George H.W. Bush: “It's an interesting suggestion. Here are the people you want to talk to about giving me the prime time out here because…”

“It's an interesting suggestion. Here are the people you want to talk to about giving me the prime time out here because we're in an election year and you'll have every jackleg jumping up demanding equal time with some screwy scheme. [Laughter] But I believe that you've got something. I have to keep it before the American people. I have not done a good job in getting people to understand we've had a growth agenda. I have proposed in three State of the Union Messages some of the various things I'm hearing around here we should do. And I don't believe there's a working guy in New Hampshire that understands that. That's my fault. We've got to do better on it, and I think you've got a pretty good idea. I'd like to take the same kind of energy and leadership that we had in Desert Storm and use it to help the working men and women in the State of New Hampshire and across this country. There is one significant difference. When I moved 500,000 troops about 14 months ago, I didn't have to ask permission from a Democratically controlled Congress. When I said, a year ago to this very day, we may have to go into battle, and I don't like sending any mother's son into battle, or daughter either, but we did it. Didn't have to get permission. Didn't have to go to subcommittee chairmen that Bill Zeliff has to wrestle with, or Bob Smith, every day to have a debate on what's going to happen the minute I finish this State of the Union. They've already prepared their response. We just did it. I'm the Commander in Chief. I have the responsibility for the national security of this country. We led, and we lifted the American spirit. And now you see some of these magazines coming out with the revision of all that, trying to take it away from the American people. I talked to one of our leading generals about it yesterday, and he's just sick about that kind of revisionistic reporting. The American people know what they saw. They saw leadership. They took pride in their young men and women. And we can do the same thing domestically, I believe. I'm not arguing about your suggestion. I'm simply arguing about the modalities because, one, political year; two, getting access to the airwaves for the kind of update is pretty complicated and quite expensive. We will try very, very hard again. And I think I can be more effective, and I'm going to say, ``Look, let's do it this way. Let's lay aside the politics. Let's do it this way.'' And then if they don't like it, fine. Keep hammering that away to the American people. So, I realize that we need a followup, but I just argue whether we can get that nice, crisp, clean air time that I'd like to have. And it was available, in a sense, to our national purpose. Remember on Desert Storm, though, the criticism of the President, it goes with my job, didn't sell it, American people don't understand what we're doing, American people don't know, let's wait, let's wait, this man will get out, these sanctions will take care of it, body bags. It wasn't all as clear on the international front as it seemed after these young men and women did that job. But we can do it here. And again, this meeting helps sensitize me to the fact that we must do it.”