212. Editorial Note
In his October 20, 1984, radio address, broadcast at 12:06 p.m. from the White House Oval Office, President Ronald Reagan indicated that in advance of the next evening’s Presidential debate, he intended to outline “the foreign policy choices for our future as I see it.” The President began his address by characterizing Democratic Presidential nominee Walter Mondale as someone who believed that “American strength is a threat to world peace.” After noting Mondale’s positions on a variety of foreign policy issues taken while he was Senator and Vice President, Reagan asserted: “Well, in the past 3½ years, our administration has demonstrated the true relationship between strength and confidence and democracy and peace. We’ve restored our economy and begun to restore our military strength. This is the true foundation for a future that is more peaceful and free.
“We’ve made America and our alliances stronger and the world safer. We’ve discouraged Soviet expansion by helping countries help themselves, and new democracies have emerged in El Salvador, Honduras, Grenada, Panama, and Argentina. We have maintained peace and begun a new dialog with the Soviets. We’re ready to go back to the table to discuss arms control and other problems with the Soviet leaders.
“Today we can talk and negotiate in confidence because we can negotiate from strength. Only my opponent thinks America can build a more peaceful future on the weakness of a failed past.” (Public Papers: Reagan, 1984, Book II, pages 1586–1588)
The final Presidential debate took place on October 21 at 7:01 p.m. in the Music Hall at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City and was broadcast live on radio and television. Edwin Newman, a syndicated columnist for King Features, moderated the debate. Universal Press Syndicate columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, National Broadcasting Company (NBC) News chief diplomatic correspondent Marvin Kalb, executive editor of the New Republic Morton Kondracke, and Baltimore Sun diplomatic correspondent Henry Trewhitt posed questions to Reagan and Mondale. Following a discussion concerning Central America, Kalb noted the President’s previous references to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and his recent remarks that the Soviets could “keep their Mickey Mouse system.” Kalb then asked the President if he wanted “to contain” the Soviets and “reestablish détente” or “roll back their empire.” Reagan responded: “I have said on a number of occasions exactly what I believe about the Soviet Union. I retract nothing that I have said. I believe that many of the things they have done are evil in any concept of morality that we have. But I also recognize that as the [Page 915] two great superpowers in the world, we have to live with each other. And I told Mr. Gromyko we don’t like their system. They don’t like ours. And we’re not going to change their system, and they sure better not try to change ours. But between us, we can either destroy the world or we can save it. And I suggested that, certainly, it was to their common interest, along with ours, to avoid a conflict and to attempt to save the world and remove the nuclear weapons. And I think that perhaps we established a little better understanding.
“I think that in dealing with the Soviet Union one has to be realistic. I know that Mr. Mondale, in the past, has made statements as if they were just people like ourselves, and if we were kind and good and did something nice, they would respond accordingly. And the result was unilateral disarmament. We canceled the B–1 under the previous administration. What did we get for it? Nothing.
“The Soviet Union has been engaged in the biggest military buildup in the history of man at the same time that we tried the policy of unilateral disarmament, of weakness, if you will. And now we are putting up a defense of our own. And I’ve made it very plain to them, we seek no superiority. We simply are going to provide a deterrent so that it will be too costly for them if they are nursing any ideas of aggression against us. Now, they claim they’re not. And I made it plain to them, we’re not. There’s been no change in my attitude at all. I just thought when I came into office it was time that there was some realistic talk to and about the Soviet Union. And we did get their attention.”
Kalb returned to this theme of deterrence later in the debate, referencing the administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), colloquially known as the “Star Wars” program after the 1977 George Lucas film. Kalb noted that at the time the administration announced SDI, Reagan had indicated that the United States “would share this very super-sophisticated technology with the Soviet Union.” Noting the President’s previously stated distrust of the Soviet Union, Kalb inquired as to how anyone would take the President’s offer that the United States would share “the best of America’s technology” with an adversary seriously. The President answered: “Why not? What if we did—and I hope we can; we’re still researching—what if we come up with a weapon that renders those missiles obsolete? There has never been a weapon invented in the history of man that has not led to a defensive, a counterweapon. But suppose we came up with that?
“Now, some people have said, ‘Ah, that would make war imminent, because they would think that we could launch a first strike because we could defend against the enemy.’ But why not do what I have offered to do and asked the Soviet Union to do? Say, ‘Look, here’s what we can do. We’ll even give it to you. Now, will you sit down with [Page 916] us and once and for all get rid, all of us, of these nuclear weapons and free mankind from that threat?’ I think that would be the greatest use of a defensive weapon.”
Later in the debate, Trewhitt mentioned the President’s remarks on SDI, suggesting that by offering the Soviets a demonstration of space military technology, the President “might be trying to gain the sort of advantage that would enable you to dictate terms.” Trewhitt stated that in doing so, the President might render the strategy of mutual deterrence obsolete. He pressed Reagan to state his intentions regarding the decades-old strategy. The President responded: “Well, I can’t say that I have round tabled that and sat down with the Chiefs of Staff, but I have said that it seems to me that this could be a logical step in what is my ultimate goal, my ultimate dream, and that is the elimination of nuclear weapons in the world. And it seems to me that this could be an adjunct, or certainly a great assisting agent in getting that done. I am not going to roll over, as Mr. Mondale suggests, and give them something that could turn around and be used against us. But I think it’s a very interesting proposal, to see if we can find, first of all, something that renders those weapons obsolete, incapable of their mission.
“But Mr. Mondale seems to approve MAD—MAD is mutual assured destruction—meaning, if you use nuclear weapons on us, the only thing we have to keep you from doing it is that we’ll kill as many people of yours as you’ll kill of ours.
“I think that to do everything we can to find, as I say, something that would destroy weapons and not humans is a great step forward in human rights.” (Public Papers: Reagan, 1984, Book II, pages 1592, 1602, and 1606)
In his personal diary for the dates October 21 through October 24, the President commented: “The consensus seems to be that I won although some want to call it a tie. A rally before the debate was a little like the Homecoming bonfire before the big game. I felt fine—certainly different than I felt in Louisville.” (Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, volume I, January 1981–October 1985, page 392)