(upbeat music) (projector clicking) - Have you ever wondered where the television signal you're watching is coming from?

♪ I love to go a wanderin' (projector clicking) ♪ along the mountain track - Welcome to True North.

(upbeat music) (mysterious music) - Good evening and welcome to Mainewatch (upbeat music) (projector clicking) Welcome to “From The Vault ”, a celebration of 60 years of Maine Public Television.

Since 1987, March 28th has been known as Edmund S. Muskie Day in the state of Maine.

So, what better program to commerorate that day than this one, from 1981, this is "Take The Time".

In this hour long special, "now" Senator Angus King speaks with the retired former Secretary of State, Senator, Governor and Representative about his days in politics and what he thinks of the political atmosphere at the time.

This casual, yet candid conversationtakes place at Muskies home in Kennebunkport with Angus King.

These were the days before King entered elected office and was the host of several programs here on Maine Public, including “MaineWatch ” which he left in 1993 to make his succesful run for Governor of Maine.

So, lets celebrate Edmund S. Muskie Day by going back to 1981 for “Take The Time ”.

- [Announcer] The following program is a production of WCBB 10.

(gavel banging) (people applauding) - [Speaker] The secretary of state of these United States, the Honorable Edmund S. Muskie.

(people applauding) - [Interviewer] On January 15th, 1981, Edmund Muskie returned to Maine to the legislative chamber where his political career had begun 34 years earlier.

The trip was emotional farewell to public life for a man who had dominated Maine politics for a generation, a man who had stood close to the pinnacle of national power.

Some months after his speech in Augusta, we visited with Muskie at his home in Kennebunkport.

He reflected on his own political past and some of the current shoes that will influence and largely shape our future.

- It was here in this room that I began my public life after winning my very first election.

It is good of you to invite me back so that I can say goodbye to public life in this same room.

In 1947, of course, things were much different, particularly for those few of us who were brave enough or crazy enough to call ourselves Democrats.

Not that we were treated badly.

We were usually allowed to speak before we were outvoted.

- [Interviewer] Muskie's jump from the legislature to the governor's office happened almost by accident.

A few weeks before the filing deadline, he was still looking for other Democrats to make the run.

- The idea of being governor of Maine was an idea that had occurred to me, that I had found attractive before that time.

The timing didn't seem right from a personal standpoint.

From a political standpoint, it looked very good as it turned out to be, and I just felt that because of personal considerations, if we could persuade someone else to make the effort, someone else who... could be a good candidate like Clint Clauson.

I mean, Clint Clauson subsequently did run for governor and was elected.

We tried to persuade him to run that year, and he felt he couldn't for personal reasons.

And there was former Congressman Carl Moran of Rockland who was still, I think he was in his late '50s then.

He was in the right age bracket, he was well known.

Tried to persuade him.

And there were others that we tried to persuade, but for one reason or another, they didn't see it as a good time, and they didn't have the optimism of youth that the rest of us at that time shared.

And so eventually, I accepted the notion with my wife's approval, and we wrote a little history.

- When you started in '54, did you personally think you were gonna make it, or there was some talk that really what was being done was laying the ground work for '56 and Frank Cough- - That's true.

Before I announced my decision to run, that is the way we viewed it.

We viewed it as a very good time to begin the process of rebuilding the party and laying the base for victory down the road.

I don't think any of us truly believed at that point that we could win in 1954.

Our attitude about that, or at least mine, changed very rapidly because the impact of these young fellas organizing and running without any evident hope of getting anywhere and doing so in an organized way and with enthusiasm and with the help of television, people could see that we weren't all Pauls.

We were just a bunch of young guys, reasonable common sense with some ideals about what we wanted to do, and- - [Interviewer] People in Maine learned that Democrats didn't have horns.

- That's right, they learned we didn't have horns.

They saw us on television.

For many, many of them, it was the first time they ever saw a live Democrat.

And so the whole thing sort of came together, and you could feel the sense of excitement growing, and that was the same year, you remember, that young Bob Jones challenged Margaret Smith for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in the Republican primary, and that stirred up the political pot.

She beat him handily, but in the process of doing so, helped stir up the pot and get political excitement to surface so then people began to look at the next fight.

Well, the next fight looked like it might be the governorship with this young fella from Waterville daring to challenge an incumbent Republican governor, and so the thing sort of built momentum, and you could feel that momentum until, toward the end on election day, I thought the chances were very good.

About the time the polls closed, I said well now, let's be sensible, Muskie.

You know this can't happen, and I remember the television people came up to Waterville.

They wanted to spend the evening at the governor's mansion 'cause they really thought he was going to win, and so they wanted me to make two statements, one in the event I won and one in the event I lost.

- [Interviewer] So they could- - So they could use either one, and I said no, I refuse to do that, but I'll give you one that you can use in either case, (laughs) which is what I did.

And only one television man stayed up with us in our little hotel room in the Elmwood.

What was his name?

I hadn't better suggest one 'cause I'm- Think his name was Shepherd, but in any case, he had confidence and he stayed, and so he got that on record and he sold that all over the country.

(laughs) - When the first Democrat was- - When the first Democrat was elected.

- You mentioned in your book that you felt that Humphrey and Johnson never really figured out how to use television.

Is there any danger of somebody who really knows how to use television, but isn't necessarily a good leader, gaining power?

- Well, it's possible of course, but I don't think that television is necessarily controllable by style.

I think that what is magic about television is that it can see through people or see into people, whoever they are, whatever their style, if there's enough exposure so that people can eventually see the real person.

- It's the next best thing to having 'em in your living room.

- That's right.

It's the next best thing, and of course, I think the quiet style, which is mine, at least when I'm on camera sometimes, or not quite so quiet when I'm in the Senate chamber and having to influence 100 balky senators.

But the quiet style on television is more comfortable, and I think that does not get in the way of people seeing the person as much as the noisy stuff.

So the quiet style is a good one, but what was good for me in connection with television was first, the timing.

'54 was the first year we had live television in Maine of any kind.

Secondly, we had to get used to television before such complex arts as programming and staging and.

- All the slick stuff.

- All of the slick stuff came.

I mean, we didn't have scripts, we didn't have teleprompters.

They put in front of a camera, and you talked.

- [Interviewer] Both his speech and our conversation focused on political parties.

We moved from there to presidential selection, the Reagan mandate, and the art of politics.

- Today in Maine, each party must listen to the other, and sometimes you must actually wait until the vote is counted before you know the results.

A great difference from 34 years ago.

I think both parties are healthier for it, politics is more enjoyable, and the people are better served.

This is the first legislature for some of you, I assume, as I looked at the faces in this room.

You are at the beginning of your political careers.

When I began my own, I had no suspicion it would lead as far as it has or that it would consume the years that it has.

Perhaps some of you will seek other opportunities for service.

I hope so.

Perhaps some of you will have the great, good fortune to gain attention for your ideas, for your skills and talents at the right time.

Perhaps your neighbors will ask more of you.

Opportunity will find you.

New challenges will confront you.

And after more than three decades, you might look back and wonder whatever happened to that law practice you had committed your heart and soul to so many years before.

- [Interviewer] What about the relationship between television and political parties, that political parties are obsolete because the candidate can go directly to the people, and you don't need the party anymore?

- Well, television has had a lot to do with that, and there's no question that the political party as a significant force in politics has diminished substantially since that election, 1954, not only here in Maine, but elsewhere, and television is a big part of that.

And some regard it as the big contributing factor to that result.

I think that may overstate it somewhat, but because of television and other things, candidates are independent of parties now.

The parties never really did raise much money for candidates although not as much money was required either.

- [Interviewer] I think your first campaign was what, 18,000?

- $18,000 for five races, mine and US Senate and three congressional races, but the cost of the campaigns now has added to the importance of television and radio and also personal organizations.

- [Interviewer] Well, do the parties have any function anymore?

- About the only function they now have is the national convention or the state convention, and in Maine, the state convention has nothing to do with the selection of candidates, but it is an important political ritual every two years, writes platforms and gives candidates a forum - But certainly- - At a very important time.

The party I think in Maine has since '54 has acquired an importance in keeping the party active between conventions.

I think Maine may be a little different than other states in that respect, but the national convention, which selects the presidential candidate, has a function really only as in connection with the national convention and with the growth of primaries, state primaries, and the binding of delegates.

- You could do it by mail.

- You could do it by mail, and if that trend continues, the national convention is going to disappear, and if it does, national parties, I think, will disappear in the form in which we've known them.

- One of the criticisms that was made of the process in '80 was that with all the bound delegates selected in January and February and March, by the time the convention came around in August, the country and perhaps even the party had changed its mind or at least may have wanted to change its mind, but it couldn't because the delegates were locked in, and perhaps that's problem with the process that we've developed.

- Well, the selection of a presidential nominee should be a rational process that takes into account all of the factors, including, I might suggest, the judgment of party seniors, party officials, people who know these candidates.

- The parties used to act as a kind of filter, and if you knew somebody face to face- - They weren't so much a filter.

They were more a representative process just as our governmental institutions are representative processes.

They're not pure democracies.

Laws are made, not by the people.

They're made by the people's representatives, and the selection of presidents was done in the same fashion.

- But what I mean is it's sort of reassuring to know that the candidates were known personally and intimately by some group of people.

- Exactly.

There was somebody who had an opinion that was valuable.

- [Interviewer] That was based on something other than TV or- - That's right.

So that I think that my own view is that we ought to do away with the binding of delegates so that the process would truly reach its climax at the national convention.

The timing would be better.

It would be closer to the time of the general election itself.

We should have the benefit of the senior, well, the representatives of the party and the Congress, governors, wherever, and I think that as a prelude to that, there ought to be a real effort to rejuvenate party activity at the caucus level in every state.

Caucuses didn't mean very much when I ran for governor or 10 years before that or 20 years before that.

I remember when we met in caucus in Waterville for the purpose of picking delegates to the state convention.

Often, there wouldn't be one than half a dozen of us who gathered for the caucus, and we'd just sit down and write 36 names of whatever it was because nobody came, nobody was interested, and it wasn't that we were trying to control it.

It's just that we had- (laughs) - You were there.

- We were there, and we had to have X number of delegates from Waterville, so we chose them.

Well, things have changed since then, and I think in Maine, it's a more viable and more alive process now than it was then, but I think in every state, the party caucus is the basic unit of party political activity ought to be made more meaningful, ought to be a more continuous process.

- But one of the things that you said when you were starting out in '54 with Frank Coughin and the other leaders of the Democratic Party that what seemed to be going on there were a lot of ideas, and the party got an image of one of ideas, and you've made speeches in the past that that's what politics is really all about.

- That's right.

I remember that Frank, who was a party chairman, sent out, but he was not party chairman at that time.

He was selected the chairman of a pre-convention platform committee, and as chairman of that committee, he sent out questionnaires all over the state to all sorts of people, farmers, labor people, business people, big business, small business, and got an amazing return of ideas, and it was the first time that had been done within the memory of living man or woman, and those ideas were taken into the convention and built into a platform that attracted people.

First, the unusual way in which it was put together.

Secondly, because having been put together in that way, there were ideas that had some relevance to problems as they perceived them, and so we got identified very early on as a party who was willing to take ideas from whatever source and try to make them work if we were elected.

- But isn't that one of the problems with the Democratic Party today?

I mean, people say that it's out of ideas.

The Democratic Party nationally hasn't- - May be out of ideas, but it hasn't stopped trying to get 'em.

The trouble is we're not, having written the same formula to success so long that we've not been as receptive to new ideas.

In other words, we've ridden the old ideas.

We haven't let 'em die.

We've stayed committed to them, stayed committed to them too long in many instances, We still recognize that ideas are important, but neither we- Well, the Republican Party, having been out of power so long, was more receptive to anything.

- [Interviewer] They has a lot of time to think.

- They had a lot of time to think, but ideas still are at the heart of it, and ideas that come from the grassroots because that's where the first auguries of change are likely to come.

If you've got a caucus organization active in both parties close to the people who have problems, the farmers who can't get a decent price, laborers who I can't weren't adequately represented and who live in a work environment dominated by management.

Whatever it is, if your political organization is based at the local caucus level, there is a place for those ideas to begin to surface from the people who have problems, and politicians are quick to pick up ideas.

- Well, one of the ironies though is of the present day and the sort of shift toward the Republican Party across the country is that a lot of the ideas of the Democrats seem to have worked, and the people who they've helped are now voting Republican, the blue collar Republican, who's now in the middle class and living in the suburbs.

- So their perceived values have changed, but the change is part of it all.

Whether or not the working man and woman has become an economic royalist because- - Because he's got a mortgage.

- Position is more comfortable than it was say in the '30s is a question that history will answer in the next year or two or three or four or five, but I think that basically, the average American will understand the difference, and you already have that discussion.

The difference between a national policy that benefits the one or 2% at the top disproportionately and does not benefit the middle class, whatever its new level of affluence.

I mean, this administration's policies aren't tilted toward the laboring man.

- [Interviewer] They've done a pretty good job thus far of conveying that image while helping- - Well, I'm not so sure they have, I'm not so sure they have, and I don't have an independent poll to back up my instincts about it, but I do know that that on Labor Day this year, there was the first Labor Day parade in 13 years, and there were over by the most conservative counts 100,000 workers, and they weren't all air controllers, and by more... optimistic estimates as much as 200,000.

So that organized men and women in labor are beginning to see that this administration does not represent their point of view on what our policies ought to be.

Now, that isn't to say that that the opposition to this administration's policies have as yet framed the programs of the future that they regard as relevant to the kind of country they want to build, the kind of world they want to build.

They realize, as every American realizes now, that the last election has produced dramatic changes.

- You think the voters made- - Not all of them, no.

- [Interviewer] Were voting for those kinds of changes?

- No, I'm sure they did not.

No electoral mandate is that detailed, but everyone who wins an election understandably likes to convert to the results to his own notions of what policy ought to be.

I did when I was elected governor, and we did a lot of things in the name of my victory then that we didn't necessarily talk about during the campaign.

You don't talk in that detail about platforms during the campaign, but what the country was looking for after last November's election was change.

I mean, what their motivation was the high price of energy inflation, the frustration over the hostage crisis and the feeling that reflected a decline in American influence and power around the world.

Those were the basic, there were other frustrations, but those were the basic frustrations that led people to say, "Let's have change.

"Whatever it is, change will be better than what we've got," and that's what they said, and now they're beginning to say to themselves, in the very words of your question, "Well, I didn't vote for that kind of a change.

"I didn't vote for that much change.

"I'm not sure I like this.

I don't like that."

And we're entering that period of that kind of questions, and you'll hear more about it.

I mean, there are two...

These very obvious observations I've always made about politics from that first election night in Waterville when I was elected governor the first time that it is the victor who was always regarded as the expert.

Because I won that night, I suddenly became a new political expert, one who knew how to win elections against hopeless odds.

Actually, Governor Cross, whom I defeated , may have learned more lessons out of that campaign than I did, but because you win, you are the success, so you are the new seer.

Everybody turns to you for the new wisdom.

Second thing I've learned is it doesn't matter how auspiciously your victory is perceived or how auspicious your start in office or how glittering your promises or how enthusiastically they're welcomed, they'll be forgotten the next election day.

- So what have you done- - Unless the consequences of those new policies are seen by the electorate as being in their interests, and then they have to account for it.

So the two important words out of three.

There are three important words in politics: victory, consequences, and accountability.

The two most important ones are the last two, the consequences of what you do when you're elected with your victory, and the fact that you'll be held accountable for those consequences, good or bad, and if they turn out good, if you've pick the right policies, if you've been lucky enough to do that, and fortunate enough to do that and wise enough to do that, then the accounting will be another victory for you.

- [Interviewer] But don't you think that there's- Society's become so complex and government so large on different levels that politicians today seem to be pretty adept at avoiding accountability, at shifting the blame, pointing the finger one place or another?

Congress blames the president, the president blames Congress.

- And the people blame everybody.

- [Interviewer] And the people blame everybody.

- No, I don't think it's that.

- [Interviewer] I mean, nobody knows who to hold responsible.

- Well, but you see, you've made a statement that isn't born out by facts.

Even before the last election, over 50% of the Senate was in its first term.

So they don't- - So they are being held- - The popular image is that once you become a senator, you're a senator for 30 years or 24 years.

Actually, that isn't so, and in the House, I think the proportion of first-termers was even higher.

So there has been a constant flux and a constant change, and you look at how many presidents we've had.

I mean, I've served in Washington with eight presidents, and I was in Washington 22 years.

Now, that certainly is, people don't focus on that.

Sure, it's been one party, but even in that period, that 22-year period, we've had Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, four other Republican presidents.

In that period, we've had Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, three Democratic presidents, and yet the picture you get that most people have is that you've had a totally Democratic government for all these years without any change.

There has not been as much change as there should have been in government policies because Republicans tended to move in the direction of Democratic policies, in other words, moderate Republicans, and Democrats taken together tended to hold to these old ideas about dealing with problems, even when the demonstrably, they didn't always work.

And so you had sort of a static situation with respect to the substance of government policy.

Well now, that's being shaken up, and it's changing.

No one really knows what the final shape will be, but it's gonna be something different.

I think a healthy shake-up.

Not that I am glad my party lost, but nevertheless, you live with history as it happens, and the time had come when the American people wanted changes, and those changes are now being made.

They may not like the result and they may move on and press for other changes.

That's the nature of the process.

- [Interviewer] As we moved inside, I asked some questions about the personal side of politics and an accident in the early '50s that left Muskie with a broken back.

My first question was whether this had anything to do with his decision to run for governor.

- Well, I think my receptivity to public life grew in that period, strangely.

I'd been a struggling young lawyer, and we were married in 1948 and had two children in the first year and a half, and so making a living was a struggle, and there was a temptation to get out of politics and now to get a law practice established and build a better life for my family.

But after you have an accident like that, you think to yourself, no matter what plans you make, the unexpected can disrupt those plans and set you back, and you might just as well live life as it comes and do the things that you think you need to do and that appeal to you, and so I became less concerned, not in an irresponsible way, but less concerned with trying to manufacture a life of material progress for my family and more interested in making my life useful.

I don't wanna state that distorted, but really, I had a more positive perspective on public life.

Up until that point, I had thought of public life as something that involved maybe two or three terms in the Maine legislature, which I'd had, and then thereafter as navigation, as national committee man and as sort of behind-the-scenes politician.

Well, it changed.

- Do you have any regrets in terms of your political career and the effect of on family?

Emory and Mitchell, for example, are spending every weekend in Maine, and that's gotta be tough.

- Well, we did the same thing, but my observation is that whatever your field, if you're going to be successful, it is going to eat into the family time unless you make a positive effort to give your family a fair share of your time, and I found businessmen who complain about the lack of time with family.

Sports figures, I mean, suppose I were a big league football player, or even worse, baseball player or basketball player.

So much of the year taken up traveling away from home.

You can't take your family with you.

So I think that we've managed to give a lot of time to family.

This house is evidence of it.

This house, we sold the other house and bought this house because how does five kids divide one cottage on a house lot?

17 acres you can find a way to split up among five kids, and we're changing it now and adding to it in order to make it a more attractive family house, and I found this summer with these rooms added, the house is more open, more livable.

The kids are living here more.

They come to see us more often, and they enjoy it.

The deck is great.

We have meals together out there.

We have breakfast together out there.

They come in here and watch television, and it's easy to flow through these rooms, and they can get privacy here.

That further porch, which is quarter of a mile away, is the greatest reading porch you ever saw because at about three o'clock in the afternoon, the sun streams through the window right on that couch.

You can stretch out there with a good book, get through about two chapters before you fall fast asleep with the breeze going through the windows.

So there's plenty of room for privacy here, plenty of beds for everybody to stay overnight if they want to.

There's the woods out here.

They love to go down through the trails to the marsh, the salt marsh, and my youngest son, of course, when he has to walk over a little ways to play golf, which is his vocation.

So it's just a great family place, and summer places have always been that, and I've always kept them even though it's been an economic struggle because I wanted my family to be in Maine all summer along.

I wanted the people of Maine to understand that we were in Maine because we loved Maine, because we love to be here, and the kids are growing up here and loved it.

We don't play politics in this area.

Haven't all these years.

We just come up here and spend the summer.

They see us at the grocery store.

They see my wife antiquing.

They see us on main street buying gasoline, and so we're not playing politics with them.

We're just being Maine folks, and that's what this house is.

So in those ways that you manage to mix politics and private life, and I found it possible to do that.

One quickly get to- - In his speech to the legislature, the secretary of state stressed the strengths of our political system, but he also spoke of the challenges we yet face.

- Just how intimately connected our institutions have been resilient enough to allow for peaceful change.

That is their genius.

Your task is to make certain they continue to work and work well.

So you have no shortage of problems to address.

Your task is hitting the right solutions.

- [Interviewer] One thing which came through during our conversation was Muskie's sense of perspective.

For example, it appears here in his response to my question about the origin and long-range significance of the Moral Majority.

- Well, it's a mixture of things that is all being wrapped together under one label, and there is a conservative move in the country that's the product of economic conditions and frustration with government and government's growth and it's demonstrations of government's ineffectiveness.

I think that's part of it.

- [Interviewer] People tend to get more conservative in harder times.

- Yes, especially when the harder times take the form of this unprecedented inflation which eats away at their income, and they find themselves stepping back two steps for every step they take forward, and it's very frustrating for people as it is for all of us.

- [Interviewer] What about the religious aspect of it though?

Does that give you any pause?

- Well, that's the second part of this phenomenon that a lot of, I mean, there are a lot of these single issues, so called, that have surfaced in this same time, almost coincidentally.

I mean, the abortion issue which surfaced with the Supreme Court decision of, well, what year was it now, several years now?

So things like the abortion issue, gun control, which has been around and keeps cropping up with every new assassination beginning with Jack Kennedy, then Bobby Kennedy, then Martin Luther King, and any attempts on the Pope and President Reagan.

So that issue keeps cropping up, and interestingly enough, with some of these single issues, the pros and the cons divide along conservative lines that also divide people on economic issues.

And so they tend to get wrapped up together, but actually they're not, but whenever people believe in a cause, they look for lies wherever they can get them.

I mean, the word coalition and the concept of coalitions, concepts that have made the two-party system work in country for 200 years that if you can get enough people of different points of view to unite behind a single effort, you can win elections and control the government and hopefully advance all of the separate interests of the people that you've brought together.

And this may be, we may be seeing, the beginning of a new coalition here.

How long it will last, no one can tell.

- Doesn't it bother you to have God's will invoked on the floor of the Senate?

- Politicians will invoke anything they can on the floor of the Senate.

I mean, the rhetoric of these movements is forgotten with history.

There have been other, McCarthyism.

The '54 election when I was elected governor was the height of McCarthyism.

People forget that now, and that was surely fully as emotional a period, if not more so, than the Moral Majority emotionalism of today, and it's gone.

People forget what it was all about.

As a matter of fact, present time, I hear people making comparisons, but I think it was an entirely different set of issues at that time although it did involve anti-Communism, and that also is being resurrected with a similar virulence now as it found then, but it doesn't, in its present form, question the patriotism of Americans in the way that- - Not the way that it did then.

- The way that it did then.

So there's that difference.

- It does question their morality though.

I mean, if a politician doesn't go the right way, the word morality comes in.

That's a pretty heavy charge.

- Yeah, but it's ambiguous enough so that you can throw it any way you want to.

I really think that, when that effort is made that the effect is more likely to be a backlash rather than effectiveness.

In other words, the people who use that kind of- - [Interviewer] The negative campaign kind.

- Yeah, I think it it would turn into a backlash more often than not.

Exaggerated attacks of that kind, at least in this part of the country, evoke a sense of fairness that most people feel about each other.

I don't think people really think that there's that kind of morality, whatever you want to call it, involving these differences of opinion over single issues or over government policies.

I don't really believe that, and I think that those who try to make that case too strongly and irresponsibly will find that they're defeating themselves and their own purposes in the long run.

- [Interviewer] Muskie's strong feeling for the practicality of politics comes through in these thoughts on the Reagan presidency.

- Oh, I think that we're going through a period that's a mixture of things.

Number one, a new president with an unusually long honeymoon who's personally easy to like, and so I think that the country wants him to succeed because he's likable.

They want him to succeed for personal reasons as well as selfish reasons, and they're inclined to give him a chance to make his ideas work even though they may have doubts about his ideas.

So people, I think, are giving the president a chance to succeed.

It would be good for them if he succeeded.

I mean, if he can really turn the economy around with these policies, obviously, all of us would be better off.

I'd like to see him succeed economically.

I'd be better off however skeptical I am about the means that he's used.

So I think there's that period, a period of giving a new president a honeymoon period and an unusually long one and with a genuine liking for him extending it and intensifying it.

And secondly, his election, representing what he does in so many ways, is causing a lot of Americans to rethink the ideas that they have accepted as sort of gospel, and I shouldn't be using a religious word, should I, but is sort of the foundation of their own attitude toward politics, government, their own political philosophy.

And so I think people have been shocked into asking themselves, well, have I been wrong all these years?

Is there a better way to do things?

Is the president possibly right?

So they're rethinking a lot of their own views and values about politics and government and programs and other people.

So we're going through a period of, I think, national reexamination and reevaluation of where we've been going, the directions we've been following, the policies we've been supporting, and whether or not they're right and ought to be changed, and this period of reexamination and reevaluation, I think, will continue for some time, but then you will begin to see, I think, that the economy doesn't respond quite as Mr. Reagan and his team have promised.

It isn't responding that way.

There will be explanations every time there's a failure of response, but it's a dynamic process, and his people, his administration's, gonna have to be backing and filling on their economic policy.

They're gonna have to be backing and filling on their social policy because the social consequences of their economic and budget policy are going to be perceived as being harsher and creating more difficult problems for defenseless people than Americans generally have believed to be the case.

I mean, his safety net argument, I'm sure reassured a lot of people.

The thing we could move to this new economic policy without hurting anybody too badly.

Well, if it becomes perceived that there are a lot of people being hurt much more badly than has been held out, and even harshly, and that is creating problems that can't be dodged and that those problems are going to begin to fall at the state level and the local level are on people outside of government who are in a position really to help families and whatnot.

Then they're gonna begin to wonder, well, it doesn't work quite as well as Mr. Reagan thought it would or said it would or believed it would.

So we're going to be going through a period when- I mean, we're going through a period now when people are testing the ideas that are... the base of this new administration.

Then as they begin to form judgements about those ideas, then you're gonna begin to see them go off in different directions with different leaders going in each direction, and you're gonna see leadership emerge.

Everybody is playing it cautious now.

I think perhaps too much so.

- For a while there.

- I think if I'd been in Congress for example, and I'm not criticizing anybody who has been, but I think that it would've been well for anybody in Congress who has real doubts about these new policies to have expressed those doubts, however they voted, to have expressed those doubts, gotten them on the record a little more clearly so that if those doubts justified by events that there is a record to go to and to point to.

When I've been asked well, what do you think about Reagan's economic policies?

I say well, I don't think they'll work, but as I've said just now, I hope they work 'cause if they do, the country would be better off, and if they work, I'll give him credit for it, but I have my doubts, and this is why I have doubts.

That's the view that I would've tried to express, I think, if I'd been in the Senate.

- [Interviewer] Well earlier this year, the mood in the Congress, everybody was laying low.

Certainly, the Democrats were.

- Everybody on every side.

- Nobody wanted to- - Moderate Republicans who normally would've been in doubt about these policies have played low for some of the reasons I've tried to articulate here.

Number one, the country has said it wanted a change, so you've gotta give the change a chance to work, and you can't be just nay saying all along.

Number two, it's possible that the old policies were wrong and these policies may work, and so you ought to give 'em a chance to work.

It's that kind of a very frustrating period.

If you think back to the Roosevelt honeymoon of the '30s, I was a freshman in college when Roosevelt was elected, and there were a lot of doubters about his new economics at that time, Keynesian economics.

They weren't too loud.

He got his stuff through with almost no opposition, and we followed that same philosophy increasingly ever since.

- [Interviewer] After all the political talk, we toward the house, and Muskie's pride in the place, especially the recent renovations, was clear.

He also kept coming back to the role of the house as a focus for his family, and if you listen carefully, you'll hear the cry of a new Muskie grandchild in the background of this sequence.

What kind of repair was the house in when you got it?

- It was a disaster, not structurally although we did find quite a bit of rot in the sills this year when we built the foundation in order to winterize the house, but structurally, you can see these beans are in every room in the house, and they're, well, I suppose you'd call 'em two-by-eights, but they're more like 2 1/2-by-eights, and the whole house is like that.

The sills were eight-by-eights.

- But you had to redo all the walls and that kind of thing.

- No, we didn't have to redo the walls.

We had to paint them.

- That's what I mean.

- These white panels that you see were covered with National Geographic maps, every bit of them, with tacks, and then when we took the maps down, these white panels were a horrible blue color.

So the first thing we did the first week we owned the house was to have all those panels painted white, and we brought in white rugs and this white wicker furniture, and that made the house livable, and we've been doing little things ever since, but this is still my favorite room even though we've been sitting in the new study, which is very comfortable.

This to me represents what a summer house was 70 years ago.

- Well, when you decide you're ready to stop practicing law and traveling all over the world, is this gonna be home?

- Oh yeah, it's home now.

We won't spend as much time here as we will in our Washington house, but this is where we feel at home, and the family is here, and we'll be here every summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and I think probably next year, we'll stay here through September, then come up for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, maybe for a little skiing in the wintertime.

Anytime we like, when we feel homesick and we wanna feel at home and relax, this is where we'll come.

- [Interviewer] The senator was full of stories about the house from praise for the young contractor who had winterized and enlarged it to the role of the weather van in giving it its name.

- [Edmund] Ever since we bought the place in 1976, we've been trying to think of an appropriate name for this 17 acres and this old house, and we've called it Old Farm for most of that time because the land used to be part of an old farm.

The house wasn't, but the land was, but none of us were ever happy about it.

The first owner of this house was a Philadelphia family named Hines.

So my oldest son thought we ought to name it Hines' Quarters which didn't appeal to me at all.

So I was sitting here after we finished the cupola, and I looked up and saw the reindeer against the trees.

I said, that's the name.

It's Deertrees.

- [Interviewer] One moment from the past holds a prominent spot on the study wall.

- [Edmund] That was on the podium out at Chicago, and so AP sent that picture, that size, up here because they wanted to take the picture of our kids looking at it.

That's what ran the next day, and so naturally, we had it framed, and that's probably our most precious souvenir of that occasion.

- [Interviewer] The tumultuous convention of '68 seemed far removed from the house in Kennebunkport, and the recent private citizen clearly enjoyed that such a place was now within his reach, and yet, as in his speech in Augusta, a strong sense of commitment to the political process permeated our conversation, a commitment that seemed to me undiminished by retirement from public life.

- The thing that I like best about politics is that it forces you to grow, to expand your view of the world, to expand your understanding of its problems, to develop your abilities to deal with the world in which you live, to form judgements, and to prepare yourself for ever-increasing responsibilities.

I'm sure that opportunity for growth exists in other activities in and out of public life, but I, for one, in politics reached this point in my 66th year after 34 years in public life with no desire to retire.

(people applauding) And that, I think, is a product of what involvement in politics with all that means in terms of associating with like-minded and like-motivated people and with the people whom you serve, that is what I get out of politics, and I commend it to anyone who wants a life of adventure, a life of potential achievement broader than one's own selfish interests, an opportunity to build something for the future of this country and this world.

And so I bless the life I've had, I bless the Lord for giving it to me, and I thank all of you and those who preceded you who've made my life what it is.

Thank you very, very.

(people applauding) - [Interviewer] What is fascinating to me about Ed Muskie is his stature, the projection of character which seems to set him apart from so many of others who ply the political trade.

It's impossible to define precisely what this peculiar combination of qualities is, his volatile temperament and imposing physical presence, his idealism joined with an acute sense of the practical, his long perspective on events, and his politician's instinct to try to control them.

Perhaps though it's none of these things, but something much more simple, something very rare.

He is, I think, a man who knows himself and is thereby given the gift to lead.

(people applauding) - [Announcer] This program has been a copyrighted production of WCBB 10.