And I have to tell you as a grandmother, I worry about the fact that my grandchildren are going to be paying for all the spending, including military spending, that has gone on and the tax cuts that have come through.
And it was, it was not beating George Bush, believe it or not, the bottom line as far as I was concerned was introducing to the public who Gerry Ferraro was.
And with the new testing and research that's going on, I see a cure on the horizon.
And you really do learn a lot about what's going on in different countries by visiting those countries and speaking to the public officials there.
At first, I kept news of my situation to a limited group of friends and relatives; I didn't want people to treat me differently.
But I do think its necessary to have debates.
But I made one mistake which I would never repeat as a member of Congress when I was in Washington, and that was when I was elected I didn't go on trips because I was so afraid of having someone accuse me of taking junkets.
For one thing, one of the wonderful things that we now have is instead of the huge budget surpluses that President Clinton left us with, we now have these huge deficits that we're going to be facing into the future.
I also lose interest if I have to go over and over and over again because it looks to me if you're practicing - it becomes artificial.
I didn't look very sensitive and they didn't know me very well.
I didn't serve on a committee that dealt with foreign policy.
I do believe in the power of prayer.
I don't consider myself a survivor; that's someone who has gone through something terrible.
I don't like to practice ahead of time what I'm going to say.
I enjoyed debate on the floor but it's not really debate in the same way.
I have been extremely lucky; I am a person who is currently living with a cancer that is under control.
I knew what leukemia and lymphoma were, but I had never heard of multiple myeloma.
I readily admit I was not an expert on foreign policy but I was knowledgeable and I didn't need a man who was the Vice President of the United States and my opponent turning around and putting me down.
I said the thing... the only thing that would scare me in a campaign or running the country is that debate that you'd have to do during the campaign.
I suspected that if I disclosed my cancer and planned to testify, the foundation would get its hearing, and it did.
I was a trial lawyer when I was elected to Congress.
I was diagnosed in November 1998 when I finally went in for my annual checkup after losing my primary race for the Senate.
I was not an accomplished debater.
I'd call it a new version of voodoo economics, but I'm afraid that would give witch doctors a bad name.
I'm a happy camper because by doing this I have an opportunity to be on the cutting edge of research.
If you ask me a question, don't tell me what the question is in advance, 'cause I'd rather not know.
If you think somebody cares about you and believes your life is worth saving, how can you give up?
Let me say that I'm not a believer in polls and let me say further that what we are talking about are problems that are facing the entire nation.
My desk drawer is filled with all kinds of prayers.
People have put me on prayer lists in houses of worship, and the nuns at the schools where I went are praying for me!
People who live through transplants or disasters like Sept. 11 are survivors.
President Reagan's one-liners were terrific.
See that's a goal that I think it's very good in the debate to find out who the person is.
So my goal going into the debate was to change that image. I wanted to have the opportunity to let people see that I understood the issues, and by the way I had been talking about the issues during the course of the campaign but that was not what looked good on television at night.
The bottom line as far as I was concerned was presenting to the public who Gerry Ferraro was.
The polls indicated that I was feisty, that I was tough, that I had a sense of humor, but they weren't quite sure if they liked me and they didn't know whether or not that I was sensitive.
The public is entitled to know whether or not I am married to Jack The Ripper.
The purpose of the debate is to find where the two of them are and where the two candidates are on the issues and I think the format is bad.
Vice president - it has such a nice ring to it!
We had prepared, my staff had prepared for me a whole dossier on virtually - on George Bush on his votes on his records, what he had done over the past number of years in public service.
We spent a full week getting ready for the debate, though I spent several weeks ahead of time studying the issues.
We were so shocked by how fast that war went that President Bush did not have a plan, a peace plan.
What are my sources of strength? My husband and my three kids, my health-care team, and my religion.
You don't have to have fought in a war to love peace.
You people married to Italian men, you know what it's like.
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