Nixon, Colson & Ehrlichman on 1972 Presidential Campaign and George McGovern

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That's the main concern that we all have to have now is the, is whether we are, are, which I didn't, I didn't want to, I've got some time, whether we're letting the government get off the hook on our issues, which is national defense, amnesty, Vietnam, et cetera.

What is that?

And having talked to him this year,

Those are, even though we win on some of those, they are not our issues.

I constantly try to hammer this into people, quite understandably.

Our issue is the national security issue.

We should all be talking about this with everything.

Foreign policy, there's all sorts of things.

Making America the center of the world.

What we did, Mr. President, was to go up and Paul and I, this weekend, lined up the weeks that we wanted people to organize on the grounds that the news media will only pay attention to us for a while, for a certain period.

And so I would shoot it all too fast that it would come too early to hold the election.

So Sunday fell there and goes out to the press.

I'd rather you had a very kind of

foreign policy next week, national security, and we'll worry about that.

You can't separate them.

The next two weeks, starting September, will be foreign policy and national security.

In other words, the sixth and fifth weeks will be foreign policy and national security.

Because, as you noted, it's very interesting to note that he's backing off of this day.

Awful fast.

He's backpedaling now, not like that.

And when they, like he said, he's going to make an apology speech to clarify and use

He clarified his views on that.

He clarified his view on, I believe he probably won about clarifying on Social Security and, in fact, .

Boy, .

Vietnam, bug out, imposing a Communist government.

Every goddamn thing she said, we've got to pour it down his throat.

That's .

Yeah.

One thing that did not come through in that meeting this morning that I want to do is give you an evaluation of what is the prospect for a long-term sustainable life for young people.

All right, I just got one quirk started.

You say today was the last day?

I don't believe in letting go of these issues for a minute.

Not for a minute, but let me give you the other side of this.

First of all, he can't go out there.

You should know.

I know there's a good sign.

It's not that you can't do it, but you have to.

We've got some ads coming on that issue.

that we will not be able to do.

We're advertising the veterans magazines and we're advertising the whole diverse industry.

Our speakers have their kits and they do use it.

NBC last night, CBS last week gave five minutes to our surrogate operation.

He said, I told him, cancel the speech.

Cancel the speech.

And Lou just said, you.

He said, he tries to get on with this with the youth.

Because what's happening now is that people are thinking and saying, well, he's just another politician.

And if he tries to get on with it,

We want him to highlight that he's changing his position because that's what's going on.

I assume he says the same thing.

All right.

They really think that first.

Yeah.

And I think it does too.

They don't trust him.

And he can say, who's saying that?

They're going to say today, but coming up, and they're going to come up for it today.

He hasn't played football before.

Where did he do it?

if they believe it.

If they trust it.

I'm just hoping we're getting our message across on that.

You know, I'm just talking about if you're doing something that's very good at it,

but the symbolism of two rock diamonds, two Catholics and two .

People haven't forgotten about .

You still get that in Congress.

You still have it in our speeches, and it's still getting printed.

And I'll let you see if people were asking, is he favoring the ?

80% of the people said he did it.

Very hard for me to do all these issues, but he's a really great friend of the people at Amnesty.

He's one of the Amnesty, pop, kooky people around here.

There could be kids that are really single in the public, Jackson children.

I don't know if you've seen this, but my great-grandfather laughed my head off.

Oh, God.

who do you trust most to be president?

That's another question.

Who do you trust most to be president in the White House?

That is number 66 to 24.

It was in the early April, the month earlier, 68.7.

In July, it was 56.31.

This is Dr. LeFou.

No, this is the one now.

We just gave all of them.

Finally, we've given all of them.

This is 61.9.

63.9.

But you see, who do you trust most?

It's almost related to the other one.

No, he's always led at one of these points.

Yeah.

And we feel that that's the key question.

He said, that's the one that...

I tell them to switch around dramatically, and he can't switch that around.

Lou's point is, I made this point to Lou a bunch of times, and he's going to talk about atmosphere.

Lou said, great, because he can't switch that around while he's switching his positions.

That's directly related to him coming out and saying, my position on atmosphere is what he really is.

And he is not going to pick up that press question.

He could go and say,

I believe in him, and you're the reason why, and maybe I'm not, but you're the reason why I believe in him.

At least that people have said, well, he's honest, he's coming true.

He's blowing that press machine.

Lou feels very strongly that he's done nothing to correct himself on that, and he's making it worse.

And he's acting more, trying to be more of a politician, and the more he tries to be a politician,

the more he's going to lose on that question.

And that's the one that tells the people, that's really the demand of the nation.

And they have a 66-24 spread.

And for him to have done nothing since then to change that, we're just going to see that himself now.

Defense is, defense, that's all.

I mean, that's the only thing I, there's a common sense about it.

It's an argument.

what I call a domestic consular.

They've never understood the importance of abortion.

You need to go through the amnesia and the posh.

They've never understood them.

They don't agree with them.

I know politically that those are the ones that bring us the media.

Those are the ones that bring us the attack.

Those are the ones that they just don't understand, you see.

But don't forget, most of us, we've been hammering those for two years.

We own those issues.

He could never catch us on that.

He could get a little bit of wealth, but he can't catch us.

And we won't let him on that.

We're not going to let him on that.

Don't worry.

We've got material.

We're without programming speakers two weeks in advance.

And I understand he's talking to the laborers.

Let's do it.

We're putting in all this.

Tomorrow, we'll read it in this.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Nice.

We cleaned it up.

We hope it will come out.

always keep the son of a bitch talking about our issues and not his.

Maybe there's credibility issues, you know, so it wasn't bigger than I think.

Maybe it is.

Maybe it gets back to Mitchell's point that the church is being too much distressed.

The church is being too much distressed.

We wish

Well, I even suggested this time as a person that we get some of our proponents on the field to make an amnesty amendment.

An amendment that would bar amnesty and put our attention to the bill and the Senate.

Let us support it.

But particularly one that will be, will bar, well, we're going to, yeah, we'll bar total, I'll just say, there will be no amnesty for the period.

But our guys, we're going to have to make it tougher on them, too, so that it will completely not give him a chance to vote for him.

I don't want to give him anything to vote for.

We could make it so that we could just ask for it.

I don't know how to just re-raise the whole issue.

I thought about that at this point.

It's something we could do next week.

While he's trying to explain his position to people, we're sticking to the book.

We can't bust it.

Yeah.

Yeah, he can call it that.

Well, Chuck, just keep the heat on the son of a bitch on the whole policy issue.

That's me as a bitch.

Rogers has two speeches next week that will highlight the foreign policy.

He's the first one to make a statement.

He's speaking to the foreign leaders, the Council of New York, which is a major news event.

Where's the United Nations?

Laird is on the nation.

Laird is starting his tour in his five states.

I mean, Laird will be in this week and the week after.

We have a whole...

You know, he'd be very positive about the value of what he's done for them all.

You know, he would tell you what he's done for all of them.

I think the terms the kids are on, Kevin would read and share whatever he'd read.

That's what I'm talking about.

who told them

Very important.

He doesn't, I don't want him to get too partisan, but I mean, he doesn't get partisan, but in a positive way, you know, just, just, just light up the thing.

He's got to allocate himself.

But having made that point today, he says, again, he's so embarrassed by the news, you know, at the time, if it were anybody else in the picture, would have endorsed me by this time, because of the foreign policy,

And it turned all crazy because some of its shades were done over reassuring the Europeans.

Reassuring.

Terrifying.

Probably terrifying.

The Newsweek guy who said so in his piece.

Well, he came back.

He said he came back again.

He said, well, are there, but the, yeah, but the, but the same time, the other time was today.

He was trying to get them to come up with a warrant for us.

I don't want him to get I don't want him to get

the United States being strong and playing a role in the rural world, the rural world will be a very dangerous place for all of us.

I've got to say that the United States is the second strongest nation in the world.

All three worlds terrifying.

That smells good down there.

I'm not a Christian.

It's got to be powerful.

Well, it starts at 9 a.m. and he's got his first fight on the TV spot on at night.

Good.

Yeah, I know.

He's got another one at 3 a.m. and he's got another one at 3 a.m. and he's got another one at 3 a.m. and he's got another one at 3 a.m.

Well, no.

He said, I would borrow the formal statement.

But he said, the money had to work.

He said, I'd be better than that one.

I'm right.

How the hell is it about his clients?

Well, the report is regarding class.

And they actually like it.

In other words, it's about a hundred thousand dollars.

The figure that would make it, of course, is the four-man seat of the National Army.

Then it goes on.

Charlie's deputy press secretary said, of course, in the details of the financial situation, it's in coverage, went out of it, but they continued to get it right.

I'm very, very keen on it.

The Marlowe statement today was running on the wires.

It's very good.

It says, it's right up there.

It says that the $500,000, you know,

people actually with interest in how this area, one of the wealthy established counties in Maryland, we have on the desk.

And Mrs. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who I'm very close to her name, she was also a producer for the National Institute, was one of those for us as the president's best person, Mrs. A.

And then it goes on to talk about, she is a member of the Kennedy's wife, and she's a member of the Kennedy family, a sister of President John M. Kennedy.

Most of the government is going to update their statements on some of the personal loans.

We won't let them off the list.

Now, they raised the issue.

Again, we didn't raise it.

No, he's raised it, and now we've got a perfect opportunity to keep demanding that the U.S. put her in safe hands.

She'll never go.

Yeah, I think she will, because the way all of us kids have been sent is in trust, and so she'll have the full confidence in us, not many of us.

Not the way they look at it.

You know what I mean with servants and everything?

The income of a million dollars, assuming that you've got 6%,

60,000 dollars a year is enough to keep you in pretty good shape, but you can't have any full-time help.

Hell, they've got servants, they've got commerce and everything.

But you don't have much money.

It's not there anymore.

Anybody can benefit.

You know, they talk about, oh, that's $50,000.

Of course it is to somebody that makes five.

But actually, if that makes $50,000, it's much better off than the steel work than that makes $50,000.

I know it's a lot.

I know I did what I did.

But I tell you, I don't like these bastards to lie about what they're doing here.

They just blew up the money and so forth.

Who the hell is it?

They've gotten away for years.

They had to go in the party's direction.

Christ, they've done some rich angels, too.

Very rich ones.

That's not coming out.

That publicity that we got from this last go-round, I discovered was not only in Washington, that was all over the country.

And though now there's 22 violations that we're going to have to charge tomorrow, I think we'll have to argue tomorrow.

But I do.

There's some that look pretty good.

All right, come in.

We're just talking about a violation of the campaign promise, which will affect Dr. Kissinger.

Not by us, by the other side.

Oh, funny, too.

Funny, too.

Your friend, Stuart Fogg, and your other friend, Senator?

Your old friend, I bet you.

I would like for your staff to write nice letters to Dean, to Pompidou, to Brock, thanking him for the great assistance he's been doing, and a very good, warm, personal letter from Anita Breschner, thanking him for giving you the time and the courtesy that you were extended on until this.

And I'm going to hate to let her say it, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it's doing.

I think it's a good compliment to see her and Pompidou let her say, I'm looking forward to seeing how it's doing.

Brock doesn't have to go so far.

I think this is a very important thing.

You see, you don't often take it if you think it's self-serving to ask it.

It is very important when you take the trip, and when they do see you, that I write them and say that, you know what I mean, and they realize, and they realize that I appreciate it, and it's coming back.

It would be good if he could stay and meet with you alone.

I think so, he should go back.

When I went down to the office, he had a discussion meeting with us and with the president.

No, with Rodney's people, yes.

Rodney's people, the president, were legally in the office, you're right.

But the following day, he could stick around for a minute and said, hey, let's just have the rest of the party come up and go back.

And I'll stay overnight.

He can stay overnight.

I'll stay overnight.

So he started getting a deal with the president.

I haven't had a good reason to stay overnight.

The Harris.

You know, I think this is going to be a big thing.

I think what's happening here is confidence.

We're getting somewhat of a few of the people who had it in 56 rising on.

They went through the 54 recession, and then in 56, unemployment dropped below 5%.

Everybody was doing nothing.

And then in 1957, Joe Humphrey made that asshole character statement.

As a result, he screwed everything up and had a 58 recession.

Well, that wasn't it.

There were a number of things that caused that.

But the point that I make is that I'll move on.

I'd like to, but I won't.

So you might realize, too,

that even though we look at Harris Post and Jones Post and the rest, you want to realize that the people that are in the stock market do read the New York Times.

They do read the Washington Post.

They do read the column.

And they do read the news magazines.

And when you read that, you get a much more negative picture and a much brighter picture on the back of the TV there.

I don't know, but I don't know what to do about it.

I'm just going to back away.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, I'm putting up a little light.

That's right.

That's the negative.

On the other hand, maybe they said, well, it's not the closest thing.

We already have that.

But hopefully, the version of the doctor, I'm sure I've got something that's going to help you keep that up.

I can just suggest maybe that we are, I wouldn't make it so easy for them to get that material.

I say the way to do it is not to have the stimulus in the truck.

Maybe you should stop doing that.

I think you ought to, I think you ought to stop putting the stimulus out.

I just haven't thought, just say you're going to put it out individually.

Do you do that?

Yes.

I kind of feel that's better.

That's what they're getting.

Yeah.

Every story has been put out there.

Yeah.

Like I said, no, don't do that.

I really feel that from this, I mean, let's just not get into that.

Had it done, we'd made that point.

But now I would put that story on the map.

Just do it.

It's not basically a good national story.

That's fine.

Well, let's try that again.

We're trying to face it.

What you have is when you've got to go to the office, you need to be able to tell them to help you out.

That's a lot of work.

I know.

Nixon, Colson & Ehrlichman on 1972 Presidential Campaign and George McGovern

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 19, 1972

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