Helicopters, both american and vietnamese during the last two years ive found that campaigning can be a lonely business. A succession of airports, motels, not seeing my family for weeks at a time, but the rewards of staying in touch with this country have been more that worth the cost. When i announced i would seek the presidency, some said i would appeal to only a few. But in the past two years, i have touched many different americans. I have traveled countless thousands of miles to look them in the eye, to know their voices, to learn what know man can ever understand from behind his desk in washington. Says we only have 5. 5 laid off. Actually employed. How much and how little time . Eggs with 35 cents a dozen. You dont like that, we can move the plant. The taxes i pay need to come back to me. I want to see schools and roads. I want to see Social Security increase. The country was disturbed and people spoke to me openly, not just of their frustrations with government but of their hopes. All americans, were not afro americans, mexicanamericans. If youre an american, youre an american. There were some i talked to whose words have remained with me. Americans like david hunter, a young vietnam veteran from long beach, california. Were systems people. And murray lavine, an engineer from lexington, massachusetts. And out in sun prairie, wisconsin, a family farmer named john krebs. Corporations are taking over everything and we do need a doctor in our building. In a cleveland clinic, a war windowo sadie develo. And on a bought street corner, a steel worker named art price, who like the others, spoke to me not only of his concern for this country but of his grief its future. Thats my freeland out there. Thats what flag stands for. Thats a unit of 50 individual states coming together. Thats what it means to me. Americans do believe in their country and the their flag. But among some today, it has become popular to deride the symbols of patriotism, to find fault with the many individual ways people celebrate their america. Sn perhaps those who ridicule these beliefs have not come from where these have come from. Those who think patriotism is overdone and out of style might ask how did it used to be . The United States itself has gone to war to keep our country free. Theyve kept us free to do what i want, thats what its given me. A work horse, i give to my children what i didnt have. Give to my country a fair share and i expect to get my fair hair back. The truth is that men like art price have given more than their fair share. In the last four years they have borne the real costs of our economic unfairness. Two million more are jobless today than in 1969. 17,000 were dropped from arts plant alone and he wonders if he is next or whether it makes any difference. Seems like every time industry gets a pay increase, clothing, automobiles, you name it, goipz in price. Ill have to buy a new refrigerator and cant afford it right now. The one i want a year ago is a hundred dollars cheaper than this year. Now its going up. Seems like people today are working to work for their food and taxes and thats it. Theres nothing much else to do. Art price grew up in a neighborhood built by those who came over in search of a better life an an opportunity for their kid that they had never had fore themselves. Success meant a good education, hard work, a decent home. A generation later that pride is still reflected in their neighborhood. Arts wife jean was born in this house and she tends it daily like her mother and grandmother before. Like most americans, around jean live for their children, their two daughters katy and marcy. You like school . Ok. Get up and eat lunch art works hashed at his job, sometimes putting in two or three extra shifts a week in order to make ends meet but he thinks its worth it if his children can get a good education and a chance in life that he never had. I am going shopping tonight. Like his father before him he prides himself on being a good father and a good provider. He feels working hard and paying taxes is his duty, but he wonders if his government shares the same obligation. You play out in the yard today . People of america getting back to paying taxes, tax moneys been wasted every day. The war. Spend it on education and things that people do need. Theres so many hoop holes for the millionaires, the poor map is paying for the nation and theyre playing the millions taxes for them. A lot of people want to be millionaires and i think its because they dont want to pay taxes. Sometimes the unfairness affects his family in a way that hurts the most. Because it touches his childrens future. Great school is overcrowded. They probably think well, lets just wait andee. Its been a lot of wait and see with the schools in this area. The price familys problem is faced by 80 of schools in america. The schools arent better today than it was four years ago. Washington only pays for 7 of their childrens education. They already pay twice the local taxes schools need money. I come from a family of five children. I got left out of a lot of things because my father couldnt afford it. I cant afford nobody, so i do it myself. Fulltime it my job and working here at the house, sundays i devote for my family because i want them to have what i didnt have coming up through the world. Today my husband makes double what my father made, and i just cant make it. There is nothing left at the end of the week. It comes down to the nickel. This august they get a raise. I am looking at a paycheck and i said, did you get a raise . And he said, yes, i did get a raise. Yes, they did get a raise, but the paycheck didnt show it. Because the taxes just eat it up. This is 28 in value. We have been deceived, all of us, like this family. The truth is that in the last four years, food prices have risen twice as fast as wages. If it was going to get better, it would get better when the president had the wage freeze and the price freeze and whatever it was that didnt work, because nothing that i can think of has been controlled. I have been to five stores in one week for specials, and when i come back from food shopping, we never have anything that night because i am exhausted. You pay and you pay, and you dont get any place. The basic struggle, just to see things get worse, isnt only unfair. It is the surest sign that somebody, somewhere, has forgotten the real needs of our people. The wage and price control operation under nixon is a lopsided operation which has been fairly effective of holding down the income of working people and freezing the wages, but the price control part of it has been a disastrous failure. You are reminded of that every time you go to a supermarket. If what has happened to the price family is unfair, what has happened to the people like sadie dibello is a tragedy. I get 73. 30 from the veterans. Then i get 89 from Social Security. I cant afford to buy groceries, and i cant afford to get sick. And believe me, i cant afford to die. There are 25 million americans over 65. They are mothers and wives. They are people who once belonged to somebody. And now they belong to nobody, not even the nation their husbands and sons died for. No country in the world treats its old as cruelly as america, and there has never been a crueler policy toward old people than in the last four years. They are the victims of a policy of official neglect. 8 00 in the morning and you dont come home until 5 00 at night. And by the time they come in here and take you, you are ready to blow your top. You get so nervous and so sick, and so hungry. My god. When you get through there, you know what is wrong with you, but then the thing of going back and waiting and going back and waiting, you cant do this when you are old. Hello. Can i help you . Yes. I would like my refill. It will be just a minute. All right. Thank you. Old people are not inclined to complain. Sadie has worked hard all her life, and she isnt giving up now. But her struggle has been especially difficult these last four years. Even with the Social Security increases, Older Americans are fighting a losing battle to survive. They spend 300 dollars a year for medical care not covered by insurance. Old people are dying of malnutrition. They are dying for lack of proper medical care. They have been cast aside by a government that has chosen to protect profits instead of people. In case you get up at a reasonable time, unlike those who rushed to work at an unearthly hour. I have faith in america, but i cant see it sliding. We have been abandoned, most americans, we really have. But we still love our america. We are americans. You Better Believe it someday, somebodys going to write the history of these times. And i think it is going to be a pretty sad chapter when they write the story on the way we have treated our older people. There is nothing that we would want more than those later years ba the years of confidence and security. Im going to do everything i cant to see older people are treated decently. Out on the midwestern plains in sun prairie, wisconsin, i found another proud chapter in our history being threatened by this administrations neglect, here on the family farm of john krebs. My dad started that farm in 1932. He cleared the farm of brush and trees and i grew up there, worked together, and it was a way of life. The Younger Generation aint going to follow the footsteps of their parents. After my generation gets out of here, i dont know who is going to take their place. It will be more than just one familys misfortune if john krebs cant pass that way of life along. We will all be losing something precious in america. In the last four years, over one million americans like john krebs have been forced off their land forever. My taxes here in the last four years doubled. There is no way i can pay on the land that i own 8,000 every year, no guarantee on my price, but the taxes are guaranteed every year. Every year they go up. That is the only sure thing that we got. We got. In the last four years Small Farmers have been forced to pay up to 40 more for labor and equipment. You, i and john krebs have been left by this administration to pick up an everincreasing tab for everything we need to fashion a decent life. Figure out what this is going to cost me with my tradein. If you go with the 273 with the thrower and supersweet pickup, suggested list of 3579. 3579 is the suggested list price. This is the chemicals and fertilizer. You have the disease of the crops to fight, the only thing keeping us going. His real enemy is not as uncertain as disease or drought. It is the relentless power of bigness. In the last four years, giant corporations have been allowed to drive the small farmer to the wall. John krebs and his forebears have fought hard odds for generations. The tractor cost me 22, 000, just a tractor and plow. 20 years ago, you could buy a tractor then for 800 and 900 probably. But the profit from his fathers labor has not gone up in jeffreys lifetime, and he knows it. Producing more food has meant less money in the years since johnny was born. Like john krebs, i grew up close to the land and i know what we stand to lose if we dont do something about their future and their stake in the promise of this country. We set a goal, and that makes you feel good if you can reach these goals in your life once in a while. I dont know who is going to farm, but i dont think i would want him to take it under the conditions we are farming under now. I think there are more opportunities in town, i will give him an education nt can work is 40 hours a week like the rest of the people. And forget about it. If you dump everybody into the cities, the cities are already overcrowded, overburdened. You have too many people piled up into small a space. So the farm problem is really everybodys problem. My dad broke those horses. I want to help you stay there. Im calling in reference to the ad in the boston globe. Murray levine came up on the streets of new york and has lost his job in the administrations aerospace shuffle. I was a pretty substantial paid engineer, manager, i enjoyed a nice reputation, and finally it happened. The day came and i left. I contacted a lot of companies in the engineering field. It seemed they all had been haunted by the same problem, layoffs and no work. You have great qualifications, you are mr. Wonderful, but we have no use for you at this time. Like nearly 2 million others, murray got caught in the whipsaw of our warbased economy. While this administration fails to turn war plans to industries of peace, while it will make no plans to convert his talent from missiles to mass transit, when it exports jobs to japan and germany and imports goods that he could design better, murray is left to his own devices. Something for you quickly, because i understand the problem. Things are slow, i know your capabilities, in fact you are precisely the kind of guy that my Company Needs and wishes to continue to grow with. What is it look like downstream . It doesnt look like things will be picking up shortly . Sit down and wait. My lack of fulfilling a role as a provider and a husband and father. And we have a conversation and, dont ask daddy for that. Im five foot 10 and 180 five pounds and when i see the kid looking at me that way, i feel like i am nothing and weigh zilch. I can take anything anybody outside can give, and i can fight it, but how do you fight the fact that kids look at you with such sympathy in their eyes, so im going to put my suit and tie on every morning and go out and do something. Movie theaters, dairy barns, you name it, anytime anybody had an idea to make a buck. I dont want to encourage smoking any further than is going on. There is no way of telling how many murrays with advanced degrees are wasting their hard earned talents in america today. There is no way of gauging the loss that this administration has inflicted on our troubled society, by the deliberate squandering of trained minds. And murray alone can know what it is like to look to his wife for the support of their family. Started working on a parttime basis when i was still employed. When i was working and my wife left in the morning, that was great, it felt like it was creative at the time. To see her leave now in the morning, i just get a knot in my stomach, and i get so angry. Have a good day. You too. There is so much to do, the hours, days, weeks being lost cleaning up the environment, the medical problems, so many great things people could be working on and they are not. That is what hurts. That is what is frustrating. This country can have full employment utilizing peoples skills to the fullest of their ability, and we can do it in peacetime. I dont think we have to have a war going in order to provide employment for the people of this country. Out in milwaukee, i met two young men who rekindled my sense of hope about this country, and of what can be done to restore the spirit of caring about each other again. David hunter and his friend tom poole. He was in the army too. Why . Because he went to the government. Were you there too . Yeah, he was right by where i was. Where were you . I was there. I was going to be in vietnam for two years straight, 18 months as a pilot and six months on the ground as a company commander, to see what it was like. To see if i could do it. I wrote a letter home for a kid who lost his arm, i talked to 19yearolds who didnt have any legs. I watched three people die. Its not a beautiful thing. The people in the United States dont appreciate what life and what death does to people. [explosions] they cant imagine. [explosions] why did they let 50,000 guys die, and god knows how many came back like tom and me, no legs, no arms, no eyes. Why did all this happen . Ready to go . Im feeling better today. Lets get down there. The tragedy of this war will not end with the signing of any treaty. It will not end with the return of the last prisoner. Did pretty well yesterday. Maybe i can do better today. Im going to go five times and back this time. All right. Lets go. I dont suffer with those who were wrong 10 years ago, nor do i suffer with those in power who have been wrong for the last four years. Those prohphets who made a human game out of political stash who made a political game out of human suffering have been in the news, but these are the anonymous victims of that game, tucked away to languish in nameless hospitals. I came back from 13 days of unconsciousness in the first thing i remember a doctor saying to me is, you will never walk again for the rest of your life. And now my big deal is to educate myself so i can dedicate other guys like me, so that they wont want to die, they will want to live. I wanted to die, and i tried it. Now i want to live every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Im going for a doctorate in medicine. I want to go up to a guy who is laying in bed and lay it on the line to him, and be able to say, i have been through it. In the last four years, over 100,000 of them have been left to find their own way back from the devastation wrought by drugs and shrapnel. That is the great tragedy of a government who will offer them no real help to come all the way home. If you dont want to walk, they are not going to give you braces. If you dont show up here when you are supposed to show up down here to walk, why is the government going to waste the money . Do you know how many braces right now are just rotting . How many are hanging up back there . A person can want more. A person can want it and wish for it, but youve got to work for it. Wishing doesnt get you anywhere. I wish i could get out of the braces. I wish i could get out of them. That doesnt help me walk at all. You have got to want to walk. They wanted us to play war. We are broken soldiers. Dont throw us away. I love the United States, but i love it enough so i want to see some changes made. The American People want to believe in the government. They want to believe in their country. And id like to be one of those that provides the kind of leadership that would help restore that kind of faith. I dont say i could do it alone. Of course i cant. But the president can help set a new tone in this country. He can help raise the vision and the faith in the hope of the American People, and that is what i would like to try to do. Id like to get a president that we can believe in. I hope i will be that type of president. Ronald reagan citizen governor is a film about the sources close to highlight his accomplishments in office