 I told him they're going to be calibrating further future Presidents before this one. Congratulations. Keep worrying, I've got no place left to go but down. Mr. President, you went through a quite remarkable political transformation, right in the middle of your life, from a liberal Democrat to a conservative and a Republican. To begin with, just how liberal a Democrat were you, anyway? Well, the funny thing is, is I look back on it. I realize I took that term because in the days of the New Deal, that was the term that was used with regard to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's programs and so forth in those horrendous days of the Great Depression. But when you look back, you realize that Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran on a platform of reducing the cost of government, of returning authority and autonomy to local governments and state governments that he claimed had been unjustly seized by the federal government and the elimination of useless boards and commissions and so forth. Well, that's my first, in fact, my first four votes were cast for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But if you look today, did I leave the party or did the party leave me? Which party would be supportive of that kind of a platform? And that platform's pretty descriptive of what I've been trying to do ever since I held office. So what you're saying actually is that the Democratic positions that you supported were actually, in comparative modern terms, fairly conservative positions from the very start. Is that right? Yes. So there wasn't that much of a change? No. And it came on, more or less, through my own public speaking. I've, as you know, I've always explained my after-dinner speaking and after lunch speaking for all those years in Hollywood that if you don't sing or dance, you wind up as an after-dinner speaker. And so I did that and I did my own speeches. I tried to, at first I started out. I felt that I had to speak something on what I was doing anew. And so the subject of my speech is usually would be the real Hollywood versus the fictional version of it and the Tinseltown image that had been given to it. And this would be in the late 40s and early 50s? Well, it was post World War II and on up there to around 1960. And then to justify my addressing, say, a Chamber of Commerce and explaining how I could justify that kind of a speech to them, I would point out then the discriminations and many of them government, tax-wise and everything else against our industry because of that image. There wasn't going to be any politicians stand up and defend the bloated people of the Tinselworld of Hollywood and to further bring it home, I would say. And you know, if it can happen to one segment of society, it can happen to you and your business or whatever. And the funny thing is, as I went on speaking that way, after the speech, increasingly, people would buttonhole me on the way out, businessmen and so forth and say, let me tell you what's happening to my business. Let me tell you the discrimination, regulation-wise and so forth of government. And pretty soon Hollywood began to be more or less shrink down to just an introduction and I was actually writing speeches and delivering speeches on what was happening to the whole free economy in the United States. Until one day I went home from a speaking tour and said to Nancy, it's just dawned on me that I'm out here speaking all the time on this subject and then come election time I go in and campaign for and vote for the people that are making these things happen. And I said, it's time for me to change. Now at the time that this was occurring in your own life, this conservative movement as we now know it was getting underway in the 1950s, were you conscious of the movement or of individuals or books or ideas in the movement or did you develop your own position a little bit independently of it? Well, as I say, I've explained how I came to see this through my own speeches that none of us, someone else, didn't talk me into it. But I'll tell you what was also happening then. I was searching always since I did my own speeches for information, for examples and so forth. And so my reading began to take a turn. I can't tell you exactly when I discovered National Review and Human Events, but I think both of them were more in the form of a newsletter than the magazine and the tabloid-sized newspaper that they now are. But the reading was started. I hadn't put a label on it or anything. The reading was seeking more information about what was happening to the private sector, how examples of government's adversarial relationship. I remember one example. I don't know whether I have the numbers accurately or not, but pretty generally this, OIC's upon and that one little example was worth about three pages of information on the farm programs of what they had become as the new deal went on and then through post-war and so forth and the government's invasion of farming. And I think that government today and its programs have been largely responsible for the problems that have befallen our good farmers. But what I found, this one example was, I found that there were several government programs, funding programs to help poultry raisers increase egg production. And then there was another program, government program, that spent almost as much money buying up the surplus eggs. Now you are speaking here of the impact on you then of regulation and of too much government as being one of the, perhaps the major factor, one of the major factors. And the tax policies. And tax policies. How about the problem of domestic communism and Fuddiker Chambers, the Chambers Hiss case and the rest of the whole question of anti-communism. You had been involved in the battle in the Screen Actors Guild, I know. Was this a factor in your own political development? Well, this came about, this started really before anything else because I came back from the war to the industry and back to my post as a member of the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild. And at first, you know, we had just finished being allies with the Soviet Union. And so my own brother tried to tell me that things had happened while we were all going on the surface and that there were changes in the motion picture industry and I wouldn't believe him and I thought, oh, this is Republican propaganda. And then through that device of a jurisdictional strike in the motion picture industry, I discovered by actual participation in the meetings trying to resolve the issues of that strike on behalf of actors, discovered that that strike was communist run and run by unions and gills in the picture business, of which there are some 43 that had been infiltrated and taken over. But there again, I actually discovered that I myself was a participant or on the board of directors of a couple of organizations that were communist fronts. Now in those days, that was the communist game plan to take a legitimate organization that seemed to have a legitimate purpose, infiltrate, get control of the leadership, and then with the respectability of many of the members unquestioned and the organization having a good sounding name, start taking it down paths that shouldn't be going down. And I can tell you one experience of mine. As I began to learn first by way of this strike, what had happened in our industry, I remember then leaving a meeting of the Guild Board and going to a meeting of this other board of directors where I was a member and by now, I had gone public on the motion picture problem. And I walked into that board of directors meeting of this other organization down the center. I slipped into a folding chair over on the one side and every member of the board on that side of the room got over and crossed the aisle and sat on the other side leaving me all alone on this side. And I discovered something I should have known before and parted, severed my relationship with that organization. Did that have a role or a part in your identification of yourself as a conservative finally then, or was that mostly brought about by the concern of government regulation? Well, I think what it was a combination. The one was so, I had been making some speeches right after the war. You know, a lot of us came out of uniform and were concerned about, suddenly after all that sacrifice, concerned about a world in which, as you know, new automobiles were hard to come by and were almost rationed. They were so limited. And then you found the people that were saying, but for under the table you can get one. And I was horrified as a lot of us were. I thought, is this what we fought a war for? So I was kind of speaking out against the kind of fascist tendency. But I always did say, if at any time, I think the other side represents the threat that I see in this, I'll speak out just as strongly against them. Well, it didn't take me long to find out that that threat, particularly in the picture business at that time, was very real. But again, this became part of my homework that I was doing to find substantiation and find actual cases that I could relate to in my speeches. When you felt the change in yourself and in your attitude, did it manifest itself to you as a change to the Republican Party or to conservatism more generally as a point of view? I would say to conservatism, because, you know, all my life I'd come from a Democrat family and I'd been a Democrat all that time and come election times. The last president that I actively campaigned for and with was Harry Truman. And then as I say, it was getting up around 60, 1960, when I said what I did to Nancy. Now I didn't get around actually re-registering until 1962. And by that time, however, I had begun to be a speaker at Republican fundraisers. And because in the 1960 campaign I had, while I was still a Democrat, I went the other way. Well, my first vote, Republican vote, was for Eisenhower as president. That was 52. But so by that time, as I say, I was a speaker at many Republican fundraisers and so forth and in 1962, with the gubernatorial election coming on in California, I was speaking at a fundraiser and right in the middle of my speech a woman stood up in the middle of the audience and she said, have you re-registered yet? And I said, well, no, but I intend to. She said I'm a registrar and she walked right down the center. I'll put the papers on the podium. I signed up and said to the audience, now where was I? At the time that you began this change, liberalism was pretty powerful in Hollywood and indeed in the country generally and conservatism was in many places unpopular. Did you have any trouble with these new views or did you have enough company? Did you feel accepted? Oh, no, it was a very funny thing. There were letters that I was engaged in politics for the one party, the more liberal party. No one ever sent me letters and said, we're not going to go see your pictures anymore because of what you're saying politically and so forth. But it was funny. The minute I switched and became publicly on the other side, you'd be surprised how much male that kind that I got. And in the industry itself, pressure? I have a feeling and not just for myself, there were many others. I believe that there was a career penalty in it, that there were certain individuals in the production and direction and so forth that couldn't quite see you as right for the part and so you didn't get a part that you might otherwise have gotten. It's been said, Mr. President, that your father-in-law Dr. Royal Davis was also an influence in turning you toward the conservative side. Is that the case? You know, I have seen that over and over again in print and I have to say to our friends in the media, why don't they come to the source and find out the truth? Dr. Loyal was so honest and so principled and he was a Republican. I knew that. Now Nancy, and she'll be the first to tell you, she was apolitical. She hadn't been interested at all in that so she wasn't influencing anyone one way or the other. And he never, knowing that I was a Democrat, he never in any way ever brought up the subject or discussed it with me. He was a good father-in-law who approved of his daughter's husband. I saw an interview with Mrs. Reagan not long ago in which she was quoted as saying, and I'm very interested in this, that she felt that your whole preoccupation with the Screen Actors Guild was an effort to put more, what shall I say, substance or weight in your life than simply the acting profession gave it and that this, therefore, the change eventually when it came to politics was not as much of a change as it may have seemed, that you had all along been concerned with other things. Yes, it is true. Well, first of all, the speaking really began when I was a sports announcer because you know every year there's a lot of football banquets, high school or college and so forth, and you, as a sports announcer, find yourself being invited to be the speaker at a banquet. But the serious end of the business came, I'd always kind of thought that you should pay your way, that you ought to be a good citizen and that's why I went both occupations, the one in radio and then later in pictures, made you kind of an audience draw so that you could help somebody raise money and so forth, that you ought to use the blessings that had been bestowed upon you to try and do something in the public good. And I had thought that, but then, as a young contract actor, Warner Brothers, the Screen Actors Guild Board tried to be made up of people representative of the freelance actors, the contract players, the stars, the bit players and so forth, so that the whole profession was represented in the board. And one day I found that to fill a vacancy, which the board could do without going to the membership, I was called upon and they asked me to take a position on the Screen Actors Guild Board, and so I did. And I have to tell you, I'm a lifelong member, a lifetime member as a matter of fact, I think the only one that's ever sat in the Oval Office who was a lifetime union member, and I was so taken up by the real character of that Guild and its dedication to the industry, not just to its own selfish affairs and all, that, yes, it had a profound impact on me and then I wound up being six times president of the Guild. And so we come, at last, to the transition to politics and I guess that began pretty spectacularly with the famous speech in October 1964. Would you tell us how that speech came about, how you came to make it? Well, I had because our second home was in Arizona, Nancy's father and mother having a home there and we'd go over every year and bring the children over and all and in that way I met Barry Goldwater and I knew him and I was greatly impressed by him and I read his book, The Conscience of a Conservative and long before anything was being talked about, I said this is a man who ought to be president and when the time came I was co-state chairman in California for his campaign. I was asked to be chairman but I didn't know enough about political, the real, all the back scenes things of politics so a man who had had experience in the party that kind of, I said I'll be a co-chairman with him and so I traveled all over the state speaking and the speech that I eventually made was the one that I had been making throughout the country and one night I made it at a banquet, not too long before the election time and when the banquet was over, one table there of really leading figures in the Republican Party asked if I would sit down with them for a few minutes they went to talk to me and they asked me if I would do that picture if they made it possible on television and I said well yes, so they raised the money independently and arranged for NBC to broadcast that and I said that I thought it would be more effective if they had an audience so in the studio they delivered enough volunteers for an audience and then it was taped and I made the speech and incidentally I got a call from Barry Goldwater a few days before the speech was to go on and he said his people had talked to him, he'd never heard or seen what the speech was going to be even though it was a taped speech it wasn't done live and he said his people were talking that there wasn't, there was only a little bit of time left and they wanted to use a tape of a program that he'd already done I think it was his talking to Eisenhower at Gettysburg, Eisenhower's home and so forth and I said well I didn't know that I didn't have any control over whether that speech could be used or not and that group of people who had paid the money to the network for it they were the ones in charge and I said well Barry I wish you'd take a look or hear it or something because I said I'd been making it around the state and it's been rather well received and maybe it might be helpful and my brother who was with the advertising agency handling his campaign was at the hotel with him back in Cleveland or someplace where he'd made the call from and evidently they made available a soundtrack and played a soundtrack over the phone to him of my speech and he called me back to tell me that my speech was going to go on You remember who was at that table when you made the speech? Oh yes, Holmes Tuttle and Henry Salvatore and a group of leading people that have always been backbone of the party in California So you knew pretty well that the speech was a good speech and a successful one you'd tested it out? Yes, but then I have to tell you, then the doubts set in after I had recommended that it be played myself then I said who am I to start telling him what something of the kind and I really I just lived with horror of what I might have done well the speech went on and about 11 o'clock in California which was 2 o'clock in the morning back here a campaign official of his called me and said they thought I would like to know that the phones the switchboard was still lighting up the pledges were coming in the speech raised 8 million dollars And it also had a much longer range effect of course Did you feel it immediately? Did people start talking to you or about you in your hearing as a possible political figure at that point? Well no, the first intimation came in the following year 1965 and if you remember the party was well bloodied up by the primary contest in that campaign and in California it was split right down the middle and a little group consisting of some of those same people that had been at the table that night at the banquet came to see me to talk to me about running for governor against the incumbent Democratic governor who was seeking reelection and they put it in the basis that I could unify the party and I just thought there I'd never in my life had ever dreamed I would seek public office I loved the business I was in and I said no let me do the things I'm doing I'll go campaign for whoever you decide is the right candidate they were very persistent and they kept after us so long that finally I said look I'll tell you if you will for the next 6 months if you'll make it possible for me to accept all the speaking invitations around the state because once you get on the mashed potato circuit there is a big demand for speakers so you know that there are invitations out there I said I will let you know December 31st whether I should be the candidate or not whether you're right or wrong about whether I could win and I honestly believed that no someone else should be the candidate but I went out and they did fix it up they hired one of those PR political firms and I started speaking and accepting these and mainly political speeches but not entirely because I thought it wouldn't be fair just to go to a party a meeting of some kind so it was chambers of commerce and opening of united fund drives and all that sort of thing and I was coming home as it got toward December and saying to Nancy that maybe they're right about this winning business and then we finally got down to well we couldn't sleep well saying to each other could we ever live with ourselves if they're right and we said no about and talking always about unifying the party that healing this split this wound and finally I said yes and I have to tell you something I look back on it now and I can't understand I actually said yes only on the basis that I thought I could win the election and I sort of I went into the campaign before I realized that yeah but if I win I've got a job for several years I'm in a different line of work I thought only as far as November when I said yes and we did put the party together I want to move forward Mr. President in time a bit to cover one subject that may be of importance in the history of the conservative movement in which you played a very very large part as in so many others the battle over the Panama Canal treaties and the Carter administration which you opposed the ratification of the treaties and led the opposition could you tell us a little bit about the political impact in the country of that debate what do you think it did in terms of public opinion and whether what relation if any it had to the conservative movement that was developing at that time well I think it was very definitely a part of the conservative program and platform it came that way and I have to say that in all the speaking that I did about it very well received I don't ever remember a divided audience or people that supported the other side now I went so far however is to make a suggestion because I believe in the good neighbor policy and I believe that and believe then that the United States suffered a great deal south of the border and all the way down through Central and South America from that past image of the great Colossus of the North and that we ought to be and I suggested if we really wanted to do something about changing that why didn't we create a kind of company and a board of directors with representatives and the board of directors of all the shipping companies that made use of the canal and that would include the countries down there well that never got off the ground and of course we know the canal was given away and I guess no harm has been done but the long run but I still think that there was no reason for that action to have been taken how about the impact on yourself now you had been you had lost the nomination to Ford in 1976 you were out of the governorship of California you were a private citizen and leading this fight against the treaties did this have a significant political impact do you think on your own future with regard to 1980 and so on I think it might have from the standpoint that I've always said the people tell you whether you should be a candidate or not and maybe back because that's the way I first started out running in seeking the governorship but I think that yes that further kept me in the eye so that as 1980 began to get closer the same thing was happening of I was being approached by people and groups and from all over the country who suggested that I should be a candidate now as president of course you have an enormous amount of input from any number of sources in your staff and in the administration official input is there any other place or from which you derive your own political and intellectual nourishment now in terms of books or ideas or does time just overtake you I don't know well I still read National Review and Human Events and a certain number of columnists they're outnumbered by the others including yourself but yes I've always been a voracious reader and I have to say that the predominance of non-fiction over fiction is quite sizable in recent years and has been and so I you once told me in a letter that you generally keep a book by your bedside and read a little of it before you go to sleep at night that generally takes you maybe a month to get through a substantial book but you then do have a regular regimen of reading or at least a program of it to keep you in touch and outside of the weekends it is mainly that bedtime reading and now in the job of course and it was true when I was a governor also that you have to ration yourself so that you take the homework first before you fall to sleep you will have finished that and then you pick up and for the balance of time you can keep your eyes open read the book How do you feel about the conservative movement today it certainly has matured under your leadership that has become politically very significant has it in addition to maturing lost a certain dynamism are we getting a little bit long in the tooth How do you trade the cause well actually what they wanted was if you can't get everything jump off the cliff with the flag flying in defeat and I've always figured look if I can get 60, 70, 75% of what we're trying for that doesn't mean you settle for that you take it and then from that point you start trying to get the rest that you didn't get and I think that that's happened to the movement also we recognize that you're never going to be able to come in with a platform of every single thing that you want and get it 100% there are still other people with other views that have to be convinced Was there ever a time when you felt that the Republican party simply was too narrow an instrumentality that it might be necessary to reach for some new political formulation as you know the idea was up and around I was involved in it and others was there a time when this ever struck you as a possible option No I'll tell you as a matter of fact I remember attending a meeting