Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 592 › Conversation 592-001

Nixon & Mitchell on 1972 Presidential Election and Political Strategy

Thursday, October 14, 1971 · 9:00 AM–9:12 AM ET · Oval Office · 13 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Mitchell, John N.Conversation592-001 on Tape 592 (tape position 00:01:08–00:13:09)StartThursday, October 14, 1971 at 9:00 AMEndThursday, October 14, 1971 at 9:12 AMRecording deviceOval OfficeSourceNixon Library record for 592-001 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and John Mitchell discuss political strategy for the 1972 election, focusing on undermining Democratic opponents and capitalizing on the President's public approval ratings. They analyze the impact of Nixon’s recent foreign policy initiatives—specifically planned visits to China and the Soviet Union—and their effect on demoralizing the Democratic field. The conversation also touches on media management, emphasizing the need to keep the administration's narrative focused on domestic prosperity and presidential leadership while minimizing the political damage caused by negative press coverage.

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Position in tape: 00:01:08 – 00:13:09

part A, 0:02

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NARA Description

On October 14, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and John N. Mitchell met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:00 am to 9:12 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 592-001 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 592-1

Date: October 14, 1971
Time: 9:00 am - 9:12 am
Location: Oval Office

The President talked with John N. Mitchell.

[See Conversation No. 11-86]

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

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We've got to suggest that I want us to get caught.
I'd be more concerned if we didn't have a very evil guy on the outside who's working on this work.
He's terrific.
And he's, for example, he said she did beautifully in the Cups in the Show this week.
That's a hell of an audience to cover.
We don't see it here.
Why don't you get her out of the...
We take care of this.
All right.
All right.
Now that, over the period of the next three or four months, you know, we'll work in with each other to get that thing to go about it.
I'll try to find another interesting thing here, which I really think is the key to it.
I think that Meany has made a decision on Teddy.
I've always felt that, you know, I'm very excited.
The Catholic blood ran thicker than his concern about Jack Clay.
And, uh, I think that's what it is.
And I think this, uh, we're gonna see more and more of many, many related things because of Petty and the buildup of Petty and the destruction of the others.
You agree with that?
Absolutely.
He is recommended that we shift our major emphasis away from Muskie and on to Teddy.
He's always said it would be Teddy.
But he felt that we should destroy Teddy first.
I don't know if you remember the early thing, the Muskie watch.
So, well, you know, he fell on his head, and I just looked at the camera, and he had a big head.
But that was the January, that time was January.
Everybody thought Muskie was unbeatable because of his strength.
But that was just a figure of science, man.
Anyway, but that's all right.
It was good analysis.
But his recommendation is that we should change our attack emphasis some, some.
to start picking titty up more on the attack side.
I'll check it.
I've never seen any of the new sun right now.
Oh, that's getting out.
Oh, yes.
The new sun is...
I'm sorry to tell it, but it's not obvious.
That's why I say that it's not going to make much of a media story anymore, where it's going to be effective for us, for speakers always, to talk about it.
And we look beautifully into the Nixon, the world leader for peace,
And thank God we have a president who wouldn't even consider it.
The one thing that came out of our mouth and came out of my ears is this.
He's in a strong conviction that we should end up talking to him about this right now.
And we can't do.
And it can't be.
No matter what happens to him, it cannot be a constitution.
So you try to split it at a second level to keep it from being negative and don't constantly talk about it by keeping comments.
You do it all the time.
Everybody's just talking about domestic issues and all the rest.
They just don't understand.
And he comes back to this.
He says the one thing where you've got to make darts and that's just a piece of it.
And you've got to get that across.
You can't assume that people know it.
You can't assume that they believe it.
You know, we're going to have rebels in here.
Everybody wants to come across.
Everybody wants to come across, but they don't like it.
You know what I mean?
They're not going to read that.
I think you've got to get through.
What did I say?
I don't know.
Right.
We agree.
Absolutely.
To an extent.
You have to be postured correctly on the issue.
It's to keep it neutral, but it is... You've got to be...
When I finish, there are people here, many times when I watch media reviews, and I think to myself, you've got to mention this is about the investigations.
They're wrong.
They're absolutely wrong.
I've got to cover them.
But always expand their issue, and never contain their issue.
We want folks to be thinking of our issue, not theirs.
Do you see my point?
Our issue is not, is not good.
And that's always been a frustration to both of your staff, because the president worked full time on the other nights.
And that's understandable, whether you like it or not.
Colson, what did you have to do?
You must have had to step in on that one.
Which is it?
Oh, sign something about Eric, right?
I don't like it.
Oh, yeah.
Not now, instead this year.
Oh, well, that's right.
Well, what I was going to add is that if we can take that man to peace, then we're going to give him one hell of a life.
But you know that... No, I want it because some of it's fascinating.
He was much more forthcoming than I thought.
He came out with a lot of good stuff yesterday that he hadn't given me before.
I think he was saving it for you.
But his latest fool for Monday is...
The first time in a year more than 50% of the American people think President Nixon is doing a good to excellent job in the White House.
Mr. Nixon's current 51-48% positive average crashed sharply with his low of 41-56% negative back in March of this year.
That was the lowest it's ever been was March of last year right after last.
He never published that, by the way.
But he's publishing it now to show the tremendous recovery this year.
He stacks up all those numbers and he can use them for any purpose he wants.
What he's been doing, he's been digging back using, he never used good numbers before publicly.
Now he's using good numbers publicly and using it to compare bad numbers.
He has some good numbers that he hasn't used.
Yeah, of course he does.
That was last summer.
I forced those out of him in the campaign.
But the point I wanted to make is in here, the leading category, which he said is the highest he's ever seen on any president, working for peace in the world, is now 64 positive, 24 negative, 12 not sure, up from July, which was 48, 48, 4.
See, that's remarkable when you consider you've still got the water going.
Oh, my God.
That it's now your water.
Yeah.
that the networks, you would think the war was raging with 5 million American troops, and that networks are terrible.
I watched, as I told you, I don't do it very often, but I watched the CBS news last night, and there was 8 minutes of the Vietnam War on.
And I said to Joe, you watch that, you figure that the only thing that's happening in the world is a terrible war in Vietnam.
Let's look at it on the newspaper.
Place that.
So I looked at the Washington Star on the side.
There wasn't one word on the front page about the war.
I turned to page two.
Not one word.
Page three.
Page four.
Page six.
was the first story in the SAR on the war, and it was the only story in the SAR, and there were two minor items, one about that prisoner coming home, which was a positive story, basically, although they turned it to negative by putting his asshole father on, who is about as qualified to talk about it as Manolo is, to explain how we should set our policy on POWs, which is we should offer to trade him ten for one.
But what, I'll tell you exactly...
Which you'd already done, right?
Exactly what has happened.
They have used those urban committees, the hearings, to...
put forth their great face that they're being intimidated by government, and they've gotten away with it this week.
That's the other way, that's counter.
Well, I think it does, but it increases their arrogance.
That's the, that's the bitch of the day.
Yeah, it's time somebody stepped fairly on there the other night.
It was terrible.
Ron Thurman did a good job.
Thurman did a superb job.
He really did.
He just kicked him all over the place.
I talked to Thurman yesterday.
He was great.
He really was great.
He's smart.
He's smart.
He played it smart.
And then this guy, these newspaper guys come on and say there's a bunch of hogwash about intimidating the media.
He was great last night, the guy that newspaper guy was on.
Ridiculous.
He said, I have yet to see a, you're not able to do it, so I'm just trying to go in a direction.
You're not in a school, you're not in a school, you're not in a school.
But what they do is incredible.
They had a long, about five-minute report about automobile accidents or motorcycle accidents in Vietnam.
They went on and on about how, you know, when some motorist, a Vietnamese guy, bumps into one of our trucks or something and damages his motorcycle, we jump out and pay him ten bucks so he won't file a complaint as if that were some evil thing that we were doing.
And they interviewed about six lieutenants and all this stuff on it.
It's unbelievable.
It's a scutting dream.
The point is...
Did we survive that sort of crime?
Because of the big moves.
Yeah, you just have, you just totally have the point.
It seems to me, basically, that they are trying.
I think they're having a hell of a time.
We asked the Soviet announcement.
They haven't said a word about it.
Did you notice that?
Did they?
Not very little.
Not much.
Well, we did.
Well, we did.
The columnists are.
The TV is not doing much on Spotify.
Why are some of them on TV?
The TV's are not saying anything.
The TV's are not saying anything.
The Democrats, what do they say about it?
Oh, they're screaming, dude.
What was that?
You didn't see last night's story?
Jim Doyle?
Doyle had a piece.
Jim Doyle, who's an ex-Western Globe liberal, just said,
Nixon dropped the third shoe.
I think he used the third shoe.
And he said that the private, they're all meeting here, you know, on this reform fight.
That's right.
That's right.
Nixon's virtue falls on Democrats.
A direct quote from one of the top party officials at the National Committee is, quote, he's killing us.
It's a beautiful thing.
He said that he talks about the new prosperity.
For months, the Democrats have called for wage and price control.
Even passed legislation to embarrass the president.
And in using what he had disclaimed, Nixon may have raised some credibility problems, but he also raised the stock market.
And two months later, Democrats were still trying to adjust their defenses to the new prosperity.
Now comes the Moscow announcement.
Democrats who were not batted into silence by this latest blockbuster could only say it seemed like a good idea.
It goes on to say that they're just floundering, that, you know, they're in a hell of a... Read this thing about China.
He's got to admit it.
That's a good move.
You're going to be good with it again?
First was the announcement of a red China visit, which overnight turned Cold Warrior Nixon into a man that sounded incredible when he tried out his 72-spoke in a generation apiece.
Then there was an administration prospering.
Then Moscow.
Oh, yeah, this is...
they had planned for next spring in the primary states they would spend much of their treasure to grasp the public's attention which while deciding who would be the candidate now they find that richard nixon has already blocked out that time for his travels and the headlines seem likely to follow him not the democrats it has raised the question whispered in the dead of night of just how much the democratic nomination is worth in 1972. here it is more than a year before the election already two democratic candidates have dropped out before the time a man might normally start

Also recorded on October 14, 1971

  • 011-086 9:00 AM · 12 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John N. Mitchell talked on the telephone from 9:00 am to 9:12 am.
  • 011-087 9:13 AM · 35 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Walter R. Tkach talked on the telephone from 9:13 am to 9:14 am.
  • 592-002 9:13 AM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Walter R. Tkach met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:13 am to 9:14 am.
  • 011-088 9:14 AM · 6 sec — Henry A. Kissinger and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:14 am and 6:06 pm.
  • 011-089 9:14 AM · 23 sec — Henry A. Kissinger and unknown person(s) talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:14 am and 6:06 pm.
  • 011-090 9:14 AM · 1 min — H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, White House operator, and unknown person(s) talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:14 am and 6:06 pm.
  • 011-091 9:14 AM · 5 sec — Henry A. Kissinger and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:14 am and 6:06 pm.
  • 011-092 9:14 AM · 14 sec — Henry A. Kissinger and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:14 am and 6:06 pm.

All 41 conversations from October 14, 1971 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 592-001, October 14, 1971. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/592-001 (accessed November 12, 2026).