On January 11, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Charles W. Colson, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and unknown person(s) met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 12:29 pm to 2:39 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 312-021 of the White House Tapes.
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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
That's good.
Well, now don't, uh, don't crush yourself, because there are other things to do.
And we can play.
Still got a fever?
Well,
Well, just nurse it off, believe me, because when you've got one, you've got to put it very close to the vest.
Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
Sure, sure.
Okay, that's good.
Well, we won't bother you there.
No, no, I'm going to leave today.
We're going to have a good day.
All right.
Sure, sure, sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, not being too concerned about what happens at the moment before and during the year.
I was thinking, too, that there's a lot going on here.
I actually think that's pretty good.
About what I was expecting, I'm pretty good at this time.
I think I might be able to get through, you know.
Although, we did have very positive stuff.
Unfortunately, we haven't had .
That's one of those things.
And the fact that it didn't change shows you the .
I have a hell of a memorandum.
I think there's a lot in that.
I'm not sure.
I mean, it may be that he's seen all of our weaknesses and none of their weaknesses, but that's inevitable.
Yeah, but I mean, and he should, but what I meant is that they have some problems too.
But on the other hand, his point that we have really done had a lot of bombshells is still running, running two to three points better than we were before.
It's a pretty good point, you know.
That was a rough time.
That's what we had our lowest point.
Then we came back up in Gallup and stayed there ever since.
Of course, we've had some, too.
Probably done better than he deserved.
I don't know what we get.
Oh, I don't see it.
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, no, no, no, no, no, no
Well, I can't get him.
I can't get him, so that's important as well.
He can have two others.
He doesn't want to.
I don't think he could see, for example, if that's how you would see him.
Well, if you get back to your, back to your, get rid of your coat and your collar, take off ten minutes.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, really, really don't, because we're, I'm gonna be honest with you, it's not the way everybody's concerned.
Okay.
Most of the stuff is blue.
That's practically ready to die.
I'm looking to see whether I've got other dates here.
When do we leave for China?
On the 16th?
Huh?
The 16th.
Wouldn't it be well to have a bipartisan movement, frankly?
Well, better still, if we leave on the 16th, why not the morning we leave?
We don't leave in the morning, do we?
He doesn't know why.
He says, we ain't coming out of this by nine hours blind.
But we need six hours, so it's only three hours on the clock.
I'd like to have a five-hour meeting on the 16th before we leave, and I want that to be only two by five.
Now, I want you to keep
If you can get your leaders thing open, Bob.
Keep open.
Let's not do the Republicans again.
My view is to do the cabinet on the 20th, right?
Let's take a look here.
On Romney, if you would, I just think you'll have to tell her that it's just no good.
I'm sorry, brother, that I, you know, whatever I said to Romney, I thought he meant before we sent our housing.
That's what he said.
There's a housing message or something.
I thought you'd see it.
Or you heard the thing, I had to see it.
Yeah.
Well, he says it's not because he thinks so.
That is what we're out of here for.
What you know.
Well, what you know.
He's going to listen to what you say.
Yeah.
He's going to do his best and say, well, this is great.
We'll hold a housing message if you don't let us.
How's that?
You think that'll work or not?
Tell me, because if I've got to come back, then I've got to set that thing aside.
You know what I mean?
Let me ask John.
Huh?
Let me ask John.
Yeah.
It's very important for you to keep those days clear.
Maybe take an hour off a day, Bob, to listen to Rodney.
It's not really worth doing.
What would be... You would say if a candidate is, I've got to come back probably Sunday night and start working here.
You'd have to stay up there and work Monday.
Well, I might.
I might stay up there and work Monday, too.
Yes, that's correct.
Monday's safer.
Right.
I'm back here.
Look, John has got to do his best to get the rock he didn't put off, and something's coming up with the, uh... Got the plane.
I see him, too.
What the hell do you have on for the 13 o'clock?
But I just wanted to let them know, I know we could, I don't want to fill the hole in it.
I see Larry Tender.
I told him to come to Tender.
Alright.
Uh, Vietnam 11.
Yeah.
Now that'll only take you a couple minutes.
That's no problem.
Uh, the McElroy thing is set for 11.30.
Are we good?
She in the square at the end?
12.
I think it's in 12.15.
Uh...
I can move a lot of people right after the Vietnam announcement.
We're going to go to 11.
We've got macro at 11.30.
This stuff is not...
in a ready bridge, you know.
Or what you do, rock me over leather.
Squeeze in between the Vietnam and I'm turning the metal over.
You want to do that.
That's the end of it.
That's the end of it.
There you go.
First of all, I just kept a goddamn thing down.
I was going to ask what was happening.
I kept rocking it because it's
What does he want to talk about?
I don't know.
Romney at 10.
The problem is, Carlton doesn't want you to see Romney on Thursday.
He doesn't want you to see him go after him.
Is that what he said last night?
Alright, then you've got... Is that what they tell her?
The only time you can't see answers, you don't do it.
Yeah.
and just see if you can work it out, will you?
No.
Then I cleared from there on.
Why don't you see Robin before the domestic console and say, do you want me to review this with the domestic console?
And I said, probably.
All right.
All right.
All right.
30 Laird, 11 o'clock Vietnam, 11.30 McElroy, 12 o'clock Sheehan, 12.15 what?
Robin.
What?
You'd better put in eggs over 10.
Okay.
I think that's the time period to do eggs, okay?
Have eggs go over 11.
11, brownie and 10, yeah.
I can't really expect Ronald to be 20 minutes off.
You know, I just can't do it.
You feel very hurt when you see, like, golden times, you know, how much you've done.
You say that they beat me at 11.
Right.
Yeah, we do the anonymous.
That knocks it all off until, John, that's the only time I can see it.
It would have passed.
You've got a cabinet and the leaders on the 25th, the Republican leaders.
Correct.
All right.
All right.
Now hold the 26th and 27th for me.
I don't want anything scheduled now.
I really mean that.
I don't want a goddamn nickel thing.
Right.
All right.
And Bartzell on the 28th, we do have Wallace, right?
Right.
All right.
He was the first who got the governor's seat.
Yep.
It was the 25th for Colombo, but if he can't do it the 25th, I can't do it another day.
Who else did we put on the...
I don't know.
Paragraph this day.
Paragraph this day.
Well, nothing.
We just scratched the floor.
We probably can go for dinner that night.
If we have things we have to schedule, that's the day we can do it.
If we can avoid them, we'll avoid them each and every day.
This is the whole of the night in the penthouse.
Just to scratch my mouth.
One, two, three, four, five...
I hope, because let me say that when I say to put things in, I really don't mean cats and dogs now.
I know.
Because I really got to study.
I've got to be over here, and I just want to know what I'm going to do, let's see.
So where there's, like, well, things that I don't want to do, like Arthur Bunning swearing in, and Sheehan swearing in, and meeting the...
the health industries group and so forth and so on, you know, they're just things that are not going to contribute to our great goal.
Correct.
We turn all that on now.
Totally.
Only go with the subject.
Absolutely.
If you have to see Laird about something, if I have to see Laird or Rogers or any general, well, I'll have to see him.
And of course, you've got the common opinion.
I'll see him.
I'm as bad as anybody else.
Some bitches get to me, but I just want you to protect me totally on this.
And you've got to cover the domestic council and Henry and all the rest of it.
There just isn't time to do a damn thing.
I'll use telephone, and I'll have a telephone with you guys.
But you see, on the 13th, we're shooting that day, but that's all right.
and reissue it in a couple of hours.
You should in the morning completely, but you'll be cleared by 1 o'clock.
That's right.
It's a very good idea.
And I'll go up there and finish up one probably within the evening.
You'd better off to stay up there if you can.
I agree to 17th and come down in the morning to 18th or something.
Yeah, I agree.
But you won't have the TV that night till 9 o'clock.
So you've got to... You know, we can peddle here.
Hey, now.
Come on.
Are we going to do a bipartisan leader's foreign policy briefing before the TV that we're having?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, at 8 o'clock.
No, no, no.
We do it at 7 o'clock.
What they want to do is give us the hope.
The thing dies, it opens.
They don't think you have to breathe, but you probably have to open the meeting.
If you don't do it, you can open the meeting and walk out as strong as you can.
The reason for doing it is simply to influence the thing of
It complains and it sets it up so we've got a...
It has a great hand.
It sets up the opposition so they raise it back to you.
They won't know what you're saying, you won't help them.
In other words, you're giving the opus.
The opus, but not the speech.
You've got to let them test you.
Now, it's not easy to have a bipartisan view.
Let's go.
Let's go.
I might not even come, you know what I mean?
I just might say I don't want to come.
You know, if I get boxed in, and you've got to be, frankly, I know it's awful hard, but you've got to be there.
And then you can go in the last minute if you want to.
The purpose is to, for example, deliver a copy to them.
I forgot about that.
Jesus Christ, can't we do that when we come back to China?
We're going to be too late.
We're going to be leaving on the weekend.
I'm having for dinner at 4 or 5.
I'm just having over in the bay.
Don't you think that's all right?
I don't have to go to a party or go packing on the boat.
I don't know if I think so yet.
Well, if not, that's perfectly all right.
I mean, just say I'd like for him to come over and we'll sit around and talk, but I just feel that I've got to now remember that I've got one hell of a problem, and I just can't set up another event, Father.
It can't be done.
Father, I don't understand.
I mean, he'll appreciate the personal manner where we can sit and we can talk a little about old times and tell him.
You know, if you'd like to have to bring Betty down for a weekend as well.
Betty and the kids.
Yep.
That's a good idea to bring that down here.
Bring it steady and get it down for a weekend in Florida on, say, the 21st, 22nd, and 30th.
And I'll have them all over to remove you or something.
That's given vacation time.
The weekend of the 5th, 6th, and 7th.
The weekend of the 12th, 11th, 12th, and 13th.
I've got the study down right after.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'll just have Don figure it out.
You'll have to handle this with the world as a restaurant.
They'll all want you to come to the party.
I'm just not going to do it.
I don't think I should go to the goddamn party.
I agree.
That's completely...
I don't think you should ever go to the party.
I'll just say that I would advise them to make sure you can pull the plug on it now.
I'm going to invite the users and their children to the party.
We'll give them the email.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You see, that's hard.
It's not gonna make a bigger thing for him.
Dom's gonna have a, maybe that's gonna give him a chance to talk to the others.
He's gonna have a chance to talk.
I got everything.
Out of the way, out of the way.
On the other one, the cabinet leader, I want to check this.
He said, you know, I asked for us to train some of those people.
If we didn't train, we should have the rest of the agency heads in the executive office.
In the executive office, yes.
That would mean Helms, Stein, Ches.
That's not bad.
Dave Lincoln.
Yeah.
Dr. David.
Yeah.
Bill Eberle.
Oh.
By the way, he got a 12, 11, 12, 35.
He got the study done.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I'll just have Don figure it out.
You'll have to handle this with the rulers and the rest of them.
They'll all want me to come to their party.
I guess if I'm going to do it, I don't think I should go to the goddamn party.
I agree.
That's completely...
I don't think you should ever go to their party.
I'll just say that I would advise them to make sure you can pull the plug on it now.
I'm going to invite the users and their children to the party over the weekend.
We'll give them the email.
We'll get them next to that house.
We'll get them the Bebe house.
We'll put it in Mars.
It's available.
We'll write her sex and give her a little vacation before they leave.
You see, that's hard.
It's not gonna make a bigger thing for him.
Dom's gonna have a, I mean, he doesn't get the chance to talk to the others.
He doesn't get the chance to talk.
I got everything.
Out of the way.
On the other one, Kevin there, I want to check this.
He said, you know, ask Russ Crane and some of those people.
If we do Crane, we should have the rest of the agency heads in the executive office.
In the executive office, yes.
That would mean Helms, Stein, Ches.
That's not bad.
Dave Lincoln, Dr. David, Phil Eberle.
That makes it a pretty
No, I want the dinner big.
Okay.
I want the dinner big, and I want it with round tables.
I want the administration family.
I want the top administration people in the White House there too.
With that whole crowd.
Yeah.
And I want the top, I want the assistants to the president.
We should have Rosewood.
Oh, Christ.
I want to have Rosewood.
I have Leonard Garment.
Well, I want people.
Right.
Garment, Klein, Price.
We ought to have done Houston.
That gives them a normal occasion to try and bring back Houston.
And I didn't mention that he's leaving too.
Right.
That's good.
What about General Hershey?
You can go to 80 on that.
Make it a dinner of 80 people, wherever.
That'll bring it over 80.
That'll bring it over 80.
You can go no more than 100.
I don't want it to be horribly crowded.
It'll be about 97.
Now, what about Connie Stewart?
Sure.
Absolutely.
Okay.
That's good.
That will cover the whole White House family.
Would you have Scalia?
You wouldn't normally, would you not?
I think you have to.
No, I haven't.
The scalp is under, well, you don't give, you know, you don't give close to much, you know, socially, you know, you don't give a goddamn thing.
And I think it might be a good idea, you know.
Sure.
Uh, you added John Brown.
John or Bob Brown, uh, has to be there.
Also, John Whitaker should be there, because he's the former cabinet secretary.
Sure.
The other guys who've been listening constantly are John Whitaker and Oliver Cajon.
Whitaker's part of the mega-perception of Bob, right?
That fits fine.
And that's it.
Now that the way it was, I don't want you to interfere with it.
I don't want you to do a thing with it.
Well, she sent me the list over and asked if something had to be deleted.
We had to put that in the book.
She had helped me work on deletions, so I went back and suggested deletions.
Well, good.
But I meant, don't push people for that damn tenner.
Because it's just...
We know that we're doing it for the Wallaces.
They're putting some people in there that are wasting time for us.
They don't do any harm.
It's one of these beautiful Wallaces.
I've forgotten where a couple of them are.
Some head of a hospital in New York.
Well, that's part of the deal.
They're very close friends.
And I think if she, whatever she, works on with cold fluids, I think it's fine.
That's it.
Let's not get all screwed up, so I don't have to be having questions.
Now, it appears that we can't get Fred White.
Is that what you'd like to do?
Well, let's see whether he likes it.
All right.
Fred White, songs through the 50 years.
I think, I think that's true.
It turns out that I worked at the Kennedy Center that week.
Well, that's true.
Well, maybe.
Yeah.
Okay, that takes care of that.
Now, on the other question, Dr. Ehrlichman, and the chair general again, I guess not Dr. Ehrlichman, Dr. Ehrlichman about the 18th movement.
John Fields of the 18th Children's.
Not right away.
As soon as possible.
Yeah, well, I thought two weeks.
Is that all right?
Yeah.
I just don't want to make the announcement.
John hasn't been concerned.
Now, John does think we still have a problem on the findings confirmation.
He disagrees with Mitchell.
He thinks we need to get a count on it and find out.
But his point is, even if we get it confirmed, we're going to have a bloody fight.
Because...
So what does John suggest?
Well, John has two suggestions.
One is to try the acting ADP thing just for a long period of time.
His other suggestion, which he thinks you can get away with it, and it seems to me it's over the list, but maybe it's not, is to move Mitchell over full-time to run the campaign to leave on the secondary desk.
You know, just had to do it during a general running campaign.
He thinks that's a lesser evil than the Clunkeys, in a sense, because they will use the Clunkeys' nomination as a cases boy for repression and wiretapping and all that kind of stuff.
Now, that isn't necessarily all bad, because the people who will be kicking him are the bad guys.
You might as well get us back in the... the regression business and all that stuff.
I know.
No judgment on confirmations and things.
They're not the best, you know, whatever that kind of thing is.
Well, John thinks we should have a very careful analysis.
I would agree with that.
I'd rather have Clanky sleep, too.
He would be so valuable in the campaign.
He's the man Mitchell needs.
hell of a man and the greater could help because he could do an awful lot of it over there somebody else
God, I wish you could wish Mitchell... Well, would you, you and John, have a good talk with Mitchell and see how stubborn he is on flying missions?
Let's go.
I don't know what the hell we can do there, but I'm going to jump in a little more.
I can't take it.
I've got nothing.
If Mitchell is needed, I can't pay him right now, full time.
Check John's presence, partner.
Some have explained quite a bit to the truck that he isn't on top of it.
Because he's not open to running the campaign, he's not as effective as the others.
Some of them think the others are doing the best job they can.
I just haven't had a chance to follow over a couple of times.
point is valid, but I'm not sure it's all that big a thing.
I would argue if you're going to do that in the early years, it's better.
I'd like to do anything like that that we have to do before China, because I think China's going to erase the slate.
I think a hell of a lot of stuff.
I agree with you.
The hardest point that he makes,
we have to face up to, Bob, is this.
He's right about this.
He's right.
It's weak.
And you know it.
And I know it.
And God damn it, we just can't quit.
We've got to quit kidding ourselves about it.
It's weak.
And it's too late to do a goddamn thing about it, except that it's in the campaign.
I don't know what else to do.
I'm not sure.
He raised one name that I think he began with later.
Thurston.
He was a really superb writer over there.
He's not a speechwriter, I don't know.
He's a purge writer, probably.
Writing speeches is a different thing.
Oh, I think he's a little too rough on them.
I don't think they're that poor.
But he doesn't know what a speechwriter is.
Well, what I meant is, I think, he's trying to save some elephants.
I don't know what the Christ elephant is.
I'm reading Roseman, but I'm trying to see if there's anything to be learned from that.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
and all the way through to White House.
The key other guy, most of the time, was Bob Sherwood.
And the other one was Harry Hopkins.
He put in a hell of a lot of time and work in his Detroit.
Harry Hopkins was like Sapphire.
But it's very interesting, the way they worked as a team, not as individuals.
I wonder if you could see if the kid thinks any of these speeches have been any good or not.
Maybe they're not quite that bad.
I don't know.
Are they?
No.
I guess they aren't at all.
Some of them aren't good.
That's the thing.
That you may be getting perky drafts of wood.
I don't think the age of the speech is here at this point.
That's a good point.
I mean, he's thinking of another age.
Accepting the thing like an inaugural address, or an acceptance speech, you know, a sort of a shitting of that, high-water warning type of thing.
They don't understand.
For a moment now, so that we get the total guidance on the page.
The guard arrives, as I said.
Don't let him.
I can't have two children on my hands, you understand?
And I don't think Bill wants to be a child.
In that respect, would you agree or not?
I'm not sure.
And if he said, Jesus Christ the President, we shouldn't have done this, we shouldn't have done this, we shouldn't have done this, and that, and the other thing, he's got to come up and say, all right, now look, we've got new problems, and this is that, and he's got Laird, and he's got you, and he's got a hell of a lot of other things to work on, and that's the way he's working.
And Bill, frankly,
The president has every confidence in moving the State Department between us soon.
I noticed, for example, in the news summary where one of our State Department people and I are pissed off, the only negative comment on Matt's trip was that it was totally political and that she insisted on nothing but black faces around us, which was smart as hell to know.
That's the lie.
And they forget that I adopted in 1953.
You probably forget that when we
In advance, our foreign trips, the State Department people want you to spend all the time with the American business community, with the American embassy staff, with the USID, with the Peace Corps, with the AID projects, correct?
Or am I wrong?
No, you're absolutely right.
They went right up the wall when we started this.
the first European trip, the Asian trip, because you wouldn't, we wouldn't have, you know, their plan was you should go to the embassy and have an embassy party for the American community.
Well, they hired a school, a long talk with the American, with the embassy staff, and spent a lot of time with y'all there, and a luncheon with the top ten embassy people.
This is the American school, and the Peace Corps Project, and the IAEA, all our aid programs.
Sorry, it's good.
And a dinner for the American people.
A next in trade has always been, in all of my trips abroad, even when I was traveling privately, I'd go see the people of the other country, and not the people of our country.
I had to catch my job.
But there is some saying, now it's true, that maybe the other didn't get something.
But that one guy didn't, you know.
Right?
You know it isn't true.
Yeah.
And it's
That's sort of the typical one.
What Bill will say is there's nothing I can do about that.
Well, he'll deny it was done.
That's probably true.
There isn't anything true about that.
There is a problem.
There is a problem that I just cannot deal with some of these people.
We cannot put them on diplomatic wire and get everybody leaving out and so forth and so on.
The State Department does.
Bill does not.
That's why he has told everything.
On the other hand, uh,
He's afraid, of course, that, you know, an infidel can write about this.
He's afraid in some instances that he doesn't want to send his cables over here to Henry.
So, uh, he doesn't trust him to, uh, not to get them.
It's too bad, but they ought to get them to me.
That's my point.
I, well, he's got no reason not to trust me.
I don't know.
The idea, well, Henry doesn't show this to me, so I won't show mine to him.
The point is, it ain't Henry he's showing them to, it's for the president.
God damn it, I gotta know what he's saying to me.
That's exactly the point.
It isn't a matter of Henry.
Henry's the judge.
And also, Bill must realize that I run Henry a lot more than Henry runs me.
He doesn't know this, but I do.
I do it in a subtle way.
Henry sometimes takes my name a little bit.
Go ahead.
Well, the president's off me every 10 minutes.
Hell, I was on him.
He's on me every 10 minutes.
Yep.
But if you could put it more in terms, Bill, we're coming into a hell of a tough campaign.
And you could say, I guess, all over the president's week or a week, maybe you could say, if you realize what he's doing, he's got to see Ron.
He's got to see the leaders.
He's got to see
He's got to do more instances of business.
He's got to have a farewell party for Don Hughes.
He's got to... And he said, this is cutting way down.
He's got to see Bartsen.
He's got to see the Dutch fire manager from the foreign side.
In addition to all that, he's got to write and say, don't mention the agent in the future.
He's got to have meetings with the leaders, meetings with the cabinet, and so forth and so on, and prepare for China.
Under all those circumstances, some of us, and this is a part of it, all the crap that John Ehrlichman has to insist that we're going to do, I mean, what are you going to do for the environment this week?
What are you going to do for the health services this week?
What are you going to do for the elders this week?
Do you understand?
I don't really believe anybody but you.
I don't think John Ehrlichman would know.
Do you think he realizes what this son of a bitch is capable of?
No.
You don't think so?
He didn't know.
He doesn't know.
I'm done all the time.
You can't.
It doesn't happen.
See, what he doesn't realize is all the time you've got to spend on dealing with Henry, dealing with Roger Pollack, dealing with Larry.
Talking to people.
Dealing with Pollack.
Right.
And he knows what the facts are, but he worries about the public.
Well, the main thing I'm showing you is that you've got to keep the president well, and you've got to keep him sharp, and you've got to keep him at his best.
And we're going to keep you totally posted on China, but I do not want it to go down to the bowels of the State Department.
I am not going to allow it to happen.
It's too goddamn important.
You just tell Bill that I don't trust Marshall Green, for example.
I don't, I mean, it isn't, I don't, I don't think he's bad at it.
I just think he's a loose man.
See what I mean?
I do trust Alex Johnson.
Because he's an honorable, honorable, smart man.
I trust Bill because he's so, he's always loyal, always faithful.
I'm trying to think of a way to get around you, Bob, that's all.
So that you don't just go in.
I know that the product of assault isn't probably going to work with Bill.
You've got to play with his vanity.
All the other things, you know what I mean?
The President needs you.
He needs you to help solve his problem.
And look, we know that Henry is terribly difficult to consult with the people in the West.
Everybody else that I've got at this point, we cannot have a change.
I don't think he'd tell us if that would work.
I'm trying to think that if he did that, that would be a confession that we don't need to have.
Cisco would be fine in Iran.
He is an ambassador in Iran.
We've got to be ruthless.
Totally saw this.
and just let Bill know a little of the feel of how I have to hold the hands of a lot of domestic Catholic people to, you know, not belong to God.
I said all that.
You have any idea how to handle that?
What?
No, I think this is the basic, basically what I have to understand.
Yeah.
He's raised it, which is fortunate.
There was a phone call from him this morning.
He made it perfect.
He's raised exactly the problem he was talking about.
He said, I've got to know what happened in China.
He's raised both points.
The need to know both sides and the need to protect each other rather than to attack each other.
It feels a little different.
Maybe, of course, he probably, Henry believes that Bill's delighting the attacks on Henry.
I'm not so sure Bill is.
I'm not so sure that Bill doesn't see that hurt to solve, right?
Was that like Pedersen or somebody that he delighted with?
Sure.
I don't think Bill was.
I mean, except the black, I don't think Rodney's his own.
Oh, hell no, he's not.
And also, Rogers is not as dumb and stupid as him.
Oh, shit.
I've sat in enough meetings to see that he's also not a brilliant foreign policy strategist.
Well, it isn't that he's not brilliant.
He's brilliant at times, but not as a strategist.
But he's not a proponent.
He's a tactician, not a strategy man.
He's a default.
Typical foreign service man.
No foreign affairs resource.
Foreign service people are...
Strategies that have to be, like in general, very solid, you know, strategies that have to be, you know, strategies that have to be, you know, strategies that have to be, you know, strategies that have to be.
I heard on the table, on the desk, that Henry's been very good that morning.
He doesn't think there's a problem.
Why the hell did he call Rockefeller?
I think he should have told him that we know him.
He did.
And he said he did call Rockefeller, but Rockefeller called him because he was upset about the stuff in the magazines.
And a Rockefeller was the one who said, someone's got to get out of here and get .
And we're all like, fine.
That's him.
He's fine.
And then had we didn't say he was going to resign in the 27th,
I had a curious incident I was just put in a little book, a little talk with Paul Keyes, and he called me on Thursday night and said, he said, Lenny, you've got a call from Henry, Henry's going to make a speech for the Women's National Press Club, and he wants me to help write it.
I said, what is it like?
I said, well, it's like a gridiron.
Henry's going to do the Women's National Press Club thing.
That doesn't bother me.
That is not your doing.
It is not a substantive speech, but it's a total waste of Henry Kissinger's time.
They'll chop him to pieces and afterwards they're cats.
What?
You know, he's been after me.
I mean, he's always... Margaret called once on the CBS morning show, and I said, Henry, it's not big enough.
And he braved with me at least ten times in the last week.
But today's show, I said, Henry, it's not big enough.
There'll come a time.
And when we use you, we're going to use you on a bigger basis.
He is just...
But he's panting to get out.
We've got to get him out into the Los Angeles country for us.
Correct me.
Yeah, but we'll take a look.
Just say that we'll consider that.
That was getting to the, but that'll keep them, but then, but he'll consider it, but he must not agree to it in advance.
Sorry, I'll put it down.
Then if the bastards piss on them, on us, on the cryptos, I'm not going to do it.
He covered all this with it.
He said, how are you this morning?
Henry said he's in good shape.
There's no point in him coming out.
He's got everything rolling well in the state of Florida.
He wants to stay there and get it done.
There's no reason to be concerned.
He told him that I was
He said, well, if we can get the bureaucratic procedure ironed out so that we don't have the problem of the attacks, the cable clearance, and then the reports, then I think we can work all this out.
He was out there, you know, and he was all solid.
He doesn't think there's a...
What do you think about the call for him to run for president?
What do you think about the call for him to run for president?
What do you think about the call for him to run for president?
What do you think about the call for him to run for president?
What do you think about the call for him to run for president?
What do you think about the call for him to run for president?
We'll be right back.
He has had a terrible problem with depression and coming down and all that sort of thing.
And he took the land.
He has a theory that a great deal of his depression is related with his epilepsy and electricity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And the land helps even though he's in epilepsy.
That's the practice theory.
In any event, the land was cursed.
When he gets back, I'm going to tell him to take some of this.
It's good for you.
It makes you sleep better.
I don't know.
The driver says it does.
I read a little book on the way out.
He has a hundred different cases of which 90 people were helped by the people who have apparently depression.
It comes down to emotional stress more.
Yeah, sure.
What the fuck?
I do think this.
I do think the idea that Ryland could go along is good.
Because I know Ryland's good for Henry.
Food is a 90% of the problem for me.
We're about to make a law on it, once and for all.
And I'm just going to have to cook my food.
They understand that, don't they?
Yeah, certainly.
Yeah, but I know I have to make my regular stuff, take a long enough of it, just so the person doesn't die.
And that's the habit, not me.
I'm just going to have to cook my food.
Well, I do, yeah.
That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,
But after that, you've got to be sure that you've heard from all those people who speak that name.
And I don't know what they're going to say to you.
Yeah, I'm sure John is following up on that, too.
And you understand why.
And you can go off and have a fight in my place and respond to him.
He's going to get up and he's going to do it again.
He'll get even settled on one day.
And he's going to do it better.
But we cannot go through.
Let it change.
There's no reason to play this even for the world.
Nothing changing.
Roger's situation will change, Henry.
I think I was probably right to set this sort of order that it's set today.
No matter how it's set, you almost have to do nothing.
I wonder about what the goddamn portion of the women who could very well be, you know, he may have his, you know, real life and all that sort of thing, maybe about 50 years of school, but what do you find out about the environment?
Apparently most people who follow that kind of life, it leads to more and more dissatisfaction, not dissatisfaction, because it's
I haven't read enough about it.
You can only have satisfaction out of the Freudian analysis.
The people who just have no ties at all, they do put place in place.
a totally different kind of personality as well.
The music continues to take to what is actually the rest of our audience to sketch with in this place of dark and light.
And I talk to George.
She says she thinks Parker is excellent, but doesn't understand.
She says that she and Fisher are so well-informed about this.
It's her view.
It may be wrong, but it's worth considering.
She's right on the bottom of it.
There's a merit to that, too, because we've had Jason and his crew out on the continent working on that.
Jason works with people who he's working with.
And because of your defense, the people that are left have to work on some of that and kind of work on this training and get people moving out.
She's right.
Tell her.
Well, have somebody tell her.
I mean, it would be nice if you were reassured of that.
It's a good idea to get a fake poll out early that shows us weak and then say we don't care.
No, that's not the problem.
That would have been showing us maybe 52%.
Then you say, good, let's have it.
That's okay.
It's the best.
That's weird.
How about a fake poll?
Okay.
I don't mind if I have to talk.
That's fine.
He's such a contrast.
He's so valuable in so many ways.
He could be
You know what's going to happen?
You'll have another spray pump.
The writer's book, maybe.
You may have another spray pump.
We didn't write it.
The heavy thinks that he was a great celebrity in his own right, and we will find that he was not.
And that's horribly hard for anybody.
Remember, it was hard for many of our people who came and came in from the 60s.
They didn't realize that you were a celebrity.
And, you know, death was terribly hard for them.
But it was something that, you know, you're no longer the, you know, the top dog, you know, another person.
He's always sort of a personality, for other reasons.
He's taking it to the highest ground.
But it's not quite so true, because Henry, obviously, you know what?
These hoops, fancy girls, you know, they will know more than a fly.
You realize you know them, and that's...
I don't know.
I just don't.
First, I agree with you.
They're not that important.
On the other hand, good God, with the effort and everything we're putting into them, are we that bad?
I don't think nobody really realizes how much we...
Some of them you haven't done an enormous amount, but every one of them you've done a fair amount with, and some of them you've really totally re-worked.
And they say we've got some good speakers.
How much of that is a speech artist?
They do that.
They don't do much on the memorable phrases.
They don't do much on the meaningful anecdotes.
And they don't have a strong...
Say, I can take the summer on my own.
I'd say it would be worth it if we had our crush.
I'm glad.
Trying to stand was very interesting.
I was curious.
I thought they had made a gap year, but it's a very good time coming.
CBS said, let's get this time here off.
Now, they, on their, watching their media, the rating soared down for the first couple minutes.
The people tuned out in some minutes before or after a couple minutes.
I think this is a very fascinating presenter.
The set was totally amazing.
We have many ways to know whether people, I was on CBS, the third people on the floor, which helped me the most.
And it probably did if you were the back of the adversary.
And you got a judgment.
And on that basis, there was no question that you were the champion.
I think Steve Pieska was delighted with it.
He was a one-on-one with it.
They thought they had a hell of a good story.
And I always would rather talk about the fact that I was in Irving again.
No, that's a hang-up business, sir.
I think it's because he is.
And that thing, there was one thing, what he was so tempted about, there was, oh, there was one thing, I didn't see it now, but I may be wrong, I'm sorry, but there was one time that I was totally in command, and frankly, I think I am almost always, but I thought that was one thing.
And you chose,
a difference at the start of something, sometimes on the press conference or something like that.
It can come on, you know, be ready to take things.
You can see that on the side.
It isn't nervousness.
It's a way out.
You're heat up.
And then it's tension, yeah.
And then that, after the first couple of minutes, always goes away as you kind of swing into gear and start pacing.
That wasn't evident at all.
You know, I did one very small thing that I thought was very important.
CBS, my good head, set up so that he would introduce the program.
I said, hold on.
I said, this is my office.
He's my guest.
I will introduce the program.
And I think that's very important, putting this place in the beginning, which I think is a small thing, but I don't know if it would be right with you to come in.
I'm going to have him here, we'll go back to the function.
Let me go over by camera to the...
first of all again you have to read everything that he says and this is not the discounted because it isn't but in terms that he speaks from the eastern establishment
isn't necessarily sold on by who has no anything else.
I'm inclined to think that he discounts too much the, shall we say, the work ethic, the Protestant ethic, that great mass of people out there who feel that the country should be number one and so forth and so on.
Am I wrong or right?
We need that at one point.
It's very fundamental.
That's where the state of the union comes in.
Well, I'm just trying to get some things in my mind before I write.
That's a supplementary figure.
I kept wondering about that.
Maybe we overdo it.
Well, I think there's that possibility in that while people do want to be number one, it may be that they don't want to talk about or be told that they want to be number one at one point.
You're sort of sticking them to a thing.
What they want is they want things to be better.
They need to be given the glint of the Spirit.
And we've got to...
It's interesting.
Schultz and Harold in our meeting last night, Schultz had given a lot of heart.
He's a fine man, isn't he?
Yeah, he really is.
Fine man.
He's a very thoughtful guy.
There's been quite a lot of talk about the whole question of the issue of osteoarthritis, and his own area, and he raised this, and he covered this again this morning, he's particularly concerned about unemployment, because he feels that we're not structured right on the issue of unemployment, that we have, by the way we're structured, posed ourselves in the laps of the gods,
If unemployment goes down, we'll be all right.
If unemployment doesn't go down, we've got a hell of a problem.
And the reason being that we're never strong, we don't come out strongly against unemployment.
Instead, we try to, and he says I'm the first one that's guilty of this, we try to say that the unemployment isn't so bad.
where we make it very clear that we are against inflation.
He said, we're now in a position where we've got no problem with inflation.
You're clearly positioned as the fighter of inflation.
And it's a position you can build on a trade-off.
You obviously maintain it, but you don't need to worry much about the inflation side of the coin.
And he says, on unemployment, though, we should be less in a posture of explaining away the unemployment problem and more in the posture of doing something about it because we care something about it.
We've got to get out and look concerned about unemployment.
And he said, for instance, you are always bothered by the fact that Kennedy had higher unemployment when he came in than you have now.
Yet he was never blamed for unemployment.
Nobody ever told Kennedy about unemployment.
There are two reasons.
One, he inherited the unemployment.
Two, it was going down under him, not going up.
But it went down over his three years.
And how much?
Six, seven, five, seven.
Oh, you're right.
Six, seven.
I didn't count that.
Okay.
Go ahead.
You're right.
Go ahead.
And he and his people didn't.
Arthur Goldberg, who was the good secretary of labor,
was good in that he went out to unemployment offices and talked to people in the lines and said what are we going to do he looked worried about this problem to the people who were unemployed and to the other people we don't look that way we keep saying it's not so much of a problem it's going to go away when you know we're ending the war and all that he said we need to reposition ourselves as really caring about unemployment we've got some pounds off all the time likely pounds on rising prices
Now, we've made our case on rising prices because we did it over and over and over.
We're not going to let prices keep going up.
We've got to stop this thing.
And you took positive action.
You also took positive action on unemployment by your tax lawyers, but you didn't have interaction.
They didn't provide any interaction.
Now, I agree with that totally.
He said, I think what we've got to do is get a Peterson-Hodgson team, Congress and labor, out into the country.
And then maybe you've got to give them a charge to say, you guys have the assignment for the next four months of full-time being concerned about unemployment.
They said, the FOIA operation on the West Coast is an ideal kind of thing like that.
I just had this shared with her.
Good.
FOIA looks like you're worried about unemployment, so you got this guy out doing it.
Now, get your two cabin officers who are concerned with commerce and whatever, get them out worrying about unemployment.
About peacetime unemployment.
Right.
That's a gap.
Keep the focus on the deep side of things.
Good point.
The Washington Post had a strong editorial this morning.
It happened to play right into Shultz's mind, which was that the unemployment problem, that you make the, they shot down, attempted to shoot down your argument that the unemployment
Or that the price of high employment was too high because we were killing a lot of people.
And they said that's a good debater's point.
But it's not a valid point because the basic problem is that the labor market is increasing by 1.5 million people per year.
And the labor number of jobs is only increasing by 1.1 million people per year.
So there is an annual deficit of 0.4 million
in terms of jobs available that is true to a point except if the two million people who were in defense plans and in the armed services were still in the bottom five would be less than five percent yeah the post argues at that point because they say if the armed forces people were employed wouldn't they only look for defense
But they come back.
They said there weren't too many.
No, they said it, but then they forgot about it in the next paragraph.
But they make the point that the key to the solution to unemployment is an expanding economy, to have more things happening so that there are more jobs, because there are more people coming into the economy.
You noticed on the shuttle, Humphrey came out for it, Muskie came out against it.
Well, see, Humphrey's doing it to the Florida primary and not to the... Humphrey's big primary is Florida.
Must be big primary as a manager.
Florida, the space shuttles that they paint, must be hurting themselves in Florida.
But he's making it.
Damn right.
The Colson argument in this, with regard to Hallett's thing, which I don't do, and this is where Chuck is particularly good, he's not a great strategist, but he's particularly good on this, his idea of going after the Rizzo's, the
the space shuttle people, the shipyard people, et cetera, et cetera.
The building trades is very well taken.
In other words, no actor special in this room, correct?
Go ahead.
George, that's our biggest, the unemployment thing is our biggest thing that we've made in the state by just putting ourselves in the hands of the people.
But it's not.
We can move on.
We can move on.
He thinks we should.
And we should be doing it right now.
For the next three or four months, we should look like the only thing that we're really worried about is unemployment.
We should quit saying it's going to be better next month.
And instead should say, yes, it's going to be better next month, but we're damn worried about what it is right now and what it'll be next month.
We want it to be better than that.
And get out and do something about it.
And it's not our opinion.
Maybe I should go to another department office.
Administration people have to, you know, they might see it.
His next point is the one that everybody can talk about, the trust and confidence issue.
And he says that, for instance, on the economy, he thinks it was a serious mistake, and I agree with him, for a company to go out and say, oh, $2,000 won't go over $1,000, it may go to $1,100.
It may not.
Because it may not.
And then we have a prediction we're up to.
And if it does go over, that'll be fine.
If it doesn't, if it only goes to $980 now,
Then we've fallen short about this thing, but 980 is still dang good.
His point is, we should understand some of what we're doing.
He agrees with the science theory.
He probably saw a science memo on how he's doing after his economic report, so what we need is to make models.
and deliverable provisions rather than grandiose.
We've got the reality going with us now.
Therefore, and psychology is basically going with us.
Like a campaign, don't predict margins.
We don't need to use it so much.
Good point.
And he says now the budget's going to pose a problem because of the way we're coming in on that.
Then he says we've got another problem.
It cuts two ways, which is our cutting government spending.
We've got a hell of a case here.
We have cut government spending.
If we were to pay, he's got a figure about him, he's told you, if the taxpayer today, this year, next year, were to pay the same rates of income taxes as he had to pay in 1968, he would pay $20 billion more in taxes than we will collect next year.
So we've had a hell of a tax period in Texas.
We've had a hell of a tax period.
That's right.
he said we're hitting it sharply in the budget and the budget message was making the point that we have reduced federal spending get that over the top and you've got another statistical thing to get that in the comments and in the three years before you came in the federal budget went up 57 percent in the three years since you've been in the federal budget's on about 24 percent or something like that in other words you have cut in half the rate of increase of federal spending
But he said that cuts both ways because that goes back to the do we care about people and are we expanding enough?
What are we really doing?
Are we expanding enough?
And all that.
Then he says we've got to question priorities.
And we are building strongly into the budget to the point that we're going to a strong defense budget.
We've got to do it in the heat for it and answer the question, do we need a strong defense budget?
I think we need to do it.
But we need to.
I think we can, too.
I think the right way is not to get that across.
And he goes, we've got another issue we've got to concern ourselves with, which is preoccupation with foreign affairs.
We've cut taxes.
We've cut government responsibility.
It's better for people to decide what's good for the people rather than for the government to spend a quarter.
We've established a new priority for defense in the budget, an increased emphasis on priority for defense.
We've established a priority for international affairs just by what we appear to do, just by what appears in the press as the important things, because it's what people are interested in.
Therefore, you can draw a conclusion from that that we don't care about the problems at all.
and that the opposition will attempt to make that come.
We've got to be aware of that.
Then he says, he gets to the point of the thrust of the future,
Somehow we've clearly got to establish what is our aspiration for the country.
How do we describe the future as we'd like to see it?
And we should avoid saying we want to be number one, but rather should go to the great spirit and the pioneers, what made the country the American spirit.
Right, the American number one.
I agree with that.
I raise it.
We've got to talk about the better way of life, the health, the environment,
all of this kind of stuff, asking our goals here, in a world that's safe and at peace.
I'll do the same thing.
Issue our agency officer on crime and drug abuse, and say we've got a problem there, and that we can't really show results.
We can only show recognition of the problem, recognition of the problem and the results, which is blocking us on an hour, but since we can show results, and apparently they've got a new drug standard, the results say about an hour and a half, something like that.
moved on a task force basis in the next couple weeks and started arresting the peddlers.
They're trying to get help, but they can't do it.
They're breaking in because they're going to go out and arrest the actual guys on the streets that are selling the stuff for the high school kids.
Which they haven't been arresting because the judges always throw them out.
And then arrest them this time and turn them over to grand juries instead of the court.
And they're going to give them immunity.
Offer them immunity.
if they'll tell who their supplier is.
Great.
So, then you put the guy in a hell of a box, he either ventures the supplier, or you go after the supplier.
He's done a very lot of effective thinking here, but I suggest that he should run it with Connell sometime.
He did Connell early on.
You know, you know what I mean?
And he says there's a whole bunch of bits and pieces of issues that are going to be very important in local areas.
Bussing is the key one.
But bussing is going to, in Texas and Tennessee and a couple other places, is going to be the vital issue.
Suburban housing is going to be the vital issue someplace else.
And some kind of pollution thing.
We've got to look to where the federal government fits in with some of those.
And that's it.
But what led me to this was his address to the future, where he argues that we should be looking to ask him to write a paragraph for me on his qualitative spirits from America and so forth, and we'll talk about number one.
See if we can do that.
He isn't a very good writer, basically, but he was very involved in that, and that gave me an idea.
You push that to Christ.
Well, they're not nearly as bad as Hallett, so to speak.
But Hallett, he was in his 30s.
You can see he didn't fall away too bad.
Well, it's good.
It's a way to make a point.
He may say that we're a speech writing team, but I don't know that he knows anything about Johnson.
Johnson's speeches were not as good as your speeches.
Eisenhower's speeches were much worse than your speeches.
They were terrible.
They were poorly put together with a glimmer of an idea once in a while.
And then Hughes came up with a good idea once in a while.
After he was gone, there wasn't much of anything after that.
I don't know.
Roy knows some of those little things we've done.
The ability to report a speech, to report a speech.
The one in Nebraska, the one in the, frankly, one of the elderly.
Of course, he's done a lot of work in life.
He's probably done the fastest speech in the world.
I don't know.
I'm in JCCC as a member of the Booster Ocean business.
It's partly wrong.
I mean, Booster isn't as damn important.
I mean, you've got to be somewhat...
Some people want to be proud of it, and I don't want to be.
Now, when I come to a couple of other things...
The power of a distinction in one thing is going to require a hell of a lot of work on my part.
I think we should go to two...
I think the market will take it if we do it at 7.30.
I think we've got to go to two televised press conferences.
Now, by televised press conference, you can substitute, for example, that world that the conference would be headed to, world...
I think we ought to do that.
Well, that'll be a hell of a show.
Don't you think it will?
I'll wait and see.
45 minutes.
Not coming off in 45 minutes.
Let me re-oppress that 15 minutes to come.
You can say that if you want to leave time for analysis afterwards.
Why do you remember that a lot of people won't listen to the analysis you're on?
I don't know whether he's right about this, but, you know, we didn't win in the day-to-day line, I guess, much.
One of those reasons for Pat's success is that you did do some things that were culpable.
And you still come here with an instance of it.
And one of the problems with that car crash that we had
He said, you know, that I'm having a present, I'm going to do a bunch of interesting things.
He's very colorful, but probably legitimate.
What do you think?
I disagree.
He said we need colorful events.
So I get out of that sports shirt.
I disagree with that.
I disagree with sports shirts.
But I agree, going into it back, the point is, what the hell is that shipyard thing they call it these days?
What the hell is that meeting of the woman down there in Florida with Color Man?
What?
Absolutely.
Because I think the crap in the office is not, is pick up the ass, come to himself, some of it.
Well, maybe I'm wrong.
But the president's got to be present.
The president can't be a guy running around and whacking it up with everybody all the time.
He'd write the union in the past.
I asked him, what do you think of that?
He thought that was great.
We have to realize, I guess, Bob, we have to realize that if we look over the year, we have been on a persistent attack.
We have lost, but more than that, we've kind of been on papers.
And the hell of a lot of stuff in the Senate.
And the Senate goes over and over and over and over.
And there was an idea of power in the State of Tennessee.
And, uh...
It's gone.
I heard.
Yeah.
And then they said, the bomb didn't even flip.
I, I, I constantly flipped because it would not cause the sketch.
And it's gone.
It's gone.
It is gone.
Yeah.
I know that one interesting thing that probably surprised me.
He doesn't like comments.
I thought the other day he was like, what the hell is that?
Huh?
I don't know.
He does have a fight, but he's definitely good with comments.
He's a guy that they can see.
I don't agree with that.
I think you can always have two strong men.
Connie and I are very different people.
But you know, we get back to the communist critique after the 17th Amendment when we thought that we shouldn't stand in the car and this and that and the other thing.
So you're right.
There's this guy, right?
If I can, I left it for a moment for the press conference deal.
Do you or do you not think that maybe that is, you know, we, we have, we want to remember the first year, the very first year we all went over the heads of the press for the press conference.
And, uh, it was pretty technical.
And they bitched like hell.
And, uh, they don't like it.
Now, I think the office press conference is pretty nervous.
I think going out in the room for a film press conference is fair, but better than nothing.
But I believe that we actually have to go to the 730 and have a whole goddamn truck in there and do them all.
What do you think about this?
It requires enormous work on my part.
It's valid work other than just preparing for the press conference, because the press conference does do some whacking up of other things.
Around here, it fires some of our people up, establishes some lines that we don't get established otherwise.
It takes the place of the people in a sense, because you tell them that's a valid program.
That's what you order the press to do, which you're going to have to do.
It takes advantage of the presidency.
It's a plus.
In other words, you have a chance to get on television on all three networks at once.
In other words, you dominate the total audience, the 50 million audience, which nobody else can do.
The typical that we do there with the 730 conference is we miss California.
I'm happy about that.
Do something about that at 730.
What are you doing here at 730?
1030 is the real prime time.
Go to 11 o'clock and then this comes up.
11 o'clock is news time also.
Good.
Go to 11 o'clock here and screw the prime time in the west.
That puts you on the 8 o'clock in the west, which is prime time, and you go ahead and interrupt them.
I think 11 is too late.
I think 1030.
I think maybe he's right about this, that we've gone too much for the new federalism.
I agree on the feeling was all right, because that escalation for our voices to be federalism, to the American Revolution, to the Second Amendment.
I'm not going to carbonate this one.
I'm going to share it.
We argue that the best thing to do is go into a totally non-shearing state.
Don't go to the president of all the people, the thoughtful president trying to get his job done.
You know what I think?
Have a couple of cheers at the beginning.
So that they really come up off their feet at the end.
But you don't have to climb all the way up.
That's what I really find, you know, but I, the reason I made it together with Ray is to develop the right to the right to determine and develop speech.
Have you ever read any of his first drafts?
I mean, he's got critical thought down.
He said they are, you know, they're essays.
Wow.
His point, though, that the program is really
And this art is against our own control.
We're almost, I mean, we're protograms.
Not what matters.
The idea of the man, you know, we started in 1971 with that.
I was glad to see the real Nixon on that boat ship.
We did really well.
We did really well.
We did something that's around Christmas time this year.
The question that I have is this, is whether or not his judgment in regard to Muskie having an image of a strong, inflected, prudent man, and Nixon having an image of a cosmopolitan,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, I think you have to pull away at some point.
What do you think?
I think it's wrong.
I don't know.
If we haven't gotten through anything, you know, I don't want to be misled by our own partisans, but you hear Connelly say it, you hear certainly Colson and others call around the country, say that Kissinger says it.
There's a hell of a lot of people who feel that the president is a strong president.
I think what Haidt is doing there is he's following, he has the filthiest notion of what people think.
What he's doing is falling victim to the conventional wisdom of the establishment press.
He's easing it.
Interpreting what they say you are as being what people think you are.
But you remember you had a horrible night before, a late summer, which indicated that on the first moment there was trust, that others considered you more, and so forth, and so on.
I don't think we did that.
Yeah.
And it's an interesting topic.
Harris is horrible.
We did better on trust than Muskie did.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Right?
Right?
You're wrong.
That's bad news.
What he points out, Truman had guts in us, and Johnson had vigor, and I had believability, and makes a flaw, and that's the case, that we are in real trouble.
Well, I mean, we've got to do something.
I don't mean real trouble, we've just got to do something about it.
I don't think it is the case, and especially after the, I'd like to tell him, and I don't have to repeat it,
I just don't think people understand a lot of things.
There is some validity to the thing that Nixon's image forces to create.
uh equal minuses in the sense that uh people want to be reassured and settled and you're concerned about worrying yeah that's right
that they want to be settled.
They want to be all right.
And while they admire your bold moves, there's a counterbalancing thing, which is that unsettling.
Whether you establish your boldness, but you've also jarred moves from complacency, which they want to be lulled back into.
It's like talking to a taxi cab driver.
It's better than that, but it's, you know, people say everybody I talk to believes this and that, or everybody doesn't believe this and that and that.
It's always, at best, 60-40, and then it comes down to the final judgment, and it's 149.
Yeah, he's very concerned about where it ends up and was that judge our judge?
Democratic judge, I believe.
And he assumes that they would get a say in what they feel.
So that nothing happens.
And obviously, the vote is going up to the Supreme Court.
And our Supreme Court may turn that around.
They're worried all of a sudden that it doesn't help anything.
The only thing to worry is that they should fail to get a state or something.
How was his decision?
That doesn't make an order yet.
You don't want to know.
I see no other course but for us to continue to fight against those issues.
We may have to go earlier than has to now.
We really go forward with the legislation, don't you think?
Yeah.
We're on the right side of the issue, whatever the Democrats on the other side are.
The analysis of the weakness of a man and personality is valid.
I believe that that is what is consistent in the attempt.
That's right.
I don't think that it's the events that would be validated by a public poll at all.
You know, you give that to some people.
You know, it relates to this.
to consider drug offenses as a must-do.
The media have made the Democrats all-knowing, you know?
Right?
I think it knocks out one of your principal problems, which is to hear the president.
People have got to make the decision if there's someone else capable of doing the president.
They throw you out.
And then, you imagine the incompetency.
You think it's great, right?
It proved to be great.
It proved to be great with virtually everybody else.
It proved to be true.
You get right down to the crunch, people have got to decide.
You're a milk plant.
They know what's wrong about you.
They know what's right about you.
They know how you'll be as president.
And particularly on a foreign policy thing, they know that you're capable of being harmed.
And you've got to just scare the geese out of them about how you know what this is.
He doesn't understand anything about what's going on, getting in the middle of all these intricate negotiations we're involved in.
No.
That, of course, violates my rule of play, because they're a strong issue.
I don't think they do.
I think what they do is that
There is, that you've got to maintain the foreign policy.
I'm not sure that would be a strength, but it is our strong point.
What they're concerned about are, and particularly what Joe said, and I think is that you, in emphasizing and selling the foreign policy point.
But I've got to avoid getting caught in the thing of, because of that, you don't care about the other.
But you're so preoccupied with that that you don't know or care what's happening here.
That's why April and May can be March, April and May can be March and April.
What President has got to be concerned about all the problems.
He's got to solve the foreign policy negotiations and all that, but he can't do that to the exclusion of the United States.
He's got to be concerned about it too.
That's the point there.
I don't think you're going to score any positive points if you give them a good negative.
For Muskie to trudge around saying, you know, that guy Nixon's running off talking to the Russians and the Chinese, well, that's just dandy, except I'm concerned about things right here in River City.
If he doesn't care about it, I'm concerned about that man in the airport.
I care about the problem in the river to get lost sometimes.
Well, Harrison doesn't give a damn.
He's out taking his trips, talking to the people over in China.
He's a man of the planet.
Besides, he's an advocate.
You know, he's got his stature.
He's part of the market.
So, you know, he's a person of the planet.
You know, he's a figure of the 7th generation.
70 or so of us.
There's a lot of different areas that I just came together to work on.
I've been all the time.
Not only you, but I know quite a bit of things that you have to go and prove in all these conferences.
And I think we just got a class.
You were far off.
Seriously.
fifth grade class that sent me a really fantastic birthday, and he came drawing for the poem, and I thought it was a little bit ridiculous.
It's very evident that I should, that I've got to hurt myself for those conferences.
And incidentally, I think I've got to hurt myself because I simply can't
You can't be concerned about trying to be so keyed up and make every one be virtual so it sleeps together.
I mean, I really feel about the local representatives.
They've all been good.
They haven't had a problem.
I honestly believe if you could go out like this afternoon, I think I could have a moment to see with no briefing book, no preparation, and no even in your own mind preparation.
You'd go out and say, okay, here I am.
Turn on the cameras and have a brush counter, and you'd go all the way ahead.
And we have to do that.
There's always a possibility of a question that you're not prepared to answer, but I don't think that's a problem.
Well, you know, just take, you can get around to a question if you're prepared to answer it.
You can take credit for a lot of somebody doing a whole lot of effort, but that is all right.
But you could allow some questions.
And whatever was wrong with that one, some years ago, it was not there.
It was not there.
It was not there.
It was not there.
It was not there.
It was not there.
The problem on this international press conference, the question may not be just there, but it's going to the press, and it's going to be asked.
And, you know, the problem is, go ask if there are any kids going on.
I say, well, they'll get coaching.
And they might be free then, but they'll get free.
Journalism teachers, or whatever they have, their advice is that they're still papers, and they're pushing on that a little bit now.
An analysis from a fellow like Thomas, who is part of the group, and grew up in the group, and all the rest, reads it first, and then writes it.
who basically would like to see us win, and they're going to be struggling, and I think we need that, and it's a very important item.
Well, yeah, I don't buy this culture change, and I completely agree with Jack O'Hill.
A good part of what he said is not valid, but it's all stimulated, and it's just worth a review of that kind of thing.