Nixon phone call with Colson on Supreme Court nominations and United Nations

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Good afternoon, sir.

Where are you today?

I'm right in my office.

Oh, you're staying here.

Yes, sir.

Well, how are things going?

Well, it was just a good day, a good quiet day to get caught up on things.

I think things went well over the weekend, Mr. President.

We caught a little bit more of the snide commentary time in Newsweek gave us just what I figured they would.

Well, maybe not quite as bad as I thought.

on the court appointments.

They were very good on the appointees, I must say.

They gave good write-ups to both

Powell and Rehnquist, and most of the publicity over the weekend.

I don't know how much of it you saw, but...

I saw the news summary.

I thought it was pretty good on the two...

It's all right.

Sure.

No problem.

They're going to stick us a bit on the style, but... Yeah.

What time in Newsweek were bound to because of their...

They had to.

They were out on a limb, weren't they?

Both of them, and it read that way.

Each of them manufactured pretty much the same story, that it was...

hoping up until the end that it could be Friday and Lilly, and then the rug got pulled out, and therefore they came up with choices that had been second ones, but at least they got in there that they'd always been in the consideration.

It wasn't too bad.

I think time was even a little straighter than Newsweek for a change.

That's all right.

The stories will never catch up with the television.

No, not with 47 million people who saw that.

Absolutely not.

And as long as the articles about the nominees, about Rehnquist and Powell, are running as good as they are, that's really what people care about.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

All this business about how it's done, only the Washington set's interested in that.

That's correct.

I thought your radio speech came off very well.

I think the points were well made, and you delivered it very well, and the press on it today has been excellent.

The Post didn't feature it quite as well as I thought they would, but the Times gave it the lead story, as you probably saw.

It isn't much of a story, really.

You know what I mean?

It's basically just a...

Well, it was good.

But what I mean, there's no big news in it.

No, it's the kind of thing that all of the local television last night had lengthy excerpts from it.

Both stations, I watched two of them last evening, and they both played lengthy excerpts from it.

The radio replayed it.

It was on the Today Show this morning.

lengthy excerpts on the Today Show.

So it...

It shows you the device is pretty effective.

It really is.

It's damned effective when you consider that it... Well, it was a good Veterans Day speech, actually.

It was.

It was good, and doing it on Sunday gave us the added play today, which I think was good.

Scott and Ford got their...

U.N. statement.

That's going to be very tough.

I'm afraid we may lose by a couple, three votes.

Well, George Bush claims that he thinks he may have a vote or two.

well i hope but we're just working on that today the belgians we may lose if that kill us but the europeans are working hard on them well no one can say you haven't tried i talked to bill rogers oh christ rogers is working his butt off he really is he called me sunday morning and he said is there anything we can do with the agronsky program and i said well it's just a local washington show but he said well maybe i'll call the panelists on it he

He just was searching for everything.

I think I've got George Bush on the Today Show in the morning or CBS News and let him get a... Well, we'll have to take some ricochets from the right on this, but we'll just ride it through.

Well, I think the case we have to make to him and can make to the Mr. President is the enormous effort that was put in, that it was inevitable, and...

I think we can make a good case with the right, I'm not, they're so damned happy right now over these two court appointments, Cat.

They ought to be.

Oh, Kilpatrick was on a couple of the shows this weekend.

I noticed that, yeah.

And he was just, Dick was over.

I wouldn't be worried if, I mean, I told Dick Moore, he did some background for both times this week, and I said I didn't think it would help.

But he may have gotten a little soft cost to him.

Well, there are a few of Moore's quotes in there that are good, indicating that these

had been under consideration.

He helped to turn it around.

They were.

Sure, of course.

But try to persuade these press people.

Well, let them write it the way they want.

We hit Rather very hard, and he promised he would give us a balancing story, which he didn't, but he did play up the Gallup poll, which played well, by the way, on the radio, on the wires, and the newspapers, I thought, did pretty well by it.

The Star didn't carry it, but they don't subscribe to Gallup.

When is the Harris thing on Muskie coming out?

That's this Thursday, Mr. President.

I think that'll have quite an effect.

Oh, that's kind of...

I just read you a portion of it, but the whole three pages of his column is just... Well, it's devastating to Muskie, but more importantly, it's a real build-up to you.

It says that...

Yeah, here it is.

It talks really about how it's not only muskie declining, but you're gaining.

And you're gaining strength from all of the recent initiatives.

And that's before the Russian thing and before the trip to Charlotte and the textiles.

That's right.

So before the pretty good week this week, too.

Well, really, the last...

The Supreme Court, I'm sure, is going to be more plus than minus.

I

I'm just confident of that.

It'll be quite a bit more plus.

Much more plus.

You know, the prevailing thought, Oberdorfer quoted in this column of his yesterday, which you may have seen in the story.

Yes, I did.

The front page article.

Yeah.

But the prevailing thought is that you have so seized the initiative on these issues.

And the court thing, to those of us around Washington, we...

get all concerned about how the selections were made and the infighting and all that.

The people in the... Who affects the president and why did he do it that way?

That's right.

Why didn't he do this and that with the court?

But, I mean, with the ABA, well, the hell with them.

Sure.

I considered a woman.

I considered a senator.

That's right.

That was a compliment to them.

What the hell?

Well, the important thing is the activism, the presidential leadership, the strong leadership across...

All of these issues.

And everybody here, I think, recognizes these are my choices, too.

Yes.

You know, somebody didn't recommend them to me.

You know what I mean?

That goes... Well, in a sense, I think that's a good thing, also.

That's what I mean, yeah.

I think that's good.

That's a good line to get across.

It is.

It's a damn good line.

And it's important.

That comes through in the time of Newsweek stories.

I mean, they do it in the nastiest way, but they said the president was keeping his own counsel and...

even though they say you did it at the last minute, he did make these picks, and they were his selections.

But I think- They point out, I suppose, I wrote the speech that- Yes, they both get that very well, that you dictated it and Manola delivered the tapes to Rosewoods, and then you spent the day on Thursday preparing the speech.

It's interesting, I don't know which one, whether it's Time or Newsweek, they contradict themselves by saying that

you were rebuffed by the ABA, and Wednesday night had to pick two new candidates.

But then earlier in the same story, they say that you called Powell on Tuesday.

To invite him.

So in that sense, they contradict themselves.

That's one good thing we have.

We did call Powell, and of course we had Rehnquist on sale all the time.

Mitchell had Rehnquist recommended by Monday.

Well, I think the overwhelming publicity is that there are two damn good men, and the public impression is of a terribly effective speech which you gave last Thursday night, and I think...

I think the speech was effective from what I have heard from people I've talked to.

Extremely effective.

I mean, as a television speech, it was just apparently quite effective at what overwhelmed... Well, it was, as you so often do, a ten-strike, because you just caught a mood that was just right, and...

You were on top of things.

I keep hearing from people now the same kind of thing that Tommy Meskell, the governor of Connecticut, told me.

The same attitude you get from an awful lot of people, which is the president has kind of made us feel a part of things, and we kind of want to help him.

I got a letter this morning from a fellow that used to be a client of mine, actually.

I did some work for him, confirmed hard rock Democrat, Leon Albert in New York.

And he was an enormous contributor to Jack Kennedy.

And he wrote me a letter.

Jewish?

Jewish, yeah.

Wrote me a letter this morning and he said, I just want to tell you, I have come full circle.

He said, I'm still a Democrat and have been all my life, but I pledge myself 100% to your boss.

He said, he's...

honest and he's tough and he's trying to do the right thing and i think we ought to get behind him and i i want to support him so that's uh it was startling from this guy because he's he's as i say a lifelong democrat but there are a lot of people that are feeling that way now this fellow will probably shake down and get some campaign support out of but uh and maybe some help in the

in the Jewish community has a lot of influence among the professional Jews.

You know, the thing that's interesting to me, and we're going to have a hell of a lot more of this, is that the Democrats are all thrashing around, Muskie's thrashing, and of course Mills is hitting hard, he's really getting rough, and Jackson's hitting hard, and Kennedy is.

But they're having a hell of a time here.

The economy is basically our toughest issue, because it really gets down to what the hell happens.

You see, when you look at Harris's poll, it still shows that while the people approve of the policy, they still have a negative rating as far as jobs, unemployment, and all that is concerned, even though we're doing a little better in each field.

Oh, much better.

But I think on the economy, though, I have this feeling that, I may be wrong, but that

At some way, it's the last of this year.

It ought to start bubbling up some.

And thank God if it doesn't, we're just wrong.

Well, I think the one, two things I would say to that, Mr. President.

One is that you've got a major, we've got a major problem right now with Arthur Burns, not to let him slip back and... On money supply.

Yes, sir.

And when you see Conley... Amen, yeah.

I think, well, I think Conley maybe you want to use as the cutting edge on this.

I don't... Mm-hmm.

Conley or Schultz, but somebody has got to just talk political horse sense to that guy.

He just... Well, I made myself.

God, he's got such an incredible ego.

Hobe Lewis sent me down a proof of an article that's being written about Conley for the...

I mean, written about Burns for the January issue of the Reader's Digest.

And throughout it, you can see where he, in talking to the interviewer, he takes full credit for...

as he puts it, changing your mind and putting across the new economic program.

He opposed the whole international part.

Well, and then he, throughout this article, he just talks about how, you know, how his influence has been the dominant influence through the years on you.

God, man must have an incredible ego.

He does say in here, there's one quote he has, which is the only decent thing he gave us in the whole damn article is,

Nixon had the personal courage and intellectual capacity to see that an old policy was not working and to change the nation's course without fear of what the critics might say.

Well, that's the, in six pages, that's the only... We've got to play as goddamn egos, we will.

The other thing I'd say on the economy, though, Mr. President, I think is very important.

I'm convinced it's going to get better and...

Yes, sir.

And I don't think it's as... A lot of people are, but it doesn't show.

Well, it shows in some ways.

I think the... Well, we hear all isolated reports, but it doesn't simply show in the figures yet.

Well, it hasn't shown.

It didn't show in the GNP.

On the other hand, retail sales, even though automobiles distort it, are good.

I still think the unemployment figures, when they're done honestly, are going to be lower than they are now.

Certainly the cost of living figures... That was all right.

That's damn good.

Damn well ought to be.

The market is going through one of their periodic cycles.

I think they'll... Oh yeah, I think it'll move up toward the end.

Every person I talk to predicts it.

But the important thing is, from a political standpoint, obviously the best of all worlds would be if the economy is booming next year.

The second best, however,

is if you're correctly pastured.

In other words, you're fighting unemployment.

You're the fellow who's fighting the high prices.

And you're on the right side of the issues.

And I think even if it doesn't pick up as much as we would like it to, I think you're better pastured today than you've ever been.

the public not feeling that we care that much, they now look at you as the fellow who's... Yeah, we've got to keep that up front and center.

I think Rumsfeld will be a help in that respect.

He's doing beautifully, I must say.

Keep him out.

This is the first time Rummy has really... We've found him a niche.

Now let's let him get out and sell like hell.

Well, and he's doing well.

Every time he's been going on, he's been making some news for a change.

And he kind of likes it.

I talked to him today about doing some things.

Tell him to do everything he can.

Yeah, he's kind of turned down for it.

Muskie, I thought, did a damn poor job yesterday on Face the Nation.

I didn't see it.

Well, he...

I don't look at those, of course, but that's...

I noticed the news summary said he was at times good, times not so good, and so forth, so I imagine that's... Well, his style is effective.

He's got a low-key style that doesn't really irritate anybody, but he just goes to extremes to avoid answering questions.

I mean, he really waffles, and...

I think anybody watching that, I watched it, kept trying to take notes of things that I thought he would be vulnerable on.

Couldn't find much.

I got all through.

I had a blank piece of paper.

There wasn't any place where you could pin him down.

You couldn't give him any points one way or another.

It just was kind of a draw.

And I think with this poll Thursday and the internal bickering he's gotten involved in in the Democratic Party, I think he's going to start down very fast.

Well, they'll approve our two judges.

That'll be a good news story this month.

Yes.

Yes, I think, no question about that.

And also, they ought to get a tax bill out.

That'll be a good news story.

That should be out within, what, two or three weeks, I would think.

We need it.

Three weeks.

That'll help the market.

Yeah, that, oh, sure it will.

Bound to.

And the automobile sales, they're bound to begin to have a filtering effect on other industries.

That just...

That just inevitably happens, and they've continued at a tremendous pace.

So I think with the initiative is the key, and you've, the momentum, you've stayed out front on all of these.

I just, I think Ovidor, if his piece was right yesterday, it must have hurt him to write it.

Yeah, that's all right.

I'm sure it pained him, but it's true.

Well, they'll keep,

scrapping away, and we just try to keep on top of them.

We'll stay out front of them.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Nixon phone call with Colson on Supreme Court nominations and United Nations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 25, 1971

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