Conversation 476-011

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

Oh, come in.

Good morning.

How are you doing?

Oh, I'm surviving that thing.

Hang on to that for a minute.

You know, I was going to start this conversation with myself and tell you what I had in mind before you jump to a different line.

And, uh, by the way, you got me quite a lot of energy, and I thought that was an absolute monumental performance when I had to formalize it.

But it had to be, it had to get to the people, so I had to, I had to, you know that little boy, that's an Irish playboy.

I've done Johnson, S.O.B.

See, all these medals of honor, but he would never, it was posthumous.

There was a lot of guys.

So it kind of like a Russian dance.

Six costumes, and I had to have five different ceremonies where I had to go to each one and go down.

Each one of these people, you know, the women all cry, and the kids cry, and it just carries you through the scenes.

But this one, though, is one of the better, again, in terms of sexual content.

The little boy is kind of, in fact, a little kid in the way.

After I shook his hand, I remember after I shook his mother's hand, I asked him, and I don't know who it was, he spoke to me, his brother, Carl.

I said, what was your name?

And that older brother, as is usually the case, was the more shy one.

Kevin was obviously, he didn't see an extra person.

And he said very quietly, so I can't whisper.

See, they all talk very quietly, because they're all in the same room, and I talk very personally to each of them, and you just say, where are you from?

He says, my name's Carl.

And little Kevin put it out very loud, so the whole word could just echo through.

He says, no, his name is Tipper.

Well, everybody took a picture of him and Carlos and all that funny thing.

And that's what his father called him.

His father called him Skipper.

And his father had never seen Kevin, except as a baby.

See, he went overseas in a baby, when he was a baby.

So, Kevin, Eric's father, could not really remember his father.

So, anyway, the real risk of it, as it later turned out, was that I didn't know if the woman was a peacemaker or any of you she might have been.

Or what the hell she would say.

But it turned out she's apparently a great gal.

She was on television last night.

She's been in the papers this morning.

She says, I always listen to the president.

He's absolutely right.

I want my two sons to go to Annapolis and serve like their father did.

Just terrific.

Isn't it?

Well, some people will think it's a little deep.

Some people need to hear a little more.

Let me say a couple of things about this thing here.

You know, you've talked before about what your goal ought to be and so forth and so on, and what your plans are, and I know you've got the, I guess, the university and so forth and so on.

The thing that I see halt at this point is that any change in your position would be a mistake, and I'll tell you why.

I mean, apart from the personal considerations we discussed in time, I want you to know I do, and you're a mistake.

It's like my feeling about something on Vietnam.

Hell, I didn't care when he came back.

Everybody said November 3rd, and then Cambodia, and now Laos, and before this.

But I've got to plow the course, and I've got to do it.

Now, Auntie Connie.

I have – I just believe that our policies are right to the extent that economic policies can be right.

I think they're going to work.

Nobody can say when.

You can no more fix an exact date as to when the economy will be at full production.

Then you can fix the exact dates of when we're going to get out of Vietnam.

But my point is that it's important to know that any change, any change in the top command, there's actual change in their situation in particular.

With means and principles, no matter how we interpret development, Paul McCracken said he was going to go back to teaching that it would be interpreted as a change of signals in terms of what the economy, of our economic plan.

I don't want any change of signals.

I think it's important for us to follow the lesson and to say, by God, we believe in our plan.

We're sticking to it.

And so that's that.

Now, certainly, at a future time, looking at the personal considerations at a future time, once then everybody gets a barge and finds out they're right, that might be a year from now, then you want to discuss it in personal doing.

But I don't think you should now, because what I mean is, I think the act of your doing anything now

would be just the wrong signal.

You know, that's why I had to, when I talked with Archer, he did a very good talk, and Archer, Archer's a great ball, and I said, Archer, you just can't get up and indicate that you don't have confidence in what I'm doing.

I said, if you do, then it looks, that destroys confidence.

So, but at the same time, Archer's playing the ball now.

He's playing the game extremely well.

Now, I kind of feel it.

I have an intuition about this economy.

When I read your notes and so forth and so on, I don't worry about the 60% unemployment.

Whether we reach 1065, frankly, I kind of hope we don't.

I'd like to miss it by about 15.

But, at a strongly moving up at that time, more important, I have a feeling that infertility is considerably increasing in Somerset.

I don't know whether what you're, I don't care about Senator or Michigan or the rest of the show, but you can't look, I looked at New York department store sales, for example, and I noticed that despite the late Easter, and therefore a very impressive carol night, that the things that were really couching them, house, home furnishings, et cetera, had a hell of a lull.

Right.

Yes, there you go.

That's correct.

Now,

I have a feeling that in summer, I don't know if it's like in December, but last month.

Actually, they're running at the rate of about 10,000 per year.

Well, that's fair.

Now, I have a feeling that in the winter over,

The economy is probably going to move on a little better.

But in any event, I think it's essential that we do not have any changes to the coffee company team at this time.

We've got you, we've got Connelly, we've got Hodgson, we've got Stanis and the rest.

We've just got to keep everybody close together.

That's the way I feel.

So that's the proposition accepted.

I was alerted to this last night, and something about your going back, my going back now, I don't know if you heard that.

I didn't hear the story.

Now the...

My response to that, we're getting a certain amount of press flurry on this, of course, and I simply said, the first thing to say, of course, I serve like a president, so it's not needed.

I tell you that, as far as I am concerned, I have made no decision on you.

Now, obviously, under pressure from the university,

That's inevitable, but I would want to tell you that I don't want to do anything that doesn't help the cause.

If the change would be helpful, of course, I'd be mad about it.

Well, let me put it this way.

I think a change would be harmful.

I think the thing to do is to just fall right in.

And I think we ought to knock the stories down flatly.

Is that all right?

I think we should, because I think right now, after all the labor and the suffering and so forth, the damn thing may begin to work.

Well, it sounds good.

We must be doing something, all right?

I mean, look at that silly stock market.

Remember when I had those miles over there, dollars at 630, and that one fellow, Izzy Cohen, says the dollars are going to go down to 510.

and all that sort of thing, or 500, or below 500, and so forth.

And I got up and I said, now look, I don't have any money, but I'd buy.

And I did, or maybe a few did.

You know, some fortunes must have been made over the last 100 months.

Did you ever see that over six, well this one, 300 points, which is 44% somewhere I can't.

Some people have made some money out of it.

Somebody has.

They have to.

Somebody has a lot ahead.

Somebody, some must have sold, some must have bought at that low.

We have to wear lots of exchanges if they bought at all.

Look where the hell they are now.

Even at that low period, the six to seven million shares a day were being created.

Yes, that's right.

And so those guys have fallen and hung on.

Wow, look where they are now.

And of course, they've gone on the market.

I understand that part.

So I think what we do is to do that.

I think we ought to just have Sigler just knock it down.

Now, I...

I would have to say that I am not sure at this time that I served out the jury.

I understand.

Let's just leave it at that.

All right.

We have no plans to change the counsel.

Let's just leave it at that.

Now, by the way, it just leads me to another thing.

Oh, the counsel.

How far is it going to happen?

Yeah.

Now, in fact, I'd like to turn to that person.

He would like to leave by July 1st, and so he needs to get on his way to a replacement.

I have thought of two or three different people.

One of them is Jim Schlesinger.

What would you think of him?

Yeah, sure.

And, of course, the secondary thing didn't work out.

I mean, period.

And of course this would have to be checked out from Hill.

Yeah.

Well, you don't have to be a group to know this.

Oh, God.

Well, I don't know whether he's...

I don't know what I don't know about his economic credentials.

Jim is a peculiar fellow.

He's a very able fellow.

He's able.

I don't agree.

He looks like a prizefighter.

He seems to produce a slight bit of abrasiveness.

But that's unintentional.

I mean, he's not a hero of a kind.

Yes, he's a little blunt.

Now, other possibilities would be Ezra the Sovereign and George Shultz would come.

Yes, I heard him now.

He's a very good man.

And Howard Stickler, of course, would be a superb guy.

But he was picked in his book.

I think he probably would not, although I wouldn't mind.

If his name were talked to, I wouldn't mind.

I can't say no.

I think George...

I would lean on the very other group that you have mentioned.

I think I would lean to Solomon for a reason.

I think his sound, he's got a reputation in the international area.

And I kind of like the feel of the West End, too.

You know what I mean?

No, that's a good point.

I think that California is a hell of a problem.

It's our major soft spot.

And you've got us all.

And I'd like to just put him on if you've got him.

I think Solomon would be best.

I think the west thing sounds good to me.

I think that, you know, I'm not likely to, I think such a trip would be a very good backup.

It looks like there's no problem, honestly.

It looks like it's...

The legislature would be very good if you'd be excellent in your studies.

That's right.

It's fine.

Don't quarrel with him.

I think if Solomon was there, we'd get something.

And we'll get something else from the legislature.

Don't worry.

I have very... We owe him something.

We can get that deal out.

It's a disgraceful...

I've never understood that.

I'll get something from the legislature.

Now Ezra, I don't know, I don't know Solomon, but I know Buffy, I know him as Stantra, as the British Stantra.

Now Ezra is, as you may know, is having to do with having brains.

Oh, I think that's good.

He's great.

He's a great guy.

He's a superb speaker.

He's half-Burman.

Half-Burman.

We need a little color in the description.

But as long as he's half-Negro.

No more.

Here he is.

No, here's Bernie.

He's Senator Brown.

No, I'm just kidding.

Well, you know, uh, you know, we have an ambassador in Liberia who has a, who's an economist.

Oh.

Try to solve it.

Let's try it.

Now, I'll talk to him.

See, sir, whatever you like.

You can talk to him and say it.

This is the governor not to say no.

The governor's command.

But put it tough.

It's a great opportunity.

It's a command.

And then if he comes in here, we want him to come in as a member of the council.

We want him to speed and write, you know, do all the things that he can do.

He's probably, from what you, I've heard of him, from what you say, he's probably the extrovert type.

He likes to get out and talk, and he does.

That's great.

Very effective.

That's fine.

And the International had appeals to me.

He said he could be very fine in the International field, where as Peterson got into an interesting discussion.

It ought to be repeated.

I told George Schultz later that Peterson should have asked for two hours rather than an hour and a half.

Second, he should not have rushed it so much.

Because we all, I mean, the men there, if you can't see the men, they need to talk a little about it as they go along.

They need to express themselves.

And we, like everybody, by the time he got through, you know, it was just a blur.

It was too much stuff.

I thought it was a break.

And he ought to do it again now.

I mean, Peterson has got some...

And you're slowing down a bit.

What do you think?

Oh, I agree.

Maybe limit the scope a little bit.

Yeah, there was so much there.

If he could cut that down to an hour's presentation, I'd like to see him do it with a group of leaders sometime.

That would be very cool.

I think the bipartisan leaders might like to hear it.

in this international balance of payments in this area is for us to concede that we're doing a far more complex thing than simply the U.S. is a bad boy.

Well, I don't know.

When you talk to someone, you might put a little bit of pressure.

You can say that the president's not going to

But that he was particularly interested in your international background and in the fact that you are in the West.

And that we feel very strongly that you're the first choice, you're the first man that's being called, that's being given absolute confidence.

And that we feel it's very important that you take this time.

He was elected in Harvard.

If it would be helpful here, friends, I could have him come back.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

If he's open, he should come back, and I'll talk to him.

If he's closed, I know you're suspending him, but if he wishes to consider it, he should come back, get the deal up, and so forth.

How much is that in the situation?

I think he's old enough.

He's about my age.

I don't think he's going to be a problem.

I don't need that.

You know, one other thing.

I hope that on the end of the council meeting about the California thing, I wish you would really concentrate on that California, Southern California climate thing.

They're really running a scary amount of dollars out there.

It's a part of the economy.

They're kind of a Pacific Northwest.

There's a damn need for people to just overgrow and overgrow.

But Southern California, there's nothing wrong with it that can't be cured.

It's an enormous expense.

If people want to live there, it's going to grow right out of them.

So there's 7% on our planet.

The facts are dropping down awful fast.

Once that goes, that'll affect our national numbers.

Our national numbers are being pulled all out because of the Southern California thing.

Don't you agree?

I agree.

See, 20 million people that live there.

25% of the workforce is in California.

So if you have 7.5% unemployment in California, wow, what do you expect?

You're right.

Let's see, that has 7% of the national rate right there.

Does it?

In fact, it was more than that.

You know, get a telephone, get passports, really.

All right.

Really, really the same.

All right.

Maybe we ought to think in terms of some kind of tax incentives for research and development in the private industry or something to try to mop up these things in the air.

I wonder if we could, unfortunately I don't know if we could get Wilbur Mills to open up any tax incentives and see if that's where we're going next year.

I think actually it's a good proposal to make somewhere.

If they could get them some hope.

That's right.

And put that in.

Put that in.

That's a good idea.

Have that run by the tax center engineers and science and so forth.

Science and engineering community will like it.

But let's think of something we could do also by executive order without having to go to the Congress.

Other than a tax bill.

I didn't think of something the tax way is a good way.

You can think of a way other than a tax bill that we can.

Figure anything we do to stress it.

I don't think Wilbur will pick up any tax reform this year.

But anyway, I want to do something about it because these people are terribly important to the future of this country.

Terribly important to the future of this country.

The unequivocally important has gone into tension with these people.

All right, $60,000, which you see there, they're leader types.

The leader types, after all, Paul, you know very well, that average guy that's unemployed, the first one, you can take the teenagers and the rest and make them full anyway.

But the average fellow that's unemployed, these two, so he's unemployed, he's not employed in six weeks, two months, or so far.

And so there's about a million and a half, two million.

It's bad off.

I mean, he's got unemployment insurance and he's got, you know, all these other things.

It isn't the hopeless kind of a thing that it used to be, right?

And that's why all this national...

The problem about the unemployed is that it's just wrong.

I mean, this country is pretty damn strong.

And you know, half, almost half of the people registered as unemployed this month will not be unemployed next month.

You know, that's the thing about it, that everybody listens and understands.

Almost half, almost half.

They're all provided with that word.

May I raise one other question?

Sure.

I've been meeting with a lot of businessmen over the last six months, especially in the Cummings department.

Oh, yeah.

Chicago, yeah.

Chicago, Nate Cummings.

Well, he lives in New York.

Oh, does he?

Yeah.

But he's from Chicago, right?

Yeah, Nate Cummings.

Nate Cummings.

I always thought he was from Chicago, but I'm wrong, I guess.

Well, he had companies in California.

There's a nation on him who works in the Midwest, or in Rich's Grove, or Crete.

Oh, my God.

He's got, you know, he's got a department in his department, you know, literally millions of dollars.

Yeah.

And I bring it up.

And incidentally, I assume there are other strong supporters.

I see that he's invited.

Do you want to do that?

That's great.

Yeah.

I know him, but I've never seen him around here.

In fact, I passed along to you a comment that he made after one of your addresses.

You wrote in a note.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

We'll put him down.

He'll be down.

He's got a great art collection.

Would he like to be on a special committee for the arts that were accepted in the hall?

I do.

I've got an address today.

That's right.

He gave me a number of names.

I'm going to take one out and put Nate Cummings on it.

I put Nate on it.

I think I'll put Ted Cummings on it, too.

He's in California.

He's one of the greatest functions in the world.

Which is amazing, you're going to say, huh?

Yes.

One of the themes that comes out of it, of course, they're obsessed with this labor cost problem.

I don't know what to think about all that.

I don't know what to think about construction.

All labor costs.

All labor.

They think what the hell do you do about labor costs?

I don't know.

Well, but there's another theme that comes out of here that I think we ought to do something about.

The business community does feel that they are shaped on versus with the rats.

There are people with a head of pollution equal to a lot of opportunity.

And this came through very clearly at this dinner that we had on Saturday night.

We had people like Gavin McBain and all the crowd.

Oh, he was?

All right.

Pollution.

Yeah.

And what was it?

Well, the anti-crush.

The anti-crush.

You mentioned another one.

The equal and one.

Oh, yes, I know.

And, incidentally, fortuitously, I have a word to argue with this, because I received a letter from the equal and one.

All right.

The point being that we have no evidence on our inspections.

It is.

It's too bad.

Well, I suppose in the same way they have no key to the intercom.

Why, for Christ's sakes, what the hell are they talking about?

I was glad to get it because it's got little key loops and what they're talking about.

But the business guy's going down.

And this letter, I would say, was a rather insolent letter, you know.

This point... Who's it from?

send it over and say this is the letter I referred to.

I'm sure it gets to me.

All right.

And I would suggest that maybe Dean Flanagan

Well, two or three of us sit down and see if there isn't some way we can defame him.

Well, the fellow, you remember, Connelly mentioned this in a meeting yesterday.

Yes, he did.

Maybe we ought to get him in on it.

To be honest, he feels very strongly about it.

He'd be superb.

There'd be P, McCracken, and Flanagan.

Is that enough?

Everybody else?

Well, that's enough to start with.

Another fellow that works with him quite often is Colson, and he's, you know, he asks for favors.

But I don't know that his, well, he would know what to do, that's the point.

He'd know, what about Sands?

There we are, Sands.

All right, I'll set up a task force.

We'll have Pete and Dad, they'll be there.

Pete and Dad, Pete Flanagan.

All right.

It's going to be a group, you see.

Flanagan, Connelly, Stans.

Yeah.

I mean, just throw Colston in, so that he can write it nice.

You see, his job is in sort of very nice letters, and I see that they're invited to the White House, and there's a hell of a lot of things like that we can do.

He wouldn't know anything about the substance.

But you need a little of that, too, you know?

Because by God, we are for the business community.

You know, I'm against these environmentalists, frankly.

I'm for cleaning up the environment, but I've always said, let's not make them a hooded boy.

Let me tell you, if they got a damn musty in there or Diddy Kennedy, they'd kill him.

Kill him.

They're such a zealous officer, you know?

Well, we're not harassing them, and I hope you always reassure them.

I offended them against the environment, I will say.

And I trust that's another way we're going to stop declaring them that screwing around.

An equal opportunity is tough, and that's just a... Well, those people are just ideologues.

This is the problem.

Jackie Butts, who's vice chairman of the Beijing Institute, was at the

Jack did the bus.

John did the bus.

It's a little D, you know, D-U-T-T-S. John did the bus.

He's vice chairman of AT&T.

This company has really gone out of its way, you know, to try to do things for the black population.

And now they have, they're being psychotized.

People are getting... Well, I'm going to get after this on the bench.

I'm going to stop this.

I'm going to stop it.

We're not making any points with the black pavilion.

So this is just not going to do it.

And there are ways to do this.

Well, I appreciate this.

Oh, I'm going to be here.

I'm going to sit here.

Sit here, please.

I must catch you for a greeting if I may, Alan.

It is what it is.

Yeah, I think so.

You've got retail sales looking back.

Yeah.

My guess is that they will rise about 1% from February to March.

Well, that's not much.

That's in the 12% range.

But I think from March to April, they're going to rise more.

And the spring is going to see that.

It's going to kill flowers.

Yeah.

One thing that he was involved here at the press conference is this.

There was a story with the Washington Post that McCracken was thinking of going back or something.

I, of course, I suppose it's on your calendar, I don't know, that I met him this morning.

You could say that the

the speculation about the chairman of this village council is completely erroneous, totally without foundation, that Chairman McCracken has, his policies have a complete confidence in the president.

Just lay it that way.

Okay.

Good luck.

Sometimes you gotta stand up and kick them in the teeth.

Alright, fine.

How's your friend up there who writes all those speeches that you said, you know, that I might probably, you know, remember you sent me copies of his speeches?

Yeah, I would like you to go out there, huh?

You go out there and keep talking.

Keep, keep, keep talking.

You're gonna win in the end.

Okay.

Right now.

Well.