Remarks Upon Arrival at the Airport in Boise

Mr. Chairman, Reverend ,Clergy, Mr. Mayor, Senator Church, Congressman Harding, Congressman White, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:

One morning earlier this year Mrs. Johnson kissed me goodby and said, "I am going West, young man," and she did come out here to see the land and to see the people. The girls and I made out as best we could because we wanted her to have a good rest for a long time.

When Mrs. Johnson returned from the Western trip, she came in to me and said, "I have just enjoyed the happiest trip anybody ever had anywhere."

Yesterday morning I kissed Lady Bird goodby and this time I headed West. Since then we have gone to Arizona, California, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and now tonight I am here with my old friend Tom Boise in Idaho.

Every mile of the way, every block of the way, we have seen the people of the West. The friendly, happy, confident people of the West have turned out as they seem to have never turned out before. The officials estimate that we have seen more than 1 1/2 million people in the West since I ate breakfast yesterday morning.

So tomorrow morning when I get back to the White House about 5:30, I am going in and wake up my Lady Bird, and I am going to say to her, "Now I have enjoyed the happiest trip anybody ever had anywhere."

I am happy not for myself, but for my country. I am happy because when I see Americans coming together in their cities, coming out to line the streets to stand and be counted for the same cause, I know that this Nation is united, and this Nation is not going to be divided.

What we have seen in the West we have been seeing all across this land, in New England, in the Midwest, in the South. Everywhere the crowds are the largest that have been seen in years, and in many places they are the largest that have been seen at any time.

What does this mean? I believe that we are finding out whose country this is. This is the country of responsible Americans, that is who. The men and women of this Nation are thinking of what they have and what they want their children to have after them. So without regard to party, responsible Americans--Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and whatnots--are uniting this year because they do not intend to turn their heritage or their hopes over to factions and fractions which stand against all that both parties have ever stood for in America. The people want responsibility in Washington. The people want performances in the Presidency, not promises.

The people of the United States know, the people of the world know, that in these perilous, critical times the President of the United States has to be right the first time, and if he is not right the first time, there may be no second time for him to change his views or explain them or correct them, or there may be no time for the Nation to change its choice.

Out here in the West the people of your State and the people of all of these fine, progressive, prudent Western States want our country to pull together. They want a unified America. We do not have a Continental Divide on our opportunity, or on our progress, or on our unity. We want the young people of the West to have as much opportunity all their lives as young people of every other region have. We don't want them to have to leave home to find it.

We want the West to make progress as the whole Nation makes progress. We want life in America to mean the same on both sides of the Continental Divide, and that is our goal and that is our purpose.

These years ahead of us, the years between now and the end of this century, can be the best years of our national life. We can do the things that we have so long needed to do. We can bind up our wounds and heal our history, and we can make this great Nation of ours whole again. We can work to give States like your wonderful Idaho a full share in the strength and the future and the prosperity of our times.

Idaho's potatoes are wonderful, but Idaho can produce greater treasures for America in the lives and in the minds of Idaho's sons and daughters.

Here in Idaho and all across the West there are rivers and resources to develop. There is work to do. There are new jobs to create. There are better opportunities to provide for all the people.

The standard of opportunity must continue to rise for all Americans, whether they live in the large cities or the small towns; whether they live on the little farms or whether they live in the large States.

And our purposes can be accomplished if-if--we unite our country, if we stay strong to keep this Nation and keep the world at peace, if we do the works for our people which our hearts and our conscience have always told us were right, and if we do those works with prudence, with care, with caution, with an honest regard for the taxpayer, and with a full respect for our American heritage of thrift and frugality.

This year, for the first year in many years, I reduced the Federal budget $1 billion under last year. I did not do that alone. I did it with the help of President Truman and President Eisenhower, who came down from Gettysburg and spent several conferences with me shortly after I took office; with Secretary Anderson, a former Republican Secretary of the Treasury; with the Director of the Budget; with Mr. McNamara, the Republican Secretary of Defense; with Mr. Dillon, a Republican who is Secretary of the Treasury.

Together, we all felt that we must have prudent, progressive government. We must keep our eyes in the stars and have a vision of tomorrow--but we must keep our feet on the ground today.

My first budget went into effect July 1st of this year. The Congress just finished appropriating for it. The fiscal year starts July 1st. During the month of July, and during the month of August, we have just totaled the expenditures of the Government. During those 2 months we spent $676 million less than we spent last July and last August, a year ago. This July we reduced the Federal employees to the point where we had 25,000 less people working for the Government in July 1964 than we had in July 1963.

Idaho's role in this effort will be greater, and it will be more effective if you have as your voice in the House of Representatives the youth and the experience and the strength of this young man, Ralph Harding, who sits on this platform with us tonight. Comp White has done a wonderful job for this State, and I have no doubt but what you will want to return him to the Congress where he can work for you another 2 years.

They asked Mr. Rayburn, who became Speaker of the House, and who served in the House 50 years, and who both parties recognized as probably the most popular and most effective Congressman in that body-they asked him one time why it was that Texas had the standing in the Congress that it had. It had 8 chairmen of committees out of 15. It had the Speaker and the Vice President. It had the leadership of the majority party of that Congress.

Mr. Rayburn in his quiet, simple way, said: "We have a little formula down home that we follow for our Congressmen. We pick them young, we pick them honest, we send them there, and then we keep them there. They grow in experience and they grow in seniority, and they grow in stature and they grow in understanding. As a result, they achieve the leadership that comes that way."

That is happening to Idaho. That is happening to Idaho in the form of your eloquent and able young Senator and his charming wife who helps Frank do such a good job. I have always agreed with the people of Idaho on your choice of Churches. There is no Senator that Washington respects more, and none that the Nation needs more, and none that your President values more, than Frank Church.

On November 3d you have one of the most exacting obligations of citizenship. You have one of the greatest responsibilities that will ever come to you. It is just as important for you to live up to that responsibility as it is for your son to put on his uniform and fight to protect that flag when need be.

On November 3d, 70 million to 80 million people in this country, in accordance with Thomas Jefferson's view that the collective judgment of the many is much to be preferred to the individual decisions of the few, the collective judgment of 75 million people will be recorded that night by the computers of the Nation. And you 75 million will determine the type of leadership that you want to guide the destiny of this Nation for the next 4 years.

That day you will determine the man that you want to entrust the responsibility of our awesome military posture to. That day you will determine the man that you want to be your Commander in Chief, the man whose thumb will rest close to that button if it ever has to be touched; the man whose hand will have to lift up that "hot line" from Moscow if that phone rings and hear the voice on the other end.

You have an obligation to yourself and your children to select the person that you know is the most experienced, and the most capable of handling the future of your country and its citizens.

I did not come here tonight to tell you who that man is. You have intelligence enough to know in your conscience what you ought to do. I did come here to tell you that you must do your duty. Once you see it, you must get that job done, because the eyes of the world are on America.

The leadership of the world is in the hands of America. We are the richest, we are the freest, we are the most powerful nation in all the world, and the other 3 billion people look to us for example, and they follow it, so they know that the number one problem in the world is how do we live with other nations without destroying each other?

After Oak Ridge, we came into possession of the mightiest power ever known to the human race, and we are the steward and the guardian of that power.

President Kennedy sat at the head of the Cabinet table for 37 meetings during the Cuban missile crisis and, as Secretary Rusk said, Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Kennedy sat there eyeball to eyeball. Mr. Khrushchev had his missiles in Cuba, 90 miles away. But both men, after counseling for days with the ablest minds in their respective countries, concluded that it would be too horrible to contemplate to put your thumb on that button and wipe out 300 million lives in a matter of a few moments. So Mr. Khrushchev loaded his missiles on his ships and took them back home, and we breathed easier for a while.

Your Nation will face other crises in the days ahead, and in the time when it does, I know that you will do for whoever is your President at that time what you did for President Kennedy: give him your confidence, give him your strength, give him your prayers. I am proud to say to you tonight that I sat in all but one of those 37 meetings, and the coolest man in that room all the time was the man that you people had selected to lead you, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

So when you go to make your choice, you will choose a Commander in Chief, you will choose a man that will try to find peace in the world, but will also try to find peace at home--peace between the farmer and the consumer, peace between the businessman and the laborer, peace between the manufacturer and the trade union. Because little good does it do us to become a mighty industrial nation if we waste all of our talents chewing on each other.

I am happy that we settled the railroad strike that had gone for 4½ years without a resolution.

I am happy that we today have the lowest number of lost man-hours due to strikes that we have ever had in the history of the United States, and that is because the businessman and the laboringman and the farmer are working together. That is because America has hope, America has faith, America does not live in fear and doubt. And that is why we have that good domestic record in this country.

So you will select the leader to find peace in the world, and the leader to find peace at home, and the leader to develop a program that will bring prosperity to our people. Today we have 72 million people working, more than ever before in our history, drawing higher wages than ever before in our history. Corporations made $12 billion more after taxes. Workers made $60 billion more after taxes.

So times are good, but we can't just sit back in our rocking chair and expect them to be good. You have to work to make them good. You have to plan to make them good. You have to be equitable and just and fair to make them good. And we are now doing our best on that job.

The day that I returned to the White House after that tragedy, I said to the American people, with God's help, with your prayers, I will do the best I can. I have done the best I could.

I have tried to be the President of all the people, of all the States in this country, and I hope that the good people of Idaho will join all the other States in the West and I hope a good many States in every section of the country, because I really want to know no North, no South, no East, or no West. I just want to know the United States of America.

I hope that on November 3d you will go and send us some good, experienced Congressmen back to Washington like Ralph Harding and Compton White; that you will vote the Democratic ticket for President and Vice President. And if you do, I give you my pledge that we will do our dead level best to preserve peace in the world, peace at home, and prosperity throughout this Nation.

Thank you and good night.