Conversation 249-029

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

I'd like you to be interested in our annual conference this year.

It's scheduled to be reflected in the Glassboro Awards this year.

7th, Johnson & Duncan, 4-6-39, May 22, 4440.

Thank you.

August dropped back to the very time of 1947.

1947?

Yeah.

That is true.

There was only a blip then.

Well, it was a blip.

There was nothing that came out of it.

It was just something that... You've got to be building.

You've got to be building before.

You've got to be building after.

And also, it shows you the danger of just having a...

or any other kind of a meaning for purely cosmetic purposes.

He never came back from that.

For example, Rogers, he always repeated back and forth again.

He really is.

He relates to a model that he grew up with.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Probably, his idea of the stock market thing now looks to be to go and pull or something like that.

They just don't say what to do about it.

I had an idea to make a TV on May 1st.

It's too late to make a TV on May 1st.

I don't know if they have one on May 8th or...

I don't know.

That is a factor.

Yeah.

We're down today.

I want to go tomorrow.

Well, you don't have to.

It has to be.

It has to stay in my mind.

I think you reached the weight on a Saturday to do it.

What time?

It was a market today.

Yeah.

I think that's a good idea.

It's a good genic, you know.

Everybody knows about bulls and bears.

I mean, it's a good picture, Jimmy.

That's right, he was involved.

It's not a bad thing, you know what I'm saying?

Yes.

You were so wrong.

It's a horrible storyline.

I'm a bull.

I'm a bull, and I'm confident.

I'm confident.

I'm confident about America.

That's the whole thing.

And I'm trying to get more of a price.

The whole speech writing thing.

I'm confident about America.

And I got here, you know, before Murphy came, walked across the pay wells and the Sarum Fund that were walking down the steps as I walked up over there.

I said, wow, you got any juicy news to give us?

I said, sure, what do you want?

He said, we already got it.

Wasn't that GNP great today?

Well, I said, boy, things are really looking up, aren't they?

I said, they sure are.

And, you know, we started.

Michelle sold the GNP to that place.

They were voting.

Just, you know, a few little old crones.

But they sit in there and hear that platinum all the time.

And then Sarah said, here's a little China thing.

She said, why that China thing?

It just got those liberals so screwed up they don't know what to do about it.

I think it has.

The China thing is affecting intellectuals more than people.

I don't know.

It's part of network time.

I've got to think about it.

It's a great situation.

I don't know much about the role that we were playing.

And now you're good.

It's a week of Monday.

No, China will stay on for a long time.

China will stay on for a long, long time.

I'm back.

Forward.

China will come over here.

San Francisco or all of a sudden if they're abandoned, you won't be able to come and visit.

But, you know, it's a big surge in terms of development.

Well, I don't know if it's developed, but that's what they think.

That was a story from San Francisco, Chinatown.

People that hadn't seen their families for 50 years or something, thought maybe their families would come to America.

See, Bob, these American people are not a warlike people.

They're not a warlike people.

We're a bunch of naive, sentimental people.

That's why they don't like these demonstrators.

That's why they don't like these bombers.

They don't like trouble.

They want to be left alone.

Don't you agree?

Sure.

People are... You're saying, well, people have it as good as the American people do.

They do want to be left alone.

They just want these little bastards to shut up, go away, and have their barbecue.

Let me say this.

I agree with Nick, you know.

As I said, the trouble with San Jose would have been a real plus for him.

That was just a bad deal.

He got that good on them.

Yeah.

Yeah, we didn't do it.

Sure, they were making the case that they did now, but they asked me on case.

We shouldn't have brought them down to look at the car, for instance.

We worked too hard on it.

You're right.

We've got to be careful on some of that.

We get cranked up.

We know they'll screw us, so we try to counteract it.

And sometimes we hear ourselves, and we think that they're going to screw us.

Obviously I was kidding.

I said in Italian I was kidding.

But the way everybody squealed about it, I had the game that I accidentally stumbled on somebody's hidden treasure chest, and now they're afraid I've discovered something I wasn't supposed to know.

And so I began to think maybe I was right and didn't know it.

And he said, it was interesting, he said, well, don't ever tell anybody I said this, but he said, I'm convinced you are right.

I said, this is Christopher Rand, it's a rough one for him.

He says, I think they really do get together and decide what their kind of line of the back is going to be.

And I said, you don't seriously mean, what you mean is that they see each other, you know, each other's lines.

Because that's in a sense, that's in fact what I was trying to say is that Severide says I'm on TV on Thursday night and then the magazine writer filled it up on Friday and so on.

He said, no, I think it goes beyond that.

I think they actually sit down and decide or call each other on the phone and say, well, we had this

And they orchestrated it.

They figured they are the establishment.

And that's why they ate our guts, because we fight them so effectively.

We do.

As Henry says, they've taken three rounds out of us now.

They won't be able to take another round.

And a good thing worked in this thing that works pretty well in every political point of view.

You separate the role of the politician out of every decision that's being political, and that's the president.

It's not a third role of the president.

Political is a part of the total role.

being head of state and head of government, not head of political.

Because political is part of being head of state and part of being head of government.

And so if you look at what people call political events, and let's take one series of events, which are probably the most important series of the things he's done.

The November 3rd speech, the Cambodia move, the Vietnam dead laws move, and the April 7th speech.

Look at those in terms of political acts.

And I set up for them on November 30th.

All the advice came in.

Very good political advice.

It wore off fast.

move the troops out much faster, step up your rate.

Fire first.

Only mistake we made was fire first.

I didn't mention that one because I left.

But calling students in that we're going to demonstrate, sit and talk with them and get their views so that we can answer the deputary and all that.

Those were all the political judgments and what the president did.

He did what he knew was right as far as the question was concerned and then exercised the act of political leadership

which was to go to the people and explain what he was doing and why, and hope they would understand.

Which they did, in a dramatic 180 degree shift in public opinion, in a half an hour, on the night of November 30th.

Because then things went along very well.

Administrations came and people didn't like them, and things grew up.

Then Cambodia.

Again, what should the president do?

God know, never invade another country and expand the war.

And if you do it, don't tell anybody about it and all that.

So what did he do?

He made the decision on the right basis.

He said in his speech on Cambodia that he would rather do the right thing and only be a one-term president than to be a two-term president because he had done the wrong thing.

That was hardly an act of political expediency.

It's just the opposite.

And he admitted it.

I can't explain why.

But nobody paid any attention to that.

Then you look at Bob's political advice, which for God's sake, just get out of the war.

Don't let everybody home.

Don't stir up the animals.

It won't take that one more time.

The President knew he had to do it.

Nobody would continue the program.

Nobody was getting all that from him.

So he did it.

And then April 7th came along.

Time to report on the troop withdrawal plans.

All the political advice would step up the withdrawal and announce a fixed date and make it as early as you can, hopefully before the end of this year, so it will undercut the people that are calling for the end of this year.

So what did he do?

He gave them no hate.

He backed them up a little bit, but not in a significant amount, because there's as much as could be properly done.

Then he went on television and he responded to the people.

All we can determine now is that people understand.

They aren't happy about it because nobody's happy about the war.

But they understand, and they understand that those are jumping down.

Those, to me, are political acts, but not in the sense that you're talking about.

Why don't you explain that to the staff?

I'm getting my grade over talking about it right now.

I was writing all this down, and we'll produce it.

That's excellent.

But why don't you make the staff

I mean, you've got McGregor, Scali, Schultz, Irv.

I mean, it's a pretty damn good thing.

I got a review on it here.

Jesus Christ, those goddamn weed cabinets.

You know, the more I think about it,

I think we ought to really consider comments rather than do.

I think we ought to just do it and do it.

I don't do it now, but if we go out, if we get, for example, if we get a summit, and do it carefully, really nicely with them, and just say, and say, now look, we're going to make some changes to the security, why don't you all take off and get them the hell out.

I think that would be good.

Spaniel could take the leadership and say, look, I think we all want to, you know, sort of submit our resignation.

Actually, you guys can't get away with it without yourself.

What you do need is two or three more strong men.

Yeah.

You could replace Spaniel with a strong man.

Yeah, I hired him.

He was a strong man.

He could go out and sell us a good truck.

He got Spencer up for being a secretary.

He could sell.

Who the hell wants to be a secretary?

Spencer didn't understand.

I know.

But I'm not, I'm kind of, I got him involved.

The guy was nasty.

He was nice and sweet.

And then he told me, man, it's not worth a shit.

in terms of selling the present.

You know that, huh?

I wonder who that is.

Huh?

I wonder who that is.

So is Hodgson.

Hodgson's a wonderful guy.

Does Hodgson help us?

I know what he can.

I would think Hodgson would, somewhere.

Well, he's got a sort of a gun on the line, you know.

Stan is just not helpful.

Not one bit.

He doesn't help a bit, believe me.

He's dead.

He just doesn't have the ability to be honest with you.

He's just not any more of an enthusiast than when he shot his first bullet.

I like a real down-to-earth, down-to-earth, down-to-earth executive.

If you're out across this country, somebody that's exciting and enthusiastic and bubbly, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like a J.C. Tidebunker.

Yeah.

John Crescent at the time, wouldn't that be great?

You know, Marty Stans, his old hat.

He had a great idea.

He loved the country and believed in the Americans.

He needs to sit here and worry about business.

It's a little hard.

If you do that, then we get as many of us as we want.

You can't take Rogers for later, can you?

I wish we could get him out.

Rogers could be an asset in the end and just get all the money.

I don't know if it counts.

I mean, he will, ain't he?

But I think in the... You know, to his credit,

During the worst of the period before April 7th, Rogers was bugging.

He was up, you know.

Others were down, but Rogers said, we're doing all right.

We're doing all right.

It's all downhill from now.

You know, he never, he wasn't one that urged that we step up to the troop patrol.

Not a bit.

Henry doesn't like to admit this.

Roger is smart, dumb, and pleasant.

Roger will go out and sell them.

Alright, he will.

Yeah, he will.

Yeah, I know.

He does go out and sell them.

Roger, yeah.

He's a goddamn selfish and self-confident idiot.

You can't do a much better job.

The only thing I could...

I think Rumsfeld would be much better.

He'd run the department better.

He'd get better sales than Romney.

Rumsfeld would be a good salesman.

Romney does not really deserve it.

He'd get rid of him.

Goddamn, that would be good.

That would be the option.

Romney is not an asset.

Rumsfeld would be an asset.

Huh?

Oh, hell no.

Hello, Chip.

Thank you.