Interview With Arrigo Levi of Canale 5 Television of
Administration
Goals
Q.
Mr. President, you have less than 1 year's work left as a President. And do you
still expect to achieve something important in the final 10 -- 11 months left?
The President. Well, there are some
things pending that I think are of importance and that I believe we can
achieve, and I'm going to keep working right down to the last minute.
Q.
Which things, for instance, a strategic arms agreement?
The President. Yes, oh, yes. We're
going to pursue that and hope that well before my time is up we will have that
resolved. But there are other things here in our own domestic problems. I think
that our budgeting process that has led to the deficit spending over the last
almost 60 years must be corrected. And I am going to be fighting for legislation
to achieve that. And for my successor -- that he could have some things I
haven't had, such as what's called a line-item veto -- the power to pick things
out of a legislation and veto them. And we still have
further to go in the building up of our national security. And that is
important to me, as is our relationship with our allies in
Soviet-U.S.
Relations
Q.
You have made that important agreement, and there may be others to come with
the
The President. My views haven't
changed. But you must remember that the Soviet leaders, when I first came into
office, kept dying. And finally there was little chance to work with any of
them on some of the things that I thought should be straightened out. Now there
is a new leader, and he does seem to want to make some changes in their system.
I have read his book ``Perestroika,'' and I know of his theories on glasnost.
And so, we have been able to reach agreement on some of the things that we've
discussed in our summit meetings. I always take up the matter of human rights,
and there has been an improvement in that. Regional conflicts -- and we see
them now -- this leader wanting to get out of
Q.
Does he approve of your proverb? He once complained that you tell him that too
often.
The President. I know. I know. He told
me that.
Q.
But you do like each other? It's an important question for people of the whole
world.
The President. I have found that, yes,
that we can discuss things and in an affable manner, and he is totally unlike
the other leaders before him that I had dealt with.
Strategic
Defense Initiative
Q.
Mr. President, you sometimes have been described as
the first passivist of the White House, meaning that
your aim is to make nuclear weapons obsolete through SDI. Is that a foregone
and lost hope?
The President. No,
not at all. As a matter of fact, we're still going forward, and we've
made progress. And there have been breakthroughs. I believe that the Strategic
Defense Initiative that we're working on can be such an effective defense, that
it makes so much more sense than thinking that a deterrent in which we're trying
to keep the peace by threatening to blow each other up, that if we can come up
with a defensive weapon -- and I have expressed to General Secretary Gorbachev
my belief that we'd be willing to share it -- that if we could have a defense
that did render those weapons obsolete -- because I have stated many times that
I do not believe that a nuclear war can be won nor should it be fought. Where
would a victor live after we'd poisoned the Earth with an exchange of these
multiple weapons that we have?
Arms
Control
Q.
Do you feel that you have made some progress in convincing Gorbachev, and the
Russians in general, of the importance of defensive systems?
The President. Well, we have the one
treaty signed already now -- the intermediate-range weapons. That was targeted
on every principal city in
President's
Legacy
Q.
What would you like future historians to remember as your main achievement, and
what would you like them to forget as your main failure?
The President. Oh, my.
Q.
Let's take one at a time. Maybe if we had time -- --
The President. I don't know. That's so
hard to pick out.
Q.
The achievement or the failure?
The President. On the economic side, I
think we've made great progress in changing a philosophy that was here in our
land in which the political debate was between how much more deficit spending
the Government should do. Now that whole argument has been changed, and it's
down to, well, what is the best way to eliminate or reduce the deficit spending. And the argument is how to reduce the spending,
not between one side that wants to spend more as
against the other. I'm proud of that, and I hope that before I leave we can
have some improvements in our budgeting process that will be adopted by our
government. I am proud of that. I'm also proud of the fact that when I came
into office our national defense was quite a shambles. On any given day, half
our military aircraft couldn't fly for lack of spare parts. Today we have
achieved a great improvement in our military. And I think the fact that we have
signed this INF treaty with the
Q.
We didn't say anything about what failure was, but the girl says you have no
time to remind us of your failures. Maybe there were none, that's too much.
The President. No, I am sure there
were things I would have -- I think there were some things that, whether they
were failures or whether they were just terrible disasters -- one, namely, the
terrorist murder of some 240 of our young marines is a tragedy I will never
forget. And I will never forget the families that I met with of those young
men.
Q.
Do you feel good looking back at your 8 years at the White House and beyond
that, your career as an actor, and union organizer? How does that make you
feel?
The President. Well, I think the Lord
has blessed me very much, and I am truly grateful to Him. I hope I can be
deserving of the good things that He's bestowed on me.
Note: The interview began at