Conversation 475-021

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Mrs. Brantley.

Students from Texas College.

Well, how are you?

How are you?

You go to Stevens too.

Do you know if he's sick or not?

You haven't given it to him.

Where are you?

You're from Texas.

You go to the University of Texas?

I don't know.

Yeah.

Where do you go to school?

You go to St. Louis, yeah.

You don't go to Stevens, do you?

Are you from Texas too?

You live there?

Oh, you're from Austin.

What's your town?

All right, let's set this up.

You're going to be the picture.

You'll be here.

Come on, you get here.

All right, now look how that Mr. Captain is doing.

He's a real funny man.

Or look at Xavier, smiling.

He's too young to be impressed.

What was this tape?

Oh, this is the video we got.

I thought so.

I remember from the college.

Not the last one.

But Worcester had been himself.

You never had him not fail to make one yard.

But he was the one.

Of course, Notre Dame was awful good, but Worcester had been himself.

Well, this is great.

I know that a lot of you would have, and I particularly appreciate the description, too.

I hope you all are interested in politics, and you continue to be.

Are you?

Are you going to bring the wires?

Can I have a question?

Oh, all right.

All right, all right.

And, uh, can I get your, uh, your woman?

I want to get your woman.

They might take care of it.

They have to ask her, or are they going to?

No, it's just about his wife.

I don't know.

These are the ways they're, uh, holding it.

That's the best thing.

Thank you.

All of your keys are hanging right there, aren't they?

All right.

Thank you.

Well, we wish you the best.

Oh, thank you.

It's great to be young with all your years ahead.

I'll be like a patient.

What's that?

I'll be like a patient.

Oh, I love it.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

We'll send you copies of this one tonight.

Oh, right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Will you do that?

One for each of you.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Live that way now.

Just always remember how lucky I've been.

You hear sometimes, you hear some of those professors get up and say, oh, this is a terrible world.

This country's in a heck of a state, and you know, and all that.

So sour, and so depressed, and they're worried about the fact, you know, the air's too busy.

And so forth and so on.

And I don't find any of them applying for a permanent thesis in one place.

Goodbye.

at the end of the speech last night, no one was aware of.

And it was a total surprise and so forth to everyone on the staff and so forth.

Are there any points you want me to make as to when you decided to include those, include that portion in your address?

I want to give a little.

The day before.

All right.

Also, no one on your staff knew you were going to die.

As you were wrapping up the work on the night before.

I really didn't make a decision until late that afternoon to use it because I had already given the text out.

I just closed without notice.

Did that just say you checked the military gates off?

to make sure that my memory was correct and was that I had remembered that the boy's name was Kevin.

But I did not remember the, I remember that he was a Marine, but I did not know the exact name of the captain.

And I got the information there.

I guess the boy was five.

He actually was four.

So the only person who knew that you had any interest

He didn't know why.

Then one minor point.

Tonight at the dinner, McGaugh from the American Hospital Supply Corporation will be there as one of the guests.

Who?

McGaugh.

M-C-G-A-W. Forrest McGaugh.

Forrest McGaugh.

He's been here several times.

That's the last time of the American Hospital Supply Corporation.

We are hiring Neil Ball.

Neil Ball is a man on my staff.

He's an excellent man.

We've looked all over the country for the best type of guy we can find.

But he comes from the American Consulate Supply Corporation.

And Forrest McGaugh is very high on him, and he was on his way up to the company.

So if you have an opportunity, what would you rather mention to you

You had no problem with the press not believing that that was extemporaneous, did you?

Not much so.

They didn't.

No, they didn't.

There was no talk.

Not much so.

There was nothing in the room.

Not much at all.

They all made that point.

Off the cuff, remarker, extemporaneous.

Oh, sure.

Without notes.

All the stories say that.

The UPI, the special assignment, of course, poses.

And that big story about Mrs. Taylor.

Right.

She came through.

Did that go on the wire or was that just a post?

No, the U.P.

autograph, sir.

What?

On her.

On the whole thing?

Yes, sir.

On Mrs. Taylor?

Yes, sir.

And the little boy who specifically gave a quote of him when you began to process that?

Well, that's this.

There's the president.

There's...

And now he, Kevin talks it up in front of his wife.

He was quite a flirtatious little guy.

He's the one, you know, before, when I met her, I shook hands with him first.

I shook hands with his brother, who was more shy.

And I said, what's your name?

He says, Kevin.

Real loud.

Everything was very quiet.

And as I shook hands with Carl, the big boy,

He said, my name is Carl.

And Kevin said, no, his name is Spitter.

And he said, and then Carl said, that's my nickname.

Which is kind of sad because that's what it's called, I thought.

Yeah, Skipper.

He got on Skipper because his dad helped him skip down.

So you might tell that or whatever that person, or whatever you call that, actually.

But that's how we did the idea.

But the way that I identified that actually the navigation was done, I said I knew that there was a jump in the back.

but I knew his brother was Skipper.

And find out whether or not, who it was, and whether or not it was Kevin Saludi.

I knew that.

But there were two little, there were several little kids in that place, and they, so they couldn't, I said that I knew that he had a brother by the name of Skipper.

And that's how Hugh ran it down.

I found out that Skipper was the name of Carl Jr., which was his father's name.

I didn't know that, but I remember that Kevin was shot.

It's got a whole room, you know.

It's got a, you know, it's a skidder.

It's a skidder.

You know how kids will talk.

Okay.

Very good.

Thanks.

That's good.

Skidder.

You've got a good rating, you've got the overnight, which the normal for the time period is 64.9.

You've got a 55.6.

So we've got someone higher than normal.

That would be good.

Usually we don't get normal.

Yeah, right.

On any public affairs analysis on that Howard Smith thing, it's very interesting.

That was a damn good rating on that because the highest rated non-entertainment show on television, regular show, is CBS at 16.7.

They do it on Tuesday nights.

And its rating, it gets about 11 million viewers.

Basically the same as you, but on CBS.

And the point is that people don't tune in to that kind of show.

Whatever it is, they watch the entertainment.

That could have been higher for Tricia.

Well, that's fine.

But it was a good race.

We don't have a schedule set for tomorrow really, but we have several things that need to be done.

McCracken wants to see you on the change in the composition of the council.

I'm just going to mention that to you this afternoon.

And Paul has been pushing for some time, or asking for some time for an appointment.

I thought about it at the end of the record.

And then, if you've done Kennedy-Hillard, he wanted to see you being back on his trail.

And the question was, do you need to do that?

And I was sat in on EC today.

I really don't think it is.

And then you wanted to see Connolly.

Right.

That thought in the church works out extremely well if you do it.

Which is the final, they have a 20 minute segment of services and they keep going.

What they do is go through the nine, it's nine parts which are the nine words of Christ on the cross.

And the ninth part is from 2.40 to 3 o'clock.

It's a 20 minute.

service.

They have a hymn, a Bible reading, a chorale, an epilogue, some prayers from the Episcopal prayer book, and another hymn, and a benediction.

And Phil Watts says that Dr. Harper, who is the minister, is very trustworthy.

There would be no problem, he says, at all.

And his daughter is out announcing, oh sure, I don't want any pickets out there.

Well, that would be very huge, and if anybody else doesn't go out there, case in place, I don't want any secret service running around there.

Can I say that?

Can I repeat?

Sure.

I don't want anybody to advance it.

Right.

I'll just go, too.

Yeah.

Go and have me, God willing.

Well, Mrs. Nixon, good.

No, no, no.

Okay.

We'll have Phil.

Why don't we have Phil come over here, then, sit down and do the church.

I'm going to come over here and ride over.

I'm just here.

Ride over with me.

That's right.

Just say we can't go in that way .

Remember, Bob, don't have .

Understood.

That's much better and much safer, too.

All right.

The only point we had set, which we do need to do, is to put it on .

And that would make it easy to leave .

That's what you want to do?

Why don't we have a cabinet meeting tomorrow?

No.

This is 5 o'clock.

That's 5 o'clock.

I'm going to sleep a little.

It's such a lovely day here today.

I'm going to hurry you out.

So we're doing it next week.

Small.

There's people he wanted to have, so he had a list of about 15 people.

Oh, sure.

Lent Hall, for example.

Correct.

Lent Hall.

He had his group.

Lent Hall, Fred Stricker, and he wanted Honeymaster.

Right.

Fine, fine, fine.

He was, but having him here in the office, that's a greater compliment than I have a whole gang.

Good.

I'll put the link up.

What was the idea that the women sang?

Was that my idea or somebody else's idea?

No, it was Mrs. Nixon's.

And she had set it up.

And that was what they wanted to have for dinner.

And then the host called it.

And then they set up for this briefing.

And I don't know how, somehow John got involved in it with her.

I mean, I didn't do it in the briefing.

Excuse me, Mr. President.

Notice the door that's on.

The words were, Bob has parents here today.

Having lunch.

What do you think it might be?

He's been here a long time, sir.

Who?

Gordon Strong.

He's a young lawyer who used to work with Nixon Mudge, and he's been working for us over here.

Yeah, they're here right now.

They're down in the mess.

I haven't noticed a deal.

But when they finish...

Don't bring them up, but let them finish their lunch.

I'll be here in another 20 minutes or so.

Okay, thank you.

Let them finish their lunch and then treat your guys.

It's very easy.

And so the idea was what?

He's incidental.

He's strong.

I don't know if you've met him.

You probably have.

But he's one-eyed.

We really got a property in there.

He's 27, 28 or so.

He's a lawyer from your firm that they recruited.

I don't know.

From SC.

He was...

He had the slightest idea of it.

Well, you didn't know.

He came to the firm after you left.

Oh, that's it.

He's been in here for the last year.

How's he been doing?

He was working for Magruder.

Magruder?

He's one of the guys that's been on projects.

I'm glad he had a client.

That's a good way to have him.

Client, client.

He's gotten in here and taken off.

Yeah.

Henry's done a review, I told you we had to shift those state visit things around .

Well, the way we've ended up now, we've got and then Tito can't come in May, which is when we had it booked.

He's raised the possibility of August or September.

And so that doesn't work because you've got in August and in September.

So he's suggesting maybe having TEO in late October.

All right.

go on to Nigeria in early October to get him out of the way.

All right.

And Gandhi is accepted for November.

All right.

So that's kind of the way that starts out.

And Faisal, we intend to at least get him in December, but now May is open, and he's suggesting that we explore having him come in May.

All right.

Or late May or early June, or something like that.

I'm going to probably do a little dinner.

I want to do that.

He's got to come by and I've got to do something for him, you know, because they have me in for otherwise.

So we'll discuss what they are coming for.

I think I should go, I believe so.

We have an invitation out.

They don't think he's going to accept it for now, so we'll come up with a date later.

And then, unless they'll be here for the graduation exercises, that's just all I will do with them.

I'm not going to have these, you know, don't build it up to a state thing, you know,

with the troops and all that sort of thing.

He's having an election for the Commerce Department when he's in Washington.

So that's apparently what everybody said.

That could be all right.

Then you have a dinner later tonight.

Velasco, Peru, we had it scheduled for June.

Right.

But Daryl has now out, so they're suggesting shifting Velasco to July, which will be doing a little more flexible hiring than some of these other times.

Right.

Delay the approach to see whether he's going to be well enough and kind of keep it loose.

Yeah.

Emperor Japan.

And that hearing center, the recommendation, no, it was hanging at the time.

I sent it back and said I couldn't imagine that we would, no, no, no, no, no, that was the section, that was the section that worked out.

Code 3.

Worked out a little.

Okay.

No relation.

Yeah.

Are you from California?

You live in California?

Where?

Oh, Santa Rosa, Valley of the Moon, that country.

That's tough.

Isn't that something?

But you went to USC.

That's right.

You're law and undergraduate.

I'm a law student at Berkeley.

Undergraduate at USC.

Undergraduate at Berkeley.

That's right.

I'm a law student.

I'm a service teacher.

You get on that side.

Here we are.

Now look out here at Mr. Atkins and everybody's lives.

You're here at a lovely time of year.

You can walk out to the roadside and see it.

Have you been out here yet?

You must go out to see the tulips.

Well, most of this isn't quite out yet, but the tulips, the trees here.

The tulip trees around here are beautiful.

The spirit is in the antelope.

That's right.

Now, let's see.

Just hand it to Jesse.

You get a little brother back here.

See over there.

You can wear that.

Here you go, Jesse.

Let me show you Ben.

Very nice.

Take them out, as I say, but what I really feel, you ought to see that out there.

That's pretty exciting.

That's it.

That's the rose garden.

I just call it the rose garden.

In the spring, they plant tulips in it, see, because the roses come in the fall.

But in the fall, they have roses.

In the summer, they have roses in it.

That's the main rose garden.

Very fun.

Very great.

Thank you very much.

It's so embarrassing.

It really is, because people like that, they don't like too much.

My little boy is back there working for the president sort of thing.

We can do that sort of thing very, very easily.

I think it's much better on an unstructured basis than it is for me to come in and see, go, God, 12 events, and I rush to him.

I know I had the idea, but I think your thought of touching events is better off.

Touch events.

But wait.

If you do touch one of these once in a while, they get the theme that you're looking for.

That limits thing.

I'm not sure how, though.

Yeah, well, I think about what happened.

It was because someone was bitching about it, his wife and whatnot.

Oh, really?

I remember he was bitching about it.

Yeah.

And then they decided, well, why don't we have a women's briefing?

And they're going to do another one after congressional office, but they're going to do that at the State Department.

Yeah.

Do a domestic briefing on it.

That won't be possible.

It will go on before we have a State Department meeting.

Is there any enthusiasm around this place at all?

Yeah.

Not on that page there.

Is it because we, of course they were primarily assistant secretary, is it really because we just try to appoint good people and we don't give a god damn about their way?

I mean, if you're not good at lying, you're not going to read that one.

It's just that one.

Tough, strong, loyalist.

I mean, if I emphasize too strongly, I think having done these three sort of tough speeches, I realize and focus.

I mean, maybe you have one tough guy that's been talking on a bunch of detectors.

No, really.

Others have cheered.

It's a...

It's done on a lot of, you know, I mean, not for the purpose of cheering me, just for the purpose of...

It makes a hell of a difference, doesn't it?

Yeah.

It does.

And it's important to eat.

It's hard.

I'll tell you why it's hard.

Because it's the press.

They read the papers.

They hear the television.

They get the hell beat out of them.

They have a scourge.

The kids talk to them.

They sell them something they must have money all the time.

I know how it is.

So it's real hard to be up.

But I think for that reason that we need more and more people to just don't give a shit.

One other thing, I'm not reading the news summaries these days, so whenever you find something, I need to know if I have a blood test.

But I tell you, you do what you've always done.

You just read through the goddamn book, and if there's something to be done, you do it straight.

Because when I get there, about two days before I do the editor's, I'll read a couple of them just to keep up on that.

But I find it's good for a couple of weeks sometimes to take all the evidence and not to be subjected to the daily harassment.

I agree very much.

It really does help.

It really does.

Because so much of it is so unimportant.

You read it every morning and you get irritated or you bark things on and so forth.

And then you can't even remember the next day what it was.

And you say, what the hell was that?

But Bob, the main thing is just put yourself in your mind.

I've got more important things to do.

I'm more and more of anything.

I've set out all this practice.

And what I said to Steve, I said, don't give it to me.

I'm going to look at it.

So maybe I decided to do the history, and I will, but it's one of the action stuff.

But you know, we tend to clutter our minds up with all this crap, and not be free enough and clean enough.

One of the great big things you gotta do, don't you agree?

It sure did.

You take, for example, that little exercise at the end of that speech last night.

That was not easy to prepare, and not easy to do.

And it required an enormous amount of, frankly, just detached concentration.

My wife had been farting around, doing all the goddamn things some people on the staff wanted me to do Tuesday and Monday.

If I had just read the speech, it would have been all right.

But it wouldn't have had that... That's right.

That's right.

Even if I had literally the last page I had written without notes, which I could easily have done, I wouldn't have had it.

What made it was the story.

It was a personal story.

The story.

People love stories.

It's what I tell Christ.

Oh, this guy, he doesn't have any stories.

Well, it's not their fault because they don't read like that.

They read different things.

You've got to go back.

You read the Lincoln stuff, Teddy Roosevelt stuff, only for purposes of stories.

And then you put it in straight and you can't go far.

Well, it's actually such a big...

It doesn't impress me the way you saw it.

I spoke to him and he said, because I thought it was my location, trying to get knowledge of, you know, of all this stuff.

I told them that we know you have to talk to everybody.

And I said, I know that everybody thinks that way when they talk about the social things and their children.

Nobody's thinking awkwardly.

But I said, I know that's the truth.

I know that you're interested in big subjects.

I have a lot to write in my teeth.

Hell, I've never found a woman yet to talk to me in an interesting subject.

If they do...

I mean, it's all possible.

If you're overbearing and aggressive, this is an hour ago, it's over.

It's a good job for that job.

I praise her for that job.

I praise her.

There's no more loyalness around.

I told her, I told her what I'm doing here.

I said, no, I'm glad to have you full time.

I used the whole thing.

I said, but on the other hand, in government, that's fine.

I said, you simply support your husband.

I said, well, you need an awful lot of support.

I said, I've used that name.

I said, but you want to remember that Professor Higgins married a pretty lady, too.

So I said, we don't want you on our command.

We want you on our command.

Women have got to think of themselves that way.

And there is a place for a woman who isn't constantly trying to ask her husband, what in the hell, why isn't the president really normal?

Yeah.

Frankly, Bob, it's like your kids.

I mean, the kids are different.

They're smarter than most mothers.

I tell you, I don't think women should simply sit there and only think about their clothes.

It isn't that.

But if you, it's like going back to old friends and trying to pick up a conversation with them.

They don't move.

They don't move fast enough anymore.

There's no common ground.

There isn't any common ground.

That's why I despise the social events.

Because when I had women on my left, don't you just drive you nuts?

Yep.

What in Christ am I talking about?

I read through the background.

Except you get a rare one.

That one.

Did you know that one night is...

You're going to ask that next to Mrs. Connolly.

Well, I can't do it forever.

Two of the best that I've heard are the wife of the Italian ambassador, who was smart, tough, strong, and she was brilliant.

And the wife of old Samila Sakasa, who's like her mother.

Oh, hell, and she's the most extraordinary of all.

She's a tough, ruthless woman.

Jesus Christ, she really lays it out.

I'll be dying.

Oh, Jesus.

I'll be darned.

So he was interesting to talk to.

You know who the other one was, if you ever stop by, is the British?

The other, Freeman's wife.

Oh, yes.

I don't know this one.

She's very intelligent.

But Freeman's wife was a hell of a gal.

She's a theater gal.

Yeah.

Well, I think it's better that we did this little talk for other reasons than to hurt people.

I don't think it's not a good response if our own people are in charge.

I don't know.

Maybe they can't be in charge.

I think they can't not.

It seems to me that we got out of it about what we could do.

And a little more, actually.

I think in retrospect, as I look at it today, we got out of it about 25% more than I think we were thinking before, because nobody had just figured out the conclusion.

You got out more than I thought you would, and the conclusion did it.

When I mentioned Roger's idea on it, it was...

I don't think he even had the feeling that it was Steve Lennon who did something that had that kind of punch.

All he wanted me to do was sit down and say, look, I really get it now.

Yeah.

But you said that.

Is there any question about that left in anybody's mind?

There can't be after that one last night.

That's...

to the point where you get to North Carolina saying this is the first time we can be 100% for a speech on Vietnam.

And conviction and commitment and all that was there, but the North Korean had nothing negative about it.

There's more to it than people unless they're moved.

They're really, they've got to be moved sometimes.

The reason they don't like it is they don't have the capacity.

They have no hearts.

Intellectuals don't have hearts.

They don't like the idea of motion-based motion.

So my God, they know exactly what I was doing.

Sure.

Exactly.

But you made it hard as hell.

After that, for somebody to tell anybody who saw that speech that Nixon's lying to you, or that Nixon doesn't care about the war, or that Nixon's expanding the war, or that he doesn't care about people dying, or he's a ruthless barbaric.

He's out there killing our boys because he loves them or something.

They can't believe that I watched.

And also, one part of the speeches in the back paper where I said, do you believe, can you believe this?

Notice how long the pause are.

He said, long pause, and they did a great camera job on that.

They came, as you build up to that, they were coming in close, and just as you paused and looked up, you looked right into the camera and held there, and they came in on a very tight close-up.

So they had a very, it was, had a lot of impact, just because of, because of your pause, and because of that, the camera...

You're going to check the charts anyway.

Mainly to see whether the boy really knows or understands.

Maybe it's not his fault he never used the chart before.

Yeah, well, I don't know if I'll ever use one again, but a chart isn't going to be...

It was my mistake.

I should have put that chart on because I didn't remember Roger's chart.

Well, you did.

You wanted to get that in Roger's chart.

Yeah, well, I remember his chart.

It was not that one.

It was a graph.

It was one of the men, the size of the men.

I remember now, look at how effective it would have been if we'd had 500,000 and the first 35,000 and a man, man, man, man, man.

And that's what's so important.

Jesus Christ, train the lion, you know.

Wouldn't that have really been something?

But it, yours made the point, it just didn't know it.

The trail of the lion was gone.

Damn right.

And for the people on CBS, which would be, you know, 40% of the audience probably, they all saw that and they saw the other thing.

And got it pounded home one more time.

Ziegler said the reaction, he told me last night when he said the reaction, the press was relatively respected.

I think it would have to be.

I don't know.

You know, they'll bench.

Oh, yeah.

They're going to carp on this thing.

He didn't set a date.

He didn't commit to totally withdraw, you know.

They're going to have a hard time saying, you claim too much from us.

Goddamn little claim on us.

You've dried them up on that quite a bit.

You've dried them up on credibility.

Say, goddamn, we've done everything you said.

The other side didn't, but we are.

A little rough on Lindy.

That's why I was kind of intrigued with Connolly's feelings, whether he would bounce back on it.

Sure.

I didn't reflect on that.

And you didn't say you didn't mention it.

I didn't say it in the previous administration.

I didn't blame him.

I didn't know.

And when I talked about what I said, when I left a question, whatever, when I returned, I had to say that.

I'm just saying, boys, I didn't start this goddamn war.

That's the end of the facts.

And I just didn't blame anybody.

And listen, that's the least I could do.

And some of them will bitch about that, but that's all right.

Because I know a lot of people are going to get that message in this campaign if we ever get into one.

You understand?

Yeah.

He missed on that one.

We missed.

Well, maybe it wasn't his fault.

Maybe he asked for the part in defense.

I don't know.

Maybe he should have asked for it.

Maybe he should have, once seen it, he should have rejected it.

Yeah, you knew long ahead that you wanted charts.

I saw your charts two weeks earlier, a week earlier.

I think we did.

When you raised the question of charts, we mentioned it.

Well, that part was first working on a draft.

With Henry's first shot, they had a charting catcher.

He said, what a right.

It was great.

He was able to do the two men over there.

But I didn't use it.

I'm glad you didn't.

I think catching each other would have been terrible.

We can use it, but I don't think I'm using it.

But you see, the catcher method should have been used for this one.

I think Rogers was particularly pleased to...

Last night.

I think he was pleased too because we took a suggestion.

He used his idea at the end.

Now, not just that.

It isn't that.

But, oh, but that is, anybody will.

You know, he knows how to talk well, and therefore he made a contribution to something successful.

But I think he also thought it was a good job, I mean, in terms of, as I told you, he called that order speech and said, and he addressed it with very enthusiasm on the basis of it.

He thought it had some of the same kind of impact as the name of some of the speech in terms of the emotional.

I think maybe they did, not in reaction, on their own, because they didn't ask for it.

Well, you're not going to get wires.

I remember I told you I would not get mail or wireless because I didn't ask for it.

People do not wire.

That's right.

You have to push a button.

And all the right-wingers, I mean, all the peace centrals said, there'll be periods of this.

There'll be periods, but don't pay goddamn attention to it.

The main thing was this.

One thing about, I was going to suggest, I don't know whether they can break it out.

If your number of group, this group, that was a very positive call, whether they see it or not.

Go back on their list and see.

But this group wasn't those who saw the speech.

See, I would think if they'd gotten a list, if they'd got it done, then that's fine.

I mean, I'd like to see, sort of check, remember on the other one, I thought that was a factor that would distort it.

That'd be interesting.

Instead of the other poll, I'll tell you, it's great working with ORC.

This guy Tom Bennett up there is so balls-out Nixon that it's just great.

I thought the speech was great, but he was also, I had him called to work out a plan for releasing some of them.

What we're going to do is release the approval

in March, which was 51, and then same as Gallup.

And then the approval in April, which is 54, which is released as a two, you know, monthly call up from the previous month, and the disapproval is down.

Then you're going to release the Cali figure on approval of your intervention, of your decision to review the case.

Not the other one, because that's already been out, the stockade.

And then we're also going to put out the disapproval of demonstrations.

And they'll release those three questions as a release.

But we called down about this, and he said, you know, they've got to get it out today and all.

We want to set up a thing where on their letterhead, we send this with a covering note to all the Senators and Congressmen at their home addresses and their office addresses.

Now they won't do it.

And they should.

See, we didn't ask them to do it.

But I wanted to do it on their letterhead.

And then I said, geez, we're going to have a hell of a printing problem on it if I send you our paper.

And the stuff, could you run it off down there for the National Committee or somebody to run it off with?

Because we close it and do an undue priority and all that.

So I said, sure.

But I mean, instantly, you know, and he said, we have no problem ever on releasing any of this stuff as long as you don't ask us to tamper with the figures.

We don't.

And I said that, you know, under no circumstances would we ever ask them to.

We don't want to tamper with them.

But obviously, we probe in these poles, and we don't always want to release all that's on the pole, only parts of it.

And he said, that's fine.

No problem.

What did you ask?

Did you go to Paris and talk to Dirge about, or was it Venom that gave you the...

analysis of why this thing went from 41 to 54, did Bennett think it was all .

Yes.

That's almost unbelievable.

He said what you gotta recognize is that there are things like that that just really knock the needle off.

And you also gotta recognize they knock it too far.

That's right.

And the 41 was lower than it really was, he's convinced.

And he said you gotta face the fact that 54 is higher than it really is because he said the reaction has the same violence as the action.

That's right.

People always react against their first emotional action.

What you can say from that, clearly though, is that Cali knocked you down because it made people undecided, but that you gave them all back.

He says it's really about as simple as that.

And the other thing that's significant to him in that poll is the great reservoir of strength in the presidency

as contrasted to Congress and other people.

In other words, when there's a problem, the people look to the president, which is why you took the heat on Cali when they were upset, and why you got the credit back when they were somewhat displaced.

Why they will buy your, they disapprove of your handling of Vietnam, but they approve of you.

They disapprove of your withdrawal rate, but they will opt for your plan instead of the Congress plan.

He did say, however, he said, one caution on that, and you've got to leave it this way for the trend, but he said, you may have overstated that some because you said the Democratic caucus.

People don't know what a caucus is and they think that some evil come by.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that makes it interesting is that we've got to... Oh, on this, is that we've got to get...

Is it weighted, too, that it affected the approval and disapproval of the war?

That question, you know, we went down to 32 and then came back to the same magnitude, the number 44, right?

Which is, and it's what you call it, which shows that it was the hawks that left us.

The war approvers, that's right.

The hawks left us.

Because the war disapprovers didn't change at all.

They stayed at the same state of mind.

All the time.

I think the main effect of this speech is that it is one thing, and in this sense it's good it does not have a, that we did not ask for a public demonstration of that sort.

Right now, the country needs to be calmed down.

We don't want a violent polarization of people all saying, I stand with them and the others are against them.

You got my point, Ken?

We may want to crank it up after the demonstrations if they have any effect.

Yes.

Not by you doing something, but by our cranking up our...

Supporter tax.

That's a problem I have.

I'm surprised I can be out of town.

I don't want to be in town most of the time.

What importance does that have?

I can't be out of town for that main day.

I've been here for quite a while.

We haven't even figured for Florida that weekend.

I've got to go.

I'm going to go.

Don't let anybody on the staff talk you out of that.

You have King Hassan on the 22nd.

Don't let anybody talk us out of that.

On the ground Thursday, then we're going to go to Florida the first thing all Friday morning.

Anybody talk us out of that on the ground that I have to be here because of the devastation in town.

How old are you?

It's the weekend after the ASNE.

You're going to have 28.

in our private office conference.

And then we have the DAR Hassan dinner.

And then you go to .

You've got to come back for the chamber meeting.

So you can't take a long weekend.

Let's take a Monday and come up .

Yeah.

But you can't come Monday night.

You have to be back here Monday night.

So you know the situation.

Uh, did you see him this year?

This year, yeah, he may be out.

Uh...

I should take a little time off.

I'll put it in there.

Sir, David Rockenhorst just went in for a play.

He went in for a long time.

Would you like to see him afterwards?

Tell him to skip it.

I'll let him know.

They don't want to tell you.

And you said somebody handled that.

You know, I...

The...

Stone hit her tonight.

I just want to be sure that somebody handles it so that he doesn't make a nice, you know, he's a nice fellow and he is capable of that.

Understand, I don't want questions and answers and I don't want a long beat about it.

See, I want it to end at 930.

And I think Cliff, I think, I don't know what is the plan.

Do you know what it is?

Is he supposed to preside?

I think you are.

Yeah.

Well, maybe there's nothing you can do about that, but can somebody, somebody, well, can somebody just be sure that you let them know that I have a very early breakfast tomorrow?

And if these people will get a chance to go back, we'll let them out at 930.

I did the thing beforehand and then the Bureau of Arms just sit in there and thank them all for their support.

But if I get into a Q&A with them, I mean, they all love it, but let me tell you why it's bad.

They're getting out of the White House, that's all you need to do.

Well, the point of it is to tell you what the Q&A, while it makes the interest to keep it going, is a very small word for me.

The other point is that it's bad, is that, as the thing from Kavanaugh said,

Whenever I'm in there, and any of those guys in there, all pregnant and everything, they get out and they misquote it somewhere.

They're like, son, get out of there.

It'll be wrong.

You see my point?

I've decided I've got to do Q&As with responsible reporters and then there's nobody else.

You see my point?

Yep.

You've got to be so careful with the average guy.

He is not accepted at all.

You can't comprehend him, and especially at an interview.

That's right.

Well, they were older men, too.

They all had a couple of belts.

We sat there, coming to the White House.

I thought you had a pole that you let over your own little dog.

What was the...

I thought it was the high area of...

of a higher, what do you call it, a physical reaction on the species.

The higher.

Yeah.

That's the highest, very favorable we've ever gotten.

Well, of course, that can't be the emotional, purely emotional.

Of course.

So I have a little of it as necessary sometimes.

I don't get it.

I don't get anything.

Everybody's an articulate person.

Why don't we have two .

Where's the ?

That's what we want.

Are you going to be there tonight?

That's right, I'll be there.

Who are you looking for?

Are you going to be there?

Yes, sir.

Yes, he's very concerned about it.

He wants to have it at 930.

He wants to be sure Clem knows that there will not be any Q&A, because I'm just going to be here for the night, so I don't have to include the day.

He's got to work on it after the dinner time.