 I'm sorry. Let me apologize about keeping you waiting here. We won't cut it to your time. As I've always said, every time I open the day with a meeting with congressman, I'm behind schedule for the rest of the day. You're smiling. It looks like you couldn't have been in a meeting with congressman. I always live with the belief that there's a pony in here somewhere. Mr. President, there are now six Republican candidates for president. Four of them are opponents of the new Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union. One is on the fence and only the vice president is strong in support. How do you feel about that? Well, I hope that they will have second thoughts, all of them, about it. I think there's some misunderstandings and some individuals who are opposed to it have kind of generated the feeling about it. But I think that that treaty is, well, the first step in the reduction of weapons that, if they're ever used, well, I have said that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Because the people that are not killed in the exchange of nuclear weapons in the country, where do they then live after the country has been so poisoned? If you look at the Soviet situation with Chernobyl, 135,000 people dislocated and still unable to go back there. And that particular disaster had less effect than one single warhead would have. So this move, if you'll remember, the Germans or the Soviets, started to implement with the SS-20s. And our allies appealed to us and we all adopted a two-track policy. When I say we, I wasn't here then. This was before I got here. A two-track policy of first trying to persuade the Soviet Union to do away with the weapons. And then second, when they wouldn't, then our allies asked us to help them implement weapons on our side as a deterrent. And that fell to me. By that time, there was an agreement with that by the United States, but it hadn't been implemented until we got here. And then we began. And as you know, the Soviet Union protested in 1981, I proposed. That's a zero-zero option. We'll take ours out if they'll take theirs out. And as you know, they walked out of any negotiations. Well, we went ahead and we installed them. They've come back and are willing to talk. And now it looks like we will be signing such an agreement. And I think those people in this country who believe that in some way this weakens our deterrent capability in Europe aren't aware of the facts, that there still remain the very short-range actual battlefield weapons, which in this case, I think, evens up the disparity in arms between the great superiority of conventional weapons. And before any further move would be made, we would have to also negotiate conventional weapons. We would not go forward with treaties reducing nuclear weapons that would leave the Soviet Union with an ultimate superiority. Would you yourself try to persuade the Republican candidates to come around on this? Well, I had to cancel because of the events of last week, a meeting that I was to have with all of them. And I'm looking forward to meeting with them and talking about the whole situation. Not only that, but other things, including our California donation to the Republican Party of the 11th Commandment. Mr. President, you seem to have been unequivocally opposed to any dealing on Social Security, the reduction of the COLA, and Social Security as part of the effort to do away at the deaths. Has that changed? Do we detect some effort to make a deal with the Democrats? Well, we had a meeting with our people this morning, and they've kept me abreast of all of the negotiations that are going on. But I have to say with these kind of negotiations going on, since I had about 25 years of being involved in labor management negotiations on the part of my union in Hollywood, it's very ticklish to give any replies to where we are or what we might do. You did say, Mr. President, in this instance at the outset that everything was on the table but Social Security. Would you say categorically, again now that Social Security is absolutely off the table and there would be no changes you would accept? No, and I won't make an answer either way. As I say, in negotiations, you do your negotiating there in the room without any advance notice as to where you stand. I'd take that as a change in your position. Would I be incorrect in doing that? I would take that as a change in your position. No, I just, the negotiations are going on and I think progress is being made. Good progress. Mr. President, shifting to Judge Ginsburg, I'd like to try to go beyond what you've already said about the judge and his philosophy and try to get a better understanding of why you've checked such a young man about whom so little is known, especially considering the surprises that are now coming out such as his drug use and the criticism that you should have picked a more experienced person. My question is what other than his philosophy attracted you to Judge Ginsburg? Was it his age, his religion or just the fact that Ed Meese recommended him? Well, every factor was taken into consideration and I must say that the top three finalists, as I've said a number of times, sometimes I thought you could have put their names in the wall and thrown a dart and it would have been all right. They were so all well qualified for this position. However, in the sum total, I did believe when it came down to really the final study, I thought there was just a bit of a shading there and part of that was the basis, the record of his other positions here in government. He was most highly thought of by all the people that were in association with him in the positions that he held here in government. And to put it down lack of experience, we had a Chief Justice not too many years ago who had never served a day as a judge. There have been others in Judge Ginsburg's age bracket that even younger and, well, even a little more or a little less, but in that same age bracket there have been other Supreme Court justices in the past that had little or no experience as a judge. But he had been cleared by this same Senate committee, just we're talking about a year ago or so, for what is about the second ranking judgeship to Supreme Court and that is this Second Circuit Court of Appeals here in the Capitol. Mr. President, I guess I still don't really have a feel, though, for what attracted you to him as a person. There must be hundreds of judges who have cleared the committee, who haven't used drugs, who don't have the questions that are being raised. Now why him? Well, as I say, first of all, I do not single handedly. In fact, I don't think any president does sit here and decide to put his finger on someone as a judge. You have a group of people and people in the legal profession who are kind of a committee to go out and seek out likely candidates. And there was a considerable list. And then as we went on and the process, it finally came down to these three candidates. And then the main task is to pick the one of the three. And as I've just told you why what some of the bases were for me, the fact that in other positions he had been in our administration and government, and we'd had an opportunity to see him at work and know how the people who worked with and for and around him felt about him. And while it was very narrow, as I say, any one of the three would be an excellent candidate for them. I've got a nephew, nice young man, who had his heart set on being an FBI agent. He's a lawyer. And in his interview with the FBI, he admitted that he had experimented with marijuana in college and they told him, forget it. There's no way we're going to have you in the FBI. So my question is can we have one standard for entry level into the FBI and another for the Supreme Court? Well, I didn't know about that. But on this other hand, on the other hand, let's look at this situation. Some individual who associated with him at that period but who today is organizing a group against him was the source of the information. But I accept his statement that this was only a few times and a one-time thing at that period in which I think there are great many people would have to admit that, well, here and there they experimented or did something of that kind. And his statement covered that and he covered it that he did not carry it on. He did not become an addict in any way. It was not a regular thing and he recognizes it was a mistake and regrets that he even did what he did do. I guess my other question along with that is are questions like the one that you just dealt with and everything else that's going on, making your job a little less fun these days than it used to be? Yeah, I try not to get me down on this, but you see, I've also had this experience before. I was a governor and I had made it plain I would only be a governor for two terms. And I had a democratic legislature in both houses my last year and I found that any term appointments of any kind that required ratification, I could not get that ratification they simply on a political basis had dug in their heels and decided they'd wait and hope that maybe the next governor would be one of theirs and therefore they let the vacancies ride and would not accept any nomination. So this is new for me and I believe that what I'm undergoing here is the same kind of politics. It really doesn't have anything to do with whether they try to destroy a human being in there. Sir, would you have appointed or nominated Judge Ginsburg for the Supreme Court if you had known in advance that he had experimented with marijuana? I have to tell you I don't know where in our meetings and all with the three so close as I said so closely aligned I don't know whether that would have made a shade of difference or not because as I repeatedly said I can't make it any more clear that all three of them I had to recognize as you could say almost just point a finger and pick one. So that might have I don't know. Do you feel let down by him that you had to find out about it this way just after you've come through one bruising fight? No, I still believe that he's actually the qualified man for that position. But Sir, don't you think this is going to make it extremely difficult, more difficult than it was already going to be even under the political ramifications? Well let's say it gives some of the people who are going to make it difficult anyway it gives them a little cover. Mr. President, if I can follow on Andy's question in talking about his nephew he pointed out that the use even occasional use of marijuana does bar you from many federal jobs specifically the FBI given what you said and excusing the judges occasional use as a student would you recommend that that should not be used as a bar to anybody in any federal job should the FBI no longer bar people? No, I think you have to look at each individual case but also the position. Now I don't know to what extent and I don't know how long or anything of that kind and I was unaware of anything having been done of this kind but again we're talking about an entirely different everything we're talking about law officers that are having a very hazardous job and all of that and so whatever has made them set their standards I think I have to have to go agree to. You wouldn't want lower standards for Supreme Court justices though would you sir? No, I think as I say we're talking about you know it's a little bit like a track team pick a fellow to run the quarter mile on the basis that he's faster than the other fellows we're talking about a job that has different requirements and certainly in his limited though it has been experienced on the second highest court in the land he demonstrated the qualities that are necessary. Mr. President with Mr. Gorbachev coming over now in a few weeks what do you hope to accomplish beyond the INF Treaty? Well I hope that we can now then make some ground in the ICBM Treaty the START Agreement where he himself has expressed a desire to have a 50% reduction of those weapons and I know that that'll be a subject we take up we also in the summits don't just deal with arms control we have dealt very frankly with them on the matter of human rights regional matters like Afghanistan and Nicaragua and so we'll be dealing with all of those and I think that recently there has been some improvement with regard to the human rights problem I would like to see it go all open to where they're as open as we are about letting people emigrate but a considerable number of well-known refuse nicks or if they're called that or people that are political prisoners have been released. How do you feel now about the role that the Soviets are playing in Nicaragua with President Ortega? Well I thought I thought it was very unwise of him this is the second time that he has done such a thing going there at a very key moment but the other thing is his recent announcement or as recent as his speech last night that he's going to depend on the Soviet Union again for the continued military help well that's indirect defiance of the agreement that he signed because if I recall correctly that agreement calls for no such outside military assistance President of the Republican presidential candidate, Pat Robertson recently angered many of your supporters by saying my wife doesn't like communists she has never suggested I make an accommodation with the Soviet Union in order to win the Nobel Peace Prize there was little doubt that those remarks were aimed at Mrs. Reagan were you among those angry at Robertson for seeming to be questioning your wife's anti-communism? Well yes I was until he apologized for it Did he apologize to you, sir? No, he did it publicly and claimed that it it wasn't really, as I understand it, what he intended to say it didn't mean the way it was taken but did that cause any grief to Mrs. Reagan particularly at the time when she was in the hospital and went through a rough time? No, she's pretty well experienced having been picked on and things of that kind and I don't know that she was even aware of it until we talked about it later But you were Yeah Can I back to the summit, sir? How would you rate the chances of the Washington summit leading to a Moscow summit and particularly some kind of framework agreement on start and as part of that do you want to have an opportunity to speak directly to the Soviet people through television and give them your views about our country and your views on the world? Oh, I'd like to do that Do you think that's a real prospect in March or April? Well, we'll have to see when you say about the prospects of this meeting way back at the first meeting and at the first session of the first meeting I invited Secretary General to take a walk with me and let our teams get on to the matters of specifics and arms control and so forth but what I had in mind was talking to him alone for one on one which we did and then I had been told by our people that the meeting would be a success if we came away with no more than an agreement to a second summit so on our way back to rejoin the meeting I stopped him out in the parking lot and he had been talking to me about there were some things in the Soviet Union that I had never been there and he thought I ought to see and I said well you've never been to our country and I said why don't we have the next summit in the United States and you are hereby invited and without any hitch he said I accept but he said you having never been to the Soviet Union the third meeting I invite you and I said I accept when I told our people that it was already set that we were going to have two more now I don't know how the difficulties arose because the meeting here was supposed to be in 1986 not 1987 and then 87 was to be there but so I have accepted and the idea of that summit and I think it shows that we have made some progress are you disappointed sir that he isn't going west with you the rats perhaps well the thing is he's got some problems there in his own country just as we all do sometimes and it's a case of this one being I think dedicated to business and a summit and therefore the thought that we both had talked about of being able to see each other's countries and so forth that may have to wait but an invitation is still open for him to make a visit here in which we can show him some of the country which he hasn't seen and if circumstances are such that we must just confine this one to the business of the summit well so be it Mr. President we hear reports from time to time that you seem more detached from the job these days and you may have less interest in some of the issues and aren't quite as excited about it is there any truth to that? There is no truth to that and every time I've read it I have wanted to take the typewriters away from the individuals that have written it and the microphones away from those who have said it aloud no I don't know where they get that idea I think it's kind of some images that they believe themselves about well here it is with a year and a half or so to go a lame duck status and therefore he's that one and the other one that I'm looking for some kind of an honor to take away with me when I leave office that also frustrates me I'm thinking of all that I can accomplish in the time we're here to pin down some of the things that have been so successful for us led to this great economic expansion which as of now is the longest peacetime expansion in our history We know you have more experience than you did when you walked in this room but do you have as much energy? Yes I do and some of those things I don't know where they're looking for those signs or what they're going by but I'm as busy as I've ever been and I'm as involved as I have ever been and that's total involvement and everything that's said in that regard is that perhaps you feel a little bit abandoned by some of the people who came here with you from California some trusted advisors, Mike Dever is going through his problems Cap Weinberger is now leaving are you beginning to feel a little abandoned as your captain? No Let me remind you of something that I said in answer to the questions the many questions in that period when I was president-elect and did not yet take an office and questions would come up about cabinet and so forth and I said I want people that don't want a job in government I want people that are willing to give up some time and the positions that they have in order to serve because of their ability and I said and I will take them for whatever time they can afford to give and then and I did this when I was governor of California the same thing that if they can't stay the distance I'll take them for as long as they can serve and then find others like them to replace them But I guess the point here is that you'd only be human if you didn't miss some people you've been able to rely on for twenty years You missed them but they're people that I always knew had to could not give the full time to this job or the jobs they were taking because of the sacrifice when you're sitting there looking at individuals who are almost a seven figures in annual income in their private undertakings and they were willing to give that up to come here at a cabinet member's salary that's a pretty public-spirited individual and you can understand sometimes when they just have to get back on the other hand you can understand family problems also that make it necessary Do you feel Mr. President the last year has been particularly troubling for you the Iran-Contra affair, the Bork thing the Senate's taking, the Democrats taking control of the Senate has it been more stressful for you? Well, yes, the whole Iran-Contra affair as it's called still failed to come up with the question that I wanted answered and there's been, out of that there has been a false image now given that I was trading arms for hostages I was doing business with the Ayatollah I was doing, we were doing business with some individuals that would have been executed by the Ayatollah if he'd known what they were doing they were looking toward a day when there would be a different government there and when the whole idea, when the exposure came through that weekly paper in Beirut of what we were doing, this covert operation that of course blew everything up but then, when we discovered that there was somehow some extra money in a bank account over and above the price of what we had sold these individuals I was the first one to made that public I called in the leaders of the Congress on both sides the very next morning after finding out that there was a piece of paper that indicated that there was this money, extra money we'd gotten our $12 million for what we'd sold them I then went from there into the press room and told everyone in there and said I was going to appoint a commission to find out what was going on and how this could happen and did so well, after all the months and months of investigation I still don't have an answer to that question they were unable, they never found out who raised the price on the weapons so that there would be extra money who put that extra money in a bank account and where did that money go? those questions were never answered and I'm still waiting for an answer Do you share the view that some of those answers went to the grave with Mr. Casey? No, I don't I just, it's somehow it must have had to do with how the delivery was made of the weapons and, but I'm still waiting to find out Sir, the stock market scared us all to death I'm sure you Not us fellows that have a hidden that I'm not privy to Now we're trying to negotiate as we always do with the deficit and with Congress and the Congress prone to acting only when there's a crisis historically Do you see a solution that will preserve what you call your economic stability the years that you have given to I think the group that's working together is making progress I'm sorry it's taking so long and I hope that we can get it settled in a hurry because I think it will have a stabilizing effect I don't know that that's the entire cause of what took place in the market I suggested the other day in the presence of some people that were quite well versed in the financial world and one of them seemed to openly endorse what I said and that was that maybe it was an overdue adjustment because maybe the market was overpriced But there is a consumer confidence problem that's following on that How do you address that? Speak to the American people about that That's why I think this among other things yes this thing that is being negotiated and if we finally you know most of our people have forgotten or are unaware the deficit spending is more than a half a century old with only one or two single year exceptions it goes all the way back to those 46 years in which the Congress in both houses was dominated by the other party and many of us when I was just no thought of public life but out on the mashed potato circuit making speeches I was calling for as were many others for an end to deficit spending but now here it has gone on and incidentally we were profits because most of us that argued for curbing it said that one day it would get out of control and the period that it got out of control and is still going on started with the war on poverty in the middle 60s from 1965 to 1980 in those 15 years the budget increased to five times what it was in 65 by 1980 but the latest figure on the deficit it increased by 53 times the deficit of what it was in that limited period and so I think that this will be a great encouraging thing if we once and for all come together bipartisan and eliminated and then once there is either a target or it's eliminated I think the people of this country should be wholeheartedly demanding a constitutional provision against deficit spending something that most states have and I would think that also for some future president they would give him the right of a line item veto which 43 governors haven't which I had some of the oldest arguments in Congress you know I mean the line item veto yes why haven't you proposed a balanced budget why haven't you proposed a balanced budget then oh I have I've up and down the countryside but I wish you fellows would do something about those reporters there because then when I see them report on the speech that I've made or see myself on TV I never hear myself saying what I said in the speech I have been pleading that's a part of what I've called an economic recovery plan Mr. President I think what Clark was saying is you have never proposed a balanced budget as president your budgets have always been way out of balance oh well and I know when they say that for heaven sakes with the size of the budget or the deficit there is no way that you could do that without pulling the rug right out from under the recovery and a lot of people that programs that would simply have to be eliminated so what we set out to do and we've had a team that has made multiple of the budgets that I asked for I've never had a budget since I've been here we've had continuing resolutions and without very much cotton spending but let me point out something else the first budget that we had to pass was for the year 1982 when you take office the budget for 81 is already in place if my 82 budget had been passed as I submitted it by 1986 the cumulative deficits would have been $207 billion less than they were but every budget I've submitted the Congress has put on a shelf and said dead on arrival the majority has said and so for them to now stand up and say why didn't I present a balanced budget they know better than that and they know that they're blowing smoke and being very demagogic Very useful session, sir Thank you very much, sir This is Reagan doing Well, much better No, I got to take this off Hard blow was there She was in a relationship with her mother who was busy had a schedule on recovery when I went up there to see her and then the day I took her for a walk down the corridor to the hospital She really seemed to bounce back remarkably She's a seaweed power Thank you, sir Thank you Back to you, sir Good to see you I'm walking way to the train My 17-year-old saw the football player saw the Rockleys story Last night, or the night before last television, yeah and said this morning it was a pretty good moving gas I think I'm too late Thank you