Conversation 505-020

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Here we go.

I think they want to be confused.

Oh, here's all.

Get over this side.

You sit right where you are.

You'll be here.

Good.

On the main street, sir.

Yes, sir.

I have children and I feel pretty attractive to all of them.

It is.

I just love your coffee.

You all set?

Yes, sir.

Distributed, you know, the wires and so forth.

Yes, sir.

Also, you have copies for both of these, and so forth.

Yes, sir.

And, uh, if, uh, Steve has a view, spending a little bit of time with his staff, he might copy me.

I'm not going to say that.

I'm going to say that.

I'm not going to say that.

All right, now what is this?

Well, I'd like to present this to you, a 17-year-old high school student in Rochester, who brings on the back, Mr. President, with my respect and admiration for the office you hold and the job you are doing.

This is Willie Gary.

That's right.

I'll write you some notes.

I will, I will.

All right.

And also...

Right, sir.

All right.

Sir.

Now, that's my course.

I have come from the fifth grade and never did it again.

Here is the, uh... You do know the character of my signature.

Mr. Kess, who presented it to me.

And, uh, I will be very proud to have him in the Presidential Library.

Yes, sir.

The fourth grade is terrible.

I extended my, uh...

All right.

I'm ready to give you all the report data from the chapel while I'm reading about the children's conference.

I've read through such letters as, Dear President R. Nixon, I am writing to you about the children's conference.

Did you discuss a way of getting a teacher's attention other than by raising your hand?

Because hands get so tired.

Okay.

I must remember that.

That'd be great.

You know, I think you've heard those things that you forget you don't remember.

It should be an art department, but it's all these awards.

Dear Mr. Nixon, I have heard about the conference on children.

I know you are a busy man, but I have to write this letter because of a class project.

Sometimes I don't understand why adults act the way they do.

Why don't you have a conference about adults?

Thank you, Mr. Nixon.

It was a smart idea to send kids 6 to 10 to the children's conference.

Nobody should complain about what happened there.

You probably got all the information you wanted.

But I mean, why don't you have a conference on adults?

I am a doctor.

I don't do that.

continuity in place for the states and the localities to go on a full appointment with the government.

That will be in the office.

That will provide basically a listening poster on a lot of people to where the ideas come in.

That's right.

In fact, very early

recommendations we will bring in state people, local people, organization people.

One thing that you could do, Chet, we get an awful lot of, like you did, Chet, with our mail.

We get an enormous amount of mail from people, you know, concerned parents and kids and so forth and so on.

And if this group, you know, if we could refer them, rather than just getting that routine far, which we usually get, well, we're greatly concerned and appreciate your writing.

I think, first, there are some good ideas now.

Not many, you know, but now and then.

You know, once in a while you get a terrific idea.

Second, though, they deserve the idea that if they write to the president that somebody really is doing more than a form answer.

Can you tackle some of that for us?

Mr. President, we're on the verge of announcing the establishment in this unit of a subunit called the Children's Concern Center, which any parent or citizen is invited to write, I mean,

voicing inquiry or concern, and get a response.

That's what I'd like to do.

I want to do an interview.

Did you see our letters, the latest book?

He collected, he went through the letters from kids.

Of course, these are just morally offbeat types and so forth, but they're quite moving some of them.

But the point is, what we need more is when people in the field, and they're all over the country and the states and so forth, and being able to get votes, the problem, they go out and say, look, I've got an idea here, how do we do that?

So what we've got to get a place for somebody to get it, keeps it true, keeps it up, and...

We need to do something, or at least let them know that we care.

That's what I think more than anything else, as I sensed from the report, from what I knew, I've had a chance to, you know, it's really good ideas.

I mean, we do.

but also there's among the more responsible people, it's just a great concern to be paying attention to it.

They say, gee, look, here I am, my hand is up and it's getting tired.

Isn't that about it?

I don't know.

What do you think?

That's exactly correct, Mr. President.

I think that what people are sensing

or have sensed is that they have a feeling that people are not responsible.

The big government is not responsible.

And to humanize this effort is a kind of paying attention to inquiries, to concerns.

And also, you know, the level of advocacy, which is very important.

Why should it only be the experts that decide what is to be done?

Why not survey the people that have to be there as a guideline?

That's true.

And also the fact that there's an awful lot of media in this country about such godforsaken places as Barbary and the rest.

You have some damn good ideas.

All the good ideas don't emanate from you.

You look at the history of this country, and I think the great senators and congressmen, more often than not, become some of the smaller states in the Midwest.

I mean, the thing is that sometimes as the state gets more populous and bigger, and as they represent great masses of people, the individuals they represent and who come from that environment are submerged by, rather,

that really being able to think independently and creatively on our own, it's a curious, I think to put it this way, the bigger the country gets, the bigger the government gets, the more money we have, the more expert we have, experts we have, it seems to me, to create, yes, the less the magic,

we also appear to be less concerned.

I think back to my own history.

As a congressman, you know, I dictated personally.

All the forefathers had every answer to everything.

Of course, I saw everybody who came and worked myself to death and practiced in the process.

It was a trillion thing.

a good way to know what's going on, to stimulate general minds and so forth, and not just to be a puppet there.

And I think if you could just, if you could get across to this country the idea that we really want to know what they're thinking, and that all people in the KJF, we aren't always going to agree, they must understand that, but that we're looking for ideas,

What we're really sure of is that there are good ideas.

Staff, paper, stretch, they get up here and come in here this high.

The user's got an idea where to bend.

Process.

How do you do it?

How do you organize?

All that sort of thing.

Now process, of course, is indispensable.

But on the other hand, there is a process that changes the world.

Now and then, some guy that has any ability to organize anything, who has no ability to

in order to get mobilized people and so forth, as an idea.

That idea, you know, then is taken by the organizer.

We get plenty of organizers.

We're often good at it.

We're good at organizing this administration.

The question is, where are the ideas going to come from?

I think it may be that out across through here, you just need people that can

It takes a lot of patience, too, when you hear somebody screwing up.

As I say, on mail, I never find anybody around here that wants to write an answer in mail or read it, for that matter.

If I were in the president's office, that's what I would like to do, and I'd like to do it because

A person who really cares will find that 99 out of 100, I should say, 999 out of 100 are nine.

But no one had to come up with something that is really quite important through appointments.

We can't see everybody.

Most people just aren't worth seeing.

Not that they aren't worth seeing as individuals for their purpose, but they're not worth seeing for our purpose because they don't add anything to the knowledge, you know.

So they just kind of tell you the same thing that you heard, know already, and so forth.

You say, I'm going to get on a mission.

And there's somebody that comes in.

Take on the cancer thing.

We had a beautiful, as Ken knows, we had a beautiful program all set up for our $100 million in cancer that would have not done a damn thing.

would have left it over at the Institute of Health under the same kind of management.

The $100 million would have gone in there.

They would have raised the salaries around the country for the research.

And not much more would have happened.

I don't mean by putting emphasis on it that we're going to solve it tomorrow, five years from now, ten years from now.

I know I'm not putting emphasis on it.

This going on, doing what we are, and spending what money on it, there's probably damn little chance of making very much progress.

So what we did, pull it out.

Pull it out.

Concentrate.

We can't do this for too many things.

The purpose is to go and put the emphasis there, but also

some of the those that do have the infrastructure, what your office could do for us.

Well, we'll certainly try in the field of children's concerns.

I think one added point, I think that people are making more and more ridiculous demands, but I think my hunch on that one is it's due to

to the kind of frustration you alluded to a little bit earlier, Mr. President, that if you have a sense that nobody's listening, you'd think that you'd just elevate your rhetoric so that it would attract attention.

That's why they get into more and more words.

It's a way of being paid attention to.

I think we all know that the exhibitionism is a way to really substitute for, oh, it's going to pay attention to me.

I'll get on that TV, too.

I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to tell you how I love

I'm grateful all of us in the nation who care about children are to you for the help and moving statements you made about the first five years of life and your own concern for children.

It's been good morale for us all.

He and Pat might have handled it.

I mean, the difficulty there is, and Pat and I have talked about it before he left, it's still a consultant choice.

But it just burns me that he did that.

And I think you're the first person that's mentioned that, sir.

I've had to thank you.

Right, Steve?

But that's a great statement.

Everybody had its eyes.

When it came across the desk, I realized it.

What's happening to him?

Are we doing anything about it?

I think the follow-up is with his office right now.

It is?

Yes, sir.

Let me say, on the fact that all the way, my wife read that statement.

She, of course, is very interested in that, sir.

And we want to support it better in the first five years of life.

And it gets down to, I mean, even at a little later stage, the right to read, you're going to find out in about the fifth year.

The kids are going to read it out, you know, all that sort of thing.

But believe me, you've got to find a way to hypo it again.

Let's find a way, and you follow up here, find a way that that is hypoed so that it shows that we haven't forgotten anything.

Because I think an awful lot of people, you know, we've got all our education issues, we just put a lot more money in to raise the kind of salaries of college professors, and you're saying, I need $200,000 to do that.

Science Foundation is getting more money, and all these things are important.

Here's one that was new, just not putting more into an old program, right?

That's correct.

It's being done, but if you have a personal charge, you see that we follow up on it.

Get my hand down, that I'm interested in, and give me a little, see you sit in the thing, and let's get it that total.

I want to know what's happened in the first five years of life.

Tell Richardson.

Tell Richardson that.

But I have a special concern, Father, that I need to be strong between the schools.

Will you do it?

Yes, sir.

That's what it is.

Nothing will probably happen.

It's up to you.

It'll happen if you do it.

That's the kind of charge I appreciate.

Yeah, I can't see you.

If they can't, you can.

What do you have on it?

I can't see the message.

Thank you.

Now let me see.

I want to get you here.

You're over time.

You've got all of these things.

You're not a dog, right?

Do you have a friend who is?

Who's your friend?

Those are fancy, too.

They have the President's seal and the signature.

Oh, you don't have paperweight shoes.

That's all right.

There's your paper away.

Does that paper ever get so heavy that that one has to turn the paper away?

You have a couple of mistakes here.

No, those I can use.

You've got to understand what I'm saying.

Now I think we're... For your wives.

And there's three.

Now wait a minute, wait a minute.

Stop.

Just a favor, Secretary.

There's no other way to get it going.

I think that's why I didn't drive.

Well, look, we, uh, you don't hear much about this.

It's all the problems we've got, you know.

I've been interested in this problem.

But you've got to depend upon people like yourself.

You'll give it along.

And we'll give whatever support we can for this local.

Fair enough.

Thank you.