Conversation 536-014

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Good morning, Mr. President.

Can I just do a very quick question?

First, the Secretary has been told after the military meeting that he wanted to have an NSC.

He was restricted to do it before we launched another round over there.

He's pressing very hard to do this immediately.

I think it's essential that we wait until Henry gets back so you can assess where we're going to, what kind of leverage we'll have, if any, with the Soviets and what... Why don't you just set it up so we can get Cisco and so forth.

He's going out there.

I would like not to have a confrontation about it with him right now.

But if he wants Cisco to go this weekend, is that the problem?

Well, he wants them to go on the 12th.

As a matter of fact, the Israeli ambassador called very upset yesterday that he had already been approached by Cisco to go.

Well, why don't you ask him to... And he'll be back on the 14th or 11th.

Well, I've got it.

I've got it.

Rather than trust that...

I think we ought to, Tom, that I'd like to have a meeting, say, on the 15th in San Francisco.

But I can't do it the first week because I'm in the budget meeting.

I'm working for the first week.

I'm tired of the budget.

I've got to get at it.

Yes, sir.

I think he'll be back.

I think we want to be sure we know what we're going to all talk about and say and so forth.

Exactly.

Because if we have to commit it out of plan, there's no problem.

Yes, sir.

He really, I think, feels he just wants Joe to get over there and start feeling out.

Yes.

Well, asking a suggestion that I frankly don't see, that I feel, put it this way,

The idea appeals to me, but I would just like to sit here and discuss it so that we've got a feel as to what we're in, so that I'm the one to tell people and so forth.

So we'll all have the same line with the congressional heat and everything that's coming up.

Do you think that'll work?

I think that'll work, sir.

The basic problem is it's going to result in a confrontation.

They can't do otherwise.

And it's a question of whether there's one yet.

Well, I think we could get a war started.

That's what's very worrying me right now.

There's some advantage to letting this thing cool a little bit so that both sides get a little more anxious before we start pushing again.

The Secretary is concerned about the U.N.

Assembly meeting in the fall.

Well, we've been here before then.

Why don't we just say that it's okay to get it on the 15th?

Yes.

We've got a $15,000 budget meeting tonight.

I'll set aside the time for a third of the Senate.

He can bring anybody he wants because you're in Francisco.

We ought to have Larry with you for that.

in all circumstances that I have not poked on that might be clear.

I've made this clear.

Just to say that I don't know who was this over going this and that.

I put this on the President to be that he has, as you know, as I've told him, as you know, he has felt that this is an area where he's depending on you and your advice and that sort of thing.

But he does feel that we've got to get everybody on salvo and all understand that we're all, and I do feel that it would be well

Just have another feel of it at that point.

When we're out there, I think we can look at it more clearly than we can from here.

Fair enough.

Just try that.

I'm not opposed and so forth.

We're going to stir it up until then.

Very good.

I'll have a chance to talk about it, too, Saturday evening out in California.

I'll have a chance to talk about it privately before I leave.

I just want to get a feel of it directly for me.

Which I can't do before, because I'm tied up exactly under speech, and I'm going out to the conference on the 6th, and so forth.

And maybe we can talk a bit, if you're going out, John, that I'd like to have a preliminary meeting and tell him that we all said that he's going to go to the preliminary meeting.

And you and he and I, he would.

And I don't, I couldn't have a preliminary meeting on the way to California, so I haven't thought about it.

But I've got to get to the question.

That's excellent.

Thank you.

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

The second question is very quick, Mr. Henry came back, he said that he asked me to get your guidance if we get an affirmative Soviet response on the summit, and if the Chinese insist on an early summit in December, the way to have these two, and he wanted to know if you would

I'm authorizing for sure.

Oh, absolutely.

I don't know.

I'll see the Soviet and have a return of Soviet news next year.

We've got to get everything out of the way before July.

I think we'll be done after that.

We'll get something to see.

If you see anything before, I'll tell you exactly the time.

The other guy who nominated me left my hair on here.

I'll try to say they've got to go tomorrow.

They never said that when I was nominated, I must say.

They didn't say the president ought to say.

No.

Exactly.

Yes, sir, I did.

Yeah, I never had a plan.

It's really amazing.

And the story of Paris, it's really got a fairly good mouth force in a way.

You know, it's got everybody thinking there's some secrets going on.

And frankly, we haven't said a word.

I haven't said a damn word.

And the guys, I must say, both Matthew and Albert handled it well.

They said, we won't blow anything.

We think the president is.

It's played beautifully, sir.

It really does.

And the worst enemies are very cautious, except for that son of Ben Clifford.

He's the only one that's popped out.

But these... Oh, absolutely.

But this is the greatest thing and critical of our policy.

The rest of them are all very mute.

They just don't know what's going on.

And that's the way to keep

Well, that's the one advantage of Chinese belts.

I don't do them all the time.

Oh, that's just one of them.

That'll make a world of difference.

You really think it will?

Oh, I think it's revolutionary in that sense.

Well, I don't know.

I was thinking a little about this.

I was thinking a little about this, uh, this whole Christmas event.

What are you really going to say to them?

I just don't know what the hell the Chinese are going to say about what they want to do.

I think he's got to tell them, Carson.

He's got to be very forthcoming.

That's, that's correct.

I mean, you can, you can.

I'd rather think he will.

Yes, sir.

Everything they've done in the last six months has been very much in the direction of

Whether they want to have it solid, they may do that.

I think they're practically under the throne of my city in this place for 104 years.

Oh, no question about it.

On the other hand, they don't get along with me now.

They figure it'll be worse.

The one thing is that we've got two alternatives, and maybe we can get both, which would be the ideal.

But either one of them is a very significant achievement.

Very significant.

This is the Chinese.

Now, in terms of what we have accomplished, in the short term, the Soviet Union is certainly more important.

We've got the assault, we've got the Berlin, we've got the medics that we've talked about.

In terms of the other hand, what has changed?

Much, much more imaginative, much more imaginative.

Well, it's just people.

Incredible, isn't it?

That's right, sir.

I think it's possible.

That's right.

But in the realities of the dangers of our position, the Soviets... France is a long way off.

Oh, they should be our natural allies.

They shouldn't.

Against the Soviets.

And also they keep us against the Japanese.

There's all the economic power.

This is right.

Yes, and very much back in the tradition.

power configuration there, where the United States has got to give them some hope.

Some kind of a threat on Japan's flank, and some kind of a threat on Russia's.

I think it's a natural alignment, but there's no sense kidding ourselves about the ideological problem.

Those bastards are tough.

They're just...

It's exactly the same.

We'll continue to be the same.

It'll be a murderous problem to help somebody else.

They sure did.

They brought on every problem we've had.

You just look at that guy at the Defense Department.

That was the liberal club that was brought in there.

Exactly.

Oh, well...

They just didn't have that big thing there.

They were using professionals and a handful of key and reliable political appointees who were an extension of the president's view.

That's what it should be.

But this was all Fulbright downgrading the professionals, getting all these intellectuals in there.

They had no loyalty to anyone but themselves.

But they're all fighting each other now, and this is going to be helpful.

There's a real split developing among these.

Where?

Well, Walt Rostow calls me about once or twice a week, and there's a crisis over there on Clifford, and it's incredible.

They are fighting among themselves.

.

Ah!

Well, the, uh...

It's bizarre.

It's just bizarre.

It really is.

I wouldn't believe it.

Rogers, of course, anybody, it's too bad he can't talk.

I just can't risk it.

I just can't risk it because he just might be so obsessed.

He can see the place.

He might just, he might crack it.

I mean, he might just do something to screw it.

I'm quite concerned about whether Henry's up to something in Paris.

That I know.

Well, he called yesterday and he said, what are all these stories that are coming from Mansfield?

Well, I told him that, obviously, in our efforts to be sure that they didn't vote on the Mansfield resolution and keep the Congress together, we've made it very clear that they better hold with us.

Did I vote all of them?

We were

negotiating on every track and every channel.

And he seemed satisfied.

That's true.

And it is true.

We didn't lie to him.

Brock has just been talking to people.

He's brazen.

That's right.

So I told him that this was beneficial.

They keep this.

It's ambivalence, and it keeps them on their metals.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, I would like to have a good talk with you and I.

Say hello.

This is your bag.

And he wants to get a treatment.

He hasn't had a chance to think about it.

He wants to think about it a little.

And after all, all the politicians are in here.

every day on this stand.

But I feel that I'd like to think about it, to talk to him, and I don't think we ought to do it on July 12th.

The main thing is, too, that I don't want to stir things up a hell of a lot right now, and other things.

Come here.

Well, I've got to conjure as long as I want to.

I wonder if we could leave this, perhaps this whole, maybe a whole thing off.

I think that that doesn't detract from the thought to take that out.

That's understood, I think, pretty much.

Thank you.

That makes a good conclusion, too, and then leave the countries out of it.

This is where our foreign policy, or our new foreign policy of negotiation rather than the computation seems to be successful.

I think that, you know, that serves the thought and makes it strong without mentioning the countries and all.

All right, fine.

And that gives you a little more...

Now, it occurred to me that what we have here is duplicated.

This, which is very good, but is duplicated by...

The recital of the good things about America?

Well, yeah.

It's a 10-page brief.

You've got page three.

Yes.

Well... We've said that already.

Yeah.

Americans join one empire for a reason.

We have poverty in America, but a man who is poor in America would be rich in most

Well, we could just leave out those three items on page five, and just go right down and say we still have urgent work to do.

The proof is all I've got.

Or should we say it, let it not be said, and we respond under the register?

Or do we want to say it is easy to be blinded by our faults and forget the good in us?

Let me see.

I think the three items should come out.

Should the paragraph before it come out, too?

Well, that's the only place at that time.

Well, let me say that all that is very, very deep.

It is very, very strong.

I know that with live audiences, to go a little further and to talk about the new United States of 190 years ago, which we cannot afford because of the British spirit, is to say, is to maybe be a little more dramatic, like the

The two nations.

See if I can get this across in good time.

Just run across the bottom, see if it's a little too long, maybe boil it down.

And yet, Thomas Church said, we act not for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race.

Don't say it the way he said it, just say it that way, which is, I know, a paraphrase.

The wonder of it was not that he said it, but that the brutal believed.

And the reason was that America had something

military strength, and economic wealth, or whatever you want that strength to be.

A flaming ideas, a purged spirit.

I like the phrase, weak in arms, poor in goods, but rich in spirit, because to every Bible reader, remember, blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall.

I think it catches and rings, and I noticed audiences pick that up.

I don't know whether that can come that way.

Fundamental.

Now, there you come, America.

But while America was weak in arms and poor in spirits, it was rich in spirit.

Now, maybe to get at the, I'm just rambling on.

I don't know whether that's too long to get in or not, but I think I do want to get in the thought that we were, here we were, and yet, maybe not to Jefferson, it may not be able to go in, but maybe it should.

It's a great quote.

uh the main point being is it's got to be more dramatically said here was this lousy little country again it had something more important than that called the imagination world that is the spirit of 76. you see what i mean uh the uh

If you want to go on further in terms of these things, they believe in themselves.

They believe in their cause.

They believe in their ideals.

They believe in themselves.

They believe in their country.

And they believe in ideals that were bigger than themselves, bigger than America, as big as the whole world itself.

I've used that before, but it's not a bad one.

Now, of course, describing those ideals is always a tough one.

Ideals, maybe you take out ideals which have been so eloquently, ideals that are so eloquently set forth in these great documents we see in this home, and so eloquently described by the Chief Justice of the Speakers.

it made me move that around.

And I like your idea of the Sunday.

I don't know whether that can still, if you move it around.

But now, let me come back to this.

I think we've gotten to say more directly than we did before in Charles and the other girls and people.

that we are going through a period of national rescuing, or we are going through a period where night after night, television, day after day, we hear what is wrong about America.

Let us correct what is wrong, but let us not allow what is wrong about America to blind us to what is right about America.

I think it's got to be said just as blunt as that.

That's it.

Cheer on it.

We're not going to want the audience to cheer.

The people out there, their hearts will cheer.

You got that?

Yes, sir.

We hear what you're talking about.

That's right.

And then, another important thing.

It is time to answer the malicious charge that this is an ugly country.

That we're an ugly country, Senator, because we've got a beautiful country in the end.

I'm kidding.

Now, how the hell did you get all this in?

I don't know.

I took out your, the God word earlier, the word God earlier.

It should be in some place because there's an artist that's faking God or something like that.

It should be in some place.

I'd rather... Oh, the mention of Sunday can take care of that.

Yeah, it's not the right word.

I have not a great source of art.

Art be produced.

Art.

R.D.

religiously.

Well, religiously, it doesn't matter.

Right?

You see, I am not one that likes to use the...

I've never done speeches, and my friend Billy Graham, and Norman Fields, and the rest of all these other people, even I, are not religious.

And Joseph, for both of them, you should, you know, say, speak in a very clear way about God and all that sort of thing.

But I don't do it.

It's not my style.

I don't feel comfortable saying it.

That's why I usually take it out when people suggest it in speeches.

It's not because I don't believe it, but I don't say it.

That's our way, an equated way, so to speak.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

I don't.

But it's got to be a little more subtle, the way that perhaps this guy... We've still got to keep this down, and I think we've got to get it down to 1,400 words, so I don't know whether we're adding stuff or...

I struck something out of late, out of his memory.

I struck a little here on page seven.

I struck out the third middle sense, those countries that were a cross-trait for the United States of America.

I am just moved, possibly, that we are truly man's hope.

I struck out, this is 50, I'm going to give this to you, 50, 200, this, that, that, that.

I like this on the top of page eight.

I think it's good.

Let us love America.

Let us love her not because she is rich and not because she is strong, but because America is a good country.

That's a very powerful line.

I've used it on occasions for groups.

They want to hear it said.

Yes, sir.

Not because she's rich, but she's a good country.

And that's, we just move, but I need to transition to the conclusion.

For a conclusion, you never need a transition.

A conclusion should come always on the back.

And it's well removed and completely away, totally away from what you were talking about.

The difficulty with most writing is the speech rate or any of the other stuff.

I mean, in writing, you must always have a transition if you're writing an editorial or something like that.

But in a speech, it sometimes has much more impact if you move to a completely different thing.

Rather than saying,

A very appropriate reminder is this story, or that reminds me of a story.

You tell a story.

That's what you do in a speech, but in a conclusion in particular, you could suddenly stop, you pause, and you move, voice change.

112 years ago in Atlanta.

Is it emotional?

Well, when you put the story of Sergeant Carl Taylor on the end of your last Vietnam report on television, you did it just that way.

I think it was tremendously effective, that shift.

People could see that you were moving to something of your own.

This will be a ship, too.

I will do this when the man lives.

Yes, sir.

Relax.

Almost.

Well, you know the story.

You don't need to read it.

Well, I can't live.

I promise I should be able to now, except we've got a tight time there.

Would you mind taking these thoughts?

I'd be happy to.

I don't know whether you disagree, and maybe you should try to pull around this spirit.

If you do, say so.

No, I think that you're right to be more explicit about it.

What?

To be more explicit.

Well, to say that we're not really needing help, we're really not being much more explicit because we're taking out a government-based preacher.

That is certainly not needed.

But to get in the idealist, I think two things I want to get in.

One is the country 195 years ago.

Well, maybe it's just as well if you're going to leave something out.

To leave out, well, no, I like to call the United Nations the world.

Not because of the French.

on the top of your head how it sounds feels good to you about that in other words this whole area of how we make the point 195 years ago this country had the point that we're proving is that wealth and arms do not make a country great that america was great because it was poor goods and but rich in spirit and today and i certainly want to leave that and be a rich in spirit and we were

I want to get that, but how do you feel after, and I'm saying it's crazy now, because if you've got some other thoughts, I mean, don't give me any more guidance on it, let me know.

Maybe you just want to go and work and play with it and see what you want.

Well, I have a pretty clear picture of the directions that you laid out.

I'm not sure, I'm just saying, I'm not, I want to get your thought on it, too, on my direction that you're on.

I do think that we can't just say America was strong in spirit or rich in spirit.

We've got to explain that a little bit and make the point that it did indeed catch the imagination of the world.

It caught the imagination of the world because they believed in themselves.

They had faith.

They believed in themselves.

They believed in their country and their nation.

And they believed in ideals.

We don't need to say what they are.

They were bigger than themselves, or bigger than America, as big as the world, something like that.

I don't know that that says what the spirit is, but it implies it.

Maybe that's all we have to do.

That's all we ever need.

The other thing I feel is very important to me is this idea, is to say that we hear too much about what's wrong.

Some of the terms I have there, I want to say that we cannot allow what is wrong about America, the blindness about what is wrong, the blindness as to what is right.

And then you could move directly.

The way you move into that way now with the painting and the sentient is very good.

I think it goes quite well in my show.

I think so.

Maybe what I have said about what is wrong and what is right

It should come at the bottom of page seven.

I think so.

I think that's where it belongs.

Let us love America, not the world.

See, I think that's where it would come if you could work in parallel.

There's no difference.

I'm saying too many words here again.

Well, it comes somehow, I think.

I think with the cuts that have been made, then we'll come out actually a little shorter than we are now.

Once you take them off, see what you can do with it, huh?

One question I'm just worried you want to talk about.

We hear so much of what is wrong.

Do you want to mention, as you did just now, we hear it on television, we read it in the newspapers, because I know that this is sometimes... Well, they say the president is sitting out of the press.

Yeah, they help him.

Don't say that.

Just saying, we hear it every day.

We know we hear it day after day.

We hear so much.

Just saying day after day.

Without setting on the press on the night or something.

That's all right, though.

Day after day.

Because we do.

We hear it in the Congress room.

We hear it in the program club.

Day after day, we hear something.

We hear it in high school.

Here in college, there's a lot of students in different schools.

Right.

So I just say day after day.

We hear what is wrong.

We hear it.

You know, I worked for Ron for a year.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

Well, sorry.

That's a good place to do it.

Now, you can come back on that Thursday evening.

Oh, they do.

You do this as well.

It won't take me much longer than that.

That's fine.

Well, why don't you go back?

It's now, it's 11.

I don't know, 20 minutes to 11.

Should we say, uh, I want to hear your truth.

Say, by, uh, Between 11, 30, and 12.

Yeah, fine.

Why don't we say, uh, Why don't we just say 12 o'clock?

That'll give you time.

And if you hear the truth before 12, bring it over.

At 12 o'clock, I shouldn't take it out of line.