Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 284-017
Date: Wednesday, October 6, 1971 at 5:30 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob")
Recording device: Old Executive Office Building
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/284-017

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[1:46:49] You know, the thing on wholesale prices was better than you reported.
[1:46:55] Now, you see, you were talking to me, and I think you had the same view.
[1:46:59] You were giving it as if the rate of increase was 3%, and 4% adjusting.
[1:47:06] Now, it's down.
[1:47:09] No, I said down.
[1:47:11] I didn't get that.
[1:47:13] I said, well, down, but it made it significant.
[1:47:14] Hell, the rate of increase has been around at a rate of 4% up, and I said, what the hell, this is much better.
[1:47:21] Oh, no.
[1:47:21] No, I said, it's reality.
[1:47:23] It's the first time in four or five years.
[1:47:25] Five years.
[1:47:26] The largest drought in five years.
[1:47:28] Yeah.
[1:47:28] This shows the goddamn thing works for a while.
[1:47:33] You know, it's good to have that kind of gravity.
[1:47:36] That was funny.
[1:47:37] We may be doing the overkill now.
[1:47:41] It's food to a lot of them.
[1:47:42] Well, that's good.
[1:47:45] And that's a hell of a good balance.
[1:47:47] That will be coming tomorrow, just before the speech, and I'm referring to it in the speech.
[1:47:52] The House past the bench over there, and I'm referring to it on the speech.
[1:47:57] The Senate is playing games, as some of you may have noticed, I was with them.
[1:48:06] They have some class, I understand.
[1:48:07] I'm not sure what they're going to do now.
[1:48:11] Can't they talk it to them?
[1:48:18] They may try to stay in session after your speech and try to move on it afterwards.
[1:48:26] So they've got until midnight tomorrow night.
[1:48:30] We have to still talk it to death.
[1:48:31] Let's be ruthless with the bastards again.
[1:48:33] I really think we ought to get a team in there and talk it to death now.
[1:48:37] They don't hesitate to talk our things to death.
[1:48:40] Let's talk one of their things to death.
[1:48:42] It's a pure political thing.
[1:48:45] Let's stick by the president.
[1:48:46] Yeah, not when they can't get cloture to turn it off.
[1:48:49] Oh, we should have no chance for cloture.
[1:48:51] I think the order's got to go out to talk it to death now.
[1:48:53] I really think so.
[1:48:56] Gregory's just got to stop.
[1:49:03] As I said, totally able-minded.
[1:49:07] You know what I mean?
[1:49:15] He just doesn't get so involved.
[1:49:34] You've got to watch it.
[1:49:36] Yeah.
[1:49:37] I'm having common areas of speech.
[1:49:39] Schultz, Stein, and three of them.
[1:49:43] You say, well, how about this?
[1:49:45] Zickel, Flanagan, or I didn't know.
[1:49:50] You see, you go to staff people, you can't have 18 hundred on the speech.
[1:49:55] They overdo that sometimes.
[1:49:56] Because everybody's going to ask, well, I need this word out, or I will say that.
[1:49:59] And that's not going to happen.
[1:50:01] We've got there such a mix.
[1:50:02] I said, you've got a mix here.
[1:50:03] That's not burnt, of course.
[1:50:04] Your reed is parted out.
[1:50:06] Between Connelly, Schultz, Stein, and myself, we've got the works.
[1:50:12] I think that's very good.
[1:50:14] I'll never get it done otherwise, too.
[1:50:16] That'll cover it.
[1:50:17] I'm so glad about the whole silk art.
[1:50:24] That is beautiful.
[1:50:25] Yeah?
[1:50:26] That's bound to be reflected in seven.
[1:50:28] It'll be reflected in three months.
[1:50:32] I think that's due to, according to , which I would think they would have discounted it, but it was down.
[1:50:40] And second, the announcement of phase two.
[1:50:44] Now, the problem we've got here, I've got it as profit, and that's the only thing that's going to chill us out.
[1:50:57] When it falls off.
[1:50:58] Yeah.
[1:51:00] That may not bother you much.
[1:51:01] I think they must be expecting that you've got to do something about it.
[1:51:05] Do you think so?
[1:51:07] I don't know.
[1:51:08] I don't know.
[1:51:11] But in a ringing defense of profits, and they create jobs for us, but with false profits, which are the result of holding wages down excessively, a sharp rise in productivity, we'd rather them taxing them than they should pass that on in price reductions.
[1:51:25] The key there is to avoid getting some seller into it.
[1:51:30] So let's get excited about that.
[1:51:32] Let's track you up.
[1:51:38] Let's put the market just over 900.
[1:51:40] It's 900.58 or something.
[1:51:42] It's good to have that.
[1:51:43] Well, what else is new in the show?
[1:51:48] We've got the captain's ship, whatever.
[1:51:52] It's a long, big breakfast.
[1:51:55] I'm not sure.
[1:51:56] I don't know.
[1:51:58] It's nice to offer what we don't have.
[1:52:04] That is nice.
[1:52:04] And that may be a lot better than eating that Friday.
[1:52:06] It's not everybody.
[1:52:07] I'd like to do that.
[1:52:08] I'd like to do that.
[1:52:10] Adding it for breakfast.
[1:52:12] The problem thing, the way you say it, is big mess.
[1:52:18] It's just one of those bad things.
[1:52:21] It's one of those bad things.
[1:52:31] That's a long talk for a second.
[1:52:33] I was curious that he doesn't have the opportunity to talk about the conference, but he does the career orientation as well.
[1:52:41] I don't know.
[1:52:42] I actually stepped in and saw this other increase.
[1:52:45] We're out in this different area now.
[1:52:48] He stepped in.
[1:52:49] One coming Monday and one coming Thursday.
[1:52:52] Something like that.
[1:52:53] I got to try.
[1:52:54] Showing that...
[1:52:59] It's going to get better.
[1:53:00] It's going to get bigger.
[1:53:05] He has a question that he asks.
[1:53:07] Would you, if you elected Merrill today, would you vote for Nixon?
[1:53:15] Which, of course, if you got a very little thing, he said 23% in July.
[1:53:21] 30 after China, 33%.
[1:53:23] And you're at 48% now.
[1:53:26] Good.
[1:53:26] Would you vote for him?
[1:53:28] the election were over there.
[1:53:30] Now of course that doesn't indicate approval or disapproval.
[1:53:32] It doesn't indicate that you vote for somebody else.
[1:53:35] Then he has others that, it's just very, would you vote for Nixon, not would you vote for Nixon against somebody else.
[1:53:41] That's right.
[1:53:42] It's not a trial either.
[1:53:45] It's always the way he tests.
[1:53:49] It's great.
[1:53:49] Well, the interesting thing is the upward trend, which is because of that, over a great work on the vote, he says ours is against approval.
[1:53:55] There's no chance.
[1:54:02] I don't think that's a good question.
[1:54:06] It is a good question.
[1:54:08] But the shift in it might be interesting.
[1:54:15] See, there's always a huge undecided on what you vote for.
[1:54:26] Sure.
[1:54:26] But it's the least reliable.
[1:54:27] It doesn't all make sense.
[1:54:29] Yeah, and I don't think he does any accurate samples, but he just... What about, what is Gallo's name?
[1:54:38] I don't know.
[1:54:43] He won't be...
[1:54:44] He is a queer damn thing, you know.
[1:54:46] Yeah.
[1:54:46] He last bowled on the 1st of February.
[1:54:48] I mean, the 1st of September was his last bowled.
[1:54:53] So he's got to have one now.
[1:54:55] He isn't going to go again until it's either this weekend or tomorrow.
[1:54:59] So he had nothing coming up now for a while.
[1:55:06] It wasn't the last one.
[1:55:07] It wasn't the first one.
[1:55:10] The first one was the other six or something like that.
[1:55:13] Why do you think he does this?
[1:55:15] They said the reason they didn't do it was because they had done three together there, so they were skipping a longer than normal period.
[1:55:21] Perfectly all right.
[1:55:23] Because we may be moving up somewhere.
[1:55:27] Harris says so.
[1:55:27] I think we are.
[1:55:29] I don't think Harris is lying on that.
[1:55:31] He would lie.
[1:55:32] And his China announcement will give a little kicker kind of thing.
[1:55:37] It sort of burns the Russian people.
[1:55:40] Yeah, I hope the office poll this weekend, I hope it's the bottom of the weekend, because I think after Russia phase two, China and all that,
[1:55:48] It's a curious thing that sort of you must always get...
[1:56:12] That impression is pretty.
[1:56:14] Almost everybody, all the hands are sort of, they kick them around.
[1:56:18] On the other hand, it's goddamn hard to beat somebody with nobody.
[1:56:23] That's their problem.
[1:56:24] And we do have some basic support developing in some areas.
[1:56:28] You just got to see what erodes us from things like busing and all that sort of crap.
[1:56:41] Plus, you shouldn't make that much different stuff.
[1:56:45] If the old stuff is right, then they don't blame the president all day.
[1:56:50] Of course, they blame the president for anything that's wrong.
[1:56:52] Even though they don't consciously blame the president.
[1:56:55] For us, they wouldn't say.
[1:56:57] I'm sure, you know, if the recycling came along, they'd blame you for it.
[1:57:01] The weather's bad.
[1:57:02] The drought can go down.
[1:57:04] The price of corn can go down.
[1:57:06] Things are bad, so the president's good.
[1:57:11] I have a feeling those office things are better than the country.
[1:57:15] Aren't you, aren't you, aren't you quoting?
[1:57:17] Oh, quoting doesn't say that.
[1:57:18] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
[1:57:39] It takes a long time for it to sink in.
[1:57:41] You look at that housing thing, it turns the economy around.
[1:57:52] The effects that that has to have.
[1:57:54] I think it takes a long time for public approval.
[1:57:57] It takes a battery over a period of time to come out.
[1:58:02] There is erosion.
[1:58:10] And it's always not built thinking about problems.
[1:58:19] But you look at the various things, the ward, the back pages.
[1:58:28] I was excited about that invention.
[1:58:30] I thought they had something going on in the water and that crumbled.
[1:58:35] Yeah.
[1:58:35] You mean the one down in Cambodia?
[1:58:38] Well, on the border, yeah, on the border.
[1:58:41] And he held on.
[1:58:44] Yeah.
[1:58:48] What did he say afterwards?
[1:58:51] He didn't say that they are on the border.
[1:58:54] All I've seen is, you know, there's a dream world.
[1:58:58] Always the bad news, never the good news.
[1:59:09] I don't think there's been any...
[1:59:13] I don't think it's on the...
[1:59:18] They don't publish the regular reviews to the publication date or whatever it is.
[1:59:25] I think that's the 11th or something.
[1:59:28] Maybe this weekend they'll have the reviews and we'll review something.
[1:59:41] And Jerry said that, you know, once there's any guns or a lot, and he said what he might do is just
[2:00:04] You can do a call and just actually talk to Wallace for a minute on the phone.
[2:00:10] Sure.
[2:00:10] And we'll wrap it up.
[2:00:13] I will.
[2:00:13] Yeah.
[2:00:18] I told him.
[2:00:19] We've got a NATO man.
[2:00:20] We don't have a...
[2:00:29] Still can't find out how that got off the...
[2:00:32] I've never heard of Cecil.
[2:00:34] It got shifted over to Cecil somewhere without him.
[2:00:37] When I jumped out, he said, well, he was told that we weren't going to go for somebody outside.
[2:00:44] We can't try and get him to worry about that.
[2:00:47] Anyway, before we've got it under control.
[2:00:51] Yep.
[2:00:52] Put it through the, there's, and it will not be any career time.
[2:00:58] I'll tell you that you're right.
[2:01:00] Sure.
[2:01:01] I saw a beautiful one.
[2:01:03] That's the one where I got you.
[2:01:06] Yeah.