Welcome to Minnesota meeting. I'm Deborah Howell, the executive editor of the st. Paul Pioneer Press and dispatch. I'll get the standard stuff about David Broder out of the way quickly David Seltzer Brodeur has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Chicago. He worked for the daily pantograph in Bloomington, Illinois, the Congressional quarterly the Washington star and the New York Times before coming to rest at his true home at the Washington Post in 1966. The first real thing you ought to know about David Broder is that he is from Chicago and that he loves politics and only the way someone who grew up on Cut and Shoot Chicago politics can by the way, he loves the Chicago Cubs slightly more than politics and only slightly less than life. The second thing you ought to know about David Broder is that he works his tail off. He is covered every major national political campaign and Convention since 1960 and is on the road up to a hundred thousand miles a year. Not only does he write a twice a week column. He is a man who writes a great breaking news story and he has written three books and is at work on a fourth. The third thing you ought to know about Brodeur is that he fairly brims with Integrity. I defy you to find a major politician of either party and this country whether or not they are speaking to David Broder who would say any different the fourth thing you ought to know about rotor is that he has the courage to say things other people don't whether it's opening himself up to talk about the painful illness of his parents are telling off the president of the United States and anyone who missed his shuttle column last week ought to go back and look it up. It was one of the best things he's ever done. The fifth thing you ought to know about Brodeur is that deep inside? This mild-mannered reporter is a terrific Lyricist who has the soul of a musical comedy star are how could you explain in one of his finest moments came at the 1983 Gridiron when he was wearing a wig and a maternity dress and saying this song to the tune of Manana. I went down to the clinic just to get myself a pill they said that have to tell my daddy. That's the Reagan schweiker squeal now, I'm fat with baby but in a month or so I'll leave a little bundle on Maggie hecklers door. There's one last thing you ought to know about David Broder. He is a special person. This is not because he is one of the Pulitzer Prize because he just got voted the best Washington columnist for the umpteenth time in the umpteenth pole. He is special because he is a lovely person respected and cared for by his colleagues in a business where that can be rare a colleague who lifts spirits and who always has a wise word. Some folks think the succession sweepstakes at the Washington Post are about who's going to be the SOB son of Ben bradlee. I'll tell you that's small potatoes. That's just running a newsroom. The real Act of follow. The real SOB is son of Broder who will speak to America as he does for my money. I want the David we have now at least until the next century. Ladies and gentlemen, I've been in this business 23 years. I have few Heroes David Broder is one of them. Thank you, Debbie. Every Instinct that I possess tells me how to quit while I'm ahead. They're in any way. I'm going to live up to that. But thank you very much. First of all in the interest of accuracy in particularly in Minneapolis. I have to tell you that that offensive lyric was written by Carl T Rowan and I was just shoved out on stage. I replied with liquor and then shoved out on stage to sing that song but it's a row in lyric and he deserves either credit or blame for it and I want to apologize for my voice. I don't know quite what happened but I've some whatever is ailing me will be cured quickly in the sun and the balmy weather of Minneapolis and st. Paul. Anything that you can't understand because of my growl is probably gramm-rudman. So just just fill it in if the blanks get to be serious the lovely gesture that marked the State of the Union the other night with the president turning to Tip O'Neill and saluting him for having sat there more or less stone-faced for 10 years and listening to other people deliver State of the Union messages with which he disagreed as revived a story that was going around in Washington a little while back about the proverbial day in the future when Ronald Reagan Tip O'Neill and Paul volcker are gathered to their reward and find themselves in purgatory waiting their ultimate destination. It's anybody told this story to this group in the last three days or four days and stop me right now and they are waiting in the ante room and suddenly a voice over the loudspeaker booms out. Ronald Reagan go to room one president goes down the hall turns the door to room 1 and sees this pit of vipers in the room. The voice comes back on the loudspeaker and says Ronald Reagan you have sinned you will spend eternity with this pit of vipers. Tip O'Neill go to room 2 tip gathers himself up Lumbers down the hall to Room 2 turns the door Sees this vicious dog on a very very narrow leash the voice on the loudspeaker says Tip O'Neill you have sinned you will spend eternity with this vicious dog. Paul volcker go to room 3, mr. Volker Rises up all 6 foot 7 inches of him goes down the hall to room 3 turns the handle on the door there inside is Bo Derek The voice and a loudspeaker says Bo Derek you have sinned. I want to try to sketch very quickly really the very broad outlines of the governmental and political scene as we see them at the start of this clearly unusually interesting year. And I guess the first proposition I would put before you is that there is a Surface calm two events and conditions in this country and almost no consensus about what's going to happen. Once we break through that envelope of calm the mood of the country as reflected in the president's speech last night is generally one of confidence. We've had long sustained economic growth without inflation most Americans and most communities feel that they are doing rather well, But as you know, and I don't have to say particularly in an area like this. The agriculture sector is in serious trouble mining oil significant areas of manufacturing are operating at recession levels if at all and we have the record deficits in both the budget And the trade accounts hanging over our heads another Paradox. The United States is at peace. The United States Soviet dialogue has been resumed but in a sense if you measure your security by what Americans feel We know that many of our fellow citizens are reluctant or nervous about traveling and parts of the world because of the threat of terrorism and we know that for all our vaunted power we are on any given day just one airplane hijacking away from another Iran hostage situation another Paradox. Ronald Reagan has high approvals ratings at historic Lehigh levels, but he had to fight the members of his own party to get through the House of Representatives in December a tax bill which would cut rates for most individuals and he's going to have to fight his own party may be uphill to get that bill through the United States Senate this year. 1986 is going to be a hinge year in terms of the Reagan presidency and very possibly I think in terms of the longer-term directions of American politics the central issue the fulcrum issue at least in Washington terms is the budget. And once again, you have Paradox there is surface agreement on the new budget process everybody from Ronald Reagan to Ted Kennedy supported the gramm-rudman-hollings approach but there is absolutely no agreement as to where that approach is going to lead the disagreement begins indeed with the sponsors of the legislation. If you ask Phil Gramm from Texas what he believes, the result of gramm-rudman will be He will tell you that it will force the cuts in what he regards as the marginal domestic programs, which escaped David Stockman and himself Phil Gramm when Graham was a democrat in the house working as Stockman's partner silent partner for part of that year in achieving that first round of budget cuts. If you ask one Rudman from New Hampshire what the result of gramm-rudman will be. He will tell you that gramm-rudman will finally Force Ronald Reagan to accept a tax increase as the price for keeping his defense program intact if you ask each of them how the other can be so mistaken. About the effects of it he will tell you you got to go talk to that other guy. I've never been able to understand why he's so confused about what our bill is going to do. It is a peculiar situation. Gramm-rudman is an action-forcing device and anything that forces action in Washington in a certain sense is welcome. But I think it's I think it is likely to turn out to be another of the great disappointments for the American people who have hoped that their government in the federal level would come to grips with these fiscal issues. I say that and I have to be careful because I know I am in a state where elements of the progressive tradition are part of your political culture, but I say it in part because I have come to believe that there is bound to be disappointment in any approach that attempts to take politics out of politics. This is a device which says we politicians have failed to deal with the deficit problems. Therefore we will hand over the power. To bureaucrats and technicians and allow them to dictate the result. I just simply do not believe that that is likely to work. There is grave question as you know, as to whether this kind of procedure which would on the face of it. Take monies, which are lawfully appropriated by the Congress of the United States in appropriation bills that have been signed into law by the president and to use the new word sequester. shorter term cancel those Appropriations on the dictate of three sets of non-elected officials in the Office of Management and budget Congressional budget office and the general accounting office if that is what the founding fathers intended. In terms of the way in which our government would operate on the most crucial question perhaps for any government namely how shall the money be spent and how much money shall be spent then. I've got to go back and take again. The courses that I took as a layman in constitutional law, but we will find out and rather quickly at I think within the next two or three weeks will know about the three-judge panels judgment on it and within five or six months what the Supreme Court thinks of this process in any case whether that survives the Constitutional test, I think it is very doubtful whether it will survive the political test. But I think as always in our country if you ask why is there this political impasse most of it comes right back to us as the voters? The reason that there is a political impasse was that the election of Nineteen Eighty-Four which appeared to be on the surface a landslide victory for the president? Actually reflected very differing impulses and sent very different messages to the major part parts of the government President Reagan made the Strategic decision in 1984 to talk about the accomplishments of the first term. You remember the great line of 1984 campaign was You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. That had a double meaning it meant two things had gone very well. It also meant that if you want to find out what's going to come after you got to re-elect me. Then I will tell you what comes after was the exact opposite of the kind of campaign. He had run in 1980 where he was very specific and clear about the policy directions that he would take the country and the political results were very different because whereas in 1980 he pulled into office on his coattails the first Republican Senate in a generation and enough additional Republican members of the house to give Republicans and conservatives mostly Southern Democrats working control of the house in 1984. There were no presidential coattails and the members of the Senate and the house came out of that election with a very different interpretation of what the voters were saying. As a result, we have not one mandate but three mandates operating in Washington DC today and it is the impasse that has resulted from that. That has led to this budget crisis that I think dominates the 1986 year. The question now I suppose is who backs down in the face of the gramm-rudman trigger? I doubt that the president will back down. I think that he believes that he will get more of his defense dollars without a tax increase by hanging tough. And I believe that he sees that he will have to unexpected allies in that effort. One is Muammar Qaddafi? Because as long as he and other terrorists are operating it's going to be very hard for the Congress to say we're going to allow cuts that will Lenay but with will prevent the Navy from steaming in the Mediterranean or from covering. In other vital parts of the world where this kind of attack may come at any date is other Ally is going to be Mikhail Gorbachev because once again, it will be very hard for an individual member of Congress to stand up to the pressure of when the president of the United States is on television saying don't send me into this meeting with one arm tied behind my hand my back. So I think the president believes that he is in a very strong position on this. I don't believe that the house Democrats are going to back down because most of them as I understand it believe that they have discovered a formula for creel electing and for continued domination of that body no matter what happens in the rest of that government. I think they believe that the politics of re-election to the house now comes down for most of them to three C's and as long as they kick care of the three C's they will be all right, politically those three C's are the colas for the elderly and the retirees the college's student loan programs and other forms of assistance for that major middle class entitlement program of a college education and third City Hall. As long as they can keep some of the program's going into the cities. So as they can take care of their college families with college students as long as they can take care of the elderly most of the Democrats in the house believe that they will be back in office for another term. Who does that leave hanging out there? Well, that's the catch-22. And it literally is Catch-22 because it's the twenty two Republican Senators who seats are up this year in what will be the major political Battle of this year in my view and I hope I don't sound partisan to partisan in this the people who from 1982 on have been the most responsible in attempting to balance. The obligations of government and the resources of government have been those Senate Republicans. I think they have understood that there a we have reached the level of government which most people in this country believe we probably want to sustain and that the only question is whether we are going to start paying for the amount of government that most Americans seem to think that we need but they are really hanging out there this time they are the ones who seats are at stake and they are the ones who are sooner or later going to have to have that kind of confrontation with the president of their own party, which they tend to for understandable reasons want to avoid if there is going to be any negotiated settlement of the gramm-rudman dilemma and an escape from the trap of the automatic across-the-board cuts that everybody I think from any political ideology regards as being a disaster or alternatively an ignominious crawl down for by Congress from its stated goal of reaching a significant reduction in the deficit this year a crawl down which would be accompanied by Hoots of derision. I think from the White House And a real risk of political retaliation at the polls by voters who said you people can't do anything, right? That brings me to the election this fall and let me just make a couple of comments about the steaks there and why they are higher than usual. The normal pattern for the election that takes place in the sixth year of a prayer of a president's term is one of serious setbacks for the party in power statistically on the no on the average. They lose seven governorships 7 Senate seats and 38 House Seats. I think there is a very substantial chance and likelihood that the Republicans will break that historical pattern this year if they can avoid A debacle because of gramm-rudman. as of today I think most of us who've tried to walk through these races that are coming up in the Senate would feel that the Republicans have a slightly better than 50/50 chance to maintain their Senate majorities slightly better than 50/50 in large part because in so many of the key states which once look promising the Democrats have failed to recruit credible candidates against what we once thought were going to be rather vulnerable Republican incumbents. If they can hold on to the Senate. Then it can turn out to be a very good year for the Republicans because the governorships. Are really there for the picking for the Republicans in 1986 governorships are increasingly important because mr. Reagan is succeeding further and further each year in Shifting the responsibility and the initiative for domestic policymaking in this country to the state capitals and of the City Halls if there is going to be anything of substance to this talk about the Republicans becoming the new majority party in America the governing party. They have to become a competitive party not just in Washington the White House and the Senate level they have to become competitive in the state capitals and they're not today as of today. They have only 16 of the 50 Governor's but the good news for the Republicans in 1986 is that there are 36 governorships up 27 of them now held by democrats and 13 of those Twenty seven Democrats will not be running for their present office again. Many of those open governorships are in states, which mr. Reagan has carried easily both in 1980 and in 1984, and the probability is great. Therefore that we will see Republican Governors winning. In many of those States if that happens if the Republicans were able to keep control of the senate in 1986 and make a significant increase in their strength at the state level. Then I would think that those who have hesitated to say something is really changed fundamentally in American politics would have very little evidence any longer to support them. All of that is out there as an opportunity and possibility for the Republicans. But all of it it seems to me is also at risk as long as we don't know. Who is really going to back down or what the escape hatch or accommodation will be in this deficit trap the fundamental point about the deficit issue I think was said well the other day by I guess I'm supposed to say just an Administration official. His point was this we're no longer arguing about the deficit. We are arguing now about the role of government in the United States the Reagan budget Choices put that argument in very very Stark terms and if we are lucky this year, we will find ways of debating that issue and not getting strapped into this sort of mechanical non-political. Pretense of the gramm-rudman quote-unquote automatic Cuts. I've rambled on longer than I meant to I be glad now to try to respond to your questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. David will have a question-and-answer period now, would you please come to the microphones located around the room? I don't believe I understood you to say what you thought would happen in the event that gramm-rudman was declared unconstitutional the challenge to Graham. Rodman's constitutionality is to the issue of the automatic sequestration device involving the use of those three budgetary or fiscal agencies of the government the authors of the ACT put into it a and a backup mechanism, which would have the Congress by joint resolution. adopt in September those same cuts that would be required automatically if the So-called trigger is ruled constitutional. In other words, there would be a single straight up or down vote. In both the house and the Senate to say we will cut across the board X percent of all of those programs which are not protected in the original gramm-rudman legislation. As you know, they put about 50 percent of total federal spending entirely beyond the reach of gramm-rudman took another 25% and said it can only be cut Within These limits and left exposed. About 26 percent of the budget which would be cut across the board if the Congress fails. To reach agreement with the president about a series of specific appropriation bills that would reach that same Target. So there is a backup mechanism but it lacks the triggering device of automaticity. In other words, it can be delayed. It can be filibustered. It can be passed in slightly different forms in the Senate and the house it can be Played with in all the ways that Congress is very expert in playing with devices for escaping. But if that if the Constitutional question cannot be dealt with that would be the backup mechanism under gramm-rudman. Do you think it's possible that when the going gets tough weather this year or next year and the cuts that Congress has asked to make under the green Rodman that they might eventually amend or repeal it is they find it very hard to do politically. I think the difficulty that Congress has gotten into at this point is that they have created an expectation now in the public in the financial Community, but they are going to one way or another get the deficit figure for fiscal 87 down to a hundred and forty four billion dollars and to abandon that Benchmark. I think in their own minds represents a very substantial political risk. now there is a blight a brief flurry of Hope last week that it wouldn't be that hard to get down to a hundred and forty four billion dollars because the estimates that came out where that that might require only 38 or 40 billion dollars of cuts instead of the 60 or 70 billion that were being talked about earlier, but that hope is illusory. The reason that the numbers look better is that the people who make those estimates have built in the gramm-rudman assumptions into their own projections particularly in defense instead of projecting defense as was done in the past to grow at 3% or 5% above inflation. This year Congressional budget office and OMB for they're projecting purposes said we will take what Congress did last year and assume a zero real growth in defense. The point is that those cuts will be much harder to come by off of the base that is being used this year than they were in the past. If the if the automatic colas are automatic triggers our grand Rodman are ruled unconstitutional wouldn't it be logical then that the colas themselves which are automatic triggers would be ruled unconstitutional next know the colas are there in statutory law that's been on the books now for a long time and the Graham Rodman's the product the price the gramm-rudman question is a process question. The coal is is some the cola provision is a part of some substantive law, which is not at issue in this court case. It's be like the automatic indexing of income tax rates, which are part of of the 1981 tax bill those substantive provisions of law are not at issue in this court case. It's simply the process question that's being tested. I noticed that Reagan mention this to continue to the stars and then also about this year. What do you feel is is your own feeling concerning the future now and the future against it I noticed the Glen himself was against it and I wanted to get your idea about maybe I should put it in the other one. And that is Bush. I feel will be the next president. I will answer subjectively though. I far from an expert on the space program. I believe that the space program is important. I cannot tell you that I can make the case that it ought to be x billion dollars rather than x billion minus 2. I don't I didn't sir certainly don't pretend to have that degree of expertise. But I think that the space program is important to the future of this country and that it is inherent in It is the kind of challenge to which this nation has historically responded the president read a lot of people by talking about the new Orient Express and I will tell you when very parochial terms what the Washington reaction was when he said that if this wonderful project worked out you might be able to fly from Dulles Airport to Tokyo in two hours and people in Washington said, yeah, but you'd have to drive all the way out to Dulles. Why can't we fly? Justin and since we are being reached the level of total triviality, I will tell you that the most distressing thing in this whole budget for people in Washington is the threat of losing federal subsidy for our wonderful new Metro system, which we want you all to come and use and enjoy we want you to think of it as your Metro system and we're very grateful for the help. You've given us. Getting back to your comments on the quandary. They haven't Washington don't we have some important things happening that might lead us to a solution. First of all with the drop in oil Russia Gorbachev is not going to be as strong economically in his negotiations as he was secondly with the unions and the workers having to take in the cuts in salary and Eastern Airlines hormonal and so forth and so on isn't going to be a little bit easier to persuade people to at least delay the colors and thirdly that's what the Senate tried to do and actually passed last spring. Therefore won't possibly that be a solution to this quandary that you outlined. That's a very good question. I think that most of the people on the budget committees in the Congress and many of the people who deal with these fiscal issues in the administration believe that the goal of a hundred and forty four billion dollars is well within reach this year and could be achieved in very much the fashion that you're talking about. If all of the people who were necessary to whose concurrence is necessary were prepared to come into a meeting and say initially everything is on the table for discussion. The Paradox of gramm-rudman is that it sets forth to reach that goal by taking 3/4. Of the game out of off the table before the discussions begin and to believe that you're going to reach that goal. Politically. I mean, it's almost literally like going around the world the other way to get to the point that you need to get to. Rudman believes that the consequences of the bill which he co-authored will be so horrendous that it will force everybody to put those other missing pieces back on the table, but I have to tell you the Senate Republicans have put those pieces on the table three times in a row now and have been shot down either by the house Democrats or by the president of their own party or by both. and it may be different this year. But up to this moment. I just say to you as a reporter. There is no sign of give on tip O'Neill's part when it comes to Social Security colas or the other two Seas. There is no sign of give on the president's part when it comes to defense or revenues and if you take all of that off the table Then you have to be very very optimistic indeed to believe that you're going to get there. With anything other than what everybody is I say regards as a massively irrational. kind of an approach We shall see sir. Yes. Would you please enumerate the base from which you use the word base from which they are operating this time to make the budget down make the budget come down to one hundred and forty four billion without taking anything away from Star Wars without raising taxes. What is the base? That's going to give them all this money. I am in a lot of trouble when I start talking numbers, but let me try to see if I can do it as clearly as I'm capable of doing it when we're talking about fiscal 1987 budget. We are talking about the budget for a year. That begins next October. There are two major sets of assumptions that go into that you have to assume what the economy is going to look like between October of 86 in October of 87 and the economic assumptions that are being used at this time are quite optimistic President says four percent real growth Congressional budget office is probably going to be a little bit below that but not a lot. The second set of assumptions you have to use is what is the expectation on the basis of past policy decisions as to where spending would go? And this is where gramm-rudman begins to enter into it. in the past they have assumed in the area of defense a growth of 3% to 5% above inflation. But last year Congress gave them zero percent above inflation. So the Baseline that is being used now for 1987. Is that zero growth Baseline? But the president doesn't want zero growth the president wants 3% plus an additional 5% to make up for what he lost in Congress last year 8% growth above inflation. So this is where you begin to get into the difficulties of the thing. The only point I would make and let me just try to say this simply without a lot of numbers. There was a view of sort of a flurry of great optimism saying, oh, it's not that bad. We only talking about 38 billion dollars or so of cuts, but that 38 billion dollars is in the Judgment of people who looked at it probably harder to get out of the base that they're now using then the 50 or 60 billion dollars, which they were looking at last year and which they filled failed to achieve. The base a base is a set is the is a is a line. It's on a chart and the line is drawn on the basis of two things one. What do you think? The economy is going to be and therefore how much revenues are you going to get in in taxes? And to how much do you think you will be spending on the basis of re of past spending decisions? That gives you the two lines that you're looking at and gives you the Gap that you got to fill that help at all. No, that's what I was afraid of. Those reductions are going to be that are going to make up the difference. Oh, well, we don't know what the reductions are going to be the president laid out his budget yesterday. And the that I mean that's in your papers this morning that's laid out very clearly. And in terms of where the program Cuts would come in the president's budget, but that's the only budget that's on the table at this point. And the one thing that is for sure is that that won't be the final budget for the year. Yes, sir, David. Let me help you get away from the budget Horace Busby writes a lot about the Republican lock on the White House through this Century. Would you comment on that whether you agree with that point and secondly one of the earlier questioners mentioned? Mr. Bush's name. Would you share a care to speculate with us on what you see as the race in 88 the presidential race? Okay to let's let's tell everybody what the Republican lock on the Electoral College. This is a theory by horse Busby a Lyndon Johnson Democrat who simply looked back through history and said that if you look at the last seven eight or nine presidential elections, you find that in six seven eight or nine of those elections. So many states consistently voted Republican that you can consider them part of an almost automatic Republican electoral base. for presidential politics States like Arizona, Colorado, Indiana North Dakota are so consistently Republican that it is almost it takes a free freakish election for them to be anything else. What has happened is he points out is that in presidential Politics the strength of Republican candidates in the last seven eight elections plus the shift of population into those states, which have tended historically to be Republican have produced a situation where the Republican nominee in any given year can start out with an electoral base of close to 200 electoral votes and needs to to forage for only another 72 have his Electoral College majority. Whereas the poor Democrat has a almost invisible. Certain political base now Electoral College base and he has to put together his 270 electoral votes almost from scratch in the two months that he's got between nomination and election. I think the historical evidence is strong and clear on that and I would think that that will tilt the odds in the 1988 election initially in any Republican candidates Direction doesn't mean that there cannot be a set of economic conditions in the country International conditions or simply such a contrast between the quality of the candidates that the two parties nominate that states do something which is aberrational for them namely vote Democratic. But if you were going to say who starts out with the Better in a stronger position clearly the Republicans do mr. Bush and the others, let me just make a general proposition about about the about the presidential candidates and it's something I've said in the office. I think that we are going to write an unusual amount of nonsense in 1986 about the 1988 presidential prospects. I mean, we always write a lot but this year's the quotient is going to be unusually high. The reason that I say that is that I think it is almost literally the case in my judgment. That the people who are now considered the FrontRunner in both parties. Have such vulnerabilities that if I were going to make any single election bet on 1988 today, I would take the asterisks against the frontrunners and let you pick the odds. I mean, I'd that's the one bet that I would be prepared to take today. I think when we come to 1988, we will find that the contest is not between the people who now peers are the major contenders in the two parties. I'll be glad to bore you at length what I think are the vulnerabilities of that but let me just let that proposition out there and then we can play with it and anybody cares to a little bit bit further. I was just hoping to get me off that that hook well. Alright who are the front-runners on the Democratic side today? Gary Hart and Mario Cuomo Gary Hart is a man who is about to leave his institutional base in the Senate. He is about to leave his geographical base in Colorado. Gary Hart is very much of a loner in politics. He got in ahead of the wave of new generation candidates in 1984 because he recognized that there would be the woods would be full of them as he said by 1988 and I think it is very plausible to imagine that some other new face who has greater capacity for building political alliances than Gary Hart has ever shown in his Senate career. Or in his political career will have a real chance to overcome that initial Advantage. Mr. Cuomo is a puzzle to me and I just have to say it in those terms. He is by far in my judgment the Democrats most Adept television performer. He's the one person the Democrats have who can talk about issues in the way that Ronald Reagan does by telling stories by creating characters by giving it some human juice and flesh to it. He is a fascinating personality with a real philosophical and religious base to his view of politics. He also seems to be an extremely thin skinned person who does not delegate a lot of responsibilities to people outside of his own family who is Almost weekly offending potential allies, by the way, in which his staff deals with people who would like to have Governor Cuomo come into their states or know sort of what they could do if they were interested in helping him along the way. And he has never been over the ground of a presidential campaign before which is a high-risk Venture made more. So I would say by my colleagues and myself. They look both very vulnerable to me on the Republican side. The two frontrunners today. Well, I should say one other person. I mean on there is another front-runner in the Democratic side. And that is Jesse Jackson, who knows what he is doing now has clearly a part of it but who also for various reasons that are we all understand will probably not be the Democratic nominee and out of a beyond that everybody else is effectively an asterisk today on the Democratic side the Republican side the two people who can go into any state and organized a meeting of supporters today are George Bush and Jack Kemp Kemp is the same some of the same problems that Cuomo has namely he has never gone through the fires of a national campaign. He does not know what it means to be covered 24 hours a day 7 days a week and he is particularly I think vulnerable to risk in that area because Jack Kemp believes a lot of things and not only does he You have a lot of things he really wants to convince you of those things. Unlike Ronald Reagan who also believes a lot of things. But who has the capacity to go through interview after interview? I'm speaking of him as a candidate now not as president because we don't have that kind of access to him. Obviously. No, but when you interviewed Ronald Reagan as a candidate or as governor of California what you got were Reagan speech excerpts. I mean, it was not a different level of argumentation. He believed what he said and he said what he believed and that was it. Any way it was both a strength and a kind of armor to him Jack Kemp want you to understand how he got to all of these conclusions. And some of the conclusions are in terms of today's conventional political beliefs a little strange. They may be conventional wisdom 10 years from now and I say that seriously ten years ago. Ronald Reagan was thought to have made a huge political blunder when he talked about a massive shift of responsibilities from the federal government to the states is about to happen. It's been happening and it will happen even more dramatically if anything resembling his budget is approved this year. Camp may have that kind of missionary and sort of Forerunner role but he is a high-risk candidate simply because he does have strong beliefs which he wants to explain. George Bush I think is going to make Walter Mondale think that he had it easy. The theory of the Mondale campaign is most of you in this room know was that there is a was a consensus in the Democratic party that he was the embodiment of that consensus and belief and therefore if it appeared to people that he was saying this to this constituency and that that constituency that there was really no problem because there was an underlying consensus and agreement within that party which bound them all together and made them more than a collection of individual interest groups wrong. George Bush has the same belief about the Republican Party Republican party has not only an idiot logical division. Between not between progressives and conservatives that was that's in its past but between the old fashioned Midwest conservatives of the kind that I grew up with most of you grew up no here in this state people who are Main Street Republicans who believe that we want a damn little government damn low taxes, and we don't want government messing around in our lives. Any more than is absolutely necessary. That kind of conservative still exists. But there has been brought into the Republicans party now. And given real status and legitimacy a different kind of conservative who is not at all interested in little government, but wants moral government. Wants to be sure that government is standing up for what is right. And is prepared in pursuit of that goal? To seek intrusion of government into areas of life which the old-fashioned conservatives find hair-raising if you want to boil it down to a phrase It's the difference between the Jerry Ford Republicans and the Jerry Falwell Republicans. George Bush believes he can have both I think he's wrong. And that's why I think he's a very vulnerable FrontRunner for the Republican nomination. Looking to the second spot on the ticket, I think women learned a lot and we're taught a lot by the Farrar candidacy last time around. Do you see any women which women on which ticket next time? I think it's very likely that there will be women on tickets regularly from this point on among the women politicians that I talked with and and report on there is a view which is widely expressed. But which I do not necessarily share myself that it is important will be important for the next woman who winds up on the national ticket to get there in what has been a traditional way namely running for the presidential nomination. And there is talk among some of the Republicans about which women might do that the names that you hear most frequently are. Jeane Kirkpatrick and Nancy kassebaum Nancy kassebaum is inhibited because she her colleague Senator Dole has clearly indicated that he has an interest in running for the presidential nomination. And I don't think that she wants to do anything to complicate his life in that in that respect the Democrats. I find at this point are not nearly as focused on who might pursue that kind of a strategy on their side but it is possible that out of the 86 elections. We will get somebody who will play that role as well. I don't think in any historic sense that the Ferraro candidacy was a setback for women in politics and in National politics. It's been my experience that often losing campaigns turn out to be of the greatest significance for the party because And they bring in the new people. Today's Republican party is very strongly influenced from the White House on down by people who volunteered because they were enthusiastic about Barry Goldwater. Now that was a short-term debacle for the Republicans, but it brought a whole new set of people in and I think if there's one thing that you could bet for the Democrats out of 1984 campaign is that they will be reaping the benefits in future years out of to candidacies and particular Jesse Jackson's and Geraldine Ferraro's because I think both of those were tremendous magnets for new people coming into politics. Okay, it's a short question on the budget you mentioned in your column yesterday that American people want things that they can't or don't want to pay for. Do you feel that a tax increase you personally feel that a tax increase is necessary or inevitable to he's a deficit crisis. I can give a very short answer that question in. My answer that question is yes. I don't think there is any way out of this bind that make sense that does not involve some piece of Revenue as part of the package as I said before. I think we are fairly close to a bipartisan consensus about the level of government and the range of government services, which we want to say undertaken. I'm not prepared to argue that there are not marginal programs which could be phased out dropped or that there are programs both defense and domestic which could be run more efficiently than they are today. But when all is said and done, I think we are fairly close to that consensus level about where the national government ought to be and in what areas of our life it ought to be and at what level it ought to be operating and the question is, you know, are we going to pay for it or not? Pat Moynihan said three years ago now that we're getting four dollars worth of government for three dollars worth of taxes. And that's a great scheme. If you can if you think it can can last if that's right, then I not only have to go back and take constitutional law. I have to go back and take economics 101 again. Thank you all very much.