Conversation 466-025

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Yeah.

Oh, hi.

I did my hunting and just wondered if, back in Queensborough, if you had anything to report on our conversations today.

That's right.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, let me ask you this, John.

Do you think we ought to, is there anything further that is needed?

Do you want a, do you want a, do you want a meeting and everything?

Because if, if you, I think that's if, uh, what's the second, uh, 840.

I see I missed the 840 this morning, so.

I'm sorry, it sounded wrong.

Right.

Yeah.

Now, what would you like for me to do?

Would you like for me to set up something before I leave?

Well, let me say this.

As far as this is concerned, I'd like to tell you, if you know what we do, there you go.

Okay.

And I'll tell Lannan, the key is to talk to you and to work out whatever you want to work out in the paradigm.

And then you can get all the offerings when you can.

Because in the final, you just want to say, this is great.

When you go to the Japanese thing, I think it was the right thing to do.

We did it in a nice way.

But Johnny Burns just said that we, I sent a very tough message to stop with a private message.

First of all, we can't let foreign policy be made by Congress, no matter how hard it is.

So... Yeah, you think so?

I see.

As a matter of fact, he's a good man.

He's a strong man.

So let's, and his ambitions will best be serve us, serve the country.

That's just like the way I feel about School Jackson.

He's a great fellow.

And while we just don't treat him real nice, any time he serves the country, serves us, and makes a stronger candidate, that's fine.

Play him all that way.

That's the way I feel.

But we had a date right off, and I knew that you had a photo of us if you watched the movie.

So we moved out today.

And then, all right, then I will tell Plantinga, and then shall I ask him to call you tomorrow?

All right, all right.

Plantinga, we're ready to go.

All right, thanks a lot.

We looked out, both senators accepted him, tripped up there, and were called early.

So I had overwhelmed them to be invited to go, and then called this afternoon and said they couldn't go because of action in the Senate's conference.

So we all figured that there's no problem, that J.B. will go.

J.B.'s coming.

Pell said he didn't think he could, and he worked everything around so that he could go.

And then he had both the Inquiry and the Cancel, but they were asked.

And just, Castoria was just beside us out there.

We're taking Jamie and the Harkins and Herb D. Simone, whatever his name is, up.

And John Eisenhower is going to be there, as you probably know.

He and John will...

Okay.

Well, here's what I want you to do.

I told Pete, uh, told, uh, told, uh, John Connery that they were going to have a sale on him.

Sir, sir.

Well, Pete is to follow whatever is to be the White House improvising.

Now, the reason that Pete does it rather than having it done by... You see, they're not going to do the Rolls-Royce thing, so Peterson is not in it now.

Peterson isn't in it.

It's just a case of saying, it's not a domestic counsel thing.

only because it involves the Defense Department, see?

That's why it's an action particularly for Pete.

And I want him to go all out, Connelly and Packard, if they will.

Okay?

I'll let Chief Justice call in before he's ecstatic about this.

He says that judges and other men are walking on air.

It's the greatest thing that ever happened to do this year in the history of the country.

To have the president back that was a problem, you know, to show that attention to the problems of the state courts, to give that commitment.

And I'm not just leaving the money.

I'm leaving the moral commitments for himself.

So he felt good.

He was like, you know, it's not a debt or anything.

It's a lot of money.

It's not a crucial item.

Mitchell suggested you use this thing for it, which was a darn good way to do it.

What are your imbalances of you?

What is worthwhile?

Everyone has an impact on that audience.

And of course, the greater you do, it would be great to see a bunch of Congressmen and so forth and so on.

It's really very difficult to know where the energy is.

Where it really matters.

I sometimes come back always to the proposition of where it really matters.

First, what the energy is.

Primarily, first things first, baby.

job, I mean not, and not this crap in the domestic scene, right, but I mean, I do the best I can, that's all I can do.

I try to keep people around, but, I hear that some of them do.

But the idea really was to try to, I haven't used it yet, try to do something public about it.

It's a 20 or five of the days where the scattered, you know, so-called the speech,

are not gone, in a sense.

I'm just wondering.

You know, let's face it.

You know, we did Nebraska, the Wilson thing, Kansas, Iowa state legislation.

Except for maybe a couple of years.

All that was made in two years.

You see what I mean?

I'm just wondering, in terms of communication, of course, at least you couldn't think of this.

I thought I had it.

But the speech writers, of course, naturally, they came under charge.

And the press is beach-dicky-beach.

But they're hell of an effort not to make, which, you know, you just have to prepare them and look at them, and so on and so on.

And I wondered if the speech is virtually done.

It's very appropriate.

Well, you know, I wonder.

But you know what I mean?

It's when we looked, as I said, about how little dribble we got out of the, out of those three events that everybody thought were great, you know.

The Adams portrait remarks, the Wilson speech, and the, uh, prayer practice.

I would say, you know, we built like, I don't know, it's fascinating.

Did you, I guess it doesn't come in yet.

The, uh, CPS people standing there didn't give to me yesterday.

the thing on the ratings of the TV conversations, Kennedy's one, Johnson's two, and your two.

And your last one, 53 rating or something like that, which was way higher than anybody else's.

Your one before that only had a 36, I think it was.

And Johnson's had a 36.

His first one was a little lower than that.

Kennedy's was a 26.

That's a different person, right?

Well, it was because of two things.

One, and it showed you the lesson of what time you go on and when you go on.

The reason yours was, your first one was 36.

Your policy was in July.

It's because it was in July and people aren't watching TV.

The reason is, one of the reasons is that Kennedy's was only 26.

And I looked at that and said, that's impossible because if you're on all three networks, you can't get that low a rating.

And then I got on all three networks.

What happened was, you went on at 6.30 at night, which was an incredibly stupid thing to do.

But I guess that was not to interfere.

But he was all about two networks, ABC and CBS, and so everything was on NBC, and they interviewed David Griswold.

John?

I don't see you.

John, are you talking to me again?

Well, what it's about is this, and you might just, after I finish my conversation, would you just call in and say you'll talk to me tomorrow.

We talked about Lockheed today, and we haven't just made a command decision as to whether to try to save him or not, because, and without the British person, all that.

And I decided we've got to do it.

Now, from the White House side, I told him I want you to handle it, and there are reasons for this, you see.

It's got to be, it can't be out of the Peterson thing because of the great issue we're now out of.

It can't be out of domestic counsel because it involves foreign policy.

See what I mean?

Not foreign policy, but I mean defense.

You see, defense is going to have to take this ball.

The other thing is, if you get a domestic counsel that I think, well, we want to use, vote, we want him in charge, you get that point.

So, the thing I told John, now John, John, I told him, he's going to have to, have to talk to Vandridge and so forth, you know, and all that sort of thing, and he's got some ideas, and I told him, and he's going to have to talk to Tackett, it's all symmetry to John, along with him, but I told, told him that, that, that, that you, that I would have not been there to do it.

that he could work, ask you to work on the White House side, but just call him and tell him you're prepared, we can do anything he wants.

And I think it's the only thing we're doing.

I think it's just an abuse of our community.

As a matter of fact, the $350 billion that we'd like to put up for Lockheed, if we get it through the Congress, would be lost in taxes.

The very economy of these various companies, right off the losses that they're going to have on subs and the rest.

You see my point?

So that's the deal, okay?

Carry that.

Yes, I wanted to tell you this.

I had a chance earlier.

Secretary Rogers called me today, and he wanted me, when I got a chance to mention to you, that you had talked to him about having a press conference perhaps tomorrow or this week.

He's actually, yes, he wanted me to say to you that he is going to testify, I think, tomorrow.

I see.

And that he would like to have it if you approve on Monday, Monday or Tuesday of next week.

And I said I would check that with you.

You're not scheduled until tentatively toward the end of the week.

Right.

So I think that would be most fine.

And then that would allow you to focus more on the domestic thing because he wouldn't just... That's right.

He will be up Monday.

I'm going to encourage him to do it Monday.

That would be a good idea.

That would be very good, yes.

Could I say, I'd talk to you later.

Could you just say that I didn't delay anything I did on Friday?

Yes, sir.

We won't want to end that way.

It's ideal.

This president will be in Florida Monday.

I'll be in Florida, sir.

Monday, I'll be in Florida.

And I say it would be an awful good time to make news.

Yes, sir.

Because Tuesday and Wednesday, we're going to be pretty hot and heavy under this.

The lynching and all that stuff.

Yes, sir.

I thought the interview was great, Mr. President.

Can we get an hour?

How many studios do you have?

Can you make more than an hour and five minutes?

I can make 150 minutes.

Or an eye, but that was about it.

If we had started at 5, we didn't know we'd be starting at 1.

It was actually, it was 59 minutes.

Yeah.

I stretched out my fingers.

I think it was an hour.

It wasn't, but it was exactly 59 minutes.

They were in at 5.18 and out at 6.17.

Yeah.

That's all right.

That was an hour.

But we did start with a whole water.

That's a damn good session to play in an hour.

There ought to be a lot of teacher stuff on that.

Well, whether it's written in Mount Sinai or not, I don't know.

We'll see.

Okay, how is Betty doing?

She's fine.

They're all right.

She can be a little bit.

She's in the city.

Yeah, they're all in the city.

They all are in the city.

Because for the Nauruans, they're all so used to, they can take one little nut and make a whole column out of it.

For the Nauruans with this stuff, they're going to milk it for weeks if they do.

Maybe so.

They may play something.

No, but this candidate showed you what happens.

See, he takes it, remember, as Johnson did.

They didn't go live.

So the network, because it was on tape, all the networks didn't play at the same time.

So Dua played at 6.30 at night, which is a lousy time.

And NBC played at 8.30, which is a damn good time.

But the TV viewer had the option, who had either of those times, to look at something else.

When we go on live, we're on all three networks, and there is no option.

And that's the way to get an audience.

So the point being, if you think you sort of agree with Mike, you just forget the goddamn speeches.

I really wonder, you know, we have this staff that's been around here and all these damn appearances and bothering around in here and there.

I really wonder, Bob, if we aren't living in a different era, a different era of believing.

You know, I can't get back to the fact that I just don't think of all these programs

Of course, Connolly, you've got to watch his judgment a little on this, too.

You want to remember, well, he's watched the national scene.

He's worked on the state scene.

That's why he's terribly conscious about legislators, and why he also is conscious of the power of the daily press and the rest.

I'm not sure that that may be outmoded.

I'm not sure that the press, I mean, the kind of press we've got, which is basically upturned, I'm not sure what the only way you can retake them all is to be on that goddamn tube, straight out, and let the people cheat.

So I don't know how you can go on any more than what's among them.

I think you can go in farcement for this, not collide with different things yet.

Not with a press conference, not in prime time.

Not in prime time, but not with two different kinds of events.

One press conference and one something else.

I know we've thought about this a lot.

Every now and then I start looking at these schedules and I think, when we're doing it, we're doing better.

a rather hopeless feeling, really.

I mean, it's sort of a, I put it in terms of, you know, don't you sometimes get that sort of feeling about all the crap that you've agreed on?

What the hell did this do?

You know what I mean about the all the little nice things, all the little speeches and so forth and so on?

You know, we think, oh gee, that's great.

Now what the hell does it mean?

It doesn't make that, it doesn't really have the impact.

It doesn't have the cycle.

And that, of course, I know the answer, but it builds up over a period of time.

You know, as Ray Price said, well, you know, jobs and apartments.

But you see, you've got to remember, everything in the old days, the way it worked with Roosevelt, the way it worked with Eisenhower and so forth, this is a different period.

And it doesn't, you can't even compare it to Johnston, let alone Kennedy.

I don't think you can.

You can't.

We're using TV.

I don't know if it's more effective.

Basically, we're using TV and 2-H, but we're doing prime time stuff.

We're using the time better.

And 2-I do the press conference better.

I mean, I'd say in an effective way.

Chris, I'll tell you.

What do you do?

When you really find out, it's a sad time.

No, it's sad.

It's a sad thing.

Believe me.

Well, and then make about three great speeches a year.

I said, right, we saw it.

That's what I said.

You can't think in a vacuum.

And hell, you can't.

That's what is needed.

That's what the leaders of the olden times did.

They factored everything in.

You see what I mean?

It's the thinking about it.

You need time to think.

You do think about it.

You think about these things and you do some things and share your opinion.

And of course, you also spend the time working on the big decisions.

Spend your time making them.

Don't just have people come in and make them for you, which most of this happens.