On August 12, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and John B. Connally talked on the telephone from 12:01 pm to 12:12 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 007-112 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Hello.
Secretary John Connolly, sir.
Yeah.
Hello.
Mr. President.
Hi, John.
How are you, sir?
I understand you feel you better come back.
Yes, sir.
I think I'm going to come back.
I'm going to be here at noon.
All right.
I'll be in Washington about 4.30, I imagine.
Fine.
Washington time.
Fine.
Well, when you get in, I'll still be in the office, so you might just drop by here if you could.
All right, sir.
And in the meantime, I'll...
I'll take a look at some stuff here.
I'll clear my afternoon and do a little studying.
And Paul Volker is across the street and has all the information.
We expect a bad day tomorrow.
They've got a big Catholic holiday over there over the weekend.
And today is going to be a fairly bad day.
Yesterday was.
Not disastrously so, but we're constantly losing the initiative, I'm afraid.
And I don't...
I'll fill you in on all the details but let me ask you for any details that you might want yeah let me ask you in terms of the of what we do here if the just just in terms of of
whether the timing and if your thought is to is to would be to consider at least moving on one apart from the other no we could my thought the least we could do is maybe move on the international front yeah this afternoon when we get in or early in the morning just close the window
we wouldn't have to move on the domestic front until, say, Monday, which would give you all weekend to give us the weekend to firm up the details, resolve any questions, get the techs prepared, and so forth.
The thing that worries me is that I don't want to leave the appearance that we've reacted in haste or that we were unprepared.
Now, I think we can separate any actions.
We can move on the domestic front, or we can put out an announcement this afternoon late that, you know, that you're going to have some major changes or kind of leak it within the next two weeks.
This might quiet things down.
It seems to me there are three actions that we can take.
Number one, that put out, it won't be an announcement per se, but it'll be a little more than a leak that some major changes, major plans are...
under consideration and substantially finalized by you, this may quiet things down.
That's one action.
In other words, that might buy us the time to do it then on September 7th, the whole deal.
It could.
It could.
I frankly doubt it, but that's a gamble.
That's one thing we could do.
That's one possibility.
Yes.
The second possibility is that we could move on the domestic front.
Just...
But that doesn't appeal to me.
But if we moved on the domestic front with the domestic issues, we wouldn't have to move on the international things.
I think the move on the domestic issues would settle the international things down.
But it doesn't solve anything, really, in the long run.
Well, just considering that for a moment, you could move on the domestic front, and I suppose one way you could put it, you could move on the domestic front
And then, of course, it doesn't solve anything, but then the international thing would be then... Well, it ought to be stabilized.
It ought to be made up.
It would stabilize, but then you have a negotiating position for negotiating on the international front.
That would be one way to look at it, wouldn't it?
That's correct.
Let's suppose, for example, that we announced that we were going to have a wage price freeze, that we were going to have a...
the investment tax credit and the other things.
Or as a matter of fact, you could just announce the wage price freeze alone.
That's one way you could do it without going into the others.
And let me say that on that, something so you can be thinking about on the plane, I talked to Schultz and he thinks that there is a possibility that we can get a legal opinion to the effect that that can be done without
congressional approval.
That's my judgment.
It may raise a legal problem, but my view is that we ought to just do it, because if we have to wait for congressional approval, they could screw it up to a fairly well.
No question about it.
See, they would put in exceptions, etc., etc., etc.
I think you have to do it.
Just assume it.
Now, on the wage price thing, you could do it.
Well, the wage price thing certainly is going to be done without congressional approval.
That we do.
Now, so we announce that.
You could announce that alone.
Another thing you could do is to announce the wage price thing
plus the import tax alone.
Now, the import tax, and I was talking about the wrong subject.
Of course, the wage price can be done alone without regression proof.
But the import tax, according to George, if it is one that applies to those things that were involved in the Kennedy round, and, of course, that's what we would want it to apply to, and