Nixon, Colson & Stennis on Economy and Press relations

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Sir, I was wondering if you could put a brush down into the galley.

Well, I'm sorry.

Well, then, Watson.

We're talking about the economy.

I didn't hear anything.

I heard you.

Senator Sass was...

Well, you mentioned selected industries, which is a very good point.

That's a...

It's a...

It basically is a, it's basically a political campaign.

It's not a bad thing.

It won't work.

On the other hand, it may be uncertain for some time.

That's our point.

I just figured it out.

Well, Conrad made this point yesterday in our meeting.

He didn't write it.

He listened to it.

He articulated that if there was going to be a

a general decline in the level of increases.

The time to start appearing to be taking charge of it is now, and then you can point to the...

When that point is reached, if you then say, okay, now we're going to get tough on this, and the results begin to be shown, it's effective.

Then you get credit for what was going to happen, and that's how we work this thesis.

Interesting point.

Your Friday figure was supposed to be 5.8.

Yeah, I got that.

Well, it will be played, Chuck, the other way.

You understand?

I'll say it, and I'm fine with jumps again.

I do, but just like Hall, it's only a race decision.

Rather not.

Well, a little bird told me that you had a birthday, and I just wanted to congratulate you and tell you that, well, I hope you're around for a hundred years.

Believe me, the Senate needs you.

Another thing, too, I had a little meeting with the President and did not ask about the conference reports, but I'm going to have them.

You have already gotten my message that I approve of the conference report, that it would not be harmful to the negotiating position.

And I want to have Stigler say that tomorrow morning to the press, too.

Would that be at all healthy or not?

All right.

I'll have it.

Also, if you would like, I'll send a letter to him.

Would that be better?

Which would you prefer?

I'd send a letter to you saying that I would examine the conference.

Do you maybe have issues?

Should I send it to you, Andy, there, one to each?

Or is it really a set of problems?

Yeah.

All right.

That's where you're going to have a problem.

All right.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, I'll get you a note down about the .

He's got no birthdays.

Okay.

One more letter.

You may.

Go to...

Well, the point that I made with the press, I said it's going to last three to nine years before Vietnam.

It's less.

Well, I'm going to, I have a thing with Revit.

I have a guarantee, a policy, that it doesn't go to 6%.

Where has he gotten that 6% sign?

No, I don't, Mr. President.

And then, what you see, it was just as bad, Chuck, for him to say it.

Oh, sure, it's the truth.

Well, he's now said it twice.

He's said it twice, and I think Revit has got to say it.

It did not go to 6% at the 5.8, which is a...

a very small aberration of the hills, five, six, five, eight.

We're down below the 60% level.

I don't know, August is another month.

It's going to be rough.

The significant thing about July, Mr. President, is that you can't say that the survey was taken before the kids got into the...

They're all there.

What you have in July is...

one of the hardest months, one of the firmest months in terms of being able to assess unemployment.

I think it is very fair to say that that is where unemployment is today, and you couldn't be that sure in June.

Now, the important thing is that it is 5.8 today, where it was 6.2 in April and May.

That's the important thing.

It is down very significantly.

The breadwinner figures are down.

The married males who are the

which is always the key figure.

The Vietnam veterans are down.

There is a healthy turn in terms of employment in the country.

And you can put it, talk about the new jobs that have been created since the first few years.

It's clear that the country's on an expansionary course.

And I just think that, I'm not gonna call it rather again, I'm gonna call Stanton this time and say, no, goddammit, this is one you clearly owe us and we want a decent break in the coverage of this one on Friday.

We'll do the same thing with Chancellor.

He's reachable.

He's... Yeah.

Is he reachable because of China?

Well, he's...

The pendulum kind of swung with him.

He's not as negative as he used to be.

And Scali does well handling ABC, so we'll see that the networks... We'll try to see that we get a decent break for them on Friday.

I think we will.

Yeah, the problem that I see, you know, if you read a news magazine or a business magazine or a press, the failure that our people have had is not in rifle shooting and where it matters.

I had these guys in three months ago, these business senators, and talked to them about that.

But that's what McCracken and Schultz and McConnell and so forth are going to be doing.

They ought to be seeing these people in groups, the powerful people,

getting our side across, because basically, Chuck, they're right in that everything is going to hell, and God damn it, it's not true.

A lot of this is due to the fact that the, in the case of the political types of nations, like China and the U.S., it's because they're so petrified of the possibility that the PC is out for money, so they've got to build this issue to destroy it.

That's the...

That's the entire point.

It's basically an orchestration.

It's no accident that they all come at the same time.

On the other hand, I just don't, I think maybe we haven't done a good job trying to get our story across.

I thought that it was done, right?

You've got about 30 people working on it.

I mean, everybody, you know, Sapphire, Clyde, you know, McCracken.

Well, it's a trouble to get it across.

Are they programming themselves?

What is the situation?

Stans.

Remember I said, let's get on with the team.

You've got Stans.

Hodges, we talked about the economy.

Stans can.

They've got to get to the people that count, not mass audiences, but the people that count.

We did once before, Mr. President, have this pretty well pulled together.

A year ago, before the 70 election, we were sending teams around the country.

It's been sliding.

That hasn't been going on.

And it's all right, because it wasn't time for it.

But we're going to, we, Flanagan and I have worked out a schedule.

We will have the Vice President Sands, Hodgson, Flanagan, Schultz, and Connolly programmed to go into about 30 cities and meet with 20 to 30 key business leaders of cities for off-the-record discussions, have backgrounders of the newspaper editorial boards do a TV talk show, and get some public press as well as some

I do see, including the very important elevator types, you've got to get the Times people, the Newsweek people, the, in this case, the New York Times, Washington Post, Mahara, you've got to fight the Wall Street Journal.

You know, the people, you've got to get the publications that they read, the Business Weekly, the Nation's Business Journal.

Well, they're, we're doing that also.

Schultz is doing time, probably, I don't know, they still do that.

which is helpful.

We'll do news week also.

The Journal, of course, the New York Times, the others, we will take one at a time.

We're also suggesting to the three networks that they might like to convene what is the equivalent of a newspaper editorial board to have meetings with our economic fellows.

And we'll lay it out and take their questions back.

But that could be very useful with the three networks.

each individual.

And we're... Well, that should be followed up on a high priority basis because right now our problem is almost totally psychological.

Totally.

It is totally.

When I say almost totally, there are some figures of the bad, the CPI going up was a bad figure, and the fact that the leading indicators turned down, and some international problems, but God damn it, except for that, those are all

Everything else, retail sales, the housing, construction, the inventory, the situation is basically sitting on the boiler.

And inflation is lower than it was last year.

Unemployment is down from what it was the first of the year, 6.2% the first of the year.

January was assembly 6.2%.

That's when it reached its height.

Right.

Then it came back, and then it bounced back up.

But this is bounced back up in May, but it's now, it's clear it's down now.

But your basic indicators, even the CPI, Mr. President, those are two-month figures that we're looking at.

If you look at a six-month figure, and we're back at where we were in 1967, it is, when I say it's totally psychological, there are always going to be problems.

No economy is ever perfect.

There are always something.

But basically, this country's a hell of a lot better off today than it was, as you point out, during the Kennedy years, or as it was during many of the Eisenhower years.

Sure.

In the last, the Eisenhower years, it wasn't here.

It was good.

We had a game in 59 and 60.

The Eisenhower years were bad.

I remember.

We got over 60% unemployment in four years, even in 60, after it turned around and so on.

That was still a hell of a thing.

and it hit us just right about October, you know, when we had that big drop on the planet.

Lou Harris is here today.

He is working with the people on the Issues Code, if you want to take it.

And he's rebacked the question here along the lines, you want it.

I'm going to go over it and be sure that it's politically the way we want it.

But coming down on the plane, he told me that he had

sat with Larry O'Brien all the way there today from New York.

And O'Brien had many fascinating things to say, but one in particular.

He talked to Harris as an old confidant.

I don't think he realizes that Harris has been playing with us.

And he said, you know, the thing we're scared to death, he said, if Nixon succeeds in making the economy well, there is no possible way

that we will win the next year's election.

The peace issue is gone.

The peace issue is absolutely wiped out.

All we've got is the economy issue, and we're going to play it for all it's worth.

And O'Brien, he was kind of downcast.

He said, I just think that the president has the powers of that office to use, and he will start using them hard on the economy.

And if he does, nobody can touch him.

It's guaranteed.

Of course, it's perfectly evident.

That's what the Democrats are interested in.

The point is, no matter how good he is, these bastards are going to make it appear bad.

Here's Gordon Allen, you know, who lives in Colorado, who's on the bench in the morning in front of the commune, and he says, what's your range, street, my name?

He says, what in Christ are you talking about?

But everybody thinks it's bad.

That's right.

Just think of that.

Percy said the same thing.

And Illinois is, what, five, six below the national average for the last four people.

But it's not bad.

They all know it.

The people of the country has become a lot more juvenile in the sort of reaction to it.

in a hell of a shape, right?

So everybody's walking the streets and everybody's on unemployment insurance or on welfare or on food stamps or on waiting around, jobs are coming and moving along.

It's just the fact that they, and I've always given about those, there's a story, there was a cashier who said, he said, we would have, I said, we would have unemployment at 4.3 today.

the war, we're at the same levels that we came in.

But then we'd be losing 300 Americans a week instead of 1,200.

And I said, it just isn't worth it.

That's pretty good.

It's a hell of a bullet point.

That sure is.

It's worth it to go to this prosperity and peace.

Well, one thing that, of course, is going to be negative from the standpoint of our critics is the variety

I would not endorse, basically, the wage-price guidelines.

I couldn't do it with wage-price boards.

I said, no, I would not endorse it.

However, he said, if these hearings indicate a way that they work without imposing the Army's restrictions with criminal penalties, by the way, then it's a matter that we may actually see.

But I said, I have yet to see one.

But the trouble is that most people, most businessmen now, of course, think we ought to have it.

Not all of them have.

I just don't know.

There's a strong feeling in the business community that they would like to see us cracking down harder.

Oh.

That's right.

Nobody, you asked it now, and nobody... How the hell do you crack later without a cracking match?

That's right.

They...

They simply look at that as the panacea without thinking it through, but then you start asking them, how would you expect this to work?

None of them have thought through it.

It's a fashionable thing.

I put the line into it very hard on the optimist, on the economy, because some of the people who talk to me, they say, well, you've got software.

What do you think?

Do you have any advice?

And I say, well, my advice is basically based on my sort of inexpensive prediction, because I have my confidence

We need to change this economy here.

It's strong.

We haven't been so far as to try to fill this ridiculous economy.

It's not going to come up very wrong as it has come up.

Actually, those who are predicting now are going to come up wrong in the next six months or so.

You've got to search like that.

The problems are wrong.

I think we are.

As far as our getting everybody cracking on this, Mr. President, we... On Friday?

I'm waiting to hear from Conley.

If he can do it Friday, we can do it.

He's got to get away.

He's coming in to see you, I think, as needed.

Yeah.

Peter Vonnegut's been trying to get him this morning.

If he can do it Friday, we're going to set up the balance.

But we will stay on this as number one priority.

I've got...

The time that we're going to be able to really make maximum mileage out of that is this fall when the hearings start on the Hill.

Did you notice the Democrats cut the appropriations for that?

No.

Well, there was a request for $250,000 to conduct Senate hearings of the Pentagon Papers.

And a group of Democratic senators succeeded in cutting it to $100,000.

Well, you know why.

They realize that those hearings are going to hurt them a hell of a lot more than they hurt us.

So we're on the side right now of trying to pump up the hearings, and the Democrats are on the side of trying to calm them down.

They caught on.

They caught on to what the impact would be.

Is that right?

The material that we're gathering, I've got a man who's been working, doing nothing but full-time working on the

analyzing the Pentagon Papers, looking for areas of political vulnerability.

He's come up with a lot of good stuff.

We're going to have to start clearing some of it through Henry Kissinger's operation to be sure that we don't do something that is harmful to the elections.

The coup material we have is just horrific.

And we have some first-hand interviews with people that really link Harriman in, that link Hilsman, that George Bundy, that link Kennedy in, as a matter of fact.

but we can't use that until after the...

The enemy's elections.

But use it then.

Oh, we'll have a book on it by then.

The material is excellent.

The areas of judgment of this pompous, arrogant crowd that were in here in those days.

The McGeorge Bundy types.

The areas of judgment are just incredible.

If you really can't do it, it's a sorry, sorry.

You say Harris goes in the field next week, huh?

He's in the field now, sir.

Oh, he's... Oh, this is another one of his major surveys, huh?

This is his major survey that he's got going on now.

Has he taken a survey?

Well, a lot of them, I guess, have all taken surveys.

He thinks it's, uh...

He thinks this is a good month to take a survey.

Yeah, all the cases next week, I guess.

I...

I don't know.

Harris mentioned one thing, that, uh, O'Brien is convinced that McCarthy will...

The state of the race is a spoiling one party.

And that party is the scene that's going to be influenced entirely by Howard's time.

Is that right?

So if that's urgent, should I end it?

Well, you might be able to do that through, we might be able to do it through that practice at the right time.

Yeah.

Come on.

Nixon, Colson & Stennis on Economy and Press relations

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Also recorded on August 4, 1971

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Nixon, Colson & Stennis on Economy and Press relations

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on August 4, 1971

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