Nixon & Woods on Supreme Court appointments and Political strategy

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Do you want to leave as President Nixon and the Soviet leaders?

Or I?

No, no, this is the...

Okay.

Yes, the...

Okay.

You noticed that they, that poor McGovern, first came off the bird, racist, mediocre, those people are cannibals.

First place, how can McGovern, how can he account for the fact that he came out?

You know, it's one thing to, if you say you're against somebody, you ought to be firm in your conviction.

Well, the part of the fellow is, well, we don't want him to come out.

Well, you know, the press doesn't even have to...

I think the country thinks there's a bunch of bad women going around.

Even Galbraith yesterday, I heard on the radio that he said that...

Well, his words were set like six months ago, he would have said you were political, of course.

But now he would have to say that none of you, no one in the country is political.

Maybe you were saying... Oh, yeah, maybe he was warning Israel about Mike Royko's call, because of the alienation.

I didn't hear about the alienation.

No, it's about you and Kennedy.

And what if any president, put any person in you want, right, with President Kennedy, what if they had, you know, talked, opened communications with the Chinese, handled, you know, this economic problem?

Oh, all the...

Brilliant.

And...

You know, that all of his followers, everybody would be singing Camelot.

Then he said, but if a man named Nixon had gone into Cuba and bungled it,

gone in, you know, and went through this list of things.

You know, his name would have been Mudd, and he ended up, oh, we'll get to Mudd.

He ended up saying, and yes, there are people who say, would you buy a used car from this man?

They should be saying, would you ride in a car driven by anyone named Mudd?

He's really rough.

Get that to Colson.

Well, no, I saw the column.

He don't know what to do with it.

He was strict until he had a little problem.

The other way they do it, it must be soft.

Oh, really?

Other people as well.

You know, and Smatters, if you want, Smatters may have killed him.

He had every right to have killed him to leave office.

I just didn't.

One of the poor bastards had never made any money out of office.

Well, no, and look at Jaffer.

They don't make money at all.

I have read far earlier, 500,000 dollars with God, after being out of office eight years and turned nine, and he said, I was out of here and I'm not getting money.

Just, you know, that's a hell of a lot to me.

And an average person, everybody, and it's all over the damn houses.

But all they do is squeal and squirm around.

This press is so terrible against the whole supply chain action.

It's terrible.

Well, I say none of them.

I know, I know.

But the great majority are just men.

Well, they're...

They're left-wing liberals.

That's right.

They're immediate experts on everything.

Disney experts, and they have a liberal bent.

They're out to destroy us.

Well, that's what I mean.

They're right-wing experts on the real estate.

They're experts on the salary.

And I shake them up every day.

And I say, give it to us.

Our guys do well, but it's just hard.

It's just hard.

We do.

It's early in the summer.

I don't know what that's all about.

That would have been a landmark.

We didn't talk about it for months.

They talk about it two days.

This is what I can talk about a week.

It's got to kill us.

But Henry was saying he can hardly wait for Harriman to say it, because Harriman's been saying, you know, that he forgets what they say.

Yeah, so it's funny.

The life is political.

What do you think is wrong about politics?

Not political.

I'm getting tougher with these people.

I have not taken any crack from them anymore.

Clearly not.

Very much so, but I don't see any crack.

And there's still Buckley had, I didn't read the whole thing, but I'd say to hear that next time at 7.30, sign the pictures and take them.

But Bill Buckley had a column that I thought was excellent on taking these people apart for everybody, everything that comes up, you know, on the Supreme Court and saying what they're trying to play for is time.

And even some of them even said, well, if there isn't one appointed by such and such time, then it would be political.

And taking it to, like, and he points out the difference between Johnson who was not running.

Not running.

And all of that.

Also, it was in Johnson.

It was in the election year.

Johnson.

Thank God we're in.

We're going to have two names for him next week.

His call really was darn good, though.

Well, what they're fighting is not the subject.

They're fighting a conservative.

That's right.

They want a liberal.

Everybody corrected me.

They want a Jew.

As long as I sit in this office, there'll be no Jew in that court.

I hope not.

No Jew.

Now, God damn it.

Those Jews, Levy over there in Chicago was a fine university president, but he's a liberal.

He's not going to be in a court.

I mean, it's the one thing where even where the judgment was...

What in the name of God would a Jew have ever done for us but kick us in the teeth?

The other thing, you could appoint a Jew to thank God.

You could make 10 more, 20 more plans.

If the day before the election you don't

Turn over half of the country to Israel.

They'll float the other way.

They will.

I agree with you.

No Jews.

The only Jew that I know that we have.

The rest of the planet is fine.

Oh, they're all right.

The rest is fine.

Not all are fine individually, but it's true.

Jews are against us.

I'm not going to rule out that.

You're right.

I know what this is.

I don't know why.

I think for every point we're going to know that his background doesn't really know him.

Because it isn't a question of the background.

Everybody in his background has done something.

The point is that you can't find a guy, if you find a fellow that hasn't changed in his background, he's never done anything.

Even that poor goddamn Berger, you know, he's been a member before.

Yeah.

Oh, I don't mean that.

I just mean that...

Some of the guys that are good at really, you know, people things, and they don't tell you.

That's what I've heard.

Oh, I see.

There's a lot of people out there that I can't really respond to.

Yeah, well, that's what I thought, I think, was what you were willing to say.

You know, he really should have been taken, and if it was too bad, he was going to fall.

Yeah, well, he did well.

Thank you.

You're going to send them both up at one time?

Think about it.

Oh, yeah.

I'm against the woman, myself.

I agree.

Everybody is.

But you can't send one of them.

No.

I don't know.

Yeah, but if you do it, there'll be some of them.

Let me say this.

What do you say?

It is conservative.

It can't do what it's doing.

It can't do it.

That's the reason, you see.

It's a way to get another conservative on the court.

And they can't vote against another southerner.

They've got to take a second.

They can't get this court grounded here.

It's always had a southerner on it.

Thanks.

Well, I was going to say that while I was out in California, I got a call from some of the staff, and they were sure I was going to have a call from Liz Harkins, who said that these women were going to insist on coming in to see you, and they were backing this one big Democrat from California.

So I said to this person who called me, look, when she asked you about this,

Did you ask why she didn't bring this up with Johnson?

I said, you know, now Liz Cartman doesn't have a damn thing to say about this administration.

She said they were in here all that time.

Why didn't she, if she feels so strong about it, why didn't she talk to Johnson about it?

Why didn't she talk to Johnson about it?

There's a, isn't there a woman named Lillian that's supposed to be...

But at any rate, I just told her, I said, well, you should have just told her that.

Well, I think her greatest confidence was, well, it's perfection.

Because it was for her.

Reagan, you already, and she, former Chief of Rep, Ann Hilton.

She was the superior court judge, that's the highest court in California in the tribal administration for 20 years.

She's been on the previous court, that's the immediate court, the five years.

She's 55 years old.

She's Catholic.

She's a Democrat.

The only time she's been reversed by the Supreme Court of the state of California is when she's hard-won, she's hard-served, and she's married to one of her parents.

Well, that's great.

Now, I'd rather not know if you even had her, but Gail had her text.

She knows her and has known her over the years, and she is, by all odds, the greatest choice.

She said there are two women judges out there.

She knows them both.

There isn't two or three.

She said there is no comparison.

Well, the ones that have been mentioned in stories are black women.

She said there is no comparison.

This woman stands head and shoulders above her.

And if Patrick Jackson wouldn't recommend somebody, she didn't really do anything.

She's a terrific judge.

Well, I'm glad you're thinking about her because simply because I told, I didn't give Jackson, I said Jackson is a smart woman and she doesn't, she's in the women's living.

Well, it may not work out.

We'll check with the bar.

They come up to the door.

I'll send her a name up there.

And if not then, the Senate can't turn her down.

They're going to have a die-hard time turning her down.

She's been a judge all these years.

They'll say, well, it's mediocre.

I can hear it now.

She's been reversed.

I can hear it now.

By God, she's not a Republican.

It's not partisan.

She's a right-wing judge.

She must be a mediocre judge.

She couldn't be very good.

She already is.

And just the way Gail wrote that, she just found the text on it.

Oh, I feel so strongly about the two things.

I don't know if there's anybody out there, but there's not going to be any goddamn liberal.

I will not fight.

That's a cool point, isn't it?

The country can go down the drain for all the people in there.

They can do more than, we'll look at the warning for the people in the country.

Nixon & Woods on Supreme Court appointments and Political strategy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 12, 1971

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