United States presidential debates, 1976

Questions for President Ford

1. Mr. President, I would like to continue for a moment on this uh question of taxes which you have just raised. You have said that you favor more tax cuts for middle-income Americans - even those earning up to $30 thousand a year. That presumably would cost the Treasury quite a bit of money in lost revenue. In view of the very large budget deficits that you have accumulated and that are still in prospect, how is it possible to promise further tax cuts and to reach your goal of balancing the budget?
2. Mr. President, to follow up a moment, uh - the Congress has passed a tax bill which is before you now, which did not meet exactly the uh - sort of outline that you requested. What is your intention on that bill, uh - since it doesn't meet your - your requirements? Do you plan to sign that bill?
3. Mr. President, when you came into office you spoke very eloquently of the need for a time for healing, and very early in your administration you went out to Chicago and you announced, you proposed a program of uh case-by-case pardons for draft resisters to restore them to full citizenship. Some fourteen thousand young men took advantage of your offer, but another ninety thousand did not. In granting the pardon to former President Nixon, sir, part of your rationale was to put Watergate behind us to - if I may quote you again - truly end our long national nightmare. Why does not the same rationale apply now, today, in our Bicentennial year, to the young men who resisted in Vietnam, and many of them still in exile abroad?
4. I take it then, sir, that you do not believe that uh - it is - that you are going to reconsider and uh - think about those ninety thousand who are still abroad. Uh - have they not been penalized enough - many of 'em been there for years?
5. Mr. President, at Vail, after the Republican convention, you announced that you would now emphasize five new areas; among those were jobs and housing and health and improved recreational facilities for Americans. And you also added crime. You also mentioned education. For two years you've been telling us that we couldn't do very much in these areas because we couldn't afford it; and in fact we do have a $50 billion deficit now. In rebuttal to Governor Carter a little bit earlier, you said that if there were to be any surplus in the next few years you thought it should be turned back to the people in the form of tax relief. So how are you going to pay for any new initiatives in these areas you announced at Vail you were going to now stress?
6. Sir, in the next few years would you try to reduce the deficit, would you spend more money far these programs that you have just outlined, or would you, as you said earlier, return whatever surplus you got to the people in the form of tax relief?
7. Mr. President, I'd like to return for a moment to this problem of unemployment. You have vetoed or threatened to veto number of job bills passed or uh - in development in the Democratic Congress - Democratic-controlled Congress. Yet at the same time the government is paying out, uh - I think it is $17 billion, perhaps $20 billion a year in unemployment compensation caused by the high unemployment. Why do you think it is better to pay out unemployment compensation to idle people than to put them to work in public service jobs?
8. Just to follow up, Mr. President: the - the Congress has just passed a three-point seven billion dollar appropriation bill which would provide money for the public works jobs program that you earlier tried to kill by your veto of the authorization legislation. In light of the fact that uh - unemployment again is rising - or has in the past three months - I wonder if you have rethought that question at all; whether you would consider uh - allowing this program to be funded, or will you veto that money bill?
9. Mr. President, uh everybody seems to be running against Washington this year. And I'd like to raise two coincidental events and ask you whether you think perhaps this may have a bearing on the attitude throughout the country. The House Ethics Committee has just now ended its investigation of Daniel Schorr, after several months and many thousands of dollars, trying to find out how he obtained and caused to be published a report of the Congress that probably is the property of the American people. At the same time. the Senate Select Committee on Standards and Conduct has voted not really to begin an investigation of a United States senator because of allegations against him that he may have been receiving corporate funds illegally over a period of years. Do you suppose, sir, that events like this contribute to the feeling in the country that maybe there's something wrong in Washington, and I don't mean just in the executive branch but throughout the whole government?
10. Mr. President, if I may follow up. Uh - I think you've made it plain that you take a dim view of the uh - majority in the Congress. Isn't it quite likely, sir, that you will have a Democratic Congress in the next session, if you are elected president? And hasn't the country uh - a right to ask whether you can get along with that Congress, or whether we'll have continued confrontation?
11. Uh Mr. President, the real problem with the FBI and, in fact, all of the intelligence agencies is there are no real laws governing them. Such laws as there are tend to be vague and open-ended. Now, you have issued some executive orders, but we've learned that leaving these agencies to executive discretion and direction can get them and, in fact, the country in a great deal of trouble. One president may be a decent man, the next one might not be. So, what do you think about trying to write in some more protection by getting some laws governing these agencies?

Questions for Governor Carter

1. Mr. President, Governor Carter. Governor, in an interview with the Associated Press last week, you said you believed these debates would alleviate a lot of concern that some voters have about you. Well, one of those concerns, not an uncommon one about uh - candidates in any year, is that many voters say they don't really know where you stand. Now, you have made jobs your number one priority and you have said you are committed to a drastic reduction in unemployment. Can you say now, Governor, in specific terms, what your first step would be next January, if you are elected, to achieve that.
2. Uh Governor Carter, you proposed a number of new or enlarged programs, including jobs, health, welfare reform, child care, aid to education, aid to cities, changes in social security and housing subsidies. You've also said that you wanna balance the budget by the end of your first term. Now you haven't put a price tag on those programs, but even if we price them conservatively and we count for full employment by the end of your first term, and we count for the economic growth that would occur during that period, there still isn't enough money to pay for those programs and balance the budget by any - any estimates that I've been able to see. So, in that case what would give?
3. Governor, uh - according to the budget committees of the Congress tha- tha- tha- that you referred to, if we get to full employment - what they project at a 4 percent unemployment - and, as you say, even allowing for the inflation in the programs, there would not be anything more than a surplus of $5 billion by the end of ninet- by 1981. And conservative estimates of your programs would be that they'd be about 85 to a hundred billion dollars. So how - how do you say that you're going to be able to do these things and balance the budget?
4. Governor Carter, you have promised a sweeping overhaul of the federal government, including a reduction in the number of government agencies - you say it would go down about two hundred from some nineteen hundred. That sounds, indeed, like a very deep cut in the federal government. But isn't it a fact that you're not really talking about fewer federal employees or less government spending, but rather that you are talking about reshaping the federal government, not making it smaller?
5. Well, I'd like to - to press my question on the number of federal employees - whether you would really plan to reduce the overall - uh number, or - or merely put them in different departments and relabel them. Uh - in your energy plan, you consolidate a number of a - agencies into one, or you would, but uh does that really change the overall?
6. Governor Carter, I'd like to turn uh - to what we used to call the energy crisis. Yesterday a British uh - government commission on air pollution, but one headed by a nuclear physicist, recommended that any further expansion of nuclear energy be delayed in Britain as long as possible. Now this is a subject that is quite controversial among our own people and there seems to be a clear difference between you and the President on the use of nuclear power plants, which you say you would use as a last priority. Why, sir, are they unsafe?
7. Well Governor, on that same subject, would you require mandatory conservation efforts to try to conserve fuel?
8. Governor Carter, I'd like to come back to the subject of taxes. You have said that you want to cut taxes for the middle and lower income groups.
9. Ah - Governor, to follow up on your answer. Uh - in order for any kind of tax relief to really be felt by the middle and lower-income people
10. Governor Carter, one uh - important uh - part of the Government's economic policy uh - apparatus we haven't talked about is the Federal Reserve Board. I'd like to ask you something about what you've said and that is that uh - you believe that a president ought to have a chairman of the Federal Reserve Board whose views are compatible with his own. Based on the record of the last few years, would you say that your views are compatible with those of Chairman Arthur Burns? And if not, would you seek his resignation if you are elected?

Transcript

• from the Commission on Presidential Debates website.

Viewership

An estimated 69.7 million viewers tuned into the debates.

Questions for President Ford

1. Mr. President, my question really is the other side of the coin from Mr. Frankel's. For a generation the United States has had a foreign policy based on containment of Communism. Yet we have lost the first war in Vietnam; we lost a shoving match in Angola. Uh - the Communists threatened to come to power by peaceful means in Italy and relations generally have cooled with the Soviet Union in the last few months. So le- let me ask you first, what do you do about such cases as Italy? And secondly, does this general drift mean that we're moving back toward something like an old cold - cold-war relationship with the Soviet Union?
2. Mr. President, I'd like to explore a little more deeply our relationship with the Russians. They used to brag back in Khrushchev's day that because of their greater patience and because of our greed for - for business deals that they would sooner or later get the better of us. Is it possible that despite some setbacks in the Middle East, they've proved their point? Our allies in France and Italy are now flirting with Communism. We've recognized the permanent Communist regime in East Germany. We've virtually signed, in Helsinki, an agreement that the Russians have dominance in Eastern Europe. We've bailed out Soviet agriculture with our huge grain sales. We've given them large loans, access to our best technology and if the Senate hadn't interfered with the Jackson Amendment, maybe we - you would've given them even larger loans. Is that what you call a two-way street of traffic in Europe?
3. Mr. President, the policy of your administration is to normalize relations with mainland China. And that means establishing at some point full diplomatic relations and obviously doing something about the mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. If you are elected, will you move to establish full diplomatic relations with Peking, and will you abrogate the mutual defense treaty with Taiwan? And, as a corollary, would you provide mainland China with military equipment if the Chinese were to ask for it?
4. Mr. President, uh - you referred earlier to your meeting with Mr. Brezhnev at Vladivostok in 1974. At - you agreed on that occasion to try to achieve another strategic arms limitation - SALT - agreement, ah - within the year. Ah - nothing happened in l975, or not very much publicly at least. And those talks are still dragging and things got quieter as the current season approached. Is there - is there a bit of politics involved there, perhaps on both sides? Or perhaps more important are interim weapons developments - and I'm thinking of such things as the cruise missile and the Soviet SS-20, an intermediate-range rocket - making SALT irrelevant, bypassing the SALT negotiations?
5. Mr. President, let me follow that up by - I'll submit that the cruise missile adds a - a whole new dimension to the - to the arms competition - and then cite a statement by your office to the Arms Control Association a few days ago in which you said the cruise missile might eventually be included in a comprehensive arms limitation agreement but that in the meantime it was an essential of the American strategic arsenal. Now, uh - may I assume that from that you're tending to exclude the cruise missile from the next SALT agreement, or is it still negotiable in that context?
6. Mr. President, can we stick with morality? Uh - for a lot of people it seems to cover uh - a bunch of sins. Uh - Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger used to tell us that instead of morality we had to worry in the - in the world about living and letting live all kinds of governments that we really don't like. North and South Korean dictators, Chilean fascists, uh - Chinese Communists, Iranian emperors and so on. They said the only way to get by in a wicked world was to treat others on the basis of how they treated us and not how they treated their own people. But more recently, uhh - we seemed to've taken a different tack. Uhh - we've seemed to have decided that it - that it is part of our business to tell the Rhodesians, for instance, that the way they're treating their own black people is wrong and they've got to change their government and we've put pressure an them. We were rather liberal in our advice to the Italians as to how to vote. Umm - is this a new Ford foreign policy in the making? Can we expect that you are now going to turn to South Africa and force them to change their governments, to intervene in similar ways to end the bloodshed, as you called it, say, in Chile or Chilean prisons, and throw our weight around for the - for the values that - that we hold dear in the world?
7. Mr. President, just clarify one paint: There are lots of majorities in the world that feel they're being pushed around by minority governments. And are you saying they can now expect to look to us for not just good cheer but throwing our weight on their side - in South Africa, or on Taiwan, or in Chile, uh - to help change their governments, as in Rhodesia?
8. Mr. President, the Government Accounting Office has just put out a report suggesting that you shot from the hip in the Mayaguez rescue mission and that you ignored diplomatic messages saying that a peaceful solution was in prospect. Uh - why didn't you do more diplomatically at the time; and a related question: Did the White House try to prevent the release of that report?
9. Mr. President, if you get the accounting of missing in action you want from North Vietnam - or from Vietnam, I'm sorry, now would you then be prepared to reopen negotiations for restoration of relations with that country?

Questions for Governor Carter

1. Governor, since the Democrats last ran our foreign policy, including many of the men who are advising you, country has been relieved of the Vietnam agony and the military draft, we've started arms control negotiations with the Russians, we've opened relations with China, we've arranged the disengagement in the Middle East, we've regained influence with the Arabs without deserting Israel, now, maybe we've even begun a process of peaceful change in Africa. Now you've objected in this campaign to the style with which much of this was done, and you've mentioned some other things that - that you think ought to have been done. But do you really have a quarrel with this Republican record? Would you not have done any of those things?
2. Governor Carter, much of what the United States does abroad is done in the name of the national interest. What is your concept of the national interest? What should the role of the United States in the world be? And in that connection, considering your limited experience in foreign affairs, and the fact that you take same pride in being a Washington outsider, don't you think it would be appropriate for you to tell the American voters before the election the people that you would like to have in key positions, such as Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, national security affairs advisor at the White House?
3. How specifically, uh - Governor, are you going to bring the American people into the decision-making process in foreign policy? What does that mean?
4. Governor, I'd like to pick up on that point, actually, and on your appeal for a greater measure of American idealism in foreign affairs. Foreign affairs come home to the American public pretty much in such issues as oil embargoes and grain sales, that sort of thing. Would you be willing to - to risk an oil embargo in order to promote human rights in Iran and Saudi Arabia, withhold arms from Saudi Arabia for the same purpose? Uh - or uh - I think you - matter of fact, you've perhaps answered this final part, but would you withhold grain from the Soviet Union in order to promote civil rights in the - in the Serviette Union?
5. Governor, let me pursue that if I may. If I understand you correctly you would in fact to use my examples, withhold arms from Iran and Saudi Arabia even if the risk was an oil embargo and if they should be securing those arms from somewhere else, and then if the embargo came, then you'd respond in kind. Do I have it correctly?
6. Governor, we always seem in our elections, and maybe in between too, to argue about uh - who can be tougher in the world. Give or take a - a few billion dollars, give or take one weapons systems, our leading politicians, and I think you, too, gentlemen, seem to settle roughly on the same strategy in the world at roughly the same Pentagon budget cost. How bad do things have to get in our own economy, or how much backwardness and hunger would it take in the world to persuade you that our national security and our survival required very drastic cutbacks in arms spending and dramatic new efforts in other directions?
7. If I hear you right, sir, you're saying guns and butter both, but President Johnson also had trouble uh - keeping up both Vietnam and his domestic programs. I was really asking when do the - the needs of the cities and our own needs and those of other backward an- and - and even more needy countries and societies around the world take precedence over some of our military spending? Ever?
8. Governor Carter, earlier tonight you said America is not strong any more; America is not respected any more. And I feel that I must ask you: Do you really believe that the United States is not the strongest country in the world, do you really believe that the United States is not the most respected country in the world? Or is that just campaign rhetoric?
9. Governor Carter, before this event the most communications I received concerned Panama. Is - would you as president be prepared to sign a treaty which at a fixed date yielded administrative and economic control of the Canal Zone and shared defense, which, as I understand it, is the position the United States took in 1974?
10. Governor Carter, if the price of uh - gaining influence among the Arabs is closing our eyes a little bit to their boycott against Israel, how would you handle that?

Transcript

• from the Commission on Presidential Debates website.

Viewership

An estimated 63.9 million viewers tuned into the debate.

Questions for Representative Dole

1. Uh - Senator Dole, presidential candidates uh - always promise that their vice president will play an important role. But it seldom turns out that way and they usually wind up uh - as standby equipment, which is the way Vice President Rockefeller once described the job. What's your view of this office that you're seeking? Has President Ford told you what your role might be, and what would you like it to be?
2. Senator Dole, prior to your current campaign you sometimes expressed concern about a negative image of the Republican party. You're quoted as having said last spring that, "We're in the unfortunate position of having a president vetoing bills and getting on the wrong side of people issues. He's vetoed the education bill, the jobs bill, you name it." Are you still concerned about the risk that Republicans will be perceived as opposed to what you call vet- uh - "people issues" and do you think that President Ford has exercised the veto too frequently?
3. Senator Dole, President Ford said in an interview this week that if he's elected he would like to see Henry Kissinger stay on as secretary of state. This hardly seems to square with the Republican platform which appears to repudiate much of Kissinger's foreign policy. Which way do you go, Senator Dole, with President Ford or with the Republican platform?
4. Senator Dole, out there in the campaign trail uh - you been saying that a Carter-Mondale Administration would take its orders from George Meany and the AFL-CIO. Yet Mr. Meany was among those who influenced President Ford on the grain embargo, which you personally opposed. Now how do you know that Mr. Meany will influence Governor Carter any more than he already has influenced President Ford? And what, if anything, is wrong with labor or business or farmers making their views known in the White House as long as it's done openly and honestly?
5. Senator Dole, ten days ago when Senator Mondale raised the issues of Watergate and the Nixon pardon, you called it the start of a campaign mud-slinging. Two years ago when you were running for the Senate you said that the pardon was prematurely granted and that it was a - and that it was a mistake. You were quoted by the Kansas City Times as saying, "You can't ignore our tradition of equal application of the law." Did you approve of the Nixon pardon when President Ford granted it? Do you approve of it now, and if the issue was fair game in your 1974 campaign in Kansas, why is it not an appropriate topic now?

Questions for Senator Mondale

1. Senator Mondale, the polls indicate that less than half of those eligible will vote in this coming election. And although you and Senator Dole have both touched on the very important issues that are before the country, many Americans feel that they're being shortchanged by a campaign that has descended into a name-calling contest. For example, Governor Carter has said that President Ford has been brainwashed; President Ford says that Carter is slandering America. If the tone of the campaign worries the electorate, does it worry you, Senator Mondale?
2. Uh - Senator Mondale, uh - everyone seems to agree that solving the economic problems of inflation and unemployment has to be given top priority. Uh - you and Governor Carter have a whole shopping list of things that you wanna do. After - after the ec- economic problem, what do you see as the next most urgent and crucial domestic problems? In what order of importance would you go to work on such problems as the decay and bankruptcy of the cities, uh - tax reform, health insurance, uh - help for the poor and the elderly - in short, after the economy, what would be the very specific priorities of a Carter administration?
3. Senator Mondale, you and Governor Carter have made an issue of President Ford's statement that there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe - a statement the president now says was in error. I'd like to know whether there's any real difference between the two tickets an Eastern Europe or whether this is simply an effort by the Democrats to attract voters of Eastern European backgrounds. What would a Democratic administration do that the Republicans are not doing to foster freedom in Eastern Europe? And what would a new administration do on the question that the president declined to answer yesterday? If an Eastern European nation attempted to overthrow Soviet domination, should the United States help?
4. Senator Mondale, you've criticized Mr. Ford for having defended Richard Nixon - that is, while Mr. Ford was vice president - and you did see in your own political career that Hubert Humphrey suffered a great deal politically by standing with Lyndon Johnson almost to the end on Vietnam. And now you've acknowledged that you have differences with Governor Carter. You've said that an important mark of national leadership is the ability to put loyalty to principle above loyalty to party, or even to the president of the United States. If push came to shove, would you put principle above loyalty to your running mate, and possibly to the president of the United States? And what issues are important enough to do that?
5. Senator Mondale, uh - you cited the priorities of a Carter administration. At the same time Governor Carter has promised to balance the federal budget within four years. Now can we take just one of those items that you gave very high priority to that would be very costly, uh - national health insurance? Now, realistically, what are the chances of getting this program in a Carter-Mondale administration, or would it have to be postponed until the budget is balanced? Which comes first?

Transcript

Viewership

An estimated 43.2 million viewers tuned into the debate.

Questions for President Ford

1. Mr. President, uh - I assume that the Americans all know that these are difficult times and that there's no "pie in the sky" and that they don't expect something for nothing. Uh - so, I'd like to ask you as a first question as you look ahead in the next four years, what sacrifices are you going to call on the American people to make, what price are you going to ask them to pay uh - to realize your objectives? Uh - let me add, uh - Governor Carter, that if - if you felt uh - that it was appropriate to answer that question in - in your comments uh - as to what price it would be appropriate for the American pay - people to pay uh - for a Carter administration, I think that would be proper too. Mr. President?
2. Uh - Mr. President, you mentioned Watergate, and you became president because of Watergate, so don't you owe the American people a special obligation to explain in detail your role of limiting one of the original investigations of Watergate, that was the one by the House Banking Committee? And, I know you've answered questions on this before, but there are questions that still remain and I think people want to know what your role was. Will you name the persons you talked to in connection with that investigation, and since you say you have no recollection of talking to anyone from the White House, would you be willing to open for examination the White House tapes of conversations uh - during that period?
3. Well, Mr. President, if I do say so though, the question is that I think that you still have not gone into details about what your role in it was. And I don't think there is any question about whether or not uh - there was criminal prosecution, but whether - whether you have told the American people your entire involvement in it. And whether you would be willing, even if you don't control the tapes, whether you would be willing to ask that the tapes be released for examination.
4. Sir, this question concerns your administrative performance as president. The other day, General George Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered his views on several sensitive subjects, among them Great Britain, one of this country's oldest allies. He said, and I quote him now, "Great Britain, it's a pathetic thing. It just makes you cry. They're no longer a world power. All they have are generals, admirals, and bands," end quote. Since General Brown's comments have caused this country embarrassment in the past, why is he still this nation's leading military officer?
5. Uh - Mr. President, uh - uh - let me assure you then maybe some of the uh viewing audience that being on this panel hasn't been as it may seem, all torture and agony. Uh - one of the heartening things is that uh - I and my colleagues have received uh - literally hundreds and maybe even thousands of suggested questions from ordinary citizens all across the country who want answers.
6. I'll give you that. Ahh - but, uh - let me go on, because one main subject on the minds of all of them has been the environment. Uh - they're particularly curious about your record. People - people really wanna know why you vetoed the strip-mining bill. They wanna know why you worked against strong controls on auto emissions. They wanna know why you aren't doing anything about pollution uh - of the Atlantic Ocean. Uh - they wanna know a-a bipartisan organization such as the National League of Conservation Voters says that when it comes to environmental issues, you are - and I'm quoting - "hopeless."
7. Uh - Mr. President, your campaign has uh - run ads in black newspapers saying that quote, "for black Americans, President Ford is quietly getting the job done." Yet, study after study has shown little progress in desegregation and in fact actual increases in segregated schools and housing in the Northeast. Now, civil rights groups have complained repeatedly that there's been lack of progress and commitment to an integrated society uh - during your administration. So how are you getting the job done for blacks and other minorities and what programs do you have in mind for the next four years.
8. Mr. President, twice you have been the intended victim of would-be assassins using handguns. Yet, you remain a steadfast opponent of substantive handgun control. There are now some forty million handguns in this country, going up at the rate of two point five million a year. And tragically, those handguns are frequently purchased for self-protection and wind up being used against a relative or a friend. In light of that, why do you remain so adamant in your opposition to substantive gun control in this country?
9. But Mr. President, don't you think that the proliferation of the availability of handguns contributes to the possibility of those crimes being committed. And, there's a second part to my follow-up, very quickly. There are, as you know and as you've said, jurisdictions around the country with strong gun-control laws. The police officials in those cities contend that if there were a national law, to prevent other jurisdictions from providing the weapons that then came into places like New York, that they might have a better handle on the problem. Have you considered that in your analysis of the gu- the handgun proliferation problem?
10. Uh - Mr. President, uh - the country is now uh - in uh - in something that your uh - advisors call an economic pause. I think to most Americans that sounds like a - a antiseptic term for uh - low growth, uh - unemployment standstill at a high, high level, uhh - decline in take-home pay, uh - lower factory earnings, more layoffs. Uh, isn't that a really rotten record and doesn't your administration bear most of the blame for it?
11. Mr. President, let me ask you this. Uh - there has been an increase in layoffs and that's something that bothers everybody because even people that have a job are afraid that they're going to be fired. Did you predict that layoff, uh - that increase in layoffs? Didn't that take you by surprise? Hasn't the gov- hasn't your administration been surprised by this pause? Uh - in fact, haven't you not - haven't you been so obsessed with saving money uh - that you didn't even push the government to spend funds that were allocated?

Questions for Governor Carter

1. Governor, by all indications, the voters are so turned off by this election campaign so far that only half intend to vote. One major reason for this apathetic electorate appears to be the low level at which this campaign has been conducted. It has digressed frequently from important issues into allegations of blunder and brainwashing and fixations on lust and Playboy. What responsibility do you accept for the low level of this campaign for the nation's highest office?
2. Uh - Governor Carter, the next big crisis spot in the world may be Yugoslavia. Uh - President Tito is old and sick and there are divisions in his country. Uh - it's pretty certain that the Russians are gonna do everything they possibly can after Tito dies to force Yugoslavia back into the Soviet camp. But last Saturday you said, and this is a quote, "I would not go to war in Yugoslavia, even if the Soviet Union sent in troops." Doesn't that statement practically invite the Russians to intervene in Yugoslavia? Ah - doesn't it discourage Yugoslavs who might be tempted to resist? And wouldn't it have been wiser on your part uh - to say nothing and to keep the Russians in the dark as President Ford did, and as I think every president has done since - since President Truman?
3. Did you clear the response you made with Secretary Schlesinger and Governor Harriman?
4. Governor, despite the fact that uh - you've been running for president a long time now, uh - many Americans uh - still seem to be uneasy about you. Uh - they don't feel that uh - they know you or the people around you. And one problem seems to be that you haven't reached out to bring people of broad background or national experience into your campaign or your presidential plans. Most of the people around you on a day-to-day basis are the people you've kno- known in Georgia. Many of them are young and relatively inexperienced in national affairs. And uh - doesn't this raise a serious question as to uh - whether you would bring into a Carter administration uh people with the necessary background to run the federal government?
5. Governor, federal policy in this country since World War II has tended to favor the development of suburbs at the great expense of central cities. Does not the federal government now have an affirmative obligation to revitalize the American city? We have heard little in this campaign suggesting that you have an urban reconstruction program. Could you please outline your urban intentions for us tonight?
6. Ah - Governor Carter, ah - in the nearly two-hundred-year history of the Constitution, there've been only uh - I think it's twenty-five amendments, most of them on issues of the very broadest principle. Uh - now we have proposed amendments in many highly specialized causes, like gun control, school busing, balanced budgets, school prayer, abortion, things like that. Do you think it's appropriate to the dignity of the Constitution to tack on amendments in wholesale fashion? And which of the ones that I listed - that is, uh - balanced budgets, school busing, school prayer, abortion, gun con- control - which of those would you really work hard to support if you were president?
7. Uh Governor, you've said the uh - Supreme Court of today is, uh - as you put it, moving back in a proper direction uh - in rulings that have limited the rights of criminal defendants. And you've compared the present Supreme Court under Chief Justice Burger very favorably with the more liberal court that we had under Chief Justice Warren. So exactly what are you getting at, and can you elaborate on the kind of court you think this country should have? And can you tell us the kind of qualifications and philosophy you would look for as president in making Supreme Court appointments?
8. Governor, I don't believe you ans- you answered my question though about the kinds of uh people you would be looking for the court, the type of philosophy uh - you would be looking for if you were making appointments to the Supreme Court as president.
9. Governor Carter, you entered this race against President Ford with a twenty-point lead or better in the polls. And now it appears that this campaign is headed for a photo finish. You've said how difficult it is to run against a sitting president. But Mr. Ford was just as much an incumbent in July when you were twenty points ahead as he is now. Can you tell us what caused the evaporation of that lead in your opinion?

Transcript

• from the Commission on Presidential Debates website.

Viewership

An estimated 62.7 million viewers tuned into the debates.