Remarks on Arrival at the Asheville Municipal Airport in Asheville, North Carolina

Senator Bob Morgan, Governor Jim Hunt, former Governor Bob Scott, my good friend Congressman Lamar Gudger, Congressman Hefner, and Congressman Mann, Mayor Trantham, Mayor Todd, Chairman White, Chairman McCain, many people in the audience who are responsible for my being President, who share with me the successes and the blame:

I'm glad to be back home in North Carolina—even if I am 1 week late. [Laughter] It is partially your credit that we finally ended the Camp David summit with success, because I was eager to come back to North Carolina, and I wasn't the only one who was eager to leave. [Laughter]

The last day, when everything seemed to be going wrong, Prime Minister Begin came up to me and said, "Mr. President, I promise that Israel will get out of the Sinai, if you'll let me get out of Camp David." [Laughter]

It's a good time for all of us in politics and government. In a person's private life, there are times of struggle, times of disappointment, times of challenge, times of failure, times of hope and times of dreams, times of success and notable achievement, times of prayer and times of thanksgiving. And I have felt throughout the last 20 months, and particularly the last 2 or 3 weeks, that your prayers were indeed with me.

We have a great country. It's always a mistake for us to overemphasize the transient or rapidly changing problems that we face. Our country has always been willing to face great challenges and to overcome difficulties and to meet difficult challenges and to answer tough questions. We've not changed. We still have the same pioneer spirit that bound us together 200 years ago, or even earlier.

My people, the Carter family, moved from North Carolina longer than 200 years ago. And we've always had a kinship with your State and a realization that there was a role for the individual human being in a democratic, free society that could contribute, no matter whether one had a service station or a peanut farm or was occupying the White House. We are party to a team effort and a team spirit that's not going to stop, not going to pause. We're going to continue to make our Nation and to keep our Nation the greatest one on Earth. You can depend on that, if I can depend on you.

I'm particularly glad to come here with Lamar Gudger. Although he is new in Congress, he's no newer than I am in the White House— [laughter] —and I have felt particularly close to him. I looked at a clipping from a local newspaper not too long ago, and it said that although I had very good support from the North Carolina congressional delegation, that the best support from any Congressman in Washington from North Carolina was from your friend and my friend, Lamar Gudger. I thank him, and I thank you for sending him there. And I have to make one request of you: When November comes, I want you to send him back with the biggest margin of any Democratic candidate in the whole United States.

He has helped me on things that are important to you, along, I have to admit, with other people on this platform—Bob Scott and the other Members of Congress.

When I went into the White House, we had a very serious series of problems. As a farmer, as a warehouseman, as someone who's lived in agriculture all my life, I know how bad the farm depression was 20 months ago, 24 months ago. Those of you who are interested in agriculture, think back—prices were going down that the farmers got for our products, prices that they paid for fertilizer, seed, equipment were going up much more rapidly. Net farm income was dropping.

Last year, October 1, on my birthday, we put into effect a brand new agriculture bill. And since then, farmers' spirits, farmers' well-being have been going up. This is a great stride forward.

Another problem that I had when I became President was the high unemployment rate that Bob Morgan mentioned. When I became President, there were 10 million Americans who could not find a full-time job. More than 7 million Americans did not have a job at all. The unemployment rate had been going up steadily almost for the preceding 8 years. And the Congress and I formed a partnership to try to do something about it. Since that time, we've had a net increase of over 6 million new jobs in the United States.

The unemployment rate has dropped 2 full percentage points nationwide, and it's holding steady and progressing in the direction that you want it to move. This could not have been done without cooperation. And one of the best things about our programs that we've put forward is that we've done it not depending just on government handouts and jobs—they've been important for some special groups-but we've tried to strengthen the private enterprise system to let private jobs, permanent jobs be the root of the progress we have made. And that's what we're going to do in the future.

I've always been concerned about the Government bureaucracy. I talked about it a lot during the campaign. It's one of the reasons I was elected President. I thought it was bad, but when I got to Washington, it was a lot worse than I thought it was. And we've done something about it.

Early last year, the Congress gave me the authority to reorganize the structure of Government, and we've put forward a series of reorganization plans. There's not been a single one refused by the Congress. This is an extraordinary, unprecedented achievement.

In the past, Democratic and Republican Presidents have only been successful in having the Congress approve about one out of three of the proposals made. But it shows the harmony that does exist between a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President answering the demands of the American people.

For the first time in almost a hundred years, we now have civil service reform on the verge of being passed, thanks to many of you who've let your Members of Congress know how important it is to you.

We've got hundreds of thousands of competent, dedicated public servants who work under the civil service system. They want to do a better job. They want to see excellence and dedicated employees re- warded. They don't want to see someone sitting next to them, loafing and incompetent, promoted and paid at the same rate. So, what this new law will do is to let us reward good employees, correct the defects among those that are not very good, inspire them to work harder or fire them if they don't work, and let managers manage the Government, save you money, give you better services. Everybody wins all the way around.

I just want to mention one other thing, since I'm in North Carolina and know how you feel. My professional career, as you know, was in the Navy. I was a submarine officer, and I went to the U.S. Naval Academy: I believe in a strong defense. And as long as I and these men are serving you in Washington, we're going to have a strong defense—one so strong that no one will dare to attack us with any thought that they might be successful. You can depend on that.

But there's another element of defense, and that is strength through character. We don't need to be a bully, trying to push other people around. We don't need to be combative, with a chip on our shoulder at all times. And since I've been in the White House, we have tried to reach out to others, even some of those who have not been quite so friendly with us in the past.

We put our arms around the shoulders of our close friends, who might be living next to one another in a state of war, and we've said, "Let's talk about the problems of our people and bring peace to the world." Sometimes this has been very unpopular, even with some of you.

One of the most difficult decisions that I've ever had to make in politics was to deal with the Panamanian treaty question. Some of you 'didn't like what we did. I realize that. But we now have a new spirit in Latin America, a strong, friendly spirit of mutual respect—not a great nation or a big brother looking down on others, but one in which we've formed a partnership to strengthen those ties of friendship, democratic principles, preservation of human rights. And with that strength, we can keep out the spread of communism in our own hemisphere.

We tried to deal fairly with the Turks and the Greeks to bring peace to Cyprus and to restore the damage that had been done to NATO. And lately, we've reached out to our friends, the Egyptians, and our friends, the Israelis, to bring them, for the first time in 30 years, after four wars, to a state of peace and friendship with open borders and trade and an end to the terrible bloodshed that's wreaked havoc in that area.

So, there is a combination of strong, staunch military commitment on the one hand, and a nation that's clean and decent and a source of pride on the other hand, where people can respect us and where the true spirit of our country can be shown to the rest of the world. And as long as I'm in the White House, I'll continue to exemplify what you are, what our Nation has been, what our Nation has been in the long past, what our Nation is now, what it can be in the future.

I believe in the spirit of commitments that were made 200 years ago, here in your State and mine, and I believe that you want us to raise a banner high of protecting human rights around the world, as we do in our own country, and that's what we're going to have if you'll continue to be partners with us.

I don't want to look too far away from you. We've also recognized that the best government is the one closest to you. I don't believe in a big brother in Washington telling you how to run your business. We've tried to get government's nose out of people's business as best we can, but not in a combative or disputive way. We've formed a good alliance with the mayors here on the platform, with the airport manager here where we stand, with Governor Hunt, and many others. And it's very important that we continue this.

We're trying to make North Carolina a kind of rural laboratory to show that small towns and cities, like where I live, and people who live on farms have a chance for a better life.

Right here where we're standing, even though you've already got some help from the Federal Aviation Administration, I can announce today them will be $2 million more coming in here next month to add 1,500 more feet to your runway, giving you an 8,000-foot runway to connect you with the outside world.

And we've tried to do away with some crazy Federal regulations. In 1 day, earlier this year, OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, eliminated 1,100 regulations. We're trying to do the same thing in the Farm Home Administration.

I grew up in an area where there's a lot of oak wood and hickory wood that can't be used for much else except burning. And there's been a regulation that even in a farmhouse, you couldn't have a Farm Home Administration loan to put a fireplace in the living room. But we are taking that regulation out to let folks around here that have trees keep warm in the winter and not spend a lot of money on buying fuel that's produced in Oklahoma and Texas.

We had another regulation that said when you build a house, you had to provide money for curbs and gutters. Well, where I grew up in the country, we didn't need curbs and gutters. And we are removing that regulation as well.

There's another one that says you couldn't get a Farm Home Administration loan if the grade level in the particular area was more than 15 percent. Them are a lot of places around this site we're standing, Asheville, where 15-percent grade looks like flat land. [Laughter] So, we are making changes like this to make your life better.

I might say in closing that I need your help. We've had some successes, we've got some challenges ahead. I'm very grateful to you to come out and meet me today. I ask you to help politically as well.

I realize there are a lot of Democrats here, I realize there are a lot of Republicans, there are a lot of people who don't have any party affiliation. But I hope you'll give your careful attention to electing John Ingram to the U.S. Senate and Lamar Gudger to the Congress, to give the kind of spirit that I try to exemplify in my own political life—a deep care about people who need help most, who want to stand on their own feet, make their own decisions, arrange their own lives, be proud of their own government, work closely with the local government, respect the officials, respect one another, live in a nation that's strong and peaceful.

Those are the kind of things I want; they're the kind of things you want. Together, you and I, we can have them in our country in the future.

Thank you very much. God bless every one of you.