 of the United States, accompanied by Frank Ferenkoff. Mr. President, on behalf of everyone in this room, I want to initially start this brief introduction by thanking you for... Well, thank you, Frank. And let me say here before I get going on my remarks that our party couldn't have a better chairman than these last few years than Frank Ferenkoff. When I say thank you, Frank, I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I was going to say something to someone else, but I guess she didn't get up. I was going to tell Maureen how proud I was of her. But there are some other people here I'd like to thank as well. People who've helped build our party, who have given it the financial stamina to lead America into a revolution that is transforming our nation and the world. People like Republican National Committee Finance Chairman Larry Bathgate, like convention gala chairman Lud Cook, and like presidential trust chairman and finance chairman of George Bush for president Bob Mosbacher, and of course, people like each of you. You know, in this whole world of politics, our opponents have you all tagged as fat cats. Of course, they call contributors in their own party public-spirited philanthropists. Well, I think you're public-spirited philanthropists. So many of us here, I see so many faces that I know so well and for so long. And so many of us are fought side by side through so many campaigns together. Now, some might say those days are over. Well, I expect that some on the other side wish they were. Wish the winning team would break up for good. But I must tell you that just as one or two battles do not make a war, one or two successful campaigns don't mean you've won in politics. Everything we've done in these last eight years, everything we've accomplished in returning hope and opportunity and pride to America, everything we've achieved to set the causes of freedom and peace marching once more around the world, all of this could be lost. And I'm sure that you in this room know that as much as anyone else are perhaps better, lost in a twinkling unless we elect George Bush, the next president of the United States. Now, our opponents say that if they're elected, the Reagan era will be over. Well, I take them at their word. And to me, that's a challenge. In all my years, I've never backed away from a challenge. They want to fight, they'll have it. To get things rolling, it's time we made sure that everyone in America knows how to decode their code words. They've given old terms whole new meanings. When they say progressive, they mean liberal. When they say opportunity, they mean subsidies. And when they say more caring, they mean more spending. And when they talk about closing the deficit, they mean raising taxes. They've been in charge of the Congress for most of the last half century, as I said last night, and only Congress can spend money. And when they talk about a strong defense, they mean cutting defense spending. When they speak of family, they mean big brother in Washington. And when they call for progress, they mean the radical social agenda of the American Civil Liberties Union. And I've just got to believe that when the American people hear all about this and say election day, they'll mean goodbye, Governor. What's his name? Code words like these are the easy ones to figure out. Some are harder, for example. They promise that they'll create good jobs at good wages, as if that were something new. Now, what could they be talking about? Since our recovery began, as you know and as you heard last night, we've created that roughly 17.5 million jobs. And the percentage of the population employed this year is the highest, not only in our history, but in the major industrial nations. I don't know whether any of you would be surprised as I was. I had to get in this job to learn what the statisticians consider is the potential employment pool in the United States. It's everybody, male and female, 16 years and up. And today, 62.6% of that pool is employed. Now, that's including all those kids yet trying to finish school. That includes people that are up there and retired, so forth. But that's the percentage and has never been that high. So sometimes I think the so-called unemployment rate is a little dishonest. There's always got to be people between jobs and newcomers coming into the market and that's what's considered the unemployment pool. But at the same time, that unemployment rate I mentioned is the lowest in 14 years and the real income of the typical American family after dropping almost 7% between 77 and 81 has soared over 9% going up since 1981, since we started. Some talk about the declining middle class and you know what is true? The middle class in the United States is smaller. Not because people have fallen out of there into a lower class and are poor. It's because they've been on the other way. They've gone on up into something above the middle class and that's why the middle class has become smaller. Our future's bright since 1983. Our manufacturing production has risen at a faster rate than Japan's. One authority on manufacturing said not long ago that we've become the most competitive nation in the world. And as a result, we are today, believe it or not, exporting chopsticks and Hondas to Japan. Highly processed high-tech sand to Egypt. Can you imagine it? We're selling them sand. Of course it's the kind out of which we make our computer chips and all in all more goods and services than ever before in our history. So with all that going on and all that means for the future and with the other side's dismal record in the past, I just don't see what code our opponents are using when they talk about good jobs at good wages. There's one code of theirs I figured out there, though. When they say this election is not about ideology, it's about competence, they mean that where they take it is even worse than where they've been. And where they've been is bad enough. Take national defense. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger wrote recently that their candidate seems to believe that in Secretary Schlesinger's words, the way to deter war is to be unprepared to respond. Their liberal leadership wants to cut the B-1 bomber, the midget man missile, the MX missile, and our strategic defense initiative. They've criticized our support of freedom fighters from Angola to Nicaragua and condemned our liberation of Grenada and our strike against Libyan terrorism. And yet they say with a straight face that their nominee is closer to me on U.S.-Soviet issues than his Vice President Bush. That statement is so out of it, I wonder what planet they're from. I'm going for immediate deployment of a political SDI. So yes, this election is about which direction, what direction America will go. Will we re-elect peace and prosperity or are we going to play truth or consequences with trench-coat liberals? Throughout our history, whenever this great and blessed land asserts for leadership, it's founded, and this year is no exception. I've worked more closely with George Bush these last eight years than with any other member of our administration. I've seen him keep a cool head in hot meetings. I've seen his balance and judgment, and I've seen his leadership and vision. And I've given him some of the most sensitive and difficult tasks we've had, and he has never let me or the country down. Of course, I think sometimes he's too modest because last night he called me from Washington after hearing the speech on television, and his opening line was, who was that fellow you were talking about? Well, a large and largely unrecognized reason for the length and strength of our economic expansion were the productivity increases that came from our deregulation of American industry, and as I told you last night, I put George Bush in charge of that, and he delivered. We might have no INF Treaty today if he hadn't traveled to Europe, as I mentioned last night in 1983. In one country after another he persuaded Europeans, still uneasy after having the rug pulled out from under them in the previous administration, that they would have America's steady backing. As they went ahead with deployment of the Pershing-2 and ground-launched cruise missiles against enormous pressure from the Soviet Union, I put George Bush in charge of reassuring the Allies and he delivered. Day in, day out, I've sought his counsel from the very first day of our administration, and believe me, no one is better prepared to lead America into the next decade to the thresholds of the next century. To continue the work that we've begun to finish the task that's before us, no one better than George Bush. But there's one thing I hope that we'll be able to say about a Bush administration that we couldn't say about the Reagan-Bush administration. If it hadn't been for a Republican Senate in our first six years, we wouldn't have accomplished half of what we did. If we'd had won these last two years, we could have done much more and finished some of the things that are left unfinished. But today with the other party in control of both houses, we face a monkey-wrench Congress determined to throw almost anything into the gears of government to gum up the works. I hope George Bush will be able to feel that he has more friends on Capitol Hill than he had on that Pacific Island where he was shot down. It's up to us to make sure that he will. Let's give President Bush an inauguration day present. A Republican Congress. You know, the choice in this election is as simple as the choice between the future and the past. Back to the past of inflation, humiliation, and malaise. Or continue forward with George Bush on the road of hope, opportunity, and peace. I know which way you will choose. You've always been true to our ideals and our cause. And so this morning, since I regret that I won't be able to attend the convention gala this year, I say to you in parting, thanks not for what you've done for me, and not for what you've done and will do for George Bush, but what you've done and are doing for America. You know, last night, maybe I told a few of you a couple of little anecdotes that I just have to close with here. Some of my own people now are beginning to shrink up. Because they know I have a new hobby. I've been collecting Russian stories. These are stories that I can actually establish are made up by the Russian people and told among themselves, which reveals they've got a great sense of humor just like Americans, and they've also got quite a cynical approach to their own government. And one of the last ones that I learned, which kind of illustrates the difference between our two systems, is one of our security agents told me this when he got back that he had heard this over there, that it was supposed to be me and Gorbachev in his limousine, and I had the unit chief of our secret service detail with me, and he had his top security man with him, and we were sightseeing, and we stopped at a beautiful waterfall, got out to look at it, and Gorbachev said to my man, go ahead, jump, go over the fall. And my man said, I've got a wife and three kids. So he turned to his own man and said, well, you go on, jump. And he did. Over the falls he went. Well, my man scrambled down the rocks around the falls to the bottom to see, could be of any help. Well, the fellow was all right, but he was wringing out his clothes. My man said to him, well, when he told you to jump, why did you jump? He says, I've got a wife and three kids. And now just one more that has to do with the difference between our two parties. Back when I was governor of California, I inherited a thing just about the same as eight years ago I inherited here. They had been hiding a deficit, and there the Constitution says you can't have a deficit, but you come into office, the new governor in the middle of the fiscal year, we got six months to correct that situation. Well, we had to take some drastic measures and so forth, but I promised the people as soon as we could, we were going to get back to returning things to them. Well, we did. Every budget surplus that we got, and we got several, we figured out a way to give it back to the people. Like telling them we figured out that one of them was equal to 10% of the revenues that came in from income tax, then telling them to figure out their state income tax and only pay 90% of it, and we'd make up the difference with it. Well, finally we got to an $850 million surplus, and we figured out a way that we were giving it back to the people. And a leader in the Democratic Senate, which there was a majority just as it is here now, I always had a hostile legislature there. He stormed into my office when the word came out about giving his money back, and you never heard a better declaration of their philosophy. He said, giving that money back to the people is an unnecessary expenditure of public funds. So let's keep them out of there. Well, I understand that I'm now going to have an opportunity to greet each one of you in a more direct and personal way than we're doing here. So thank you all, and God bless you. I'm going to look forward to that. Thank you, Mr. President. We have a little presentation. I'm sorry to say, sir, that this is not a presentation to you, because if we give it to you, it ends up in a government warehouse somewhere. This is a presentation to the Ronald Reagan Library. Thank you. And I would ask Bob Mossbacker and Lod Cook and Larry Bathgate if they won't move over here to help with this presentation. And, Mr. President, I want to introduce to you the individual who is responsible for what will be presented to you, the internationally-renowned artist, Mr. Peter Max. Yes. Well, in 1981 I painted for the president, Nancy Reagan, the Six Statues of Liberty at the White House, and in 1986 I was painting the Six Statues at Governor's Island when the president gave the speech and inauguration of the Statues of Liberty. That night I went home and I was very touched by the whole thing, and I remember I had a dream, and the president in the dream said to me, paint me a colorful flag, maybe a flag with a heart. And I woke up at five in the morning and I painted this painting. And that's what it is.