 Mr. President, I'm going to see you again, sir. It's nice to see you. Thank you. You know, John, I'm very interested in you, Mr. President. Let me see. Where do I go? Right here, sir. Good. You know, I'm in the middle. Let's see. Let's just get the B.N. safety to go to the middle. Thank you. Well, I'm delighted to meet you here with you, and I think you know my attitude to your organization, to the military itself, and all the things that have been done in regard. I'm just delighted to participate in this, but I think I should be listening more than talking. So, Gary, why don't I hear it back to you? Thank you, Mr. President. Before you, first of all, I want to introduce you to these people because they represent American veterans across this country. It's almost as nice to take you here in the first time, too. Mr. President, we'd like to thank you for your strong commitment to the young people of America. As D.C. college Republicans and young people alike, we'd like to wish you a happy birthday. On behalf of the National College Republicans, Mr. President, happy birthday and six more years. Because I know, and as you well know, the schedule has been kind of turned around today, and therefore I have to say goodbye and send Nancy back upstairs. She has an appointment waiting for her, but she wanted to come down and at least be here for the candles and all that. Well, I want to thank all of you and for this reception. And I don't dress this way in the Oval Office, but it's Sunday and it's my birthday and I don't get to dress like this very often. I was going to come down in a cardigan, but I remembered that there was a president just before me. He wore one in his first fireside chat, which prompted Henry Kissinger to say he was the first president to ever start office by pulling the wool over his own eyes. But listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate this, but also in seeing you and seeing the enthusiasm that you have. I don't know if you're around the east here or Washington very much and start the day off with the morning papers, end the day with the evening TV news. You could wonder if anybody on our side is keeping their enthusiasm out there. But things are on the mend. You know, I have to tell you, the efforts to try and portray this is something different. I do get a little frustrated at times. Some of the senators who I saw, Senator Kennedy the other day on the air. And he was saying that our whole economic plan had caused all this trouble. Well, yesterday I tried in just that five minutes I have on Saturday noon on radio to point something out. If you just put some dates together, the recession, the unemployment started increasing, inflation started going up, so did interest rates back in 1979. And I remember campaigning in 1980 in some places like Flint, Michigan and Detroit in a town in Indiana where unemployment was as high as 20% then. And I remember that they stormed at me because I called it a depression, not a recession. That was in the summer of 1980. And they said technically it was a recession, not a depression. But by the time we got here, interest rates were 21.5%. We'd had double-digit inflation for two years. And unemployment was continuing to go up. And I remember that in four years before in running against Kennedy, Kennedy, that's a Freudian slip. When my predecessor was running against Jerry Ford, he cited what they had created a misery index. And the misery index was made up of adding the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. And at those times, it came to 12.5%. And he said that no one had a right to run for president with a misery index of that size. Well, by the time the election day came in 1980, his misery index was 19.7. And we started, as you know, January 20th. You start after the fiscal year has begun, so your first budget all the way till October is theirs, not yours. And we hadn't put any of our, as a matter of fact, we managed to squeeze a few billion dollars out of their budget just by management changes after we got here. But it was not until around in July that the bottom fell out. The recession had kept right ongoing, getting worse. The interest rates hadn't come down, the automobile plants were closing, the steel plants, the housing industry, no one could get mortgages. But we did get most of our program passed, the budget cuts and the tax cuts. But they didn't begin until October 1st. By this time, we'd hit bottom. And so I figured that our economic plan couldn't have had much to do with what had taken place in that recession. But since then, things have started getting better. And as you know, for 1982, inflation rate was down to 3.9. Unemployment has stayed up, but that has finally, in this month of January, or last month of January, begun to come down and dropped four tenths of a percentage point. But you know what I'm trying to say and inspire you to recognize is this, and I should have said this perhaps first. We've had a lot of Republican presidents, and only for one two-year period. And your whole lifetime, or before, has a Republican president had a Republican Congress. Every Democrat president has had a Democratic Congress. Now we, at least for two, going into the second term here, into the third year, we have a house, one house, the Senate, but not the House of Representatives. And what this Republican Party of ours must do is say that before too long, if we're going to quit this obstacle race and really have a chance to prove that Republican philosophy works, let's get ourselves a Congress as well as the executive branch and see that. By the way, on that 3.9 percent inflation rate, it's kind of interesting that for the last three months, that 3.9, the last three months, the inflation rate at an annualized rate has been running at 1.1 percent. Now if we can hold it at that, things are going to get even better and the interest rates come further down. I'm standing here going on a lot, but just, I know I haven't got much time and I know you've got a party to go to, I've been told anyway. But maybe one of you, among yourselves and talking, have you said to yourself, if we could ask him, what would you ask? Will you run again for us, for the youth, Mr. President? Will you run again for the youth of America? Well, I hope you realize that this is not the time to make such a statement. I'll give you my standard answer and then I'll take my standard answer. And that is, I think this, it's too early, it's too early, but then I think also the people tell you whether you should run or not. But now you had your hand up. Well, that's a nice question. It says, do I understand that the people want me to run again? Well, of course, as I say, that isn't the flavor you get from reading the press or some of those polls or not, but, well, did you? I'd like that, of course. I don't know. That was a sort of a surprise stop that we made there in that pub. And I tell you, I hadn't been in there five minutes until I was talking with a brogue. Everyone in there was, everyone in there was talking like that and they were saying, well, listen, you are what it's all about in what we're trying to do here. There isn't any way that we can turn around what's been going on for 40 years in a very short time, and we've said that from the very beginning that we were going to start working for it. What I want to see, I want to see us not only get this economy straightened out as I think we are now, that it is, it's coming around, but I want to at least prove to you with, if it's only one installment, that we didn't intend to leave your generation stuck with that trillion-dollar debt, I want to see us make a payment on that measure. Maybe we can do it. See, they can't be college young Republicans. We're going on. Of course, those are the two youngest college Republicans I've ever seen. Well, I know you want to get going and I won't keep you standing on that hard. Well, in this job, you kind of got a national constituency. But on the other hand, I had to say about the Redskins, though, that I had to be happy to see that happen here. It was a very unusual thing. You know, the people in Washington, being the capital and all, you kind of sense that they don't have a hometown feeling. They haven't got the same feeling that most of us have about our hometown. This did it. All of a sudden, never mind the capital, they could have moved that out. This was their hometown and their hometown team wanted. It was very inspiring to see. I've got a question over here. Well, I certainly will. Congratulations and happy birthday. I'll come around on the way up. Well, I think they mix the babies up in the hospital. I don't feel that old. No, we've got a little gym upstairs here and I work out every day. He looks. Doesn't he, folks? I think I feel better than I felt 20 years ago. It's 39. I know how much that means to me because when I was governor, it was back in the riot of 60s. And any time people your age were around then, there was a riot. Yes. What? It would be a pleasure to run against him. What's that? What did you say? I'm a Catholic university. Happy birthday. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for that. I'll put on that helmet I wore when I played the gipper. Well, thank you very much. I'm delighted to have that. Well, I know I can't keep you in the longer night. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much.