Remarks Upon Arrival at the Phoenix Airport

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:

I want to say a deep thank you from the bottom of my heart for your warm welcome to this wonderful State of sunshine here in Arizona.

This is not a day for politics. This is a day for God, and since this is God's day I will leave very shortly and go with my old and longtime friend, Roy Elson, down to hear his preacher. He recommends him pretty highly, and I want to see if he is as good as the preacher I would have heard at Johnson City had I gone to church at home this morning.

The reason I didn't go to church at home this morning was because that beloved and venerable and wonderful man, than whom there is no other like him in all the world, Carl Hayden, the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said to me, "I think if you are going from your ranch in Texas to the sidewalks of San Francisco, you better not do it without stopping in Arizona."

And when the Chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee makes a slight suggestion to the President, I hope the President is smart enough, and I know he loves Carl Hayden enough, that his suggestion is my command. So here I am.

I want to thank Governor Fannin and Governor McFarland, my old boss that taught me so much and I love so much, and Edna, for coming out here to meet me.

I want to tell you how grateful I am that Arizona furnishes one of our Cabinet members, Stewart Udall, and his lovely wife, and I am very proud of him. He is doing a wonderful job. We have done the best work on water and on power and on conservation that has been done any years since I have been in Washington. This has really been the conservation Congress.

I want to thank Congressman Udall and Congressman Senner for coming here and welcoming me this morning. I am going to leave with Roy now in just a moment and I won't be seeing you any more, but I am coming back to these wonderful, happy, smiling faces, and this dry air and this fine sunshine because it is good and it invigorates you. It makes you count all your blessings and think about really how fortunate we are to be Americans.

Now, all of you people out here have faith and have hope and have vision or you wouldn't be in this "Promised Land of Arizona." If you were afraid, and if you were doubters, and if you didn't have vision, you would be in some ghost town somewhere instead of a State like Arizona and a city like Phoenix that is a "Go-Go State" and a "Go-Go City." Do you know that by the year 2000--and we are really closer to the year 2000 now than we are to the year 1918 when we had our "last" war, even when I was born, 1908, we are pretty close to the year 2000--in the year 2000 Arizona's growth will be twice what it is in the rest of the Nation, the Nation's average. I don't want that to be repeated out where it gets back and drifts back over into Texas because some of my opponents over there will be saying I said Arizona is twice as good as Texas, and I don't want to say that.

But I do say that your resources, your people, your management, your faith, your vision, your 20th century methods, your modern ideas, your great electronic industry and other industries that are coming to Arizona--that you will be growing twice as fast as the rest of the Nation in the year 2000.

You have one problem, and it is a mighty big problem. [Laughter] No, no, now. I told you this wasn't going to be a political day and it is not. You get the wrong impression. Now wait a minute.

You have one big problem, and that problem is--water.

I never go down a corridor of the Capitol that Roy Elson doesn't catch me by my coattail and say, "Can't you help us with the problem of water in Arizona?" I never went into the Appropriations Committee but what Carl Hayden didn't catch me by the lapels of my coat.

I am not that intimate with your other Senator, and I didn't come out here to advertise him. But I do want to be fair and frank. He has talked to me a good many times about your water problem, and he wants to help on it. And he has wired me, urging me to take certain action in connection with water for Arizona. So it is not a partisan thing between Democrats and Republicans and Independents. We all have to find an answer to this water problem because that is going to be the answer to the 20th century.

I will tell you what I am going to do about it. We are going to continue under the program that Stewart Udall has working now, and we are making progress on it every day. In your child's lifetime, if not in yours, and I think in yours, but in your child's lifetime we are going to be using the water from the sea to make the deserts bloom.

Just think about what a wonderful land this will be when all the people are smiling and happy, when all the grass is green and we have nothing but a beautiful vista on the mountainside, where our cattle and our sheep can graze and our children can play.

Now, that is the kind of a world that we want.

I want to leave you with just one little thought for today. I am not your preacher, and I hope you all go on from here to church. But I want to just leave this thought with you: A great man named Abraham Lincoln, of another party, said, "I trust, sir"--when someone said to him, "I trust, sir"--meaning President Lincoln, "that God is on our side," in a very hectic period in our national life, Lincoln replied, "Well, let us hope that we are on God's side."

What I want to say to you this morning is that all of you made great sacrifices to come out here and be courteous to me and be kind to me. I don't interpret it any other way. I think that you are really warm, and I hope not only that God is on our side, but I do hope that all of you are on God's side.

Thank you very much.