Nixon phone call with Dent on 1972 election and Republican Party strategy

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Hello?

Yes, sir.

Well, you survived?

Yeah, you sure survived in good style, Mr. President.

Yeah, I saw you were on television a lot last night.

I didn't see it, but I read the news for me this morning.

Right, sir.

Trying to interpret everything.

Well, I must say, the Southerners came through in great stu—well, the whole country did, actually.

Yes, sir.

On the Senate race, you know, he ended up with a net plus of two in the South.

And in the House races, I think we're going to end up with a net gain of about five or six in the South.

Yeah.

We won some—and all of those were your victories, Mr. President, your co-deal.

Holshouser won the governor's race.

Did he win?

Yes, sir.

You did that.

Every one we won in the South was... What happened to Fletcher Thompson?

I was so surprised.

Mr. President, he's no candidate.

All right.

And the second thing was he abused that Franken privilege.

Let me ask you something else.

Yes, sir.

I wonder, Harry, if really speaking quite candidly, if whether that House Campaign Committee shouldn't have run better candidates in the South.

Now, they do damn well.

You know, particularly when they saw McGovern about to get it.

Yes.

That, good God, we could have, with the kind of sweeps we had, 65, 70, 75, you could have carried states all over the damn South.

Right.

And, well, let me say this, but a part of this is, I got after all those Southern Chairman, oh, six or eight months ago, and...

They did.

Now, in Mississippi, I think we picked up two out of the three seats we were running for.

Yeah.

And all three of those were good candidates.

Right.

Candidates make a difference.

Right.

But they ran people except where they were staunch Democrats who couldn't be unseated.

I couldn't fault them overly on that because— So there it was all right.

What about the rest of the country?

It didn't seem to me that, frankly, Harry, the people would—

I saw we were running in some of the northern and western states.

God, they seemed like a bunch of sad sacks.

Yes, sir.

Old for the most part.

Well, our problem in this election, it was a candidate problem.

I mean, and as I said, too even in the South.

Frankly, I mean, we won with Scott, but you did that.

We won with him, but you did that.

Neither one of them are much a candidate.

No, sir.

Tell me this.

When you think of the ones that we lost in the Coattail thing, do you think, for example, if I had gone to Iowa, that it would have saved Miller?

I don't think so.

Miller was— I don't think so either, Mr. President.

We're an incumbent.

Can't win with you.

Miller, too, has been—he's so— He's funny.

He's a negative fellow.

Yes, sir.

Maybe, I don't know.

I don't know.

How bad did he lose?

By about $15,000 or $20,000, but no one could figure that an incumbent could have lost.

Oh, well, isn't it a possibility that some of them didn't hang closely enough, or did they?

I don't know.

Didn't use your situation enough, yes, sir.

Remember, I kept saying...

The ego's gotten away, Mr. President.

Huh?

The ego's gotten away.

What I mean is, as incumbents, they didn't want to think that they had to hang on to your coattails.

That's right.

Yeah, and too late.

They were saying they were all going to do it.

Right, sir.

Margaret, that's simply age, wasn't it?

Yes, sir.

She shouldn't have tried it again.

Seventy-four.

Boggs is just too bad, damn it.

I suppose if I'd gone over there, maybe, well, we'd have had Agnew in there right at the last.

You know, that's as much as we ever have done, you know, in the Eisenhower years.

Right.

To Delaware.

But, Mr. President, where you went, though, where you went, you won.

Like, you went to North Carolina, you went to Oakland.

Except Kentucky.

Except Kentucky, and then the Rhode Island situation.

How do you figure Kentucky?

Louis Nunn raised taxes when he was governor in Arizona.

They just stuck with him.

And then, too, Louis comes across as a crude, strong politician, not a statesman.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, in Rhode Island, I just have a feeling there the problem is J.P. just—he was a dove too long.

That's what I think.

I don't see how we ever stood a chance in Rhode Island even for you to win there, frankly.

I mean, I never counted that as— Well, if it turns out—

Apparently we finally won Minnesota, didn't we?

Yes, sir.

Is that the final count you got?

Yes, sir.

I thought we would.

I mean, I thought even Hubert's last minute.

And Alaska came through.

Right, sir.

In fact, the only one they got then was Massachusetts.

The only one they got was Massachusetts.

And Massachusetts deserved to be on the wrong side.

Yeah, thank God.

California haven't got the final return, but it's, what, 55, 56, isn't it?

Yes, sir.

They're saying on television this morning that they think that you're going to end up with the biggest, bigger than Lyndon Johnson on the percentage, and that Alf Lyndon only picked up eight electoral votes, whereby this guy got 17.

Well, on the percentage, I think it's going to be 62, don't you?

What is it, Sal?

I think it.

I hope it is.

I don't know.

What the hell did Johnson have?

He had 61.

61.1.

Yeah.

Of course, if we hadn't had that goddamn Schmitz in there, we'd be at 63, you know?

A million nuts in the country.

A million nuts.

I mean, there was no reasonable for Schmitz.

No.

Yeah.

Absolutely not.

I was glad we got little Holhauser.

He's not much to look at, but he's a good man.

He ran a perfect race, Mr. President, and he jumped on your coattails and never turned loose.

Yeah.

But I just can't understand, Harry.

Isn't it really necessary to build a new party?

Yes, sir.

The word Republican is anathema, isn't it?

In the South, I think the South now, a lot of these assholes, and I already told a couple of press guys yesterday, for off the record things, one of them is going to be on Thursday at the Star.

I said, you guys are interpreting this.

It's really not a very admirable performance on the part of the liberal press.

I said, you are now blaming McGovern's tactics for losing this.

I said, his tactics didn't lose it.

His issues lost it.

I said, he lost the election the day of the nomination.

Sure, Eagle did hurt him some and the $1,000 thing.

But I said, you want to remember, he stood for busing.

He stood for amnesty.

He stood for acid.

He stood for bigger welfare, and all of you stood for that.

And I said, now, because you see that going down the tube, he says, uh-oh, it isn't that we were wrong.

It was that he was wrong, right, his tactics.

Now, as a matter of fact, and I said, now, you take the South.

Everybody's, you're going to try to write this as if this is a question of race.

I said, hell, it's not a question of race.

I said, it's a question of patriotism.

It's a question of patriotism.

Of moral values.

They just thought this fellow had the wrong kind of people.

Don't you agree?

Exactly, Mr. President.

Let me tell you what I think.

In the South, my God, and they say that we have no real enthusiasm in the South.

Christ, if they'd been there in North Carolina, Oklahoma, Georgia.

Seventy percent is enthusiasm.

Yeah.

That's what the average was.

But they say the vote was low.

Of course, as a matter of fact, Harry, have you ever seen the vote be very high when there ain't many of you?

But it's a landslide?

No, sir.

Mr. President, the thing that did you the most good was what I've been calling the triple play.

A gang dropping those mines in Haiphong Harbor in Moscow.

I ran that everywhere in the country.

The triple play.

And that was the most brilliant.

That's what won us.

The Vietnam thing.

Incidentally, we think you should be glad to know

We're going to have Vietnam done and on the right way within about a month.

That's great.

I deliberately didn't say it.

I didn't want to play politics with him, this son of a bitch.

Didn't you think he was about the worst candidate, Harry?

Yes, sir.

What he said, I think we're not going to let them get away with that.

Even last night, he started out nicely in his thing, but then proceeded to shut his jaw out and said he wasn't going to support, you know, this or that.

Did you notice that?

Yes, sir.

What did you think of that?

As far as grace, I came on, I thought quite graceful to the son of a bitch.

Right.

And Mr. President, he came across to the people that way.

Did he?

Yes, sir.

When he made that statement, he wasn't going to support you if you were elected and so forth.

That hurt.

But he came across with negative and negative and negative.

Yeah.

Now it's very important, it seems to me, for us to try to keep that southern peace.

Yes, sir.

But by doing it, we're going to have to do it by inviting our Democratic friends in, aren't we, Harry?

Yes, sir.

You can't do it by just going with those small, well, except in the border states.

Right.

North Carolina's beginning.

But take Virginia.

Virginia, Christ, it's a coalition of Democrats and Republicans in Virginia, isn't it?

Right.

But Georgia, for example, South Carolina, hell, you can't just run as a straight-out Republican.

No, sir.

Do you agree?

I agree.

In fact, you see, we picked up a house seat in South Carolina, that farmer I brought you in here one day.

Yeah.

And you shook his hand.

He was a superior candidate, and he grabbed on to you, and that's what did it, by the skin of his teeth.

But we've got to get better candidates, and we've got to do something about the National Republican Party, Mr. President.

The National Republican Party is a damn disaster, Harry.

Isn't it?

Yes, sir.

I can tell you.

Spent $11 million in the off year of 71, and what the hell have they got to show for it?

Right.

And all they do is whine because they say, I don't come into more states.

And yet, you know, if I had gone to more states, that could have mobilized more of our Democratic friends, too.

Yes, but you did it in the end.

By going to several states, they can't gripe.

Well, I did six.

And the ones they wanted.

Right.

Also, I... You can't expect me, nobody asked me to go to Maine.

Right.

Well, let's see.

Allitt asked me to go to Colorado, but God Almighty, I couldn't believe, I knew we were carrying Colorado 65%.

How in the hell could Allitt lose?

Part of his problem was he just ain't much of a candidate anymore.

That's right.

What do you think?

You know, Allitt's always whining.

any incumbent who couldn't win with you running like you did.

There's something wrong with the incumbent.

I think you're right.

But the key to this thing, too, is getting our right candidates recruited—I mean, superior candidates recruited early.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah.

Harry, I wondered if you would send over for me, then, if—at the present time,

Do you have in front of you, are you at your office or home?

I'm at the office.

Yeah.

Do you have in front of you the latest California return?

No, sir, but I'll get them.

I'll tell you, I... And if you could get me the latest in California I'd like to have.

the latest return there.

Yes, sir.

And the latest popular vote.

What is the latest popular vote?

The latest I've got is 5 o'clock in the morning here on the news summer.

Are you having later than that?

About 43 to 44 million.

But it's 61, but they don't say 61 what percentage.

It's between 61 and 62.

Yeah.

But a total of 43.

Johnson got what?

43, wasn't it?

Of course, it was a hell of a lot lower registration.

Yes, sir.

What do you attribute the lower vote this year than 64 to?

I think some of those Democrats didn't come out.

I'm trying to check in the South.

I think some of the blacks didn't come out in the South.

I think that this vote didn't stir them up.

That could be.

Also, another possibility is that some of our people just thought, well, what the hell we're in.

Right.

Don't you think?

Right.

But nevertheless, nobody here is going to make one goddamn, except for the commentators about the low vote.

There was an apathy among our people.

Did you think so?

No, sir.

I never ran into that as I went around the country.

That was Connolly's point.

One more point about we got out there to surrogates.

I know I did.

And went in these congressional districts.

And I read letters of endorsement from you for every one of these races.

So, I mean, we did something for these people.

Not only that, let me say it.

We gave a letter of endorsement to everyone.

I had a picture taken with everyone.

Right.

To all the Senate candidates, we had television clips made for all of them.

I did radio tapes for all the Senate candidates.

Right.

And I made telephone calls to them.

What in the hell can you do?

That information should really be given out.

We just have to make sure that's out.

Well, you do your best to get that out.

Right.

Get a hold of them.

And I told them to pass that around.

Maybe they didn't get to it.

Would you do that?

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Right.

Nixon phone call with Dent on 1972 election and Republican Party strategy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on November 8, 1972

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