Nixon, Agnew & Dent on Media Bias and George McGovern

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I think you would be very honest, though, most of the time.

He was concerned about sacrificing the governor.

They don't do that at any rate with us.

But there are going to be a pile of Senate seats and House seats, and he says, you know, they could lose both Democrat members.

And this could be true in many other states if we could get the right momentum.

So I think they really have some problems.

We have the candidates and the site and the policy program.

We have an organization, the Committee to Re-elect the President is in operation now.

And we have, I think, a good cooperation between the RNC and the Committee to Re-elect the President.

And to that, I just want to talk to some of you that I saw in an analysis the other day.

It probably hasn't occurred to any of you because just looking at the rotors and all the so-called experts are writing as if they have the same situation when you have, and I'm not using this term, but they use this term, and they train from the right as you do when you have extremes from the left.

they say no water right then it splits this party

There's a very great difference, generally, between the conservative and the liberal.

That's called the conservative and the extreme.

The extreme conservative and the extreme liberal.

And that difference is that the conservative and the extreme conservative

would rather lose fighting the principle than the compromise.

The extreme liberal wants power and is willing to compromise to get it.

Now, there are some, there are some of the McGovern-type liberals now that may be

like the extremes on the right, and they'll just say, no, no, we aren't gonna do it.

But generally speaking, if you will follow the, it seems to me that if you look at the New York Times, Sunday, Life magazine, all the media are now saying, well, McGovern should shift his position, it's perfectly all right, he should move over, and these are things that he's just been misunderstood on and so forth and so on and so on.

In other words, now, those same publications

wouldn't have put Goldwater in it.

I mean, they kept hanging over his head things that he may have blurted out at times and some that he didn't.

But you know, Goldwater was never being able to move one inch in the right because they said he must live with his record, he must live with his statements.

That's the media.

The media attitude towards someone, one of their own, is all that it is.

The media attitude is not only give them an edge, urge them to take it, because, come back to the proposition, I have a strength.

Come back to the proposition, never overlook it.

That's the extreme humble act.

He believes.

He believes very deeply.

But basically, he wants power.

I think another way you can analyze it is this.

So there's a person on the right and one on the left.

The one on the right does not believe that.

I mean, look here.

Think about it.

He's Lacey Fair.

He doesn't want a lot of government.

Frankly, he's against a lot of government.

He wants to get rid of a lot of it.

The one on the left is a totalitarian, basically, in terms of government.

He wants more of the government to do this and that or the other thing.

So the one on the right can't realize his objectives out of power.

The one on the left can only realize this by hand.

And that's why you hear, and you see, if you read about some of these so-called extremes that are supported to govern,

uh, that, uh, Baron Sosa, in his interview with the Times on Sunday, that, well, uh, that he had some young idealists, and, uh, those, and that, but he, but he knew that most of them, uh, didn't want to have this long fight for nothing.

Goldwater could never have said that in 64.

Because the Goldwater people in 64 were willing to fight and lose for Bristol.

You all remember.

I remember hearing it.

But none of that would be true.

That'd be my analysis.

I make a mistake.

Democrats have proven once more that as a party, they are undergovernable.

Mr. President, I'm sorry.

He governs this and the governor sleeps in bed.

Mr. President, Mr. President, I have a question on that.

But he definitely pulled a candle with the commissioner last night and his analysis that there's no way a governor could be stopped and that instead of losing votes on the second ballot, he would get votes on the second ballot.

Yeah.

He said he would pick up more from second preference.

Incidentally, all this analysis could be totally out the window because these various things change, and there are exceptions to it.

Because some of your conservatives are intelligent enough to realize you can't do a darn thing unless you're in a dismantling program.

So they want to get in, and they don't like to lose either.

And some of the fanatics on the left are basically being instructed

You see, you've got that sort of, that suicidal attitude, which we see in these, you know, Barnabas or whatever you're going to do, and some of that stuff.

It's an extremely, it's, it's, I would simply say that, on the other hand, the ability of a candidate to restrict his possessions

in order to win.

See, you have to do, every candidate must do things in order to get nominated, and you'd like to forget when he's trying to win for the election.

We've all been through this.

On the other hand, the question is, are you going to be allowed to move to lose your hard core?

And I would only suggest to the governor, I would not use the low-water analogy, because it is not the same.

Because he not only will be, not only will be, his media supporters not only will not have acted as changing his positions in order to win any position, they will encourage him to do so.

Or the other way around, you see, in the goal, and it was exactly the opposite.

Am I right in my history?

John, you went through some of that.

You're absolutely right.

He couldn't get off of that position at all.

Mr. President, don't forget it wasn't just the media.

I've been in that mess room now, boy.

Don't forget it wasn't just the media.

It was the campaign that Johnson used, too, against whatever he affected.

Very right.

Oh, the media campaign against Johnson.

Did you hear, did you read any editorial in any of the eastern press saying that that was below the belt?

You might be interested, maybe Bob can add more than I.

The Democrats had one terrible state convention up in Michigan over the weekend.

They finally agreed to give the Wallace people, after all, they got 51% of the vote, a fair percentage of the deficit.

They'd forgotten to take your money.

They tried to walk out, and it took them, what, 10, 12 hours to work out some confidence.

But the net result was they never got around to any consideration of their platform.

And they were able to make, from their point of view,

perhaps kind of fiction, he never got around to the Mustang problem.

And they want that to go away.

They sure do in Michigan, particularly.

He better not live there.

But you know, to me, I appreciate the amazement at what's happening.

You know, where Cunningham, you know, and White Knight, or I guess he was the spirit carrier for Teddy on that ITV thing.

I know he was a great hero of all the lives and so forth in California.

I don't know how you can get any further left than he is.

And he goes to the Delegate Choosing Party in California, and they pull him, one of our delegates.

because he hadn't supported the government, for instance.

They had a few problems, but they're not in trouble, mainly because, and by saying they're not in trouble, it's mainly because they will have an ally in the media, not me.

And we've got an ally in the media rather than an ally.

It's just as cold-hearted as that.

Boy, it makes a difference.

Well, anyway, we'll have to adjourn now.

I want you all to get back to your seats.

But you all let me suggest that earlier, that you and Jerry could have a few, you know, even going beyond this, what is the best strategy after the convention?

Thank you.

All right, we're good.

Nixon, Agnew & Dent on Media Bias and George McGovern

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on June 13, 1972

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