Conversation 247-009

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

The only thing about the copy is loads of other things.

The good, the good, the good, the good.

It's blank.

It's almost identical with that.

throughout that and see my point of view.

I'd rather, I'd rather wonder if Conley wasn't having fun, though, than if he was just sitting in the parking lot, basically.

Cool.

I think Conley has a general reaction, but maybe he's right.

Maybe what comes across is what he says there.

Smith, of course, did provide more of an

It's hard, but there's an awful lot involved in this sort of thing.

As we know.

I just don't know.

Former addition that Ray wanted to make there is that supposedly he was in that area.

He was that Catholic priest that ran for the Senate.

I didn't, I just got a little bit cold on it.

Just let the boat go over there a little bit.

Anyway, let's get back to the camera.

Fight for these.

They're all here for your sons.

That includes me.

They're not going to make news just by being positive.

They've got to take somebody on.

They've got to hit somebody.

They've got to attack somebody.

Sure.

And here's the weakness.

I guess we're only hitting somebody.

I don't know whether we did or not.

We just haven't had anybody on our cabinet team.

I mean, take Finch and Klein.

We've done their running around.

They never attack anybody.

Yes, it's Cline.

Cline does sometimes, yeah, we always see him.

I know he was crazy for CBS, but he's kind of not the story.

He's kind of an important guy.

Yeah, I think he's crazy for that story.

Well, he got into the big disservice one of those.

But anyway...

I've been wondering about that, because I think you just want to just face up to it and make some changes.

Everybody understands what I'm saying.

I think we can make them now.

We've got to wait a couple months.

You're going to come down to it, Bob.

Did I say a couple months?

How many of them are going to come?

Three of them are going to come.

I'm stepping back to the point that I mentioned earlier.

They've got a customer down in Georgia now.

enough for them to be good operators.

They've got to be out fighting.

You know, they've got to be out pitching.

And, you know, not giving that bland crap that they attack.

All of the answers is, your answer is, we didn't accomplish much.

That isn't the place to have an answer.

What the hell?

The captain should answer.

They're your team.

What the hell are they doing?

I don't get hurt.

Daniel had pointed in that there are only 12 cabin officers and 535 accomplishment.

Interesting.

A lot louder than one accomplishment.

That's a lot of pictures.

And if you want people to listen to individual guys on that level, you won't send anybody to that.

Well, the point that he

Because I think we've got to really, look, I think there is too much of an attitude on the part of our staff people.

Good job.

Not flappable.

That ain't enough.

See you then.

We hardly bought that mountain.

Right.

It was basically not enough for that person.

The majority had three options.

You don't have anybody in the capital.

You don't have a lot of people.

You play with some effort, Richardson.

But I think once I understood, I think Bridgerton could be.

I mean, the town of Austin has been built with everything.

Well, they pointed out.

I said, now, Volpe's got a lot of heart.

I said, Volpe, apparently.

I said, I won't speak to you.

I said, I should work on trouble in space.

Volpe is just an officer.

Pay attention to Volpe.

I'm calling on space agents.

But, you know, too much yak.

And Romney.

Romney has never recovered.

Stands.

Two men, Mordeaux, Harder, Bell.

Right at the top, Laird and Rogers are just not here.

You can't use them.

Secondary estate.

Bill.

The problem is you can take somebody on.

Somebody's gonna take these people on.

That's that's uh, you know.

I can't see if we should strengthen the sun.

I thought you were strengthening the blue.

I've been really terribly disappointed in my son.

I think that when you dump somebody in the cabinet, I wonder if he'd be any better right now.

Maybe if the cabinet was looking at him and talked to him more.

He's very frank.

He likes to, you know, get all those surprises.

He can't do the right thing.

He's not ruthless enough.

But the moment he hits this point of the

questions is find some instances where you can show a little emotion.

And the point is, as I said, Bob, they've done it how many times have we?

Don't you agree?

There's been a hell of a lot, but nobody ever got it out.

They can't.

The way of getting it out is just talks about it.

He's not suggesting I do it myself.

He is suggesting that I, in press conferences and other things, I just don't see my changing the press conference agenda.

I mean, I, after all, should.

You know, Gregor Johnson lost his memory.

He stomped around.

I have a long piece from North.

North?

Oh, did you hire him or not?

He wrote a damn good piece though.

if we can get as much of his time as possible.

So he wrote a long piece, and what does he say?

Well, now this is the same thing he's getting from his point that Leonard says, I don't want to change.

He says, we just got to get across off the hill I've been doing.

That's right.

But he does say that we've got to change what we get across.

And he makes an interesting point that I haven't really thought of, which is that we, as we talk about how things ought to be done, we talk about how Kennedy got things through.

You know, you kind of think about the way Kennedy got things across.

He said you've got to look at what they did with Kennedy.

They very consciously worked at getting across the things that were not

In other words, Kennedy was a playboy, so they worked hard at getting across his 100 days and trying to make a big thing out of that.

Kennedy was a socialite, so they worked hard at trying to make him look like a loner.

Jackie Kennedy was a jet-set swimmer, so they worked hard at making her look like a mother and a classic, you know, the Buffalo Casals business and stuff like that, where her natural bent would have been, yeah, some far-out modern jazz.

Very good point.

You're just the opposite in most of those things, and we should therefore be getting across the opposite points.

In other words, that you essentially are a loner, so we should make you look like a sociologist.

That you're essentially a... and I don't think this works, no.

Except, he's not changing it, though.

He's saying...

build up the points that are natural.

They didn't change Kennedy.

Kennedy did go out alone in a cell phone.

So they made a big thing out of it, because that was a good point to make, they thought.

But Kennedy was pushing legislation, so they made a thing out of it.

We're efficient, so we shouldn't push efficiency.

We need to show a little more informality.

We need to look a little looser.

We need to stir up a little more excitement and that kind of stuff.

It doesn't mean Pablo Casals, she needs Duke Ellington, was his point.

That was super, because Pat Nixon's thought of as being proper and formal and all.

I don't know, but that's what she's thought of as.

He argues, for instance, on Trish's wedding that we shouldn't play the fairy princess marrying the rich prince.

That'll...

appealed to a few Tories in the days of royalty, but a great mass of Americans don't look at it that way.

A lot of sheep look at it.

I don't know.

No, I think the wedding is going to be played royally.

Believe me, they love royally.

Oh, and Trisha is royally.

That's, I mean, she just can't change it.

I don't think you can make Trisha any royally.

She's got a great charm and all that.

Like, she was out with those Easter egg kids yesterday and did a sensational job.

They're on television.

Was it on television?

Oh, yeah.

Kids monitor it.

She does that.

just extremely well.

And she does it the way Rosalie does it, when they go down most of the time.

I don't think, actually, Bob, we're doing quite as badly as Lenny Malik.

You know what I mean?

I think that, uh, I don't think, actually, we live a very rough period before, almost the end of us, almost the end of us.

I think now we're getting deceased.

Well, what Conley says is true, though, and he sees, and that's, of course, that's Leonard's point, that the people who know you

You know that you're warm, thoughtful, considerate, you know, those kinds of things.

They know how hard you work.

They know all these characteristics.

And yet the people who don't know you don't realize that.

So the key is not to make you any different than you are.

It's better to make...

to the general mass of the public, what the people who know you well have known for long.

The real question is whether we change the press conference and conversations.

That's it.

That's where you made the massive, massive effect.

Well now, there was a one time, let's face it, this way, the three speeches, November 3rd, Cambodia, and April 7th, were all

speeches in which I, you know, showed emotion, you know.

They were all in their way of goddamn defective.

Liz and Sapphire and Bryce, that bunch, they never come up with a goddamn thing, which has any...

They just can't do it because they don't believe in it.

That's really what it gets down to.

You know?

That's what they would say.

Schmaltz.

You wouldn't realize it.

Without Schmaltz, you'd get no place in this business.

Probably see if you couldn't get rid of all that inculcated grace and sapphires.

You want to be brittle and clever and all that, but it's not that different from war.

They talk about that children and youth crap I did.

I wrote something about my mother.

Brassman Cook did a good job on that.

It's a story at the end.

I don't see much stuff that comes through that way.

The anecdotes are not warm.

That's kind of like I gave it to the Adams.

I know I got one of you.

I worked this out.

He thinks that I could survive.

I would not agree.

I want you to do.

I think that this is pretty good.

I got this.

This has got to be prepared in a way that we're going to let them do it.

We've got to start voting for it.

We're goddamn fools with the fate of the nation and the world.

It's a less than a matter of routine.

We've got staff, work, and I don't know.

I really can't do any of these folks anymore.

I don't want to do it.

I don't know what the hell we're going to do.

I've kept my crack because our economic policy would otherwise appear to be a failure.

But he's a utter disaster as a citizen.

I don't want to be conned.

Schultz is a very good citizen.

Schultz is good, but he's not going to stand.

Now, here's a possibility.

Kahnbach is convinced, and I'm not at all sure it would be a good idea, that Stantz would be interested in resigning and being finance chairman again.

He has to go to the same room and everything.

And then make him a pastor of the brick.

Yeah.

If you tell him where he stands to raise $50 million.

How about this?

How about this apartment?

You retire.

That's a pastor of the brick.

Walter can't stay there more than four years.

He shouldn't get the hell back here.

Yeah.

If you take Congo, you might like Africa.

Right, you really might.

I'll take him any post he wants.

That's what I'll do.

Congo or something.

And you'll do that.

Then we could get a Secretary of the Congress who's really a balls-out salesman, you see.

More of this gray and tired kind of line.

See, that's a post where you could really put a balls-out salesman.

And you could use him to sell the economy.

You can cut across a lot of lines.

If you go out and sell the hell out of business, you can use them as a political operative.

It's the same category, of course.

And Mitch will be going out soon to put an AG in, if you want to.

If Mitch will leave, I'm going to have to find you stuff, and I don't want to be the former Mitchelist anymore.

No, no.

Not now?

No.

Do you know what I mean?

Yes, I understand.

He feels he's got to leave sometime next year.

Next year.

Let's take a crack at Stanton.

How about some others?

Chuckie Robbins.

He could.

He could, maybe.

He's got the ability.

We can't go to him.

But we've tried on him and struck out.

We've hooked on him.

Both of them.

We just stuck with him, haven't we?

A letter from John McClellan presiding for John McClellan.

John McClellan presiding for John McClellan presiding for John McClellan presiding for John McClellan presiding for John McClellan.

drive the goddamned and the oppressed to a hell of an end.

That's a good one.

He's a big man.

He's a former head of the CIA.

We couldn't tell if that's a top-priority thing.

When does he reach the press?

I don't think so.

That's a good thing.

That's better.

Put him on that.

That's just a good one.

Put a man on that, because that's only once every three months.

But what do you think about the part of the guy in the letter here?

Is he not correct?

I don't know.

I don't know if he's correct or not.

Of course, part of this reflects what they read in the press.

See, the thing these days, we have to realize, the thing these days, the painless shouting, peace now, peace now.

Yeah.

Well, maybe you've got to start demo-gogging a little bit.

Maybe that's what you want to do.

You can assure us how to do it.

A little bit of breastfeeding and then always die and some of that as you go through the answers to press conference questions and taking a quarter on once in a while.

That's right after the business about the speech.

I don't mind, but I don't know why.

They know how horrible blood can be.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

The main thing you've got to consider is, oh, I really think you've got to have a part with John Irving.

Don Schultz, I would imagine, because he's that kind of man himself.

Now, look here, John, for Christ's sakes, let's start with this goddamn cat.

Do we want to go into great battle with them?

What can we do about it?

He is one, but he's our friend at least.

God, I'd like to chuck the whole bunch, believe me.

You know, there's only one man in that cabin that I will keep.

Well, Richardson would, you know, if we sat down and talked with Richardson, we wanted him to fight, we wanted him to make news, we wanted him to attack.

Become a national figure.

Do it.

He's not that warm emotionally.

He could knife them a little.

You say, look here.

You see, Conley, he's looked them all over.

He says, this is an able man.

He says, but nobody knows, never heard of him.

The main thing is to kick this goddamn welfare assholes.

Common says welfare is the biggest issue in California.

And Bob, we're on the wrong side of the goddamn issue.

Now, I want you to talk to her with me about that tomorrow, but I really think we've got to, I think we ought to check that on the system.

You know, that part, both the welfare and more.

People do not want that message.

You know, they don't want to have people who do not have that welfare role.

Boyd had, Shultz and a lot of other people.

What the hell do you think about it?

Huh?

People don't want it.

Come on.

They're telling the news.

Right.

All over the place.

They're giving themselves the Japanese name.

That's fine, but those aren't fair.

They're screwing things up all the time.

Over and over again, right?

Talk about lack of charisma.

Talk about the welfare of men.

We've got to take the heart of it again.

At this point.

Success.

I would be more inclined to replace him.

I trust Nelson, that's for sure.

Nelson can't be trusted.

The board of policy has to have somebody we can trust.

They can put someone else in there.

They're far not afraid.

Yeah.

Did Henry mention you about the Prime Minister in Morocco?

Back in the day, no.

The Prime Minister is being dispatched here.

That's in the way it's like in Egypt.

It's not very safe, so we'll see.

It may be.

He does know what it's about.

It may be.

I can't say what it is, but it's a little...

Why can't he cancel it with you?

I'm not turning it off.

He's hiding the Prime Minister.

He comes on a mission from the King, and there's this guy that's marching hands full of guns.

Or he probably could maybe set it up, or whatever he wants.

Well, if he's canceling it, it sets us up to do that Marine thing.

So if he's just going out and saying he can go out early, put the Marine thing to the very end.

Well, I think that has a good touch.

If we do something else,

So some other, it doesn't have to be any event, but I mean, if we have some other reason or activity.

We're there.

So I'm going to work out there.

You worked out there, right?

That's why it is.

It's kind of an event.

The commandant of the Marine Corps, I don't know which one, apparently told you, I guess it was the African one, last year, that that was the one wish he had for you, was that you would in some way participate in the return of the 1st Marine Corps.

That's the only try to do it.

That's apparently a very big thing.

That's a hell of a division.

I served with it.

You've got to know this.

I served with it before the war.

You check it out.

I think it was the 1st Marine Air Force.

It might have been a tentative dynamic.

Remember, Trimley used to run around with a little button for the war to change the bit, but why not?

The other big guy is home.

Dick Moore is opposed to it on the ground.

He said, it fills up the war.

Just any involvement with the military is not a good money agreement.

And, you know,

I'm for the military.

See, Dick isn't and I am.

You see, I'm very strongly for him.

Dick is, is, sort of leaves in terms, you know, because he's a peacemaker.

I know he's for us.

No, no, but I know he's for us, but he sees that the military is unpopular.

God damn it, we've got to stand up for him.

We want to remember, where the hell are our friends, Bob?

and they were the division that started the pacification program.

You can talk about the things they've done for the people of the Assurans, how fine they are, and so forth and so on.

The price is good.

But I think he would tend to reflect more of her feelings and, well, she would have nothing to do with the military, you know.

They should be the military here.

What's the rule?

We don't stand up for our friends.

The rule?

As much as the military symbolizes the war, it's supposed to put it the other way around.

And back in Europe,

I mean, Camp Pendleton is sort of your home base.

Right.

You're in your backyard.

What's the score on that?

We're seeing anything yet.

They're pulling.

Oh, that's right.

They're pulling 99.

We probably don't get a third chance.

No, we're good.

You know, it's good to have a boat like that.

It really is.

I know it's good.

Oh, yeah.

It's very, very, very good.