nine out of ten, I think, black voters voted for your opposition. How would you rate that in terms of disappointments? You had said during the end of the first term that you were going to make a major effort to reach out to black voters and all voters and it didn't seem to work. Well, maybe because they weren't told very much by some of those leaders we're talking about of what we've accomplished and what we've done. I don't think that the rank and file know about minority-owned businesses and how far we've gone with that. I don't think they know about legislation that we have sent up to the Hill, like the enterprise owns that has not been passed, legislation that in other areas that has to do with improving their status. I don't think they know about the fair housing proposals that we have sent up there and a democratic majority has not dealt with. Have you, in recent times, planned to sit down with some of the black leaders, not like the ones you've been talking to and say, why can't we communicate better? Why don't you like my policies? Why won't blacks vote Republican? What is the problem here? I tried that in the very beginning and I found out very frankly that they are so committed politically as a party that they don't want to hear. And I have to come to the conclusion that maybe some of those leaders are protecting some rather good positions that they have and they can protect them better if they can keep their constituency aggrieved and believing that they have a legitimate complaint. If they ever become aware of the opportunities that are improving, they might wonder whether they need some of those organizations. As you start another four years with the distinction of being the oldest president in history, are you getting tired of this job? Are you getting weary of it? Is the excitement gone? No, not at all. Well, it seems it is to most of your chief staff who are all sort of going off and being replaced. The old gang is leaving. Oh no, I can understand that. I can understand when you come into government it's a little different than the private sector. Someone gives up a great deal to take an appointment in government. It's a cabinet position or whatever it is. And unlike a business where there's the continued challenge of the profit motive and growth and so forth, yes, after a time, I can see where some of the excitement has gone in that particular job. But what we found out here is that it doesn't mean that it's just that it's gone for being continuing to work in government or they wouldn't be taking other jobs. When you start listing the people that are leaving, yes, a few have left and for legitimate reasons that they knew when they came that they were not going to stay endlessly. And I said in appointing them from the very first, I said if these people that I've selected and want to come to government, if they can only come for a year or two, fine, I'll take them and then get someone else if they have to return to their private lives. But when you have someone that goes from one position to another, we found that out in California when I was governor, even with some of the permanent staff of government, that we took people that had been 20 years in jobs and we switched them with other people and you'd be surprised. The first protest was, I've been doing this for 20 years. What do you mean? I've got to go over here. You'd be surprised before the next six months was over after those changes. You never saw happier people in your life more excited when they found a new challenge. They were asking questions in the new position and saying, well, why are you doing it this way? Well, they say, well, why don't we do it this way? Well, the same thing happens with these appointees. Mr. President, the question is, are you still excited? I don't think they're going to let you switch with George Bush, for example, and I don't think you want to. No, not as long as I stay healthy. And you expect to, I presume. Yes. No, I think the difference is in here, as I say, I had a reason that compelled me to do this and as long as the challenge is still there and it still is, as I said earlier, the job isn't finished. So, no, I'm just... You must have a different feeling starting a second term, though, compared to the excitement of the first when you brought a Republican Senate with you. There were all these signs of major changes. During the second campaign, it was, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. Can that be as exciting? Yes, it is because, as I say, we've got a great start. If you really look at the whole tone of government today and what was being debated in government up until four years ago about cost or programs and this new program and let's spend money over here and doing this, the whole debate now has turned around to how much should the rate of cutting be and what should we cut? No one's talking about new programs and spending more money by government. No one's talking about more authority in the federal government. We're adjusting and giving back to local government and to state governments authority that the federal government should never have taken from them in the first place. And then I have an experience, a previous experience, that makes this exciting. As Governor of California, most of our great accomplishments came in the second term. The great welfare reform that was different than anything that's ever been accomplished in this nation took place in the second term. But having conquered the agenda, you don't feel a little of the thrill of the chase has gone? Oh, no. No. Because, as I say, if you walked away now and someone else came in with a different view, all of this could be unraveled. The idea is to get it clenched and in place that we can then have an amendment to the Constitution that says hereafter the federal government cannot borrow money. It must stay within its means. Have an economic recovery that is based in sound principles to where the people have accepted that if the government takes too much money from the private sector, you have these recessions that we've been having for 50 years. Let's look at the foreign policy quick before... Quick on foreign policy then. Are you, at this point, are you so committed to the Star Wars defense, the SDI initiative that you'd be willing to go out of office not having achieved any arms control if the Soviets won't move on the other two? Well, I don't think... I don't look at it as that... that that is a possibility. I think when they actually see this and the very fact that Geneva, we successfully put it there as one of the things that's going to be negotiated, you see when they're talking space wars and so forth, they're talking about some things where they're even ahead of us and that is having nuclear weapons in space that can shoot down at us. We're not talking about anything of that kind. We're talking about research to see if there is not a defense that can be built that doesn't kill people, kills weapons that can keep the weapons from coming to your shores if there is such a thing. I would hope that they would work on such a thing. If you can have that, then the very thing that they themselves have said they want to do in addition to these weapons becomes more than just possible. How important is it to actually signing an arms control agreement with the Soviets to you in the sense of an accomplishment a record book accomplishment? I don't believe since research is contained in the ABM treaty today I don't think that this is going to cause a walk away from the table and if it is then they never meant to come to the table to begin with. But let me point out something that they'd have to consider. Suppose we could succeed in getting down to the point of elimination of nuclear weapons but we know how to make nuclear weapons and if down some place in the future there should come a time of strain and stress who would know if somebody they would have to think maybe we were doing we could think that they were doing somebody say hey maybe let's get a few of these things ready for use and who would know that they were doing it? But if in the meantime our technology has made it plain that there is a defense against such things then you have guarded against that ever happening in the future for it's the same thing in other words as when at Geneva World War I we outlawed chemical weapons gas, poison gas but our soldiers on both sides, all sides were also still equipped with gas masks and we find today because why? Because people have knowing how to make it have continued to make it or started in to make it again well the same thing with the nuclear weapons you see the point is all we're asking for is the research and we have said to them that if such a weapon research is fruitful and if such a weapon is developed we're not going to keep it a secret and we'd be very happy then to sit down with them and say hey now let's look at the situation here Mr. President I wanted to ask you a quick question about the influence of your wife on your policy the influence that I think any wife has on a husband if you've got a happy marriage and we do have one thing as if you know that's one thing may I just may I voice a frustration it's not only my wife it's everyone is this picture that is being created that I sit at the desk and wait to see who's going to grab this arm and pull me this way or grab this one and pull me that way you know something I'm too old and stubborn to put up with that I know I make up my mind and I do I listen for counsel and advice I want to get expertise from people expert in various fields but I haven't changed my views since I've been here and with Nancy yes we've been married for 30 odd years and of course we talk and of course she has opinions and I listen to her opinions sometimes we argue about them and I don't listen but sometimes well as I say we get along and I find myself going home and I think like every other happy husband telling her what the day was like and what we did and all what did you last fight about? no not fight argue maybe I should have put that disgust so I just want to point out that we you know like any other human beings we don't always see something of that kind but it doesn't make any dense in the marriage thank you Mr. Mayor so you're going to be right in this second time? they've never done that yes they've never done anything else thank you for spending time with us it was a pleasure to be here I think that part of that part of that is the only distance between them you don't take a look when I heard on all sides of the discussion when we dated I made the decision California Bear yes I've been dated yes alright