Nixon White House Tapes ›Tape 599 › Conversation 599-006

Nixon & Haldeman on Presidential Approval Ratings

Friday, October 22, 1971 · 9:34 AM–9:50 AM ET · Oval Office ·13 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob")Conversation599-006 onTape 599 (tape position 00:39:21–00:53:08)StartFriday, October 22, 1971 at 9:34 AMEndFriday, October 22, 1971 at 9:50 AMRecording deviceOval OfficeSourceNixon Library record for 599-006 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and H. R. Haldeman met to review the President’s upcoming public schedule, including strategy for a potential radio address and administrative coordination for meetings with Imelda Marcos and the Price Commission. The pair discussed current Gallup polling trends, noting a recent increase in presidential approval ratings, and reviewed the economic landscape, specifically focusing on the Consumer Price Index and Arthur Burns's handling of the money supply. Additionally, they touched upon the confirmation preparation for Supreme Court nominees William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell, with Nixon emphasizing the need for thorough vetting to avoid potential Senate confirmation pitfalls.

Audio

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Transcript (AI-generated)

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He may have done it.
Well, he was right.
It'll come off or it won't.
He'll know.
That's what the veteran's saying.
I read one copy.
And we've not set that to do yet.
The question is whether you do want to do it.
Yeah.
And so one possibility would be to do that as a Sunday evening thing.
So that we make the Monday papers the best day papers, which is probably better than doing a Monday for Henry's return.
It's going to bother him a little bit.
He's going to do my church and all that big talk.
I don't tell him anything.
It's going to get him, finally.
Yeah.
Since popularity, the highest point since January is Thursday, 54.35.
That's a substantial jump point.
So four points.
They had a 49.38.
That's a lot higher.
Oh, this is 27.
You're kind of close to the best.
I'm telling you how good your bats are there.
Well, I think we've got a good treatment back into it.
They'll tell him.
Davies will tell him, but obviously Gallup won't tell Rumsfeld, no.
Because, see, this is a printed release.
It's printed for Sunday.
They have these leaps and bounds.
This is their Sunday, you know.
It would have to be this.
If Harris is 51, you know what I mean, Harris, Gallup, whether it runs three or four or five points ahead, you know, this question is different.
Anything else you think they've been in?
None of that stuff.
That office is not given.
The time doesn't get places.
Regional?
No.
The lot was hired at 54.
56.
They only had it at 56.
5633.
We got it hired.
Disapproval is down three from the last time, too, which is...
Doesn't mean nothing.
My highest discipline was the gym.
39.
40, 39.
This speech is a big story.
It does come up.
The point should be made that I did it myself, you know?
Yep.
What do you want to do, I mean, with this price paperwork?
Right, we talked to Don about that.
He told me I had to leave on the weekend today.
I wasn't on it.
No, they're in today.
And the thing to do is, I think, is as soon as you, they start at 10.30, better have you come back from that, wait a minute, do the Rogers thing, and then catch them for a few minutes before you do the Mrs. Marcos.
The process is only half an hour each.
And the other thing, Mrs. Nixon, I don't know if she talked to you, but she will not have Mrs. Nixon.
I told her that she won't be with her alone.
I don't have her at all.
Now that she won't see her, she says if you would like her to, she'd be glad to drop by the Oval Office.
No, she shouldn't.
She doesn't need to get that message to her meetings.
And she says she doesn't need it none of the Oval Office.
The hell with Mrs. Martin.
She's had it before.
All I want you to do is thank them for serving.
Do you want to do the grudges over to the OB, or do you want to do it over here now?
Over here.
OK. OK. We're going to have to go back and forth.
Sorry.
Sorry.
I don't know if you want a quarter of a Sunday evening.
I know we're going to give you dinner at 7.30 or something.
If you go to Camp David, would you be back then?
Or wouldn't you go to Camp David?
Sure.
I don't care.
The best time there is, when people might be listening, I think 7.30, actually.
The listening audience should be a little better Monday doing it.
We don't care if you take it to the radio audience, but it's 2.2 percentage points different.
You get more juice.
No, but it'll still, there isn't any on Monday on the holidays, so you get it played as a holiday message.
Oh, my God.
Get it done, you know what I mean?
Yes.
Don't just sit back and say, well, the administration has to do it.
I'm sitting in there going, yeah.
Let's take it.
I'm not waiting anymore.
I'm just going to ask you to do another one.
I can't.
I was just wondering if there was an indication from you as to how you want to not be prepared, whether you want him to, as we have in the past, want us to get into it, or do you want him to stay out of it?
I don't care.
There's a concern, as you know, that justice doesn't do a very thorough job on this.
And John's point is, in dealing with the Senate, we should know anything that is going to come up before they do.
So I find what I've been doing is not bothering with it.
Of course you should know.
I mean, it's all the same.
It's all the same.
It's all the same.
It's all the same.
It's all the same.
It's all the same.
It's all the same.
All right, all right.
He can make a pretty goddamn good case right now because you look at, they were arguing that the factor was confidence.
Now you've got a monumental upsurge in confidence.
The psychology thing, if you think about it, the psychology theory is way up.
The only factor that's down is money.
And the result is the economy is stable as hell.
Not sluggish.
And, you know, shaking the stock market is not what he's really talking about there.
The stock market guys seem to think that the problem there is the international concern.
That's the Lanzer Careers guys and some of them all are saying that.
I won't get into the stock market.
They're just, they're going to be concerned about something all the time, Bob.
I'm sure everybody in the planning and this voice has just got to cold their hands.
But they did.
I thought the last time I'm going to do it was fucking Star Trek.
No more.
I mean, it doesn't do any good.
You know, we've done our best.
They said, let's do something.
No, we've done it.
But I heard it was just a hard man to handle.
And he hasn't said a damn word about this policy since it went in.
He was supposed to, but he didn't.
And he split the screws on the money supply.
You've got a third quarter.
The first and second quarter are sensational business volume.
You've got a third quarter is back down to not much.
That's not too bad.
They've got a good story on the consumer price index today.
Fair, fair.
There's some very good things.
Food prices are down, which is fine.
And when you take the only thing that causes the up is services, which we don't have control over.
You know, on the items that they measure, 85% of them have shown no increase in prices.
Which means we have a free market.
We don't have to get as far out of it.
That's not what that's about.
That's not what that's about.
That's not what that's about.
That's not what that's about.
That's not what that's about.
That's not what that's about.
I mean, if it were for us, we're on the basis of a sound theory.
I was trying to get an invite into a game that night.
I mean, I don't know.
I thought, I just thought maybe John was probably working on something.
I mean, John confirmed it to you that he did happen, of course, because he was your buddy with me.
I'm like, oh, yes, sir.
And I'm just, I don't know what I have here.
No, I'm sure he'd hope I don't want to let you go there.
He's not on there, is he?
I'm going to leave this.
I don't even know where he is.
If there's any goddamn reason to have him, it's just about keeping him on for a while until he starts behaving like some bitch.
We have to be strong.
I can't do that.
I don't think it's on here.
It's right here.
It should be, clearly.
Really.
So God had pissed off, and he did tell them, you know, because they'd all, they're all out on the limb, but the God-takers were really hung out on the limb, hung up, you know, doing it in the quiet, and all you do is wind up, do this and that and the other thing.
But I thought that was true.
It was.
They'd never been really so taken back as they were back then.
The fakers...
The commentators are just teaching them to get out of the deck a lot of things.
So that they're down.
And that frankly, it's well-replenished that way.
Otherwise, if we can break with stuff, frankly, to get it.
A couple people pointed this out.
They were chopping the beds with gold water and serving it in the house hard.
Because now they deal with them.
I mean, you ought to have somebody that's fighting a capsule.
And I've only been a couple of months.
I've got to figure that out with the science guy, because he said Reckless is superb.
He's never heard of Powell.
That's the opposite of what everybody else has said.
Yeah.

NARA Description

On October 22, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:34 am to 9:50 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 599-006 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 599-6

Date: October 22, 1971
Time: 9:34 am - 9:50 am
Location: Oval Office

The President met with H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman.

     Speeches
          -Raymond K. Price, Jr.

     The President's schedule
          -Speech
               -Timing
          -Media impact
          -Henry A. Kissinger's return

     Polls
             -Gallup
                  -Approval statistics
             -Dwight L. Chapin
                  -John S. Davies
             -George H. Gallup
                  -Donald H. Rumsfeld
                  -Louis P. Harris
             -Comparisons
             -Disapprovals

     The President's Supreme Court announcement
          -Public relations
               -The President’s involvement
               -Richard A. Moore
               -John A. Scali

     The President's schedule
          Price Commission and Pay Board
                -The President's conversation with Rumsfeld
          -William P. Rogers
          -Imelda Marcos
          -Thelma C. (“Pat”) Nixon
          -Mrs. Marcos
                                         6

                     NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS STAFF

                                Tape Subject Log
                                  (rev. 10/06)
                                                          Conv. No. 599-6 (cont.)


           -Possible meeting with the President
     -Constance M. Stuart
     -Price Commission and Pay Board
     -Rogers
           -Executive Office Building [EOB
     -Radio speech
           -Camp David
           -Timing

Nominees to Supreme Court
    -John N. Mitchell
    -Preparation for confirmation
          -John D. Ehrlichman
          -Department of Justice
          -The President’s view
          -Senate
          -Clark MacGregor

Economy
    -Arthur F. Burns
    -Charles W. Colson
    -George P. Shultz
    -International economic situation
    -Stock market
          -Peter M. Flanigan
    -Burns
          -Money supply
    -Consumer Price Index [CPI]
    -Burns
          -The President’s view
          -Colson
          -Nobusuke Kishi dinner
                -John B. Connally
          -Josip Broz Tito dinner
                                               7

                          NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS STAFF

                                       Tape Subject Log
                                         (rev. 10/06)
                                                                        Conv. No. 599-6 (cont.)


     Supreme Court nominees
          -William H. Rehnquist
                -Barry M. Goldwater
                -James O. Eastland's comment
                     -Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

The President and H. R. Haldeman left at 9:50 am.

Also recorded on October 22, 1971

  • 012-079 8:08 AM · 6 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 8:08 am and 3:05 pm.
  • 599-003 8:50 AM · 31 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House from 8:50 am to 8:52 am.
  • 599-004 8:58 AM · 8 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House from 8:58 am to 8:59 am.
  • 599-005 9:06 AM · 20 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Rose Mary Woods met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:06 am to 9:25 am.
  • 081-001 10:38 AM · 22 min — President Richard M. Nixon and members of the Pay Board and Price Commission, including George H. Boldt, Arnold R. Weber, Dr. Neil H. Jacoby, William G. Caples, Kermit Gordon, Rocco C. Siciliano, Virgil B. Day, Robert Bassett, Leonard F. McCollum, Benjamin F. Biaggini, George Meany, I[lorwith] W. Abel, Leonard Woodcock, Floyd E. ("Red") Smith, Frank E. Fitzsimmons, Dr. C. Jackson ("Dan") Grayson, Jr., William W. Scranton, John William Queenan, William T. Coleman, Jr., Marina von Neumann Whitman, J. Wilson Newman, and Robert F. Lanzillotti, met in the Cabinet Room of the White House at an unknown time between 10:38 am and 11:59 pm.
  • 599-007 10:40 AM · 21 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at 10:40 am.
  • 599-008 10:40 AM · 10 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:40 am to 10:52 am.
  • 599-009 10:52 AM · 2 min — unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 10:52 am and 11:09 am.

All 50 conversations from October 22, 1971 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 599-006, October 22, 1971. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/599-006 (accessed September 18, 2026).