The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Anderson Pre-debate

so earth says ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh

ooh ooh ooh ooh oh funding for this program has been provided by the station and other public television stations and by grants from exxon corporation the corporation for public broadcasting and at and t and the bell system company as the nation awaits what may be the decisive event of the nineteen eighty presidential election tonight's tv debate we talk to the candidate left on the sidelines john anderson we

can getting a rash of last minute opinion polls that the news media today and yesterday reinforcing the impression of a very close carter reagan race and making tonight's tv debates seemed potentially even more decisive doubt there's carter a three point lead house gives reagan the same yankelovich as carter one point ahead the ap nbc poll gives reagan a six point lead always friends are close to or with in the polling margin of error none of the polls contains any fresh hope for independent candidate john anderson the standings range now from nine to twelve percent it was a drop in his poll standings from the vicinity of fifteen percent which caused the league of women voters to exclude him from tonight's debate between carter and reagan tonight with only a week ago and his appeal apparently shrinking what keeps henderson running gay man i talk to the candidate earlier today he was with jim in washington congressman ellison welcome

to begin with many are wondering right now frankly congressman why you are still in this race what you say to them ms diller because i have something to say to the country something i believe that is very important i have some very distinctive positions on energy and the economy on the way that we ought to pursue they chart a more peaceful world what we ought to do as far as our national agenda of priorities are concerned and i think my positions are so distinctive and compared with those of either president carter or governor reagan but i simply ought to the millions of people who i believe are going to vote for me to continue to make every effort to win this election and i i say that because i still believe despite the poll figures that we just heard and they are mixed mr discrepancies among the major polls i do believe that they reflect great uncertainty in the minds of many people there is an unusually high percentage of undecided voters today there are many who support even though registered

in the column of either president carter or governor reagan is nevertheless i think very soft support that could floor always very quickly and very dramatically because of events that could yet take place in the remaining week of this campaign do you see any realistic this in iowa at this point college and that could lead to re elected i do indeed sir because i rely on some earlier polls were taken by abc and lou harris that indicated that when you look at this as fifty one of options instead of the national polls the fact that it is the electoral votes but that will be determined on the basis not any man getting a majority of the states but the man who gets the plurality after all we've done to get the electoral votes and that there had been polled and within the last few weeks indicating that in the ten largest states of the country to be but we're really when i went into the voting booth to do me as able to win that might support dramatically increases and that it would be within striking range a plurality needed to win the electoral votes of the ten large estates in the country so

yes i don't think that this is an allusion was the witches say if these people were able to see you as a way to win why is it up to this point at least a week before the election that you've been unable to convince them of that well ms diller i think that the decision of the lake was highly unfortunate when on the basis of a very arbitrary standard they decided that i should not be represented in the cleveland they have made other arrangements as you know unfortunately the north that millions of people will see my participation because of the cable news network and the independent stations will carry their broadcast and i'm grateful the pbs website or short after the original debate in cleveland it was an unfortunate decision on their part that would deprive millions of americans though the opportunity that they really would have opted for if they have had a voice in making that decision but you know unfortunately we've we have come to view

elections in this country as there as almost another form of competition another form of contest and we have come to rely so heavily on poles and ratings and statistical analyses it's that that has almost i think swept aside what ought to be the more important factor in an election or whether these people really have to say our interview so sufficiently different and didn't give that we ought to consider all of them before we make up our minds are somehow and i'm not being really i'm not blaming the media at this point i think their sweat but in the same psychology that really affect the public generally that somehow these things are for or dane on the basis of polls i don't believe they are open that that said congressman the fact is that you had dropped in the polls yet effectively in the last thirty days what you're reading national mall well there is this still very strong for additional time

that the traditional party's system hands on people and somehow i suppose they begin to feel that maybe an independent candidate cannot cover i think i can answer that argument very very well like i believe an independent who was able to bring in a bipartisan administration is going to have a much better chance than jimmy carter well given the ones that have been opened up in the course of his campaign are given ronald reagan governing are trying to govern with a democratic congress i think the broader coalition approach that i have a spouse would be much more effective but that happened notwithstanding i think the public finds it difficult to accept a concept that it really is quite new to american politics we haven't had the kind of coalition government i'm talking about really since at sixty four the second term of abraham lincoln more than a hundred years ago if it fall over forty or not elected president would you say your campaign your candidacy as a failure no i don't think that whenever you have ideas that are worth expressing the spouse in as i feel that i have had

in the fields of energy in what we ought to do to restrain inflation and of what we ought to do over the long term to create the foundations for a more durable lasting peace i don't think that those ideas spread abroad among millions of people across our land our ideas that will simply lie fallow i think that they can be nurtured if not by me by others and bear fruit in years to come so i'm encouraged that this is not a fruitless exercise although i don't want to imply with what i've set that we are engaging in any kind of post mortem at this point bill determined to win that election when you look back on these last several months that this campaign you see villains in it people were movements or anything that has that caused few problems if you consider where low blows are unfair and that sort of thing i don't i've never believe in the conspiracy theory of history which so many people claim and i i guess therefore i would shy away from the use of the word done it do believe i do believe that we have had in this

campaign to an unusual expect not war mongers as some have suggested again either candidate was war and even the informants to that extent i think is totally unwarranted and ironic but we've had fearmongers we have had birds dick purely on the part of the carter mondale campaign a conscious calculated effort to plant fear in the minds of voters fear that if they vote for john anderson they're going to get someone else and that there is some thing wrong with voting for a candidate and who knew believed whose ideas are your own ideas or which you feel bad for the country and this is unwarranted an unusual degree to which a president assad not to defend his record and give us a vision of what he wants to do for the country in the period ahead but merely has concentrated on inducing these fears in the minds of people with respect to both his opponent that i think is an unfortunate incident of this campaign that iran

congressman a lot of people have said to me they would like to vote for you that they feel they will be wasting their vote if they do do they say that to you and so what do you tell them oh probably at least ten thousand times over the course of the last few months and i tell them always the same thing whatever happened to the bolsheviks lesson that we all learned in high school and maybe and maybe even earlier and white that the very essence of democracy the very basis of a sound democratic structure has to rest on the notion that you that the best qualified men and women the true that people that you think are competent credible best able to carry out and discharge the duties of the office that they say and to choose otherwise to do it on the basis of some convoluted reasoning that well almost like putting down money on a horse race you got to be sure this man is gonna win before you vote for i think that the sports the meaning of the whole democratic houses we could end up in that case would always second best because the second best might have more money

he might be the year as they say the the morning line favorite on the basis of the polls or something else this is not just another context this is an exercise a democratic exercise in which we shoot a national leader and that you would on any other basis than trying to select the very best possible person he was this other argument you know that what you picked the second best for the lesser of two evils rather than seeking to do the greatest poet in your joints that i think is very dangerous for the whole process if you can't be president yourself does it make any difference to you who is well obviously that's for the american people to decide and i shall not endorsed either of my two opponents and i don't imagine that i will get endorsements from either of them i don't think i've heard either jimmy carter or ronald reagan express a preference for a fallback candidate nor shall i but obviously in my heart top i have thought is people i believe about these issues over the last almost one one and a half

years as anyone else and obviously i care very much about who leads this country and what happens to the future of this country you just said a moment ago that some voters are responding to that traditional target returning to one of the two major parties as that process continues doesn't that to say to you is an american citizen yourself keeping on i was pretty sure were no you see i think we ought to remember the history of this country and the history of the two party system is a very distinguished historians pointed out the republican party itself grew out of the fact that the two parties of that day the wigs and the democrats refuse to address the slavery issue and later on about making it a popular move earlier on that decade that helped reinvigorate and revive the democratic party and that led to the election or rather the nomination of election of william jennings bryan and some suggest is he has done that the race by robert la follette the progress of the nineteen twenty four really sowed the seeds of what made possible the election of franklin delano roosevelt in

nineteen thirty two so really the key points out that in the political life of our country when you get into the rights of indecision the routes of skepticism and cynicism them owners' they do today on every side this is the very high when people pop to opt for an independent movie that is the way to really shake up and to rehabilitate and to reinvigorate the party system is already mr carter or mr reagan equally acceptable to you as a president will again are i have to say that that is a judgment that i would lead to the american people i do not intend to endorse either directly or by inference either one of them because i have such broad and profound differences with both i think on the peace issue which mr carter i think particularly have sought to preempt as is all i find in the adoption by paul president carter and ronald

reagan a nuclear war fighting theater i think that in their adoption both of them part of a mobile amex missile system that i find it very deep stabilizing factor in the effort to reduce the level of nuclear arms in the world i think that they are bold in my judgment not very far apart in the way that they would proceed over the next four years or at him in the next term of a president to deal with the all important issue of war and peace and that disturbed me because i have a very different approach than either one of them so our i think on that issue i can support either one of those candidates as an acceptable leader for this country in the period ahead but on other issues do you feel yourself and you find yourself having difficulty choosing between them because you might send yourself as a candidate a little bit of wanting a little bit of the other sort of political split personality now i really don't look at it that way obviously there are certain

gotten a hymnal the areas are there certain broad objectives that every candidate is going to show everybody wants pete's everybody wants prosperity everybody wants to do something about like the energy problem everybody wants to address inflation now you have to get specific though what precisely are you willing to recommend and willing to do to achieve those objectives and i feel again that my positions in those areas are sufficiently different and distinct that i cannot find much in the program of either one of these other two man that makes me comfortable that they are really going to give us a better country in the next four years that we're going to be more successful that we're gonna put aside the politics of posturing for the politics of performance i don't find it either one of them the likelihood that that will occur you find it in yourself yes sir if i were not confident if i were not confident that i have some better ideas than either of these men has to offer i could not

have been sustained over the many many months of this campaign will thank you in the final analysis the selection which is only a week away now what do you think is gonna finally decided well i don't really believe that a single debate and it's being widely touted and i will participate in wildness i have already indicated myself i don't know that that in essence is is what will will decide and the american people do treasure their vote for the residency very highly and one they drop ever leave the curtain on the voting booth and began to think first of all they will think about what has happened the last four years in our society we do not reward great customarily we do not reward really in an election that makes it so difficult for me to believe that they would reelect incorrect because it has a failed presidency and so many now that i think they'll have to consider the alternatives of these and they will look at the politics of the

nostalgia of ronald reagan as i think cyrus vance worked for further than somebody else's sentenced allergies sent with a roster of memory and i think that the terrain has forgotten that certain things that might have been quite acceptable and that could have been adapted to problems of an earlier era certainly are not going to be adequate for the stormy pres into the future that stretches before us you can't you can't go back into the past so i think when people realize that in essence that's what governor reagan has offered they are going to reject him than i hope they will remember that even though i talk about some things that maybe have fallen rather harshly on some people's ears because they have representative i think of you real isn't in presidential politics calling for short term sacrifice to be sure to build a better future talking about a new conservation ethic that is going to have to be brought about by a willingness to accept a tax on our cells rather than for many opec to tax us a willingness to address certain issues that up until now i think we just kind

of swept under the rug i think we have to have and incomes policy in this country attacked based incomes policy if we're going to restrain the new round of wage and price increases that may be lurking around the corner and i think if people we'll recall the things that we have had to say they're going to decide yes this this would be better even though it may require some belt tightening it would be better for us to follow this world that you to go back into the past or reward the failure of the last four years what effect do you believe the current operation what is an interesting survey of course that was made public just a very very recent and showing that at least the firm or the american people are resentful i feel the president has its place and politics not with that issue i'm thinking maybe you may be caught on the horns of the law mother in the sense that if they come home i obviously we will rejoice there would be a certain euphoria that however might die

away very very prickly as people began to contemplate the whole train of events that led up to their taking out a long year that elapsed well they were in captivity at and wonder why the kurds now on election eve so i think there's some very calculated there are very real dangers for the president in that situation do you feel and manipulating this whole situation now for political purposes well clearly he did in the spring when he said that he was so busy that he could not campaign and debate with teddy kennedy is right and then the situation suddenly became more manageable in may and was convenient to go out on the campaign trail i have said that now as we seem to be coming through are actually doing a lot of this whole situation if there was ever a time when i would think the president would really have to get off the campaign trail go back into his office at the rose garden or wherever he chooses to sit and conductors his presidential business if there was ever a time when maybe he would be totally preoccupied with negotiating and gaining the

release is now and yet of course the president seemed to be with almost abandoned throwing himself into the job of seeking an hour getting his own reelection so viewed in that context i think it's a perfectly legitimate an objective statement to make sure he has politicized the manner in which he has addressed the issue right now in the us you feel that that is in a position where he can control for political purposes the release of a half to know know that i do not really because i would prefer the state department insisted and i have no reason to doubt their good faith or their statement that there is absolutely no clear to wait channel no government to government negotiations between iran and the united states government which in another way i suppose it is an illustration of how many engines under this administration during the last four years of where we have lost control of events entirely where we're sitting back literally waiting for something to happen because i'm not weak but

someone else composed the action must be true i think in this case thank you robin if you can find a moment ago mr anderson about the only to women voters implying of dropping you from the list yet a month ago you accepted their standard of a fifteen percent approximate standing in the polls you thought that was fair then why's it will ferrell i did suggest the stand and quite naturally when they said that not only on the basis of that fifteen percent i thought there were other things far more important than the fact that i was on the ballot in fifty states or shortly would be that i would've raised almost ten million dollars from the government treasury as the other candidates but from small private contributions thousands of volunteers and offices across this country from one end to the other those to me with a visible tangible signs of a viable national campaign a platform three hundred and seventeen pages and like this thing which running mate twice the governor of his own state wisconsin all of those things i felt were the condition of the

kind of campaign that deserve representation in any debate conducted by an allegedly nonpartisan organization the one they take them on the basis of the week's polls to say no you are now below this single arbitrary standard of fifteen percent i think they ignored all of these other factors that are more important even more important in establishing the viability of the candidates you said also a moment ago you didn't think that this debate tonight would be decisive if it is not decisive what is at stake this evening for carter and reagan or there is always the possibility that i suppose many people have talked about that one of the other opry could make a state that would be regarded as either ludicrous or extreme are oh i totally unacceptable that people would remark them now as as a candidate but i regard that is rather

unlikely and it's for that reason i suppose that that i think that it is not really quite as all the harmony as some people have sought to make out stroke it may bring the widest audience which is why i wanted so very much to participate in the original debate itself because of the breadth of the audience that will be watching and let's face it up until now many people perhaps have not heard any of the candidates other than in a jingle or two on a commercial of some kind which is scarcely the basis on which to make your selection but but i do believe that event the cumulative train of events over the course of the campaign certainly add up to something in the public consciousness in provo that our way just a single performance won't go for these millions of people watching only mr reagan and mr kotter tonight would you expletive want that reinforce the the sense that those are the two

candidates of the two traditional parties the two men who can win and accelerate the drift away from you back into those two camps that's why not out of bitterness but out of deep disappointment i felt that the league had made an erroneous decision and really about the white house pressure that there isn't any doubt in my mind that there was almost unbearable pressure exerted against by the carter mondale campaign staff who look on the debate is simply one more campaign vehicle not as really any forum that the american people are entitled to attend and listened to and i felt that yes it was pre judging they are the parameters of the campaign at and framing framing the campaign and that traditional reference at a time when as i said in my earlier answer that we need the sheer joy an independent movement to an ally even to reinvigorate the whole political value you think it will accelerate the drift back to the two major parties no i i'm not willing to concede that that that will necessarily happen

because i'm still putting my hopes on the fact that we have made this other arrangements that will be reported on in the media i think the media will or undertake perhaps not the obviously for the ninety minutes or two hours that i will be a constitution hall but i hope it will be inserted in a way that millions of americans will yet have an opportunity in the final week of the campaign you know that there are family not just two candidates standing for the presidency mr anderson you're very experienced debater yourself on television and elsewhere what do you regard as the strengths and weaknesses of mr kotter mr reagan in a setting like this evening's well clearly mr carter's weaknesses as a wreck or as i say an american society does not reward it and i think in foreign affairs and the domestic affairs as well there is just a lengthy list of failures to which anyone with fairness and justification asked appointed president bears the responsibility of accounting for his stewardship his four years in office that's the week

how far is governor reagan is concerned i think it is simply what i referred to a moment moment ago the tendency not to really have any new ideas at all that are applicable to the period that confront us in the future but you're alive pretty much on some old ideas veritably schimmel it's of the past in an effort to suggest that somehow we can recreate and reconstruct the golden past and substitute that for that for the future and i i think americans are too pragmatic too accept that kind of loss has the advantages the debater do you think well i think you know each in their own way i i regret that carter would not face the reagan at least was willing to come to baltimore president carter was not so i've only have the opportunity of confronting governor reagan on the debate platform he's unquestionably by virtue of his acting skills a very talented

person on any platform carter president carter has great familiarity with the issues as indeed he should we have to do no idea so i think it balances out well we have to leave it there congressman thank you very much for joining us this evening that is all what now jim lehrer and i will be back on many pbs stations at nine pm eastern time tonight with a special report introducing and analyzing the carter reagan debate on pbs coverage begins thirty minutes before the debate so join us at nine pm eastern time until then i'm robert mcneil the company's become and by

corporations you're only new moon noon