Conversation 232-003

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This is a memorandum for file.

Only one copy can be made and delivered to the home.

With further discussion on the memorandum I wrote you a week or so ago.

On the problem of getting over more adequately some of the...

more personal activities of the presidency, more personal aspects of the presidency.

It would be well for you and whoever else works on this to review what we have done just before and since the election and the effect of those activities.

Very encouraging.

Our nationwide tolerance on Thursday night, in my opinion, was pretty much of a dud.

I know that you've got a good reaction from people like Bill Rogers.

Basically, that appearance was highly presidential, philosophical, for the average person's health.

My guess is that the average person who turned it in either went to sleep or

turned to whatever movie or other item was on, on some other channel, in order to get away from the period.

That's not bad.

Yeah, frankly, I think I would have done the same thing if I had been listening to Terry's paragraph.

That's true of the five minutes I did on the night before August.

It did precious little good.

I can sense that this is the case from the way I have been able to sense my own and check my own personal contacts, but also from the fact that I have yet to find anyone who has

mentioned either appearance either before or since the election and objections on that there was scarcely any male reaction at all which is something that no responsive court was struck in the public.

I realize that the answer of Ray Price and the

quote, presidential, end quote, group, will be that that's exactly what we wanted to do, put the people to sleep, rather than to excite them.

Very good.

On the other hand, a certain price is paid for that, and this is what we must watch as we move to the second term.

This will be...

pompous and dull, and give no enthusiasm, no lip, no excitement to what we are doing, we are going inevitably to fail in achieving our significant goals in the second term.

I cannot emphasize too much that once Vietnam has concluded the so-called

so-called wall bangers.

Wall bangers.

That's one word to dash in between.

Close quote.

I think they're loved so much, except they aren't going to be around.

We are not going to have big players.

I know that Ziggler Field has really big stuff, but

new cabinet appointments.

It is a big story in Washington.

Ehrlichman, when I talked to Ehrlichman about this, he disagreed when I said that I didn't think much of it, that most of the people in the country really gave a damn about it.

However, I am totally right on this.

Ehrlichman is wrong.

You will recall when we had set up the OMB and put Schultz under the job.

It was a big story in the New York Times and the Washington Post

But out through the country, if you had taken a poll, I don't think more than one or two percent of the people would have known who George Shultz was.

Or if they would have thought that OMB was a civil rights organization.

or some kind of a mysterious foundation.

Very fair.

Election.

Well, I thought at the time it was the right thing to do, and thought it was the right thing to do immediately thereafter.

I think when we did Election Eve, again, fell into the same error.

The Oval Office talking quietly to the Navy.

I had already in effect

And what I said there was so anticlimactic that the fact that it was a rather exciting crowd made very little difference because I could do very little at that point.

And to give not only that crowd a lift, but to give the millions listening on television somewhat of a victory and a feeling of lift.

If you check this out on our own staff, you will find the fatal weakness in our staff that I have been constantly trying to get across to you.

They will all think that we did exactly the right thing, that this was presidential, that there should have been no excitement election night, that we should not have tried to...

raised the spirits of people in the last week of the campaign for fear that we would get some criticism from the press for either campaigning too hard or trying to demagogue or what have you.

All of our staff people would say that.

This is exactly the kind of thing that appeals to them as writing intelligent, sober,

In other words, we're falling under the error of the price approach in spades due to the fact that we had a runaway election.

and didn't want to do anything to jeopardize our lead.

In other words, we felt the error that I had always feared of backing into the victory.

Whereas we probably should have tried to, even with the demonstrators and all the rest, to put a little excitement in the last three weeks.

It is true that the motorcades serve a useful purpose.

That very unexpected turnout of people across the runway in Greensboro changed the mood a bit.

And of course, the final rally in Los Angeles was one of the best.

The difficulty was, as far as the last rally was concerned,

It's very exciting to those who have a doctor's degree in political science.

What we are doing now is not exciting at all as far as the average person

what we are saying about what we are doing and cannot really make it that much more exciting because it just isn't there.

I know that John Burlingame would suggest that if I would just go out to my junior high school and make the announcements there or possibly drop into a supermarket in Saturday afternoon and do it, that this would

change the whole situation, but it would not you.

You cannot take what is basically a dull story and make it an exciting story.

What you can do is to take a very good story and make it a very good story and a very exciting story.

This story is dull, not good.

This is the second tape of a Memorandum of the Whole, which is being dictated with only one copy to be made.

This is the second tape of a Memorandum of the Whole

They indicated that only one copy is to be made, and that to be delivered to home.

None is to be kept in your file.

Although that would be very effective.

What made us gun-shy, and understandably so, was Conley's very frank criticism after the 1970 campaign of our style in that campaign.

Again, Conley was affected by the enormous press that was given to the

San Jose incident and the Phoenix broadcast on the other hand as we coldly analyze that and as Colson reports from an individual who does have somewhat of a gut feeling about the country now what we did

throughout the campaign, before, underline the words, underline the word before, the Phoenix speech was broadcast nationally.

Had a very good effect on the country.

It avoided any erosion, any erosion in our support.

It actually gave people a lift, and as Cap said,

you ought to go back and read his letter that he wrote at that time, or wrote with regard to it.

It was probably a little later than that, after the election that he wrote it.

This was one of the few times that he related to the president.

I'm sorry, this was one of the few times that he told people in town, related to Nixon as they had related previously to all of our characters.

Another example of our approach is what happened in New York the other day.

The big story, at least from any kind of a...

The most positive story, at least from any kind of a national impact was the walk that I took through Rockefeller Center where I met the Israeli and the...

I had them shake hands and I made a little talk to the television cameras.

Zegler opposed my going on the walk that day.

I do not blame him for that.

He was simply playing it safe because playing it safe has brought us pretty far.

He said that after all, I had a pretty good reception down at Wall Street the day before and that we didn't, quote, need it.

And that's what the word need, in quotes,

and that I might as well sit in the hotel room and let Henry's visit that night be the story.

I, of course, was fearful that there might be some demonstrators this night.

I had an odd impulse to go.

It turned out to be a good idea.

You have to understand that, again,

Most of the members of our staff have no feeling for political chemistry, for the excitement, the reaction of people.

I go back to the time that I went and spoke to the POWI's.

Ehrlichman's reaction is typical of the reaction of our entire staff, virtually our entire staff, in matters of that time.

Sorry, to Ehrlichman.

The big story was that by going there, regardless of what kind of reception I got, regardless of what I said, it would be a good, quote, gimmick story, end quote, to get us on the news that night and keep a more negative story at a lower level.

On the other hand, the reason that that was a good story

was because of what happened there.

Not what I said so much as the excitement of the crowd, et cetera.

What we have to realize, too, is that the, quote, presidential, end quote, advisors are constantly pushing me on a character.

Sometimes I feel like walking among people

I will never do anything really crude or stupid, but on the other hand, I have to do the things that do not appear to be so, uh, contrived and so planned and so well-ordered and, uh, so, and, uh,

Also, which appear to be ones in which we are simply avoiding risks and avoiding negatives rather than taking chances to make positives.

We are taking chances to make positives in the forward pulse area.

What we need to do is take chances to make positives in the PR area without going to the early sammier type of gimmickry.

I would agree.

A very effective presentation.

On the other hand, I was so

I had it beaten into me so much by everybody around me that I should talk only to the television audience, that I deliberately kept the crowd subdued by trying to shut off applause throughout the evening.

After Monday, by the time the speech was finished, we had lost that excitement, that feel of exhilaration, that feel of love that can only come from a total event

rather than something from one line or one inch straight.

What happened the night before, which, and on this one I give total credit to the staff for suggesting it, was quite different.

Here again, of course, the staff had prepared some remarks for me to read, which would have perhaps been much better than what I said.

On the other hand, what made that event

was a spontaneity.

Some would say even a bit of non-presidential demagoguery, although I did not intend it to be demagoguery.

The praise of Sammy Davis, et cetera.

I was a speechwriter.

Most of our speechwriters would have...

uh, vomited and they felt that I was going to, uh, be so personal as to say that both of us had come a long, had started at a very low, uh, low base and had come a long way or whatever it was.

Related to all this, of course, is to get somebody more effective in the PR, uh, planning than we presently have.

A selection of whoever is going to bring people into my office at times in the future.

One of the reasons I like Bull is not only that he's good for me, it's that he's very nice to people.

I think it would be of a sake to have Alex bring people in.

He's somebody we employ who doesn't care whether or not somebody smiles at him when he comes in.

Every time of day.

is basically a very bright John E. Decker type.

Whatever individual is coming into that office or inside before he comes in.

Cox had that ability when she was with me in my great congressional days.

Pete Provenza, that poor ignorant

who handled my formal office in the White House probably received more notes of commendation from people all over the country than any member of my staff during the time I was vice president because he simply had a warm heart and was nice to people.

He liked people.

He let them feel what he liked.

In earlier days,

when she did not have the responsibility she presently has.

But giving the individual came as a feeling of warmth.

By the time I got to them, they weren't so frightened or so spellbound that it...

that I had to spend three or four minutes to get them up to the point where they could talk in any kind of fashion.

This last paragraph is somewhat of a digression.

What I'm trying to do here is to make a fundamental point.

That is, quote, character.

must be reviewed in the light of prior to the election.