Conversation 318-003

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So I do have a call.

Chuck, I have an idea that I've talked to Al Haig about and he's supposed to implement it.

Ron said that Henry gave a brilliant thing to the press.

Now, the thing about it is that that, however, should not be put out to our troops in that form.

I have asked Haig, if you follow up and I want this done this afternoon,

they have to work all night, to have either Buchanan, Buchanan may be the best, or Sapphire, Sapphire might be, to take it on a Q&A basis and to say, what about B.O.W.?

I mean, take the questions that we really want, and then the gut questions and say, here are some answers and questions that you may have with regard to our peace plan.

Whack, whack, whack, whack, whack.

And, uh, and also was sent one of his bags.

I should support the president.

This is the only chance to have peace.

Yeah, and the national unity is the only chance for negotiation.

It'll help our POWs.

To help our POWs, the way to do it, to get negotiation, we must be united.

If we're disunited, we won't get negotiation.

And negotiation is the only way to get our POWs.

Right.

Good, good.

Well, you can follow up.

I told Haig, just call Haig and say, how's it coming?

and uh sapphire could do it very fast for a few kids or the two could do it together whatever they want but get fine well you could uh call bill and uh well hey just probably call hey first hey he's already gone hey he hasn't called him and say get sapphire and then you get to get going fine but the reaction is today you continue to be able to play something else

In their spirit.

How's their spirit?

You know, the wires were, I mean, what we had were extremely emotional, which is an interesting thing there, too.

God pressure and all that sort of stuff.

So maybe we thought it was an emotional way to care for people.

Now, that was the thing Harris was laughing at.

Why don't you give Simlinger a call, see what his pole shows.

Yeah, that's right.

Keep it on because the second wave will be the North Vietnamese turning it down.

Then we've got to just take our rage out on them rather than on ourselves and stick to this line.

This line is sound and right.

Right.

Yeah.

Elliot probably feels good about this, too.

Bill is great.

Be sure he should have a press conference.

That's very good.

And send Henry's Q&A over.

Don't send Henry's whole text.

Put the Q&A thing in the high spots of our reading here.

And ask him to follow up.

And also be sure he's televised.

Point out to the Rogers that we did not have Henry televised.

We wanted to keep it at the proper level.

You'll appreciate that.

But I talked to you and I said, be sure he goes on television.

If possible, even live.

Yep.

Fine.

Whatever you want.

All right.

Right.

Good.

Right.

Good.

Right.

Good.

Right.

All right, any swingers that come over, that will knock out that Hines post line that this was a mixed reaction craft, you know.

Any swingers, you can get a list out, you know, you have to get that exhibitor.

You got the exhibitor, great reaction in that, and he's pushed that out, okay.

Worthy?

Great, great, good.

No, but where did they get it?

The ratings.

Yeah.

Bob said more kids than they have.

The heating point is 30, 39.

50, 80.

Yeah.

Well, one of them gave 66.

Another gave 56.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Oh, good.

Good.

OK.

I guess Henry really did a great job.

Well, I guess spectacularly, Tony, and so on the basis of attitude and tone and all this kind of thing.

Oh, yeah, they said he was dull.

I'm sorry he wasn't on television, but nevertheless.

Yeah, but it wasn't our decision.

It's wrong.

We're letting Rogers go on tomorrow on television.

Now, one thing that I thought, though, which I'm sure you will,

and how I should now have Sapphire go through and brief out questions and answers.

I've covered with Kay, and I've covered with Postman.

Postman will write it, ask what's done, and then it'll be done today, and it'll be circulated all day.

Then they have the answers to questions.

So then stupid-ass Mike Agnew can even understand it.

I'm not sure sometimes he wants to understand.

I'm not sure that he sort of meant that he wasn't consultant or some goddamn thing.

That was really short of a shocking performance, but I really loved it.

Leaders mean you've got to be for the president.

He really should be an agent, even in the cabinet.

He should get a cross-wise position.

If he wants to get a cross-wise position, he should have a deliberate work ethic.

That's the problem.

It's a little strange.

Rice was sitting right behind him.

I don't know whether Rice felt the same.

Take your bicycle and see if it has anything to do with anything right now.

I'll get it.

When you get Mr. Harlow, please, Mr. Halston will talk to us.

Isn't that a pretty good rating, though?

Yeah.

40 million homes, 80 million people.

That would be one of our bigger ratings.

You know, your idea, though, about it is prime time ratings.

It's just something you've got to use.

Yeah, but the only... Not overuse it.

No, but... Are they going to ask for...

It doesn't make much difference, but I... You should have gone at 930.

Yes, sir.

We should have.

I guess you're right.

And, you know, we kept bouncing and bouncing at 940.

Goddamn it, screw their damn programs.

So it does make people mad, too.

This kind of thing.

I'd agree.

If you were going to want to announce the detail of the welfare children's care message or something like that, you shouldn't interrupt.

If you go on with something like this, everybody's going to want to hear it.

People will, I don't think, objectively.

I think, Howard, you're going to find that everybody's going to be talking about this.

You wouldn't miss that any hell of a deal.

You would have gotten the most out of Biden.

You would have lost a little of these.

You would have gotten a lot in the West.

But you've got those people on the right side.

We got them heavy, and California's a great radio state.

That's right, and at 530, they're all driving.

And I'll let you, and I'll let you, I'll bet you money, too, that the news in California was real big.

Sure.

You know.

And it got the thing played over.

I got home last night at midnight, and there you were, you know, went to the bathroom to take a shower, and there you were, going through the whole damn speech on the radio.

What is your feeling again?

How did it sound on the radio?

Very good.

You always did.

I mean, that radio is really my music.

You've got it made on radio.

Oh, thank you.

Bryce, how are you, sir?

Well, I'm not allowed in leadership because I'm not a leader.

I'm a follower, so I go to other meetings instead of you.

That's right, that's what I was calling you about.

What was your reaction to the way your friend Spiro responded to the challenges this morning?

What we really mean.

Well.

Well, that's what I heard, and some of the people who were there were awfully concerned about the fact that he did.

And the reason I checked out of it was because of the staff meeting yesterday when we had the briefing on it, and he did the same thing.

And it was noticeably a problem there, but for an elite to be able to do that seems to me to be absolutely shocking.

It's an otherwise.

Did you do it?

Were you in the leadership meeting on the budget?

Because apparently you did the same thing there and started questioning everything.

The strategy was all wrong on the budget.

And I just, I don't know.

I'm not sure that there was.

I think maybe it was.

I guess that's what it was.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, you're right.

It was.

Well, it's not as bad, but even there, you know, they tell the people, the main reason you're going over this stuff after a decision is made, which these things are, is to get everybody lined up and fired up to go out and swing by.

And it's utterly asinine after the president's told the nation what he's doing for the vice president to sit there and say he doesn't think he should do it.

Yeah.

That's right.

But with the leaders, it's unbelievable, isn't it?

Yeah.

But do you think he thinks he's being constructed by this or something?

Or is he stupid or confused or what?

Yeah.

That's probably it.

Yeah.

That's a lot to do before a decision.

After a decision, the only thing to talk about is how you get it sold.

It was kind of interesting because Henry said what he was objecting to at the staff meeting yesterday was 180 degrees turned around on the leadership meeting this morning.

Yeah, yesterday he was opposed to the ceasefire in front of this morning.

It was going on in the opposite direction.

It's a way to get it, you know, bring it to his awareness so that he realizes what he is doing.

apparently this morning i guess yeah

Well, we've got too many things coming up, too much going on.

The problem, what this creates is a real problem on how you use the guy this year.

Because if we're going to get, you know, this guy, what we're going to have to do is just keep him out of the way to do it tomorrow, which is ridiculous.

Why don't you take us that way?

Ha ha ha ha ha!

He used to come home and say, that's what you have at night.

Okay.

Good.

Next question.

I want to know about Henry not being on TV.

Roger's going to have a press conference tomorrow.

And I'd go closer to him than Roger would be on TV.

And I'd tell him, tell Roger, maybe he should go home.

So it's very important to him to be on TV.

What do you think?

I want to go over and see him a little bit.

Thank you, Senator.

Thank you.

Oh, you're going now.

Well, good.

Don't let me go over.

You can save it.

All right.

And I'm going to hand this Q&A over to Roger so he can correct the line.

I heard a few had cooperated on it.

Do you think the water people could hook up a phone and speaker's cable with a speaker speaking so that both ends of the conversation could be heard in the room just as soon as Henry was introduced?

The phone would ring.

I'd get on the phone.

Henry would not be known.

And it wasn't.

Or maybe it should be.

And I'd get a call from the president.

And we should just pick up the phone and say, hello, where are you?

I said, get back here.

I want to give you help.

What are you doing?

He's going to use the line.

I just felt that would be a way to do it.

I do it without counseling.

All right.

Can you do it?

It would just be funny if I did it.

Yeah.

I'm ready to do it.

We'd have to have a bull up there or something to say, Henry, the president's calling.

It's very important that he's going to be grabbing.

He won't say hello.

He'll say, Mr. President.

He won't know that.

I think it would be a hell of a thing.

Another possibility.

No, we don't say it's the president calling.

That's the thing.

We just say, you know, they can play this sort of part of the program.

They can just say, here's a phone call you have to take now.

And this is what we're going to do.

And so he takes the phone call.

And it's you.

You have to have someone there to get the call first before they put it on the speakers.

The other way I could do it would be to go by myself.

I'm sorry I have another case and I can't be with you tonight, but I will be with Dr. Hirst as soon as possible because I want to get him back to the White House so I can get him home as soon as possible.

That's about it.

Yeah, I think it would be very awkward for you to come in and do it, and you couldn't do it in the right kind of way.

Right.

But I'm kissing you just to try the phone, and if you want, that's really my plan.

One other thing I wanted to ask you, in terms of things, do you not think that the people who are going to deliver you, so when we were talking about this earlier, that it was all that different?

and whatever the case might be.

I don't quite really think it was a subject matter.

But there is something in the way of delivery, and I've got to remember what the hell I did at the different time.

I don't know what the hell I did was different.

I don't know.

I read the speech all the way.

I didn't frankly spend as much time here.

I didn't get it in my head because I knew so much about the goddamn subject.

I don't think the delivery was

compared it side by side with other Oval Office speeches is probably much different or much better.

Yeah, that's my point.

It might have been a little, sometimes, you know, when you're on a subject like that, that you're very solid on, that meaning may come through more than when you're talking about something.

Yeah.

But the difference

The other thing is, I think our people, each time they look at it, they know they think it's great, and they all say that's the best one you ever did.

And that's not quite what it was.

What if all of these men, what if all of these men, what if all of these men,

He called them.

I know they called him.

If I could say something about the radio, because he's a fellow, so he thought it was very good.

I don't know why he didn't call us, but God bless you.

I don't know.

I wouldn't go back and look at it.

It would be a good thing to do anyway.

Just take a seat if you do have anything.

I don't want to become however self-conscious about myself.

I don't want to become self-conscious about myself.

But if there's some little things that you naturally do that make it better, you might as well do them.

The CBS crew was really on our side last night.

Jesus Christ.

The guy that did the Christmas show was there and he said, he said, I have more comments than I should.

He said, I've never done it.

And she said, I'm sorry we didn't have more on purpose.

She said, did I ever hurt you more eloquently than all that bullshit?

So that helps that.

We've done well with Coach Krug.

We've done well with Coach Krug, but we just take the goddamn time to get more skills out of the producers and cameras.

We're in pretty good shape.

...staff in the CTS.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

I don't want to praise their production crew on the Radder show, on this show, on the Christmas special.

I just want to thank them all.

Don't pray about it.

Of course, Calvin's good, but he's going to want to say something.

I'm going to say to Calvin and the crew, yes, that's good.

They've done such a good job of production.

Gallup's come up with an interesting thing where he used the old Schultz theory on the economy.

He says that the public is less pessimistic about jobs when inflation worries grow.

And this is based on a survey in January versus October.

In October, 45% said there'll be more people out of work in the next six months.

Now only 38 people, 38% say that.

And 23% said fewer people will be out of work.

In October, 27% said fewer now.

That's not bad.

In October, it was 45, 23.

Now it's 38, 27.

Quite narrowly described.

And then they said, if you make the prices the most of the things you buy, it will be higher or lower in about six months from now.

When 72% say higher, 3% say lower.

Where in October it was 63 to 5, it doesn't go up.

Well, it took nine points from 63 to 72.

I mean, but in that ballpark, it doesn't mean people worry about inflation.

But it's kind of surprising.

Of course, October, that was right after

right at the height of the breeze, I think, for example.

They still said in 63% that it was going to be higher, because they know for a reason it's going to be higher.

Well, yeah.

And that, it isn't a, do you think the price of most things you buy will be higher?

Well, it will be.

It will be?

And that isn't really a measure of inflation, in the sense, because the question there is not whether they'll be higher, it's how much higher it will be, how fast will it go up.

The proposal is that you walk out with a degree.

You walk out with a degree and that's the resignation and nomination of your appointment.

Stan's made some great farewell comments.

That's it.

Hello.

Hello, Frank.

You know, you probably think that sometimes when we call you from down here that we're always bitching about something, but I wanted you to know that I mentioned it to your crews, but I don't know whether they get it together, and I know a lot of people work on it, but I thought...

crew who's your production of the Christmas night thing that we did with Julie's show when I called Julie's show on Christmas night, and the Dan Rather thing, and the crew that did the thing last night, that it just was about the best we've had.

So I would invite you to pass that to your production people and tell them that there's a guy down here that appreciates having CBS's fine technical crew do that.

You know, those guys, sometimes they work their butts off and they wonder if anybody appreciates them.

But I read about them.

First, they made me feel comfortable, which is good.

Second, they're just damn highly professional.

Thank you.

Well, we had a lot to say, of course.

It was, as you know, a very important speech.

Very important speech.

60% of all members.

Right.

That's really high, is it?

Yeah.

Very interesting.

How have you been?

Feel good?

Me?

Well, you know, I'm the only president in history who's been in three years and never missed a day.

I mean, I should have missed some.

But I feel fine.

Of course, this is, as you know, I'm

I probably spent more time working on my speeches than I did in that piece of development, but all the time I was working in the last two weeks on writing the State of the Union.

Nobody knew, but I was also writing this one.

So it was a very hard two weeks' work, so I'm glad it's over.

The other trip to the East between all the press conferences,

I appreciate it, Frank, but if you would pass that, you know, I don't know how you do it in your shop, but put a little memo in there and fuck in there, what you call their rating files, I mean, the files of the people, the producer, the cameraman, the director, et cetera, that I called and said this, so that maybe next time you do a pay raise, they'll know it.

But the pay raise should be only five, five tenths percent.

Fair enough.

Okay, and also pass it to Bill Figgins, too, will you?

Okay, I'm sorry, but Stance Peterson, is that the way you want to do it?

Sure.

And just let Stance be the only one to make comments.

Peterson's going to be up for confirmation.

Well, Peterson should say Mr. Word.

I would say I'm honored to take this position.

I obviously cannot comment this when I'm going up for confirmation.

Lennox says, well, I hope you should follow up the advice, because I don't have to go for confirmation.

But this is a great challenging opportunity, and I'm delighted to go to you.

You said the word, and I understand.

Thanks for naming your name.

I hope you should talk to me in three minutes.

I'll walk off.

OK.

Very good.

Do that for our coach.

Take care of that.

I think they're all...

I think one of the things we've got now, you know, is every period of our retreat, when you had to practice your old land, we've got...

It's also an operation.

Don't you feel more comfortable about it now?

And at the time of Cambodia, too, when we had to do so much ourselves.

It's...

The difference is just immeasurable.

It isn't just...

What you have to do is, it's also to get the channel set up.

Like Scallion's a hell of an asset.

You bet it is.

We've got our contacts with all the different groups that we can, where we can get something done.

We just found her, you know, beat all the bushes before.

We've got everybody.

Now we're trying to do it.

It's something that I've missed a lot.

You've got to fight every inch of the way down.

You're really up for that every time.

Every time you shake them up, they'll be out of the water.

Mm-hmm.

Live.

Get more calls and things like that.

Pictures and things.

They're definitely pretty good.

No, they're different.

They're all good.

Yeah.

This is better.

You take the lead on it.

One thing they were saying last night that I didn't follow their advice on,

You take the paper and look at your right hand, and you put it to your right hand.

You've got a picture.

It's unnatural looking.

I always flip it to the left.

I've got to hold it with my right hand.

I don't want to mess with it, because it's too well-built.

I always take a pile of paper to distract you.

You see, that's the way I do it.

I just cut the pages off and drop them down.

You've got to do them that kind of thing.

You've got to do the way you do it.

I think holding the paper up and they move back so they've got the shot with you with the paper and then they come up and tie it most of the time.

Well, that's what I felt.

Well, it probably gets it out of there from a lighting point of view because there is some light bounce off of that paper.

And that's probably what

I think that basically what we're doing now is we've got the issues properly considered and just quite much going on.

I'm going to see if they can work it out to set up a telephone at the press club there that Kissinger's doing tonight.

It has the telephone instrument at the speaker's table, available to Kissinger with

wired into the VA system with a control switch so they can cut it in when they're ready to.

And then you don't tell Kissinger this, but tell them so they have it ready.

The president's going to call Kissinger.

And they should then take the phone up to him and say, there's a call you have to take and Henry won't know it.

As soon as he says, when Henry says hello or whatever, then you put it on the speaker at that point.

And the president's going to say, hello, Henry, where are you?

And Henry's going to stand up and say, Mr. President, Mr. President.

And I say, well, get over here right away.

I want you to get over here right now.

And hang up.

But the thing is, get walking with the engineering of it and see if it's mechanically feasible to set this up.

And also, if you want to set somebody up over there, you can work the timing out with the president here.

Mr. Williams calls, you know, so that it fits into the program and all that.

Yes.

Okay.

Just as he's entering the room, right after he's entered the room, before he starts, that may be his first line, because I think his first line is going to be, the reason I'm a little late or got here a little late is because the president is going to be home in three minutes.

No.

No, maybe it's better to just let it go on.

Well, no.

What I was going to say, no, I think he'd say, no, but I won't worry about that kind of time.

That's when you get sticky.

You try to get the precise time down.

Why not?

He's sitting there at the dinner.

Just call him.

Hello.

Thank you.

Fine.

I wanted to get your view on how you thought the thing looked last night and what you thought of the President's delivery.

Why?

Because we were curious.

A lot of people said that.

We were curious as to what was different that made it better.

Yeah.

I see.

He looked good physically.

Not the picture or anything, just the president looked good.

Well, that's probably, you know, a weekend in Florida helps there, too.

Okay.

Doesn't have to go driving.

Well, that, so that's...

That would be your evaluation of why there's been this reaction that this was, you know, better delivery than some of the other things.

I kind of hear eye to eye.

Yeah.

Okay.

Very good.

Well, that's basically what we're trying to figure out.

Good, good.

Expert opinion.

Yeah.

All right.

So it wasn't, you don't feel there were any technical differences with me having you start it off?

Yeah.

I wanted it right up.

Okay, thank you.

He said, he said, what were you doing?

I said, he said the president was excellent.

And later he came back and said this speech and the first economic message that he did are the two best by far that he's done since I've been involved.

completely that his delivery was very comfortable.

He didn't rush.

And Bill has raised this before, and others.

He has felt that he pushed harder than he should on some of the parts in it.

And if you do that, you get to the parts that you want to get past, and you can go back and forth, and they're badly recognized.

Well, they're badly written, or you're bored with them, or they're a subject matter that you can just as soon not bother talking about on television.

So you try to get them done so you get to the part that you want to talk about.

But he said it was obvious he had total confidence in what he was doing.

And it was his overall facing the speed of delivery.

He said sometimes in speeches, he seems to rush.

And as he does things fast, he makes mistakes that are not important mistakes, but they're technical mistakes.

He gets too many words put together too fast.

or something like that.

And he said, so the one comment I could make is that it was the pacing.

And he said, now on top of that, of course, there was a brilliantly constructed speech.

And he said, that probably relates to the pacing as well.

But he said, I don't know how it was put together and what the story was, but it was so clear and so concise.

And he was so clearly comfortable with it.

And that makes a difference.

He said there was nothing technical that was any better about this than any other scene.

Part of it were his cameras and all that.

It was all about, was your consideration about looking better.

You said about the floor.

Oh, he said, I've never seen him look better.

And he said that that was the president's lens.

It wasn't a matter of the lighting or the setting.

There was nothing different or exceptional about that.

And he looked good.

He didn't look tired.

And you don't.

And that does make a difference.

Big shows, when you get tired, talk to anybody else.

Well, I was tired of the economics.

Well, he wasn't talking about the looks on the economics.

I mean, I don't think he's talking about the pacing.

But you can tell, all of us can tell when we're tired.

And the time, everyone in the office is.

But TV is so relentless.

You know, when you sit there, just

You take a guy, whether it's you or anybody else, and you look just at his face, and you sit there staring, just at a close-up of that guy's face, which you never do.

Look, in a conversation here, you don't sit and look at somebody's performance.

But they do on television.

And they study every detail of your face.

They see an awful lot of you in that time.

And if you're tired, you're chosen.

You're chosen in how wide open your eyes are, whether you have bags and all that kind of stuff.

And the makeup can't

I actually felt a little tired after we did it.

Hell yes, because I've been running two speeches every week since you got damaged and all that.

It's not easy to have one on your mind and another thing all over again.

But I deliberately just said, oh, the hell with it.

All right, that's right.

Your attitude was pretty much that way.

You were a very relaxed attitude yesterday.

You weren't really worrying a lot about the speech.

You weren't driving yourself to it.

get more done on it because you felt pretty good about it.

And I think the weekend does make a difference.

You may not have seen a good weekend where you got a little sun and some fresh air.

You didn't push yourself.

I'm trying to work with it.

I think it does make a difference.

But he kept coming back to it.

The real thing was the basement.

Well, you know, I got it.

I got it.

It was exactly 19 minutes.

18 minutes.

23.

This isn't a fast pace.

But it did go that fast.

Greg Johnson was so bored.

It was horrible.

That's right.

He made the point that sometimes you have to be the person who is pushing, pushing himself.

He knows that he has the desire to keep speeches short.

That's a good desire when you're writing a speech, but once it's done and you start delivering it, you should forget about it and make it short.

Just make it effective.

You don't know.

He said the other point is, all of us, everybody else in this business has to worry about time.

Has to worry about time.

Everything we do on television, we've got to get time exactly right.

The one guy who doesn't have to is the president.

Time is all he is.

He can take as little or as much of it as he wants to.

That's the one thing he should never be concerned about.

Getting done quickly or if he can't go any longer.

I'm a heavyweight.

Rather than try to time-case those damn dinners, you know, they probably never know when they're going to introduce and all that.

But I don't know why, just during the eating portion while I'm sitting at the table and everybody's just sitting there, you can't get a phone call.

And, uh, put the phone up there.

Put the phone up there and hang it.

Now that kind of gave it away.

That's alright, it's alright.

He'll know it's some kind of gag, but he won't know what it is.

And that'll get him to take the call.

The, uh, MC can just say,

If we have your attention a minute, please.

We've just been informed there's a phone call for Dr. Kissinger.

And then just hand Henry the phone.

He says, hello.

And then you come on.

And it will be completely private.

He has to give it to you.

I think we'll meet him on the phone.

Yeah, right.

And then he says, Henry, I want you to come back to get help.

And then just hang on.

Henry will stand there.

And Henry will just break the place up.

And then they just sit back down and go on to dinner.

That's really better, because if you do it at the beginning of the speech, it really rouse him up on the speech.

This way, if you're gagged, that's separate, and then it's done.

You're arguing with him.

Right, like what he told me about was, you know, I have to wait for him to get to the court, or Attorney General, or whatever.

But if I've got to say a word, then I'm also going to come back to the Attorney General.

I want you to talk to Kev along the turn of each line and say, Kev, we're going to put the mileage in because we cannot, you know, with all the car keys and everything, we can't have a shift at this time.

But you should know that we want him to get, you know what I mean, because he is catching the trail box.

Don't you agree?

I sure do.

We just say that they just know that and don't tell anybody.

and maybe a .

Maybe something else, you know.

We'll see.

We could do HW.

We could.

It's better time.

Or HUD.

We could do Dan Aaron.

Ken is a very, very classy guy.

All right.

See you later.