 Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Mrs. Reagan. Thank you very much. You've already done that. Thank you. Thank you, Eddie Fritz, and thank all of you. Well, here we are in one of the entertainment mechas of the world. And I know that all of you have just one thing on your mind, a foreign policy. But it's a special honor for me to be able to speak to the National Association of Broadcasters because, as you've just been told, broadcasting and I go back a long way. I mean a very long way. Come to think of it, the first group like this that I ever addressed was called the National Association of Town Criers. For those of you with television stations, I have an announcement. As you know, I've never liked big government, and that was one of the reasons I was opposed to the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which I've already been told. That particular legislation, which I vetoed, and I think you would agree there's no reason to substitute the judgment of Washington bureaucrats for that of professional broadcasters. Now while I'm on that subject, I wonder whether I could enlist your help. I nominated Bradley Holmes to the FCC last December. And last fall, that was in the fall of Susan Wing this past December. Now until these nominations are confirmed by the Senate, the FCC can't operate effectively. Yet for all these months, the Senate has failed even to hold confirmation hearings, much less bring the nominations to a vote. So just let me ask you, isn't it high time the Senate took action? As I say, I've never liked big government. Yet sometime before I leave office, I do intend to enact a very important new regulation, one limiting the number of commercials during my old movies. Truly is an honor to have this opportunity to address you of the National Association of Broadcasters as you gather here under the theme Broadcasting and Democracy, the winning ticket. It's an honor in particular because these remarks represent an historic moment for both the presidency and American broadcasting. It was back in 1923 that Warren Harding became the first president to speak over that new fangled piece of equipment, the radio. In 1946, Harry Truman became the first president to speak by way of television, followed by Dwight Eisenhower, who in 1955 became the first president to be seen on color television. Today, just six short decades after Warren Harding first spoke over the radio, these remarks of mine are being recorded on HDTV, High Definition Television. I'm told that HDTV represents in advance as dramatic as that from black and white to color, a new and powerful manifestation of the broadcasting industry. This technological creativity from primitive early radio to HDTV and satellite transmissions during my own lifetime has, of course, transformed American life. But I would submit that it promises to transform world affairs as well, and this is a subject that I'd like to come back to. The truth is that there is no setting in which the cause of peace and human freedom is ever far from our minds. And so I'd like to take a moment to address foreign policy, not only because of the coming summit, but because I believe that lessons have emerged during these past seven years that will endure far beyond this administration. Now, a few words about an issue that is important to both the Washington Summit last year and to the coming Moscow Summit next month. Arms reductions. I cannot, of course, describe to you the detail of the talks we've engaged in with the Soviets or are engaged at the moment. Rather, I'd like to discuss with you our fundamental approach to arms reduction. The first point is that we insisted upon arms reductions. We refused, in other words, to be drawn into an elaborate arms control process that could very well lull us and our allies into a false sense of security. After all, it was in a climate of arms control and so-called détente during the 1970s that the Soviet Union continued their pursuit of the biggest arms buildup in all history. A buildup of nuclear and conventional forces alike. While we in the United States permitted our own deterrent capability to weaken, at first many critics viewed the goal of genuine arms reductions as unrealistic, even according to some misleading, even put forward in bad faith. They claimed our administration was making proposals that the Soviets would simply never agree to. But by the autumn of 1985, you and the media began reporting a Soviet willingness to consider a 25 percent, then a 40 percent, and finally a 50 percent reduction in strategic arms. We do not know yet whether we can reach an agreement with the Soviets on such a dramatic production or reduction in strategic arms in time for the Moscow Summit. But the negotiations are going forward earnestly and in good faith, and that in itself is historic. With regard to our zero-option proposal for intermediate-range nuclear forces, or as we call it, INF, the critics again derided our position as unrealistic when we first advanced it in 1981. Today, it's my hope that the Senate will move expeditiously to give its advice and consent to the INF Treaty that Mr. Gorbachev and I signed last December in Washington, so we can exchange instruments of ratification next month in Moscow. If you will, contrast these events with the Soviet attitude when the United States ordered deep cuts in nuclear arms to Moscow at the beginning of 1977. You will recall that the Soviets rejected that American offer out of hand. Why? And what has changed in the meantime? Here I believe we come upon two points of tremendous importance for the Moscow Summit and the whole future of American-Soviet relations. First, the United States in the 1970s slashed our defense budgets and neglected crucial defense investment. We were dealing, in short, from a position of weakness. Well, today, we're dealing from a position of strength. Second, the United States, those 11 years ago, had not yet shown what might be called a tough patience, a willingness to stake out a strong position, then stand by it as the Soviets probed and made their counteroffers, testing American determination. Why should the Soviets have agreed to a joint cut in 1977 when they had reason to believe the United States would go on permitting the strength of its deterrent forces to erode? When the Soviets had reason to believe, in other words, that in dealing with the United States, they could get something for nothing. Yet today, the Soviets understand that we can be tough enough and patient enough to hold out that to improve their own position, the Soviets themselves must bargain. But I said when I first ran for president that our nation needed to renew its strength. Some called me bellicose, even a warmonger. Some claimed that we should deal with the Soviets not by rebuilding our own defenses, but by engaging in a nuclear freeze, a freeze that would permanently ratify Soviet nuclear superiority. Well, I speak today, as I will speak increasingly in these months, of the lessons we've learned. Now we know, without doubt, that strength works. That strength promotes the cause of freedom and, yes, the cause of peace. I do not claim this achievement for my own bipartisan support in the Congress has proven crucial in rebuilding our nation's defenses. It's my fervent hope that this bipartisan coalition can be sustained and enlarged in particular to support strategic defenses for America and our allies. My concern, my grave concern, about efforts to cut the defense budget, this is no time to weaken our defenses, not now, and we've been through so much to rebuild them when our strong defenses have brought us so far in dealing with the Soviets. Admittedly, defense is expensive, but it's not so expensive when you understand that it represents an investment in our own freedom and in world peace. And it's not so expensive when you consider what would happen if our defenses were permitted to fail. And so in the coming campaign and for the years ahead, I would say to all involved in American politics, and I'm sure you here today agree, wherever our parties may differ in our dealings with the Soviets, let them always agree. I didn't say that exactly correctly. No matter how much we may divide and be divided in our relations with the Soviets, let us always agree. We must be patient, and, yes, America must be strong. Important as they are, arms reductions have represented only one aspect of our four-part agenda for dealing with the Soviets, the other three being human rights, regional conflicts, and bilateral people-to-people exchanges. This in itself represents another achievement, for we've gone from containment, the mere defense of our interest, to a strategy based upon the expansion of freedom. Nowhere has the world movement toward freedom and democracy been more in evidence than in what might be called the outposts of Soviet expansionism. For in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Africa, and, yes, Nicaragua, we see domestic insurgencies directed against communist tyrants, and it's been a central part of our new strategy, part of our new commitment to the expansion of freedom to help them. With regard to Nicaragua, it's no secret that I believe Congress should have done more, much more, to aid the freedom fighters. But the recent vote to send humanitarian aid will do much good, and I want to restate my commitment, my unshakable commitment, to stand by the freedom fighters and their efforts in every way to bring peace and democracy to their country. Between now and the time I leave for Moscow, I'll be speaking at greater length about human rights and regional conflicts. In the very near future, we anticipate the signing and Geneva of an agreement that will result in the total withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Now, if that accord is complied with and the Soviets withdraw irrevocably from that long-suffering country, this will be a great victory for its heroic people, whom we shall continue to support. It'll also be a major contribution to the improvement of East-West relations. But today, if I may, I'd like to talk for a moment about the bilateral relations between our two nations. It was at the Geneva Summit in 1985 that General Secretary Gorbachev and I endorsed a new expansion in people-to-people exchanges between our two nations. Since then, exchanges of all kinds have begun taking place. Some have rightly received enormous publicity, the performance of pianist Vladimir Horowitz in Moscow, for example, or the Bolshoi Ballet's tour of the United States. Others have been quietly going forward, student exchanges, fine arts exhibitions, exchanges between academics and scientists. All of this has its impact. No Soviet citizen can return to his country from the United States, seriously believing that America represents an aggressive power. No American can return from the Soviet Union without having his understanding of that country and, yes, of what it means to be an American, deeply enriched. And so in Moscow next month, I'll seek to expand these people-to-people exchanges still further. But I'd like to consider as well the implications of another kind of exchange, one that I touched on at the very beginning of my remarks, the information exchange, an exchange born of high technology. To be sure, no revolution in our time is more striking, far-reaching, and profound than the revolution in technology and communications. The semiconductor and countless other breakthroughs have ushered in a new burst of economic creativity. We have products today, the laptop computer, for example, that were quite literally undreamed of just a decade ago. Instantaneous communications have made possible the growing integration of world markets. And, yes, the new communications technologies have made it harder and harder for totalitarian states to control the information that reaches their peoples. All of this says a great deal about the nature of the two-world systems. In the West, as I've suggested, we see rising standards of living, medical breakthrough after breakthrough, enormous economic and technological creativity. And in the communist world, well, Khrushchev may have said, we will bury you, but today, when we look at the communist world, what we see is a vast economic stagnation. Today, the Soviet Union cannot, and remember this is some seven decades after the revolution, cannot feed its own people. And consider this, endless shortages and long lines force the average Soviet family to spend two hours shopping every day just to obtain the necessities of life. It is not too much to claim that it lies in the very nature of freedom to promote growth and prosperity. Just as the technological revolution says much about the future of our two systems, so too it suggests a great deal about their future. Maintaining a state monopoly on information is already becoming more and more difficult. States that depend now on the consent of their people, but not on their consent of their people, I should say, but on a rigid control of information those people receive, such states will come under increasing pressure. So too economic growth has already come to rely less and less upon the labor of the hands and the sweat of the brow and more and more upon the genius of the human mind. Consider, for example, the cover story of last week's Forbes magazine. The article by the author and economist George Gilder described coming developments in computer technology focusing on the work and views of the California Institute of Technology's physicist, Carver Mead. The article was entitled, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. Mead, Gilder writes, believes that new developments in electronics are opening right now opportunities for entrepreneurial creativity and invention unprecedented in the history of technology. The current transition promises yet another 10,000-fold increase in the cost-effectiveness of computing in the next decade. Silicon slices with as many as 10 billion linked transistors will become possible. And listen, if you will, to what Mead himself is quoted as saying, the entire industrial revolution enhanced productivity by a factor of about 100. The microelectric electronic revolution has already enhanced productivity in information-based technology by a factor of more than a million, and the end isn't in sight yet. And Mead goes on to say of coming developments, we're not going to need the federal government to come in and bail out all our electronics. We're going to do just fine. Thank you. Well, I know what you're thinking and it's true that last remark warmed my heart considerably. But what does this technological revolution mean for the future of the world order? It means that nations will have to grant to their scientists complete freedom of inquiry to their businessmen and entrepreneurs freedom to invest, to risk, to create new products and with them new markets to their entire economies the freedom is to grow and grow unburdened by heavy taxation and unimpeded by needless regulation. This represents, as I said, the true challenge of openness to the communist world. But the Soviets and their clients must open their countries to ever wider freedoms or they'll see their economies indeed their whole way of life fall further and further behind. Well, I don't want to go on too long. This is after all, Las Vegas. And outside just a moment ago I saw fellow trading 10 passes to the Reagan talk for one ticket to Frankie Valley. I'm mindful too that bringing things to a good conclusion is always a tricky business. You were told that I was a sports announcer, W.H.O. Des Moines. Well, back in those days, the great evangelist Amy Semple McPherson was making a tour of the country holding revival meetings and one of them in Des Moines. Now, the station thought it would be a good idea an enterprising public relations man to interview Amy Semple McPherson. But why they picked a sports announcer to interview that noted evangelist? I'll never know. But there we stood in the studio and I asked her several what I thought were appropriate questions and then she answered graciously but then went into a very fervently about the success of her meeting. And I sat down until suddenly I heard her saying good night to our radio audience and I looked up at the clock and there were only four minutes to go. Well, I didn't know enough about Amy Semple McPherson that I could fill four minutes. So I got up and in those days of radio and disc jockeys and so forth, I started thanking the noted evangelist Amy Semple McPherson and so forth but I did like this which means get a record ready. And I fell out in the control room through the window, reached out. There was always records around there for such contingencies and picked one up and put it on the table and I said, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude this broadcast by the noted evangelist Amy Semple McPherson with a brief interlude of transcribed music. I expected nothing less than the Ave Maria. The Mills Brothers started singing many the Moucher's wedding day. She never did say goodbye. She just slammed the studio door as she went out. But to return to world affairs you may recall that when I was in Berlin last year I challenged Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the wall, that grim reminder of all the divides east from west, the communist world from the free. But there is another wall that divides us, an invisible wall. It's the wall the communist world has erected against the free flow of information and ideas. It's the wall that prevents the communist world from joining the west in this new age, this dazzling new age of prosperity and creativity. And so I challenged him in Berlin before the Washington summit. I challenged Mr. Gorbachev here today before the summit in Moscow. Challenge him to tear down this other wall, this grim invisible wall of oppression. Mr. Gorbachev and I have already addressed each other's people on television and this was helpful. But I challenged Mr. Gorbachev to open the Soviet Union more fully to western media. Western newspapers and journals should become freely available to Soviet citizens. Soviet airwaves should be open to western broadcasts. And yes, the Soviets should open their country to books, all books. Here I have a specific first step to suggest. Mr. Gorbachev opened the Soviet Union to the works of a great man and an historic author, opened the Soviet Union Solzhenitsyn. We have been too long divided east from west. Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev that our peoples might come to know one another and together build a world and you. Well, I made a promise to myself as Henry VIII said to each of his six wives, I wouldn't keep you long. So, thank you all and God bless you all. Well, Mr. President, I think you can feel the deep affection that this audience has for you and for our lovely First Lady. We do have a special presentation for you. It's rather historic. It's being presented on behalf of the entire broadcast industry. As one of the 20th centuries most outstanding and effective communicators, you have recognized the broadcast media to entertain, to inform and to lead. You have been deemed by all Americans as the great communicator. During your term, you have institutionalized the Saturday morning radio address. You have used television to speak directly to the American public on issues affecting their daily lives. You have used our medium to reach across the continents communicating internationally with world leaders and individuals. Through your dedication and commitment to the First Amendment principles and freedom from government oversight, our industry has remained competitive and strong. For your unwavering support of and respect for and belief in the broadcast industry, we present to you the first Ronald Reagan Broadcasting Award. I'll ask our Chairman Wally Jorgensen for the presentation. The award reads for a lifetime of achievement and leadership through the effective use of the broadcast media presented by the National Association of Broadcasters, April 10th, 1988. This, believe it or not, this is the shape of the first microphone I ever faced. Well, God bless you all and thank you all very much. I'm very proud to have this. Thank you.