On May 13, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and Raymond K. Price, Jr. talked on the telephone at Camp David from 11:36 am to 12:04 pm. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 165-042 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Well, every Sunday we got Price working.
Well, I think it's worth doing.
Well, a lot has happened since we were here for that sort of traumatic day.
Was it two weeks ago?
It was.
Well, we did the right thing, I guess.
I think so.
It was tough, but we had to move.
On this thing, I sort of had a few thoughts that might be helpful.
Basically, I want to meet with the leaders, not just the big five, you know, about the thing so that they can
they can say that they have met and that I'm sending a message to the Congress that day and I would like to do that Tuesday morning without the fact that I'm going to meet Monday morning with them.
Second, I would like to meet with what I had in mind was a message to the Congress and then maybe a shorter
message for before you pick up the highlights for a radio type thing unless you think otherwise on that i don't know what you're going to do and i think should be the best thing there well uh i get i'm i'm i'm a man of a leader what we've been working on and uh it might be better to turn what we've been working on was a uh about a 10 minute radio speech uh and the joint resolution and we hadn't done an accompanying message but i was thinking if you're doing a radio speech
In addition to it should cover campaign financing, campaign practices, also another thing I think would be interesting to do
and this is a subject I've long had very strong feelings on, is the terms of office for members of the House.
My, for example, in any, none of these would I recommend.
In any of these I recommend.
I mean, it has been suggested that this and that, and it is suggested that the committee have the right to consider that.
For example, in terms of the House, I have felt for a long time that half the House should be elected in the presidential year, and
the other half in the off year, but for four-year terms.
Because when house members are like two years these days, and you can state it bluntly, a house member runs for one year and serves for one year.
Now the house, that'll get the house just totally for it.
You get my point?
It gives another dimension to it that you haven't otherwise got.
On campaign financing,
I particularly would like to get it structured in such a way that it is aimed to be sure that we pick up the labor union stuff as well as business.
In other words, that the laws with regard to any organization, labor, business, professional, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that contributions are limited to, say,
you know, to individual countries and say that it's no more than $25,000 to every, you know, to any one candidate and all of that candidate's organizations.
In other words, they avoid the law, even the present law, strict as it is, by giving, or just setting up, you know, a lot of peripheral organizations.
Take Mike McGovern, took $250,000 from the teachers union, and then made a speech saying he was for teacher strikes.
Well, that's not healthy.
Then, of course, they say we took $250,000 from the milk producers.
Of course, we didn't do anything for them.
We didn't kick them in the balls by increasing the quotas.
But nevertheless, that's an unhealthy thing.
You see what I'm getting at?
So I want to hit that one head-on at labor.
It's a lever that's sort of sorted out as a tool, but you can put it as a thing.
It's good to put in easy examples.
Like, on the one hand, on one candidate, they just get a substantial contribution, but the mouth producer just made an implication that they would get special favors.
On the other hand, a contribution to the teacher's union is made to another candidate who thought that they would get, you know, a special one.
You see what I'm getting at?
That's on the finance side, but mainly what is needed really on the finance side is just a strict limitation of no contribution period in $25,000, something like that, by anybody.
Nobody should be able to get 10% more than I think finance those campaigns.
That's big enough.
But suggesting that, again, always put in the terms that among recommendations that have been there are
that have been made, that are presented for consideration, that it is requested that the committee consider and make recommendations on are the following.
That, and then you just zing, zing, zing, zing, zing, put about eight or ten examples.
That will give it a real amount of gutsiness.
In terms of who is to be on it, I think that it should be, I mean, the traditional 444, unless you have other views, and that the chairman should be selected by the commission.
rather than my other president naming the chairman.
Does that make sense?
I think it does.
What we have now, the way it's tentatively structured now, it would be eight from the Congress, that's two Democrats, two Republicans each from the House and the Senate, and then eight other members, that is the two national Democratic and Republican chairmen and six other public members to be chosen by the president with the chairman and vice chairman selected from the commission by the members of the commission.
and then put in a substantial amount.
Just a few names that occurred to me.
At the top of the list, in addition to the two national chairmen, Strauss and Bush, I think you could put John Williams, would be an excellent name.
Don't you think so?
Another one, the former governor of Missouri, head of the Governor's Conference, a Democrat, Warren Hearn.
Lucius Clay is...
Sort of a senior statesman type of a guy.
California, who has been the, you know, with the Los Angeles Times, what the hell's his name, you know?
Murphy.
Murphy, yeah.
Yeah, it's not bad.
Terry Sanders from Florida.
Probably Milton Eisenhower.
Been in the political science area.
Oh, is it Terry Sanders?
Terry Sanders of North Carolina?
Yeah.
I said Sanders.
I meant Sanford, yeah.
So to get a southerner in there.
John Wilson of Harvard, you know, is the political scientist.
I don't understand.
On these names, these are names that would not be put in the, or if you thought that we should put our names out now, or, no, let's wait until the Congress enacts the legislation.
Yeah.
But these are names that could be floated, though.
Yes, mm-hmm.
And incidentally, it's all hands to get busy on names, but in terms of getting really responsible people, I would not put, for example, my present view would be not to put the Gardner of Common Cause on it any more than I would put the head of the Birch Society because of the basic apparent, you know, sort of a total bias in one way or the other.
But, you know, who knows?
of things you have to consider.
But this is the type of name I would think of.
In other words, another one could be maybe you've got to think of a woman.
You might put Lady Bird Johnson.
No, I don't.
Margaret Smith.
Margaret Smith.
Excellent.
Margaret Chase Smith is excellent.
That's the type of woman I would put on
in the black something like her Mrs. Whitney Young you know she's a great person and so forth something like that or the head of the Urban League Jordan he's a good man but anyway the main thing they can start on but we want to start proving those names just as soon as this thing goes out Cummins didn't get a
I noticed, from what I heard from Hank this morning, you'd get a few people like apparently the Mansfield and Ford both said it was a good idea.
Of course, Ford and Scott talked with me about it that morning.
So did you see that some of those guys had said they thought it was a good idea?
Oh, it was in the morning paper, I think.
Yep.
But that's what you see.
There's already bipartisan support for the idea.
So campaign tactics and so forth.
Now, when you talk about tactics, I would talk about a number of things.
For example, you ought to get across the fact that, for example, in the last campaign there were blank instances of violence, violent demonstrations.
You said that heckling is part of the great tradition of a politics and a mirror system, but violence and denying the right of free speech to others is not.
And there were so many instances of violence and property damage, so forth, that part of organizations, wherever there is any evidence establishing connection there, must be held financially responsible or something of that sort.
You know what I mean?
Or put up a bond for it.
I'd like to just get that in, just as a thought, you know.
You want to get not only, people must not think that the only kind of campaign practices that is wrong is a,
is wiretapping, or trying to find out what the other side's going to say in its speech, or trying to get their schedules, or trying to tiktok them.
But after all, the worst kind of thing, which has been both in the 68 and 72 campaigns, was just an inordinate amount of not just heckling, but terribly destructive, violent demonstration
to deny the thing.
And as you know, in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, we have solid evidence that the case where the local committees, the government committees, supported getting those people out.
Anyway, I'd sort of like to see if you could play around with that a bit.
I don't know what your trust is, whether it's going to be primarily finance or primarily tactics or what you're... What I've tried to do and what I've done so far in the draft that I've got now is just try to cover them all without...
I haven't covered a lot of examples.
But maybe we should.
I've picked off the kinds of things that the...
that the commission ought to look into.
I'll be sure you include violence in it.
I've got that in there.
Good.
Well, maybe we shouldn't use any examples.
Then in the follow-up, though, you can, again, through the whole process of leakage and so forth, you can put out on a chapter and verse basis a lot of the violence stuff.
Yeah, violence occurred and this and that.
I think you're right.
I think there's a danger of a little backlash if we get into too much of that.
That's right.
They'll think like we're trying to play... Yeah, we're trying to make a case.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
All right.
All right.
I agree.
The more general, the better.
The whole point is, when you come down to this, how do you impose it?
That's, I guess, that's the real question, isn't it?
These things shall not be allowed.
That's like the Bible here.
Thou shalt not commit adultery, but nobody pays a goddamn bit of attention to it.
You know what I mean?
The Catholics just go to it and confess it, and it's okay.
The others do it and don't confess it.
So, I don't know, it's out of any kind of a procedure to make Len, Len's probably, his good mind would work on that sort of thing.
Well, of course, at this stage, I would think that what we want to do would be not try to prescribe too clearly because we're asking the Commission to do this.
Yes.
But the Commission's got examples of the kinds of things that, a few examples of the kinds of things that they might be out with.
And that they should make recommendations.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
But the reason, while it's a little bit offbeat, to throw in this business of the election of Congress, it's just a damn good idea.
Now, the one moment that I probably, I would like to bite, but I probably don't because it would hit fellows like Stennis, is the age factor.
What do you think you should put in it?
No, no, no, that really goes too far out.
That's not really campaign practice.
But you see, the election every four years, the way I would get into that is to simply say that the commission should consider the fact that as to the term of office,
As a matter of fact, they should even consider the fact that the term of office of a president, whether it should be a six-year term, one six-year term without re-election rather than two four-year terms.
I mean, you see, the other thing they should consider, they should consider the term of office of the Congress on the ground that the Congress is particularly at the present time, every two years and with the media and so forth, that congressmen cannot
They already served for one year and campaigned for one year, and this makes them particularly targets for an enormous amount of expenditure, et cetera, et cetera.
I think that could go in if you could find a, and it'll really entreat people a hell of a lot.
And maybe they'll come up with a recommendation on that.
Now, on your time, in view of the way this thing is going, I don't want you to have to rush something up here this afternoon
Just take the rest of the day, and then tomorrow around noon, shall we say, around 3 o'clock, 2 o'clock, I'll take my first look at it, and we'll start working on it.
How's that?
All right.
I think you need a little more time.
We want this to be a rush job, and a little time you might...
And one thing that could be very helpful might be to maybe call Mansfield on the phone or see if he has any ideas as to what he thinks we'd be glad to have.
Scott, Ford, Mansfield, and Albert.
They may not tell you, but two minutes could call on that.
And then they're consulted.
a little feeling of concentration and bipartisanship.
I think he was going to be talking to Scott and Ford at Bush this morning.
Bush.
I think I talked to Bush a little bit yesterday, too.
Bush likes the idea that does.
Maybe we shouldn't put the two national chairman on the damn thing.
I wonder if that doesn't make it too, well, maybe so.
Should we also put the two national finance chairman on it, too?
No, no, no, that loads it.
Let's just put the national chairman.
What do you think, or should we make it... Well, it looks like a pretty good balance, though.
Four from the House, four from the Senate.
The two national chairmen, which would be basically Exeter Show, and then six appointed by the... Six at large, six public members.
The ones from the House and Senate would be members of the House and Senate.
And they would be appointed by the...
the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, respectively, on the recommendation of the Majority Leader and Minority Leader.
Right.
That's what it's always done.
But there would be members of the House and Senate this way.
Let's see how we get the governors in on this thing.
They ought to get in.
Why don't we... Why shouldn't we name the...
and vice chairman of the, I mean the chairman and vice chairman of the governor's conference.
In other words, that gives us four and then four more to go.
The governor should be in on it.
This will deal with only federal elections, presumably.
Take it back.
Except for looking into the way these relate to... No, no, I agree.
Take it back.
I agree, I agree.
I'm off base there because basically the Congress cannot enact laws with regard to these state elections.
Well, that would knock her off then, right?
Leave on John Williams, Margaret Smith.
Those are two very good names.
I don't know whether there's a Democrat who's retired who isn't.
Nobody can get that poor Maryland Democrat out of jail.
Or maybe get Otto Kerner out of jail, you know.
That's our problem, isn't it?
The way I'm suggesting things that they might come up with, the way I've done it now, after a long section ticking off areas that they ought to look into, I've got a sort of coppered ear saying it would be premature to predict what a commission such as the one I propose might recommend, but examples of the kind of reform it would certainly consider.
Our limits on the size of individual campaign contributions tighten control over the activities of multiple organizations working for the same candidate.
Shorter election campaigns, new disclosure rules that would simplify not only the filing of reports, but also the public discovery of votes.
Now, how about requiring free television time on it?
Mm-hmm.
Have you got that in?
And why not throw that in?
You know, that's the British system.
And in order to reduce the size of campaigns that...
that television time should be, you know, should be offered to candidates on television and radio time.
Something we might end up, I would think we might end up, maybe yes or maybe no, recommending ourselves.
It does get into regular force subsidy, but... Yeah.
But what I meant is that, not that we would end up recommending it, but we would just say these are matters that could be considered.
Mm-hmm.
considered because it has been talked about a great deal.
Well, I'm sure you're way ahead of me.
You've got all these ideas.
Okay.
I think it's probably better since we're just suggesting things would be possible not to, when we talk about limits on individual contributions, not to set a specific figure, but just whether it would be $5,000 or $25,000 or whatever it would be, etc.
Limits on individual contributions and limits on contributions.
Unlimited contributions by organizations, business, labor, education, and so on.
Strict limits on there under any, you know.
You see, the way labor gets around and raised, you know, is through, they don't do it through a union now, but they do it through their committee of political action.
Well,
And the way business gets around it is that business just, like the doctors go out and they raise a lot of money from the individual doctors, and then they have the AMA Washington office chuck in the money.
Well, now, by doing that, the moment they do that, that means the AMA Washington office lobbyist has a hell of a hook on a congressman or senator.
See?
It's that that's got to stop.
And it's always been, Lord, help me.
We have not given them the thing we have been doing, but my organization, the campaign should be, I mean, contribution should be individual, not by organization, I'm sure.
It is what I wait.
Okay.
One thing is that those travelers seem to have a lot of merit, and then I think we have a flag in the thing is,
The thing which you've got has been behind the Independent Federal Elections Commission, which would have enforcement powers.
Mm-hmm.
He's been pushing that.
As a matter of fact, it passed the Senate.
He died, too, last year, but then died in the House.
Yeah, I'm for it.
What form was it graded?
Not that it passed.
I don't recall.
I...
I wasn't following closely enough.
I haven't got all the details of just how the...
In the past, the Federal Access Commission...
It would set a common enforce basic standards for electives.
It would be like a fair campaign practice committee with teeth.
And, of course, there are various ways that enforcement powers could be set up.
It would also take over the enforcement functions of the GAO now.
Yeah, it should be the GAO.
But listen, to be sure, it covers...
It covers not only the presidential elections, but covers elections to the House and the Senate.
All federal elections.
All federal elections.
Okay, right.
And then, as far as whether to be basically a message to the Congress with a spoken word, you have thought it through, let me tell you.
I don't know.
I was just thinking if you got to the problem where length was a problem, just solve it by just writing it more lengthily and sending a message to the Congress so that I could deliver an excerpt, basically.
Or if you want, just let my thing be the message to the Congress.
All right.
It may be that the sharper the better here, in a sense.
The fact that if you make it too lengthy, then they say, why didn't you cover this or that or the other thing?
And I will open it your way, but just do it free, flip through to write it into what you want.
All right, bud.
Figuring that I'll start to work around two o'clock on the afternoon.
And...
I'll have to finish the darn thing.
All right.
Well, we can finish it that evening easy enough because I've got Haley Selassie on my hands on Tuesday.
I understand.
But I have no problem in terms of finding a time to deliver it because I can take the thing Tuesday afternoon.
So your thought then is to see the leaders on Tuesday?
Yeah.
I'd see the leaders at 8.30 in the morning.
Mm-hmm.
and tell them that here's the, I'm going to send this message down.
We appreciate the expeditious action on the part of the House and the Senate in setting this commission up.
And get new copies of the message and wish you well.
See?
And then to do it on Tuesday or Wednesday.
No, Tuesday.
Yeah, no, I'd like to do it.
Well, I guess you could put it off to Wednesday.
In other words, make another running story that we've
leaders and maybe gotten their ideas.
That's not a bad idea.
In other words, do it Wednesday then.
I think you've got a good point there.
Do it Tuesday.
Just tell them and say, look, here's what we have in mind.
Is there anything else you'd like to have thrown in here?
And do it Wednesday, yeah.
meet with the leaders and do it Wednesday.
That's not a good idea.
I think that might have been a little better with the Facebook covers.
Right, right.
We're waiting a day.
We'll work in their ideas.
And we won't even, as a matter of fact, like Scott's thing, say, well, that's a great idea, even though we may have already had it.
Also, I'll tell the leaders I'd like their recommendations to me for the public members, as well as, you know what I mean?
That they have their right, but as far as public members, I'd like any
Any recommendations that you have for public members?
Well, I'll consider them along with the names that I have.
But you think that might be a good idea?
I think it would.
Fine.
Good.
I think that's a better scheme.
Okay, Ray.
I don't know if anyone else, but there are two.
Well, to me, you're welcome to work here, you know, anytime you want, but...
he would pass on to Ron so that he can put it out to the press that you and I had a talk about this thing today and that we're working on the message and that he can put out the fact that we're going to have a bipartisan meeting on Tuesday.
And we won't not announce what the message will be because after the bipartisan meeting we'll decide we'll do it Wednesday.
so that he can get a little Monday, I mean, a Sunday night Monday story and say that you and I have had a discussion regarding the message and so forth and so on.
All right, thank you.