Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on Vietnam War and Public Relations

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That's true.

It really is.

He's handled things with great guilt.

He doesn't need it.

Basically, the thing about him is his great strength.

In fact, he did not allow his emotions to be involved.

That's why you don't want to fight him briefly.

He is the one who works very hard.

It's hard not to be emotional.

It is.

It's hard not to be emotional.

It's the only way to handle these people, if they're feisty, if they're selfish.

If they're gonna, if they're gonna have a crisis, they're gonna have a problem.

You know, we have one bench, one and a half councillors in the rest of the country.

I don't know what your question is.

That's all right.

I can plug it up.

Okay.

In the country, in the country, it's definitely how it is.

He had more self-assurance that he had.

But the cockiness has been in a sense to cover up some self-doubt sometimes.

Yeah, I think he's got a much stronger feeling.

Now listen, he knows what he's doing.

He's the best person that's ever had such a job.

Yeah, he's got a marvelous thing coming back as well.

Your father's already on COVID coverage, so I don't know why they'd be concerned about not being on the COVID coverage.

He's having fun on that.

His only concern on that was that he backed off.

Now, I guess we have a computer problem.

What do you think?

I don't know.

I didn't understand.

I was thinking of it.

I was too calm and I said, no, no.

I don't.

I said, I knew that before we did it.

But it was facing around my office today and said...

Not only sent one, he sent two.

I said we created a very tough time here in energy, but the president, with many recommendations, has been very serious and tries to consider it.

But it seemed so clear to him that this was not the right thing to do at this time.

And then he graced it with Maine and several other hardline people.

And he didn't want to talk about it with anybody that was soft on him, because you have to be sure.

He was getting it from the hockey side playing around on considerable detail as to the ramifications of the plan.

The point that everybody universally and immediately came down on was the point that you had started with a long premise.

Your conclusion was all right if your premise had been right.

But your premise was that this would create a crisis in the country domestically that could only be met by the president rallying the people.

The only way you would create a crisis was if the President stepped up and tried to rouse these people.

But the way it had to be handled was on the road.

He said it was absolutely right.

Probably made it wrong.

And they didn't think the crisis would come out like they think.

But the point is, I suppose you do have to...

And now at least you're doing something.

You can rally to the press.

It's rather than rallying to the press.

You're doing something.

Rather than going on television and saying, I'm breaking my promise.

Sure.

You know, all that sort of crap.

Say we're declaring war.

We'll step it up.

You know what I mean?

He doesn't realize, but he does want to go out and face that question so hard on this damn negotiation.

Ron says he's scared about this.

He's mad.

That's his possible appointment and all that.

What do you think?

Worrying about the daily news, what matters is the long-running truth.

I'm not sure if you can comment on that.

I think that's right.

You're on track.

I think there is something.

I was concerned.

But we all have a mistake.

Everybody has a mistake.

Thank God I pulled off this.

I pulled off this.

I hadn't done that.

No, we've made a mistake.

We've got to pay for it.

That's all we need.

We can't turn on the bed.

That really counts well.

That's what we have to do.

Fuck him up.

I don't have to do this.

Coach Jackson, I think it was strongly recommended that we make Cooper's investment law, and that he could help to get votes for some of our policies on defense, foreign policy, and the rest.

We discussed that with Carl at this meeting.

I don't want to send him abroad because he's dead.

He's got a lot of other problems.

Of course, he'd be sick.

He'd be in Washington that day with the Congress and the State Department.

You're going to follow through on that.

It's going to happen, huh?

That's the only way I think of it.

We're using another one.

It's fine.

I think what it's going to mean is that it's going to go wrong.

We're using it.

Don't spend the money.

We're doing it.

It just might be the right thing to take his wife up, you know, to get away, go someplace, but not far away.

Or maybe they just can't do it.

Well, I don't know what to tell you.

With regard to these jobs that I get, the fees and so forth, I mean, of course, I'll keep you in much control, and I'll keep you posted, and I'll keep you up to date.

But again, it's not just about the recognition of people who came through.

Well, I don't know what happened, but there was something.

I understand.

What I had is, even with the dollars, but the dollars closed.

I think that's something that has to be controlled.

I don't know how to control that.

Yeah, and that may be, you know, it may have been a mistake not to go down all three roads and go after that.

But why don't we ask the primary charge to put those students together?

It's not to have the same first name and first name.

I think it's a hell of a good assignment for Rose.

Anyway, you give her the course, and you'll put in the name.

And she doesn't even know what's going on.

Coach, I've got a phone call.

Don't raise any problem on him.

I have a question.

If I become secondary, there's something for you to sign.

Without her management of this thing that got bogged down, it's the wrong lane coastline.

I would say that the living room is going down.

I don't say that he did it.

I just don't get him.

He has to.

And he'll do it without getting his ass in trouble.

She knows exactly what it is.

I don't know what they're talking about.

Now, we have all three groups, so you remember, we had the political group, and Marty Stanton's group was the first one.

We haven't done any duplication of that.

I guess that's fine.

Well, it was a little duplicated because we had it for the National Committee, the former National Committee was going to try to take care of it.

And with Stanton,

But with the church, the church, just because of the job being arranged out, they haven't thought about it.

Well, you might just talk to her, and post her, and the others, and then have a summit with the others, repeatedly, because they had been to a dinner, and then also a dinner with the church, and the dad showed up.

He didn't really need to do that, and then she went along and invited two or three government people to eat at the church, or to eat at the dinner party.

Except, of course, there

That's right, it was good for those people, but the important thing was to get the word out in the country.

The president was recognizing the new majority and giving a different kind of people instead of, once the election was won, turning right back and having the same old crowd as the White House.

And it made a big thing out of this being the biggest White House Christmas season in history or something.

The numbers of people were tremendous.

And I love the fact that you and Mrs. Bush have spent receiving Christmas gifts and all that.

Hang it into your old Christmas story that you want to make.

It's a housing Christmas.

It all makes into a very nice sort of Christmas story.

And the beautiful decorations they're playing at the house are better decorated than they were at home.

But fitting that into the people that were there to see it were not the same old stuff that we expected.

And they stare at us all the time.

What if there was some dude wearing some very hard hat with both hands or something?

Sure thing, that's a big deal.

What if someone's out in the game wearing an American Legion hat?

That's right.

You know, they're not headed with disabled partners right now.

That to them is, you know, they kind of laugh at that.

You know, this fucking flag is supposed to go.

You know, we have to just laugh at it.

You think they don't know?

They sure don't.

Thank you for having Mrs. Brennan at your table for cattle today.

Thank you very much.

.

This is Marcus.

My proposal to the Vice President, I thought that was a great move.

I thought that we had decided to go through with it.

And Bill proposed to the President, and she proposed to the President, and I proposed to the President.

So, by doing that, you didn't have to have the Vice President speak.

I mean, it was better, yeah, I didn't want him to talk.

I didn't want him to share it.

I was amazed when I saw her come in.

It worked perfectly for that reason.

But the part of it that we're interested in is that we must not be concerned about...

Now, we get the folks.

I don't think, I think the people that are, we've got coal, coal increase, coal, coal, and that's great, but what the hell, I think the people who wanted to use something, wanted something to use against you, is that, I don't have a feeling that there's a, I don't know, I don't know.

They were setting this up, as I understand.

Everybody believed what Wednesday said, correct?

Yeah.

Somebody was supposed to, whatever the picture is, but it's worth it.

How the hell are we going to get him to be different for a while?

Well, let's talk about the internet here for Christmas, I guess, for us in New York.

And then going after California.

Sorry, after Christmas.

For a little while.

I'm just thinking about my book.

I don't think there is a...

Oh, there's one.

Oh, the heat will come up.

The heat will come up.

But my heart is with you.

I'd like to know what it is.

But it's so totally numb.

You're in touch.

The facility is wherever you are.

I don't think it's going to be very...

I don't think you want to create an atmosphere of crisis.

That's right.

Crisis.

You want to look like you said it was going to make things.

That's right.

Crisis would be better.

All right, sir.

Good job.

Right here.

Well, I'll wait.

Okay.

Yeah, but you're the one who's playing.

You're the one who's playing.

I set up to shoot this.

Thank you.

Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on Vietnam War and Public Relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on December 18, 1972

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