Interview With the President Excerpts From a Question-and-Answer Session With John Chancellor of NBC News.

MR. CHANCELLOR. I kind of hate to bring this up, but I have to. Do you think your brother, Billy, would be a liability in a campaign?

THE PRESIDENT. Well, you know, family matters and my brother, Billy, are fairly sensitive with me. Billy is an extremely independent person. Any criticism that I might make publicly of Billy would cause, I think, him to react very strongly and to reexert his independence. We have a good personal relationship. It's always been that way.

Billy and I have very strong differences of opinion on many issues. He expresses those differences much more frequently than do I. And I don't look on Billy's actions as a basis for success in future political activities. And I hope the people of the United States realize that I have no control over Billy; he has no control over me.

We are two very independent people. We love each other. But any attempt that I might make to control Billy's words or actions would not be successful at all.

MR. CHANCELLOR. Counterproductive, as they say.

THE PRESIDENT. I think it would be counterproductive, because Billy prides himself on being independent from me. And I think he would show it if I tried to dominate him, and I have no intention to try to do so.

[The transcript of the above exchange was made available by the White House Press Office on January 13. The transcript of the following exchange was released on January 16.]

MR. CHANCELLOR. Now, Mr. President, talking about cooperation from the private sector, you've got some big labor contracts coming up. Suppose the Teamsters Union, for example, which is a big and very important union, wants to go beyond your guidelines and suppose a strike should result. A big, bad Teamsters strike would cripple a lot of things in this country. Wouldn't you be tempted to relax your guidelines in that case?

THE PRESIDENT. Well, I hate to answer a conjectural question like that. I believe that the members of the Teamsters Union are very interested in seeing the anti-inflation effort work. They've been forthcoming, without giving me any commitments on what their stance will be when the contract is negotiated. But they are Americans. They're patriotic. They are sound people. They have interest in a stable income. And for them to get very high wage increases that would destroy the efforts to control inflation would not pay dividends for them in the future. They understand that.

I can't think of anything more damaging to the economy than a sustained Teamsters strike. This is a unique union in that they could bring our economy almost to a halt. They've not ever done this. And they have shown, I think, a remarkable degree of responsibility about this in the past. We would not be able to accommodate a strike of that kind. Either I or the Congress would have to act very rapidly to bring to an end a strike of that sort if it should occur. But I don't think that that's going to happen.

We can't write a labor contract and mandate that employers and employees adopt it. The only way we can be successful is to convince the public, employers, employees in all segments of our economy, that it's in their best interests to have a strong American economy with inflation under control. And that's the basis on which we hope we'll have success.