On April 26, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Manolo Sanchez, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 489-011 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
That's fine.
That's fine.
That's fine.
That's fine.
That's fine.
That's fine.
That's fine.
I know they were concerned about just not letting it deteriorate.
Actually, it seems to me that that's a fear we probably didn't have enough.
I thought that the farm bill was a problem, but
I don't think that here, that all the assholes I see, why we haven't seen Roger Fleming for two years is rather strange, isn't it?
Yeah.
I mean, after all, he is cantankerous and difficult, but he feels he's a Nixon man.
He's very conservative.
So, God damn it, Quaker, or whoever's in charge here, had a man here.
Quaker probably urged him.
Did you ever recall asking Quaker?
No, no, that I don't think so.
and concern with the Farm Bureau on their own.
We should know that I think overall we've not done well in our move to bring them in and try to get them involved in all of this.
Well, it's whatever had it adequate to do this one, I think.
I mean, I know he is in the environment field, but, you see, the guy should have kind of worked on this.
Maybe this requires some more bolding.
John thinks he is.
But I think he's smart.
I just don't know.
Maybe...
I don't get it, they don't specify, they're just, they want to specify, they're not setting them on regional, but only in the regional part, only because we have so far exercised it, but not for any rational reason, this is funny, and they haven't been saying anything at all for the last fall.
They don't specify, but many things are, so probably many things are departmentalized.
I think part of the problem really is that the control is going to be hard to relate to farmers.
I think that's it.
He does not know what he's doing.
That's right.
Maybe they can suggest something.
It's not the police.
No, it's not the police.
It's part of the report.
We've got to get it solved in the next few months.
It's food agriculture.
They all need to be there, a couple professors or what.
Farmers coming, do they want it?
Is it a good idea, not a good idea?
How is it coming?
Is it supposed to be coming well?
Is it supposed to, supposed Farm Bureau do want it to?
I don't know.
I can't imagine that they're not, but they're missing it.
Again, they're missing out on that.
Part of the farm community, the left-wingers.
Too far in their direction and not enough with our friends.
The Farm Bureau patients tend to be more our friends than us farmers do.
It's not the truth, farmers, you know what I mean.
And then, the chance to meet everybody at the Bureau, it was terrible.
We could lose them a game or another, we could lose them more than we could.
Like a whole bunch of the giveawayers.
The food stamps, I want to go eat.
Your friends are your friends because they basically believe the way you believe.
believe in the stuff the farm union believes in.
Basically, you don't really even believe in the farm dealers.
But no one's going to get closer to the farm dealers than the farm union basically.
We can't get it true.
You know what they're for.
They're for getting rid of all the old county in the world.
And they're right.
But the problem is that it is totally unfeasible.
It can't be done.
And the Congress will never do it.
The economy's going to stand it.
It's going to be hell and hell if we can't do it.
I don't know how they'll end this meeting.
I don't know.
Really, if you could see that they don't put a crew so that I get 18 men around on it, because two of them change their minds.
I get Donald Cruz, that chef.
I get paid promotion.
Whatever you can do for him, I don't know what they can do.
He is so good.
Back to, you know, I mean, he's down.
He's all right.
He's a chief already.
You know, he's so good that I should keep him in the Navy.
But I just think he ought to be rewarded for what he's done.
Well, I think the problem is that then you've got the doses that are over or something.
He's a great, he's a good chef.
Such good chefs are so temperamental and such good leaders.
I want to keep him on our team too, which is what I'd like for you to do.
I was noticing some very nice slices they had at Camp David and so forth.
I want to be sure that for our personal purposes that we purchase some of those, you know.
I think that what I meant is we should have a set of those and others just put away.
Did you see what was done with regard to any follow-up on Elvis Prescott?
As you know, independently.
I wonder who's keeping the budget.
For example, maybe you give this to Colson.
I noticed he was on the cover of Laker Live this week.
It's disgusting.
You gave it to us.
You gave it to Frank Sinatra.
There's only two people who have been here to make any record.
It's two people.
You sell two of these copies of every record, every time they make one.
This is not real.
This is our bank.
And every movie they make is the same.
I must have heard what the hell it is that they have in the office.
They're stocking us with energy attire, which is making our pejoratives.
I can't stand it.
It's a healthy spot.
We've got it sorted.
Regarding my little project about having the cabinet take on people,
Maybe it wasn't the way they used to start each other in on the pipeline.
One thing in my check to see what Rami did yesterday, they said he spoke on a regular basis.
He had a pitch against it.
I'd like to know what he did do in terms of it.
Somebody can check that speech to see, shall we?
If he did do anything in terms of the economy approach.
That's good.
I don't have any problem with that.
The reason I get after this is because it's something Connelly never fails to mention, and he probably may have mentioned to you too, doesn't he?
Yep.
The cabinet has got to catch the money.
So he said, we've got to, we've got to, we've got to, that's the only way they're going to do it.
There's no other way about it.
Well, kicking him doesn't make any sense.
Most of them want to do what's going to be effective.
Sure.
I wonder if you would discuss the genre when I saw those two.
Romney was fine.
His hands came, and he started this conversation by saying, it's been five months since I've been in a group.
It's less of a problem.
So I think, perfect.
And I worked around and around on this.
I see all the others.
I mean, Ricketts isn't complaining.
Hodges isn't complaining.
Mitchell isn't complaining.
Connell isn't complaining.
Clare isn't.
Rogers isn't.
It's not about it.
It may be hard.
It's so hard.
You've got to go in and out.
Because they have special, really sad sex.
And the other sex would be Mitchell, Rogers, .
Because I want them.
I do feel that we don't like that .
I don't think they take them.
These guys, well, you all have to get the first year off of being a Latino family.
You've got to see the other guys.
You've got to have a heart to deal with people like that.
You know, he's been the great one to greet his kind people with respect.
Holding his eyes.
It's surprising, except that John would go back and forth with him.
Because he goes through it with him all the time.
Yeah, except that he would go that far with you, you know, come in.
Sorry about that.
He just, he never seems to be amazed by both these sort of crassness or something.
He just doesn't have much of a touch.
He's crazy.
He says, you know, what it really is to me is he was so anxious.
He knows, really.
He put it right in there.
He wants to really say that.
He said, I feel I'm not a member of the first team.
Well, of course you are a member of the first team.
I'm sure you do.
You know what I mean?
When John went through this incredible exercise where he thought you ought to keep all the cabin officers in their level one positions after the realization of all the other cadet ministers, well, for the sake of Jesus Christ, we're sure to hope for everything.
We'll share.
Maybe we do have a problem in this case, which does, I want you to talk to John about it.
They tell me he makes all the speech and goes around arresting.
It's got certainly more emotion and pizzazz and all that than the other guys did.
It's all credit for what they got from him.
But, uh, apparently you have to make some opinions on that.
I don't want to have the feeling that if old Haney's man's been pressing or something, apparently we didn't put them off or Stan's asked he got in.
He was particularly complaining.
I think he was just trying to set himself up to force you to listen to that whole thing.
Sure.
And he had that a lot harder to go through.
Why don't you read, uh, how do you, what does he make the next step?
A guy really, does Bryce know him that well?
It's a guy really that brought him in as far as I know.
I think Jimmy Bryce brought him in as far as I know.
The third of days, Bryce just talked to my wife.
I just didn't call her and talk to her.
And I'm hard, hard to talk to.
You got to know whatever things she did mention to him.
Is that right?
Yeah, whatever.
And if any friends and co-writers of Bryce have raised it, also.
Thank you.
All of this, uh...
We got to have Bryson at this meeting with Mark Barrow.
And he was there, and we got to deal with it.
Let's have Bryson ask him to sit in with us.
The press is probably going to die.
See, they have those songs where they run a little American, all that love American flag.
Oh, I guess.
That's great.
That's what they did on their tour.
That's what they're going to do.
They're going to go to Europe.
Well, they haven't left yet.
Oh, my God.
That's just fine.
Damn right.
It's a carnage that could be straight out of Ohio.
We got to Ohio's high schools and I sat there.
I'll tell you that that's the way most kids around didn't feel.
I thought it was the majority.
Probably more than that.
I don't know.
I don't know.
We don't know for certain.
We've served in a lot of prisons, drugs, all the hell.
It's more than that.
Most of them are that way.
Don't you think?
Yes.
I never believed in front of me solving a problem.
Now, they ask me about it, I'll take it in my own way.
Now, they won't press three or four.
I use it again.
That's another thing.
You get a good example, use it twice.
Tell a story.
You would have seen, if I had just read that text, the speaker would have been fine.
But it would not have had a moment, it wouldn't have moved without that audience.
Do you agree?
Yes, we agree.
What I've asked Ray to do is take the text as delivered.
Go through and cross off the entire written text.
And then look at what's left.
All of the parts that you put in.
And see the point of how much
That ad was a very good speech to be in, but was not, didn't have the that has me put this example in.
The answer to that is the writing press just deplores it.
They don't want it.
On the other hand, we were playing our audience here, Bob, just as I was playing the VARs and just as I was playing those governors, you know what I mean?
And God damn it, we had gotten to sing into that.
Well, that Rio Grande story is a damn good story.
And anyway, the point is, let's face it,
uh, the, uh, this work using MTV in the first time.
It made the, uh, well, I'm afraid I've gone too, too far, but, uh, but anyway, I, uh, that kind of story, and they're not meant in any fashion, I mean, god, that's why I want Moore and these other people to sit around and say, think him up, think him up, think him up.
Moore is great at it.
He's the best.
He really thinks in terms of stories and anecdotes.
It isn't smooth if you do it that way, you know what I mean?
You've got a tall story and you have to, you know, make something up in the spur of the moment and think of something you haven't thought of yet and you give up and put it in place and all that sort of thing.
And of course, what the press will quote will not be that.
It will quote this.
The things you mentioned, you know, places where everything's free, there's no freedom.
They won't get around that.
What I had is, what does the platform do?
Again, restate your opposition to the guaranteed annual wage to the tiers of the Chamber of Commerce, which I did very well.
I'm trying to gain their support for welfare reform.
Thanks.
I thought it was great.
I don't care.
I said, what do you want her to do, kill him?
You know, it's like they, like the first draft they presented to me in the DAI, they wanted me to quote that horrible thing Roosevelt said, we are all sons of descendants of eminence and revolutions, you know, practically broken by silence.
And why do we do that?
What in the name of God do we care ourselves like that?
It's where we pander to.
What the hell do you think Humphrey must be interested in when they go talk to a laborer?
Do they tell them, look, as Paul says, we're free enterprise?
No, they tell them, we're free.
The difference is that then they go to free enterprise, you don't say we're for free enterprise.
That's right.
They do both.
That's right.
They play both.
They pander to both.
And they expect me to be up there, and we're not, so we don't play this letter for them.
They say that this, and also it just happens to, this happens to what I believe.
That's the other point.
I'm, uh, I think we're, I really believe it would be different kind of thing.
I believe these things.
I believe these things.
The rain started off just like the governor said.
In fact, I mean, anyway, she did,
The sad thing about it is that it's so unusual as to be a good story.
You have all these little kids who are paid more by the foundation and by this and that and the other thing and so forth.
Or the merchants.
Not these merchants, no.
They have the kids coming around, having a handshake and cribbing for a trip to some sort of store.
That's a copy of Texas.
That's a hell of a story.
Today, it was good the way you just dropped in the Mexican-American thing.
You didn't say it, but again, you're kind of going all of a sudden, most of the time, some of our nation.
We had a hell of a, it is the well-earned part.
Sure.
But here's some people who want to work.
And about three.
I'm sorry for these poor little Mexicans.
I have a question.
Those kids in high school class had written a pathetic letter to the
Ford Foundation or something.
They would have sent him $1,000, put him in the Hilton Hotel, and got here and sent him by airplane to Harvard.
That's right.
He'll have a dinner at the Reed Coast or some damn thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's true.
He won't be there when we leave in a couple weeks.
It'll be at least the end of the journey on the way back, I think.
Do you want to try and do something?
But we're down there, so I thought I was about to find something that's just goddamn hard to get hints about and scout it for.
He's always afraid of somebody who's going to suggest that we take away the policy change.
Of course they are.
What he's got right now is Scali's going to suggest it anyway.
He's a hell of a lot better off suggesting it to Henry and talking it over than he is suggesting it to someone else.
Of course they are.
Try it out.
Maybe Scali has thought of something that we haven't thought of.
You know what I mean?
What Henry is, I told him, I said, look, Henry, it's all cosmetics.
They're great, too.
Don Hughes, I think.
He's worked with Wise.
Don's wonderful.
But we didn't get any publicity on the third week.
Who did it?
If you do this, why don't you get down and close to them and say, now, what are you going to do?
If you've got your eyes, you know, this, you know, like, thank heaven he's strong.
You know, he's like a rock.
You've got to be like a rock.
The difficulty is that it's all the way in terms of how to present something.
The last bastion of resistance has fallen in the court.
He, talking to him this morning, he was the one who, the only one really who was opposed to having press conference at all.
And he said, he thought about it yesterday, and part of it would depend on how you went at
the moratorium business or the demonstrators.
And I know what Ron, you know, what Ryan Ron had to say.
Well, that's absolutely perfect.
He said the key is where do I get to do this?
How great of a way does he want to play it?
He wants to take a very fine line where you in no way can be quoted as crazy, but where you don't take them on.
And the point of saying we're both for peace
My job is to bring about these, you know, in other words, turn it around to the back of the substance reiteration old line, which they'll get tired of playing anyway, but a lasting piece is what we're concerned with.
Their interest is to end this war.
Your interest is to end all war.
And they're against this war.
I'm against all wars.
Which is why you're trying to end this one in a way that we don't have others.
And in fact, the great line of that you're working at the tough decisions that have to be made to make sure that the teenagers who were here demonstrating over the weekend won't have to go fight in the middle.
But that's, he said to do that, then it's fine.
The hesitation that he had on doing the press conference was that it might build up the adherence of relating to the events.
That's basically the same hesitation that Roger said, which he might be appearing to react to the marchers.
That's the case now.
And he's looking at it and saying, that's what you're going to think on Saturday afternoon while they're marching.
I don't think you're going to think that on Thursday, when the march is five days past, and there's another one coming, and people aren't all that involved in the marches.
They knew it would happen.
It's done.
It's going to be smart.
He says, if you don't build up the demonstrators, if you don't make a question on that, you take a positive line, that he would vote for the press conference.
He doesn't feel it's overexposure.
He'd never vote if there was an overexposure question.
He only thought it might look like a reaction.
He raised the point, which we talked a little about yesterday, which Scali also pushes for, which is going for 10 o'clock instead of 9 o'clock on the basis that it doesn't seem like it's hitting right into prime time so much, and yet you get virtually the same audience.
The argument against it is that you cut into a movie, but it's something we may...
The advantage of 9 is that you don't cut a movie.
Movies start at 9.
No, no, they're over 11.
But if you start at 9, then they just start the movie a half hour later.
If you start at 9.30, the movie's been running for a half hour, and they have to stop the movie and turn on you and then go back to the movie afterwards, which is much more disruptive than just coming in before the movie starts.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's a good hour for the West Coast, which is going to be, I don't know, 7 or 7.6.
And he's used to staying up.
I like 10 better for watching the movies.
I sure think we've got a problem cutting into the movie, which is what's getting at least, the movie will normally have at least a third of the audience.
Yeah, I agree.
I don't want to have to move you.
Let's think of that only as kind of a list of things that we missed there and the rest.
Let's see whether this week's stuff gets much of a play.
I don't think that, you know, the activity this week is going to get that much mileage.
You know, the press won't play it up because it'll probably be more, bigger come March.
Well, next week they won't be able to ignore it.
Okay.
No, I don't think so.
If you start stopping all the traffic coming in here.
Tecush was telling me that this traffic thing was starting.
He said he was coming in from Siouxland Parkway near Andrews, I guess.
So there were two cars driving side by side and going about five miles an hour just to block the, you know, just slow down the traffic.
And they were all just jammed up behind them.
There was nothing they could do.
He said finally the Parkway Police came and pulled both of them over to the side and presented the rest to him.
I think it's ideal to do it in between.
There are a lot of names left to consider.
I mean, that is a possibility.
You've got to do something this week.
I mean, at least you can.
Of course, I've got to do something.
I want to do something.
But no, because nobody wants to.
I guess some sort of feel the way...
That's possible.
Yeah, well, I think everybody is in favor of nine.
And the Scali was the only one really.
He's for nine also, but he says it's a very close draw.
He doesn't favor it strongly over the other.
He does favor it slightly.
TV rather than non-TV.
He figures it's really a question of television or not television.
Yeah.
And he figures television.
Well, television, they can't put a man on.
Yeah.
Television can't put a man on.
I don't think so.
I think it does even if you also have somewhere in the intervening grid an announcement of a TV thing like your, the announcement.
It ought to be a couple weeks apart unless there's something really compelling in your national, in your preemptive TV.
It's one that really grabs a hold.
I know that if you do a press conference this week and then you get this whole thing next week, I think you ought to go on with it.
If it's something you want to attempt, if it's good enough to go on and publish.
To be honest with you, I wouldn't see any, just go on and something that covers news now.
Because the news that you're saying isn't going to add that much more to it.
That one in and of itself carries the story of China.
This is something that I need to get up there and say.
It's like the China thing.
They don't say that.
They're going to say something else.
They will misinterpret anything you do to suit their purpose.
They'll say you're doing the Marine thing probably to distract attention from the demonstrations or something.
And they'll say this.
You're doing the agriculture, eh, because you're trying to mend your political fences with the farmers.
I think we're just doing the 9 o'clock.
Two hours.
.
Yes, word on that.
The range down there, we had heard about, too, that, let's say, you couldn't get across.
We're not trying in these press conferences or anything.
They can't just assume that every time you say you've got a top, that you've got a rear.
The hell with it.
They differ.
In fact, they differ.
And the moments differ and everything like that.
God, haven't you just do the best you can?
I think one thing, for example, that somebody told me sometimes in the polls was,
Just that your status takes more out of the fact of how effective you are on the press conference.
I take all the language you're going to be reading.
That's not a bad point.
Your strengths are acute at it, frankly.
OK, but 60 million people see it.
They know the strength.
We can talk about all along, but I think people go on and say, hey, look, you have a lot of errors.
And we don't care what the van calls us, right?
No, not too much.
Not too much.
Okay, here we go then.
Long range daughter.
Well, I was just, we had a claim on a weekend at the Pips in Aurora.
It's mainly because of the surrogate lunch.
Now that that's off, I wonder if it would be better to wait until the following weekend.
You do the Johnson-Halbury.
on Saturday morning and then go on to Florida there and stay over a few days afterwards.
The only reason I'm raising this is you will just be coming back from California a week ahead, and rather than going away again the following weekend, even though you're going to have a hell of a busy weekend, you get back to California.
And I can't go to Florida then.
Well, you could have if it had been surrogate.
That would have been reasonable.
But now it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Well, maybe what you do is just wait until the 28th.
The other possibility, well, I think we could change that.
We were, you talked about doing one of the academies.
I don't, and about the 29th is our last one.
I think your idea is really important.
Well, that's what we're talking about.
Not a graduation.
That would, we could do, the other thing might be to do what's going on the 15th, which is Armed Forces Day.
I'm just wondering if
Just if the military, and especially the army, think it done so much.
If maybe it is the time to... On the other hand, the popular mood is against the war.
You don't want to talk about the war.
Which is...
The strength of the Newport speech, where the Marines are talking just 500 words.
I'm not talking, but just basically, the bill of rightness and some of the rights, what they think ought to be said in 600 words to most people.
Those guys are going to be standing there in a hot sun.
They've got to have five minutes.
And I mean, don't you agree with me?
Nobody thinks we ought to give them a five-minute speech.
No, sir.
And not even a 10-minute speech.
I think it's got to be pretty like that.
We're having a lot of the armed forces thing that we ordered.
We're all having a lot of the armed forces, you know, reception.
Yeah, I think it's better to, I think, actually, to just let it out.
The green thing is very, very high visibility.
Yeah.
Let's wait until after that at least and see.
Yeah.
Gotcha.
Okay, that's what you're after.
You don't want to go to Florida that week.
Totally, uh, let's, let's go to Florida where you read on the 28th, Bob.
You understand?
Okay, the question there is, are you back for the Memorial Day or the Lyndon Johnson Memorial Day?
The Lyndon Johnson thing doesn't sound good to me because what the hell time do I have?
Well, you get there Saturday afternoon and you stay through and come back Tuesday night or something like that.
It's Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
3.
The Congress is recessing over Memorial Day, so there's...
The other, the problems with that Memorial Day are, you talked about when you do the race, that's on Saturday night.
And the day before, the 28th, is the NATO conference of cities, which is in Indianapolis.
And that's something you're sort of tied into.
I don't think you can go to Indianapolis the next day and not do the NATO summit.
Very free and easy, if you will.
All right.
Go there.
Just plan to go there to the OEJ library.
And that way, we don't have to take anybody out with us.
I understand you've got a hell of a problem there.
Who's going to bring those people back?
We'll bring another plane.
We have to anyway.
I know, but Bob, that plan will be pulled to you.
But we'll leave enough room to put the people from your plane on.
The other thing would be to not, you know what you could do is go to Florida by Thursday night at 20.
We just fly over to the Johnson Library Saturday morning and back to Florida.
anybody with you, and then we'll fly the presidential plane down from here.
With the, you know, Florida on the train first.
Okay, then stay there Sunday and come back Monday night.
He had a terrible problem in the thing of taking people with him.
We really do.
Very tough problem.
There's some advantage in that for a reason.
And I love him on my own.
Right.
That's true.
But we bring a plane, we send a presidential plane from here and use one with a lot of seats in it instead of one with all the fancy stuff.
All right, fine.
Okay, that's good.
No Thursday afternoon.
Still leave the Alabama thing on the way back up.
Yes, that we have to do.
No Thursday afternoon.
Be down there Friday.
Over to L.A.J.
and be back Friday, Saturday night with Laura at the 22nd.
I stayed the 24th and do Alabama on the 25th.
Yeah.
We're going to do our southern background here, you know, the thing to Alabama.
There's some possibilities in the whole Alabama business that we are there.
Yeah.
How about doing that city thing, you know, there are two other countries at the same time.
I think we ought to come in there and let them have a dance.
That's one place we're going to have a ticker tape parade, you know, the county we're working in.
That place might be pretty good.
I thought the chamber reception was very good today, you know, it was very well in the beginning.
That's the, you know what I mean, is that they're, that's what you said, they were, it was not negative.
I don't know, it was very positive.
That was part of, part of that is because people were assaulting us, you know.
Sometimes they, they're not the librarians and the rest sort of react against you.
I agree though, we've got to go Thursday night.
We've got to be in Florida so I can go to that LBG library without taking these clowns with me.
Excellent idea.
And back.
the Florida for Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday.
I don't know where to do the other one, because I spend a lot of time out of the place.
I would get a question that week, the 27th.
Yeah.
That's the National Council meeting of the Boy Scouts, which we had known as a sort of a possibility.
Yeah.
It's in Atlanta.
And the way to go to Atlanta,
But it's not, the problem is it's not Boy Scouts, it's Adelos.
It's the World Scouting Association.
There's 5,000 Adelos.
Now, per year, I'd prefer to do, we're going to do Alabama.
It's Alabama.
I'm not going back to Atlanta.
Right.
Well, that's my thing.
Plus the fact that on May 27th, no, June 2nd, a week later, the 2,000 Explorer Scouts will be in Washington.
for their first national congress.
And I think that's one you should have them on the White House lawn and welcome.
It's 2000, so we can't get them inside.
But I don't think they can do that.
Congress is somewhere else.
But I think you ought to have them in for a, you know, they'll come to the White House and you just read them on the lawn.
And then maybe channel them or something.
All right.
The fact that she was boys, which seems to me is a hell of a lot better.
We are committed to this Denmark that's already here.
We've put it off so many times.
We've moved it because of the wedding.
We've got to keep holding it.
Like I said, the possibilities are going on.
Right?
Got that?
Just as hard to do on the 15th as the 8th.
You have to be back for a cent a gallon on Friday.
Oh, I know.
Oh, I know.
Oh, that's an office visit, too.
Oh, no.
Right.
I know.
I can get out of that.
I can do it.
All right.
Let's look at something.
It gets a little interesting, then.
Wedding anniversary.
Your wedding anniversary is the 21st.
Father's Day is the 20th.
Yeah.
whether you shoot for some kind of a family reunion deal in California or someplace.
That's a lot of appeal, the anniversary deal.
It sure dramatizes it.
Yeah.
I think we've got to go.
I hope you didn't have as much as I said.
Because while he says that he's going to be told, he just cannot.
He just, you know, he's .
He's just so eager.
You know, .
So I read it.
I think it's going to happen.
So you have to take some time on tomorrow for a few minutes.
Elmer Vogt has made a formal request for an appointment, which is the first time he's ever done it, to the Cancer Research Committee.
His committee's meeting Thursday.
He is formally asked to see you before the meeting.
He has a Kennedy visit.
I don't know about Williams, which is the other guy in.
Mr. President, he's having lunch with his officer, Dean Atkinson.
Would you like to see it?
We have 15 minutes more, perhaps, than two o'clock, sir.
No?
Oh, okay.
I don't like that son of a bitch.
Let my hand swear it.
He has a series of things.
He's requested an appointment.
They've all been staffed out.
He asked for it a week ago.
Secretary, what do you see as the case?
It's very sad, Bob.
You know what it is.
A little something.
I don't have any.
The thing to do is I don't have any office hours.
I can do it around 5.
He's going to be here for that voluntary action.
Just got to take it anyway.
Get cleaned up for that voluntary action.
Yeah.
Oh, wait.
Too much.
I think you should take that in because they allow us to read.
Sure.
I know it would be impressive.
I don't know about the press conference, and I just figured it was 6 or 7.
If we can, there's always some time anyway.
So say it's expected to end at 7.30.
Right now?
7.30 Tuesday, 7.30 Tuesday night.
He's working on it already.
Oh, yeah.
I think that's when I told him.
I think I said 6 o'clock.
Well, 7.30.
No use for it.
Do this three seconds.
You've got at least an hour and a half.
I think everybody here gets too much of us.
Also enough for the fact that we don't do a press conference or we don't do a speech and so forth unless it's to be the ultimate, you know, reflection and all that sort of thing.
And it's got to be at exactly the right time.
You've got to have exactly the right answers.
So without such a goddamn idea about I can't do this, I mean, that's impossible for anybody to do the same thing.
I didn't go too far.
Also, it was the greatest journey on the means.
You know, I didn't say, oh, we're not going to do this.
And it's true.
Just do the best you can.
And it's been nice.
It's better than most of the other people.
So I agree.
And I say, I don't think they consciously feel that.
But, you know, the staff are going to go on.
They're going to have to try to spur it in their mouths.
Because I think you're scheduling .
I just was wondering what's going on with all those idiots and all the other .
I mean, you're listing all these tons of people.
Send out two planes.
He's got another plane.
He's got another plane, isn't he?
Well, they're targeting the plane anyway.
Well, there's an air force plane.
No, but Brennan is going to provide another product for a lot of people.
We'll just take the...
Right.
See, you've got to help.
You've got the vice president.
He can't fly with you, so he can host the plane.
He can host the plane.
And, uh...
At the time, he's having everybody use anybody.
I'm sorry, I misplaced the history.
I guess you can think of it that way.
Thursday, do you want to keep the date completely clear, or do you want to take one new shot at that?
You know, we've got this James Payne that we're putting in the Civil Rights Commission.
He's got to do it at some point.
And that would be a...
What are we going to do Wednesday or Thursday?
I need some time to prepare here, but I didn't always have any time.
Nothing.
We have a Wednesday break as Secretary Leonard will bring in Johnny Johnson, who is the civil service guy who is now going over to head up something else.
Assistant Secretary of Manpower or something.
Right.
All right.
And then...
29th.
That would be Wednesday.
And then Thursday, the thought would be to bring Jane Spain in, who will be the first woman vice-chairman of the Civil Service Commission.
And we just do a thing where she comes in, let her picture opportunity, just a picture, go, stand by.
Sure.
And that's all.
Johnson's going to be assistant secretary of the Navy, I guess, from then on, right?
Let's do a third, do both of these.
Listen, stuff on the women appointments, we've got a damn good story on the women appointments stuff.
We'll release it in conjunction with Jane.
That's supposed to be a hell of a job, I guess.
And your wilderness message, I think, will just drop.
That's our who's out.
But I don't think you're sending out the wilderness message.
We just don't need that message, right?
No, you're right.
You're right.
We just drop it.
I have a signing ceremony or something.
I'll call the Congress.
No thanks.
Well, if you can't move there, no thanks.
We'll release it.
How about California?
Are you going to be able to tell something?
Are you working on something for Maquis?
Yes, we can.
The thing, you know, my people are very, you know, coming, they'll come out and settle a thing with Maquis, and that's it.
While you're out there, they come and see you.
Parliament feels very strongly that you should not announce it, nor should it be announced at the White House out there.
The county should announce it separately with Lockheed, because it's like the Pennsylvania railroad deal or something.
We're bailing a private company out.
We've got the support of the county, and if you were to come around the day, we'd come out.
No, it's set.
And the county will do it while you're in California, which is a good focus.
Then you'll want to come out then.
Yeah, you come out.
He will come out, talk with the Lockheed people, and drop it there, and then he'll come in and have an appointment with you.
He'll make an announcement from Los Angeles?
Yes.
Oh, good.
But not from?
But not from the White House.
Right.
He'll have to come.
It'll work out.
Sorry to set it up in some way.
And then we're doing the financing.
One of the things, you know, if you can suggest that you get some more publicity for your private school financing deal.
And there's a session on that on Monday in California.
We'll have the farm thing for a radio thing.
That's about all we've got for some other possibilities.
I'm not sure if it's going to be the farm thing for radio.
It isn't really the way I want to use it.
I don't mind if you have the thing.
The only thing I was going to say is that...
I think the only guy that can really write them is Christ.
That's right.
He's still in Christ.
with cooks and the other stuff, he could get me out of about six speeches.
Exactly what Ray's doing.
And on that kind of thing, the farming doesn't fit in your radio series.
It's just that that seemed like the way you ran your farm time for that thing over.
So if the price here really needs to be put into all the history of these, these will be good.
Yeah.
His first one is on sex.
The other one is on complexity.
And he says it's gotten so complex, he can't get enough technical with it.
And he's, that's what I heard.
But he's good.
Oh, and he's great at this.
I said, I want to be sure that he knows that we're following the studies as long as we can.
The problem, the thing is that
Well, none of our people really understand why I am so strong for anything, because I've heard lots of sermons in my life, and I know that those are the words of God, and that's the guy who tells the story.
You know, we went there, and then we went out to talk to the campaign, and there he sermons.
Sort of a half-assed guy from American University.
He wasn't that bad.
Anybody know he was an old, great brain?
He just told three or four of these stories.
That's all he had to do.
It's fine.
That's the way it was.
Well, that's what the Bible does.
The Bible reads all it is.
It's telling stories.
That's what they did.
The parallels.
And it's all he has.
Man went into the mountain.
He did this and that and the other thing.
And there was a son between.
The father was proud of his son.
There was a man who passed on the other side of the street.
And a woman came here and there.
Why, in the name of God, can't we get our keepers?
This reads the Bible.
Read it.
It's all the same in the speeches.
Except there's something like a Gettysburg dress or a couple of her enshrined marble.
And, you know, but if you read Lincoln's, you know, general speeches, he's got a great story about all the American presidents.
See?
We now are living in the age of cold elections.
That's my point.
I think Carney, I mean, it was, I'm sorry, I'm joking.
I'm all about, I mean, voting, I mean, he's a great guy.
But maybe the daughter of one of these guys, you know, Steve Carney.
The first thing they, of course, heard about him in college.
That's what it was.
Who knew that better than I did?
Of course it was Carney.
Deliberately so.
Yeah, and that, you listen to, and so will all people.
That is what, and some of it is what they got out of it.
It's always this mountain speech, and this part, listen to the police speech.
And where does it get surrounded away by this stuff?
So, so Carney used to be, you know, totally embarrassing.
Here's, at least with your, you told a very
moving story with a great dignity, and that, well, that is, but it's not the other way.
The other side didn't want us to get lost.
But the point is, I don't want our guys.
The story about the little guys in Texas is corny, isn't it?
No, I don't think it is.
I don't think someone would say that.
I don't think the middle president has told it twice.
And I'm going to tell it a third time.
I don't like it.
I'll tell it on that story again.
Because if you tell people it's in the public consciousness, the kids can read around it.
It's a really good story.
It ought to be told over and over.
It makes a point.
They pay their own way.
And they say it in human terms.
People know that we hit some little Texas tamale from washing cars, maybe sitting and mowing lawns.
They know what you're talking about.
There's a lot of us whose kids are doing exactly that to try and accomplish what they want to do, too.
There are a lot of us whose kids are out doing the same thing.
Babysitting.
You're trying to make the kids earn something so they can get the value of work.
That's right.
An awful lot of parents are.
There are a lot of kids doing it.
You got it right.
Kids whose parents have got money.
That's right.
They know what they've got to learn.
There are a lot that aren't .
It's just astonishing.
You know, who ride over the old man for the allowance, and who don't do a thing, just not anything.
And they give him a car, and wants a car to eat.
We think we're doing them a favor.
You know, the lion and the other lion, you've probably read the speech that I actually have prepared.
But in fact, you don't do a favor to a person when you help him when he's
So you just deny him the capacity to develop the ability to develop himself.
And what the hell?
And that's true.
You just keep talking to the kid, and talking to the kid, and talking to the kid, and he's just gonna sit there with his hand out and say, well, what's next, Papa?
Or Mama, or whatever the case might be.
Now, this is old internet.
Call it what you want.
God damn it's what I believe.
Tell us if there's any questions that he's on.
Somewhere you've got an authentic leader for him.
You ain't gonna make it yourself.
Well, otherwise you'd have a plodding stalker.
Just talk to them about inflation.
That's what the speech was first about.
The companies and the economy.
Inflation is coming.
We can be confident the economy's coming up.
Remember that Ico had this stuff about the urge to suffer.
And he was great at doing that.
A lot of good economists about our foreign policy.
Economists about this country.
He does a lot of good things.
You notice how many people listen to him and they'll fall.
Yeah, it's awful.
It's nothing good.
That's a dull speech.
Has to be said now and then, but you've always got to talk about something good at some point in your speech to a general audience.
Yeah, we should see.
I just can't tell you how pleasing an energy that you thought of this Johnson thing.
That is terrific.
I was wondering about that plan.
In fact, I had a horror of the thought.
Democrats riding on that plane.
But if I had heard them out and said it with me, it would have been very difficult to figure who to put on because we can only, we can't take that many people.
I ain't gonna take anybody.
I'm gonna go for it.
I guess go down there and that's it.
Also, this coming off the plane is tough.
I don't know which one's coming.
I have to bring them all up to the picket line and push it.
I go alone, and I come in and be welcomed.
This junction there is pretty loud.
When's the next press conference?
We've got things, and as we drive it forward, it's getting everywhere.
Let's make it look good this time.
Are you, have you just given up on office press conferences altogether?
You just want to get rid of them?
No, I think they are worth it in between the others.
If you do the others every four weeks and do one in between now and then, I think it's fine.
We'll have to go back to that pattern, all right?
And let me suggest that we do office press conference, say, on the 13th,
How many decades do you have in the 13th century?
The 13th century.
The 13th of May?
The May of it was too soon.
That's two weeks.
Well, in August, first time or second?
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
And then come back.
I don't know.
There might be one in the 27th or somewhere around there.
The GED.
Why not go to Berger before?
No, no, that's putting the two quotes together.
Center it in the root of the capital.
Six.
You would lag on 29.
Yeah.
Six, 13, 20.
It should be a month.
I agree the TV should be a month.
The 27th is the next day to shoot the boards.
How does that fit in with your writer's mother's schedule?
That would be, yeah, but you can get them all back and work with the 26th and 27th.
Okay.
That's good.
I kind of like to mention that there's a congressional recess at that point, too.
I kind of like all these conferences for a little bit.
Well, they don't require quite as much preparation.
You know what I mean?
Well, not here.
And, uh... All right.
Good.
Anything else?
No.
You think it was Mexico or claims that got screwed up last year?
I'm not exactly sure.
Sometimes it's .