Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 4 › Conversation 004-023

Nixon phone call with Haldeman on White House management and Public relations

Thursday, June 3, 1971 · 7:43 PM–8:01 PM ET · White House Telephone · 17 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob")Conversation004-023 on Tape 4 (tape position 01:12:45–01:29:21)StartThursday, June 3, 1971 at 7:43 PMEndThursday, June 3, 1971 at 8:01 PMRecording deviceWhite House TelephoneSourceNixon Library record for 004-023 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and H.R. Haldeman discussed the need to implement a "one-man responsibility" program within the administration to increase accountability on key policy initiatives, drawing a parallel to Egil Krogh’s leadership on drug policy. The President reflected on the positive reception he received at a recent event for members of Congress, suggesting that he should host more informal, social gatherings to foster personal loyalty and capitalize on the power of the White House. Additionally, they reviewed strategies for handling economic messaging regarding unemployment, explored the benefits of utilizing Q&A formats in public appearances, and confirmed the cancellation or relocation of certain social events to accommodate renovations at the White House.

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Transcript (AI-generated)

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I was thinking that on, after our talk with Dole and Mitchell, it's probably we ought to start our one-man responsibility thing here.
You know, we've got Finch, you know, flubbing around, Mitchell, you know, sort of talking about him, Dole, right?
But nobody's really doing anything.
Nobody's really responsible.
We sort of need to
I don't know, a bargain operation.
Don't you think maybe that this is something that somebody should take and get quite excited about?
Yeah.
No, I really do.
I really think it's a tremendous possibility.
I mean, we've got young people, you know, that want to do things.
We've got junior chamber guys that would love to go.
We've got women that want to work.
What the Christ are they doing?
I mean, you know what I mean?
What more could they do that is more important than this?
I really feel that, I think that really gets down, though, Bob, to the whole business of responsibility.
But I don't think we've really got it now.
What do you think?
I think that's right.
The National Committee flops around.
Everybody else talks about it.
Bob never will.
Bob, he never will.
He never gets down to it.
Well, we'll talk about it.
I just thought you ought to consider it.
I'd kind of like to get some of that where we get you.
A young goer.
Put him in charge.
Like we're putting Krogh in charge of drugs.
Well, I couldn't feel better about trucks, because I know Krogh is a tough son of a bitch.
He believes as I believe.
He's going to do what I want, right?
And he will.
He won't give up.
And he won't give up, and he'll needle everybody, and we're going to do something.
And, Bob, that's what we need in every field.
I think that's what that crazy Perot says, but he's right.
Yep.
That's a very good point.
Where we don't get things done is where we don't have that.
Right, yeah.
You know, on another subject, one thing that was really rather pleasing about this thing tonight, I never saw a more appreciative group.
You know, these people have come from all over the country, and a lot of them have been defeated.
And my God, they were just Democrats and Republicans, so appreciative and so positive, and also members of Congress.
I think maybe we ought to build a little more, because, you know...
I'm sure that meant an awful lot to them.
It's kind of like your whittier choir coming in.
Yeah.
And another thing, I think we might do a little bit of that with the members of Congress on a social basis.
Bring them down for a cocktail, come down, and see if they find a reason.
It's an awful...
It's a... Get the personal touch to it.
Get a personal loyalty that you'd never get out of that sort of impersonal business of bringing them down to the Capitol for a reason.
They were really great.
These people were just so moved by it.
I was surprised.
We forget the power of the White House, don't we?
Well, we tend to.
We sure, you know, we play it and play it with people that it does mean something to.
And that kind of group, it really would.
Rather than having John Gardner for the 18th time, have people like this.
And have others, you know.
Like, that's one of the reasons this police chief was good.
They'd never been in the Cabinet Room before.
And they thought it was marvelous.
They said, no president ever did this before.
And they're right.
That's what we ought to do is more and more of that kind of thing and less and less of the... Less and less of the people that have always been there, like the Advertising Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the usual groups that come to town that expect always to see me, the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, I'll see them.
It doesn't mean a goddamn thing to them, Bob.
Not a thing.
Really.
They've been there.
Don't you agree?
Yeah.
I thought Dole seemed to be a little concerned about the toll business and so forth.
He's got to keep his dobber up.
He's always concerned about the POW thing.
Yeah, I know.
That I understand.
Yeah.
There's no unapproval.
Even in Gallup, it's still 50, isn't it?
Yep.
That isn't too bad, is it?
It's very good.
It's good.
It's good.
The real drag is the war.
We've got to face it.
That's it.
Well, I feel it.
You read it through everything in full.
The other thing that was interesting... That shows there's other light strength that's holding up, and if you eliminate that one negative, the light strength in the other area should pop up.
One thing that was very interesting about this group tonight, two things I mentioned briefly.
Both Democrats and Republicans spoke very, very favorably of the press.
Of course, these are pros.
They've seen it.
But, boy, they were...
right tone and all that sort of thing.
The other point is that, uh, Charlie Kirsten made a point that, you know, I don't know if you would be able to do Q&A, but he said you could do Q&A.
I said, I'd be very interested to see it.
We were just too young for that.
I don't know how we can work it out, but, uh,
We could work it out.
You have to do a lot of screening to get something intelligent enough.
Of course, you don't have to be too bright to match the watch.
Yeah.
The problem with a Q&A with a panel of that kind is that...
They say it's a fix.
Well, or either they say it's a fix on the one side or the... Also, you get the kids on it...
We tend to try and get real gutsy about questions, grandstands and stuff.
What we might do is to sometime go to some young group and just say, all right, questions, kids, and let them pop up and stand up.
At Rochester, I'm considering the possibility of just making an immediate Q&A, which might be a different way to handle that.
That's right.
And let the cameras be in and all that.
How are they going to handle this?
I don't want to have our people try to gloss it over.
I don't know.
They were debating whether to try and make a little...
I think we've got to do that.
I think we should.
Yes, we've got to do it in order not for people to get too depressed.
In order not to get depressed and also so that we don't look like we only explain the good news and ignore the bad.
That's right.
And I think if we just take it, it's good for our people to say, you know, well, yeah, I think we should go.
I'm quite aware of it.
That's what the president has said, that unemployment is a major factor and we're working on it.
That employment is going up.
We've got to have it go up more because of the increasing.
Point out the favorable thing.
More people employed.
We need more to sop up the people that are being let out of the armed forces.
I must say, it's going to move.
It better go even to 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, whatever it is.
And then every month it goes down is a hell of a good month, huh?
It's got to get up a ways, or it's got to be up a ways in order to go down.
Don't think about those young kids, okay?
They may find a good forum to take it on.
They're not necessarily college kids.
Well, I don't think one of them is that.
Maybe one.
We don't want the kids to look bad.
See, if you have just each color kid, they'll look bad and antagonistic.
On the other hand, you could have a combination.
On this group tonight, it's quite apparent the Q&A
the Q&A technique is extremely effective.
They all think that, you know, you need to sell.
I look like a person who will grow and watch these reviews and think that I do them better than you see anybody else do them.
You've got to broker that thing.
You know, that's the same thing that our friends in Yale say.
Right, right.
Well, that's the most difficult part.
And you said that, but that's...
in its various forms, and we ought to work for other forms.
You shouldn't just, you don't have to be the press.
I mean, you can go before almost any group.
I could have even done that with the Chamber of Commerce.
Sure.
Let them ask questions.
Like we did, like them, you know, let the Chamber of Commerce have a panel.
Do it like the editors.
Yeah.
And they'd ask a lot of good questions.
Uh, have you checked them?
You didn't have any report on the driver's name by any chance yet?
No.
Well, one other thing I want to ask briefly is, we do not, do we have a dinner in the White House next week?
We really shouldn't, Pat, next week.
They're going to start decorating.
No, I don't think we do.
She said on the 8th she thought we had a dinner, and I said, I don't think so.
The 8th?
Do we have, does that mean we have one of those more expanded theaters?
My view is that if we do, we've got to put it in Blair House or something.
You see what I mean?
I don't want to... Yeah, I don't have my calendar right here in the other room, but I... All right.
Want me to check it?
Would you mind?
Just a second.
No, we don't have anything on the 8th at all.
Do we have anything next week?
No.
Because remember, we checked that.
She didn't want anything after the...
So next week is clear, is it not?
As far as White House... Yeah, the 7th was the date they had proposed for the advertising council reception.
So we have that scratched anyway.
on the 8th is Pete Peterson's bipartisan leaders thing but that doesn't involve that's not a social deal that's you know the Peterson international presentation economic presentation briefing and so forth and the 10th is the divine group divine group
That's not social.
Push that over to the firehouse.
Yeah, but it isn't a social thing anyway.
Sorry.
That's good.
Well, I'm a Peterson.
I, uh...
I think we should push that to the firehouse very quickly.
Sure.
Well, we can... We'll work out a...
If it's scheduled to be in the residence and that poses any problem, we can sure not have it there.
I don't think it is.
Well, we wanted to have something social.
We could have the thing at Blair House.
Sure.
And put the whole deal on over there.
Yeah.
And let's leave the White House staff to take on a hell of a burden.
Actually, Blair House isn't big enough to do a fake group.
It isn't very big.
Or in one room for a briefing or anything.
And that's all it is.
But we, I know we were, from our side, we're not planning on doing anything in the residence next door.
Because it's, it isn't a thing of the nature.
you know, is when we were gonna be at midway.
Okay, well, we'll hop in and look at that tomorrow.
Yeah, right, we sure will.
Okay.

NARA Description

On June 3, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman talked on the telephone from 7:43 pm to 8:01 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 004-023 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 4-23

Date: June 3, 1971
Time: 7:43 pm - 8:01 pm
Location: White House Telephone

The President talked with H.R. (“Bob”) Haldeman.

     President's previous meeting with Robert J. Dole and John N. Mitchell

     One-man responsibility program
         -Robert H. Finch, Mitchell, Dole
         -Edward L. Morgan
         -Finch
         -Egil (“Bud”) Krogh, Jr.
         -H. Ross Perot's opinion

     President's earlier reception for 80th Congress
           -Future get-togethers
                 -President's Whittier class
          -Attendees' reaction
                 -Reaction to White House power
          -John W. Gardner
          -Police Chiefs, Advertising Council, Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign
                 Intelligence Advisory Board [FIAB]
          -Dole's concerns
                 -Polls
                 -Prisoners of war [POWs]

**********************************************************************

[Previous PRMPA Personal Returnable (G) withdrawal reviewed under deed of gift 02/18/2022.
Segment cleared for release.]
[Personal Returnable]
[004-023-w001]
[Duration: 2m 18s]

      Polls
              -Trial heats
              -Harris poll
                      -The President compared to Edmund S. Muskie
                      -The President’s rise
              -Gallup poll
              -Similarity of recent polls
              -President’s attitude
                      -Winston S. Churchill
              -Optimistic outlook for the President
                      -Robert J. Dole’s opinion
                      -Opinion of White House staff

**********************************************************************

     Presidential approval poll
           -Vietnam war issue's effect

     President recent press conference June 1
           -Reaction at reception for 80th Congress June 3
           -Charles J. Kersten
           -Young people at press conferences
           -President's forthcoming trip to Rochester, New York

     Unemployment versus employment
         -Handling by administration June 4
         -Jobs for returning veterans
         -Actual figures

     Possible press conference format

     College students

     Question and answer technique
          -Chamber of Commerce

     Jack J. Dreyfus, Jr.

     President's schedule
           -Dinner on June 8th
                 -Thelma C. (“Pat”) Nixon's views
                 -Maurice H. Stans’ group
                 -Blair House
                 -Next week's events
                 -Advertising Council
                 -Peter G. Peterson's bipartisan leaders
                 -Samuel L. Devine's group
                 -Blair House

Also recorded on June 3, 1971

  • 004-020 2:47 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Julie Nixon Eisenhower talked on the telephone from 2:47 pm to 2:49 pm.
  • 004-021 3:06 PM · 30 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman talked on the telephone from 3:06 pm to 3:07 pm.
  • 509-015 3:06 PM · 38 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:06 pm to 3:07 pm.
  • 509-016 3:07 PM · 31 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:07 pm and 3:17 pm.
  • 509-017 3:07 PM · 6 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:07 pm and 3:17 pm.
  • 509-018 3:17 PM · 8 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Rose Mary Woods met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:17 pm to 3:27 pm.
  • 509-019 3:27 PM · 1 hr 15 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Robert J. Dole, John N. Mitchell, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:27 pm to 4:49 pm.
  • 004-022 6:27 PM · 5 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 6:27 pm and 6:39 pm.

All 24 conversations from June 3, 1971 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 004-023, June 3, 1971. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/004-023 (accessed October 12, 2026).