Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 220 › Conversation 220-005
Nixon phone call with Haldeman on 1972 Presidential Election
Saturday, October 14, 1972 · 4:05 PM–4:30 PM ET · Camp David Hard Wire · 19 min
AI Summary
President Nixon and H.R. Haldeman met at Camp David to discuss the 1972 reelection campaign strategy, specifically focusing on the timing of a potential Vietnam War peace settlement. Nixon expressed concerns that a premature announcement could jeopardize his political standing, concluding that peace negotiations should remain independent of election-year pressures to avoid appearing politically motivated. The discussion also included a detailed review of various state-level polls and campaign operations, with both men expressing confidence in the President's significant lead over George McGovern.
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I don't even know who was in first place anymore.
I don't either.
Over the homes, the number two came in.
Southern Cal was the number one.
Yeah.
They must be loaded this year.
Apparently are.
Getting back to the conversation with Henry.
You finally come to the point that he really has to consider, we have to consider,
What the hell is the best time to settle this?
Well, the danger is not the one.
Of course, he is.
He said that when he was playing with the environment, he knew it was going to be great.
Of course, they're wrong.
We don't need it.
There isn't anything that's going to help us.
at this particular time, because they're talking about a constituency that, I mean, the kind of people, basically, anybody that's from a government now is not going to be helping to make a peace in Vietnam.
That's right.
That's the thing that they don't realize.
So what the hell?
All we do is jeopardize the right.
What you do is you strengthen our own
You strengthen the attitude of people, you don't win any votes.
I think if we could pick a time for a settlement.
Right after election.
The time to pick would be, yeah, November 15th.
That's right.
I know, but we can't do that.
But the pressure might come off.
We've got to live with this back more.
Therefore, pressure on them to settle now.
Sure.
You can't run the risk of that also.
Also, it's too far down the pipe.
I mean, that's the way things go.
So I didn't want Henry to be worried, except that, as I said, it's very, very, we have given him a much clearer appreciation of what's really involved.
And it's interesting that the girlfriend that caught him, he gets one guy to kind of make to him for months, weeks,
We don't go through it because of the election.
We don't need it.
It can only be a risk.
She's in.
She's down for the weekend.
I talked to her a few minutes.
She's bright.
She was in.
Tom Henry got in.
He came in to me and all the world.
She said, you know, it's good.
I said, Jesus, Henry, what do you think we've been saying all this time?
It's all right.
They invite you over to the main entrance.
You have to be as quick as you can, as you can on the way.
It's interesting.
Another thing she said, you know, the head of her office runs a telephone operation.
And she said on their telephone, they're only calling Democrats, registered Democrats.
What area?
New York City area.
They're calling Democrats.
She said that they're getting about 54% of the Democrats for next.
And she said they're asking, they do it both ways.
They call the people, they say this is the committee to re-elect the president, and so on.
And they figure they get a phony vote, but then they call the same people back two weeks later.
And say it's the committee to re-elect the governor?
No, and say this is the American Institute of Public Opinion or something, you know, we're taking the polls, we can vote for it.
And they get the same answers.
And she said the interesting thing is that it went up noticeably and stayed up right after McGovern's Vietnam speech.
And she said especially was that true among the Irish areas.
Patriots.
I don't have any indication that it's going up at all.
Yeah, we do have some.
Well, not in some of the areas.
The others...
Well, we do in space.
Well, I don't understand.
I said, I said, I said, I said, but why it is that we're talking now about astronomical leads three weeks before the end that are not going to change.
They're not going to change.
They're not going to lose.
You can't lose the states anymore.
If you're in that Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit,
You know, can you kill one other man?
North or south?
That's my point.
I said to Henry, I said, don't let the election interfere either way.
That's the point I made.
I said, that's the right thing to do.
I said, now the risks are considerable because each is a fragile thing.
And let's suppose if we make it, we announce a ceasefire, then there will be great breaches of it.
Everybody will worry.
But on the other hand...
I don't know.
Of course, the timing of the talk would be different.
I could be gracious.
I don't...
I can't be excited.
Yeah.
I'm excited about Jesus Christ.
The American people are not going to say, God, we're going to... That's the point.
If there was somebody on the right, that would be different.
But there's the other point.
I don't think we're going to lose anything.
Even if the thing screws up too.
Well, a lot of people think you will.
There's an argument.
They raised the point that you will.
They argue with me.
I don't agree with her.
They're talking about their constituency.
They argue the line that it is.
And they're, of course, they have no, they have no awareness.
But you get it from the undecided and the wavering type people.
You don't get it from these things.
Well, you won't get it from Montgomery.
He can't lose it.
He's not.
So once again, once he's 35, he's going to get 35, come hell or high water.
And that's where he is today.
And that's an honest vote.
He's going to get 35 or 40% of the vote.
That's just the way it works.
Yeah, but if he only gets 35, that means you get 65.
What I meant is, I think if he said 35, then he would get 40.
Because that was a gallop trip before he called for cold water, except they didn't see it.
That's not true.
If he only gets 40, he only gets 65.
He may get less than 40, though.
He may get anything as the spread there.
He may get less than 40.
When you look at Massachusetts, and you look at West Virginia, and you look at Minnesota, and you look at Washington State, my God, he's behind by big chunks in all those places, except for Massachusetts.
He's behind by four points there.
Three or four points, which is, of course, unbelievable.
as a matter of fact you don't know but what
Not 60, but we both can't get it.
And we know it occurs at 60 because we were always just quite easy to consume.
Our campaigning really probably kept us where we were, having in mind the fact that the meeting was going to shit on us.
And at 68 in May, you know what I mean, our campaigning was not ineffective, but it was effective.
On the other hand, I believe that McGovern's campaign is not fully anything for it.
It is, most of it.
We were at 56.26, now we're at 62.27.
We almost fell home last week.
Illinois, 62.27.
California, we're down 54.35.
What were we before?
58-34.
We didn't believe it, remember?
It was 58-34.
This is another way from California.
Yeah.
54-35.
58-34.
It shows quite a wide calculation.
Well, he's up one and you're down four.
Yeah.
It's not an election.
He attacks.
He attacks.
He doesn't.
He doesn't.
That's within sampling error, so you don't know.
But that also, the other issue, well, I'd always figure it out.
But in California, if you look at that, that's a hell of a sweep.
In Illinois, it's tough.
You can't, you cannot close in California.
You can't close at 90 at once.
5732.
That's our rating.
Yeah.
Last week.
52, Michigan 63, 26.
That's the one that I believe, that we don't believe.
I just need to be correct on the shows at 50, 37.
I'm still correct.
50, 37 is right where they were before.
52, 37.
New Jersey, we're off a little.
58, 33.
But hell, we were at 62, 31.
31 points.
Now we're only 25 points.
New York, no change.
56-33.
What's 57-33?
56-33.
61-29.
That's an improvement.
What's 60-32?
But anyway, Pennsylvania's an improvement.
63-28.
That's when they actually released the solution on that.
What is it?
Is the Gallup 60-35 now?
It's not out.
It's not going for Sunday.
It's going for Monday.
We've sent it.
We've sent it.
It doesn't make any sense.
We're waiting for that to get closed.
It could very well be.
What do you think?
I hadn't thought about that, but it's just one of those.
It might come out the same day and come out the same time.
Do you think so?
Absolutely.
It helps us for the public polls to show a closing.
I don't, for the ballot side, I don't, you know, I just did not see any more closing.
We don't want a closing.
We don't want a closing.
Well, we've got to assume some closing due to the fact that they're in two-man races, as Conway says.
It's a 46th proposition.
It's fine there, you know.
Unless there's one hell of a sweep.
40-60 at the outer end.
Yeah.
45-55.
Yeah.
But in a two-man race, a landslide, a huge landslide is 40-60.
And when you get sometimes, you get something like a coolie, you get a 35-65.
Not two-to-one.
None of those were two-to-one.
None of those that you talked about the other day was two-to-one.
So it's not landing either.
That wasn't two-to-one.
Yeah, that is right.
The rats, the kids.
Also, you know where it could have an effect?
is that it's the last blow, it has nothing to do with the war at all, the last blow at McGovern's credibility.
Because all of this stuff, his whole pitch is that you can't bring about peace, and you aren't going to be able to in the next four years.
And then all of a sudden you do.
It's done, then what do you do?
Corruption.
It's not corruption, it just doesn't hang.
We thought it was high that the L.A. Orange County got burned, so we decided to hold it.
We pulled again, and again, 54-35.
Oh, Jesus Christ, that is an unbelievable edge in California.
I don't see any.
I'm not sure they're putting any in.
They're really afraid to do it.
They've got to put something in.
Don't be quarreling about it right now.
There's only one that's damaged, right?
Good.
That's fine.
It scares the hell out of me.
They're working like hell out there, I don't know.
They are.
Do you have a smell and feel that Knopfziger's got to manage a campaign or what?
No, but he feels that Knopfziger, with what they've built in around him, can.
They're doing it piece by piece, which is fine.
You don't need to run California as a statewide thing.
Thank you, Sean.
You've got about six campaigns in California, and basically that's what they're doing, right?
Well, Connie was very impressed.
It was interesting.
I said, how does L.A. look?
Because, you know, you've been concerned there.
And he said, oh, well, it looked damn good.
He said, you got it there.
He said, Jamie, he said, of course, Northern California, you've conquered this group.
All you can see and hear is a superb job.
He was very impressed in the valley.
He said, Fresno, they loved it there.
He said, everybody there says you'll carry Fresno County.
And I said, well, if we do that, we don't have to worry about anything else.
Did you?
Go in the center?
Yeah.
Sure.
Drop a couple states.
Oh, sure, sure, sure.
It's hard to figure what they're going to name.
Oh, Massachusetts.
I frankly think we're going to take West Virginia.
Art Bowl is 60-24.
I haven't told anybody about it.
I haven't told anybody.
I always tell Clark to continue to say West Virginia is... No, we didn't.
He doesn't know that.
Clark has seen this.
This is the one I did on the tree.
You know, Massachusetts was beautiful, but Massachusetts, you didn't have as many people.
But you showed it very cool.
44, 41.
Just like the Boston Globe shows.
Thank you.
Interesting.
West Virginia and Kentucky are identical.
Kentucky, 61, 24.
West Virginia, 60, 21.
All right.
We'll squeak by 66 to 16.
Jesus.
50 points spread.
But it's a Texas shot.
Totally unmarked.
So the last one we have is our rolling wave, which was 63-22, which was the same as our wave three, which was 64-24.
Government people are pulling, and they've got to be getting the same results.
If they're pulling, well, they may not be able to pull.
How are they not pulling?
Also, they see the mistake in polls.
Okay.
Yep.
Because our polls, there's no inconsistency in these polls.
That's the interesting thing.
There's just a damn little anything we get.
You know what I mean?
Our poll in the Chicago Tribune poll will check out.
Our poll in the Hartford Times poll will check out in Connecticut.
Our poll in the Detroit News poll don't check out because we had that flip.
That's when I think ours is wrong.
Our earlier one checked exactly what the Detroit thing is.
I think we got one bad bull around that telephone play in Michigan.
And so do our people.
They may have unloaded a call a long time ago.
They think it got tilted by that sample.
Sure.
And that one, everything is all so much in the same ballpark that there's no way it...
Which is, they've got to be getting the same thing.
Yeah.
I think that's, I think, I think, frankly, it means we've now covered all of these things.
And also, it has something this week, which is very, I just don't think people should be without these things.
Well, it's the right day to do it Friday.
You can do it at the end of the week.
You can pile up your bill signing business and I'll have the first of the week all the work you have to do up there to sign that one up there.
Like Climax did with the bill signing.
Tuesday won't be as hard as any Thursday will.
He's got to get something from them, which is a very, very tough thing to do.
Mr. Weinberger just called.
He said there's a report about a conflict in Anthony's office.
I have to watch out for him.
I've got a report on that.
My HR1 conference in Illinois was reported on Sunday, too.
I mean, Sunday, too.
I've got a report on that.
Thank you.
NARA Description
On October 14, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and unknown person(s) met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 4:05 pm to 4:30 pm. The Camp David Hard Wire taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 220-005 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 220-005
Date: October 14, 1972
Time: 4:05 pm - 4:30 pm
Location: Camp David Hard Wire
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, NARA Online Public Access Catalog Identifier: 597542
The President met with H.R. (“Bob”) Haldeman.
College football
-Current ranking of teams
-University of Oklahoma
-University of Southern California [USC]
Vietnam negotiations
-Possible settlement
-Previous meeting with Henry A. Kissinger
-Timing of settlement
-John D. Ehrlichman, Clark MacGregor
-Forthcoming US election
-Electorate
-George S. McGovern’s supporters
-Right wing
-November 15, 1972
-Strategy
-[Nancy S. Maginnes]
-Conversation with Kissinger
-Conversation with Haldeman
-Unnamed man in charge of New York campaign telephone
banks for the Committee to Re-elect the President [CRP]
-Calls to New York area Democrats
-Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan
-Support for the President
-Polling techniques
-American Institute for Public
Opinion
-Increase after McGovern's
Vietnam speech
-Irish ancestry of voters
-Patriotism
*****************************************************************
[Previous PRMPA Personal Returnable (G) withdrawal reviewed under deed of gift 09/16/2019.
Segment cleared for release.]
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, NARA Online Public Access Catalog Identifier: 597542
[Personal Returnable]
[220-005-w002]
[Duration: 54s]
1972 election
-Polls
-Outcome
-Sindlinger poll
-Detroit News
-The President's talk with John D. Ehrlichman
-The President’s talk with Charles W. Colson
-The President's lead
-Detroit News
-Polling lead needed to carry states
*****************************************************************
Issues
-Vietnam War
-Peace issue
-Possible risks for the Administration
-Prisoners of war [POWs]
-Situation
-Casualties
-Timing of settlement
-1972 election
-The President’s conversation with Kissinger
-Possible cease-fire
-Breaches
-Type of settlement
-Success
-McGovern
*****************************************************************
[Previous PRMPA Personal Returnable (G) withdrawal reviewed under deed of gift 09/16/2019.
Segment cleared for release.]
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, NARA Online Public Access Catalog Identifier: 597542
[Personal Returnable]
[220-005-w004]
[Duration: 12m 6s]
1972 election
-American electorate
-Choice between the President and George S. McGovern
-Clark MacGregor’s analysis
-Undecided vote
-Working class
-Polls
-George S. McGovern’s possible vote count in election
-The President’s opinion
-Gallup poll
-Point spreads
-Massachusetts, West Virginia, Minnesota, and Washington State
-George S. McGovern
-The President's 1960 vote count
-The President's 1968 campaign's effectiveness
-George S. McGovern’s campaigning
-The President’s opinion as to effectiveness
-California, Illinois
-Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania
-Gallup's next poll
-Timing of release
-October 16, 1972
-Yankelovich poll
-Two person race
-John B. Connally’s analysis
-Landslide
-[John] Calvin Coolidge
-Alfred M. (“Alf”) Landon vs. Franklin D. Roosevelt
-Youth vote
-Vietnam War
-Vietnam War as issue for George S. McGovern
-Credibility of George S. McGovern
-Corruption issue
-Polls
-California
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, NARA Online Public Access Catalog Identifier: 597542
-Timing
-Los Angeles, Orange County
-Cory poll
-The President's campaign organization
-Franklyn C. (“Lyn”) Nofziger
-Handling of campaign
-Opinion of Frederic V. Malek
-Targeting within California
-John B. Connally
-Fresno County
-Massachusetts
-West Virginia
-President’s opinion of potential electoral victory
-Release of H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman's poll
-Massachusetts
-Becker poll compared to the President
-West Virginia, Kentucky point spreads
-Texas
-Polling by George S. McGovern’s organization
-Variance within different polls
-H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman's polls, Chicago Tribune, Hartford Times
-Decision Research
-Detroit News
-Yankelovich and Gallup polls
-Potential effect of poll results on the President's campaign workers
*****************************************************************
Schedule
-Bill signing ceremony
-Revenue sharing signing ceremony in Philadelphia
An unknown man entered at an unknown time after 5:25 pm.
Congress
-Telephone call to the President from Caspar W. (“Cap”) Weinberger
-Conference report
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, NARA Online Public Access Catalog Identifier: 597542
The unknown man left at an unknown time before 4:30 pm.
Congress
-House Resolution [HR] 1 conference
-Spending ceiling limitation
Haldeman left at 4:30 pm.Also recorded on October 14, 1972
- 149-001 3:45 PM · 10 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 3:45 pm and 3:46 pm.
- 220-001 3:45 PM · 8 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 3:45 pm and 3:46 pm.
- 149-002 3:46 PM · 14 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Tricia Nixon Cox talked on the telephone at Camp David from 3:46 pm to 3:49 pm.
- 220-002 3:46 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Tricia Nixon Cox met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 3:46 pm to 3:49 pm.
- 149-003 3:49 PM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 3:49 pm and 3:50 pm.
- 220-003 3:49 PM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 3:49 pm and 3:50 pm.
- 149-004 3:50 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman talked on the telephone at Camp David from 3:50 pm to 3:53 pm.
- 220-004 3:50 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 3:50 pm to 3:53 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 220-005, October 14, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/220-005 (accessed October 10, 2026).