 President of the United States. Well, welcome to all of you. It's an honor to greet such distinguished guests and friends here in the Indian Treaty Room. I recall with pleasure a dinner that then President-elect of the Hoover Institution Glenn Campbell and the Hoover Institution Board of Overseers gave my honor seven years ago. I'll be returning pretty soon for you. But I've been an honorary fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1975 and continue to be very proud of my close association with you. Many of the Hoover Institution staff have served my administration, including Martin Anderson, Richard Allen, Daryl Trent, John Razian, Rita Ricardo Campbell, and Glenn Campbell, just to name a few. But even more important, many of the ideas that we've been able to turn into reality during the last seven years have come from your distinguished scholars. A free society must be built on strength, not only the power of its national defense, but the power of its ideas. It's a tribute to you that many of the policies of my presidency have come from ideas of Hoover Institution scholars. In particular, I recall the publication produced under Glenn's direction during the 1980 campaign that made a major contribution to the formulation of my domestic and foreign policy programs. That book was, as you know, the United States in the 1980s. Not only did I and my administration study it, but so did Secretary General Gorbachev. And that's what the Soviet leader told Secretary of State George Shultz before our first summit meeting in Geneva. We have read this book and watched all its programs become adopted by the Reagan administration. The New York Times quoted Secretary Gorbachev as saying, the Hoover Institution's bold intellectual leadership has made it not only an institution with an internal international reputation, but also a national treasure. The work of its scholars and the priceless documents in its library and archives provide resources that are essential to meeting the policy challenges of this century. In those archives, that reminds me of what I might have done to cast slur on the dignity of the Hoover Institution. My state papers at the end of eight years as governor of California were delivered to the Hoover Institute. And I went over for the arrival there. And they had been packed away, of course, in those cardboard cartons that you get and can unfold and use for storage facilities and all. The pile was probably as long as the width of this room and as high or higher than the door height. We had been one box short. And right in the middle of that big display of cartons was a Seagram whiskey carton. I don't know how it got there. But we owe a special debt of gratitude to the wisdom and foresight of the man who founded the institution in 1919, former President Herbert Hoover. Today I'm sure you realize the importance of the work of the Hoover Institution to the debate on critical national issues. And I'm delighted that you have now, under Glenn's direction, undertaken a new project of major importance. Thinking about America, the United States in the 1990s, edited by two of your distinguished scholars, Annalise Anderson and Dennis Bark. I know it'll bring to bear on the policy debates of the next decade the best thinking of our country. And finally, I want to say a word about the leadership of your distinguished institution. While it is the scholars whose ideas are of such fundamental importance, it is the institution's director and his board of overseers who provide the vision and institutional guidance that make it all possible. No one has contributed more to the Hoover Institution than Glenn Campbell. Glenn's creative direction and firm leadership have given the United States a unique institution of which we're enormously proud. We owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude. So thanks to Glenn and thanks to all of you for what you've done for me and for our cause. That's really what it's all about. The cause of human freedom and our commitment that America will remain the land of freedom and opportunity that God intended her to be. You know, having mentioned Mr. Gorbachev as being the reader of some of your works, I had to try him out on some characteristics in our meetings. And in my first meeting, I didn't acknowledge to him that my hobby has become collecting stories that the citizens of the Soviet Union tell each other. Reveals they have a sense of humor, but it also reveals that they have a certain cynical attitude towards some things in their homeland. But I chose to tell him one story. Soviet made. It seems that as they tell it, an American and a Russian were arguing about their two countries and the American said, look, I can go in the Oval Office. I can pound the President's desk and say, Mr. President, I don't like the way you're running our country. And the Russian said, I can do that. The American said, you can. He said, I can go in the Kremlin. I can pound the General Secretary's desk and I can say, Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan's running his country. And he laughed. I didn't tell him the one and then I'll quit before I get going. I didn't tell him the more recent one that I had heard about the man walking in the street in the evening in Moscow and a soldier shouted to stop. He didn't stop and he started to run and the soldier shot him. And another man standing there said, why did you do that? And the soldier said, curfew. But he said, it isn't curfew yet. He said, I know, but he's a friend of mine. I know where he lives. He couldn't have made it. You know, if their government would get out of getting between us and the people over there, I think we could get along just great. Well.