Nixon, Haldeman & Shultz on Speechwriting and Public Relations

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I'm sorry.

He's fighting all the creep hangers.

He's sticking to his guns.

He thinks we have any progress on inflation, doesn't he?

But his money supply is boosted up.

The main point I get on this whole thing is that he's still confident about the recovery.

He says there is a lot of things going on.

He feels he's got to lose his temper.

There's a lot more order.

And it's just about to start to turn over.

Sure, sure.

First cut.

24.

25 to the 24.

25 to the 111, 25 to the 45.

Another figure.

Pretty rough cut, basically, isn't it?

They changed the first order.

I don't know what the second order is, but it's going to be swell.

I'm your friend.

Well, the main thing about this is that the order got as long as the Supreme Court policy, the registry policy, and the rest.

That's the very best advice we can get.

I've got it.

Sometimes it doesn't.

What else is going on here?

Well, McGinnity, sorry, I just wanted to run it by for a handshake.

Just because we aren't going to have an answer today, I want to get some more writing out of it.

They all said he was brighter and sharper than they had expected.

And Ray said he's bright and quick, but not deep.

He doesn't read anything but the papers in National Review.

His interest, other than real estate and politics and religion, he was... Ray was more impressed with him than he thought he was going to be, because he thought his columns were clever and shallow.

The point is, we want that it stands down on us.

It's exactly what we're after, which is the point I made, you're right.

When, in the name of God, do we ever get anything out of them that is clever?

It's clever and shallow is what we're talking about.

The problem is, everything we've got is too deep.

Everything we've got is thoughtful and deep.

Rather than clever and shallow, it's so goddamn profound that, you know, I mean, it's basically, and it's particularly true of Ray, Evener, and Cook,

I think what we'll do is try him on some stuff.

We'll get him, but without locking him up yet.

He's a guy that's interested.

He wants to help.

He's a tall, skinny guy, a little aesthetic.

Quite precise in his speech.

He can... Colson says he may be... My only reservation is he may be a right-wing nut.

Buchanan says he's just about what I'd expected, very conservative.

We should see more of his work before considering him further.

But we can push in another staff.

There's no, you know, we don't have any...

Because I didn't need to write something that could get us all there.

So did you get that Dan Palmer out of anybody?

Yeah, but they didn't do it.

Well, then I thought it was shallow.

It was shallow.

And I'd just do Dan Goodwin.

What do you think of it, though?

I thought it was Dan Goodwin.

He wants to continue writing.

He wants to do more.

I said, since we need a Dan Goodwin to write for the National Committee for...

for Dole.

That's what we're talking about.

That's what I had to get on him in business.

I think actually that may be a place for him.

And then we can find the guy down at the boulder that's getting over there to the National Committee box.

He'd be just perfect for Dole.

Dole needs shallow, clever things.

Let me tell you, the more I think of it, that is the problem with our speed chargers, the damn thing.

It's just too beautiful.

He's got his religious mission business, which is a little .

And he said he wants to write further .

That's too bad.

I asked him if he thought he had more to say than what was said in those columns, or did that pretty much wrap up his view, and he said, oh no, as an editor, he had always thought that the guy who writes his first book tends to write in generalities, and the way to develop it from there is to get down to take one specific within the book and ask him to expand on that.

He said, I could very much see doing that on my column, which a whole lot of points covered there, and you can take any one of them and develop it.

So, you see...

I think the thing we do is ask him to do it.

Give him a little, you know, a little underwriting so he doesn't have to spend his time selling real estate.

Would you take, would you take, would you take your rough notes on comments and give Ray a little, a little, a little instruction on that?

Yes, sir.

I think it's good for him to hear that.

Yeah.

And maybe, who else's word?

You don't need to do it with Colson.

He believes it already.

Uh, what word would be canon?

It's been him for totally, uh, more?

Mars, what do you think?

I think really the bite, that's what it is.

Not what we're getting, the bite that we're getting, the stuff we're putting, I'm putting in, and the rest, as you know, that's the stuff that's sending, gets it.

Typical of the...

was what they prepared for me to go out and do on television on that drug message.

Do you remember that one?

Yeah.

That 100 words.

It was a disaster.

Yep.

It really was a disaster.

Wasn't it?

Yep.

You had written it before you brought it in there?

Yep.

So I sent it out and sent out a couple of notes.

We got in something about Public Entity No.

1 or something that little thing.

It went down, wasn't it?

Clever and sound.

But that's really the point.

People are shallow, that's the point.

People can't comprehend things like that.

And so we try to be shallow, and that's part of our problem.

We've got to think deeply, but we've got to talk shallow.

That's right.

And people sometimes really don't like it.

It isn't quite like Sapphire either.

No, because his is regular.

So there's a difference, isn't there?

But it's simple, that's what we mean.

Simple, simple, simple.

Keep it simple.

Simple, direct, blunt.

So Bill said, that's scary, man.

Some sort of, I don't know what the hell that rather is.

But, you know, they can't see anything wrong with your eye, I'm sure it does.

No, it's scary, sure.

And he was afraid of some, actually, some kind of scary.

more serious than it turned out to be.

Probably just kind of broke a blood vessel or something like that.

I think Bob was the one who told me about the other day.

I think he was, too.

Because it was all sort of make-work type conversation.

Be smart, man.

You know how it goes.

He wouldn't normally call me to tell me anything.

No, I reflected a little more on that going on.

I may be wrong.

I do not think it has all that great consequences.

He's overestimating what they're going to think about what Henry Kissinger is doing.

You know what I mean?

It's the president that they've got to be sitting on.

And I don't think it's going to make all that difference.

He's got to do that he's not now.

That's true.

Averill Harriman called him and said...

I assume he met with Lee Dovetoe in Europe this weekend.

If you need any help on how to deal with him, I'd be glad to be as insistent as I can.

So he's now convinced that somebody has put out that he's meeting with Lee Dovetoe.

You mean straight?

How the hell is that?

Well, he says Sullivan raised the point with somebody.

And Sullivan, of course, is close to Aaron.

I raised a point with somebody that said to Haig yesterday, yeah, I said to Haig, well, I guess Henry would be meeting with Leo Coe since he's gone into Paris or something.

Maybe Henry was talking a lot.

In other words, they're trying to smoke him out on that.

Haig said, well, that's ridiculous.

But then Harriman called today with this problem.

Henry's better off too late now.

See, late was there before, but that's where that comes from.

He can't.

Well, you know, that kind of coincidence, that's what you said all along, that his cover wasn't going to hold forever, and it can.

If Henry Kissinger just never goes on trips, all of a sudden flies to England for a couple of days, and we don't know who's been gone for six months or whatever it is, happens to fall into Paris the same weekend.

There's going to be, we're very much speculating, Dan and I.

And then you just break it through.

Just say, well, I want to just calm down.

I went to meet with Pete.

Whatever it is he went to meet with.

It's going to be tough for Henry.

He's uptight on all this stuff and he's got a lot of stuff that's bouncing around.

It's going to work.

You've just got to kind of cobble it through.

Sure, sure, sure.

That's why I raised the hay going with him.

He says, oh, hay's got to keep them all under control here.

He's afraid that Ecuadorian fishermen will start a war.

Really, I mean that.

Oh, boy.

Maybe they will.

I guess I'm sure.

I think it's coming along, right?

That household was a good one.

That was a hell of a place.

I figured having Albert on here was going to fail this one.

It was going to be this one.

I just didn't think it was going to fail.

They proved to be right.

They did pretty well.

They've got a pretty good reading of what they're doing.

They said it would be closer to close to the gap and lose a lot of the Etsy women and people that they used to hold.

We can do this well, we'll probably have to do that some of the time after the paper's coming out and everything, isn't it?

What do you think?

Yep.

We're going to have a hell of a lot of people here.

These guys want to vote for something.

That's the thing, it's staying in control.

I have a question.

We're going to be saving something in September.

Well, if we get any, if there gets any very interesting things, we've already, something will happen.

I just thought that was a pretty cheap trade.

Goddamn, dude.

Would you ever think of that, you know, with the charge on Alex on that, that there's a blood cult and he just said they're going to be in town and it would be, you know, I think the right, you know, airplanes or something.

He just called back, I don't know, a few times.

I don't know if I could say no to him.

I don't think I could say whatever.

Well, it did, but did he come on and say, well, yeah, I don't even know.

Yeah.

Nixon, Haldeman & Shultz on Speechwriting and Public Relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on June 28, 1971

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