Remarks in Del Ray Beach, Florida

Gee, it is nice to be here in Del Ray Beach. The weather has gotten better, the crowds have gotten bigger, and all of you are so warm and friendly, and I can't thank you enough for just being nice. And I appreciate it very, very much.

Let me take a minute or two to talk to the older people, the younger people, and some my age. [Laughter] All of us have a great stake in keeping America strong, both at home and abroad, and let me tell you we are going to keep it strong here as well as abroad.

But we have it do it not with some quick fix. We can't do it by spending all the money that we can borrow. We have to do it by running this country responsibly, constructively, and with good commonsense.

We have had too many patent medicine proposals that all of you know don't work. In the last 19 months, we have had some difficulties. We have had high Unemployment, terribly high inflation. We have had some challenges from abroad. But I think we can say in good conscience that we have made very substantial headway in meeting the difficulties of inflation. It is half now what it Was 19 months ago. We have gone through a tough recession. Unemployment is going down, employment is going up, retail sales, personal income, you name it, everything looks good. But it is not good enough, and we are going to make it better with your help.

America has a great responsibility to keep it in the leadership that it has worldwide. We have a responsibility to deter aggression, to maintain peace, and to protect our national security. The only way we can do that is to have a sufficiently strong military capability so that our allies respect us and our adversaries know they hadn't better fool around.

Right now, America is strong, and we are going to keep it that way. Let me assure you that with your help on March 9, your help on November 2, we will keep it that way in the next administration. What looks good today will be far, far better in 1977, 1978, 1979, and 1980.

I thank you for coming. I promise you to do the very best I can. It has been good, it will get better, and with your help we can have a great administration for the next 4 years.

Thank you very, very much.