Asheville, North Carolina Remarks at a Reception for John Ingram.

Senator Morgan and Governor Jim Hunt, Congressman Lamar Gudger, Wallace Hyde, who, along with the others, helped make it possible for me to be elected, and your next Senator, John Ingram:

I don't have any particular remarks prepared tonight. But as I was sitting here on the stage, some thoughts went through my mind that I think are, perhaps, similar to those that went through yours.

As I listened to John Ingram talk, he obviously is a man who is quiet and sincere. He may not be as sophisticated as some of you, and neither am I, but there's a genuineness about him that appeals to me. I believe he means what he says. And I know when I first began to run for President, not many people thought I had a chance. A few of you thought so, and you helped me. And a few months ago when John Ingram decided to run for the U.S. Senate, many of you, even the strongest, most loyal, most knowledgeable Democrats, didn't think he had a chance. And when you got ready to give a campaign contribution, the chances are that you probably gave it to another fine man, Luther Hodges, or maybe some of the other candidates, Mr. Davis, or others.

But there was something in John Ingram that the people liked and trusted. It's hard to say exactly what it is, because you can't analyze the inner character of a man. But I believe a lot of women thought back about how he treated them in establishing insurance rates.

We hear a lot about the rights of women and treating them fairly and decently and giving them a chance for a job and equal pay, taking care of widows. But not many insurance commissioners around the country have been sure that insurance rates were fair to women.

A lot of young people, young men just as good as you and I, just as good as the young ladies, have long been stigmatized and condemned and made to pay higher insurance rates because a few are careless and reckless. And it's an easy thing to overlook something like that and say, "Well, all of them are not to be trusted." But in a strange way, because I think he's close to people, John Ingram said, "Well, young people can be trusted." And the insurance rates for young men and women in North Carolina are just about the lowest in the whole country because he had confidence in them.

I noticed when he introduced his wife, he was really proud of her. And I could tell that he really meant it when he called his three daughters up here and his son, and said, "These are the people that make me strong." Some might think, well, that's kind of a corny thing to do. Well, if so, I'm corny, too, because that's the way I feel about my family.

You don't have to be a college professor, you don't have to be a distinguished lawyer, you don't have to be someone who's rich to understand what people need in Washington, in the White House or in the Congress, or in the State legislature or the Governor's mansion. What you need is someone who's close to the people and who, although he might be 40, 50, 60 years old, still understands what it means to be young and what it means to be young in spirit and the special problems of those who need help.

I'm a Democrat by inheritance and by conviction and by experience. And I see some things that are special in my own party that make me proud. I think John Ingram, Lamar Gudger, represent those kinds of things; Bob Morgan represents those kinds of things; Jim Hunt represents those kinds of things.

We've always been eager to reach a hand out to someone who was in need, not down as though we were superior to them, but reach out as a brother or a sister, and say, "You're having a tough time now, perhaps you don't have a job, perhaps you haven't had a chance to get a good education, perhaps you are a farmer with just a few acres of land and not much capital, perhaps you're a young married person, you don't yet have the finances to buy a home, perhaps your parents have never been to college or your grandparents, and you, for the first time, are trying to get a better education than they."

Well, those are the kind of people that the Democrats have always cared about; even rich Democrats are concerned about those things. And in doing that, they exemplify the finest aspects of a genuine Southern—you might say—conservatism. Because we believe that the best way to invest our money and taxpayers' money is in people, to give them a chance to take whatever talent God might have given them—sometimes not much talent but to use it, through better education programs, housing programs, farm programs, to let people stand on their own feet, answer their own questions, make their own decisions, run their own lives and, in the process, contribute, to let the rest of us have a better life.

This is not something to be scorned or condemned, when you invest in people. And I'm proud of the Democratic Party because it's what it is. I grew up as a politician, as a very young politician—I haven't been in it long—in the South. When a lot of people said, "Well, I believe in what the Democratic Party stands for; I really appreciate what Franklin Roosevelt did to change my life in the Depression or what Harry Truman did, kind of a down-to-earth, honest, tough fighter"—I appreciate those things— "the idealism of John Kennedy." But one thing that Democrats have always had to suffer from, particularly in the South, is that we had the reputation, which we did not deserve, of being fiscally irresponsible.

Now, that's changed. The reputation has changed. The facts are that it has never been true. But last month, the Gallup Poll for the first time showed that twice as many people in this country said that Democrats are fiscally responsible than they did Republicans.

And the reason for it is that we've been trying, since I've been in Washington and long before, Democrats have, to get control of the Government, to get control of the bureaucracy, because again, the bureaucracy really consists of good people, people like you and me, who—perhaps younger—said, "I've got one life to live, and I want to spend my life serving others." At first, service in the Federal Government was a very low-paying thing; it's getting better. But they've got one life to live, they want to invest it in America.

But the problem has been that for the last 100 years, the civil service has not been modified to let them do a better job. And I thought it was a good idea, when I was running for President, to promise that we would reform the civil service to let excellent, dedicated, competent, qualified employees be rewarded, and to let those who are not so competent or not so dedicated be inspired or urged to do better, or to be transferred or fired.

I think it helps all around, because it's not good for one person to be sitting here at a desk working hard all day, competent, and for their neighbor, who's incompetent or lazy, to get the same pay, the same promotion, the same privileges, for not doing a job that the other person then has to do for them.

So, we've come close now to completely reforming the civil service system. We can let good employees be rewarded, bad ones be better, let managers manage, get a better return on your investments in government, provide better services for our people. We win all along. And that's part of what the Democratic Party is trying to do.

I believe in balanced budgets. I don't believe in wasting money, and I believe I represent in my own beliefs what most Democrats also want to see in Washington.

When I was running for President in 1976, the Federal deficit was over $60 billion, $66 billion. And I resolved to do something about it. My first budget that I presented to the Congress was in the fifties of billions of dollars. The next budget was in the forties of billions of dollars. That's the one Congress is working on now—we might get a little under forty. In 1980, the fiscal year that I'm preparing now, it's going to be well down in the low thirties. We're bringing the budget down into balance and, at the same time, we're not cutting short on the delivery of services. We're providing the needs of America, and that's what Democrats have always stood for.

As I said this afternoon at the airport, I believe in a strong defense. I spent 11 years of my life in the Navy, at the Naval Academy, on battleships, in submarines. And I know that throughout the world, people depend on us to be strong enough militarily so that no other nation can successfully even hope to challenge the United States of America. But there's more to strength than just military weapons. We've got to keep the weapons, but strength also comes from being a clean nation, a decent nation, a truthful nation.

And I think you all remember that in the last few years, we had lost that reputation. In Vietnam, and with Watergate, and with the CIA revelations where they had violated the law, a lot of people began to lose confidence in us, and we began to lose confidence in ourselves. But I think with the close coordination of a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, we've begun to repair that damage. And I think it's accurate to say that all over the world now there's not a single head of a nation, whether they serve in a totalitarian society or a democratic society, that every day they don't think about basic human rights—are they treating their own people fairly? And this has been like raising a banner around which we could rally once more and of which our friends and we both could be proud.

And, of course, we believe in peace. I'm proud that in the last 20 months or so we've not had a single American soldier lose a drop of blood in a foreign war. And I hope when I go out of office, we still can say the same thing. But that's peace through strength, not weakness.

So, you can see that I'm prejudiced on behalf of the Democratic Party and what it stands for. But we've got our problems. We don't claim to know all the answers. Sometimes, even in a State like yours, the Democratic Party has not worked as a team. I've been disappointed not too many years ago to see Republicans, in effect, take over in your State. But now we've come back.

And I would like to ask you tonight, as a special request from the President of the United States and the titular head of the Democratic Party, to resolve in your own minds and hearts to try to repair that damage that has occurred in the past. You've already demonstrated by coming here tonight that you believe in the same things that I believe in. But I hope that you will leave here tonight committed to making sure that we have two Democratic Senators in Washington next January.

It's not going to be easy. I recognize that. But if every one of you would not only be satisfied with what you've done tonight with a contribution—that didn't hurt any of you—but if you would go home and start thinking about what more you can do, there's no doubt in my mind that every one of you, no matter how old or young, even very young people could raise 5 or 10 times as much as you've contributed tonight. Send it in to help the candidates here on the stage, and kind of organize yourselves as campaign managers.

You're not servants. You're not followers. You're inherent natural leaders. And I think the good thing that you can do to show your leadership capability is to invest it in something you love—your country.

So, it wouldn't hurt you to organize your block, 'or to organize your community, or perhaps the whole town or county, and demonstrate once again that we have a spirit in the Democratic Party that wants to repair past damages, answer difficult questions, reach deep within our hearts and restore the spirit and the idealism, the truthfulness that has long exhibited what the Democratic Party stands for and what our country is.

So, help us all. Let's elect John Ingram and Lamar Gudger, and not only that, but show the people of North Carolina and our country that we are still as great as we used to be and that we can be even greater in the future.

I'm very proud of you, and I thank you for giving me your confidence to serve as President. Government can't do everything for people, and my inspiration comes from you. But I'm glad that you and I form a partnership, a kind of a political team of which I'm proud, very proud. And I'm also proud that we have a chance to exhibit this team spirit in the greatest nation on Earth.
Thank you very much.