"Secure in My Own Mind"

Flying from Denver to Los Angeles last week in his chartered Boeing 727, John Anderson talked with TIME Correspondent Eileen Shields and looked back at his distinctive quest for the presidency.

Q. Couldn't you avoid accusations of being the spoiler by getting out of the race now?

A. I am willing to live with the accusations. The political theologians will be engaging in disputations about the meaning of the election--that's how they make their living. I feel secure in my own mind that what I am doing is right.

Q. What have you accomplished?

A. I have fought a good, clean, hard battle to get on the ballot, persevering over odds that people originally thought were impossible. I have rekindled the enthusiasm of young people with the process that was dormant, if not dead. I raised terribly important issues that otherwise would simply have been left on the shelf. The issues will live after me. This country has to wake up and face its problems in a new and a different way. Maybe it will take a year, maybe it will take longer, but others will think back on what I said and what I did and be heartened and encouraged to do the same thing.

Q. But if you can't win, why fight on?

A. I am not writing my political obituary on the first of October with five weeks to go. But all of us have pride and selfesteem. We have to be good at what we are doing. One of the things that mean a great deal to me is that all those people come up to me and say, "Thank you, John, for giving me a choice." That touches me. I am sufficiently emotional that I carry away a feeling of commitment to those people. It is not one that I would lightly abandon.

Q. Is this a matter of personal ego?

A. No, I am a maverick with a cause: the whole philosophy of a new realism. The cause is more important than the individual. If it were just a matter of satisfying some personal ambition, I would surely have given up the fight a long time ago.

Q. You really still think that you can win?

A. Don't ask me how. Don't ask me why. I am not that wise. But the potential is there. I will try. I will try.

Q. Why not start now to think about the '84 election?

Anderson paused. He began to smile. He turned to Correspondent Shields and said: "And she noted that there was a smile. Give me at least until the fifth of November."

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