Remarks at a President's Club Dinner in Los Angeles.

WHEN I heard that you were holding a political science seminar in Los Angeles tonight--with a modest tuition fee--I decided I would like to join you.

California, aside from being the largest and greatest State in the Union, is also a proving ground for political theories. The world has been told so often that a successful politician really had to be something of an actor. California now seems to have proved it.

I know many of you here are interested in show business--especially in motion pictures. And I want you to know that your President sleeps better every night knowing that Jack Valenti is your president.

Jack has told me about a new film he has just seen, based on California Democratic politics. The first scene shows all the Democratic leadership of California in a smokefilled room. And to reduce the budget for this scene Jack said there is no soundtrack. But that doesn't detract from the movie--because nobody was talking to each other anyway.

After going through the problems of Punta del Este and Vietnam, the pickets and protesters, and then the Middle East, it is quite a comfort for me to come here and enjoy the peace and quiet of California politics

I want to get in some plugs here and now because I hope no one ever charges me with ingratitude or short memory. I am too busy getting agead to ever try to get even.

I don't know how I can thank this wonderful orchestra for the enertainment they have given us, and Ed Ames, the Supremes, Eddie Martin, and the others who have helped them, because they want to help me. They will always have a special spot in my heart.

To those of you who came here tonight to help the Democratic Party, I want you to know that for the first time in the 35 years I have been in Washington you have made the Democratic Party debt free tonight.

Every one of you have had to give up a few dresses, or postpone a fewbills--payments of them--or not take your trip, or sacrifice in some way. You did not give to your favorite charity--you gave to us.

I want you to know that I know it, that I appreciate it and I am thankful that this country has people like you who will help their President get rid of this burden he has been carrying. I inherited a debt of $4 million when I became President. I inherited a campaign that was just around the corner in November 1963, a campaign in the spring of 1964, and all through that year.

After having spent many millions of dollars in that campaign, we still owed $4 million. We have been trying to work ourselves out from under it ever since. Tonight you made it. To that grand man, other than whom there is no other like him in this Nation, Arthur Krim, who heads the President's Club, and to Lew Wasserman, who is associated with him, I say that every Democrat should revere your memory and your contribution.

With the proceeds of this dinner, we can now begin to marshal the resources that we need to carry our case to all the people in the election of 1968.

I came here tonight to speak very briefly to you about our commitments and our responsibilities, of our Party's commitments to all the American people, of our Nation's responsibilities in the world.

Thirty-five years ago, with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic Party made a promise to every American. We pledged ourselves to revitalize the old American dream of individual opportunity. We declared that the task of government was to provide each American with the chance to achieve his full capacities.

Through four administrations of our Democratic Party we have kept faith with that commitment. Franklin Roosevelt promised a New Deal and he delivered it. Harry Truman pledged a Fair Deal--and we got it. John Kennedy promised to get America moving again--and he did it.

Then in 1964, our Democratic Party was reelected on the most far-reaching platform that any party ever had, by the greatest total number of votes that any party had ever had, by the highest percentage that any candidate ever received. Since that day 85 percent of the promises made in that platform are tonight the law of this land.

The Congress that you elected that year, the great 89th Congress, charted a road to new American greatness that our children are going to be reading about in the centuries to come. Your great, able, and hard-working California delegation in the Congress, and your Democratic leaders here in your State, did their full share of this work. I want to publicly express my personal gratitude to each member of that delegation in Congress and say thank you very much.

Don't change them. Some of them vote wrong once in a while. We don't see everything alike. If we did, we would all want the same wife. We all do the best we can. We all do what we think is right. The big problem is knowing what is right.

In the middle third of this century, great Presidents and great Congressmen have cut through the tangle of doubt, dissension, and disinterest that for years blocked millions of Americans on the road to a better life.

These men that did that were doers, not doubters. They saw America's destiny as a thing to be achieved and they set out to achieve it. They made very bold promises to all of our people and, as I observed a moment ago, they kept those promises.

Democrats cannot speak tonight only of the proud past that they have all helped to build. They must speak tonight of the gap between what is and what ought to be. What is that?

--When millions of American children still lack decent medical care, When one out of every six Americans lives in a slum

--When filth is heavy in the air, in our rivers, our lakes, and our waters,

--When Americans do not feel safe on the streets at night or even in the daytime or in their homes,

--When millions of Americans have less than 75 cents a day to spend on the food that they eat,

--When all these things are true, we cannot luxuriate in our record. We have much to do. Much more to do. The dock is ticking. We have much to do. Much more to do. The clock is ticking.

In our time we have drawn the roadmaps of progress. But a roadmap is not a road. Passing a good bill is progress, but it is only the first stage of progress. We need the resources that will make that bill work. A single legislative victory cannot teach a child to read and cannot prepare or train a man to hold a job and make out of him a taxpayer instead of a taxeater.

We are getting started on building these roads. But we cannot rest until they are built--until we have translated the bright laws into better lives for all of our people. So, those who fought us when we gained our first victories for America are still fighting-the voices of gloom and doom, criticism, complaints, obstruction for obstruction's sake. We just cannot sit by and let them win by attrition what they lost in the open struggle in the election and in the Congress the past 3 years.

If we are alert to that danger, if we press on to redeem the promises that we have made and the hopes that we have aroused, I have not the slightest doubt about retaining the confidence of the American people in the Democratic Party.

Because you know and I know the Democratic Party is the party of the people. It is the party for the folks.

In your minds tonight, quite apart from partisan matters, I am sure, are other concerns of our country in the world--in Vietnam, where our brave sons are dying to redeem a pledge to freedom that the United States of America made--and in the Middle East, where the rights of men and the rights of nations are threatened.

I have spoken many times of our goals and of our resolution in Vietnam. Earlier this week, just an hour before the United Nations met, I stated America's position on the somber problems of the Middle East.

I said: "Our country is committed--and we here reiterate that commitment today-to a peace that is based on five principles:

--"First, the recognized right of national life.

--"Second, justice for the refugees.

--"Third, innocent maritime passage.

--"Fourth, limits on the wasteful and destructive arms race, and

--"Fifth, political independence and territorial integrity for all."

Let the world be sure of what I think you can be sure of and that is: As long as I am the President of this country America will keep her commitments and America will meet her responsibilities.

This is a good time to repeat and warn the fainthearted and the weak-kneed that this is a time of testing for our country, a time of testing at home and a time of testing abroad in 122 other countries that are watching us through their field glasses.

But there have been many times of testing for the American people--and we have risen to that challenge together, firm in our resolve before--and we shall rise again.

This morning in New Jersey, at what the distinguished Chairman called a little farmhouse, we had another meeting. It was a smaller meeting than this one. It cost less. But since it has attracted some attention, I think I shall say a word about it.

It was a good meeting and I am very glad it took place. I am grateful to my good friend, the great Democratic Governor of New Jersey, Dick Hughes, and my newly made friend, Dr. Robinson, the president of the college, who is a Republican. They found a very quiet place for us to meet.

This morning I found myself in a house that had been visited before by Presidents--Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. So it was in no partisan party spirit that we went to Hollybush. We went to serve what we believed to be a great national purpose, the purpose of peace for human beings.

I said to the Chairman that we have 200 million people and we might have even had 200 million the day before yesterday when Patrick Lyndon Nugent was born, but we didn't announce that we had reached that goal that day, because I know immediately the Los Angeles Times would have charged the administration with having a credibility gap.

I said that we not only had a responsibility to our 200 million and their more than 200 million--the 400 million together--but we had a responsibility to 3 billion people in the world because of our strength and obligations as great powers; that responsibility was peace and trying not only to secure it for ourselves but to secure it for all human beings.

The world's peace now hangs heavily tonight upon the wisdom, judgment, and understanding of these two very great states-the United States of America and the Soviet Union.

There are deep and very serious differences in our two societies, but one thing we do have in common, as Chairman Kosygin himself said when he addressed the United Nations, is a grave responsibility for world peace in a nuclear age. Every crisis in the last 20 years has necessarily invoked that common responsibility and repeatedly we have seen the dangerous consequences of incomplete understanding.

We have also repeatedly seen that when others are irresponsible in word or in deed a very special burden for care seems to always fall upon America. So I was glad to meet with Chairman Kosygin this morning. We talked throughout the day quietly and straightforwardly.

I am glad to say to you that I found he came to our meeting in the same spirit. He had some seniority on me. He had been a grandfather for over 18 years and I had been a grandfather for only 18 hours, but he and I agreed that we both very much wanted a world of peace for our grandchildren.

We talked about the problems of the Middle East in detail. We shall continue to talk about them. We talked about the problems of Southeastern Asia. We talked about the arms race and about the need for new agreements there. We talked about the need for common action on constructive initiatives for peace. We reached no new agreements-almost, but not quite. New agreements are not always reached in a single conversation. So, we are going to eat lunch and spend Sunday together again at Honeybush.

I don't want to overstate the case. I don't want to get your hopes too high. I do think, though, that we understand each other better. I do think that I was able to make it very clear, indeed, that the strength and the determination of our country and the Government are fully matched by our persistent eagerness to talk and to work, to fight for peace and friendship with all who will work and talk with us.

But all of you must remember that one meeting does not make a peace. I don't think there is anyone in the world who ever wanted peace more than the leaders in the world of countries who are not at peace. You must all remember that there have been many meetings before and they have not ended our troubles nor have they ended our danger. There is not a nation in the world we would trade places with tonight.

These meetings just have not ended our troubles and our dangers and I cannot promise you that that will not happen again. The world remains a very small and very dangerous one. All nations, even the greatest of them have hard and painful choices ahead of them. What I can tell you tonight--and I have no doubt about it at all--is that it does help a lot to sit down and look at a man in the eye all day long and try to reason with him, particularly if he is trying to reason with you. That is why we went to Hollybush this morning and reasoning together there today was the spirit of Hollybush.

I think you know me well enough to recognize that that is my way of doing things--"Come now," as Isaiah said, "and let us reason together." What I think is even more important--that is the way I think we must finally achieve peace.

Those who do not smell the powder or near the blast of cannon, who enjoy the luxury and freedom of free speech and the right to exercise it most freely at times really do not understand the burdens that our Marines are carrying there tonight, who are dying for their country, or the burdens that their commanders are carrying, who wish they were all home asleep in bed, or even carrying a placard of some kind.

But they can't be and still retain our national honor. They can't be and still preserve our freedom. They can't be and still protect our system. When they can be--with honor-they will be, at the earliest possible moment.

Sometimes I think of my friends who don't understand all of the cables I read from all of the 122 countries. They don't hear all the voices of despair and of all the chaotic conditions that come to us through the day. Sometimes I think of that Biblical injunction, when I see them advising their fellow citizens to negotiate and saying we want peace and all of those things.

I try to look with understanding and charity upon them, and in the words of that Biblical admonition, "God, forgive them for they know not really what they do."

I can just say this to you: There is no human being in this world who wants to avoid war more than I do. There is no human being in this world who wants peace in Vietnam or in the Middle East more than I do.

When they tell me to negotiate, I say, "Amen." I have been ready to negotiate and sit down at a conference table every hour of every day that I have been President of this country, but I just cannot negotiate with myself.

And these protesters haven't been able to deliver Ho Chi Minh any place yet.

I was not elected your President to liquidate our agreements in Southeast Asia. I was not elected your President to run out on our commitments in the Middle East. If that is what you want, you will have to get another President.

But I am going--as I have said so many times--any time, any place, anywhere, if, in my judgment, it can possibly, conceivably serve the cause of peace. That is why I went to that little farmhouse way up on the New Jersey Pike today to spend the day, and that is why I am going to get over to see my grandson by daylight in the morning.

I have been up since 4:30--1:30 this time. I have been about 24 hours on the go. Then we will fly back to New Jersey Sunday for another go at Hollybush.

All I ask of you is two things:

Be proud of yourself, of your family, and of your associates for making my burden light by coming here and cleaning up this debt, wiping the slate clean, and making the Democratic Party fiscally sound and solvent where we don't have to carry a tin cup and walk around begging. That is number one.

Number two--give me your confidence and your prayers, because, God knows, I need them.

I looked at all my communications the other day, my phone calls, and my visitors and I finally observed to one of my assistants, "Why does nearly everybody say something ugly to the President?"

He said, "Mr. President, I have worked here for 29 years. I was here with Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Truman, Mr. Eisenhower, and Mr. Kennedy." And, he said, "Somehow or other the people just don't seem to like Presidents."

That may be true at times, but when I read about my decline and my defeat, I look back over the problems that other Presidents have had and I don't seem to remember many of them that the American people turned their backs on in a time of crisis or in a time of war.

Whatever the prophets may say and whatever the columnists may write--back to Lincoln's time, at least--that is all the time I have had to research, since f started reading these columns--no President has ever been turned upon when he was engaged in trying to protect his country and its interests against a foreign foe.

So about all the strength that we have and the strength of our system, the strength of our courageous young men who are ready to die for that system, and the strength that comes from your confidence and the comfort that comes from your support and to every man and woman in the room tonight, whatever color, whatever religion, whatever party--there are not all Democrats here; some Republicans want to help the President, too--I want to say this: You will never know how much the confidence that you have given me tonight means to me and how much strength it will give me in the days ahead when I will need it most.

Thank you. Good night.