Conversation 596-017

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Oh, I see.

Fine.

I want to tell you one thing, but are you ready to talk?

Fine.

Uh, I just had a letter, and it's just working, sir.

Tom, you'll hear it.

You know who he is.

And he's, uh, a big wheel.

He's an American.

He's such a good boy.

He was a bad rapper then.

I don't know how you'd understand.

He said, uh, hit it.

Hit it.

Yeah, but Los Angeles Bar, and he was close to Earl Adams, of course he is.

So I think we, I just want to throw those things in.

There's apparently a quarterback player living on the other side.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, if it happens, it would be a hard one.

He just, I guess, just might be a little, I guess, confident.

Yeah.

That's right.

Well, we'll see what, if the army takes all the hook of the man, then.

Right.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, right, yeah.

How's this one?

Do you get the old duck from the end?

Right, right.

Okay.

Of course, if I want to, that thing that both you and I talked about, the court thing, you know, about the press quite a lot.

No, you were right in what it said.

It said, press advisors said, I went back and had them run the tape, and what it talks about is the press is giving the president a great deal of advice on what he should do on the court, and these advisors say what the other people in the press who are advising say is not that they're press advisors.

So it's...

You know, getting back to that, where you're hiring players or anything, do you have to do with another field or any other field?

What I'm getting at is that I feel very strongly that we just shouldn't take that line down.

It's one of the red shirts.

First they cut me up in Denmark and then they called me twice when I was trying to control.

Nothing's going to be done.

The only way to do it is for either the board to fire, which, as of now, can't.

We have no plan because we can't.

Sometimes, even with the Johnson people, see, all there is, all you've got on the board is church and name.

Thank you.

Oh, 25 minutes.

Right.

There's a team of ex-officials members, and some of those we can wheel, but... Yeah, okay.

Fine.

The other one is for Roger Stevens, who actually will add on everything there without the board's consent anyway.

to see the light and decided to better do it.

And that's... Well, you know, they're losing the manhunt.

They're not.

They're the big part of it.

And last Saturday, you know, they're just so... And frankly, should we use it more?

Yeah.

Or should we want it?

Like if we have, you know, some kind of a gathering where we want to have a big thing over there?

Yes.

Yeah, but they pay for it.

They charge for it.

I raised hell about that.

I also raised hell.

I hit him on this.

There was an executive committee meeting yesterday, and I do it kind of instantly at the board meeting because the Kennedy sisters are sitting there at home.

I just asked for a copy of the policy governing the use of the Senate by outside organizations.

And Blair said, we don't have one.

And I said, well, I'd like to have one drawn up by Monday and mailed to all trustees so that we can discuss that at the next board meeting.

And I said, well, we've got to have one because one of the bio-managers decided they want to have a fundraiser.

He said, no, I don't think so, but maybe we would, maybe we should.

I said, well, I said, well, what if the, what if that right-wing priest who wants to ruin the water wanted to have a travel venue to give him the hall?

He said, no, he said, oh, of course not.

We wouldn't have anything political here.

What's your name?

I quit arguing.

All I wanted to do was just

It's worth our making some effort because we're putting, the government's putting money into it.

It's being perverted.

And they won't buy it.

I don't know whether we want this or not.

Bob Anderson.

Which one?

All right, it's a great deal.

Blankenship has gone in with a proposal that the other two theaters be named the Nixon Theater and the Johnson Theater.

Because he says there were four presidents that had been associated with bringing this center to completion.

Eisenhower started it, Kennedy carried it on, Johnson renamed it for Kennedy, and President Nixon got it finished and dedicated it.

So he's arguing that the three inside theaters should be named for Johnson, Kennedy, and Nixon.

I mean Johnson, Eisenhower, and Nixon.

And what was that project that appeared?

No, they're just the Opera House and the Concert Hall now.

They don't have names.

I don't know whether you want a name or not.

If you do, you ought to take the Concert Hall, which is the one you can dedicate to it.

It won't have the musicals and stuff in it, which will be the ones where you may get some lousy shows.

I don't think beyond the 30-mile radius of Washington that a lot of people like those shows.

Oh, yeah, they do.

Ray, I'd fight him, but I think Blair's coming for him, because he's a bad man.

That's the key.

He ought to use an ass for a good reason.

Well, he's bad on everything.

The night he went over to the band concert, he ran out to the press and said, this is a terrible thing.

We were assured that we would have 24-hour service before the president ever came to the hall.

He didn't have a telephone that night.

You know, we couldn't get them on the phone.

And I raised hell with him, and his answer to me was, well, we've been assured that we would always have notice and always have some advance before the president.

Yeah, very well.

Oh, well.

Roger Stevens is basically a bird.

He's a nice guy.

And he's really pleased.

He's politically pleased.

Good on him, too.

What is the situation on the...

I had a piece of paper...

Was it this morning?

Yeah, I think it was this morning.

I was trying to see where I walked out there.

I didn't know.

I had my fire.

I was looking for something.

I was trying to get out of here.

The attacks of Kennedy and Bayh and the media on possible Supreme Court nominees, Scott has told me he would take them on this afternoon.

And Grenny did an excellent job yesterday.

And Scott has agreed to start rallying the forces and give us a little counterattack on the onslaught of garbage that's been dumped by Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Kennedy, Bayh, and company.

We've got some people working on it.

The thing that really demonstrates, Mr. President, is how hard it is for them right now to find something to attack you on.

They're going to go all out on this one to try to find it.

Anyway, the thing is that

We ought to, uh... We ought to really have a memorial for you.

Just wait, wait, wait for somebody to speak up and just let them elaborate the hell out of this.

First we help them.

We're generally that fast.

Journey responded quickly.

We gave stuff.

We sent up some material yesterday.

Started by six guys.

If Scott gives the speech we've written for him, he will remind Ted Kennedy that Ted's first nominee when he was a senator was Francis Morrissey in Boston.

His brother had to withdraw the nomination.

It was so bad.

All of them raised common cause.

They said they were really affected.

They were getting heavy, heavy, they were concentrating on districts and getting heavy, heavy mail.

And the governor was saying there was an all-government common cause, corrupt and so forth and so on.

Clearly, why didn't they have anything to be doing about common cause?

Did they have a tax attempt to save us?

No, sir.

They did not?

No.

Why are we doing anything with regard to trying to cut off contributions and so forth?

Well, we had a...

These guys really, they all ran that.

Ford, Scott, I don't know.

Back when it was effective, we had an all-out program.

Then it sort of faded until we quit working on it.

Yeah, they...

The gardeners sort of withdrew from the publicity campaign and started working instead on...

organizing and getting people out.

Well, I think that's true.

What it is, Mr. President, is the

is the rallying point for all, everybody who feels disaffected with society.

And, well, far from that, though, it is what it is, John.

That it was basically the Republican institutions that conquer middle-class types that are heavily supporting John.

Suburbanites and don't work with John.

The Ducalism.

Yeah.

Well, God, that was interesting.

I remember you had one, somebody resigning on it once.

Was there... Well, Chuck, the other day, uh,

It was a Democrat who resigned from it.

It was John McCone who resigned from it, but wouldn't let us publicize his resignation.

It's hard to find out who quits, because they won't make their membership lists available.

But I really am not sure.

We had some stuff stacked up.

We had some stuff, and we kind of backed away when they went flying.

Well, they went by and the effect of really the Republican National Committee attacks, the effect was really to help them build up their membership a little bit.

So we stayed away from it and they, for a while after the SSP, they really went too active.

I haven't heard of them.

Right.

Yes, that's right.

That's right.

Is that what they're getting mail on?

That's what they're talking about today, huh?

25-bar letters of Congress to those that are in power in Congress.

Sounds pretty good.

Yeah?

Thanks.

Quite a load, isn't it?

Yeah, it's, that's, uh, if we get the legion on the BSW after an individual congressman, we're lucky to get 500 or 600 letters in a week.

Or the chamber.

They did well on the paid feature.

They did very good.

They really did.

I'd like to see, can we check Gardner's tax returns?

Sure.

They're not that well-checked.

I don't know if he has organization.

I think we are.

He's on that list that we put down.

Can we have him?

He knows somebody else, too.

There's a couple of companies he could be in.

Unfortunately, he'll come out clean, I'm afraid.

Oh, sure.

He's basically just a fanatic.

I don't think he's got that much.

I mean, Juan is out in the doves, and I...

He's still decent.

At least he finally got his invitation to go out the window.

It's a darn good thing he got any more of us since the timeline.

Remember the time he had a little bit of something?

I had a four-day dinner.

He ate one before I...

Remember?

Yeah, he made some nasty crap about that.

Well, we tried to buy it.

Well, no, no, not directly to you, but to the thing at White House dinners.

I mean, you didn't like them, did you?

I forgot that I could.

They get to the White House dinners and everybody gets saddled or something and overlooks it.

But that doesn't mean anything to me because I've been under too much damage or something.

Who's a scientist?

I don't know where he is.

I just hope he knows just about what I want.

And also, I want him to be real tough with regard to those press people.

Very tight.

We should take another look at that because if he's getting active again, we did have some things that we hit up our sleeve.

And we might appeal a few more people off this board right now.

He must be a son of a bitch who just got out.

They have a very extensive fundraising operation.

They go through direct mail and go through voter lists and just pick indiscriminately.

Probably a very effective industry.

Well, why don't we do that?

Maybe we can learn something from them as to how they operate.

I've looked at their direct mail.

Their costs must be enormous.

They keep coming back with... Somebody is giving them a hell of a subsidy in life.

Big money in that.

We know what this stuff costs.

Big, big money.

But what else is there with Efren?

Is there anything else your audience is worried about?

We're hoping to get a little counterattack started today on the hill.

Bill Springer, Dean Birch, some of our friends are testifying and they've all been geared up to discuss Efren's book.

Springer was just loaded for bear, right?

If he

If he does it, and if the...

I think the networks have got to cover him.

They've covered him.

Yes, sir.

No.

Yes.

I just sent out a book, Happy Birdie, which I needed to be in Bridge.

According to Neil Freeman, the sales are not particularly exciting.

It's not the kind of a book that...

No, we could start buying... That's being done, Mr. President.

Yes, sir.

What we're doing is putting a...

The only thing that's holding that right now is that a summary is, we're rewriting a summary of the book, plus Edith Ephron's speech, which was printed in Human Events, which was excellent.

Putting that in a package, because people are more likely to read that than they are to read the book.

And actually, we may get some very good publicity this week out of the Urban Heroes, because we've got two shots at it.

And Thurman, who's on that committee, is loaded to ask the right questions.

And he will.

And Springer is well-briefed.

I think the networks, they played themselves so hard on this Bleeding Hearts tune that they're being repressed by government.

They're almost honor-bound, duty-bound, rather than no honor, but duty-bound.

If the FM thing gets into the hearings this week, they're almost down to carry that out.

Bob, as we get back to our earlier subject, it occurs to me, I don't know if Chuck agrees with this or not, but I know you, and this is one of the few areas where you're trying to sort of go from the soft hats, but I really feel the, I really feel this art is almost a bluebird in pain in the ass most of the time.

Now, I know the argument is that we get to some people that we don't otherwise reach and so forth.

But believe me, it's like the tennis set.

I mean, the art set is a loser.

It's a lost cause.

You could spend more goddamn time with those people unless they're basically gardener types and all the rest, except for now and then a Bob Hanks.

And so he was anyway.

But I wonder if all of our efforts here

I don't think it's worth, like I don't think going last night was worth anything.

We did that from the arts.

That's an art experience.

I'm worried I won't go again.

Never.

I think you having some interest in the art, you look at that cross section of the people that you trotted over to one day here in town.

Look at who was there.

Were you there?

Pretty solidly on it.

Okay.

Well, you're not doing all that much.

We're getting a lot of credit for, well, we are doing that much.

All right.

We got 40 days of publishing.

That's a lot of money.

That's right.

It means something to the women, actually.

It means a lot to a lot of men.

It's amazing.

The men, it's the businessmen types, the Bob Anderson types, and...

There's lots of names.

There's something about it that gives them some kind of aura of respectability to be tied in with that side of things.

It satisfies their requirement to feel that they are doing something culturally worthwhile.

With women, there's a certain amount of glamour attached to it that they identify.

I don't think these should reach very far.

I don't know.

That's the other thing I wanted to point out.

acceleration of time.

I think you've done enough.

And because you've got Nancy is damn good.

She pressured you, but she's also good at making sure she's like, what's her name?

She milks everything for all of us.

She does.

If you think of the Bill Boyer's efforts of building up the JFK Camelot image as being effective, what

Lyndon Johnson has done for us this week.

It's worth ten times that on the other side in terms of nailing the, nailing the Vietnam War.

I'm wondering, I hear that's getting through.

Oh, yes, sir.

I don't know.

We think it did.

You know, we thought the Pentagon papers were getting through.

I think they got through to a degree.

I think they got through in a very negative way on Kennedy.

His stature has not...

I mean, the memory of his presidency is different today than it was six months ago.

You think the Johnson thing is going to be the same?

Same way.

It's a cumulative effect.

And then you read a column like Shannon's in today's New York Times trying to revive the memory of Kennedy, and it falls flat.

I mean, it doesn't.

Well, Lenny was furious.

I saw him yesterday at this meeting.

He was furious.

God damn it.

I said, what's the matter?

He says, do you know who they've assigned to review Lyndon Johnson's book?

Arthur Schlesinger.

You know, he's just, he says, they wouldn't consider you as a decent reviewer yet.

They had three reviewers for the three principal publications.

They're all, you know, crap all over the book.

He says, you people ought to have an interest in that book.

It's doing you a lot of good.

Don't get it.

Don't stop.

Don't worry.

It's got a good name.

Well, that's getting big.

Newspaper front page type coverage.

Yeah, because they all buy it.

That's the same story.

Yeah, people can't miss the newspapers.

And even if they only skim it or even if they only catch it, headline it.

There's a big front page headline in the L.A. Times.

jesus he just today he had to overthrow major clinton well he zapped bobby kennedy today i'm the vice president how he got to be nominated as vice president he didn't really want it jack came to his room to talk him into it and bobby pointed stories saying he johnson had been seeking it

Maybe those list analytics read more than the public.

That's all we have.

But it's part of that fiction.

But the most important thing is the end thing.

So we'll follow up on that at a proper time, too.

We're putting that summary together for you, Mr. President.

I hope to have it by the end of the week.

We may decide to drop that issue off.

Well, we're in complete control of what we put together there.

It's got a lot of wallop to it.

Picked up an interesting report from secondhand, but directly from the fellow who talked to Mayor Daley before Daley met with Kennedy last week, Dave Bradshaw, who's very close to Daley.

Yes, sir.

Who said that Daley is coming hard...

It was interesting because I didn't tell him any of the conversations I had with Lovestone last week, and he gave me a report from daily that was almost identical to Lovestone's report from Meany.

incidentally what about the housing start thing that i noticed that they made a big drop well i gave you i gave you a bad uh i gave you bad information last night it was well it's it's funny it's still very good oh it's outstanding but there are two ways you can look at it it's year you can look at it as year over year yeah in which case it's up 47 percent yeah year over year but it dropped

Well, they call it seasonal.

But right now it is just below 2 million.

In August it took a flip up to 2.2.

On the other hand, if you look at it the normal way that they've been looking at it every month until this month, it's on a year-over-year basis, it's good.

Well, it's still very strong, actually.

Well, it's 47% above the year.

There's never been in the history of the country a 2 million...

housing start year this year will clearly be two million on a on an annual basis and that's a hell of a strong housing right market's floundering again today and i i called up the market let's see at noon it was down eight points i called two of my friends both of them said well they're now wild when there's about tight money which i