Conversation 019-028

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Yeah.

Okay, fine.

I'll see them there.

I think it's a nice idea.

Have Hunger get some desk and put it out there.

All right, bye.

Yes, sir.

Oh, I was just talking to Alex here.

What is the, how did it go this morning?

Everybody happy?

Yes, sir.

It was a good session.

Good idea, too.

Covered the whole ground.

John covered domestic, George the budget, economic, and Gregor legislated.

Henry did a superb job on that.

Did he?

Was he in good shape?

He's great.

He really is.

He walked in and he came late.

He said, I apologize for not being here to hear the other speakers, but as you know, the president's giving me hell every half hour.

And he wouldn't let me leave until I had gotten this half hour's worth.

And then he played off of that kind of stuff.

And he just does a

a marvelous job and i think people came away with a very good upbeat feeling well the thing about it too is that uh as we know bob uh henry with his faults is still uh just so basically in tune with what the hell i believe in oh yeah and it's a goddamn loyal yeah well he did a great job of laying out the you know china and soviet thing and wrapping up vietnam

They must feel that they know what the plan is and that it's working damn well, but that there are going to be some possible setbacks here and there and that nobody should flap about it.

Good.

And that's what our people need to know.

Well, the thing is that everything isn't going to be like you get in India, Pakistan, and you have to bomb the north so everybody doesn't say, oh, Christ.

Right.

I mean, hell, that's part of foreign policy.

He laid that out and then said the North Vietnamese are going to have some spectacular event that's going to make it, they're going to do everything they can to make it look like a disaster for us.

It won't be, but it'll be played that way, and we just got to be prepared for that and go through it and go on about what we're doing, which is working.

You know, and he hit that damn hard.

So I picked it up at the closing and said the same thing applies to the political thing too this year.

We're going to get good polls and bad ones, and we better not get excited about the good ones or depressed about the bad ones.

and we know the opposition is going to score some points on us there's no point getting upset about that we've got our plan we know what we're doing we're in good shape and there we go i think we've got you know it was a good thing to do well i'm glad you did it another thing too is that uh i think there is uh sort of a tendency as we know for everybody

and sort of sit around and grouse and say that things are going to hell.

And that those guys, you know what I mean.

Now understand, I am all for, believe me, all for Price and Buchanan and Alec and others writing their critiques.

And we'll get them from death.

You know, and saying everything's going to hell and they're not doing anything right.

You know, all that kind of thing.

But, on the other hand, if you ever start getting that sort of a feeling around Bob,

It just destroys.

The thing to do is to remember that things are going to hell a lot better than we had any right to expect.

And that doesn't mean that we say, Jesus, we're swimming.

We simply say we have a hell of a fight that we're doing now.

But I think there's one tendency that

You can feed it to all the cabinet people.

The thing is that it'll be a very, very rapidly spreading virus.

Some of them are staff people, particularly younger people, and some of them are cabinet people.

But any time anything goes a little bit wrong, they'll throw up their hands and say everything's gone to hell.

And I don't think we've got much of that.

I mean, not as much as last year, at least.

People are better seasoned, for one thing.

They've been through a couple of things that were supposedly the end of the world, and they didn't end.

That's why I say, I mean, that's why I'm there to do something that we can't even know.

It's just that sort of thing.

I think all of those things.

I mean, you know, people, your staff meetings and the rest, tell them, now look, fellas, let's keep our heads and our perspectives.

I mean, what's going to be the big story next week?

What troubles will the other fellow have us?

i just told alex just do it on the way out sure because you know it's just they did all this work

One of the points that is very, very important on this thing is, as I told you, to remember the great capacity that two fellows particularly have, one is McGregor and one is Coulson, to sort of build people that can sort of talk the upbeat stuff.

They're fighters.

The reason they do is that both of them

Each one of them is a realist.

Jesus Christ, they never, I must say, McGregor having lost an election, an election or two, and Colson knowing that you go up and down, they're realists.

But they know the overwhelming importance not to go down, go around with your mouth hanging down.

Don't you agree?

Absolutely.

And I think that's a so, so important experience.

And

it's really sort of the connolly attitude isn't it yeah he's never he's never down you talk to us candidly about things but he doesn't talk that way he never projects it and that's the key thing he always says three things well i think we're doing great yep okay

We kind of opened the meeting on that, thinking back to three years ago this morning when we were all trying to figure out what the hell we were here for and how we were going to do it.

This has developed into quite a coup over that three years.

I think it's a great idea to do it.

I was thinking of this and that connection.

Do you think maybe I ought to have the breakfast, but not this year, with the Democrats, except for a few?

I mean, I'll do some of the Democrats with a little pop at night, you know, our conservative Democrats.

But what I meant is the breakfast for the Republicans.

We could do about three, four breakfasts with the Republicans very easy, you know what I mean?

not this year no no and the other side of it is if you have it just with the republic looks partisan then you get the contrast to last year when we had it with the democrats and maybe it doesn't matter no no the point that i make is that if i did this i would have democrats and at night uh selected democrats for uh you know for a drink so what i mean

so we can say, well, we're doing different things.

We've got some gays having reception, and you have a breakfast with Mansfield, you know, do all that crap, you know, along with Albert.

I suggest the breakfast, because it's not such a time to get these guys.

Well, it might be a good idea.

And, of course, all those guys are going to be running.

They're all going to be running, and we need them not fighting for it.

We appreciate their help, and so forth and so on.

And then, you see, then I would have in

And I'd have in the senior Democratic guys that have been helpful to us, like I'd have in the Southern Democratic crowds, you know, in terms of people like Hebert and Stennis, you know, people like that.

And they'd all, I'd have in them sometimes.

And we'd say, yeah, we're having Democrats and Republicans.

Yeah.

But don't make a thing out of the Republican thing of covering everybody.

Would you say you're having a group?

Yeah.

maybe not do them all right in sequence so that it doesn't no i agree i agree i'd have and rather than having them in alphabetical order you might have them in terms of when they came to congress they they could say that it's the club you know this club and that club have invited me and so i have invited them up here

That has some merit, too, because you can talk a little differently to the older guys than you do to the younger guys.

Alex asked whether or not I should have one of the women.

I asked you about that, and you said no.

Say something about Mrs. Stans and Mrs. Hardin.

I don't know.

I don't think so.

The only one that can do it is Adele Rogers.

She's short and she's damn good.

Yeah.

And Adele certainly can.

Yeah.

And as the ranking captain, why play?

Well, she's the ranking, of course, Mrs. Agnew is, but she can't do it.

Well, yeah, but she's got those inferences.

Yeah.

She's sort of at luck with Mrs. Nixon there.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

They don't do that.

i think maybe we could do that so what do you think i suppose maybe it does i'm not really sure but it you know it doesn't hurt anything that's probably it's a cheap shot for us tell her we just gonna have two i prefer to say two minutes about mrs hart and the women in the cabinet

Tell her, by the other thing, that we're going to have the non-cabinet type speaking.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So that we get the, you know, like the Harlow, the two alumni, and the two departing ones, so that we get the big shots not in at this time, but that we'd like for her to say a word about that.

Okay.

that's that's that's good i'll tell alex that alex what did you leave it with i left i said i asked you that i had you and i discussed it okay and uh colson was always on the list as was mrs well i did i wasn't sure colson didn't raise it understandable i thought i was sure uh i didn't he didn't raise it but i i had just i was looking over the thing and thinking about the fact that i had suggested scally to you yeah

And then I thought, my God, if I had Scali, you can't have him without Colson.

That's why I called.

That's right.

He was on.

Because the thing is, another reason I suggest him is that he has never asked me to go to all of this.

And, you know, when a guy doesn't ask, I feel a hell of a lot different about putting him on than when I do ask.

He's awful good about all that.

He never has.

He's got good sense.

Never wants to be out front and everything.

He just likes, he knows damn well what's more important is that I know what he's doing.

So Henry made the foreign policy sound pretty good, huh?

Yeah, he did.

And it's done darn good.

He covers all the mystique, you know, over the years.

The building block, he's got some good analogies of the blocks that you've been laboring so painstakingly to build over the last several years, and now it's starting to take more.

Well, about the cabinet meeting this afternoon, do we have an agenda for the damn thing?

Yeah.

Basically, it's a budget.

Well, did you get a hold of Connelly and ask him if it was OK to sign a brief report?

Yeah.

Here it is.

Stein's going to give a brief report.

Rumsfeld, a brief report.

Then Schultz, a quick rundown on the budget outlook.

And that's it.

That'll be fine.

That's enough.

The State of the Union will set them up on that.

We shouldn't have a long cut.

No point in getting repetitious on that.

Right.

We're figuring an hour and 15 minutes.

We ought to get it done.

We've got to hold a harlow on.

Yeah, we're going to set that up.

Or he's going to.

Don't know he's got it before he gets up there today.

I was wondering with regard to whether

I think if you want to, that's fine.

I don't care to.

My inclination would be not to.

You just don't need that.

I don't know.

I don't think the problem is you get sandbagged by the wrong people.

If you could, you know, move around and chat with some of the people you don't see, that would be fine.

We would just make the receiving line very leisurely.

Right.

And have people, I don't, since it is long leisurely, I just wonder if people ought to move right into this.

Well, that's all right for now.

They don't mind sitting in their previous room.

No, I think they probably ought not to.

I think that's maybe the answer, is to have them not go into the dining room, have them stay, and then you lead the thing into the dining room.

Yeah.

And we'll go in first, huh?

Yeah.

Why not?

We've done that on some others, and it works pretty well.

I know Mr. Nixon didn't want to do it for state dinners anymore.

Well, if we do...

But you just finish the line.

As soon as the line's through, you turn and go down the hall, and everybody else follows you down.

You go in and sit down.

They all come in and sit down after you.

Well, the trouble is that they can't start.

And also, I'm a little in a box of having to give them a pop-up every time somebody comes in.

No, I think they ought to just tell me.

When the line's halfway through, we'll start them in.

Yeah, you start to start them in, and at least we wait.

Instead of running them all in right now.

Don't run them right in.

Just have the drinking go on just a little while.

In other words, make it for five so that we stand there for a minute, and then dinner is served at eight, shall we say, eight o'clock.

Eight o'clock.

Very good.

It's going to be, you know, don't get me kicked out of any of the non-Catholic people.

Yes, of course, it means more to the Catholic people, but the Catholic people are not so.

They should be.

You know, considering everything, I was just thinking, you know,

probably come out soon.

I understand about as well as we would hope at the end of three years today.

Maybe we would have liked to have stood better, but we consider that the

I thought that was an extremely interesting point, which is basically his depth analyzer.

Sometimes I think that kind of thing, and I think it's also true Harris may be more important than me,

Yep.

Oh, sure it is, because it gets into some degree.

The other is just a degree.

Okay.

Very good.