Nixon phone call with Colson on China initiative and Economy

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Mr. President, I have Mr. Coulson for you now.

All right, all right.

And I wanted to let you know Rosemary had gone out for the evening.

She didn't answer at home.

That's right.

You've got to go out and call her tomorrow.

Okay.

There's Mr. Coulson.

Okay.

Yes, sir, Mr. President.

Well, I'm sorry you caught me trying to get home through the flood.

Yeah, it really rained, yeah.

Anything important today?

I don't know how important, Mr. President.

I did a little sampling of the senators who came to that briefing the other night and got some interesting reactions.

in Illinois, and yet everybody's worried about it.

And Baker thought it was helpful, although he had a similar comment.

He said, we're really in pretty good shape down there, but everybody's all, it's a psychological thing.

But Baker can help and Percy by speaking up a little themselves.

I talked to Griffin and Percy.

They all found it useful, and they all said, we want to get the rest of the

Right, right, right.

Sure, sure.

Have you talked to him since the China initiative?

No, I haven't.

I haven't talked to him.

I think he has to be the most enthusiastic fellow I've yet talked to.

He really is.

Well, that's interesting because, you know, he's basically hardline as I am, but he's smart enough to see it.

He had the most extravagant comments.

He said this is the biggest thing, in my opinion, since the atomic bomb.

He said, I don't think anybody in the circles I travel in is talking about much else.

What do you think about the right wing thing?

Didn't bother him a bit.

He said that that's how we get into discussions.

As a matter of fact, I asked him about that.

He didn't really take that very seriously, that he knew where Bill Buckley was going to be.

That these fellows are trying to put a little pressure on us from the right.

consensus I get.

That's good to have Hope seeing it.

That's very good.

Well, Hope was terribly enthusiastic and wants to do a book on it.

Well, it really is worth a book.

You know, of course, when you compare it with the Cuban confrontation and the other, this is for the big marbles and that's for the little marbles.

Yeah, well, you know what I mean?

We don't want them to get by with giving us these cheap shots and then taking a good wang at us on the big shots, you know?

Well, of course, what they did last night, it was kind of sad, because they were the only network to really carry that superb coverage up on the Capitol.

I think that's one of the best photos CBS did.

They not only carried it, they did something of...

It was The Little Girl's Crying.

Yeah.

And just held on it for a moment.

Uh-huh.

And Pierpoint narrated it, and it was very, very positive.

Well, that helps.

That may be more important than the economy.

Who knows?

Well, I've seen any number of that picture rerun today, and that's it.

this weekend, as I expect you will.

Well, you can't tell.

You'll get some mixed, some not.

But that's all right.

There'll be a lot of positive stuff bound to be.

But people reaching out for you like that, you're right, Johnson never gets that.

That's more the kind of charisma that you saw with Kennedy shots.

Sure.

They used to run it all the time with him and Eisenhower.

But as I say, I blasted CBS today, and they apologized, rather said he couldn't.

Well, particularly, that gives you a chance to make them give us a good shot next Wednesday when the retail things come out.

I thought I would use that, just that way, to make it up.

They've been awfully good since Stanton was down.

Yes, I know.

The only network to have run a lot of these human interest kind of things.

Yeah, that's good stuff, too.

The Eisenhower battle, they were the only ones.

I think the visit up in the hill was a nice thing to do because of not only that shot,

Good.

The man that came running in said,

Actually, you know, on the China thing, our real problem here, I mean, when you think of the whole bluest, what his reaction, but it's really, Chuck, to get our own people to, you know, like the, well, everybody from the Towers to the Dominics to the, well, Natrick, Percy's all right, and people on this issue, but they really ought to be jumping up and down and, you know, rather than, you know, whining around.

You don't want

What have you heard from Harris lately?

Has he done any more surveying?

say this, in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, in which the average unemployment was higher than it is as of today.

That's exactly what I told you.

5.7 then and 5.6 now.

Now, what the hell are they talking about?

That's right.

Well, the first two Kennedy years, it was 6.7 the first year and 5.7 the next year.

spectacular.

That's what it is.

It's all, frankly, it's all psychological.

And if we can get Burns now, we've got a lot of heat on him to just say one thing positive, that'll have a hell of an effect.

Well, I had at least a half a dozen calls from Alan Greenspan today, who's been acting as very intermediary.

Well, Alan's a solid fella.

He's very solid.

He knows that Burns has gone over

Back down on the even rated.

That was the only way he was going to get well.

Yeah.

You see, we may get the retail sales, and then you never know what's going on in unemployment.

That's what that goddamn BLS people, they could go up to six, or they could go keep where it is, or creep up a bit, or whatever the hell it is.

But nevertheless, that's not really the point.

This summer isn't going to see much change.

Well, let's not be discouraged if it does.

My point is that, what the hell?

So we got very little out of it when it went to 5.6.

So if it goes up to 5.8 or 6, so what does it prove?

They've discounted it, actually.

That gives us another...

another benchmark for which to move down.

That's right.

All right.

Now, I think, be sure you let Connolly know that the reactions were good, will you?

Yes, I will, Mr. President.

I'll let him know tomorrow.

Tell him you've checked it all.

Tell him about the machine tool people and the rest, because he fights these damn battles and talks to these business people, and he's got to know that we're aware that he's doing a hell of a job.

Well, I certainly will.

He is.

God, he really lifts them out of their seats, I guess.

He just is great.

When he gets wrapped up,

It just may come, like your friend Harris says, you never know.

It may come with the consumers.

Well, he thinks that it's due, and he thinks over the next... Well, the consumer, basically, retail sales are good in June, and they're going to be good.

It's a question of whether they're very good.

Well, that's going to be...

It does, it does.

If it doesn't last too long.

Steel is not, of course, nearly the impact that Otto's has because steel is a basic, you know, Otto's just reflects it, just reverberates.

He should.

That gives us another benchmark, see?

It does.

And also, he'll know the questions.

You know, we get different questions to ask for change.

Right.

Exactly.

He gave me a very interesting slant on the economy.

He said, you know, you fellows are taking punishment for inflation very unfairly.

He said, what you should do is break down...

commodities over the past year, the things that people really buy.

Sure, that they live on.

They can do without carrots, but they've got to have potatoes.

What triggered his thinking about this was that article that we wrote about the bracket design that was in the Washington Post yesterday.

Actually, I don't think we'll see what food prices do this summer, but one thing we've got to watch, you know, where everybody's so concerned about getting farm prices up, and I'm not so damn concerned about that.

Let the damn things...

you know, the difficulty with it.

So you worry about agriculture.

Well, if you worry about agriculture, there's a hell of a lot bigger market in consumers.

And I'm just not going to push any farm prices up.

Well, they haven't.

Actually, what we've had the last two months has been a catch-up.

Sure.

Because farm prices as a whole, food prices as a whole, are only up, I think it's the average of 3.5% over the years.

So that hasn't been the big factor.

But when you do break it down,

uh i'll send you a memorandum on this because it's fascinating nobody apparently nobody's looked at this when you do that and you find the things that are important to people really well transportation has gone up but that's the fears of railroads and airplanes yeah but basic commodities that's one that's a one-shot deal right and the basic commodities that people really need

Thank you.

That's right.

Well, anyway, I'll be out in the country tomorrow, so we'll get a few.

I have a feeling if you get a little reaction like you got up at the Capitol from that crowd, that that's a contagious thing once it starts, Mr. President.

We hope so.

I'm sure it is.

Well, you can't tell about the country because some one group can get organized and raise

What is your reaction to the Vice President's trip?

Well, John Skelly talked to me after you called him in.

I think he was disastrously reported.

Yeah.

He was really, really very hurt.

Oh, I'm sure he feels, and he's been done in, and he's just hurt as the devil.

Well, he should be.

That Newsweek story, I think, was the worst thing.

It was his fault, he wanted to go, you know?

They really got a bad deal and an awful bad rep. And we've all got to make it clear to him that we think he did and play that goal right down the line.

Well, I agree.

And Skelly thinks he did.

where we'll start rebuilding.

I want to get a place where he goes, where he gets a good reception.

I just think we ought to do that.

Let people cheer him.

They will, you know?

Sure they will.

I mean, it isn't all that bad.

I mean, let's try to figure a place like that.

And of course, the main thing is if we do it, if we get him to go, he's so tender about it at the moment.

I talked to an old mine Democrat Italian politician

Nixon phone call with Colson on China initiative and Economy

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Also recorded on July 30, 1971

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