Nixon phone call with Colson on George C. Wallace and Assassination attempts

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Hello.

Yes, sir, Mr. President.

Just for purposes of the columnists and the others who try to write this morbid stuff, has it occurred to you to have Clausen and Sapphire and Munch and Klein?

I don't know how I'd get out of it.

You know, you talk about this whole business of the left wing, talking about this time of...

Violence and so forth.

Yes, in America, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, did anybody remember that Truman got shot?

No.

You remember?

No.

You remember the Truman shooting at Blair House?

Yes, indeed.

Yeah.

Does anybody remember when Franklin Roosevelt got a pop at him, killed the mayor of Chicago in Miami?

Cermak, you remember him?

I'd forgotten.

I'd forgotten both of those.

All right, fine.

Okay, you've got the Cermak shooting.

You've got the Truman shooting.

You've got the Cermak shooting.

They were both nuts, of course.

One was Puerto Rican.

The Cermak was just crazy.

The shooting in the House of Representatives?

The shooting in the House of Representatives.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, that's true.

We tend to...

But I particularly like the Truman-Roosevelt, the D.R.

one.

Yeah, I see.

uh then of course there was a pr one and so forth but my point is these things happen those are contemporary presidents uh contemporary presidents truman and truman and frank and fdr right i mean so uh let's get that uh yeah it it that's a

point, Mr. President, which we hadn't thought of.

The way the media will play it is the sickness in the 60s and continuing on into the 70s.

That's exactly right.

It was Truman and Roosevelt just not that many years ago.

Yeah, I think a good columnist like a White or somebody just ought to point out, now look here, let's not, Bill White, Dick Wilson, two or three of them ought to say, you know, some of you fellows are just missing something.

Don't let these libs get away with a bunch of crap.

Mm-hmm.

That's a very good point.

I'll get the facts and the research on this to save them.

Tell them it's doing the homework and get them in and get close to them to feed that to them.

That's an excellent point.

We do tend to have short memories.

That's right.

Well, also, we tend to beat our own breasts about our own problems and so forth and so on.

I think that nothing

Nothing like this has ever happened before in the world, and then something we did caused it.

You see, these goddamn liberals are just horrible that way.

They cause it themselves.

They're the ones who creates the division in this country.

Who creates the hatred about the war?

Who the hell's doing this?

Bob Dole used that today, and I think he's going to get a hell of a play out of it.

He made that point that it's the McGoverns and the Humphreys who keep playing on people's fears and emotions and driving them to this.

The so-called new populist is nothing but a demagogue appealing to people's fear, and that that's exactly what causes poor, sick mentalities to go out and try to shoot people.

That's right.

And that's where the blame is, not with those who are conscientiously...

carrying out the nation's job.

Well, this is a damn good point, the historical parallel, and maybe especially Roosevelt, when you stop and think about it, the great hero of the liberals.

Sure.

Exactly.

Truman was kind of a hero, too, at that time.

That's right.

Fair deal.

While he was living at the warehouse before the Korean War.

That's when they popped him.

That's right.

See?

Well, I'll put our boys to work immediately.

That's a damn good point.

I wish I'd thought of it.

Okay, everything else going according to, I guess, they're all Democrats worrying about Michigan.

We're writing it off as being because he got shot.

No, I don't think they can, Mr. President.

It's too big.

It's much too big.

Plus, the media had already built that one up as the, you know, that Wallace was doing very well.

And the press accounts are saying that he would have won it anyway, and maybe he got a little benefit sympathy-wise.

But they aren't playing it as a...

Shock to the Democratic Party that he won this big.

I thought he would get maybe 38, 40 percent at Michigan.

I never figured 50.

That's a really startling...

It's going to take Hubert right to his I.T.

He's going to have to do something on the busing issue, isn't he?

Well, he's tried to, you know.

Well, I know, but Christ, he's on both sides of it.

You can't do it that way.

I mean, we've coppered it, if anything, too much, but we've had to from a responsible standpoint.

But he didn't have any responsibility.

He just ought to come out against it, if I were you, I would.

Well, he can't when he's counting on 90% of the black vote.

And without that, he really is in trouble.

I mean, he doesn't...

Perfectly obvious when you look at where he's picking up votes that the black vote has been...

absolutely critical to him.

In Pennsylvania, in Ohio it was.

I haven't looked at the Detroit figures, but I'll bet you that's where a big chunk of his Michigan vote is from.

And he's stuck on that issue.

We've got him over a barrel, and I think our fellows have got to keep the heat on Hubert on that issue, because we want to keep him locked in where he is so he doesn't move after the convention, assuming he gets it.

See, they ought to keep the heat on him right now as to say, now, Hubert, in view of this, are you going to change your mind?

on this issue.

Get the message.

That's exactly it.

That's right.

I've tried letters written to him, everything you can get.

His showing is really very, very poor.

It's a damning show of showing.

He just isn't coming through.

No, not at all.

And the smart people are talking a hell of a lot more now that a governor is just going to sail on through.

Well, you know, Connolly made an interesting observation three days ago to me.

He said that he never thought Hubert would be the one we'd want.

I said, why, John?

He says, because John Connolly just despises Hartke.

And he says anybody that would pick Hartke for his co-chairman has got to be out of his mind.

But he says, but he puts it on a very interesting ground.

He said, well, Hubert just doesn't turn anybody on anymore.

And he said he's not going to be able to anymore.

He says McGovern does turn him on.

What's your argument on that?

My answer to that, Mr. President, is that McGovern turns as many off as he turns on.

I just saw Dave Bradshaw, who is, I think, one of my best political parameters.

He says, if it's McGovern, you can just wipe out the Catholic vote in Chicago and the conservative Polish vote.

And he said, they just will not buy this guy.

And he said, the Daily Machine will sit hands down...

He probably will for either, but he said the people will not buy McGovern.

And he gets the kind of rank-and-file Democratic talk.

He said that Daley's opinion right now is that McGovern is going to get it.

He said it's a good thing for the party because he'll go down in flames on the Democratic establishment.

My answer to John Connolly is that that's true.

Hubert doesn't turn anybody on, but he will just bring out that traditional Democratic vote.

John still thinks that Kennedy's going to come in and pick it all up.

I think even, I really think even less so now after the Wallace thing.

You mean, you think the lead?

Mm-hmm.

Do you really think it worries him, you think?

I do.

I really do.

I think he's kind of got an obsession about it.

He talks about it with everyone.

He does think about it, plus all the other reasons.

But I think when you add this reason into it, that it just frankly will be pretty decisive with him.

Plus the fact I don't think right now he could, unless something falls apart,

Right now, he can't derail McGovern, and he knows that.

And he may be just watching McGovern do exactly what Daley says he's going to do, and then Teddy becomes the one bridge between the old Democrats and the new, pulls them together, and he's got a better shot at it in 76.

I don't think he's going to do it.

I think the die is being cast.

Right now, I think it's being cast.

You think maybe the idea that some have said that Teddy running as his vice president is a possibility?

With Humphrey?

No, with McGovern.

Oh, Jesus, no.

I can't conceive of that.

Or with Humphrey either, can you?

I can't conceive of him going either way.

I mean, with either as vice president.

That just wouldn't be in the cards for him.

And he has told close friends that that would be the thing that he would avoid to the point of leaving the country.

during the convention are just refusing, because that way, if they won, he's stuck for four years in a tough spot.

And if they lose, he's blamed for the loss.

They could probably dredge up.

He argued it was Chappaquiddick, but he took the ticket down.

I just don't see what's in it for him.

And he personally, this year, he doesn't have the burning Kennedy zeal to be president, just as an individual.

I've seen him a couple of times.

I've known him, my gods have known him, since 1952.

He doesn't have it.

He's not a fire with it like Bobby really was, and my god Jack was for four years.

He was running up in the Senate for president from 1956 to 1960.

This kid is different.

And I think, unless California falls apart, I think that McGovern is...

is well on his way.

I belong to the school of thought, and I told this to Mitchell just two days ago, that we've got to start right after California, not even wait for the convention, start helping to cut McGovern down a bit in terms of his image and issues, just because I would think we would need, want to be sure that we'd have that much time to bend his arrow.

The one thing he's got going is the straight arrow, and I don't want to see him get out of that convention and then start playing it smarter than Goldwater did.

That's where Goldwater, you know, when he got the convention, instead of coming back to the middle, he went for the right.

I think McGovern will do that.

No, McGovern will be smarter than that.

He'll play the Midwest democratic populism, and that may be that we should start kind of taking...

few nicks at him before then.

Why the hell doesn't Humphrey do that?

I think he's doing it except Humphrey's problem is that if he starts hitting him too hard on those issues, that Humphrey loses the possibility.

I mean, Humphrey's big worry is that if he gets nominated, the left walks out on him.

So he's got to be very, very careful not to alienate the McGovern constituency.

I agree with you that you have to knock, give McGovern a few kicks in the butt.

Yeah, we've got to start planting the amnesty, the pot, the abortion, the text.

Well, I think you've got to put it and you don't just plant it.

I think the way to do that is really through very extensive, effective mailers to every opinion maker and other to a list of 10,000.

Just hit them.

One, two, three, four, in other words, and keep rolling it in.

Don't you think so?

Yes, sir.

And start some of the... Every editor, every, you know... That's exactly the technique.

And then start some of the hate stuff going, the...

areas where you can really stir up some passions.

You know, Dave was telling me that we were talking about Michigan, and I asked him if he was surprised by the Michigan result, and he said, no, not at all.

He said, if you could go into the northwest suburbs, or northwest part of Cook County, where we've got a hell of a busing prep, he said, where Roman Paczynski, who started out as a traditional liberal, became a red-hot conservative on busing.

He said, if you could feel the intensity of the feeling on busing in northwest Chicago...

He said, hell, that issue turned the state of Michigan easy.

He said if any Democrat who went in there and campaigned hard against busing would win that primary.

And he said exactly the same thing is true in the portions of Chicago where the white Polish vote lives, blocks away from the black vote.

And he said that's just a surefire formula.

That's an issue that people vote on.

He wasn't a bit surprised by the Michigan result because of the busing issue.

And Puchinski, by God, Puchinski calling for a constitutional amendment.

So that's exactly where those votes are.

But it's one, as you said this morning, it's one where we have to go in and exploit.

But you get the, for example, get the Polish community in northwest Chicago and get it firmly fixed in their minds that...

McGovern is for amnesty, which is an issue that really inflames them, because most of them have either served in the war or have children who have a war.

Amnesty, pot, abortion, which really cuts with the Poles and the Irish, and busing.

All the talking he then does in September, October, aren't going to do him any good, because he

Firmly planted it.

I mean, you scare people.

That's what they did to Goldwater, and that's what we'd have to do to...

Try to have to do it and keep them scared.

Just frighten the hell out of them.

If this guy were ever president, they'd have all the blacks moving into the neighborhood.

Oh, yeah.

4,000.

That's absolutely dynamite in those kind of areas where big, big black boats are.

Well, even with Hubert, you'd hit the busing thing the same way.

Yeah, the trouble with Hubert is that he would talk one way in northwest Chicago and another way in south side Chicago.

He's so goddamn hard to pin down.

I don't think McGovern could.

I think he's a little more of an honest ideologue.

Of course, we would do it with Humphrey.

Hell, we've got him on record on enough things that we'd nail him hard.

Okay.

Bye.

Well, I'll get our people to work on that.

Excellent point.

Nixon phone call with Colson on George C. Wallace and Assassination attempts

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 17, 1972

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