Charlie, I really want to thank you for that splendid and nourishing introduction. Of all the introductions that I've received that's certainly the most recent. I can tell you that. I love to have Charlie introduce me because he's a great warm-up comic - he gets the crowd in a nice jocular mood and from then on out you got smooth sailing. I don't want to go one second longer, though, without telling you how proud I am that two of my dearest, loving friends are in this audience today. One is the legendary screen star, Kirk Douglas, and Kirk, I can't tell you how happy I am to have you here. Charlie, Kirk and I, when we have a little vodka, will tell you about the time he and I were in Russia and we had a hell of a time, but that's for another seminar. Also one of the great international motion picture figures and my friend of a thousand years, Mo Rothman [is here], and, Mo, I'm so pleased that you're here.

I would like to chat with you a little bit about what the title of my so-called speech is - that is, "Hollywood and Washington, Both Sprung From the Same DNA". I have had the supreme good fortune beyond the lot of most men or women to be able to spend my entire working career in two of life's classic fascinations -- movies and politics. And I have to tell you that in both those landscapes I have known the great, and the near great, and those who thought they were great, and I want you to know that that latter category outnumbers the first two by a long shot.

But the whole thrust of what I am about to say has to do with how much alike are movie people, movie stars, movie executives and politicians - they're both in the same kind of business, unpredictable, sometimes glamorous, they're anxious to please, addicted to power, always on stage, hooked by publicity, enticed by applause and usually reading from scripts prepared by someone else. And so I think it's very, very difficult to distinguish which is the entertainment capital of the world -- Hollywood or Washington, D.C. That's why I say that the one thing they are, though, they have to have come out of the same DNA.

Now, as Charlie said, I was in Dallas on November 22 [1963], and I landed at 6 p.m. at Andrews Air Force Base on the evening of Friday, November 22. I was there in that motorcade when by a senseless act of mindless malice the 35th President of the United States was slain in the streets of that most unhappy town. And in those intervening years from then until today I've been able to be a participant at the very highest levels of government, like Charlie, and I've also been able to mingle and be part of the movie community, and I am a more than casual observer of the mores and customs of movie stars and studio bosses. So out of the melange of experience I want to tell you about some lessons that I have learned as a result of that long experience. I hope these musings will be interesting to you. I can certify they're going to be damn interesting to me. And maybe this comes at an interesting time in our history.

Here we are. It's fair to say we're in a moment of national discomfort when the public ponders the leakage of civic trust, when the Congress is arguing about moral omissions and personal contrition and their effect on these gauzily- designed Constitutional strictures on impeachment. A lot of people believe that there's something slithery going on, stirring about on the dark underside of the political fabric where we are engaged today. Let's face it, [it is] an increasingly coarse and even an abrasive debate. So my own take on that is that no matter what happens in this country, this nation somehow is able to go on and see its way through it. We've gone through a lot, and we will do well when we get by this one. However it comes out. But let me cite for you some of these lessons.

First thing I learned, and I learned this in a way that made a big impression on me, is that the one enduring standard by which every presidential advisor, every presidential counselor and even every president must be judged and measured is not whether you went to Harvard, Yale or Princeton, or even San Diego State, or whether you did 1600 on your SATs or whether you were charismatically enabled or whether you made millions of dollars in what we sardonically refer to as the "private sector." Now, these are all impressive credentials and you may wear them modestly or otherwise, but when the decision crunch is on in the White House or in the Congress, when the dagger is at the nation's belly, there's only one gauge by which you will inevitably be measured. It is whether or not you have good judgment. Now what is "judgment?" I say judgment is a little elf who lives somewhere between your belly and your brain and who from time to time tugs at your nerve edges and says "Jack, don't go that way, though everybody's telling you to do it. Go this way."

One of the reasons why I admire Kirk Douglas so much is all his life he's had this little judgment elf telling him to do something different. He was the first movie star to go on his own, unshackle himself from the studio system. He's made pictures that caused great controversy. He broke the blacklist in Hollywood, but always going against the grain because somewhere somebody was saying "Kirk, I know they're telling you to go that way, but go this way." And he did and his whole career and life have been enhanced by it. That's not to say that you don't make bad judgments from time to time, but you have to make judgments. I never saw one presidential decision when I was in the White House ever made when the President had all the facts he wanted. Kim Campbell was Prime Minister of Canada and I dare say that she experienced the same thing. You walk down a half-lit corridor and then it becomes very dark and pretty soon you run out of information, but at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning you have to make the decision. So you make it on judgment, or instinct, or intuition, you name it, but it is that intuition, instinct and judgment which is the one ingredient on which the rest of the human condition depends for guidance.

Same way in Hollywood, good judgment. One studio has got a picture that is in real trouble, it's going over budget, way over schedule, they've got a young director, it's his second picture, he's untested. Should they fire him? Get a new one? Should they shut the picture down and start all over? The head of the studio goes to the location and makes the judgment call without having any idea whether he's right or wrong. We're going to stay with the director, we're going to finish the movie. The movie was Jaws and launched the career of what is obviously now, and not even arguably, the greatest film maker of our time. Good judgment.

I learned that forecasts, particularly economic forecast, have about as much accuracy if you're trying to forecast more than two weeks, as much chance of accuracy as winning the lottery. If you truly believe in long-range forecasts such as economic forecasts you are enrolled in defunct mythology because most forecasts, particularly economic, are based on unwarranted assumptions leaping to preconceived conclusions. Remember, when an economist cannot remember his phone number, he'll give you an estimate. So I don't believe in forecasts. I don't believe that anybody in Washington can tell you what's going to happen a year from now. No one knows what the Internet will look like five months from now, nobody knows whether the picture script they've written and have green-lighted is going to do any business or whether it will tank the first week in the box office. Don't know. It was all summed up by William Goldman in his wonderful book, and if any of you is interested in reading a wonderful book it's called Adventures in the Screen Trade, and William Goldman wrote these immortal lines: he said, "in Hollywood, nobody knows anything." True. In politics nobody knows anything, but you have to suffer through these endless talking heads on television prattling on about what's going to happen and nobody keeps score on their prophecies and if they did they'd be batting 120 in the leagues.

It was all summed up for me. I'm an admirer of the English language, and a man named William Hazlitt, who was an English philosopher in the 18th century, he summed up something very relevant to today. He said: "Man is the only animal who both laughs and weeps because man is the only animal who understands the difference between the way things are and the way they might have been." Think about that a little bit, because it's true. I learned that nothing lasts. What's up sooner or later will go down. Do I need to remind you about this endless bull market that was never going to end? What's down sooner or later is going to go up. I remember we'd be in the White House and the press would be comparing Johnson unfavorably with Caligula and it would be a terrible time and the President would say "Well, boys I tell you what we're going to do. We're going to hunker down like a jackass in a hail storm and wait till the winds stop blowing." Which, by the way, is good advice for the President we have today. So I learned that nothing lasts. Victory is a prelude to defeat and failure is the precursor of triumph. It never fails.

Let's take John Travolta as a good example in the movie business. I mean, several years ago he was dead dog meat. You had to subpoena people to go see his pictures. Then one day he gets a call from Quenton Tarrantino who says, "John, I'm making a small movie. I've got a small part, small money for you." Travolta says "Count me in." The movie is Pulp Fiction. As a result, studios get on their knees begging Travolta: "Here, take my 20 million to make my picture, please."

I learned that polls, p-o-l-l-s, particularly political polls, are Janus in disguise. The poll is accurate on the very minute it is taken. It is in decay 20 minutes later. So you can't rely on polls. A political poll is like the picture of Dorian Grey. The face of entropy. I can't tell you how long I searched for a sentence to use the word "entropy."

E-n-t-r-o-p-y. Not easy. Not easy. And the politician who's constantly putting up a wet finger to check the political winds that blow and checking the polls before he votes is usually a politician who's going to leave office with a wet finger. Believe me.

I learned that the First Amendment in our country is the shield that protects us from the seductive embrace of those who declare themselves the guardians of all good and who would like to be able to tell you which intrusions they're going to both condemn and banish. Now, these guardians of goodness I've met a lot because they tell you that they, and they alone, are the ones who can tell other people how to conduct their lives. They repeat like a gramophone. Over and over and over again. The ideology of the rigid-minded. I know best how you ought to live your life and how you ought to raise your children. Now, I have met in the movie industry a lot of those guardians of good. Believe me, I have. And I've met a few of them in the political world and whenever I confront one in a debate I always want to utter, as many of my friends know because they've heard this before, an old Texas prayer and it goes like this: "Dear Lord, let me seek the truth but spare me the company of those who have found it."

It's not easy being a First Amendment man or woman because if you're an advocate of the First Amendment you have to allow that which you find hardly meritorious, unwholesome, soiled, to enter the marketplace. And sometimes the stench of the odor so overwhelms you you want to call your Congressman and say "For God's sake, pass a law and protect me from this slime." But beware before you make the call, because when a tyrant first appears he always comes as your protector. Never forget that. And so I think that we have to always be on guard against that.

Finally, the lesson I have learned is that there is one singular imperative that I think is essential in this 21st century coming up. It is a word and it's called "leadership." Now, we in Hollywood say "magnificent," "fabulous," "nothing like this before," but we never define what it means and in Hollywood we use the word "leadership," but nobody ever defines it. What is "leadership?" Well, I found my definition about fifteen years ago. In a small little cemetary on the outskirts of a Normandy French town called Caen. This little cemetery was inhabited by about 200 graves. These are mostly RAF pilots shot down during the great invasion. And on one of these crosses that I came across is this inscription: "Leadership is wisdom and courage and a great carelessness of self." Now what you want to do is think about that, just for a little bit. What does it mean? It means that from time to time great political leaders must put at hazard their very political futures in order to do what they believe to be right in order to benefit the people they have by solemn oath sworn to serve. Great directors, producers, studios, must from time to time take large risks because they want to make a film they think is important though it may put to peril their place in Hollywood's Pantheon. So that wisdom and courage and a great carelessness of self is easy to say, but it's damn hard to do.

You'll be pleased to know I'm on the home stretch of what I'm telling you now. The first time I ever saw this definition come to vibrant living light before my eyes was a long time ago. It was in December 1963. Lyndon Johnson had been president for about three weeks. At that time I was actually living at the White House on the third floor of the mansion and, by the way, if ever you're on Jeopardy and somebody says "Who were the only two assistants to a president who have actually lived in the White House," the answer is Harry Hopkins with FDR and Jack Valenti with LBJ. Now I'm only asking that, if it's a Double Jeopardy question, I want 10% of your winnings. That's all. So this morning, I'm up when the President is up. He said "Why don't you call Dick Russell. See if he'll come over for a cup of coffee." Now, for those of you who are in the Baby Boomer age and beneath, maybe you've never heard of Dick Russell. Richard B. Russell was the senior senator from Georgia. He was at that time the singular leader of the Senate, in prestige, in influence, and in integrity, but he had one irremedial flaw-- otherwise I think he would have been a great president. He was the leader of the segregationist forces in the Senate. In 1952, eleven years earlier, the post of Democratic leader fell open in the Senate. All the senators said "Dick Russell, you be our leader." He says "No, Lyndon Johnson should be our leader." Now, mind you, at this time he was 44 years old, Johnson. He was in the fourth year of his first term - he was a rookie senator, but because all the senators said "We want Lyndon Johnson," he became leader. The youngest leader in the history of the Senate and the greatest parliamentary commander the Senate has ever known.

So Russell came in to the second floor. He's about my size, bald, blue eyes; Johnson's 6 ft. 4. [Johnson] grabbed him and embraced him and they sat down on a little green couch overlooking the Rose Garden in what is called in the mansion the West Hall. Johnson sat on a winged back chair so his knees were touching Russell's and I sat to the right of Russell and the President put his around him and he said "Dick, I love you and I owe you. I wouldn't have been the leader without you, I wouldn't have been vice president if I hadn't been the leader and I wouldn't have been president if I hadn't been vice president. So I'm sitting here because of you, and because I love you and I owe you I wanted to ask you here so I could tell you face to face, please, please don't get in my way on this Civil Rights Bill. This has been languishing in the Senate for too damn long, I'm going to pass that bill, Dick, I'm not going to change one word of it." Then he lowered his voice and said "And if you get in my way, Dick, I'm going to run you down." And Russell, impassive and mute until then, began to speak in those rolling accents of his Georgia countryside, and he said "Well, Mr. President, you may very well be right, but if you do you're not only going to lose the South forever, you're going to lose the election." And Johnson, I must tell you, in all the years that I knew him after that, I was never prouder of him than on that Sunday morning a long, long, long, time ago, because he looked Russell in the face, grabbed him by the shoulder in an affectionate gesture and he said "Well, Dick, if that's the price I have to pay, I'll gladly pay it." That moment for me was kinda like an epiphany. It illuminated in a blinding blaze the highest point to which the political spirit can soar. I've not seen that happen very often in Hollywood or Washington. But it happened that day, which is why I have never forgotten that lesson and I never will.

Now, as I often say, I'm enchanted by what I'm saying up here, but I would like to tell you that that's the end of my prepared text, which will go rollicking down the corridors of time I'm sure, and tell you that I'm delighted to have had this opportunity to hold you captive, and if you have any questions before we depart the scene I'd be pleased to have them, but I do thank you for being so attentive.