Nixon, Haldeman & Butterfield on Administration strategy and Public relations

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I want you to call me Ben.

Don't point out Ben.

I'm Henry.

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

You must know Ben.

I don't want him to be starting out in the wrong place.

I'm sure I can handle it.

in terms of the things related, my recollection is they're really related to the war situation pretty much.

But would you get back, do you have O.M.

material that you want to share?

I'll talk to you about it.

I'd like to see both of you.

Now they've always said, do you remember we took the Big Third the whole year and a half ago and they said, do you believe the President had the time of the Third of the time or something?

Do you remember?

It showed that we were out of surprise and we weren't believed.

Yeah.

But, you know, they just don't believe anybody.

Yeah.

Now the other thing is that I think you don't even mind.

I think about the price of credibility.

That relates to a great extent to really whether our people are taking it all.

You get my point?

Mm-hm.

People believe the press must have taken it all on them at some times.

You understand?

That's where the agonizing thing was.

It's getting nervous, and then it just came back to the surface.

So it may be, I don't know, I just don't know what's up.

in the news summary at least.

Well, I know they try, but I just wondered if all these guys... Nobody is with any... Well, I think the last... No, no, no, not just the press.

The defense of the president on the war and so forth and so on and so on.

We just haven't had anything since that press conference.

That's my point.

We had that press conference last Thursday.

And here it is Tuesday.

Except for Rogers.

Rogers went out.

That was good.

I don't know.

Maybe that's all we can expect.

But do we have the others that get appeared up or are out?

Yes.

They don't get an inch.

Now the credibility of the press and the others is that credibility is so fragile that it's easy to destroy someone else's credibility.

And we probably are not making the effort that we should be.

in the sinister way we ought to be doing it, to destroy the credibility of our enemies.

And that's really the flaw there.

We don't want to do it openly.

We've been attacked by our... all of our enemies here for a long, great time.

I cannot believe, I cannot, I cannot think that the domestic initiatives may be negative in their effect rather than positive.

I'm just not sure.

He sure made the point.

I don't know.

He really went down and he got a lesson.

He said, what you all got to realize is that reorganization and revenue sharing have just about as much sex appeal as that cup of coffee.

He said, that's just about the way it wraps up.

He said, besides that, on all your domestic initiatives and all your programs, if you put the support together, you're relying on elected officials, governors, mayors, and so on, to back you up.

He said, no elected official, congressman, governor, or anybody else will ever stand with you except when he thinks it's going to do him, give him some votes.

And that's the only reason he did it.

No matter how good your program is or bad, he'll be with you if it'll help him.

He'll be against you if it won't.

And that's that.

So he said, you can't handle it that way.

He said, also, as you looked at issues in 1972, the issues are going to be there, but people can take issues away.

And he said, must he have an issue?

He had the environment.

And he was running with it.

The president took it away with about an hour's work.

And he's lost it.

He doesn't have an issue there.

Now you can build an issue, revenue sharing or welfare reform or whatever.

Wilbur Billings will take it away.

Or Muskie.

Or Cooper.

And he said, you can't win on issues.

The only thing you can win on is the man.

And he said, also the war?

He said, forget about the war.

That isn't going to accomplish anything.

In the first place, the war is going to be alright.

But being alright isn't going to do you any good.

Again, it's going to be the man that makes the difference.

You either are going to get the man over or you are going to get the war done.

Then he talked about it.

He said, like, take Postal Report.

He said, you changed the post office.

That's the most monumental accomplishment of government in years, decades.

He said, but it doesn't mean a goddamn thing to the people.

Unless, but it does mean that they can gain the President's credit for pursuing and accomplishing his possible objective.

That's where it means something.

And then Denton and a couple of the others got into the school desegregation and jumped on that and said, there's another one.

Said it was the President's leadership in Charleston too.

President's leadership that made possible

a revolution in the South, a quiet, bloodless revolution in the South that could never have happened except for those meetings that he had and his calm, cool way of carrying that thing through quietly.

And he said, you haven't been able to talk about that yet, but you sure as hell can start now.

Start making the point.

But he said, don't make the point that you've desegregated the South.

That ain't a point.

The point to make is what Richard Nixon

As a leader.

As a leader is able to accomplish.

Why have everybody missed this?

We've been talking about it.

No, no, we've talked about that and the purpose was laid out better.

No, no, no.

Why have they missed the leadership point?

Remember, that's what I've been talking about all the time.

I don't think they have.

I don't mean about desegregation, I mean about everything.

You know what I've always said, the war doesn't make any difference, it's how you're doing.

It's courage or divinity.

You see what I mean?

In all these areas, it's what will be interesting to see in life.

I'd like to take a look.

Let me take a look at that thing.

I think that'll be an interesting exercise.

And I think it's also interesting to note, though, that a very strong approval of those who say if you had to do it to support an American, then they'd bomb the North or any other thing.

Yeah.

Sure they would.

Put it out there.

Well, we've got a lot of it out, and we've got to figure that we may get some more, but there's got to be follow-up on these things.

Right.

Nixon, Haldeman & Butterfield on Administration strategy and Public relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 9, 1971

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