Nixon, MacGregor & Haldeman on Busing and Equal Educational Opportunities Act

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Hello.

Mr. McGregor, sir.

Yeah.

Clark McGregor, Mr. President.

How'd you get along with your Southerners today?

We did well with the Southern group, Mr. President, on busing.

We had a very fine, productive meeting.

How many people came, Clark?

About 20, Mr. President.

House members only?

House members only.

Right.

We met in Les Earn's whip office just off the House floor, and there were a lot of votes, and so we had to sandwich it in between votes.

But we had the powerful people there.

We had Joe Wagoner and...

and the vocal, powerful people who are identified with this issue.

The only one we were missing that's been identified that I'm sorry we didn't have was Tom Downing.

He was not, however, in town, but we'll follow through and get him.

Sure.

And a couple of others, but the meeting was excellent, Mr. President.

If I do say so myself, and I have to add that because I handled it, but Jerry Ford and Richard Poff just were magnificent in their support of you and the position we've taken.

Good, good, good.

And the meeting finally ended by saying, yes, we recognize the President is absolutely right.

We can't get a constitutional amendment.

We're afraid that the moratorium will slow down the pressure for the constitutional amendment, but of course we could be mistaken in that, and we recognize that the constitutional amendment can't be passed with a two-thirds vote in the Senate, and surely we couldn't get...

38th State Legislature.

So, yes, we agree on that.

And we're gratified to hear that the President is hard on the moratorium and will not countenance any weakening of the moratorium.

Good.

We're pleased with that, and I pointed out to them and hammered at Section 406 and the 5- and 10-year cleansing provisions, the provisions by which court orders cease to have any effect.

And Joe Wagner finally came up with two modest proposed amendments, one to the moratorium proposal, which would, in his view, strengthen it, and that was in the Findings Clause, namely that old busing orders are as bad as new busing orders as a finding of Congress.

And, of course, a finding of Congress would not in any way diminish from the...

Perfectly all right.

So I said, I see no objection, whatever that is.

The amendment that he had was to the Equal Educational Opportunities Act proposal, and it had to do with borrowing some language that the Chief Justice has used in the opinion on the Three Sisters Bridge with respect to the authority of Congress.

And I said, Joe, will you send me that language, and I'll certainly do what I can to see if

We can consider it.

I said to the President, we can't modify his proposal now, but if it's offered by you, we could give support to it if Jerry Ford and Richard Wolf support it.

And Jerry and Richard said they would.

So we've made good progress, Mr. President.

We'll follow through with those who could not attend the meeting this morning.

Good, good.

I don't have such good news to report to you, sir, on the proceedings in the Senate Committee.

I got the report this morning at the...

that eastland uh backed off yeah you know and there have been additional developments sir that uh we're discussing right now by we i mean bob alderman chuck and wally johnson myself what are they um we cannot be sure that there will be a vote next thursday even though it appears as though eastland has promised such a vote he said i can't guarantee that there won't be a filibuster within my committee

that the vote on termination of the hearings may not take place until Friday.

And then, of course, if we don't have a quorum, we might have to go over to the next week.

So you think maybe Eastland is playing their game?

I am.

Yes, sir, I am.

So what else do I see?

The second development, Mr. President, is that even some of our Republican senators are saying

But maybe the thing to do is to divide the issue of continuation of the hearings from a signal to the Senate to start the client needs to debate in the Senate.

They want to go on and continue the hearings.

And I said, under no circumstances could we give any support to that.

So I regret to tell you, Mr. President...

No favorable news to report as a result of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

We're discussing it here, and I intend, sir, to give you a detailed report in writing with some suggestions that I have for your consideration.

Yeah.

So at the present time, then, they...

What happened?

Did they hear Janine today?

Yes, and they're hearing him again this afternoon.

And who are they scheduling?

No other additional witnesses will be scheduled, Jim Eastland assures me, until the executive session has been held.

What about that?

I thought they wanted to hear the secretary and the lawyer.

I think I persuaded Senator Eastland that that would not be in the interests of anyone whom he professes to be supporting in this effort.

Hal Janine is doing a good job.

He's an effective witness.

He's doing a fine job.

Yeah.

But the point is that now you mean the Republicans may not stand up on termination of the hearings.

Is that it?

Senator Mathias, well, he will not commit his vote to me to vote to terminate the hearings.

And Senator Scott keeps talking about severing the issue of going forward with client needs and the issue of terminating the hearings.

And I have knocked that down repeatedly.

Oh.

But he continues to talk about it.

Why the hell does he do that?

I asked him, why are you doing that?

And he said, this is the way to muster the necessary votes for Kleine's confirmation.

We don't care much about that.

You know what I mean?

That's not the big issue.

I kept saying that Kleine is simply a backdrop for the gut political fight between Teddy Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

That's what this is.

But we can't seem to get our Republican senators to appreciate the full gravity of this situation.

Yeah.

But we're still fighting, Mr. President.

Mm-hmm.

Well, we can't go now.

We can't have Clint East...

I mean, he doesn't have the provocation to do anything at this point.

He can't, you know what I mean?

We've got to have the vote.

The big move.

He's got to have a vote before he can do anything.

That's right.

We've got to have that vote.

Yeah.

And then, let's see.

Yeah.

So our energies are all devoted to, and will continue to be devoted to getting eight votes.

Nine if we get 100% attendance we'll need.

to vote for termination period without any additional witnesses on this aspect or that aspect at all.

So we'll continue our efforts in that direction.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that sounds right.

At least I think you're...

The very fact that you're going to...

the very fact that you're going on for a week.

It seems to me, I mean, going off for a week, that's good.

I think it is.

There will be no...

There's a certain tendency, Clark, you've got to remember, too, in these things, that people get awful goddamn tired of it.

It's a news story.

Right.

People can get a little satiated with it.

Yes, and women have.

And I just let the thing ride around a while and rumble around and at least...

At the present time, there's a certain amount of confusion, I suppose, at ITT, and can keep their side up front this time.

Okay?

Thank you, Mr. President.

Bye.

Nixon, MacGregor & Haldeman on Busing and Equal Educational Opportunities Act

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Also recorded on March 29, 1972

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