808 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

Today as you assemble to exchange ideas and assess your progress
over the past year, I hope you will find new inspiration and new ways
to bring security and significance to the life of Maryland's aged. I
wish you all possible speed and success in bringing the community
to our elderly and our elderly into the community.

WELCOMING REMARKS TO REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS-
REGIONAL PLATFORM HEARINGS, FRIENDSHIP

May 16, 1968

In the interest of time may I welcome and introduce the members
of the Republican Governors' Task Force to Maryland. I also welcome
our guests and wish to express special gratitude for the time and in-
terest of our witnesses.

These regional platform hearings emanated from a proposal to the
Republican Governors' Association by Governor Shafer. Our objective
is to develop platform recommendations based on knowledge and
executive experience. Today the majority of America's elected gover-
nors are Republicans, and as governors we represent the only Repub-
licans currently entrusted with high level executive responsibility.

The executive experience is singular in that it is the focal point
which coordinates the necessary administrative and legislative action
to implement policy. With all due respect, I admit a Democrat —
President Harry Truman — best summed up the essence of executive
responsibility when he said "the buck stops here. "

Republican Governors alone can claim this monopoly on the total
approach and the total responsibility for problem-solving. In addition,
we take a great deal of pride in the creative and imaginative, the dar-
ing and different solutions to old and new problems devised by many
of our Republican Governors. Success as well as experience should
give credence to our views.

This is the last of the regional hearings that have covered all the
major issues confronting our nation. Our next step will be to trans-
mit the information gathered by the task force to the policy committee
of the Republican Governors' Association and to the individual Re-
publican Governors for consideration prior to our meeting in Tulsa
next month. It is our hope that at this meeting genuine consensus