Nixon phone call with Colson on 1972 Presidential Campaign and George McGovern

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Hello?

Mr. President?

Yeah.

Mr. Coulson.

Good morning.

Good morning, Mr. President.

Well, I was just looking at the front pages of papers, and I saw that picture in one of the papers of those little kids.

I guess it was a star.

I thought, well, that made the whole thing worthwhile, didn't it?

It was a marvelous shot.

And just think of those little kids, what it's going to mean to them.

That's exactly right.

That was a beautiful picture.

In fact, the star gave us a...

read them all yet, but the story gave us a hell of a good story.

Sherman really went, yeah, I saw the first part of it, yeah.

That laid it out beautifully, as a matter of fact.

Laid it out the way we want it.

Going to take just those lines and get them around to our people who keep not drawing that issue as cleanly as... Just be clean.

I mean, the whole point is, yes, they can have it, but they must serve, they must pay the penalty for having left the country.

That's right.

You put that right

Well, that's the way it is.

That's the way it's always been, you know.

I don't know what the hell our people are thinking of.

What the hell are they thinking of?

Well, they're getting to the moral and immoral war crap.

That's what it really is.

Did anybody talk of amnesty, basically, for World War II deserters?

No.

Not really.

No.

Most of the people thought, particularly in the Jewish press, they should all be shot.

Uh-huh.

Am I right?

Well, I think the...

The thing we need, Mr. President, is just to... You did it brilliantly yesterday, and I'm sure it'll carry around the country.

It's just every now and then put that issue in focus, and there's not a damn thing the government can do about it.

He can scream that he's not drawing you out, he's not getting you into a debate, and he can't confront you on the issues.

Well, I'm saying things.

Oh, my God, of course, and that's what's driving him crazy.

That's really what he's saying.

He hasn't been able to best us on the issues.

He's not...

It was an incredible...

Apparently, the interview last night I heard on the radio.

What was that?

Well, it was something he had taped on Friday evening.

And I've asked one of my assistants to try to track it down because it was a very pitiful plaintiff kind of a thing.

He was saying, well, I just can't get this campaign going because I can't get Nixon to come out and talk about the issues with me.

And he just doesn't want to campaign with me.

And

Unless I can get him out and confront him on these issues, we'll never make our case to the American people.

Oh, bullshit.

Everybody's against me, kind of thing, really a persecution complex.

Everybody's against me.

I can't get—he didn't say that.

I can't get time on the networks to put my case across.

I can't put my whole issues before the people.

You know, we've—Haldeman told me that O'Brien had filed this complaint.

Why the hell didn't he file it at the time that the networks made this decision months and months ago?

Oh, sure.

There's no question here, is there?

Oh, no.

The networks are being very fair in this respect.

Yes.

I mean, you can buy time, can't you?

You can buy time.

What are you trying to do is get a...

That's right.

I don't want it.

Yeah.

Why don't you tell them to give it to him, can they?

Wait a minute.

Why doesn't Dole say he has no objection?

That puts the bee right on their back.

Yeah, he today is going, that's a good point.

Yeah, get Godot to say, I have no objection whatever to their selling him time.

He says this is a decision on their part.

And we have no objection whatever if the networks want to sell them time.

We want them to have every opportunity to present their case.

It's a network decision, and we have nothing to do with it.

Be sure you get that across.

Yeah, I'll call it.

That's very important, because that's good.

Yeah, I just, frankly, if he wants to spend the kind of money that he'll have to spend to...

to go on network half hour.

I think it's $150,000.

Yeah.

Pretty good piece of money.

Yeah.

As I recall, he does that four times.

It's fine.

What the hell?

That's good.

Those are all dollars that he can't spend in other kinds of media funds, which I think might do him more good than that.

Mm-hmm.

Good.

There's a sense of frustration.

I don't know how much you've read of the Sunday press.

I read as little as I can and get away with it.

I have to admit I slept a little bit late this morning.

I haven't gotten through it all.

No, I don't read it.

There's a real sense of frustration in it, Mr. President.

Even among the people who have been generally friendly to my governor, there's a sense that he's really grappling on the defenses.

As Valeriani said Friday night, I was amazed.

Valeriani said that the harder the line that McGovern is taking, the more he appears to be coming across from the defensive.

But it's true.

Certainly it's true if you read, just kind of get the flavor of what's being written from within his camp.

I thought it was significant.

I think he's basically, he's at the moment a very desperate man.

Mm-hmm.

almost all UAW.

And they went and interviewed 82 registered voters, 50 Democrats, 16 Republicans, 16 Independents.

50 Democrats, 16 Republicans.

And the result is Nixon 52, McGovern 19.

Jesus Christ.

Undecided 11.

And then they say this astounding Republican tide comes in a district selected for it by elections analyst Richard Scammon, which has closely followed Michigan statewide results.

The precinct

comfortably by Hubert Humphrey against Mr. Nixon in 1968.

What's more, the Nixon tide here comes despite serious opposition from the UAW, the nation's most politically serviced security.

And then he goes on and talks about what the workers' reaction, one of them said, to praise Mr. Nixon for trying to iron out things with Russia and China and to vote against Magellan.

Well, but he had a positive reason, too.

That's a positive reason.

They seldom put any of those in.

Well, they're there, but they don't put them in.

Yeah, I know.

That's what these jerks like to write.

We don't care.

It's interesting, but he said, and it isn't only Bussing.

He made the point in here that, he said, UAW leaders and Democratic politicians will deceive themselves by thinking Bussing is McGovern's only liability.

Voters view him here as not practical enough and too inconsistent, most of them seeing Mr. Nixon as more responsible and sensible.

And here's another very interesting quote.

A governor will say anything to get a vote.

See, that's where I think this, when he comes out for aid to parochial schools or he chooses his position here or there, people just kind of perceive him as another one.

And when I veto the water bill, people will say, well, he's got the guts to do it.

Oh, absolutely.

And for all the environmentalists and the Westchester County suburbanites who get upset over the...

Water pollution bill will be those housewives out in Macomb County who will say, by God, that man has got courage.

That's right.

And there's 10 of them for every one.

Well, we're going to do it.

And another quote here, McGovern seems to be an exceedingly sneaky person out to put something over on the public.

That's what happens when this fellow starts out to try to move his position, and it's

Today, people are just too smart for that.

They catch it.

It's amazing that these are working people that catch it, too.

Well, this is a nice little white suburb, probably $15,000 a year income.

That's where these working people are now.

The conclusion of this is with six weeks left, McGovern will regain this vital suburb.

McGovern's own credibility must be restored while a busing issue is at odds.

With six weeks left, that is, huh?

the UAW in its own backyard.

Here's another interesting thing.

In this group, the approval rating for you is 59%.

That's exactly what Harris is finding.

But this lends some support to the point that Scammon was making to me yesterday.

He said, you're not going to be able to tell, really, a hell of a lot from national polls.

He said, you've got to get into areas where there are huge, huge people.

They are going to distort figures for you, because

They don't really get reflected, do they?

There's no way they can, because you can find, take an area like this, Macomb County, if that's running, Jesus, 52 to 19.

Whatever it is.

Yeah, well, I don't know.

That's out of 82 voters.

52 of them are for a few.

That's, my God, that's 70%.

But you get that in one area like this, and then you...

It really will distort the overall pattern.

That's what's below the surface there.

That's what's just waiting, I think, to express itself in the polls.

Chuck, what it's doing is it's getting to that damn great final majority, too, that we've spoken about.

And it's getting away, interestingly enough, from that group, you know, that

Some of our people, and particularly in our more intellectual types in the White House staff people, feel as they say, oh, don't—you know, they've always said, don't play to the Catholics, don't play to the blue cards, don't play to the Italians, because they said the real votes are out there in those suburbs among the upper middle class, you know, the 15,000 to 25,000 and so forth.

My point is, we're doing as well there as we always do, and there ain't much better we can do.

And basically, a lot of those people are soft shot.

They really are.

Am I right?

Absolutely.

You see, if you thought only of those suburbs, what would you be doing?

You'd be signing the water bill, right?

You'd be signing the water bill, and you'd be appealing, Mr. President, to him.

I would soften amnesty.

I would copper pot.

You know, I wouldn't, I'd be, you know, that's exactly, you see, that's basically... And you would never talk about busing, because that's a different issue.

Bussing is divisive, and who knows?

We don't want to appear to be... You see, there's really, that's it.

One of the things we're doing is drawing sharp issues on these things that cut into the gut, gut issues.

You also want to remember, all things erode some, Chuck.

You've got to figure, I don't care whether it's Watergate or whether it's the wheat deal.

People are not all that interested in sophisticated politics.

So that cuts you a couple points.

What's the difference?

There's going to have to be something.

That kind of erosion doesn't matter in an election.

It's like Johnson was probably hurt a little by the Bobby Baker thing and hurt a little by the Jenkins thing.

That's right.

But it didn't matter that much.

But who cares?

That's right.

Another point to Scanlon.

This is important to keep in mind, I think, for all of our people inside to understand.

It's not a good thing to talk about.

Scanlon said when you get out on the fridges, you know, 60 to 65 percent,

He said, it has to be soft.

He said, you have to expect it to be soft and to move back and forth.

Because he said, when anybody in American politics is talking about that kind of a lead in a two-way election, he said, you just, out there, he said, it's very, A, it's hard to measure, and B, it's got to be volatile.

Sure.

He said, you get down into the hard core of your support, and it's pretty strong.

He said, but you've got to figure that out there, you're going to show some movement back and forth.

You have to be very strong.

Right.

and little things are going to affect the grain deal.

Maybe the grain deal does take a little slice off the top.

Maybe two weeks from now the government will make some hack and the two points will come back up.

But out there it tends to be moving all the time.

That's the only one.

The grain deal is the only one that...

Nixon phone call with Colson on 1972 Presidential Campaign and George McGovern

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 24, 1972

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