On January 17, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 2:34 pm and 3:43 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 315-017 of the White House Tapes.
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Twenty-five years ago, I sat here as a freshman congressman among the speaker government, and listened for the first time to the President and President of the United States.
I shall never forget the majesty of that moment.
The Senate, the liberal elite core, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, and the Chamber, and the President of the United States.
All of the older guys, the presidents, the president, and the president.
And I remember that on the day he addressed that drum session at the New York Republican Congress,
He spoke not as a partisan, but as president of all of them, calling upon the Congress for a set of partisan considerations and national interests.
Here you turn the shape of the Marshall Plan, the great foreign policy that shows that you've been responsible for avoiding a little war for the past 25 years, for a group underneath the Congress by the bipartisan majority, which I was proud to be a part of.
1972, the 4th.
We must not waste it.
I know the political pressures in this session of Congress will be great.
There are more candidates for the presidency in this chamber today than there have probably been for any one time in the whole history of the Republic.
There is an honest difference between the parties, but within the parties, on some issues of board policy and other policies as well.
However, there are great national problems that are so likely to transcend our leadership.
Let us have our debates.
Let us have our honest differences.
But let us join in keeping the nation at first place.
Let us join in making sure that the legislation America needs does not become a hostage to the political interests of any country or any person.
There is an impressive selection here to be presented with a huge list of new proposals.
Knowing full well that there could be no possibility that they would be an act that you can do work on today, I shall not complain.
I present the leaders of Congress today a message of 15,000 words, discussing in some detail where the nation stands, and setting forth specific legislative ideas for the triumphant economy we have.
Much of this is legislation we tried to propose in 1967, and in the first session of this 9th Senate Congress last year, in which I gave an essential redaction to this year.
I have not presented proposals which have attractive labels, but probably have some.
I am presenting only vital documents which are within the capacity of the Congress to enact, within the capacity of the budget to enact, and which I believe should be above partisanship.
Programmes which deal with urgent priorities for the nation, which even must be decided by a part of the National, by this Congress, in the end of the Congress of 1973.
When I took the oath of office in the 17th of November, the nation was under one of the most harsh decades of
The 1960s were a time of great progress in many areas.
They were also a time of great agony.
The agonies of war, of inflation, of rapidly rising crime in the third and least states, of hopes raged and disappointed, of anger and frustration that led finally to violence and to the worst civil disorder of the century.
To recall these troubles was not a fun thing to plan.
The nation was so torn in those final years and centuries that many of the bold parties questioned whether America could govern at all.
The nation has made significant progress in its first years of service.
Our cities are no longer the goal of a civil society.
Our colleges and universities have again become places of learning and a set of battlegrounds.
A beginning has been made in preserving and protecting our environment.
The rate of increase in crime has been slowed, and here in the district of Colombo, the one state where the federal government has direct jurisdiction, serious crime in 1970 almost actually reduced by 30% in 2004.
But most importantly,
Because at the beginnings of it may we consider that the year 1972 can be the year in which America may make the greatest progress in 25 years for achieving our goal of being at peace with all the nations in the world.
As our involvement in the war at Vietnam comes to an end, we must now go on to build a generation of peace.
To achieve that goal, we must realistically face the need to maintain our independence.
In the past three years, we have reduced the burden of arms.
For the first time in 20 years, spending through defense has been brought below spending money and resources.
As we look into the future, we might encourage progress in our negotiations with the Soviet Union and the United States and the United States of America.
Looking further into the future, we hope there can eventually be agreement on the mutual reduction of arms.
But until there is such a mutual agreement, we must maintain the strength necessary to do so.
Because of rising research and development costs, because of increases in military and legislative pay, because of the need to proceed with a new weapon system, my budget for the coming fiscal year will provide for an increase in defense spending.
Strong military defenses are not the enemy of peace.
They are the darkness.
There could be no more misguided set of priorities than one which would tempt others by weakening an army, and thereby endangering the security of the army.
The world has changed greatly over the 11 years since President Kennedy said in his inaugural address, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, eat any hardship, support any brand, oppose any foe, and we are sure to survive successfully.
Our policy has been carried away since the birth of the U.S. and to meet the new reality of the new world we now live in.
We make only those commitments we are capable and prepared to meet.
Our commitment to freedom remains strong and undisputed, but others must bear their share of the burden of the momentary amount of freedom.
This is our policy.
We will maintain a military return, adequate to be any threat to society.
We will act to defend our interests whenever and wherever they are threatened.
But where our interests or our treaty commitments are not involved, our role will be limited.
We will not intervene in terror.
We will use our influence to prevent war.
The war economy will use our influence to try to stop it.
Once war is over, we will do our share in helping to bind up the wounds of those who have been killed.
I shall soon be dead in
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