On August 5, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Alexander P. Butterfield, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Manolo Sanchez, Stephen B. Bull, and Charles W. Colson met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:46 pm to 2:40 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 555-006 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
It's a good thing to have it there anyway.
Yes, sir.
That's a little bigger, bigger.
Two hours.
All right.
He was in this morning.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can't quite understand how that is.
I just thought I was just shaking their hands.
Do I have to talk to them for an hour?
I'm not going to do it.
I'm just goddamn well not going to do it.
I have a thing to say to those people.
This is what you asked me to say.
I don't know what you did out there in the roadside.
This is a bad thing.
That's what I'm going to do.
Those were, you know, a large group just on a tour.
Some of these people were there.
I've got to say, I mean, the way they're coming, that's what I've seen from all these people.
That's right.
You remember what this group, they were at that other place that we had six months ago.
What is the purpose of it?
The purpose of it is to talk with them about the farm problems and opportunities, what needs to be done, what's being done, what they think, what you think, what you're trying to do.
We'll make it about 30 minutes.
I think that's long enough.
Forget it posted.
I mean, of this thing, I think he .
Well, but let me get it more like this.
It's my fault.
It's my fault.
I thought there was .
I thought that didn't see.
I just wanted to have some exposure to .
I remember you wanted the top 10 part people, the top 10 business people, business publication.
We've had that, right?
The top 10.
Actually, one of that series of, yeah, that was big.
I see.
I can see.
We started all the others.
I thought that took care of it.
I don't think these people look for them.
I would do it not as a briefing, but as a thing where you hit a couple of your own points and tell them you're interested in what they feel the situation is in the park.
Let them talk.
Just play it for the individuals that are there.
That's really all you're after.
Well, that's interesting.
That's the end of that strategy.
important.
If you haven't covered a group that might be far more important, it might be the editors of Catholic magazines or things like that.
The Italo-Americans.
Remember we had that.
But we have really done the farmer's job.
I swear to Christ we have.
Everybody has gone overboard on that.
The dairy people and
And, uh, you could go too far there.
You know, go too far into this area.
You have to wait.
Do you want Henry or anyone to sit in with Albert tomorrow night, or do you want to leave him alone?
And, uh, he wants to talk about this, you know, straight in the title.
But we've had breakfast with Mansfield a little while.
I think since he wants to talk about his Florida trip, just let it be Henry and tell Clark that it's for her, but they're not going to bring up legislation.
Yeah, that's right.
Unless Clark, I mean, I don't want Clark to feel that he would be in any way...
I think this is the hardest part.
The CBS Morning News had, had,
It's good stuff, you talking to Ruby Keeler coming out to the crowd, and then you talking to a group, uh, talking about how the musical wasn't just escapists that had good music, and it comes out right at the end, and you were mixing with the crowd outside the theater.
Such a good move that you were signing autographs.
Oh, it's a very positive thing.
And today's show is the same thing.
The only rival of the theater is the loud cheers from the crowd.
because I didn't talk while you were there, you know, and I don't, you know, talk about the Hillary's.
Apparently Broadway fans were scared of the president, so they, both CBS and NBC wanted him.
Stuff was good.
Well, I was extremely friendly to Mark Cobb, extremely friendly.
I figured out two different ways.
One, the theater proposition was
much more friendly than the last time we went to the theater, which was a year ago.
Well, we were there, I don't know when it was, but just more upbeat, far more upbeat.
The second reason is, as far as the Broadway crowd is concerned, the reason that it was friendly but more friendly is that the enemy didn't have the chance to get organized.
You see, the organized people depress everybody else when you see them, all those clowns out there.
So by just going more and more, this is not going to tell us anywhere when I go into a place, you know,
It's much the best way to do things.
It really is.
It's much the best way.
So we're on 30th.
And I wish we could get into Dallas without knowing other places.
Well, you can't get into Dallas without knowing.
But we can work Dallas pretty well, I think, if you can do.
Well, it's a very short way.
It's at that stadium.
It's right there by the airport.
Practically at it.
I don't think it's out in the woods.
No, but I mean it's at Dallas Arena.
It's not the downtown.
It's that other, I think, it's that other one right by the airport.
And if it is, it's just a very quick run over there.
We can get our own car to the airport.
And it goes without saying.
Although maybe not.
Let's try to get our own car out of the airport.
I couldn't agree more.
We don't have our own.
We've got to go for a run.
There he comes.
Oh, is that me?
Mind the fact that you're likely to have a lot of adventures, and I don't think nobody would come out and send people through against you.
But I'd say there was a hell of a reason, a marked reception.
I wish somebody had been along yesterday that could report it to you.
Well, bullshit, bullshit.
Yeah, he probably could tell you.
And then if we get...
In New York, I meant the New York reception was down, frankly.
It was really upbeat.
I'm a judge of these things, and much more so than we've been in there in recent times.
It's a great building to have.
Riding with you, the whole kind of business and all that.
The thing for the swing west,
There's a lot of possibilities.
Springfield looks a little better on a new possibility, which is that there's something you can do there, as well as do the state fair.
Either that, put it away, and then you're getting well.
Does that work?
No, it doesn't.
The old state capitol is completely restored.
That's where Lincoln served as a state legislator.
and it's fenced off and has a mall on three sides of it.
Happy little state capitol.
You could sign a bill, which has to be signed no later than that day, as it turns out, authorizing the establishment of the Lincoln Hall National Historic Site, which has just been done, which Congress has just acted on.
And that's a four-block area that includes Lincoln's home and stuff around it in that old state capitol area.
And then go back to the airport.
So then you can just stop at the fairgrounds.
Just do a drop-by type thing instead of a formal appearance.
Or you can go and see.
It is Governor's Day.
There is not a program set up.
Oval League will be just moving around.
Perfectly delighted to do anything you want at the fairground.
I think it is different.
I think it's best to go, especially when you have the other... You and I just walk around through the crowds.
People will swarm around.
You visit.
There'll be a couple of us that are working here.
I mean, it's a good thing to do because it is...
I forgot this, but it is the biggest state fair in the country, the Illinois State Fair.
And they have, like, 100,000 to 150,000 people there.
I wish we had more.
You have big crowds.
The other thing, they probably got those things that you can ride on to the tarts.
I think they did.
You just get on a tart and ride along and have to see if they can't order you.
Order you down to your little train.
Maybe you can do it just in your car, too.
Well, that would be nice if they could get it.
I think they can.
But the writing, the other exists.
.
.
.
.
.
I'm going to speak to later organizations.
That's great stuff.
For example, Commonly News.
That's what I had heard before.
The Reelit.
The Reelit.
The Reelit.
Some of the other thoughts and facts.
But my own question is this.
I know that we have mailed out tons and tons and tons of material.
But the one thing I'm emphasizing to Bob, and I'm not emphasizing to you, with cabin officers, you just do not only take them to the water.
You've got to force the bashes to drain.
They've got to be told what it is and say, here it is.
Call it to their attention and get it done.
God damn it, Bovey is really trying in his own damn stupid way.
But at least he's out there.
He doesn't know the facts.
He was surprised to hear it.
What have we done?
Do they have an order?
Are we giving them two months?
No, I don't think so, Mr. President.
We give them two things now, and we're doing it.
average, more than once a week, we give them a one-page update.
We now have a sheet that's exactly what you and I talked about.
Inflation, and then just the key points.
Each one of the indices' key points.
Then we give them an in-depth summary.
Then we give them a talking paper each time that a statistic comes up.
The wholesale price index is out today.
We have already distributed it.
a very brief paragraph to all of our folks under the Cabinet, explaining the two-tenths of one percent increase, why it was two-tenths of one percent, why the industrials were up.
When we have something really important, like the automobile sales in July, we call each of their offices and say that it's staying here.
We would very much appreciate their delivering it personally to the Secretary.
We have compiled a briefing book, which we've given to all the top colors.
It's the same thing with the Congress, Mr. President.
We had all the senators up for re-election and gave them nice little books.
Bob made the point to me they'll never read it, so I called six of them, and none of the six had read it.
Only one admitted to still having it on his desk.
So then you say, what the hell do you do?
And then you don't do that?
The hell do you have to get a picture out and say, don't give us any material?
The constant bitch from the hill.
Constant bitch.
Then they say, we want you to write a speech.
So we write a speech.
And they say, no, you get a medicine in my cell.
I've got to write my own speech just to give you the raw material.
Well, they've been pretty good.
We've been getting the speeches given.
That's .
Yeah, and press releases.
That's .
Well, it's probably we can't do anything about it.
I've told Alex to get the facts to him and give it to him again.
Maybe they aren't written in a dramatic enough fashion.
Who's doing the writing?
Sapphire?
No, the economics of Sapphire does sound good.
No, no, no, never, never, never.
We have a young writer who's on board now who's doing a very good job.
Sapphire is a great show.
It'll be awesome.
Very good.
And we do have the subcabinet briefing tomorrow, but
that I mentioned to you, sir.
You know, all of the presidential appointees and the departmental auditorium.
Why don't you mention to them that it gets discouraging as hell to send all this stuff out, to send it to your principal, to your cabinet secretaries, to be you guys, and then they can keep hearing back that we don't get enough material.
Say, you know, we're not shoveling this stuff out for, in order to keep bigger consumption.
I'll give you Sherlock, you know, and I'll even make it useful.
Well, I think I tell you I should just do the rounds, talk to each individual.
I don't know.
It's probably...
It might be worth my doing the rounds again.
Yeah, I might just go with myself each time.
I'd wait till fall while I would do it now.
Well, I don't know, Senator.
The only problem is that they're all going to be back.
They're going to be out, you know, in August, talking to people.
And I just want them to... God, if one of them could just have a talk sheet,
Maybe say the president wanted you to have these badges and talk-sheets based on the captain being smiling.
That our word mentioned, positive, is that we're concerned about our country, we're concerned about our economy.
Unfortunately, the crisis might take a while, so we need to take it slightly, but I don't quite understand it.
So, it's basically, what I mean is it's got to be done in a hot-tongue, cold, safe way.
See what you can do.
So, well, maybe they, you know, maybe they'll see what we need, but we don't want to go through one of these long paragraphs.
We just want to get a line comic up all around the cars, you know, just flips through the cars and back, back, back, back, back, back.
And there's a calling here for different ones.
Well, each man has to have his own style.
Just think of the facts.
Just what about any positive facts about the economy?
The main thing that I was thinking was, why isn't the word a peace transition?
I can't get these people to do it if they don't understand that that's the way to mean the peace issue.
God be with it every time.
If the two million people
It's a great line.
Well, you did it yesterday very well.
We've got to get other people using that.
We've got to get columnists taking that.
That's a very powerful line.
You could have 4.3 unemployment today if you did it.
300 people a week.
That price isn't worth it.
It isn't worth that price.
That's right.
Well, you probably covered it that night.
Well, I got Conley's points.
We did it Monday night together.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, we'll see if there's that point.
Increase the real count and so forth and so on.
There's a lot of these photos.
If I can see the sheet, maybe, then I'll try to do the right one.
I think I know how to do it.
I know how to get it into their drill and their dumb heads.
It's got to be done in a way that is totally understandable.
It's just as simple as, get the sheet for me, the best sheet.
I want to see the best sheet.
By the end of the day, you have a positive repair.
I can bring them right in now.
You know, I want to see what you've got.
I have a mind of it.
It's better to catch and so forth.
Here are the facts to emphasize about the economy.
If you do that, it's certain.
And prepare it for the sheet based on the press conference and so forth and so on.
The most punchy writer is Buchanan.
Buchanan cuts away all of the burgeoning craft that goes with each other.
If he would, he might take the right of his own.
This is a metaphor, Buchanan.
How would you put it?
One, two, three, four, five, six.
And I don't want to get into the job, but sometimes a couple of editing things are good.
Sapphire is not that hard.
He's cute, but not hard.
He might get it good slowly.
But this is what we need.
We just need to get the facts at the point.
The point that Bob said to mention about Rumsfeld and McGregor's house the other night, Rummy and I were
taking these congressmen one by one who are coming up and bitching about the economy, and you just turn on them, and you say, have you thought back to previous post-war periods of the adjustment?
Do you realize that out of 22 major industrial nations, we're the three best in the United States?
Well, I reported on them, too, in the fact that the Democrats had never produced really valuable counter-infrastructure.
I think the closest we came was Eisenhower.
4.3, 1955, 4.3.
in Eastland.
The Democratic Party was an average in the three Kennedy years of 6% of its money.
And nobody wrote about it.
Goddamn little.
Remember I had that survey today?
You get about five times a year in structural
They want to be one of the facts.
They want to say the right thing.
They want to be healthy.
But our congressmen and senators, on those I told Bob this morning, I can see that they do something.
They probably do a lot of good on that.
I'm not looking at those other senators.
They're those strong senators.
And we saw them trying to say some positive things as well as saying they wouldn't have said anything positive otherwise.
i mean they can i noticed it to my greatest surprise jack miller said something good that was amazing now there's a case where we're still trying to get out of the challenge here now there's a case we wrote his speech and sent it up to him and he gave it just the way they they do do it sometimes but most of them don't know how to make the most of it
I reread his transcript from last month, and he left himself plenty of room.
He said this is a very dramatic trap.
But what we're really concerned with is the trend and the month-to-month variations.
Even if this is too much, it may be reflected in some adjustment there.
Well, I had the month-to-month variation yesterday, too, except for monthly aberrations.
The trend is down.
And it is.
It's 5.8 now.
The wave is 6.2.
The wave, you kind of want to play it back somehow.
You could just hit those bastards on last month.
It was a statistical aberration, so we'll accept that.
And it really wasn't 5.6.
It was only 6.0.
A drop of two-tenths.
And we'll agree with you.
Now, this month is 5.8.
It's another drop of two-tenths, and that's a goddamn good trend.
Yeah.
I'll leave it sitting there.
Well, I actually pointed it out last month.
It was just this very early.
Yeah, Hudson could do that.
He could say that many of you speculated it was.
Yeah, yeah.
He said, no, no, no.
I'll say it was only 50%.
It was 5.0.
Right.
You can't live in August if you worry about August.
Yeah, that's right.
You can't live in Donahue if you want to speak or something else.
No, but you've got to hammer each one for whatever reason it results.
You're absolutely right.
You've got to do it.
This entire inch up, as I've said, this entire whole thing now is so clear.
It's a psychological problem created by the media and by the Democrats with an ableist system of Republicans.
The only man speaking out effectively in this economy is one general economist.
Hodgson tries, Schultz tries, neither is very effective, except in very small groups.
McCracken is a disaster.
Now, where the hell is Stanton?
Stanton says something, and we will leave you with that.
No, Stan is good, and he's got a good player for the publicity.
We're going to send him out in the country with the rest of the country.
I think this idea of getting Stan and the rest out in the country is warm.
The small business guy in the Chamber of Commerce has been syndicated, and most of that went a little bit down.
Your problem really is in the Wall Street area.
Oh, completely.
That's where your problem is.
Well, the Wall Street is totally affected.
the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and Newsweek, and three networks, period.
And they, they vacillate wildly from week to week.
God, it's incredible that even the, even the good ones on Wall Street just shunned it.
Well, how do you make news otherwise?
Well, the other thing on the PR side that occurred to me, and I, I, uh, I'm sure you would follow, is that you mentioned Judge, the new Judge,
must let them just talk about the economy.
We've got to talk about our issue, which is peace, for example.
Here, a month ago, people were talking about the president as the bold leader and the world leader, and, you know, et cetera.
And that has got to be hammered and hammered and hammered every time we can, see?
Because otherwise, I think,
Why don't you develop, have development of the VR shop, a way to continue that line.
It's got to be a character's speech.
Every speech has got to have a way to produce it, or so forth and so forth.
Got any ideas on that?
the way these guys are all trying to push it now, but you continue to play off time, which is the kind of thing that gives you the biggest stepping stones, right?
You use that as a dramatic thing.
I think you've got to really work at that.
Then you go...
But you really, you stay with that.
China still has people's imagination.
They still get excited when you talk about it.
You gave it another little kick yesterday with the timing question and when you're going to go and all that sort of stuff.
We need to feed out what we want to do.
We need to feed out every two, three weeks some sort of talk about China kind of way.
And there'll be enough there if you don't have to do it.
You've got to be careful not to.
I don't mean any substitute or anything.
It's in a way that just some other things.
And there's a constant, everybody analyzing and trying.
Well, let me say this.
I think that the point that you made, Bob, that I can just mainly overlook, is it isn't trying.
But it's the way it was done.
The molders, the secrecy, the wealth.
In other words, build up.
It's the leadership, and it's being in control of foreign policy.
Instead of .
We've finally got a dramatic leader.
I hold up the most effective world leader since World War II.
You know, some of that stuff.
But, you know, people have got to say it.
I got it in my look article.
They finally printed it, and they closed it with a closing line that said, quote, something about it.
And I said, well, what?
The era of the great leaders of the world has passed.
There are no great leaders left except Richard Nixon.
Well, the kind of thing is one that certainly gives us an opportunity to know, to ride after all this work.
Thank you.
Well, that, Mr. President, if we're clever about it, will continue to be written about and can weave into this leadership thing.
This is the
We'll start building it.
There's an interesting thing in that.
The leaders are all gone.
They start building that.
Now, it isn't true.
In the free world, they're all gone.
You've still got Mao, Mao Zedong, who is the only leader left, and Chang, in a sense.
Yeah.
But he's been discredited.
He's sort of pulled it up.
Chang really fits with Franco and...
And that's the last of them.
And they're the only ones left of that.
But the towering world leaders, the Adenauers and Churchills and the Gauls and Stalin, Eisenhower, the men that walked in big steps across the world scene aren't there anymore.
And there are none emerging except for Jim Henson.
You know, I carry this thing because none has a power base.
So he used to have a power base.
Okay, we don't even need to be modest about it, though.
It's just true.
It's, it's, it's 20 grand.
There aren't any of the others who know a goddamn thing about it.
Hayes knows something.
Pompidou's a jerk.
They're like a money-changing brand.
They've all got different kinds of names.
There's none of them.
There's no Latin American.
Who the hell's gonna think about you down there?
No.
No European.
Yeah, but there's no leader in this country.
There is no...
If you look at the Democratic Party, why do they have 17 candidates for the presidency?
Because there's nobody that's... You know, the debunking, the debunking of Teddy, the bottom of Jack Kennedy, is very remarkable, isn't it?
It's incredible.
All of a sudden, all of a sudden, Ted Cruz has become fashionable to kick in now, instead of the president.
I thought, though, that after Teddy was arrested and all, that he would come to rest with a great leader, he must have.
Really, he was a goddamn disastrous president in foreign policy.
Domestic policy, we'll forget.
Foreign policy was an utter disaster.
And they're all saying the Berlin Wall was built in that period.
The Cuban confrontation, missing the opportunity to kick the goddamn Russians out of the Western Hemisphere, and making a deal whereby we can't do it now.
You understand why we can't move into Cuba, don't you?
No.
Christ, he had a secret deal with them that God damn had with Stevenson, and he made a deal.
that we would not do anything there with the Russians.
And we got nothing in return.
Nothing except getting rid of the Turkish vice versa.
We gave up in return.
We gave up the Turkish base instead.
We had the Turkish man in the ground.
We had a fellow at the end of the thing where he made it absolutely clear to the communists that we were scared that we had no strength.
I've been interested in the Boston newspapers this week.
The Boston Globe has just sworn Jack Kennedy to pieces.
I cannot understand it.
I really can't.
They've talked about it being a playboy, almost being thrown out of college, always taken with the women.
Jack Kennedy?
Yes, sir.
Really?
Yes, sir.
Who the hell writes such things as that?
That, I must say, I think is unfair.
Well, this is all coming out in the Kennedy papers that have now been made available in the YC.
That's what's...
The Kennedy Library last, this week, released 5,000
or something of his personal papers.
He put them on and made them available to the public.
And this was the day that he
that uh privatized them and made them made them available people are starting to run that started to play back all of the and they're the pre-presidential papers so it gets back and he wasn't exactly a shining star in the washington scene as a pre-president and uh they're getting into all that work and it gets past all see this there's been such a limited myth built about him you have the tpt vote that makes him a great warrior right and you have the the uh
The physical courage of his ride through that fight with, fight with death and writing his profiles encouraged while he was lying there trying to save his life.
And then, then you have his, his presidency business with Bush.
All the stuff in between, all the, where everything's stuck between the deaths is all starting to come out now.
Well, the, the papers in Boston have just been brutal.
They've gone back to his days at Harvard when he was caught with a gal in a room and, and
various disciplinary notes he had gotten from the college, his mediocrity as a student, really just torn him to shreds.
It's been a brutal jab.
I got a lot of press reading about him, though.
You know, he read a thousand words a minute a year or something like that.
Pretty fast, a thousand words.
How do you do that?
I was reading school things.
I mean, just throw it out and read that fast.
I don't learn that.
Well, he says, get on the side that the people are against things.
Get with them and say you're trying to beat the problem.
because you agree with the people that it is about.
The old Rossa technique.
We have a problem with the American business status agreed on.
That's the point.
That's the problem.
It's been a part of his investment.
He's predicted it.
You say we've made no progress against it, but should we make no progress on it?
Like, on a fund that's going to go to 70% or 80%?
Yeah, maybe it will.
It hasn't yet.
Now, what the hell is this all about?
On the unemployment thing, I do think, though, that I'd rather he said he's got to clear that content.
You know what he has said?
he said yesterday he was so absolutely certain it would go to six percent which by the way he was told from a source on the hill who claimed they had it from bls just couldn't but he was told that if
it was below 6%, that he would interpret that as very good news.
He's so damn sure it's in on the 6%.
So I will pull the cork out, Mr. Robin Hood.
Yep.
Write his script for him.
Tell it down his throat.
Mr. Boyd, that's all right.
Have a good night.
All right.
I must say, though, the guy in the room, he doesn't even have the books and the copy.
Now he's afraid to be false again.
Aggressive.
Firm.
Mean.
Jesus Christ, you know what I'm saying?
I mean, he sounds like good.
But he talks the way I talk, actually.
All the rest of them talk like Republicans.
Stupid, dumb old bastards.
Defensive Republicans.
They don't know how to get up and fight.
You've got to fight.
This is unbelievable, I must say.
Unbelievable.
Well, we just love to tell you something so honest.
We tend always, Mr. President, to worry about governing, and the Democrats worry about holding office.
Winning.
Winning.
Well, we also tend always to worry about being responsible.
Like I said, responsible.
Like that goddamn Texas bus case.
Responsible.
I'll say this, when I consider what we used to do in this field, we must be doing some better.
You know, the problem is we have to be because they're rougher on us than they are because the election's coming up.
That's right.
But the first six months, you had a pretty good run.
I mean, I don't really care.
I mean, I got it back for six months, and I took it.
We didn't write as we should have.
That's it.
And then on November 3rd, I gave a hell of a letter, and then we didn't write that job.
Except for a couple, three days.
We were voted in some way.
We didn't get on.
We didn't go.
I mean, we should have.
We could have written that for three months.
And, you know, we've had our problems.
It was a tough year, but 71, God have an economic labor.
It's turned out to be, just what I said, a good year.
You can't get around that fact.
He has a tough time finding anybody who believes in amongst the folks.
They know it is for themselves.
It's the frontboard now.
When they jumped all over, he said, well, this one is 3.8% or whatever it is.
3.1, lowest in the country.
And he says, yeah, but everybody, you know, keep hearing about all this stuff.
Howard Baker says the same thing.
It really isn't any serious on this one, but everybody thinks it is.
So what does he think we should do?
That's, these, these guys...
He's obviously an upbeat fellow.
Or has been, years past.
Or I guess he's running now.
He's not going to be a...
He's running in... No, he's, he's, he's all right.
He isn't the...
He's a very upbeat fellow.
You'll see out there, he can lead the charge.
I'll tell you, when one senator finally gets up there, defends his administration regularly, and do's the acting clean.
Now, we had no, I almost think we made a mistake in having him go to the National.
Well, he's still getting in there.
He gave the Democrats a good slug yesterday on voting against Lockheed and voting against Jeb.
He gets more mileage now than he did since Tennessee.
Yeah, he does all right.
Wouldn't it be good to have another one, though?
Somebody who, by God, is a leader, who's out there just pouring it out onto you.
I think you could use a little bearing.
He's doing, he's certainly gained a lot of stature since the time he got picked as president.
A lot of people recommend politics.
I have a letter from my daughter's boyfriend.
He's in Minnesota.
He's a pre-med, and he's going to med school.
He's working as a moving man, which he's done in the last five summers.
He works for a moving man company.
He says, you know, he's graduated from Stanford, and he's a Stanford radical.
basically, but now his father's a very good lawyer in Minneapolis.
You know, he's coming back into the fold a little bit.
But he said, working with these moving payments, he said, it's a really interesting fact that they all, business is good, they're all working good overtime, and they get fantastic pay.
They get like $750 an hour or something.
And, but they said, they all say, boy, that administrative
It's just terrible the way things are all falling apart, this terrible inflation.
And he said, I asked them what they meant by inflation, and nobody could answer.
They don't know what inflation is.
But they hear on television that there's this terrible inflation, so they sit around in their moving trucks or eating their sandwiches at lunchtime or something, you know, and say, Nixon's got to do something about this terrible inflation.
That's right.
It's the psychology.
So, you know, the answer...
His simple answer is that the president's got to go on television and sit there with his charts like he did when he explained Cambodia to the people, and he's got to explain the economy to the people, and he's got to say, here's what we're doing, and here's where it is.
A hell of a lot of people have suggested that.
They claim that that's the way you will just go right around the media and sink it.
No, sir.
God, no.
Don't do it in August.
Time to do it is in the fall, if at all.
But I understand.
It depends on
And I'm not sure that's a good idea.
I don't know if you want the president on election.
How about some radio talk?
I'm not so sure you don't.
How about some radio talk?
It wouldn't have the effect.
No.
No.
It would have some effect.
It would have some effect.
It's not the effect.
The TV thing, when you get the time, talk to 50 million people all at once here.
The effect is... Well, the same, exactly.
The old businessmen.
It's a fascinating thing to talk to these fellows about their businesses.
And you get them saying, Burnham of West, I sent you a whole slew of them.
Burnham of Westinghouse.
Right down the line, these guys are saying, our record profits this year.
We've got record profits coming.
Never been so good.
Color television sets are up 25%.
But Jesus, aren't things terrible?
We've got to have wage price guidelines, and you think about it.
What more do you want?
You've got the best... Well, there's another factor that passes to this that is, however, almost contradictory.
This is true whether, whatever, how they hold short solar.
It'll do.
As we saw in Ohio, as we saw in Iowa, as I saw last night in New York, there is...
There is among the people, I think, a higher degree of enthusiasm and support for the president.
For what reasons?
I don't know.
I don't think it's just China.
This is a lot of things.
It's probably maybe they just, people are just disturbed and forced by it.
But there's more than there's been in a hell of a long time.
There's a hell of a lot of this.
I'm talking about a lot of New York nationalities, right?
These goddamn press people.
Unfortunately, we didn't have any of our people who wanted to report it, except Jerry Warren.
You might ask him if he saw any, you know, he might get it across.
Some of the TV guys, he's a good resort at the point.
I mean, Warren's a painter, but they write in a bad theater.
I mean, you know, we might have a theater once in a while.
Yeah, but they were always good.
They were outstanding.
Jerry, you know, you could tell the difference.
Mm-hmm.
outside.
They didn't know you were coming.
But there is, there is, there is something there has to affect.
I wish I had, for example, been with us in Ohio.
These guys actually answered in here.
He was
I think the feeling is there.
It really boils down to having one major problem and that is to get the public attitudes
in line, more in line with the reality of economics.
It's political and it's psychological.
Well, Harris has said that psychology among people has not changed since six months after the events because of the media that could be wrong, right?
That's right.
Remember, I raised that one.
You raised it.
Now, Lou Harris in April said, don't worry, in two months it's going to turn around.
It hasn't turned around.
That's right.
You know the economy has turned around.
People have.
That's right.
And you made the point that this is unique because of the
impact of electronic media is the opportunity you have on a one-shot to turn things around because you can hit all the people at once which has 500 times the impact of dan rather even when he does what he does three times a
Okay.
Well, we're going to see if we can find any.
The, uh, the girl is going to be there in Manchester, which will be a nice little cover thing.
She lives in Manchester.
So that'll be a touch and a touch.
We're taking Obie Schultz along because she is born and raised in Nashville and was a nurse.
by trade.
So she'll go with Pat on her.
Right.
Swing through the nursing home.
And we're separated as we go through.
Yeah.
How do you go inside?
Pat will go on one swing and you'll go on the other.
This is a better way to do it.
At no point are the two of you going together.
Excellent.
But Opie can kind of go along and...
Sounds like a nice thing because he's apparently a great folk hero in Nashville because the wife of the Secretary of Labor has the biggest thing the town's ever had.
So...
And that little, it's kind of like taking John Scali back to camp.
How does that, uh, how does Banger, what do you got, are they going to get a little proud of the area?
I mean, how do you count Banger and Los Angeles?
I remember the Republican area used to be conservative as hell.
That's good.
Margaret Smith said that it was a good place.
She said that's the right place to be going.
On that other trip, Clayton, the, uh, strength field works pretty well.
And there's an easy way to do something on the park if you want to, which is it's on a lake and the campsites are on the lake.
So you can get on a boat and take a little cruise to get a feel of the thing and just put ashore at a campsite here and there and go in and talk to the people and get off.
You have much more control than if you go into the floor of Yosemite Valley or something, you know.
We could also, if you want to get another state out of the way, we can land in Montana and helicopter down to the park so that you do Montana and Wyoming both.
I wouldn't do anything for Mike.
Well, I think I made a half-ass promise to come in and I did issue to him.
Yeah.
I'll do that some other time in a different setting.
I don't think it would, but the problem is how you work the timing.
So it's to get the value out of it.
If you do strength people on Wednesday morning or midday, then you're getting the late
Now, you missed that.
What do we want on TV?
Springfield, Good Town Town, and the Lincoln thing.
Grand Tee Knots, the visit to the National Park and the camper stuff down left, and the BFW speech.
You have three events in two days, and one of them isn't going to make the TV.
That's true.
The one I would be more inclined to lose on TV is when people go forgetting to
I think you want to be a W on TV, probably.
Or maybe you don't think you do.
I'm not sure about that.
National Defense.
If you're not, then the thing to do is get to the Great Lake in the late afternoon and do the tour in the next morning so that it'll make TV that I really am doing the VFW for then.
Uh, but they can't change their time.
I guess they can't.
We can do it.
We can do it anytime Thursday.
They're in session all through Thursday and Friday.
They've got to see where they want you all day.
They think that I want really disorders.
If I'm going to speak, I need time to...
Well, maybe that's the thing to do.
Maybe we end up in there.
We can do it so that it still gets on TV.
And we can do it so that the text gets on with the video, which is not bad.
I mean, it's a really great television.
Not very good.