President Reagan's Interview with Godfrey Hodgson of the BBC on April 20, 1988

mr. president can you recall your feelings when you took the oath of office time well it won't be easy I do recall that day with great clarity and all but all of it the coming to the White House first the being taken down to the scene and then appearing before those thousands and thousands of people stretched out on the mall and and was a kind of an unreality about all of it but it was an awareness of what it meant in my life and I mean an awareness of the importance of the occasion and at the same time a great prayer in my mind that I could meet the responsibilities a lot of people have told us that one of your great strengths is that you had an agenda of just a few big things that you wanted to change can you tell me what your goals were well yes the country was in the economic doldrums that double-digit inflation great unemployment the economy stagnating the people in the country seemed was lost kind of a belief in themselves and in the country also there was the matter of national security on any given day half of our military planes couldn't take off for lack of spare parts half of our naval vessels couldn't leave port for that or lack of crew so I'd been determined that we had to restore the economy and I'd been asked many times in campaigning if I ran into the deficit problem because we'd been running deaf would been deficit spending for almost a half a century with only a few years scattered here and there where where there wasn't an annual deficit and I would be asked questions about what would I do about national security and the spending for that in the face of a deficit and I said there I would have to choose national security and so we set out to restore the economy I had some definite ideas on that one of them was a very controversial one and that is that having a degree in economics I believed and from experience in our own history that the best way to increase government revenues was to cut the taxes not spend them to restore incentive and we had a wide range of tax rate cuts and it worked there was a sizable increase in our revenues as those tax cuts took effect and there still is today so it was to get that done and then the other in I had always believed that there was a kind of a hunger for a spiritual revival if you could call it that in our country not only a revival in those things of morality and family and so forth but in our nation as a whole and we set out to do that and I hear a great many people who say that they have now a restored belief in our country sometimes when you speak about the United States as being as moving forward as being number one when you speak about American pride that's not quite so easy for people who are not Americans to relate to do you ever worry about that well no I think there's something you have to remember about America this is the melting pot all of us buy our way of ourselves or our ancestors our immediate parents came to this country from someplace else and you don't quit loving your mother because you've taken a wife all of us still have a feeling of attachment to our original sources and so I don't I I think that still is a part of our makeup and it doesn't mean that we're denigrating what is happening anyplace else it just means that we want to live up to the heritage that's been given us you sought to create a new climate for the business in those early years of the admit recently the Benson problem some of the the stock market is down some of the business indicators the economic indicators are not so good how how confident are you that the country is truly competitive well one of those things that we had to deal with there and I know I haven't explained them very well T of all the facets of it the signs we are in the 65th month of a sustained economic expansion and that is the longest period of expansion in our nation's history there is a thing in our country called the potential employment pool all of those people that if they did or wanted a job are available for work the highest percentage of that pool is employed today and has ever been true in our nation's history so I think that never mind a stock slump or something in the market I learned in economics that there's nothing so timid as a million dollars so that isn't a valuable or a valid sign and I think that all the signs are there from employment and the fact that we have gotten inflation under control down from the double-digit figure that it was and so I believe that our economy is on a sound basis we went with you when you made your speech in Notre Dame can you drop me and you said there that you the manufacturing industry but it was not in difficulties at the same time it's impossible not to notice as you look around you in South Bend that have been problems a lot of plants have moved to Mexico or abroad do you think that government should be doing something about restoring the competitiveness of American industry well we have a program of trying to restore competitiveness because our standard of living as you know is so high that that rates for production here cost of production is higher than in a great many countries now that isn't something we're not going to do away with our standard in order to to bring up a be more competitive all we ask is a fair playing field with other nations but I would like to point out that in this broad nation of ours average figures for the nation of course do not apply to every sector there are going to be pockets of unemployment where let's say a plant and a manufacturing plant closed because there's no longer a market for its product I think back to some earlier days of what happened and the companies that made buggy whips when the automobile came along they had to find new jobs someplace and this is true there aren't signs of actual economic decline nationwide there are areas where they were concentrated around a particular industry and that industry has changed in some instances it's changed because of technology that they find that they can produce with the development of manner of machines and so forth they can they've developed aware of they don't require as many employees but we have a as a result of that a mobile society the people are accustomed in this country to leaving and going to other areas and you will find areas in this country where they're begging for employees right now in the nation's capital here last Sunday the local papers help wanted ads those are those ads I don't know whether you do it in England but with hundreds of advertisements on one page seventy four full pages last Sunday employers looking for four employees in general over the past eight years in the United States as any other time they've been winners and they've been losers how do you feel yourself about the losers well I think that anyone who is faced with need and true no fault of his own yes government can play a part in helping them my criticism and one of the things that we sought to change and are still seeking to get changed in the nature of welfare reform is that it's one thing to help someone to once again become self-sustaining but it's another thing when the government then introduces a welfare program that actually preserves the jobs for the bureaucrats and makes the dependence of that individual permanent rather than seeking to bring them out of that to where they can earn their own livelihood you mentioned the budget and the budget deficit earlier mr. president it was surely one of your clearest mandates when you were elected to to balance the budget and yet the United States is now the biggest debtor nation in the world how do you feel about that well I'm just as critical of it as I was before I got here I knew of course the budget by that time was a trillion dollars and I knew that there was no way that you could balance the budget in one year without pulling the rug out from under any number of institutions but I said that we must set out to get us on a downward path to where we could look ahead and see a date certain that we would be balanced and at that point also I advocated an amendment to our Constitution that would make permanent the necessity of a balanced budget but the budget had been getting out of control for a number of years as I said earlier we hadn't been balancing it for more than half a century now what happened back about 15 years before 1980 the middle 60s President Johnson's administration adopted a program called a war on poverty and it was a great program of government programs help and so forth one kind or another poverty won in that war because beginning in nineteen fifty sixty five to nineteen eighty in those fifteen years the budget of the United States government multiplied to almost five times what it had been the budget deficit multiplied 252 times what had had been so the when we came here it was it was built in to the structure and it has just kept on doing this and our fight with the legislature in all these years has been to continue working that the cuts that would bring this down to the day in which we could balance it in general are you frustrated by the difficulties that any president has with working with the Congress when it's controlled by the other party yes there are some frustrations and I don't know whether it's one party alone there has always been a kind of a contest there and you can go back over the years and see where Congress has sought to restrain some of the constitutional powers of the President and that is continued and there are some areas in which they have restricted the president and restricted him in such a way that I think it is it acts against the best interest of the country do you feel that as president you're losing that battle with the Congress well and we've more or less held our own there may be some things here or there where they have increased their attempt of control but the fight goes on many people would never believe back in 1981 that you would be flying to Moscow that you would be negotiating with the Soviet leadership and even handy getting on quite well with the Soviet leadership when did you decide when did you feel like change your mind about negotiating with the Soviets no I have always felt that there should be negotiation I've always felt that that that was the answer not an eventual war as so many people I think have built into their thinking that it's inevitable someday that kind of contest but you have to remember when I first came here in the first few years I was here the Soviet leaders kept dying on me okay I met with some but not in the sense that if we've met now well with this present leader yes we we will be having the fourth summit when I when I go to Moscow but I came here with a belief that what was needed was realism and strength the realism meaning don't be lured into a date on because it sounds good or to make a treaty in which you shake hands and yet you know that the evils are still going on realism was to make evident that I had a clear view of what the differences were strength was in the building up of our defence structure and some things such as when I came here they had leveled or aimed at Europe and the great targets of Europe the intermediate range nuclear missiles there was no counter weapon in Europe against that the NATO nations had asked this country prior to my arrival for us to provide a counter weapon and so it fell to me to begin the installation of those the Soviet Union protested about our installing these weapons and I offered an alternative I said look we're willing to not put those weapons in there if you will eliminate yours let's have a 0-0 agreement between us and those weapons well they walked away from the table they wouldn't even discuss it we went ahead and installed the weapons and one day they came back and said they'd like to talk 0-0 with us and I think this was another evidence that strength you have to deal from strength do you still think of the Soviet Union as an evil empire I have to because of the many things that they're being done there to their own people not just to other countries where they have sought to influence them and make them communist allies but in looking at their own people in denying people the right to to practice religion in the virtually the taking away of the children from the family with regard to its raising and it's education all of the things that of that kind the the person whose career can be destroyed in the Soviet Union simply if it expresses a desire to emigrate and suddenly he's among the downtrodden and the unemployed the labor camps for political prisoners that are they are just simply because they don't agree with some of the government's policies and yes I find that I find that evil I think that they are still violating many of the principles that they agreed to in the Helsinki pact with regard to human rights and many of your closest conservative supporters are troubled by your arms control policy they they're afraid that it really could seriously put the security of the United States and of the West at risk what do you say to them I say to them they don't know what they're talking about I have said many times a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought I was very interested to hear the foreign minister of the Soviet Union repeat those words himself not too long ago now the present power the policy that existed when I came in called the mutual assured destruction was a policy based on both of us having enough nuclear weapons that if the other one started a war with nuclear weapons you could retaliate well what kind of a defense is that in a nuclear war how could there be a victor where do they live after those nuclear weapons have exploded all over the country and made it radioactive the people who once lived in sure know still can't go back there to live because of the poison so my feeling is that we start eliminating these nuclear weapons and getting rhythm but I am also very determined that after the present treaty before we proceed any further with such as the tactical battlefield weapons then we must negotiate before we do that we must negotiate a reduction of the conventional weapons down to parity to make sure that one country won't have an advantage over the other why have you insisted on keeping the capability to build a Strategic Defense Initiative as opposed to determine because that is the ultimate way to get rid of nuclear weapons to make them obsolete if you have to face shooting them with no knowledge as to whether you can get one through to its target then why go on what they were most costly weapons and I asked in the very beginning I'm not a scientist but I had brought in our people and our military leaders and I said is it worthwhile is it possible to look and see if there cannot be developed a defensive weapon there's been one for every other offensive weapon since history began a defensive weapon that could actually intercept those missiles as they came out of their silos on their way they came back to me after talking it all over and said yes they think this is worth investigating we have made great progress now we know that we are on the way to such a defensive program and I have never considered a bargaining chip to give away in return for eliminating a certain number of missiles my thought is that once such a thing is proven practical then we can all take a look at our nuclear weapons and say we don't need these anymore in fact I've told general secretary Gorbachev that if and Wynn's we were able to establish there is such a web we know they've been working on such a thing for 15 years longer than us but if we should get it first I'd be willing to share information with them to hasten on the basis that we all get rid of our nuclear weapons are you afraid that I'm sorry yeah that's wonderful mr. president it's just the right bank I can understand the argument for the strategic defense but isn't there a danger that insisting on SDI would miss a historic opportunity of doing a deal with the Soviets on ballistic missiles well no it seems perhaps that way when at Reykjavik when we finally found ourselves agreeing completely on the eventual elimination of all of the weapons and then the general secretary put the price on that as our stopping the development of SDI so I came home well we're now back negotiating on a treaty to cut in half the strategic ballistic missiles many people in Europe baps it logically afraid are afraid both that SDI might be a sign of a weakening American commitment because the United States could defend itself but also that arms control agreements would also be a sign of a weakening commitment what do you say to those people well I have said it to them I have met with our NATO allies at all of them and made it plain exactly what I see as the goals not for just us but for all of us all of them too and I think they see now they had a I can understand it they'd been led to believe that maybe this nuclear umbrella which was part of the basis for NATO was going to be eliminated and leave them facing that gigantic conventional force there and I convinced them that no that we had nothing of that kind in mind and that there would have to be the inclusion of conventional weapons as we went further in any any agreements and I think they are all very satisfied now because that is our first line of defense before we leave the subject of nuclear weapons can you say something about the personal burden of being president in a nuclear age how conscious are you of the fact that that decision is ultimately yours well I think you are conscious of of what could happen and you certainly wouldn't want to be presiding when such a thing takes place but I have always felt it said you were in you aren't you don't become president you are given temporary custody over an institution called the presidency and with that goes some responsibilities and if you were willing to raise your hand and say I do so help me God the time of inauguration why you have to accept that these are now your responsibilities do you literally lose sleep over this responsibility no I sleep pretty well after I've said my prayers what do you understand by what is called the Reagan doctrine well the Reagan doctrine was based on the recovery of that economic slump that we were in and putting it on a firm basis such as the reductions in tax and so forth to put doing that it was also based on my belief that one of the great strengths of America is that it is a Federation of sovereign states and our Constitution from the beginning provided certain rights and laws that belonged at the state level where they were in charge and over the years again the Congress had passed bills that invaded that right and was taking more and more federal power to where it almost looked as if the federal government was trying to make the states just administrative districts if the federal government so I'd pledged also a return to this federal system and we have been working at that there was also a part of that was as I said earlier this need for the people to once again recognize their responsibilities as citizens because our Constitution is different from most all of those in the rest of the world in that it is not a document in which the government says what the people can do ours says we the people tell you the government what you can do and I wanted to restore all of that so that was part of it including the dealing with the nations abroad and seeking to help wherever we could developing nations throughout the world to understand democracy and to choose democracy and free enterprise as their as their path mr. president perhaps one of the worst crises of your presidency arose over what's called the iran-contra affair what what was the driving force behind that it is something that with all of the investigations by the committees and the special investigators and so forth has been completely missed overlooked and distorted we have been trying for a long time behind the scenes to bring about peace between Iran and Iraq we knew that we were not the favorite people of the Romanian because of our relationships previous to that with the Shah now we knew also that well let me put it this way it started with this by way of a third country in the Middle East we were informed there were some representatives of Iran not of the government who wanted to make contact with the United States to see if they could not establish a better relationship and they put it on the basis if you remember at that time not too long ago we were hearing every day that the home a NEAs days were numbered and that he might not live out the week and these people were representative of one of the fat which are still there within that country as to who's going to be in charge when he is gone this third country recommended them said their credentials were honest so we accepted and we sent some people had to be a covert operation because if they were discovered they'd be executed and after our people had met with them for a time and that we too would like to have that better relationship they made the proposal that they would have more confidence in our people who were meeting with them because there was no one like the Secretary of State or anything of that kind not to have a covert operation you couldn't do that that that would convince them that these people they were talking to we're able to contact the top of government here and represented the top of government and they put out that that if they would sell them literally what amounted to a token force it didn't change any balance between Iran and Iraq of those missiles those tow missiles this would reassure them but also it said it would strengthen them in the coming factionalism about taking over the government of course they would present these to the military not the Revolutionary militia but to the military and this would give them a prestige and they would have to have the help of the military no this was presented to us I told our people over there that we had a policy that we could not do business with any country that supported terrorism which Iran does they made a pretty good case for themselves that any government of theirs would not support terrorism and finally I said there is a pretty good way they could establish that if we do the thing with the weapons we've got some hostages held by the Hezbollah which we know has a relationship with Iran and would they use their influence to see if they could free our hostages now this was what happened and I the shipment which was I'm legally entitled to do as president - not to the kidnappers to these people and when some of our people said well it's good to look like arms for hostages I said wait a minute if your child was kidnapped and you didn't believe in paying ransom but you found there was an individual that you believed had the power to get your child back you wouldn't mind doing something for that individual and that was the basis upon which this was done in view of the way things worked out do you regret taking that decision well I regret one thing some of the people in the cabinet when we talked about it who opposed it never opposed it on the ground that it was arms for hostages they said if it ever becomes known it will be made to look like we had traded arms for hostages well they were right that's exactly what has happened and the media has helped in that and so the opponents of our program but I don't know you can't sit by when you know that you've got citizens of your country who were held in savage captivity by barbarians of the of that type and here was a plan and I would call to your attention that before this thing was made public two hostages had been released and I was told that there were two more coming out in 48 hours well they never got out because someone getting wind of this in Iran tipped off a scandal sheet over there in Beirut and they published it and then our press took it up went wild with it and it was known and distorted and it was then that I found out a number of things that had been kept I had not known but I am the one who went before the press here and before the Congress and told them what the plan had been and now what we had just discovered about the extra money and so forth we had gotten our twelve million dollars for the two missiles and it was only when this scandal broke that I discovered that there was more money in a Swiss bank account someone had raised the price missiles mr. president as you look back on your years in this office what do you think has been your greatest achievement sometimes I think just stayin alive but no seriously I think that we have as I said earlier about this the economy we have implemented a number of the things that we set out to do there are some things we haven't achieved yet that I still think are a part of this whole program but I guess I'm most proud of the change in attitude in the part of the people and evident among our young men do you know that when I came here most of our people in uniform young men in uniform they wouldn't go into town in their uniforms on a Saturday night they changed in civilian clothes and I came here with a mission I took up with the military as to how to restore a pride in the uniform so that they would be proud to wear that uniform go down the street and let people that pass them on the street be able to say a kind word to them when they saw that uniform and that has happened I one of my greatest prides is to has to do with the young men and women in uniform in our military they are all volunteers they're the highest level of intelligence and education that we've ever had in our military mr. president throughout your period and I'd like to ask you a few questions about the other stages at the moment but you seem to have a consistent knack of being good at persuading people to agree with you to believe with you what what is the knack of this salesmanship well maybe it's because clear back when I was governor of California I issued an order to my cabinet and to all the people around me I issued the same order here that no decisions would be based on the political ramifications we would make a decision to do or not to do something based on is it good for the people and I have stuck to that and I think that's it it isn't any time that I go running and saying hey we must have this because it'll be politically helpful no it's we've stuck with that and maybe that's part of why I have some success in in persuading them do you actually think of yourself as a politician what do you think of yourself as a politician no X actor how important this mrs. Reagan's advice been to you in this job well I want to tell you that this is a helpmeet such as I think every man dreams of having a relationship that sort of matches your dreams of marriage when you were an adolescent but she doesn't as the so many people in the media have tried to intimate she doesn't come down and get involved in affairs like disarmament or anything else she does what she advises me and what she thinks is good for me and and I feel free to confide in her on the things that are going on and then at the same time she is the I think one of the finest unpaid employees of the government because as a first lady she isn't an employee but what she has done with regard to the drug program nationwide and how she continues to work with that and a few other interests of hers she is a tremendous help as a matter of fact she's a help just my mind knowing that she's up there for when I go to meet her at the end of the day we've been dodging your footsteps we went among other things to Dixon and found it a lovely place talked to a lot of people that known you can you say something about what values you acquired or learned in Dixon that have helped you in a political career oh my goodness yes you know I've I've often thought that our children were born and we tried to raise them under a handicap we lived in a large city and I've often thought that there's something out there in small-town America in rural America that where you know everyone and are known by everyone in the community that is different than being anonymous in a large city and being able to go down the street and no one knows who you are cares we were not well-off as a matter of fact we were poor by any standard but I never knew a time when my mother wasn't finding someone in the community that was worse off than we were and she was helping them did your mother okay thank you thank you that's helpful did your mother specifically plot the ambition of a public career in your mind no as a matter of fact without her knowing it she planted in my mind the first ambition the entertainment world the she was she had been in a hometown Talent her home town Talent a club that put on plays in the small town and she gave readings I don't think that goes on anymore but would be invited to go to a club meeting and so forth and then recite whether it was comic or dramatic or whatever and when I was a little boy she kind of got me interested in memorizing things that's why I could I could recite the the Jacqueline or the Robert W service a couple of those poems but I was I had two great interests in in my education in addition to getting an education and they were athletics playing in the athletic teams and being in the entertainment in the class plays and the drama club plays and so forth and even though I got my degree in economics when I got out of college and was forced the depths of the depression to face up to what did I really want to do I realized it was in some part of the world of entertainment people the Democrats in California used to see you were only an actor do you think being an actor actually helped in a public career yes very definitely actually I did not suddenly change and say I want to be a politician I made a speech I always believed that you have to pay your way so in Hollywood if you don't sing or dance you wind up as an after-dinner speaker and so I was out on the mashed potato circuit quite a bit always did my own speeches and talked on what I was interested in and this led to my making a speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater in his presidential campaign that was played on national television and as a result of that speech a group of prominent party members came to me before the 1966 governor race in California and claimed that I was the only one who could bring the party together it was quite divided and split up and win the election and I thought they were crazy and I said no you pick someone else and I'll campaign for them do that for them well they kept after still pretty soon Nancy and I couldn't sleep we thought well what if they're right can we live with ourselves if we keep saying no and finally I made a proposal to them that I would go out on a circuit throughout the state of speech making speeches and come back and tell them whether they were right or wrong and I came back and told Nancy that I thought maybe they were right so I finally gave in and you know I was well into the campaign before I realized that I wouldn't be back in show business by November when the election time came suddenly dawned on me I might win and that was the end of show business with me before that when you were with the Screen Actors Guild in Hollywood you encountered the evidence that just has strong left-wing influence was there how important was that to changing your political ideas well I don't know that it changed my political ideas so much as it did give me a real understanding of the communist menace I had been on the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild and I came back from the service after four years in World War two and back to the board and discovered that something was going on in Hollywood and there are some 43 unions in the motion picture business and some of them had were way off on a tangent and they called a jurisdictional strike now this was not a fight with management this was a fight that they believed that another union was doing the work that they should be doing and it threatened to close down the motion picture industry well the responsibilities hit the Screen Actors Guild if we aligned ourselves in that strike with the other side the picture business would close you can't have a picture business if you haven't got anyone in front of the camera and I made a motion in the board that we inject ourselves into this fight by inviting both sides and management to sit down at a table with us as the third party the neutral party to see if we couldn't find a peaceful solution and it was out of this meeting every day for months that I learned what was going on and I was helped along when pretty soon some of the people from our own FBI made contact because of what they saw I was doing then I become president of the Screen Actors Guild and they they came wanting some attires some findings from me on people that I had dealt with and so forth and the highs I got an insight into what was happening to the motion picture business and I set out to do everything I could to stop that kind of takeover of of organizations like that and we won in a sense is that what you're trying to do on a world scale well I never got over realizing I could recognize the signs and that was one of the reasons why I said that just as they were doing this but they were doing it in the mean in the way of not trying to convince the people but in having a takeover at the top just like their own country is and I said why don't we spread the word about democracy to these emerging countries so that they will know there's an alternative to this other what were you just good as I was gonna ask you about the day that she was shot at the Hilton parallel and what your feelings were then well I think in a way mr. president that was one of those moments that solidified your popularity in the function the way you dealt with all of that I was a crucial thing in yeah the only unique thing I think about that was that I got all the way to the hospital and walked into the emergency room and when the nurse came to meet me I said I'm having trouble breathing I didn't know I'd been shot yeah I thought when the Secret Service man jumped on my back yeah after throwing me into the car that he had done the damage yeah I thought he'd broken a rib and then when I started to spit blood I thought that the rib punctured a lung yeah that's amazing and and when when were you first aware what had happened when they got my clothes peeled off of me including cutting off a suit that I was wearing for the first time a brand new suit they found out there the wound under my arm where the bullet hit me there and I was not aware of it what had happened as the bullet careened off the side of the car as I was coming to the car went through this space between the door the the hinge space and caught me right here your microphone is off the producer would love to get this in the program could you did starting mr. president if you tell us about the day when you was shot at the Hilton Hotel well I think the most unique thing about that was that I heard what I thought was firecrackers and the next thing I knew was Secret Service man standing behind me literally picked me up and threw me headfirst and dived me into the car the door waiting there and I got in the car and he got in behind me and the door was closed and we started away and suddenly I felt the most awful pain that you could imagine and I hadn't felt it up till then I didn't feel a bullet hit me or anything and I said to the agent who was in the car with me I said I think you broke a rib when you jumped in on top of me Ana and just then I coughed and I had a handful of frothy blood and I said and I think the rib broken rib was punctured a lung and he by this time was telling the driver George Washington Hospital and we were on our way well I finished off my handkerchief with the blood and I finished off his because I kept coughing I kept getting more difficult to breathe we got to the emergency and then I got out and walked into the emergency ward and the nurse came to meet me I said I'm having trouble breathing and just about that time my knees began to get rubbery the next thing I knew I was on a gurney and it was until I cut my clothes off of me which included a brand new suit I was wearing for the first time and then found the wound back up here where it had gone in the pain had come when it it had hit that seventh rib and the pain came when it glanced off to the rib and then went on down through my lung and ended about an inch from my heart and that was about the time then that they told me I'd been shot I hadn't known it thank you yes yes it was

Channel: Reagan Library

Views: 97,862

Keywords: U.S. National Archives, Ronald Reagan, Reagan Presidential Library, BBC, British Broadcasting Company, Godfrey Hodgson, Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, Arms control, assassination attempt

Id: OVqllMcDzAE

Length: 46min 2sec (2762 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2018