Conversation 154-005

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Hello.

Mr. President?

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

I have Mr. Colson for you, sir.

Go ahead, please.

Hello.

Yes, sir, Mr. President.

Well, Stu and I deliberately got in some of the foreign policy and the amnesty stuff and so forth because they need to hear that.

I mean, they believe that, and we just may as well lay that out there.

We'll get McGovern talking about it.

Oh, I think we will.

I think we're going to see him talk about amnesty.

I think that's what he wants one of these half hours for, that he's trying to buy.

And defense and amnesty, I think he's worried about it.

What can he say about it?

I don't know what he can do with amnesty other than to try to do a musky-type speech where he tries to prove how completely fair and, you know, he'll try to fudge it up.

I'm sure he'll try to fudge it up and say, well, we'll have him work in a peace corps.

Ah, ah, ah, sir, hell no.

These poor bastards have got chopped and worked in a peace corps.

That's right.

You know, he can't get off the issue.

The only thing he can do is, if he tries to take the sting out of it, he may make it worse by talking about it.

I guess the best thing he could do really is duck the whole land issue entirely.

Yeah.

Either that or change its position.

Well, no, I don't think he can't do that.

Well, he'd change it on the schools.

Yeah, I think that on that one he'd have a hell of a problem with the kids.

Yeah, that's one they believe in, don't they?

Yeah, that's one they really do.

Now, he's got to go.

You know, Julie was saying that she'd heard McGovern say that he's not for legalizing marijuana.

And I said, what did he say?

He says, well, he wants to treat it like alcohol.

I said, that's legalizing it.

That's right.

Alcohol is legal.

I don't think he can get off of that, do you?

No, what he said is that in that Playboy interview a year ago, which we've hung around his neck about eight times, and he keeps referring to it.

Good.

He talked there about wanting to...

legalize it.

And then he switched his position to say that he wanted to reduce it from a felony to a misdemeanor as a possession of it.

And that's what he's talking about, that he's not in favor of legalizing it.

He still would leave it a misdemeanor.

But that's a pretty fine, I mean, that's a pretty fine point for people.

The man on the street doesn't understand the difference between the felony misdemeanor.

Sophisticates and lawyers and others do.

And maybe reducing the penalties he

He can get away with it.

He's still stuck.

Well, actually, I'm for modification of penalties in many areas, but I don't talk about it anymore.

Exactly.

Well, sure, it's a responsible position to reduce some of the penalties, but... Yeah.

Well, the trouble he has, Mr. President, with an issue like that is that you can't ever get rid of the impression, and it may not be...

It's fair in his case because these are all his positions, but he can't get away from them because he's got the...

the impression that he's soft.

And boy, nobody who watched you on television last night talking about drug pushes or watched you Monday night.

We've had a good week on drugs.

By God, if we don't have that issue.

We've got that.

We at least have said it twice on TV time, haven't we?

All three nights and two nights this week have had at least two minutes, some up to three, of this issue.

We've also gotten pretty good coverage out of our people hitting him,

Mm-hmm.

The thing we've got to be on Amnesty, we've all got to be exactly the same.

And the thing we've got to say is what I said there, that people who desert must pay a penalty.

Right.

use the word penalty so that it doesn't look like they're just going to come back, you know, because, and they should.

That's right.

God darn it, it's wrong for anybody to come back.

They're going to come back, as Lincoln said, by God, they can serve a number of days they're out of the country in prison.

Well, we've got some press people going up to Canada this week to do interviews with the kids up there who will all be casting their absentee ballots from the government.

Right.

I think we might get some stories up there.

I think we ought to take away their citizenship.

Well, Barry Goldwater is proposing that in a speech tomorrow, a statement that went out this afternoon for tomorrow.

Why shouldn't we?

That's right.

He's going to say they've deserted the country and they should try the rights of citizens to vote.

We'll see a little bit on that.

Keep it alive.

Right.

At this point, it doesn't matter really how we do it, just as long as there are people talking about it.

We've got Kleinjeet speaking.

Good.

We've got our lower wikers really taking off on this issue.

He said he went around Connecticut.

Maybe I told you this, but

But through the state, he didn't do anything except talk about amnesty in the government.

And he said, my God, he was getting responses from the crowd.

So now he wants to do something legislatively.

He wants to put in a bill that will make kind of... Wiker of all people.

Wiker, yeah.

Well, you see, that's what's happening.

And these people are catching on to it.