On April 12, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Victor Lasky, Patricia (Pratt) Lasky, unknown person(s), and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:30 pm to 5:22 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 477-013 of the White House Tapes.
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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I'm sorry I was impressive.
I see it.
That's your girl, do I see it?
Yeah, yeah.
She's been with me, Connor.
Been with me for a long time.
As you may recall.
I don't know.
I just sort of hear something in your head.
Well, we've covered most of our people.
I've covered most people, yes.
And what I... You're doing administration.
Administration, yes.
What are you going to call it?
Man in the middle?
No, God forbid.
Let's all try that again, shall we?
No.
I'm going to die soon.
You know, I get this all the time, but there's one thing I want to point out, Mr. President.
I've written millions of words about you over the past 23 years.
Gosh.
And I mentioned 48.
Well, I guess I've done a lot of writing about you, and God willing, no harm has come to you.
Forty-eight.
Forty-eight.
Twenty-three years.
And some of them...
Some of them are 48.
Right, some are 48.
And...
I can't discuss the others because they were beyond my control.
Yeah, yeah.
August 3, 1948.
Right, right.
Good.
Now, I just want to very briefly outline what I'm trying to do.
I want to present a picture of a man who came into office, well trained, as you were,
ready for the job, as you were, facing extraordinary problems, up and down the line.
A lot of people have forgotten, it seems to me, that 1968 was a year in which the country seemed to be coming apart.
They have forgotten that.
It was coming apart.
I grant that.
It was coming apart in every way that you can say.
We had a Vietnam War that was going nowhere.
It was tearing the country apart.
We had a Middle East situation, which, as you pointed out, could have been an explosion.
We had an economic situation, which I don't know.
Through the roof, would you say?
Yes, through the roof.
We didn't do it yet, but everybody who looked at the economy then knew that it had to be turned around, that we would have had an explosion at the end.
we would have had an explosion that led to uncontrollable inflation and a very deep depression.
So we had it up and down the line and what I want to describe in this book as credibly as possible and as dramatically as possible, there have been dramatic moments that for some reason haven't gotten through.
As a matter of fact, the whole story hasn't gotten through, unfortunately, to be blunt about it, of how you face these crises.
That's what I want to put in book form.
We will be out January or February next year.
Hopefully, we will have an enormous paperback in the summer of next year, which will come just in time.
Well, you know what?
It will not be a campaign book.
I think people don't want that sort of thing.
There have been ups and downs in this administration, but as I see it, frankly, I think you've approached the problems.
I think you've hit them hard.
You've taken risks.
Vietnam is a good example.
The economy is an excellent example.
And as far as I can see, the thrust is upwards as of now.
People just now began to see it.
Not that we were all that prophetic either.
But we had to be, we had to have a lot of economic policies.
I had had a lot of confidence in those policies not to panic last December, November, December, and go the way of controls, which many advocated in the administration.
And they said, well, the inflation will never be slow.
The economy will never be growing until the people, until the business community is convinced that inflation is being slowed, etc., etc.
Well now, well, we shall always have inflation with us.
It has been slowed.
It has not been stopped.
It will not be stopped.
It has been so.
The economy is beginning to move upward, not as fast as some would like.
But on the other hand, we do not want an explosive rise
Any explosive rise in an economy leads to an explosion by that nation.
We want steady, and the whole watchword of this administration is steady, responsible, maintainable policy, policy of growth, policy toward peace, foreign policy, and the rest, avoiding the ups and downs of
of sudden shifts that made great headlines for the moment and great news for a month or two or three months or four months or five months that lead to the arms problems later on.
How much controversy or discussion with opposition views were expressed before you on the economy?
Oh, a great number.
I would say that, frankly, the majority of the cabinet was leaning toward wage and price controls.
I mean, even wage and price controls, in one form or another.
I resisted it for two reasons.
One, I had been an OPA, that was some of my experience.
I knew that wage and price controls, it was hard enough to make them work in overtime.
It was impossible for them to work in peacetime.
And I also believe, from my travels around the world, equation-price controls will cycle and shift the dynamism of the American free enterprise system, which is the greatest source of our strength for a million years ahead.
We have to realize now that we are now in a period, we've reached a period of nuclear, nuclear...
shall we say, equality.
So what is the greatest advantage the United States has as we enter the last century?
We must have an economic policy that will not be based off, where we don't have the body of the economy bloated by inflation, which gives us the impression of health, but which is really the prologue to a heart attack.
And on the other hand, an economy which avoided, where you have, and we inherited this bloated economy, avoided taking action which might, might block the bloating, but
take all the dry out of the patient for the rest of his life.
So what we've done is we've put this country on a diet.
It's not that it's never cost us a diet, but the diet has had its effect.
We've lost some weight.
We've shown sprinkles.
Our employment has gone higher than we would like.
The inflation hasn't come down as fast as we would like, but having taken an aesthetic as you go, sticking to our course lines, we now see an economy looking for the second half of 1970, which will be good, and in 1972, which will be very strong.
That's such a significant creation.
Mr. Nelly, the New York Times guys feel the same way.
I was talking to a lot of good friends.
Well, the financial guys.
Yes, they feel that, too.
Now, very quickly, when did you make the basic decision on Vietnam?
through Vietnamization and the troop withdrawal.
Vietnamization was always a nice theory that even was held by during Westmoreland days.
The difficulty was that
We got in.
It didn't get the thrust behind it that it needed.
And we have to realize that this is traditionally an American way.
It was, we had made, we made the sanctions in Vietnam.
We had made it before this thing.
And then we made it in Korea.
We said, remember we used to say the rocks won't flatten.
And so they said about the South Vietnamese, they can't act.
That's what they used to say.
And so we said, well, let's find out.
And so we, instead of just making the atomization a nice little theory, we're apparently going to audit them.
And we stretched them right to the end of the traces.
In other words, we always, in every announcement of withdrawal that I have made, has gone just, has gone somewhat beyond what our military
and some of the, in the first instance, the South Vietnamese wanted it.
Although they always agreed.
They always agreed because they, and they said, well, we'll come up to the market each time.
South Vietnamese have come up to the market.
Now, had we not set these high targets, we'd be way behind where we are.
But I made a decision, actually, ourselves.
We made it in the spring of 1969, after Laird returned from his trip to Vietnam.
And then, he made recommendations.
And then, if you recall, it was in June or July of that year that I met you at Midway.
At Midway, we announced the first 25,000.
Do you remember 25,000 or 25,000?
Yeah.
You can imagine, hey, he went through with this administration to get that money by an awesome trip.
I mean, the defense secretary, the military, the Duke, et cetera, et cetera.
Although, Duke, he was very good at it, very good.
He has always been a strong advocate of the administration.
He said, give us the arms, do a good job.
But I think the South Vietnamese have had more confidence in themselves than have the Americans.
The American military, just frankly, nobody else can quite do it as well as they can.
And they don't like it.
The difference is that we certainly cannot continue to do it that way.
And from then on, we've been on a steady course.
I never, while we had certain numbers in mind, I never tied down myself to do anything or allow the people in the Pentagon or out there to get tied down to any specific numbers.
I always kept it flexible, having in mind that the situation might change.
So we moved up to 25,000, then 40,000, then 50,000, then 150,000, then another 100,000.
I heard it the other day.
Do you think, as I see it now, the issue is... Let me put it this way to you, Mr. President.
The boys were lucky.
Well, I hope... Well, I don't mean you.
I mean, I've done it.
You can talk just about that.
Everything is practically all.
And, I mean, where is the establishment?
where is this establishment in the rest of time?
All out sniping, nipping, and so forth.
I understand them quite well.
I agree, but I just don't understand them, and that's another subject.
Well, they're afraid of Franklin.
Why is that?
That's for sure.
Oh, there are several reasons.
One, you see, is we're off the record.
Off the record, yeah.
They cannot bear the thought that they brought it all home.
And I really hate them when I said that.
They kind of bear the thought, too, that it was Kennedy that was involved in the murder of the M. It was Kennedy that was involved in Harris' partition of Laos.
And Kennedy sent the first 16,000 combat troops to Vietnam in the summer of 1917.
It all began, and that's when the Americans got involved with combat in Vietnam, 1963.
So you see, they can't blame it on Johnson.
They know that they started it all, see, without a murder of the enemy.
And without a lot of hoaching and trailing, without a murder of the enemy, we would not have had the disaster that you had there.
And, yeah, he talks about it in American history.
So the establishment has this problem here.
They, for eight years, leave us with no war, no men, and the only answer they had is get out and let it go down to two.
Get out and let it go down to two.
They didn't say what happened.
And they rejected our military.
They said it isn't going to hurt anything.
So what happens?
I said, no, we're not going to do that.
I put him on November 3rd.
I did him on again during the Cambodia thing.
I took him on again last week.
I said, no, we're going to stick the course.
So he looked up here and says, my God.
It's possible now that the war that we've got the nation into may be ended by the man that they... None of them supported, see?
I didn't have any other support.
They never want to see anybody succeed.
They didn't support me.
See, I am the only president.
See, I have her open to something.
I will run.
I am the only president this century that has come out of office without any support from the establishment of the syndicates.
Period.
Life says they support me.
I'm opposed to the networks, I'm opposed to the columns, I'm opposed to whatever else they tell me.
I don't care.
That's the way that it is.
That's it.
So really, knee down.
Just to talk to these people on this.
One, they don't want to see this president do it.
But second, there's something else involved.
They have no complex about their work.
They've got to know how they deal with things.
And I'd rather think that it's, you know, it's a terrible thing, but it's kind of like the Spanish Civil War.
I would not want to say that those were hierarchically empty.
I mean, I read the papers in those days, it's very much on the side of the hierarchical people.
You know, like most people, how could you do that?
But, looking back, you know,
At the present time, there's a strange, strange attitude here that maybe if the United States fails in Vietnam, then we will withdraw into ourselves and quit these foreign adventures and start leading them to gallows.
And of course, we're not a district, but we're going to take care of anybody who loses to Vietnam.
That's what they're going to realize.
You know, the Israelis know that.
That's why one of my strongest supporters would be even Mrs. Meyer, because they know it, and they are not the knockout groups.
I was over that, maybe.
I remember about the Libs.
The Libs here in Florida.
Some of your Libs here, liberals as we call them, they claim to be friends with you.
They let them move into it in one minute.
You know that.
It stopped already for the Fulbright State the other day.
Yes, it's amazing.
And he got away with it, by the way.
Imagine had you said something like that.
Mansfield?
No, Mansfield was the same way.
He was the greatest.
That brings up the Middle East itself.
When you came in, this is one of the great success stories as far as I'm concerned.
I don't believe that I may be wrong, I may be shooting now, but I know that no one really wants a war over there.
Let me tell you, along the Middle East, I cannot be sanguine about it in terms of negotiating the peace or opening the cow, but I can be reasonably confident in terms of avoiding the reopening of hostilities, because there just isn't anything headed for either side.
For the Israelis, they're just not going to be named.
There isn't after the ejections, or, may I say, the Russians.
Now the ejections aren't going to move unless the Russians want to move.
And there's where our Jordan policy came from.
It's like we did in Jordan.
See, everything falls under the beach.
What we did in Jordan would not have been successful.
If Cambodia were in the background, and what we did in Jordan, of course,
It's the word trust that I use to speak to them.
This is what it's about.
Far more than the far more than the future of those 417, they're nice even if they're not, they're nice even if they're not.
Far more than their future.
Or the Indonesians who will go, or the Thais that may go, or the Filipinos that will be traveling, or the Japanese that will wait.
What is really involved is what happens to trust for the United States of oil and what happens to the American spirit.
That really is on the line.
And people say, well, it really doesn't matter.
We get out of this war.
We just have a sigh of relief.
Everybody is safe.
Good riddance.
This nation's never lost before.
Watch.
You'll never lose.
The flag will be in the dirt, and people don't like to see the flag in the dirt.
Not even some of our...
Right, and also the main thing, Vic, we don't have to lose.
The future of the Pacific, and my view is involved there, but you can leave all that out.
Let's say the future of the Pacific is not involved.
Let's say it's only the future of the South, the other means, and nothing's been done, and so the hell with it now.
What's really involved is the future of America, the future of the Mideast.
to give you a, frankly, because if the American spirit comes out of this war wounded, then it will be for which it cannot recover.
then America will not continue to play the role that we have to play if we're going to have a peaceful world, or at least a very decent free world in years to come.
You know that in your mind.
Who the hell else is going to play the role?
The Germans, the Japanese.
They're number three and number four in economic power, but in escalated as far as military power.
Europe.
A couple others will play it.
The Russians and the Chinese.
There it is.
That's the world.
We wish it were different, don't we?
But it isn't now.
See, that's what we Americans, that's what your establishment friends don't want to face up to.
They don't want to face up to the fact that we live in a world where what happens here affects
the future not only of America, but of the whole world then.
So if we drop it, if we, if we bug out of Vietnam, we'll bug out of the world, basically.
As far as taking the world to a world power.
And that wouldn't be too bad.
We don't have to be a world power.
We didn't want to be a world power.
But on the other hand,
that it will be a very dangerous world and would be if the United States of America does not continue to play a strong, vigorous role, not just economically, but in terms of our military technology.
We're getting back to that Jordanian crisis, which I think is going to be one of the high points in the book.
You'll have to get most of that.
Yeah, well, I will.
I can tell you which one.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Well, I'll have to get it.
But I was over there at the time.
We were here all the time.
I know.
I was down at West Bank, and I got myself accredited to the Army.
The Israelis, I thought we'd be moving into Jordan.
It was my last fling as...
Were you on full nights?
Yes, yes.
I went to that...
I went to that kibbutz, by the way.
Where I was?
Gadot.
Gadot.
It's G-O-D-O-T. And I did the Liviori gods, and they were very pleased.
And I got a newspaper clipping in Hebrew, which I can't read.
Right, right.
But... Or you can.
Well, someday they'll take over the world.
Anyway, I was there at that time, and...
And so now he gives us touch and go.
Touch and go.
He's a tough guy.
Let me tell you, the presence of those that you're in with, those heights.
That's right.
Would work on the injuries.
Yeah.
The injuries and the heights and the bleed out there.
So here's what the theory is.
And, because I break away from the other aliens, they handle themselves with my ghosts and snap me.
I got with them.
Well, they came true.
Well, it could have been a confrontation, couldn't it?
Well, of course.
What would have happened if the Libyans had moved in, you know, and knocked over the church, and if there had been a temptation to knock over the church and the government, the Israelis could not tolerate that.
They would have had to move in.
And if the Israelis had moved, the Egyptians would have thought they had had to move in.
So what happens then?
Russians and us.
And we and the Russians then get together
Well, as a matter of fact, you were highly praised by the chief of the Israeli intelligence at that time.
I had dinner before I left with him and his people thought you'd handle it magnificently and kept the whole thing down.
But they were, as I gathered, fully prepared to go in.
And it's a problem to hold those guys back.
if any of us were early candidates.
Well, the point is tomorrow.
That's why they are better advised to make their deal now.
I think so.
They have the internal situation.
You know, one of the problems they face, which is interesting politically,
they don't know who will be a successor, whether it will be you or someone else.
And as they put it very bluntly, they don't know who's going to be the big chief in Washington, or whether they can trust a man who, for example, is willing to bug out of American commitments elsewhere, which is a problem I wish some of our liberal friends would understand.
Well, they say it.
They say it.
I don't know if they say it publicly, but they say it privately.
Now...
Well, that's right, or they may be.
Even though we have no treaty, the rest of it is, shall we say, a certain position.
We have no treaty to give them.
I know we have.
I'm just curious.
I happen to think that Dr. Kissinger is one of the best guys around.
I admire him greatly, and I've written about him and so on in a column, and what a great guy he is and so on.
I mean, as a person, not as a playboy or anything, as a man, as an advisor or whatever you call him, how did you discover him?
Well, I do love him, of course.
I never met him, but I do love him through his book, you know, one of his books.
And those are, you know, interesting.
I can't remember the name of it.
I'll get back to it.
But then what happened is that with the campaign, the, from time to, in the last couple weeks of the campaign, three or four weeks of the campaign, he's just sent a couple of memorandums through John Mitchell, you know, on the enemy situation.
I don't know if they're any good.
So after the campaign, I called him in to thank him.
You know, of course, that he had made, he was, quote, anti-Nixon during the Rockefeller period.
Which is very interesting.
Well, I was, he happens to be one of the more fascinating guys around, and I was just curious how that thing developed.
And then checking the log, I did notice he came in, oh, just after the election, over to PF.
In that PF period, were you mainly concerned with getting staff?
Yes, yes.
That was the first thing we did.
We had staff people who wasn't a kid.
And Kevin, too, of course.
We were getting staff and Kevin.
That was practically all of them.
Yes.
And what about, and then you assigned task forces and so on.
Were they valuable to you, the task force reports?
Yes.
Arthur Burns was the main one on that.
Arthur, before he became head of the Fed, said, gee, we've got to get the program going.
You know what I mean?
Because he remembered the ISAR administration.
We didn't have a program in the first year.
We got one in the second year.
So Arthur set up the task forces.
They were extremely valuable in getting our lead going on some things.
And of course, Arthur continued.
He was our follow-up.
Our follow-up.
And also, Steve told us that all the touches I made in the campaign were followed up on.
He kept bugging us on most things.
And all the domestic field, he was our primary.
That was before we had the domestic council.
But that's why we, of course, I had one hand then on this.
This was planning for the future of the...
The Earth Affairs Council.
But Arthur Burns was the guy who had followed up on some of the areas of that kind of case.
And that eventually became Alecman's province.
Yeah, then what happened is we took Moynihan, Moynihan Council, the Economic Council, various councils, put it all into the Domestic Council.
We all have it there.
It has to be.
And that's very, now we have three.
We've got the Domestic Council, which handles all that.
We've got the National Security Council, which in Russia, and now we have the International Economic Council.
which is obviously in Peterson, which is extremely important, extremely important in terms of looking ahead.
At this time, we have a period of military balance.
What happens economically to the United States?
The continued vitality and growth of the U.S. economy and its ability to compete in the world will determine whether the United States remains the first power in the world.
That's one of the reasons why I fought so hard for SST.
Let's see how the environment works, I suppose.
But when a great nation, I have two reasons.
One, a great nation
ceases or draws back from exploring a new world or the unknown, whatever the case might be, then
its time for greatness is marked, it's limited.
That's the history of nations.
It's nations that turn into, and I'm not speaking of conquest, I'm not speaking of military conquest, but in exploration, whether it's in science or going to the new worlds, Europe, Europe, and when they turn into it, that nations tend then to consume themselves
their own selfishness.
So whether it's SST or space or my very strong support of scientific research
And now this new Christian and Canadian economic policy.
I want the United States to continue to look outward.
We must look outward.
Not because we want to dominate the world, but because... De Gaulle put it very well when he said, France is only her true self when she is engaged in a great enterprise.
And, uh, we think of that, too many people, too often, in terms of something like war.
Uh, war is not what I think of.
I reject that in this period, in history, world history.
But, uh, but, uh,
America must continue to be engaged in great enterprise.
Now, there can be great enterprises at home cleaning up the air, up the water, raising our standard of living, seeing that the minorities have a better chance at better education, better health.
All these are great enterprises, it's true.
But also, but those enterprises are devoted to satisfy our own maturity needs, our own needs.
We cannot, America is a world war because of who we are, where we came from, and where we are.
And America, therefore, should play a banal role in the world, a dynamic role in the world.
Not simply to help other Asians, but to help ourselves.
Because once we cease to play there, once we cease to compete with the other great nations, once we cease, and that's why I'm bringing up a very liberal trade policy.
I don't want states to build huge barriers around themselves and just let them in.
I want us to compete with the rest of the world.
I want us to be more productive.
I want us to be, you see, that's the vision of the kind of America we want.
You know, when the United States says, ah, quit,
that equipment would worry about man on the moon and start worrying about man on Earth?
My answer is worry about both.
You say, don't build the SST.
My question is, is somebody else going to do it?
And it isn't that I'm saying to worry about somebody else being number one.
We want people doing everything.
But if there's going to be a new breakthrough in transportation, the United States,
should be leading that where we've always been first, rather than waking up five, ten years from now finding that our claims are absolutely not true.
Do you have any other discouraging episodes of the SST going down a drain?
Oh, well, the infinity.
Most people will remember the two judges that were turned down.
Those were not discouraged.
I, as a political realist, knew that if it was the Democratic House and Senate, that we'd be lucky to get an integer.
And frankly, we've done rather well.
We trust that we're going to be able to get our welfare reform and our revenue share in the whole of the park and maybe even in the government reorganization.
Possibly something can happen.
But if we can get some of those three, maybe the six schools, I said four, the State of the Union, we've done a major achievement in this Congress.
But in terms of discipline, the Senate turns down that appointees.
It's just part of the game.
Now, all you do is fight harder for the next one.
I'm searching for Arthur Bill Jansen.
Yes, our good friend, Bill.
Well, and you've got a little better guy now because he...
Well, I didn't understand the argument.
You got how he made his billion a year.
Well, that's part of it.
No, there is a plan, for example.
You would like to have had to stop the Inflation Center.
You would like to have stopped it, but I don't have any increase on it right now.
If you'd like to, for example, stop the Vietnam War the day after you came in.
We couldn't.
But it was the wrong way.
And it would have brought something worse later.
These are disappointments.
We would have liked to have made more progress in our relationship with the Soviets.
When will your book close?
Probably late fall.
You have that much time?
Yeah.
Good.
I'll, uh, I'm gonna try it.
I'll be able to move.
Well, not anything.
What may happen, I have no idea.
Something might.
Yeah.
And if it does, you may have another chapter.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
Well, we'll see.
Watch the Chinese.
Yeah.
It's something now.
That was my machine.
That was not the State Department.
That was not under the objection of the State Department.
Why is that?
You know, they just...
Hey, there's some silly argument about that.
I'm just trying to get back to the state of it.
I'm trying to get to the chief.
I'm trying to call somebody.
14 months ago, 18 months ago, I changed the policy.
I did it for very practical reasons, because I spoke with them.
We've got to, but I looked at the facts.
I found the great Soviet broadcasts and newspapers, the Chinese broadcasts and newspapers.
For the Soviet, China was enemy number one.
For China, Soviet government was enemy number one.
We were number two in the whole case.
So what do you do now?
You've got to realize that if you are going to avoid an impossible situation, a terribly dangerous situation, a communist China with busy people, completely isolated,
The Soviet isn't going to be able to encourage that.
Maybe we have to.
Now you can't do it immediately.
This is the time.
And if you tried it, maybe it wouldn't work, per se.
So a little bit of trade, travel, you know, these little quick-suite announcements were made, and the purpose was to sort of show that the door was open, not for recognition in addition to the UN.
That is, this is not China.
But, because we have our connection to Thailand, we will keep it.
But on the other hand, if we look at the world, and I intend to look ahead 25 years rather than 5 or 2, if we look at the world 25 years from now, I want to be sure that I have done everything that I can to make the world safer then.
Save then and not just now.
And we're 25 years from the Communist China, sitting out there with the Soviet Union and the United States.
I said, we're in a terribly dangerous world.
So we're going to do the job, fight it and save the people.
Well, they're cramming all of us into the state, but they make the Russians mad, too.
Here at State, the predictions say, look, they didn't want to recognize China years ago.
But now, the Russians, you see, were selected in China, stayed at Boston because they wanted to make the Russians mad.
So I said, now look, we're not doing this to make the Russians mad.
We're doing it because we want good relations with both, or as good as we can have.
So I did it over State's objections.
Every move that I made on China has been my own.
State of Texas.
That is fascinating.
Well, it's very funny because, curiously enough, I was happy when it brought in the ping-pong players.
For a lot of reasons.
I know what would get the Russians, so I don't give a damn.
You see, their concern is that they want to become so weak.
But you see, my view is the way to get it is not to...
I could just do everything they want.
You see my flag?
Are you getting any of that?
Yeah, are you getting flak from Taiwan?
I talked to the foreigners today when you left.
Yes, but they know that I...
I want to keep it open.
Let me put it this way, Mr. President.
Number one,
There'll be nothing in his book that will be embarrassing to you.
That's number two.
Number two, whenever you feel like, whenever you feel like, if you have any, get any ideas in the next few weeks, next few months,
Send them along.
I'll put it in a book.
In many ways, it's completely unofficial.
I'm fully responsible.
But I think it might be a valuable weapon.
I think the book might be.
Now, let me ask you one other question about young people.
Has this been a major problem for you?
Yeah, and understandably.
I mean, basically, the young people are, frankly, it's a problem for the inherited.
That's right.
It's a problem for the inherited.
Look, the young people, they're turned off not just for the war, they're turned off of the system.
They're turned off of the fact that their professors and, frankly, just the high school students, their teachers, have been turned off, too, you see.
And so they look at these systems, and so it's the war, it's the ecology, and everything else.
And they say, ah, gee.
And it's another.
It's an indication of the fact that this is just us.
It's around the world.
Young people in every industrial country are turned off.
I would say, what is going to change them?
No speeches to young people.
No rap sessions to young people.
I rap.
I talk to them.
I will talk to them.
I've been to universities and so forth and so on, as you know.
And they like to hear that.
What will change them?
Our plan is frankly success.
If we succeed in ending the war, if we succeed in showing that this economy still is a pretty good thing.
And also, also as they realize as time goes on that this isn't too bad a time.
That's part of the problem.
If only they could move around.
If only they could know, good God, I've been there every time in the world, except on this channel, virtually every time.
And, uh, you know what the other place you ever lived?
Or that you'd rather be born?
whether you were black, white, anything, huh?
Agreed?
I agree.
That's the point.
Now look, that's old hat stuff these days.
It is, but you know, they don't buy it.
They don't buy it, and I don't try to sell them.
But my point is, once the war problem is back at them, and they're not worried about a draft, and they can't yell peace now, and once they say, well, we've got to call you back, you realize what it forces them to do?
It forces them to do something their teachers have done around the greatest service to them.
It forces them then to turn to themselves and say, now wait.
It was the war that was to go on.
It was the dirty air, the dirty water.
It's the system.
And so we handle these problems.
And then it always gets back on them that way.
The problem of the spirit, the individual spirit.
That's all.
And it is going to be solved only by that.
It isn't going to be solved by preaching to them.
It isn't going to be solved by patriotic speeches.
It isn't going to be solved by dialogue.
It will be solved only as excuses.
Excuses for being against the system are withdrawn.
And then finally the individual has to look in that mirror one day and says, gee, maybe I ought to look.
Maybe the fault is, you know, it's a, that's what they never hear in their schools.
You solve their lines, follow what you want.
How does the political thing look to you now, Mr. Cliff?
I think that the Laotian thing had one beneficial look.
The greatest mistake in American politics is to strike a kid without killing him.
And also by, in this case, by striking two women.
And what they did, they talked about it,
That's this year's issue.
And they all, they all bail out.
I mean, Muskie's even endorsed this, these demonstrations.
All right.
They're all, they're all taking this on.
Now, they didn't have to.
If I had been giving advice politically, I would have said, look, boys, you've got this guy right where you're on, because if he fails, you can blame him.
But if he succeeds, and you have criticized him, you don't blame you.
See?
That's the position they're now in.
They took a risk they didn't have to take.
The other issue is the economic issue.
They didn't want to leave them on extra heat.
So I think as I look at it, I am not concerned about the president leaving.
Even in the year itself, it's not the issues of the spring, not the ones of the fall.
This is the spring of 71.
My next fall.
But they're out there.
They're running crazy.
They're out there.
They're all out screaming about the war.
They're screaming about getting out.
They're screaming about... And there's also something a little bit irresponsible about that.
Let's suppose we do a couple of things.
Well, it's my lawyer.
It's my law firm.
I just wanted to say...
Well, the other one that I heard that he's
Teddy, of course, he's not coming up hard.
Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, Hubert,
I don't know, maybe let me say that I appreciated your comments, right, because you had a lot of guts.
But you're going to prove me right.
I can prove you right.
You know, it's a funny thing about the war is that apparently you have a moment at home where they'll give us another issue.
But, you know, like when I went home last week, I brought my stack, not a lot, three or four, not a lot of stuff, just in your home.
Because they were worried.
I remember the Senator and all that.
And they said, in fact, they were from, or they said, well, there's less than one.
I know that.
Hell, everybody's trying to remember.
Do you ever read Carl Sandburg?
The darkest month of the Civil War, you know, was August of 1964.
And in September, it was all virtually over because of General Mark Stewart George.
That was the time.
My point is that right at the present time,
Everybody's worried about the damn thing.
I said, Roger should have come too, but they, they said he gotta announce a bigger withdrawal and the rest of it.
I said, that's all of it.
We're not gonna come all this way and just throw it out with an announcement.
So we just stick it in there and turn it.
And you know, it, it, it, even though our other side of the case is, I think they got a little respect for this, standing up to him.
Well, you stood up to them and announced how you saw them as the president.
The truth of the matter is, it's the only thing you can tell me.
being an honest book itself, an honest sort of country, you can't let these crushers and capitalists and all of this.
They would love to eat this.
Buckle tool?
Oh, and look, I'm sure that if you want to have it, I'm sure if you went on a food tube right now, I said, I'm taking that one.
Get everybody home.
No more.
We're out of the world.
Everybody will cheer you, and you lose next year.
All right.
Oh, yeah.
Here you go.
A little drink.
You got something like that?
Drink?
No.
You got this.
You don't play golf, do you?
Thank you.
That's important.
You don't get any.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You don't play golf?
Well, I know someone who does.
Thank you.
Well, I'll give you something else.
Thank you.
Those will be worth a great deal of money if you save them 50 years.
I won't be here until you get this done.
There you go.
Five minutes.
White knows where I am.
Just hold it.
Just be here in case he stops.
Okay.
I'll get him a hand.