Ronald Reagan Interview on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson - 01/03/1975 - Part 02

we're talking with that former Governor Reagan and during the break we weren't discussing when I mentioned that I thought most people were not apathetic I think they're confused basically because you hear intelligent people from both political parties or in the middle conservatives and liberals and they all seem to have different answers as to what is going wrong in the country some people say well let's let the government spend billions of dollars and then other people say no no more federal spending let's give the tax rebates than the other intelligent people say no tax rebates we've got to do this and do that so everybody is confused how do you see the thing what are we going to get out of this well honey I think that one of the things is that people keep looking to government for the answer in government's the problem moment ago you asked you know about people and feeling not only confused but right low and down in America first of all the American people if they would just take a little inventory and look around you triple our troubles and we're better off than any other people on earth and we've asked so much of government and we've gotten in the habit over the last 40 years of thinking that government has the answers there's very little that government can do as efficiently and as economically as the people can do themselves and if government would shut the doors and sneak away for about three weeks we'd never miss them now the if the people what you had in mind particularly huh no I said this was in the gutter okay our biggest problem is that we have built a permanent structure of government federal state and local the permanent employees and they've come to the place that they actually determine policy in this country more than does the Congress of the United States there are 14 and a half million public employees in the United States that's quite a voting bloc and the bureaus and agencies not in Washington I heard you talking earlier about some of the research programs well there was a senator the other day and he took up some pages of the congressional record he was doing the same thing you were listing all these crazy research programs and how much they were costing and wound up his speech by introducing his own he wants a study in a research of Transcendental Meditation so you know there's a state senator in Michigan and he just found out the other day they got a ninety three thousand dollar study on whether chitlins are bad for you and he said that there's a fourth-generation Shipman he figured that he could tell you how for ninety three cents to find out the answer to that know we laugh at those things but they do happen I guess oh listen there you had you had some beauties and there's some others what would you say if I told you about one a study in which this was called the the demography of happiness and in this study the government found out that young people are happier in old people they found out that people that earned more are happier than people that earn less and they found out that well people are happier in six people that's two hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars to find out it's better to be rich young and healthy than old poor instead so what do you say now that it's the government maybe the problem so so what do people do they have to look to somebody and you say if they look for themselves that's it maybe good advice how about somebody who's on a you know a Social Security pension or a pension that are trying to live 150 dollars a month you know they have to look at somebody I guess yeah they're saying hey we can't make it we can't afford to go to a doctor well 62% of the people can't stay home in an election and cure things as we did in the last election I just read this to week on I heard this week on the radio they dropped 300,000 voters from the Los Angeles roll because they didn't take the time to go to the polls in the last election 300,000 people is the lowest percentage in history only 38% of the people voted in the national election and this means that people aren't paying any attention to what well here a poll was taken recently that found out that only 46% of the people in the poll could name their United States congressmen but what was worse 86% of those who could name him couldn't tell you a single thing that he represented or stood for they just know that he representative a but he was a congressman but what's he doing while he's up there and the same is true at the at the local levels of government and and all the rest but so you're saying people really have to take an active interest you have to have can citizen action groups locally and and let them know it because they're essentially reserves now the special interest groups aren't as everyone thought big powerful business interests or something that are going to persuade government to do things as a matter of fact I don't know anyone with less influence today in government than business they're just a convenient whipping boy but it's the groups that have got a particular ax to grind you can't have a power plant because it might interfere with a the seagulls no I think I'm an environmentalist and I do not agree with those people way over in the edge who pave the whole country over in the name of progress but also I don't like those on the other extreme that won't let you build a house unless it looks like a bird's nest someplace in the middle we got to allow people our ecology to write well this kind of group and they want their particular program hundreds of dollars have been added to the cost of an automobile putting gadgets on it to declare up the air we're the only country in the world that's set out to do it that way the automobile industry over and over again told if they give them more time the answer lay in making the motor more efficient and making it burn the fuel better and when they were given the limited time there was only one with a and they could turn to that was the atoms that you had and the verdict is really kind of still out on those where they're gonna add more sulfuric acid to their to the air or not yeah what do you think is gonna happen now you've been asked this question I'm sure you know that I was would might possibly bring it up tonight there's an election coming up you you're out of politics now but you you were speaking and as I say you're going around the country you envision a possibility say in 76 if the convention say was deadlocked I'm giving you all the theories and so forth and the Conservatives took over possibly and got control of the of the electoral process and they couldn't quite make a decision and they came to you and said governor Reagan we can't decide between mr. Ford mr. Rockefeller were divided would you like to you like to go to the White House you remember that answer I gave you about the CIA yeah no that was delicately phrase oh yeah verbose but delicate verbose but that was it I am no I think it's an unanswerable question I don't think anyone in view of the things that go on in the last few years knows what's gonna happen in that in the next two years down the road I think that everyone should hope and pray that people to they'll do the job so well there won't be any question about it because if they do then everything's alright with the rest of us you think they're doing their job well well I agree with some things and disagree with others when they when they give me a when they give me a choice between a fifty three billion dollar deficit in the budget and an eighty billion dollar deficit when budget deficits are what's causing inflation I don't see that there's any room to be on either side of that argument yeah I think the answer to curing inflation is a balanced budget no how do you do that I mean it's out how do you the budget while balancing the budget is like protect you don't spend more than you take in right now it's like protecting your virtue you have to learn to say no there's got to be another way what's the second option well no there's some ways that this could be brought about first of all that limitation here's another one why shouldn't we have in addition to a simplified income tax why shouldn't we also have a law that says that any time a legislator or a congressman introduces a spending program he has to introduce with it a tax program to pay for it then let the people find out there was a woman that from a financial firm that was back at the president's Economic Council and her words weren't quoted everybody else's words got in the paper all the hellos and the Gaul breaths and all the so-called economist and I had a I have a degree in economics so I can say this I think an economist is someone who has a Phi Beta Kappa key on one end of his watch-chain and no watch on the other this woman said that he you go to bat the poles and you ask the people do they want some social service some program that government can give and the people in the polls are apt to read and say hey that sounds good yeah hmm but she says that isn't exactly accurate she says put a $100 bill in each person's hand and then show them the program and say now isn't that a nice program do you want it give me the hundred dollars she says see what the poll says then how many people hang on with a hundred dollars instead of the program in other words if it's rather hidden and someone doesn't know exactly where it's gonna come they always start all the government programs start $1 down and we'll catch you later and and they they multiply all of those things that you were the Office of Management and Budget in Washington that's responsible for the budget putting up putting the budget together cannot even tell you how many boards commissions agencies bureaus and departments there are in the federal government but all of them can pass regulations and those regulations have the force of law and the difference is when you break the law you're innocent until proven guilty when you break a regulation the fella that charges you with a break in the regulation you're guilty you want to take him to court and prove you're innocent that's up to you and all of these are things that that yes we can trim the budget there's enough fat and the federal government that if you rendered it you could wash the world you are now you took it they took a poll of the American people the past week and I make 78% or sometimes around 75% were opposed to more military aid to Vietnam and Cambodia in Southeast Asia in general and yet the administration was trying to tell the American people that a couple hundred million or two hundred and twenty two million dollars would make some kind of difference or that the government might make it and how do you feel do you think that that is a lost cause in a way I think people can see humanitarian you know for children hospitals etc and medical supplies and food but it seems that the public have just almost handed up with military involvement where we feel we are not directly threatened well we are fed up we're war-weary after a long and badly fought war on the other hand and this is one where I'll probably lose a lot of people because it isn't popular or publicly clip to say this today when we withdrew our troops we made a ceasefire a peace agreement and it was based on supporting the non communist forces in Indochina on a basis of one for one replacement every bullet they expended a bullet to replace it if the Communists violated the ceasefire the Communists have violated the ceasefire 72 thousand times since it was instituted and we brought our men home and I think for the United States to break its word we're in that agreement we pledged something and the Congress is now saying that the United States reserves the right to just break its word and not what other allies ever go to trust us and I there's no question that backed by Red China and the Soviet Union the communist forces in Vietnam and Cambodia are on their way to take those over they do of course Laos just automatically falling then they're on the edge of Indonesia a hundred and forty million people which comes within 14 miles at its nearest point of the Philippines the domino theory is it was still a viable theory and yes it is and I could see the United States one day being very very lonely now it's a very funny thing that the same forces that want to cut our defense spending are the same ones that want to increase all these social services in this social tinkering and experimenting that hasn't worked and every time it doesn't work they just impose a more expensive program on top of it I think the American people if they really look at all effects yes we want fiscal responsibility but I think we also want a country that is strong enough at all times that we can say to any adventurous guys over there on the other side of the water you better look twice brother before you start getting rough we can take care of ourselves as you said before you made the statement that would probably get mixed for your reaction but I didn't understand that people aren't and it's hard to understand how maybe your interest is involved ten thousand miles away but Russia seems concerned that their interests extend all the way to Cuba and to South America to Chile into other countries of that kind and they're the ones that have said they're going to impose their way of life on the rest of the world we haven't said we want to do it to the rest of the world are we let me ask you one more question before you go let us assume that there's a third party that the neither party seems to go yeah you like this approach already huh and they're thrown into disarray as they say and a third party is formed what do you think that'll ever happen in this country what a third party will be a major type of alternate to what we have well I'd still prefer to see a revitalization of the two major parties we have because the two-party system has served us very well third parties have a notorious way of not being successful now the Republican Party some people say well that was a third party a hundred years ago when it started it actually wasn't it was a second party the Whig party had my shrunk and shrunk and then the remainder of the Whig party said to two other groups that had formed parties hey want to get together with us they changed their name and called themselves the other party and so it was in effect the Whigs just disappeared it was just a new second run maybe this is time maybe it's time for realignment between people who might be find themselves in the wrong parties maybe there are some people still voting I was a Democrat most of my life I became a Republican only not too many years ago and I had the pleasure of telling some of those people that are saying the Republican Party ought to broaden its base the other day that when I switch parties I didn't do it because the two parties were alike I did it because they were different and I think that the two parties are to stand up as to what they represent what they stand for a third party I they have a way of electing the wrong people they because they simply divide themselves from the other forces that feel the same way and then the other fella sneaks in and then I it could happen that the that neither party would would represent what the people want and finally the people would take some action do something about it but I'd rather devote our effort to see and if we can't find out what the present two parties stand for and which one we want but you don't see yourself as maybe I was a part of that actively active politically again I said I don't give up do i yeah you sure sure don't I wish I could think of a good get off like I have Lauren Smith actual question yeah Nancy Nancy you know said to just say hello tonight she thought it was great that we're both in town at the same time thanks for being with us tonight really you

Channel: Johnny Carson

Views: 2,067,084

Rating: 4.8804798 out of 5

Keywords: Ronald Regan_02_03.13.75

Id: CNmnmdtcdcg

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2020