Nixon, Colson & Haldeman on PRC trip and unemployment

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Hello?

Well, you're still in bed.

That's good.

Well, now don't, uh, don't crush yourself, because there are other things to do.

And we can play.

Still got a fever?

Well,

Well, just nurse it off, believe me, because when you've got one, you've got to put it very close to the vest.

Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.

Sure, sure.

Okay, that's good.

Well, we won't bother you there.

No, no, I'm going to leave today.

We're going to have a good day.

All right.

Sure, sure, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, not being too concerned about what happens at the moment before and during the year.

I was thinking, too, that there's a lot going on here.

I actually think that's pretty good.

About what I was expecting, I'm pretty good at this time.

I think I might be able to get through, you know.

Although, we did have very positive stuff.

Unfortunately, we haven't had .

That's one of those things.

And the fact that it didn't change shows you the .

I have a hell of a memorandum.

I think there's a lot in that.

I'm not sure.

I mean, it may be that he's seen all of our weaknesses and none of their weaknesses, but that's inevitable.

Yeah, but I mean, and he should, but what I meant is that they have some problems too.

But on the other hand, his point that we have really done had a lot of bombshells is still running, running two to three points better than we were before.

It's a pretty good point, you know.

That was a rough time.

That's what we had our lowest point.

Then we came back up in Gallup and stayed there ever since.

Of course, we've had some too.

Probably done better than he deserved.

I don't know what we get.

Oh, I don't see it.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Well, I can't get him.

I can't get him, so that's important as well.

He can have two others.

He doesn't want to.

I don't think he can see, for example, if that's how you see it.

Well, if you get back to your, back to your, get rid of your coat and your collar, take off ten minutes.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, really, really don't, because we're, I'm gonna be honest with you, it's not the way everybody's concerned.

Okay.

Most of the stuff is blue.

That's practically ready to die.

I'm looking to see whether I've got other dates here.

When do we leave for China?

On the 16th?

Huh?

The 16th.

Wouldn't it be well to have a bipartisan movement, frankly?

Well, better still, if we leave on the 16th, why not the morning we leave?

We don't leave in the morning, do we?

He doesn't know why.

He says, we ain't coming out of this by nine hours blind.

But we need six hours, so it's only three hours on the clock.

I'd like to have a five-hour meeting on the 16th before we leave, and I want that to be only two by five.

Now, I want you to keep

If you can get your leaders thing open, Bob.

Keep open.

Let's not do the Republicans again.

My view is to do the cabinet on the 20th, right?

Let's take a look here.

On Romney, if you would, I just think you'll have to tell her that it's just no good.

I'm sorry, brother, that I, you know, whatever I said to Romney, I thought he meant before we sent our housing.

That's what he said.

There's a housing message or something.

I thought you'd see it.

Or you heard the thing, I had to see it.

Yeah.

Well, he says it's not because he thinks so.

That is what we're out of here for.

What you know.

Well, what you know.

He's going to listen to what you say.

Yeah.

He's going to do his best and say, well, this is great.

We'll hold a housing message if you don't let us.

How's that?

You think that'll work or not?

Tell me, because if I've got to come back, then I've got to set that thing aside.

You know what I mean?

Let me ask John.

Huh?

Let me ask John.

Yeah.

It's very important for you to keep those days clear.

Maybe take an hour off a day, Bob, to listen to Rodney.

It's not really worth doing.

What would be... You would say if a candidate is, I've got to come back probably Sunday night and start working here.

You'd have to stay up there and work Monday.

Well, I might.

I might stay up there and work Monday, too.

Yes, that's correct.

Monday's safer.

Right.

I'm back here.

Look, John has got to do his best to get the rock he didn't put off, and something's coming up with the, uh... Got the plane.

I see him, too.

What the hell do you have on for the 13 o'clock?

But I just wanted to let them know, I know we could, I don't want to fill the hole in it.

I see Larry Tender.

I told him to come to Tender.

Alright.

Uh, Vietnam 11.

Yeah.

Now that'll only take you a couple minutes.

That's no problem.

Uh, the McElroy thing is set for 11.30.

Are we good?

She in the square at the end?

12.

I think it's in 12.15.

Uh...

I can move a lot of people right after the Vietnam announcement.

We're going to go to 11.

We've got macro at 11.30.

This stuff is not...

in a ready bridge, you know.

Or what you do, rock me over leather.

Squeeze in between the Vietnam and I'm turning the metal over.

You want to do that.

I just kept a goddamn thing down.

I was going to ask what was happening.

I kept rocking it because it's

What does he want to talk about?

I don't know.

Romney at 10.

The problem is, Carlton doesn't want you to see Romney on Thursday.

He doesn't want you to see him go after him.

Must be about something on Friday.

Is that what he said last night?

All right, then you've got... Is that what they tell her?

The only time you can't see answers, you either do it there or you don't do it there.

and just see if you can work it out, will you?

No.

Then I cleared from there on.

Why don't you see Robin before the domestic console and say, do you want me to review this with the domestic console?

And I said, probably.

All right.

30 Laird, 11 o'clock Vietnam, 11.30 McElroy, 12 o'clock Sheehan, 12.15 what?

Robin.

What?

You'd better put in eggs over 10.

Okay.

I think that's the time period to do eggs, okay?

Have eggs go over 11.

11, brownie and 10, yeah.

I can't really expect Ronald to be 20 minutes off.

You know, I just can't do it.

You feel very hurt when you see, like, golden times, you know, how much you've done.

You say that they beat me at 11.

Right.

Yeah, we do the anonymous.

That knocks it all off until, John, that's the only time I can see it.

It would have passed.

You've got a cabinet and the leaders on the 25th, the Republican leaders.

Correct.

All right.

Now hold the 26th and 27th for me.

I don't want anything scheduled now.

I really mean that.

I don't want a goddamn nickel thing.

Right.

All right.

And Bartzell on the 28th, we do have Wallace, right?

Right.

All right.

He was the first who got the governor's seat.

Yep.

It was the 25th for Colombo, but if he can't do it the 25th, I can't do it another day.

Who else did we put on the...

I don't know.

Paragraph this day.

Well, nothing.

We just scratched the floor.

We probably can go for dinner that night.

If we have things we have to schedule, that's the day we can do it.

If we can avoid them, we'll avoid them each and every day.

This is the whole of the night in the penthouse.

Just to scratch my mouth.

One, two, three, four, five...

I hope, because let me say that when I say to put things in, I really don't mean cats and dogs now.

I know.

Because I really got to study.

I've got to be over here, and I just want to do it, see.

So where there's, like, well, things that I don't want to do, like Arthur Bunning swearing in, and Sheehan swearing in, and meeting the...

the held industries group and so forth and so on, you know, they're just things that are not going to contribute to our great goal.

Correct.

We turn all that on now.

Totally.

Only go with the subject.

Absolutely.

If you have to see Laird about something, if I have to see Laird or Rogers or any general, well, I'll have to see him.

And of course, you've got the common opinion.

I'll see him.

I'm as bad as anybody else.

Some bitches get to me, but I just want you to protect me totally on this.

And you've got to cover the domestic council and Henry and all the rest of it.

There just isn't time to do a damn thing.

I'll use telephone, and I'll have a telephone with you guys.

You see, on the 13th, we're shooting that day, but that's all right.

and reissue it in a couple of hours.

You should in the morning completely, but you'll be cleared by 1 o'clock.

That's right.

It's a very good idea.

And I'll go up there and finish up one probably within the evening.

You'd better off to stay up there if you can.

I agree to 17th and come down in the morning to 18th or something.

Yeah, I agree.

But you won't have the TV that night till 9 o'clock.

So you've got to... You know, we can peddle here.

Hey, now.

Come on.

Are we going to do a bipartisan leader foreign policy briefing before the TV that we're having?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you know, at 8 o'clock.

No, no, no.

We do it at 7 o'clock.

7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

What they want to do is give us the hope.

The thing dies, it opens.

They don't think you have to breathe, but you probably have to open the meeting.

If you don't do it, you can open the meeting and walk out as strong as you can.

The reason for doing it is simply to influence the thing of

It complains and it sets it up so we've got a...

It has a great hand.

It sets up the opposition so they raise it back to you.

They won't know what you're saying, you won't help them.

In other words, you're giving the opus.

The opus, but not the speech.

You've got to let them test you.

Now, it's not easy to have a bipartisan view.

Let's go.

I might not even come, you know what I mean?

I just might say I don't want to come.

You know, if I get boxed in, and you've got to be, frankly, I know it's awful hard, but you've got to be there.

And then you can go in the last minute if you want to.

The purpose is to, for example, deliver a copy to them.

I forgot about that.

Jesus Christ, can't we do that when we come back to China?

We're going to be too late.

We're going to be leaving on the weekend.

I'm having for dinner at 4 or 5.

I'm just having over in the bay.

Don't you think that's all right?

I don't have to go to a party or go packing on the boat.

I don't know if I think so yet.

Well, if not, that's perfectly all right.

I mean, just say I'd like for him to come over and we'll sit around and talk, but I just feel that I've got to now remember that I've got one hell of a problem, and I just can't set up another event, Father.

It can't be done.

Father, I don't understand.

I mean, he'll appreciate the personal manner where we can sit and we can talk a little about old times and tell him.

You know, if you'd like to have to bring Betty down for a weekend as well.

Betty and the kids.

Yep.

That's a good idea to bring that down here.

Bring it steady and get it down for a weekend in Florida on, say, the 21st, 22nd, and 30th.

And I'll have them all over to remove you or something.

That's given vacation time.

The weekend of the 5th, 6th, and 7th.

The weekend of the 12th, 11th, 12th, and 13th.

I've got the study down right after.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'll just have Don figure it out.

You'll have to handle this with the world as a restaurant.

They'll all want you to come to the party.

I'm just not going to do it.

I don't think I should go to the goddamn party.

I agree.

That's completely...

I don't think you should ever go to the party.

I'll just say that I would advise them to make sure you can pull the plug on it now.

I'm going to invite the users and their children to the party.

We'll give them the email.

Yeah.

You see, that's hard.

It's not gonna make a bigger thing for him.

Dom's gonna have a, maybe that's gonna give him a chance to talk to the others.

He's gonna have a chance to talk.

I got everything.

Out of the way, out of the way.

On the other one, the cabinet leader, I want to check this.

He said, you know, I asked for us to train some of those people.

If we didn't train, we should have the rest of the agency heads in the executive office.

In the executive office, yes.

That would mean Helms, Stein, Ches.

That's not bad.

Dave Lincoln.

Yeah.

Dr. David.

Yeah.

Bill Eberle.

Oh.

At the weekend of the 12th, 11th, 12th, 13th, I've got this study done right now.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'll just have Don do it, and you'll have to handle this with the grillers and the restaurant.

They'll all want you to come to the party.

I'm just not going to do it.

I don't think I should go to the goddamn party.

That's completely engaged.

I don't think you should ever go to the party.

I would just say that I would invite them, in nature, to pull the plug on a calendar day.

I would invite the users and their children to a bar for a weekend.

We'll give them the evening house.

We'll give them the excellent house.

We'll give them the beanie house.

We'll give them Mars.

Those available.

We'll buy her sex and give them a little vacation before they leave.

That's hard.

It's not a bigger thing for him.

But I'm just going to have a... Maybe that's going to give him a chance to talk.

The other...

It's going to give him a chance to talk.

I got everything.

Out of the way.

On the other one, the cabinet there, I want to check this.

He said, you know, I asked for us to train some of those people.

If we do train, we should have the rest of the agency heads in the executive office.

In the executive office, yes.

That would mean Helms, Stein, Sanchez.

That's not bad.

Dave Lincoln.

Dr. David.

Phil Eberle.

That makes it a pretty...

No, I want the dinner big.

Okay.

I want the dinner big, and I want it with round tables.

I want the administration family.

I want the top administration, you know, the White House.

Yeah, and I want the top, I want the assistants to the president.

Then we should have Rosewood.

Oh, Christ, I want to have Rosewood.

I have Leonard Garment.

I want people.

Garment, Klein, Price.

We ought to have done Houston.

That gives them a normal location.

And I didn't mention that he's leaving too.

That's good.

What about General Hershey?

You can go to 80 on that.

Make it a dinner of 80 people.

That would bring it over 80.

No more than 100.

I don't want it to be horribly crowded.

It would be about 97.

That's very good.

Now, what about Connie Stewart?

Sure.

Absolutely.

Okay.

That's good.

That'll cover the whole White House family.

Would you have Scali?

You wouldn't normally do that.

I think you have to.

I think so.

No, I haven't.

The scalp is under, well, you don't give, you know, you don't give close to much, you know, socially, you know, you don't give a goddamn thing.

And I think it might be a good idea, you know.

Sure.

Uh, you had a John Brown, John or Bob Brown, uh, has to be there.

Also, John Whitaker should be there because he's a former cabinet secretary.

Sure.

And the other guys who've been listening to council should be there.

Well, Whitaker's an older fellow.

Whitaker's part of it.

Make a perception of him, Bob, right?

That fits fine, and that's it.

Now, the way that Wallace went and drove the steel, I don't want you to interfere with it, and I don't want you to do anything with it.

Well, she sent me the list over and asked, she said that something had to be deleted, and we had to put that in the book, and she helped me work on deletion, so I went back and suggested deletion.

Well, good, but I meant, don't push people for that damn tenor, because it's just...

We know that we're doing it for the Wallaces.

They're putting some people in there that are a waste of time for us, but they don't do any harm.

I've forgotten where a couple of them are.

Some head of a hospital in New York.

Well, that's part of the deal.

They're very close friends.

And I think if she, whatever she works on with cold fluids, I think it's fine.

That's it.

Let's not get all screwed up, so I don't have to be having questions.

Now, it appears that we can't get Fred Larson.

Is that what you'd like to do?

Well, let's see whether he's licensed.

All right.

Fred Larson, songs through the 50 years.

I think, I think that's true.

Turns out, February's during Kennedy Center that week.

What's happening now?

I think we think we can.

Well, maybe.

Okay, that takes care of that.

Now, on the other question, Dr. Gerlachman, and the chair general, and, well, I guess not Dr. Gerlachman, about the agent's move.

John Fields is the agent, too.

Not right away.

As soon as possible.

Yeah, well, I thought two weeks.

Is that all right?

Yeah.

I just don't want to make the announcement.

John hasn't been concerned.

Now, John does think we still have a problem on the findings confirmation.

He disagrees with Mitchell.

He thinks we need to get a count on them and find out.

But his point is, even if we get him confirmed, we're going to have a bloody fight.

Because, so what does John suggest?

Well, John has two suggestions.

One is to try the acting AP thing just for a long period of time and find out.

His other suggestion, which he thinks you can get away with it, and it seems to me it's over the list, but maybe it's not, is to move Mitchell over full-time to run the campaign to leave on the secondary desk.

That is necessarily all bad, because the people who will be kicking them are the bad guys.

I'd rather have Clanky sleep too.

He would be so valuable in the campaign.

He's the man Mitchell needs.

Hell of a man.

And the greater could help, because A.G. could do an awful lot of it, no matter where they're at.

I think that was somebody else.

God, I wish you could wish Mitchell... Well, would you, you and John, have a good talk with Mitchell and see how stubborn he is on flying missions?

Let's go.

I don't know what the hell we can do there, but I want to jump in a little more.

I can't take it.

I've got nothing.

But Mitchell has made it into the campaign right now full time.

He's got John in presence flying.

Some are saying quite a bit to the truck that he isn't on top of it.

Because he's not open to running the campaign, he's not as effective as we ought to be in some of the things we ought to be doing.

And that's complicated.

I'd like to do anything like that that we have to do before China.

Because I think China's going to erase the slate.

I think a hell of a lot of stuff.

I agree with that a little.

The hardest point that he makes,

we have to face up to, Bob, is this.

He's right about to be treasured.

It's weak.

And you know that.

And I know that.

And God damn it, we just can't quit.

We've got to quit kidding ourselves about it.

It's weak.

It's too late to do a goddamn thing about it, except in the campaign, I don't know what else to do.

I'm not sure.

He raised one name that I think he began.

Glacier?

First.

He was a really superb writer in America.

He's not a speechwriter, I don't know.

I've heard writers about him.

Writing speeches is a different thing.

See?

Oh, I think he's a little too rough.

I don't think you're that poor.

But he doesn't know what a speechwriter is.

Well, see, what I meant is, I think, he's trying to save some elephants.

I don't know what the Christ elephant is.

I've been reading Roseman, so I'm trying to see if there's anything to be learned from that.

I've heard about the speech writers.

I'll try to, but we can't work with everybody.

I've seen here.

Ray only had one year where he was a speech writer, and then Drew had another one.

But when Roseman was in, all the way through, Roseman was with him before he came into the White House.

All the way through the White House.

The key other guy most of the time was Bob Sherwood.

And the other one was Harry Hopkins.

He put in a hell of a lot of time and work in his Detroit.

Well, Harry Hopkins was like Sapphire.

But it's very interesting.

The way they work as a team, not as individuals.

I wonder if you could see if the kid thinks any of these speeches have been any good or not.

I mean, we've put, you know, I've made these goddamn radio speeches and everything else, you know.

Everybody says they're good.

Maybe they're not quite that bad.

I don't know.

Are they?

No.

I guess they aren't at all.

Some of them aren't good.

Yeah.

That's the thing.

that if you made the Gettysburg Address, it wouldn't.

And I don't think that Cage's speech is here at this point.

Good point.

I mean, he's thinking of another age.

Except in a thing like an inaugural address, where he accepts the speech as, you know, a sort of a high-water warning type thing.

They don't understand.

For a moment now,

As I said, don't let him, I can't have two children on my hands, you understand?

And I don't think Bill wants to be a child in that respect.

Would you agree or not?

I'm not sure.

And if he said, Jesus Christ the President, we shouldn't have done this, we shouldn't have done this, we shouldn't have done this, and that, and the other thing, he's got to come up and say, all right, now look, we've got these problems, and this is that, and he's got Laird, and he's got you, and he's got a hell of a lot of other work on, and that's the way he's working.

And Bill, frankly, the President has every confidence to move in the State Department if we click as soon.

I noticed, for example, in the news summary where one of our State Department people and I are pissed off, the only negative comment on Pat's trip was that it was totally political and that she insisted on nothing but black faces around her, which was smart as hell to know.

That's the lie.

And they forget that I adopted in 1953

You'll probably forget, but when we advance our foreign trips, the State Department people want to spend all the time right on the American business community, with the American business community, with the American embassy staff, with the USIA, with the Peace Corps, with the AID projects, correct?

Or am I wrong?

No, you're absolutely right.

And it was on your trip as well.

They went right up the wall when we started this.

the first European trip, the Asian trip, because you wouldn't, we wouldn't, you know, their plan was you should go to the embassy and have an embassy party for the American community.

Well, they hired us to a long talk with the American, with the embassy staff, and spent a lot of time with y'all there, and a luncheon with the top ten embassy people.

to visit the American school and the Peace Corps projects and the IAEA program.

It was a hard experience.

And a dinner for the American people.

The next in trade has always been, in all of my trips abroad, even when I was traveling privately, I'd go see the people of the other country and not the people of our country.

I had to dress my job.

But there it is, some say.

Now, it's true that maybe the other didn't miss on it.

But that one guy had, you know, right, you know it isn't true.

That's sort of the typical one.

What Bill will say is there's nothing I can do about that.

Well, he'll deny it was done.

That's probably true.

There isn't anything true about the state.

There is a problem.

There is a problem that I just cannot deal with some of these people.

We cannot put it on diplomatic wire.

We've got everybody bleeding out and so forth and so on.

The State Department does.

Bill does not.

That's why he has told everything.

On the other hand,

He's afraid, of course, and it's a lesson to be right about this.

He's afraid in some instances that he doesn't want to send his cables over here to Henry.

So he doesn't trust him.

It's too bad, but they ought to get them to me.

That's my point.

Well, he's got no reason not to trust Henry.

Boy.

Well, the president's off me every 10 minutes.

Hell, I don't know.

He's on me every 10 minutes.

Yep.

But if you could put it more in terms, Bill, we're coming into a hell of a tough campaign.

And you could say, I guess, all over the president's leader, maybe you could say, if you realize what he's doing, he's got to see Ron.

He's got to see the leaders.

He's got to see

He's got to do more instances of business.

He's got to have a farewell party for Don Hughes.

He's got to... And he said, this is cutting way down.

He's got to see Bartzell.

He's got to see the Dutch prime minister from the foreign side.

In addition to all that, he's got to write and say, don't mention the agent in the future.

He's got to have meetings with the leaders, meetings with the cabinet, and so forth and so on, and prepare for China.

Under all those circumstances, some of us, and this is a part of it, all the crap that John Ehrlichman has to insist that he's bringing in here, I mean, what are you going to do for the environment this week?

What are you going to do for the health services this week?

What are you going to do for the elders this week?

Do you understand?

I don't really believe anybody but you.

I don't think John Ehrlichman did know.

Do you think he realizes what this son of a bitch is capable of?

No.

You don't think he did know?

No.

I'm done all the time.

You can't.

It's understandable.

See, what he doesn't realize is all the time you've got to spend on the dealing with Henry, dealing with Robert.

Dealing with where?

Talking to people.

Dealing with Colin.

Right.

And he knows what the facts are, but it's so...

He worries about the public, doesn't he?

Well, the main thing I'm showing you is that you've got to keep the president well, and you've got to keep him sharp, and you've got to keep him at his best.

And we're going to keep you totally posted on China, but I do not want it to go down to the bowels of the State Department.

I am not going to allow it to happen.

It's too goddamn important.

You just tell Bill that I don't trust Marshall Green, for example.

I don't.

I mean, it isn't I don't.

I don't think he's a bad man.

I just think he's a loose man.

See what I mean?

I do trust Alex Johnson.

I think he's an honorable, honorable, smart man.

I trust Bill.

I appreciate him.

I totally trust him.

I know he's loyal.

I know he's faithful.

I'm trying to think of a way to get around you, Bob, that's all.

So that you don't just go in.

I know that the problem with Saul isn't probably going to work with Bill.

We've got to play with his vanity.

All the other things, you know what I mean?

The present nature, we need you to help solve this problem.

And look, we know that Henry is terribly difficult and insulting to the people in the West.

Everybody else, by God, at this point, we cannot have a change.

Cisco would be fine in Iran.

I mean, he is in a fashion in Iran.

We've got to be ruthless.

Totally selfless.

and just let Bill know a little of the feel of how I have to hold the hands of a lot of domestic Catholic people to, you know, not want, not...

I said all that, you haven't got it, you don't know how to handle that.

What?

No, I think this is the basic, basically what I've heard is that he, he, uh, he's, you know, he's racist.

Which is fortunate.

There was a phone call from him this morning.

He raised exactly the problem.

He was on to that.

He said, I've got to know what happened in China.

He raised both points.

The need to know on both sides and the need to protect each other rather than attack each other.

Maybe he, of course, he probably, Henry believes that Bill's delighting the attacks on Henry.

I'm not so sure Bill is.

I'm not so sure that Bill doesn't see that hurt to Saul, right?

Was that like Pedersen or somebody that he delighted with?

Sure.

I don't think Bill was.

Except the black, I don't think Rodney's his own.

Oh, hell no.

No, he's not.

And also, Rogers is not as dumb and stupid as him.

Oh, shit.

I've sat in enough meetings to see that he's also not a brilliant foreign policy strategist.

Well, it isn't that he's not brilliant.

He's brilliant at times, but not as a strategist.

But he's not profound.

He's a tactician, not a strategy man.

He's a typical foreign service man.

No foreign affairs groups or foreign service people are...

strategists and technicians.

Just like in general, it's very intelligent to have a strategist working on a technician.

I thought it would be a strategy of mine.

He's really out of any of his concerns.

He's going to spend a couple of hours on it.

He didn't go after it.

I heard on the table, I don't know if there's guests today, what's the latest?

He said Henry's been very good that morning.

He doesn't think there's a problem.

Why the hell did he call Rockefeller?

I think he should have told him that we know him.

He did.

And he said he didn't call Rockefeller, that Rockefeller called him because he was upset about the stuff in the magazines.

And I brought the fellow over to the one who said, someone's got to get out here and demand that we can't just cover stuff.

And we're like, fine.

That's it.

It's fine.

And Henry didn't say he was going to resign in the month of September.

I had a curiosity that was put in her little book, a little talk with Paul Keyes, and he called me on Thursday night and said, he said, Lakey got a call from Henry, Henry's going to make a speech for the Women's National Press Club, and he wants me to help write it.

I said, what is it like?

I said, well, it's like a gridiron.

Henry's going to do the Women's National Press Club thing.

That doesn't bother me.

That is not here to do it.

It is not a subject to be speaking, but it's a total waste of Henry Kissinger's time.

They'll chop him to pieces and afterwards they're cats.

What?

You know, he's been after me.

I mean, he's always... Margaret called once on the CBS morning show, and I said, Henry, it's not big enough.

And he braved with me at least ten times in the last week.

But today's show, I said, Henry, it's not big enough.

There'll come a time.

And when we use you, we're going to use you on a bigger basis.

He is just...

But he's panting to get out.

We've got to get him out into the Los Angeles country for us.

Correct me.

Now CBS is in on it, and this is a part of the job, but when the Pope's trying to find $9.5 an hour, well, that, you may want to do it.

Yeah, but we'll take a look.

Just say that we'll consider that.

That was getting to the, but that'll keep them, but then, but he'll consider it, but he must not agree to it in advance.

Sorry, I'll put it down.

Then if the bastards piss on us, on the trip, there's something I'm going to do it.

You have a role.

Yeah.

He covered all of us, but he said, how are you this morning?

He said, well, all of us, you know.

Henry said he's in good shape.

There's no point in him coming out.

He's got everything rolling well in the state of Florida.

He wants to stay there and get it done.

There's no reason to be concerned.

He told him that, you know, I was

He said, well, if we can get the bureaucratic procedure ironed out so that we don't have the problem of the attacks, the cable clearance, and then the reports, then I think we can work all this out.

He was out there, and I said, well, it's all good.

He doesn't think there's others.

Yes, sir.

What do you think about the call in Iran?

He has had a terrible problem with depression and coming down and all that sort of thing.

And he took the lamp.

He has a theory that a great deal of his depression is related with his epilepsy and electrical electricity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And the lamp helps even those with epilepsy.

That's the practice theory.

In any event, the lamp is hurting him.

When he gets back, I'm not telling him to take some of this.

It'll be good for you.

It'll make you sleep better.

He's not a colleague of mine.

I don't know.

Dreyfus says it does.

I read his little book on the way out.

He has a hundred different cases of which 90 people were helped by the people who have currently depression.

I suppose it is, but that's kind of theology.

Oh, a lot of them are that bad.

Oh, God.

I do think this, I do think the idea that Riley could go along good, because I know Riley was good for Henry.

— 2 min 20 s with no transcribed speech —

Food is a 90% of the problem for me.

We're going to make a lot of money.

And I'm just going to have to cook my food.

Do you understand that?

What do you mean?

Yeah, simply.

Yeah, but I know I have to eat my regular stuff to take a long enough of it.

Because if a person has to die, they have to have it.

Not because they don't have to, but because they have to.

Well, I do, yeah.

Oh, my bad, my bad, my bad.

My bad, my bad.

But after that, you've got to be sure that you're working with all those papers.

I don't know what I would say to you.

Sure?

Yeah, I'm sure John is following up on that.

I don't understand why.

I'm going to go off and have him write my notes and respond to it.

I'm going to get up and he's got to do it.

We'll get him set up on the paper.

We're going to do it better.

But we cannot go through.

I think changing Roger's situation will change Henry.

I think Al's probably right to say this.

It's an important thing to say to him.

No matter how exciting it is to him, he almost has to do nothing.

I wonder about what the goddamn portion of the women who could very well be, you know, he may have his sort of, you know, real life and all that sort of thing.

And what do you find out about the environment?

Currently, most people who follow that kind of life, it leads to more and more dissatisfaction, not dissatisfaction, because of

I haven't read enough about it.

You can order protean satisfaction out of it.

Protean analysis is the people that go screwing around in a lot of industries.

But people who just have no ties at all, they do put place in place.

a totally different kind of personality as well.

This is the key to the table for the National Restaurant.

I've been used to sketching in this place for a long time.

I can't control it.

She says she thinks Parker is excellent, but doesn't understand.

She and Fisher are so well-informed.

It's her view.

It may be wrong, but it's worth considering.

because we've had Jason and his group out on China working on that.

And because of your defense, the people that are left have to work on some of that.

And kind of work on this training to get people moving out.

She's right.

You'll tell her, well, have somebody tell her.

I think it would be nice if you were reassured of that.

Pull, pull, pull.

It's a good idea to get a fake pull out early that shows us weak and then say we don't care.

No, that's not the problem.

That would have been showing us maybe within 2%.

Then you say, good, let's have it.

That's okay, just pass it.

That's what we're here for.

That's what we expect.

How about a fake pull?

Okay.

We don't want to talk about that at all.

He's such a contrast.

He's so valuable in so many ways.

He could be

You know what's going to happen?

You'll have a nurse break down.

The writer's quote may be, and you may have a nurse break down too, in fact, that Henry thinks that he was a great celebrity in his own right, and he will find that he was not.

And that's horribly hard for anybody.

Remember, it was hard for many of our people who came and came in from the 60s.

They didn't realize that you were a celebrity.

He's always sort of a personality, for other reasons.

He's taking it to the highest ground.

But that's not quite so true of Henry.

You know what?

Oops, back to girls.

They will no more live.

You realize, you know, and that's... ... ... ...

We've got our .

First, I agree with you, they're not that important.

On the other hand, good God, with the effort and everything we're putting into them, are we that bad?

They don't do much on the memorable phrases.

They don't do much on the meaningful anecdotes.

I don't have it.

I'm trying to stand in this very interesting period, since they had made a gap year, and it's still a very good time coming.

CBS, it was good this time.

Peter Austin, you know, stayed on there, watching there.

He did very good.

The rating soared down for the first couple minutes.

You know, the people tuned out in some minutes before or after a couple minutes.

You know, probably about any of this.

The fact that he presented, you know, the set was totally amazing.

One thing that occurred to me when I checked is that we have many ways to know whether people, I was on CBS the third week on the floor, which helped me the most.

And it probably did if you were the back of the adversary.

You've got to judge them.

And on that basis, there's no question that you could be a champion of one of those things.

Oh, no.

That was way in the 80s.

I think Steve Pieska was delighted with it.

He was a one-on-one with it.

They thought they had a hell of a good story.

And I always regret her talking about the fact that I was nervous again.

No, that's a hang-up, isn't it, sir?

I think it's because he is.

And that thing, or if there was one thing, but he was so tense, it was like, if there was, oh, it was one of the things, I didn't see it now, but I may be wrong, I'm joking, I'm sorry.

But if there was one time that I was totally in command, and frankly, I think I am, almost always, but I love that in the world, and you chose,

a difference at the start of something, sometimes like a press conference or something like that.

You can come on, you know, be ready to take things.

You can see that on the side.

It isn't nervousness.

It's a way out.

And then it's tension, yeah.

And then that, after the first couple minutes, always goes away as you kind of swing into gear and start pacing.

That wasn't evident at all.

You know, I did one very small thing that I thought was very important.

CBS and Mark Good had it set up so that he would introduce the program.

I said, this is my office.

He's my guest.

I was introduced to the program.

And I think that's very important, putting this place at the beginning, which I think is a small thing, but I would like you to come in and start to read.

I'm going to have him here, but I would like you to come in and start to read.

I'm there, and I have him.

Let me go over, by camera, to the very, very, very, very, very, very, very,

First of all, you have to read everything that he says, and this is not for discounting, but in terms that he speaks from the Eastern establishment, the one who lives in it, who isn't necessarily sold on it,

I'm inclined to think that he discounts too much the, shall we say, the work ethic, the Protestant ethic, that great mass of people out there who feel that the country should be number one and so forth and so on.

Am I wrong or right?

That at one point was very fundamental.

Because that's where the state of the union comes in.

Well, I'm just trying to get some things in mind before I go.

But that's a tough one to take.

I kept wondering about that as he hit it.

Maybe we overdo it.

Well, I think there's that possibility in that while people do want to be number one, it may be that they don't want to talk about or be told that they want to be number one.

Because you're sort of sticking them to a thing.

What they want is they want them to be better.

They need to be given the limit of the spirit.

And we've got to contend with Schultz.

He's a fine man.

Yeah, he really is.

Fine.

He's a very thoughtful guy.

He's particularly concerned on unemployment.

Because he feels that we're not structured right on the issue of unemployment.

That we have by the way we're structured placed ourselves in the laps of the gods.

If unemployment goes down, we'll be all right.

If unemployment doesn't go down, we've got a hell of a problem.

And the reason being that we're never strong, we don't come out strongly against unemployment.

Instead, we try to, and he says, I'm the first one that's guilty of this, we try to say that the unemployment isn't so bad.

where we make it very clear that we are against inflation.

He said, well, I have a position where we've got no problem with inflation.

You're clearly positioned as the fighter of inflation.

And it's a position you can build on and trade on.

You obviously maintain it, but you don't need to worry much about the inflation side of the coin.

Good point.

And he says on unemployment, though, we should be less in a posture of explaining away the unemployment problem and more in the posture of doing something about it because we care something about it.

We've got to get out and look concerned about unemployment.

And he said, for instance, you are always bothered by the fact that Kennedy had higher unemployment when he came in than you have now.

Yet he was never blamed for unemployment.

Nobody ever hit Kennedy about unemployment.

There are two reasons.

One, he inherited the unemployment.

Two, it was going down under him, not going up.

But it went down over his three years.

And how much?

Oh, I got a point.

6-7 to 5-7.

Oh, you're right.

6-7.

I didn't think, I didn't count that.

Okay, that was so high.

Go ahead.

You're right.

I think 6-7 on Eisenhower.

And he and his people didn't.

Arthur Kuhlberg, who was the good Secretary of Labor,

was good in that he went out to unemployment offices and talked to people in the lines and said what are we going to do he looked worried about this problem to the people who were unemployed and to the other people we don't look that way we keep saying it's not so much of a problem that's going to go away when you know we're ending the war and all that he said we need to reposition ourselves we've got some pounds off all the time likely pounds on rising prices

Now, we've made our case on rising prices because we've hit it over and over and over.

We're not going to let prices keep going up.

We've got to stop this thing.

And you took positive action.

You also took positive action on unemployment by your taxpayers, but you didn't... At interaction.

But they didn't move on at interaction.

Now, I agree with that totally.

He said, I think what we've got to do is get a Peterson-Hodgson team, Congress and the legislature, out into the country.

And then maybe you've got to give them a charge to say, you guys have the assignment for the next four months of full-time being concerned about unemployment.

And he says, the FOIA operation on the West Coast is an ideal kind of thing like that.

I just had this up.

I heard.

Good.

FOIA looks like you're worried about unemployment, so you got this guy out to me.

Now, get your two captain officers who are concerned with commerce and labor, get them off worrying about unemployment.

About peacetime unemployment.

Right.

That's, yeah, keep the focus on the beach side of things.

Good point.

The Washington Post had a strong editorial this morning.

It happened to play right to Schultz's mind, which was that the unemployment problem, that you make the, they shot down, attempted to shoot down your argument that unemployment,

or that the price of high employment was too high because we were killing a lot of people.

And they said that's a good debater's point, but it's not a valid point because the basic problem is that the labor market is increasing by 1.5 million people per year, and the labor number of jobs is only increasing by 1.1 million people per year.

So there is an annual deficit of 0.4 million people.

in terms of jobs available.

That is true to a point, except if the two million people who work in defense plans and in the armed services were still in the bottom five, it would be less than five percent.

The post argues that point suspiciously because they say if the armed forces people were employed, wouldn't they overlook the defense plans?

But they come back.

They said there weren't too many.

No, they said it, but then they forgot about it in the next paragraph.

But they make the point that the key to the solution to unemployment is an expanding economy.

To have more things happening so that there are more jobs, because there are more people coming into the economy.

You noticed on the shuttle, Humphrey came out for it, Muskie came out against it.

Well, see, Humphrey's going to the Florida primary and not to the... Humphrey's big primary is Florida.

Must be big primary is Manhattan.

Florida, the space shuttle's a big thing.

Must be hurting itself in Florida.

But you think he did?

Damn right.

The Colson argument in this, with regard to the college thing, which I don't do, then this is where Chuck is particularly good.

He's not a great strategist, but he's particularly good on this.

His idea of going after the Rizzo's, the...

the space shuttle people, the shipyard people, et cetera, et cetera.

The building trades is very well taken.

In other words, no actor special in this room, correct?

Go ahead.

Any last?

George, because that's our biggest, the unemployment thing is our biggest thing that we've made a mistake by just putting ourselves in the hands of the people.

But it's not.

We can move on.

He thinks we should, and we should be doing it right now.

For the next three or four months, we should look like the only thing that we're really worried about is unemployment.

We should quit saying it's going to be better next month.

And instead it should say, yes, it's going to be better next month, but we're getting worried about what it is right now and what it'll be next month.

We want it to be better than that.

And get out and do something about it.

And it's not arguing with you.

It's arguing, maybe I should go to another department or administration.

You go out there and, well, you might see it.

His next point is the one that everybody talks about, the trust and confidence issue.

And he says that, for instance, on the economy, he thinks it was a serious mistake.

And I agree with him.

For a company to go out and say, oh, the Dow Jones will go over 1,000, it may go to 1,100.

It may not.

Because it may not.

And then we have a prediction of a luxury.

And if it does go over, that'll be fine.

If it doesn't,

If it all goes to 980, then we've fallen short, obviously, but 980 is still dang good.

His point is we should understand some of what we're doing.

He agrees with the science theory.

He probably saw a science memo on how he's doing at his economic report, so what we need is to make models.

and deliverable provisions rather than grandiose.

We've got the reality going with us now.

Therefore, and psychology is basically one of those.

Like a campaign, don't predict margins.

We don't need to use it so much.

Good point.

And he says now the budget's going to pose a problem because of the way we're coming in on that.

Then he says we've got another problem.

It cuts two ways, which is our cutting government spending.

We've got a hell of a case here.

We have cut government spending.

If we were to pay, he's got a figure about him, he's told you, if the taxpayer today, this year, next year, were to pay the same rates of income taxes as he had to pay in 1968, he would pay $20 billion more in taxes than we will collect next year.

So we've had a hell of a tax cut.

We've had a hell of a tax cut.

That's right.

He said, we're hitting it sharply in the budget.

And the budget message was making the point that we have reduced federal spending.

You've got that over the top.

And you've got another statistical thing.

You've got that over the top.

And in the three years before you came in, the federal budget went up 57%.

In the three years since you've been in, the federal budget's on about 0.4% or 0.3% or something like that.

In other words, you have cut in half the rate of increase of federal spending.

But he said that cuts both ways because that goes back to the do we care about people and are we expanding it up?

What are we really doing and are we expanding it up and all that?

Then he says we've got to question priorities.

And we are building strongly into the budget and point that we're going to do a strong defense budget.

We've got to do what we need for it and answer the question, do we need to stop this?

But I think we need to.

I think we can do it.

I think the right way is not to get that across.

And he goes, we've got another issue we've got to start ourselves with, which is preoccupation with foreign affairs.

And that's a target for us.

We've cut taxes.

We've cut government responsibility by the Mason Doctrine, and it was better for people to decide what's good for the people rather than for the government, which is kind of corny.

We've established a new priority for defense in the budget, and increased the emphasis on priority for defense.

We've established a priority for international affairs, and just by what appears in the press is the important thing, because of what people are interested in.

Therefore, you can draw a conclusion from that that we don't care about the problems at all.

And that the opposition won't intend to make that point.

We've got to be aware of that.

Then he says, he gets to the point of the thrust of the future.

He says, somehow we've clearly got to establish what is our aspiration for the country.

How do you describe the future as we'd like to see it?

We should avoid saying we want to be number one, but rather should go to the great spirit and the pioneers, what made the country, the American spirit.

I agree with American number one.

I agree with that.

I raise it.

We've got to talk about the better way of life, the health, the environment.

all of this kind of stuff, asking our goals here in a world that's safe and at peace.

Issue our agency officer on crime and drug abuse and say we've got a problem there and that we can't really show results.

We can only show recognition of the problem, recognition of the problem and the results, which is blocking us on an hour of intent so we can show results.

And apparently they've got a new drug standard and the results say about an hour and a half, something like that.

on a task force basis and a couple weeks and started arresting peddlers.

They tried to get help, but they couldn't do it.

So Brady came and said they were going to go out and arrest the actual guys on the streets that were selling the stuff at the high school kids.

They haven't been arrested because the judges always throw them out.

They're going to arrest them this time and turn them over to grand jurors instead of to the court.

And they're going to give them immunity, offer them immunity.

if they don't tell who their supplier was.

Great.

So then you put the guy in a hell of a box.

He either ventures the supplier, or you go after the supplier.

He's done a very lot of effective thinking here, but I suggest that he should run it with Connell sometime.

He did Connell early on.

You know what I mean?

And he says there's a whole bunch of bits and pieces of issues that are going to be very important in local areas.

Bussing is the key one.

But bussing is going to, in Texas and Tennessee and a couple other places, is going to be the vital issue.

Suburban housing is going to be the vital issue someplace else.

And some kind of pollution.

We've got to look to where it fits in with some of those.

And that's it.

But what led me to this was his address to the future.

He argues that we should be looking to ask him to write a paragraph for me on his qualitative spirits from America and so forth, and talk about number one.

He isn't a very good writer, basically, but he was very involved in that, and that gave me an idea.

You push that to Christ.

Well, they're not nearly as bad as Hallett, so to speak.

But Hallett, he was in extremes.

Well, it's good.

It's a way to make a point.

He may say that we're a speech writing team, but I don't know that he knows anything about Johnson's speeches.

Johnson's speeches were not as good as your speeches.

Eisenhower's speeches were much worse than your speeches.

They were terrible.

They were poorly put together with a glimmer of an ideal once in a while.

And I think Hughes came over for the day once in a while, but after he was gone, there wasn't much of anything after that.

Carlos showed up at the end of the day.

Roy knows some of those little things we've done, but they will be a word of speech.

They will be a word of speech.

The one in Nebraska will never be, frankly, one of the elderly.

Of course, he's not a bad pal of a word in life, but probably in Nebraska's speech,

Now, can I come to a couple other things?

Power was a significant one thing, and it's going to require a hell of a lot of work on my part.

I think we should go to two...

I think the market will take it if we do it at 7.30.

I think we've got to go to two televised press conferences.

Now, by televised press conference, you can substitute, for example, that World, that the conference would be edited to World,

I think we ought to do this.

That'll be a hell of a show.

Don't you think it will?

Oh, wait a second.

45 minutes.

Not coming off.

45 minutes.

We'll re-oppress that 15 minutes to come.

We can say that.

We want to leave time for analysis, after analysis.

Why do you remember that a lot of people won't listen to you now?

I don't know whether he's right about this, but, you know, we didn't win in the day-to-day line, I guess, much.

One of the reasons for Pat's success is that she did do some things that were colorful.

One of the problems that we have

He said, you know, without having a present, I wouldn't be able to understand his stance.

He's very colorful, but probably legitimate.

What do you think?

I disagree.

He said we need colorful events.

So I get out of that sports shirt and disagree with that.

I disagree with sports shirts.

But I agree, going in to look back at it.

The point is, what the hell is that shipyard thing they call it?

What the hell is that meeting of the woman down there in Florida with Color Man?

Or Ethan or something.

What?

Absolutely.

Because I think the crap in the office is not, is pick up the ass, come to themselves, some of it.

Well, maybe I'm wrong.

But the president's got to be present.

The president can't be a guy running around and flapping it up with everybody all the time.

He's right with the union thing, apparently.

I asked him, what do you think of that?

I thought that was great.

Nobody does on the 13th or the 17th.

And so they change the way it's done.

Because we know it had no effect on the polls.

We may have had.

We have to realize, I guess, Bob, we have to realize that if we look over the year, we have been on the first sister of the time.

We have Lowe's, but Martin, I think, has kind of done papers.

And...

And a hell of a lot of stuff in the Senate.

And the Senate was over and over and over and over.

And there was an aerial power initiative.

And, uh...

It's gone.

I heard.

Yeah.

And as I said, the bomb didn't even flip.

I, I, I confident it's a blip because it did not cause discussion.

And it's gone.

Oh.

It is gone.

Yeah.

I know that one interesting thing that probably surprised me.

He doesn't like comments.

I don't know if there's any good questions.

What the hell can I do with that?

I don't know.

He does have a point that he's definitely good with comments.

He's a guy that he can be.

I don't agree with that.

I think you can always have two strong men.

Connie and I are very different people.

We both feel different circumstances.

But you know, we get back to the communist critique after the 70th Amendment when we thought that we shouldn't stand in the car and this and that and the other thing.

Because you're right.

There's this guy, right?

In fact, if I can, I left it for a moment for the press conference deal.

And do you or do you not think that maybe that is, you know, we have, we want to remember the first year, the very first year we, all we went over the heads of the press was the press conference.

And it was pretty technical.

And they bitched like hell.

And they don't like it.

Now, I think the office press conference is for the birds.

I think going out in the room for a film press conference is fair, but better than nothing.

But I think that we actually have to go to the 730 and have the whole goddamn truck in there and do them all.

What do you think about this?

It requires enormous work on my part.

It's valid work other than just preparing for the press conference, because the press conference does do some whacking up of other things.

Around here, it fires some of our people up, establishes some lines that we don't get established otherwise.

It takes the places you're meeting with people, in a sense, because you're talking about .

That's what you order the press to do, which you're gonna have to do.

It takes advantage of the presidency.

It's a plus.

It's a chance to get on television on all three networks at once.

In other words, dominate the total audience, the 50 million audience, which nobody else can do.

The difficulty we do there with the 730 conference is we miss California on that.

We do some of them at 730.

We don't hear it.

That's very...

In other words, you wouldn't.

You'd go for the real prime time and screw it.

Well, I think there is a real prime time.

Go to 11 o'clock and then this comes up.

11 o'clock is news time also.

Good.

Go to 11 o'clock here and screw the prime time in the West.

That's putting on the 8 o'clock in the West, which is prime time, and you go ahead and interrupt them.

I think 11 is too late.

I think 10.30.

I think maybe he's right about this, that we've gone too much for the new federalists.

I'm not going to carbonate this one.

The President of all the people, the thoughtful President trying to get his job done.

You know what I think?

Have a couple of cheers at the beginning.

So that they really come up off the heat at the end.

But you don't have to crack them all the way up.

That's what I really find, you know, but I...

The reason I made it, you got away with it, was great.

It's another idea where I determined, you know, I don't speak.

Have you ever read any of his first drafts?

I mean, he's got critical about them.

He said they are, you know, they're essays.

Wow.

His point, though, that...

The program is really...

And this argues against early control.

We're almost, I mean, we're protograms.

Not what matters.

The idea of the man, you know, we started in 1971 with that.

I was glad to see the real Nixon on that boat ship.

We did really well.

We did some around Christmas time this year.

The question that I have is this, is whether or not his judgment in regard to Muskie having an image of a strong, inflected, prudent man, and Nixon having an image of a cosmetic,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, I think you have to pull away at some point.

What do you think?

What is taking you so long?

I don't know.

If we haven't gotten through anything, you know, I don't want to be misled by our own partisans, but you hear Connelly say it, you hear certainly Colson and others that call around the country say it, Kissinger says it.

There's a hell of a lot of people who feel that the president is a strong president.

I think what Haidt is doing there is he's falling asleep.

He has the filthiest notion of what people think.

What he's doing is falling victim to the conventional wisdom of the establishment press.

Interpreting what they say you are as being what people think you are.

But you remember you had a poll on that one, before the late summer, which indicated that on the personal thing, there was trust, or there was more, and so forth, and so on.

I don't believe in that.

And incidentally, it's not the Harris' poll.

We did better on the trust with Muskie, didn't we?

I don't know.

Yeah.

I didn't believe at all.

Well, Truman had guts in us, and Johnson had vigor, and I had believability.

It makes a flaw, and I do this.

And if that's the case, then we are in real trouble.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, we've got to do something.

I don't mean real trouble.

We've just got to do something about it.

I don't think it is the case, and especially after the...

I'd like to challenge Donald, and I'll have to do better.

announcements and all, I just don't think people understand a lot.

I think there is some validity to the thing that Nixon's image forces to create.

equal minuses in the sense that people want to be reassured and settled.

And you're a little positive about work.

Yeah, that's progress.

Is it that you...

that they want to be settled.

They want to be all right.

And while they admire your bold moves, there's a counterbalancing thing, which is that unsettling thing.

Whether you establish your boldness, but you've also jarred moves from complacency, which they want to be rolled back into.

... ... ... ...

It's like talking to a taxi cab driver.

It's better than that, but it's, you know, you talk to a few people who say, everybody I talk to believes this and that, or everybody doesn't believe this and that and that.

It's always, at best, 60-40, and sometimes it comes down to a minor judgment, like this 149.

was that judge, our judge?

He assumes that they will get a say on the appeal, so that nothing happens.

And obviously, the vote is going up to the Supreme Court.

And our Supreme Court may turn that around.

They're worried all of a sudden that it doesn't help anything.

The only thing you're worried is that they should fail to get a stay, for some reason.

How was his decision?

That doesn't make an order yet.

You see no other course but for us to continue to fight against those issues.

We may have to go earlier than has to now.

We really go forward with the legislation right now.

Yeah.

There's something, not that I have a constitutional amendment, but I have legislations that are on the right side of the issue.

But every Democrat on the other side of it.

The analysis of the weakness of a man and personality is valid.

I believe that that is what is consistent in the attempt to correct.

I don't think that the events will be validated by a public poll at all.

If you give that to you, some people will relate to this.

to consider drug offenses, it must be.

The media have made the Democrats all known, you know, right?

I think it knocks out one of your principal problems, which is to hear the question.

And people have got to make the decision if they, if there's someone else capable of

They throw you out.

And then, you're made into an accomplice.

You think it's great that you're here.

It's proved to be great.

It's proved to be great in virtually everybody's eyes.

It's proved to be true.

You get right down to the crunch.

People have got to decide.

You're enough quantity.

They know what's wrong about you.

They know what's right about you.

They know how you'll be as president.

And particularly on a foreign policy thing, they know that you're capable of being harmed.

And you've got to just scare the geese out of them about how you know what to do.

He doesn't understand anything about what's going on.

He's in the middle of all these intricate negotiations we're involved in.

No.

That, of course, violates my rule of play because they're a strong issue.

I don't think they do.

I think what they do is that...

There is, that you've got to maintain the foreign policy.

And that, I'm not sure that it would be a significant strength, but I mean, it is our strong point.

What they're concerned about are, and particularly what Joe said, and I think John should say, is that you, in emphasizing and selling the foreign policy, point.

But I've got to avoid getting caught in the thing of, because of that, you don't care about the other.

But you're so preoccupied with that that you don't know or care what's happening here.

That's why April and May can be March, April and May can be March and April can be months of environment going on.

Our president has got to be concerned about all the problems.

He's got to solve the foreign policy negotiations and all that, but he can't do that to the exclusion of the United States.

He's got to be concerned about it too.

That's the point of difference.

I don't think you're going to score any positive points if you give them a good negative.

For Muskie to charge around saying, you know, that guy Nixon's running on part of the Russians and the Chinese, well, that's just dandy except I'm concerned about things right here in River City.

If he doesn't care about it, I'm concerned about that man in the air.

I care about the problem in the river to get lost sometimes.

Eric's doesn't give a damn.

He's out taking his trips, talking to the people over in China.

He's a man of blood.

He's such a useful advocate.

He's a guy with some stature.

He's out of the market.

So, you are a useful person out there.

He's a man of blood.

He's a man with some stature.

I think we just got a class.

We were far off.

fifth grade class that sent me a really fantastic birthday and he came drawing for the poem

You do agree that I should, that I've got to hurt myself for those times.

And it's, you know, I think I've got to hurt myself because I simply can't.

Can't.

be concerned about trying to be so he doesn't make everyone a virtual so it sleeps together i mean i really feel about it because of course they've all been good i honestly believe you could go out like this afternoon i think i could have a whole season with no briefing book no preparation and no no even in your own mind preparation

You'd go out and say, OK, and here I am.

Turn on the cameras, and have a brush conference, and you'd go on the way ahead.

And we have to do that.

There's always a possibility of a question that you're not prepared to answer.

But I don't think that's a problem.

Well, you know, just take it.

You can get around to a question, if you're prepared to answer it.

We can take it.

We've tried it a lot.

I know a lot of cameras, and that is all right.

But you can put a lot of questions.

And whatever was wrong with that one time your son, it was not their son.

It was not their son.

The problem on this international press conference, the question may not be good there, but this one press will not be able to help us.

And you know, the problem with Scholastic, if any kids want one, they'll get coaching.

They might be free then, but we'll get them free.

Journalism teachers, or whatever they have, their advice is that they're still papers.

They put some on there, and they put them out.

The analysis from a fellow like Tom, who is part of the group, and grew up in the group, and all the rest, reads it first, and then writes it.

who basically would like to see us win, and therefore they should judge us.

I think we need a very important argument.

Well, yeah, I don't buy this culture change, and I completely agree with Charlie Elton.

A good part of what he said is not valid, but it's all stimulated, and it's just worth a review of that kind of thing.

I think that one of the reasons I've had the first choice, I don't just think it's a program that we've got to involve.

Nixon, Colson & Haldeman on PRC trip and unemployment

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Also recorded on January 11, 1972

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Nixon, Colson & Haldeman on PRC trip and unemployment

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on January 11, 1972

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Cite this conversation