Conversation 044-139

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Mr. President, I have Mr. Ehrlichman returning your call.

Okay.

Should I put him on?

Yep.

Right.

Ready?

Thank you.

Oh, John, I wanted to check on the economic thing about my schedule tomorrow.

Anything to do tomorrow?

I have Stein's paper here, which is just a recapitulation of the meeting the other day.

No, I don't need that.

I do not have Renfray's yet, and I expect it sometime tomorrow.

What I really want, I don't mind sitting down and reading the papers, but...

I really want us for these, I guess, to be ready to meet with these fellows when they've sort of got their ducks.

There's no point meeting with them now because they have seven different options here.

And they're all over the place and no firm recommendations.

Okay.

What is your recommendation?

Should I read the options?

No, no.

What I'd like to do is I've been waiting for Renfray's stuff.

And then what I'm going to do is reconvene that group.

I'm going to Camp David tomorrow about 4 o'clock.

Right.

3.30 just to reading and so forth.

Maybe you've got something.

But understand, I've never found it too useful to read

Oh, I don't mind.

I don't mind getting saturated in it.

This paper, Herbs, is rather lucid.

It's really pretty good, and if you do have some time for reading, well, that wouldn't be a bad thing to throw it in for the rest.

When do you anticipate they'll be ready to...

I would say Thursday at the earliest.

Now, let me say that if they want to have a meeting, one of the best times for me would be Saturday morning.

Fine.

That's about when they'd be ready, wouldn't it?

Well, I think so.

Now, George will be out of town Saturday.

That's out.

I see.

But... Where's he going?

To the time life thing?

Right, right.

I knew that damn thing would come just when he shouldn't have it.

But let me see if I can pull them together tomorrow, and then we'll try and have something in shape Thursday or Friday.

One other thing, briefly.

I talked to... Are you ready to talk?

Sure.

Yeah.

As you know, I'm going to give a veto party...

Right.

...for Thursday night, and...

started gilding the lily we've done so much for them lately but uh so pleased with themselves and told them to invite all of the domestic members of the cabinet except

He had nothing to do with them.

Good.

And for them also to invite top White House people, too.

Good.

I think this sort of thing is a good thing.

You know, they'll all, because, you know, that was a hell of a vote in the House.

It really was.

189, including 163 Republicans, you know.

And an interesting, it shows you that something that I had an interesting talk with Sam Devine.

and also Les Ahrens and Wagner reflected the same thing.

They're getting mail.

So they just come in, and I asked Sam, and Sam said, well, you know, the turning point, he says, was that the middle part of your speech when you reported in Vietnam.

He says that just put it so clear.

He says apparently from his place, at least, it turned it on.

So maybe who knows.

Excellent.

I've just been sitting in Ken Cole's staff meeting, domestic fellows, and they report...

Even in tough subcommittees like Health, Paul Rogers Committee, the Republicans are banding together now and they're asking for ammunition and they're going to stand up to Rogers.

Is that right?

So that's... What is happening here too, John, is this, that...

The Democrats become more and more partisan.

For example, one of the few good fallouts of this miserable Watergate thing is that it is so goddamn partisan and mean that it makes Republicans mad.

Our guys are not—they're partisan, too.

Partisanship breeds partisanship, I can assure you.

Don't you think so?

They're dividing along party lines now, which we haven't seen.

It's good.

Very good.

Well, I'm glad you're doing that.

It's good, particularly from the standpoint of...

If they divide party lines, we can win them all.

Now, Bill Timmons is going to want to suggest a sort of a powwow here one of these days to try and salvage some of the national security bills up there.

And we've got to think through very carefully what the strategy is going to be

He's just afraid that we're going to be making a stand on tough legislation every day of the week and that eventually we're going to lose a couple.

And they're going to start chewing away at the defense stuff.

And he'd like to sit down and try and work a bargain with the leadership.

I think we have to think about we're prepared to bargain at this point.

It may be a little early to begin to do that.

He's pressing Ken, and Ken and Roy Ash are going to get together and try and dope something out for you.

On national security?

In order to salvage the national security stuff.

Yeah.

Well, I'm ready any time.

You know what I mean?

It's a lucky several days off.

Maybe that could be done Saturday morning.

I'm sure it could.

Right.

White House course.

Yeah, that's right.

Did Bob have his meeting yet?

Do you know?

I don't know.

I haven't had a chance to check with him.

The other thing that's pressing is base closures, and I understand you're working on that.

Yes, I am.

The point that I hear is that I don't want those damn things announced certainly before Thursday now.

Right.

You know, I want to have their, let the boys have their one day of shouting before they start screaming.

And I also want to ask a question or two.

How much work has been or is being done with regard to telling these people they are going to be closed?

Well, they're...

I just don't want them to slap them in the face.

They're waiting to get the green light from you before they start a notification.

The only point is that they're standing on one foot and the other and calling every hour on the other.

The only problem is there are 40 of them.

They know they're going to close.

The question is only on five.

I've already decided we have to keep Portsmouth in a half-assed way.

I'm just thinking about, and I've told Emmons to check with Cole.

I don't know what is Cole's recommendation.

Let it go.

Well, he's sitting right here.

I'm not sure what it is.

What do you think we should do with Philadelphia?

He says Rizzo comes out ahead net, so go ahead and make the closings in Philadelphia.

All right, fine.

That takes care of that one.

I can tell you right now, I marked the thing up, and I've just been waiting to talk to you about it.

It must be kept in just as low a profile as you can, but I made a promise to keep it, and I cannot break the promise.

Close Philadelphia, which was one of the ones in question.

Close Kansas.

After all, you've got Dole and Pearson, and it's going to be tough, but that one should be closed.

No.

i also raised the point there's only one other one john that was open one in oklahoma tinker the point there and i put it straight to uh to timmons was it was bellman now we want bellman to run and i don't if bellman is going to run uh let's uh i mean if this is something that could be a very important worth it so bill's checking that you can just check with bill unless

But if it's a, you see what I mean?

If it's good bargaining material for Bellman, you see the other thing, it could be the thing Bellman is such a, you know, he's rather explosive.

Bellman would say, well, hell, if you close this base, I ain't going to run.

I don't want to do it.

It isn't a lot of money on this one, too.

It isn't one of the biggest.

So let me say that everything closes except,

behalf of Portsmouth and possibly Tinker on Bellman.

But on Tinker and Bellman, don't close it, too, unless it's going to have some effect on the Bellman matter.

I get you.

Now, does that give you the guidance you need?

That's what I marked in the paper, but just go ahead and do it and then tell Richardson.

Okay.

But don't start informing them until after this Thursday night affair.

Okay.

All right.

Bye.