Whether I serve one or two terms in the Presidency, I will find myself at the end of that period at what might be called the awkward age-too old to begin a new career and too young to write my memoirs.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten.

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty...an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.

There has also been a change - a slippage - in our intellectual and moral strength. Seven lean years of drouth and famine have withered a field of ideas.

It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured - perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in - for that should be important only to me - but what kind of America I believe in.

I'm 43 years old and I'm the healthiest candidate for the Presidency of the United States. You've travelled with me enough to know that I'm not going to die in office.