Nixon & Ehrlichman on Busing and Child Development

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Hey, all right.

Good.

Do me a favor.

You're in this small building right here.

Oh, yeah.

Best room in the house up there.

My friend Jack Kemp, you know, he's my client there.

He said to me, Larry, he said, all the Democratic candidates, you're going to give them the hell or the Nixon hell.

And he said, you have the temerity to stand up for me.

And I said, well, Jack, tell them not to do it.

You're going to hurt them.

Could you send me a copy?

Send a copy and send it to, let's see, in my shop over here, Harry Dent.

Harry Dent, he's got most of the political stuff over in his office.

And just, you and I are chatting.

Well, I'm so delighted that you, we want to be as thoughtful as we can.

I'm sitting here right now.

john's the head of the domestic council and whenever you have something in the you know affected county government where a problem or something we can't we don't have much money but we now need to be helpful but you just get on the mark with john because he knows that i told him that he will talk to you

Last night, somebody was telling me we did rather well, generally, in New York City elections.

I mean, not in county elections.

Give me a break, wind down, or do you have a better chance?

I haven't had a chance to study.

No, I mean, did we do that?

How are we doing that, sir?

Yeah, wait a minute.

Did he fold those or pick them up?

I know them.

How about NASA?

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

Hello?

Yeah.

I wonder if they affected the bonding you heard.

Yeah, people don't want those taxes, do they?

What position did you take on the bond issue?

I know, but that was a responsible thing to do.

He's a new man.

What is his name?

Why don't you give him a call?

K-L-E-I.

Good man.

Great.

All right.

Well, we're glad to see a lot of you young bucks, you know, fighting the battle.

You know, you do well.

We want to help wherever we can.

Bob?

Yeah?

I just hope you do better than the bills, Doug.

Okay.

All right.

Thanks, Billy.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, young guy.

Here he comes.

We're going to have those New York County executives in.

All of them.

The one that's gonna like, the one that's flying, you know, the one that goes down the long alley.

I don't know, this is something.

Oh, it's something, I mean.

No, it don't.

No.

They're terrible for, yeah, the history as well.

The city level, that's all I heard.

That's right, but, you know.

Right.

I talked to Vice President about this yesterday, and he'll sponsor a conference of these guys, get them in and indoctrinate them.

I think you kind of had to go mad at us this morning over here.

I didn't want to say anything.

I didn't want to.

But big medicine.

And maybe we can do some backgrounding out of Chicago while you're there.

Get some of those Midwest farm editors up.

I can go close to the background right now and say that I wrote, I put the damn labor leaders in and put them through the rain.

That's it.

Don't worry, we're going to play it if the hell that Henry's worried about.

We've got to get this out, particularly in the Midwest.

And if you have no objection, I would think we ought to have Midwest farm editors come up for the morning after the Chicago dinner.

just to be there, you don't have to see them, but somebody from the administration that can give them the inside story of the negotiation, how the president hopes for the future.

Yeah.

And, uh, come down and get Henry out there, what do you think?

What do you think?

And whether the price goes up, as long as you feel like somebody's doing something about it, I think it'll help.

Yeah, it's selling yogurt.

Yogurt.

was home trying to buy corn for his cattle.

And he said he couldn't find it.

He said he couldn't find it.

And a dollar.

And a dollar because everybody's speculating on the price on that.

And they're all hanging on to it.

John, on the dock strike, I want to be tougher than George, who likes to be in this stuff.

All right.

Just, and something, I didn't want to say that, but to appear to be tough, even if it fails, I want to slap down.

They'll think that I'm not sitting here.

I charge this motion at politics.

Just like I told you that we'll put the 19 threes on again.

Well, I don't think it's going to work.

Listen, the later it breaks this thing, we're going to put the three right back on.

And then I'll allow this administration to teach us enough to get this done.

Now, see my point, right?

All this should be, all this is semantics.

Now, I said that on the bus and thing.

I know you know how strong the IQ is, John.

I am willing to go for after constitutional amendment, right?

And I think you would be willing to, would you not?

Yes, I want to see the ability.

We have no other option.

That's what it's going to be.

Just being for this little old man.

The method up here is not enough.

Okay.

We'll get you high visibility on this one way or the other.

And obviously this, professionally I have more trouble with this than I do some other things we can do.

But that's no problem.

Thank you.

It's a basic thing.

And I think a neighborhood school, I like a neighborhood school approach rather than an old bus approach.

Busing is such a narrow thing.

But if the idea that a child should be allowed to live in his neighborhood and go to his own school, if you give me a neighborhood school amendment, I'll be for it.

But, you know, it should go through this platform.

I was shooting a little bit of a line in there, but I had a reading for you this weekend.

I don't know if you're ready this weekend.

At the same time, we'll get you.

Now, you know, we got several votes last night on the record.

Roll call vote.

How'd they turn out?

Oh, overwhelming.

Four of us.

Overwhelming.

Four neighborhood schools.

In a proportion of about 250 to 100 right down the line.

Good.

But every one of those Democrats now is on a list.

They're on a list.

We'll have a list for you later today.

Not a list for me, but a list for Harry Dent.

Sure, sure.

I think it's a lie.

You know, I've always said, let me tell you, as I said earlier, it's a strange thing.

The kind of issue to me in 1950, I wasn't, because it was quite real, there were spies, and I got a couple of them.

It's a real gut issue.

It's like nothing.

It's a gut issue.

And I thought Yoko could use this goddamn word when he used it.

Of course, every member had to be warned.

Yes, you forced an awful lot of them before last night.

Did we?

Oh, God, yes.

A number of them had to come across the landing, including a couple blacks.

Interesting way to know.

Conyers.

Against us.

And old Hawkins.

Yes, Hawkins, yes.

against us.

Most of these are blacks, four of us.

Clarence Mitchell was out in the hall sampling up and down, saying they just burned the Constitution.

Raising hell for the NAACP.

Now what's going to happen now?

Will the bill go through?

The bill will go through.

We'll have a conference.

The Senate will try and slice some of these things off.

I have a thing regarding a way over.

If I overstate, will I be told?

Yes, you will.

Yes, sir.

Great.

Because of what you're told.

Child development.

I hope you cry at the end, because I wouldn't want to go to the legal service.

Oh, we've got half the time.

We've got half the time.

Yeah, I'm absolutely opposed to legal service.

People don't understand that so much.

No.

We literally do have the message in preparation right now.

And Javits has been sucking around down here.

He's called me half a dozen times.

He wants to try and work a compromise.

We have held the line on this just flat.

And Elliott is with us, and he's holding the line.

But he's not being strong enough in his public statements.

And I'd like to...

The president is opposed to...

to take the children away from their mothers and put it in, you know, whatever it is, find a real demagogic thing.

Well, Buchanan has written a real demagogic memo on this.

It was his last act before the people of Georgia.

And there's a lot of good in there.

So...

I don't think you have to...

I don't think you have to... You say, I've been on the record for over 10 years on this subject.

And, you know, actually, I'm for it.

I am.

Sure.

I agree.

I mean, I'm for it in the 80s.

But don't let yourself get onto this particular language.

Okay.

Because, interestingly enough, a lot of church groups oppose this language.

No.

Protestants.

Good old Bible Belt Protestants.

What they're afraid of here is that it is so imperfectly drawn that they're going to get another bad decision out of the Supreme Court.

And so they would rather not go through this with this language.

I think it's perfectly fine for you to take the occasion to say, my record's clear for 10 years after this.

I talked to John this morning.

He's going to have a memo for you on the airplane on this.

I asked him to talk to Harlow again this morning on two things, Kyle and this bad name.

And basically what it comes down to, I had lunch with Harlow yesterday about this.

Butts is a guy that is totally programmable.

He'll say any damn thing we want him to say, and he'll say it more or less tirelessly.

But he has these two impediments, the name.

But there's a Pat Benson thing is the thing that concerns me most.

And they don't have a good answer for me.

All right, Doc.

If he would take...

by reading what would be doing quite a horrible thing.

Well, that's where I come out.

I agree with that.

If he could possibly get it, he'd be, he had so many fringe benefits to him.

Yeah.

If we don't know, nobody's going to say, well, he's a farmer and the rest of it.

He could say, I'm a farm boy and sort of grew up in an old farm.

Sure.

I've lived with these problems all my life.

Some of my specialists, he was my farm advisor and all for years.

If he could get it.

Now,

He is doing an absolutely superb job for Procter & Gamble.

Just superb on this whole phosphates and detergents problem.

He's cutting the guts out of that company.

And I would guess that they would not let him go.

He would be confronted with a very tough choice.

I mention this because you can't get your heart set on him.

There's a very high probability you can't get it.

I'd shove him over and go,

Well, I will talk to him.

The two of them both say Kyle is not that good.

He's not smart.

He owns farms.

He's not a farmer.

Both of them came out saying, gee, he just isn't that smart.

He isn't a smart guy.

He's a dumb congressman.

He's about like Sherman.

And I was fairly impressed with him here, but I don't know him at all.

Forget it.

Okay.

I'll talk to Bryce.

You're just going to take him with his name.

Or you've got the young guy that fall back on you.

I prefer the young guy.

You could get him through anything.

I think he could.

We have to go.

Harlan and I have to go up and see Roman.

And just go ahead and just tell him you want him and you need him.

Yeah, and let Curtis get the credit.

Curtis is running.

Yeah.

I think, put that way, that we could probably get around Roman.

The young guy is nothing but still my favorite.

Well, he really is.

I like the idea of everybody in the cabinet being younger than I am.

I really do.

I just want young people around me.

You want me to take a run at Harlow first?

Or do you want me to, uh... No.

Well, yeah, take a run at Harlow.

All right.

Frankly, get Harlow.

All right.

I think it's the best of both worlds.

He's comfortable and he's

I don't think you'd lose the second man.

You wouldn't lose Lane either.

He'd stay around for whatever he's worth.

No, I don't think so.

He'd say, well, we've got something to do for him.

He understands why he can't do it.

It's got to be a good question.

But if Paul is the one who moves.

Oh, I need to ask you about Red Blunt.

Jack Croft was part of the restaurant last night, but I went to.

Mrs. Blunt got me off in a corner and said the White House is cutting red up down in the south.

Well, apparently they suspect that Harry is playing some kind of game down there.

And I didn't say yes or no, but it occurred to me that maybe that was some kind of signal that you had out.

I want to check with you.

I have no signal out.

Frankly, I don't think he's a good candidate.

Uh, I think he did drag on us in the election.

Yep.

I would prefer they didn't run.

I haven't told anybody that except you at this moment.

He is running like hell.

I know he is.

He's gonna run and he's gonna lose.

Well, I think we have to be... We have to be very clear in our signal to Harry as to where... We're gonna talk to Harry about it.

Alright.

And say, Harry, what the hell is going on?

Alright.

You do that.

But you remember...

I don't get caught anymore.

I just think Rick is going to be a liability.

No question about it.

Do you agree or not?

Yep.

I mean, just think, Rick.

He's already running like Alabama owes him the job.

I know.

He's keeping his house up here, and he's going to go down there and let those peasants vote for him.

I know.

That's kind of the way this thing's going.

You have no understanding.

He's absolutely oblivious to politics.

You know, it's always been terrible.

Yeah.

The thing that I think we can carry on about.

Dick Berlin.

was in the other day, told me that he's encouraging all his friends in the South to raise money for Sparkman.

He's so upset about this postal right thing.

And he said, now, you understand, I don't blame the administration and I don't blame the president because they were right in asking what they did in the way of postal pay raises or postal rate raises.

But he said this guy Blunt has run that thing into the down.

Blunt has.

Well, Blunt has heard us.

Both of us have been a goddamn death loser.

Blunt not in spaces, no question.

And he's not cooperating on anything.

Well.

That he would be the same way in the Senate.

I personally would like to see him...

I won't talk him out of it, but... Well, she's there on her way out of town.

I think we've seen the last of them now.

But you'll run across him every time you're in the south or any place.

He'll come stick to you like glue.

And so...

I think we have to be very careful with that.

I love him as a person.

He's a fine goat.

Have you seen him recently?

No, not lately, no.

He looks like 100 years old.

Oh, is that true?

He's become physically, not mentally, but physically, you know, a bit dark.

His face is withered.

It's happened in the last...

There's something wrong with him.

I don't know.

Something like this.

Because he's been very vigorous and...

He will never, never...

I'll be darned.

Poor Jonathan, this wonderful guy.

I'd like to refer you to Senator Blunt, but I need you to know that I observed him at the dinner the other night.

He was like a ghost.

Well, the thing that concerns me is to get a lot of newspaper talk going about the White House cutting Blunt up or vice versa.

What do you want me to do?

I think I'll just talk to Harry, if you don't mind, and indicate to him that there's a lot of talk like this and that we've got to be awful circumspect in the way we conduct ourselves on this thing.

and that we don't want to give Blunt any help.

Oh, yes.

Yes, sir.

Hope's coming down.

I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to tell that goddamn son of a bitch in life.

You know, he's horrible.

Well, I get another chance.

No, he's pretty close to the commie line.

He's part of his.

Well, we've got Grunewald down here.

Grunewald, yes.

And, well, their national affairs people, their editors, are down here.

And I've agreed to see them for an hour.

Under no circumstances is Henry to see them.

Well, no, they don't want to see Henry.

See, these are the domestic guys.

And Grunewald's sort of their den chief.

It's really a pain in the neck.

Terrible.

Don't tell them the things you don't want to.

Screw them.

Okay.

But, uh, no, high school, I, I was pretty blunt.

Yeah, I'm amazed at the quality of these guys.

That fella and Hedley Donovan, running, you know, one of the greatest film-making practices in the nation.

They really are.

They're, they're,

He's on the phone now, Mr. John Klein.

He'll be talking to you in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, sir.

Thank you.

Good job.

Mr. Klein.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Klein.

Yeah, I was talking to your friend Ed Reagan up in Erie just a few minutes ago, and he said that you and he had collaborated a bit.

And I said, well, I'm glad to see this youth movement, and are you counting seconds?

Yeah.

Suffolk has been a place that I have so many pleasant memories of.

Jay was in the meetings there, you know, and they really turn them up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It may also get here.

You're in Lauderdale, huh?

Good, good.

Yeah, incidentally, I happen to be going to Florida this afternoon myself for a couple of days.

I go to keep this game going.

Really interesting.

Is the weather good?

It'll stop.

It's not a

Yes, sir.

Right.

Well, I certainly am glad to see you win.

And we, John Erickson of our commission council, is going to meet with all the county executives from New York in the next couple of weeks, I understand.

We can try to help all we can.

All right.

Not one doesn't have any questions.

I've talked to both of them.

The other two.

Who?

The other two.

Yeah, but he was just realizing, right?

I don't need to know the other one.

Did he have any questions?

Did he pass off?

Yeah.

Mark, do you have any questions?

That would be the other one.

Well, it might be useful for other reasons, but you know, aren't you?

Not for a long time, I haven't.

So, it wouldn't hurt to mention it, because I've lost your bird, your dildo.

That's right.

And the cuffs off my trousers.

All right.

Bill says he can't report to you today that he would prefer to leave.

I've got to better button it up.

Well, it is an amendment that provides the president with discretionary authority to declare a balance of trade in payments emergency and then gives him the ability to impose selective or general import quotas or to impose an import surcharge of up to 15% of the value of a particular article.

And so you can see what is involved there.

Now, this is basically from the treasurer.

And Terry Walker has reported that he is doing this for Silk, who is the secretary of instructions, and refers to a meeting involving you and Connolly and Bennett.

And it seems to have been.

Well, I was here when you saw it.

It is just it was first proposed that putting this authority in the hands of the secretary of the treasury.

And the committee changed it to putting the authority...

I don't think it should.

I don't really think it's that weird.

Well, I know exactly what you mean.

You're coming to more important things.

How's it going?

Is that still a golden house?

Many screw everything up, or not yet?

Well, it didn't seem to have as of last night.

I understand.

My last greeting also went in about 10.30.

You had said that you didn't think that at some point, but I just want to get a review.

I'm so anxious to get that to work, but I also feel this, and George, I feel very strongly that we shouldn't pay out too much.

If they do not get the right kind of agreement, we'll flush the whole thing.

impose a freeze for 90 days, and have the cost of living council be very discretionary.

Get the teachers there, some interactive stuff, in other words, make our friends, and do it as low-key as possible.

Mr. Klein, I think that might be the best two words now.

And you say, what are you going to do after the 90 days?

Well, we believe that we'll take a look at it and see how the thing works.

And at the end of 90 days, say, we've kept this inflation down for this length of time, we've decided that.

Well, I think that it is inevitable, if the labor people are going to go along, that there has to be a way of approving the coal settlement when that comes in and the dock settlement, and they are going to hold to the principle of the sanctity of their contracts.

I understand all that.

It doesn't bother me.

I'm assuming that if we're going in for this, that's what we're going in for.

There will be approval of some very large settlements, and that, of course, will develop a hue and cry about caving in too much labor.

I think what they will get out of it, and this is the management strategy from that board,

is they will be looking for some kind of a moderate guideline for 1972.

Could we make it five and a half over the six?

Good cuts.

That number was 6.2.

So that looks like his bargaining number, and it probably could come down a little bit.

Make it, if you can get it in the 5 range.

It doesn't have to be 5, but you know, 5.7 or something like that.

You get my point.

I'm just thinking of the semantics.

Well, your signal to us on this is to try hard to make it work, but if the price is too high,

And it gets very, very steep, particularly in 72, to just flush it, get out of it, and start running the national economy the way you and I know it ought to be run.

And on this surcharge thing, you want me to try to turn this off?

Oh, why, yes.

And it's the...

I'm trying to do it the way that there isn't any connotation of cuddling.

But I want to try to get...

The thing is, I don't want the heat down here in the White House in the last few years.

What the hell am I going to have to do?

I'll be...

They'll be in here to ask you.

Cranberries and holy hands and, you know, Jesus, you're actually going to be awful.

Okay, I'll try to get Connolly.

I think he's in Jakarta.

Would you want me to do that?

Yeah.

The record shows that he is operating under direct...

Okay, John, the only thing that I'm concerned about that I...

I'll put it this way.

In principle, I like the idea.

The only thing is I don't want to have a responsibility so directly put here so that every item that becomes one for outcome doesn't die or...

Well, no doubt that's why he originally put it in the Secretary of the Treasury.

But the Secretary of the Treasury and the President are indistinguishable from this sort of thing.

I don't know if they didn't put it here.

It's a Treasury thing, I would understand.

Putting it over here would be bad.

They got it.

They got it here.

They're going to back off the Treasury.

I don't know.

It just can't be done.

I'm not going to make a whole fool of it.

Oh, it was overwhelming once they got the drift that you supported it.

But it is, it is fierce protection.

I mean, really, it's going way over that end of the hike.

Well, let's not get any out publicly here.

I don't want to say anything.

I don't want anything to be said publicly on this.

You see, we're studying it.

You see, then you have a direct competition with the common.

This must be avoided at all costs.

The common must be aborted.

I don't want him to come back and say, well, leave us for something, because he could get in a huff.

He could go to hell.

That we must avoid.

And we'll screw it up some way here, but excuse me.

So that's why the common cooperation is absolutely essential here.

All right.

I want to be sure.

I think this is terribly important.

I want to be sure I understand you.

All right.

You don't want this.

I don't.

I know you want this, and that is the basic signal.

But I want to beat it without...

But we don't.

...without having what appears to be a direct confrontation with the Congress, or what he thinks is a direct confrontation.

Not that he's got to realize it, but I think that there are just too many landmines in terms of...

of what I've been having to do.

Don't base it on the fact.

And don't argue the merits.

Tell them all the merits.

Tell them I've got to compose photos and everything.

But the politics.

Argue only the politics.

But on the politics, as far as the merits is one thing.

I mean, the free trade and so forth.

Because he's against free trade and so on.

But argue the politics.

It's the politics that worries me.

Having the president have to move in too many areas.

And frankly, I mean, you know, Christ would be in everything.

Everything.

You'd either be in everything or you would have a lot of dissatisfaction.

All hell would go loose because it's just textiles and space.

See, this is going in the reverse direction of what you and Connelly and I worked out in our program that we want to do.

When he gets back, assuming we can get some good things out of it, he's going to talk about it the other way and he's also going to go see if he's got these and so forth.

I think it's coming to a head.

I think they're going to have to decide something one way or another before a meeting leaves for Florida.

And he's supposedly going to leave Saturday.

I know his first meeting is Tuesday.

So conceivably, you think I'm going to stay here then?

No, I don't.

I think we can.

I think you should stay away from this matter.

I think you should stay away from it.

But let me say it.

I'm prepared to go to the 90 days where you stand.

It's just all right.

I know how difficult it is and so forth.

George, it's clean.

We can throw it and get rid of it.

I understand that it's something.

Okay?

Isn't it?

It's a... We knew it when I told you.

Sure.

Oh, yeah.

We all knew it.

Well, we knew it.

Now, with Arthur, I got told with my letter, he tackled me on.

He called me yesterday.

I didn't take the call.

Last night at the dinner, he came back to the dinner.

He says, God, I got your letter.

Everything's all right.

I just wanted to reassure you.

He says, all right.

You can reassure me tomorrow.

He says, I just want you to know I'm terribly worried about you.

That's good.

He's got it on his mind, isn't it?

But I'm not going to give him an inch.

I'm just going to say, Arthur, deal with Jeremy Strong.

Am I right?

I think it's the thing to do.

That's the only real dark part of it.

The letter says, Arthur is thinking of history and everything else.

And he knows that, and all that letter's in the file.

How do you realize what it does to him, George?

The economy doesn't go up.

the historical relevance for his great advice of millions of people.

Well, Milton, interestingly enough, when I talked to him on the phone a couple of days ago, he said the parallels to 1960 just scared the daylights out of me.

That was Milton's words.

Would you tell Milton that he ought to call her or wouldn't do any good?

He's on the outs with Arthur.

But if he writes an article, that has its impact on Arthur.

But I want Arthur, I want a program of people putting the heat on Arthur and calling him.

See, they're calling me and he thinks that maybe I'm lying, which I am to an extent, although I know what people feel, so therefore I'm not.

I'm representing what the center of the business community is.

But anything pertinent.

You, you, and Colson, and Flannigan, sit down and think who are the people that are the respecters the most.

See, if you get Dave Howie in college, for example, if Howie believes in something that Simon Lee does.

From what I could judge of this Calvin Bullock forum that Mr. Bullock said, it was a crazy thing.

But anyway, yeah.

They're worried about caving into labor.

My talk to them was basically along the lines of... Oh, you were there yesterday?

Yes.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, I thought you were going next week.

Well, tell me about it.

That we're basically going to conduct our fiscal and monetary policies, I didn't say it quite this way, as though we don't have any machinery, in the sense that we're going to have policies that will continue to bring the rate of inflation down, but...

A very strong part of that now is to have a strong expansion.

And a strong expansion at this point, because of its productivity kick, will do a lot to give us a lower cost pressure and so on.

They seem to accept that very well.

But they're a very skeptical lot down there in Wall Street, I would say.

They're all worried about labor.

Not a very impressive group, in other words.

Well, I guess it's a fairly typical group.

Not very impressive in terms of guts.

Thank you.

All right.

Okay.

All right, I'll keep that in mind.

Let's talk about the other black figures today.

That little crow.

Hey, hell, he's good.

Good enough.

Rrrrgh!

Nixon & Ehrlichman on Busing and Child Development

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NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

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Also recorded on November 5, 1971

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Nixon & Ehrlichman on Busing and Child Development

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on November 5, 1971

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Cite this conversation