On October 25, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, Stephen B. Bull, Alexander P. Butterfield, and Manolo Sanchez met in the Oval Office of the White House from 12:35 pm to 2:08 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 601-033 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
A lot of heavy metal to be going.
It's a very fine job.
Good guys, people.
I, uh, I don't feel comfortable yet with the situation.
Well, I'm satisfied with that.
It's a basic political question, going for a new tax.
And, uh...
I can see all kinds of negatives in it, in terms of people saying, you know, here's the...
There's another thing, too, that I was thinking about.
I was very interested to note that your follow-up to my analysis of polls showed rather modest support for trekking.
That's right.
In other words, it was less than I had realized...
I can see, for example, why we had to do the car.
It was basically an issue that could have been a hell of an issue now otherwise.
Revenue sharing.
I think it was just something we just did.
Well, it's our answer to the problems of the city.
As far as the average guy is concerned, it didn't make much headway.
I wonder this year if we really want to go on a great initiative.
And incidentally, this is related also to our problem on Hoover.
I read his memorandum.
I mean, your memorandum.
It's breaking the law.
Liddy.
Liddy.
Smart.
Yeah, very.
Must be conservative.
Smart.
How do you know he's a hero?
He was Hoover's ghostwriter.
Did a lot of Hoover's speeches.
And did you hear Hoover fire him?
No, no.
He got disillusioned.
and he put him for transfer.
We found him over in... Let me tell you what I have a feeling on.
It's a way off thing.
His analysis of Hoover from a psychological standpoint is tremendously perceptive.
We may have our hands here a man who will go down the temple with him, including me.
I don't think he would want to, I mean,
He considers himself a patriot, but he now sees himself as McCartney did, and Benson did.
Perhaps I am dumb now.
He sees himself as an issue rather than the issue, which is the great wellness of any political man.
Ordinarily, I would not have sent you the whole piece, but I wanted you to get that build-up that this guy gave you.
That piece would make a perfect piece for a magazine that way.
Actually, the message gets down to your point.
Interestingly enough, a stronger case for not doing something on COVID-19.
Now, there's something in between.
For us, first of all, let's suppose we get Uber and I convince him we can't.
Or, you know, whatever.
No way they're going to say I did it.
Now, you just let me run this body.
It just curves me right now.
It's the easiest way to get a very hard physical problem.
We do that, then...
Hoover, through all of his operatives, will piss on anybody that we send up there who has their name.
And I don't think he will approve of the other name.
That's my guess.
You have a view with me that he might approve Pat Gray, is that correct?
Well, I think Pat has a better chance than most.
Yeah.
But look, so I sent Pat Gray's name up.
Then you come up with something else.
You're going to come into one of the hellest, damnedest kind of confirmation fights you ever saw.
Who is Pat Gray?
How is he qualified?
If he's a Finch, a Stooge, a Mexican Stooge, he's not heavy.
He should have it from the Bureau.
If he has somebody from the Bureau, they say he should have somebody from outside.
Ramsey Clark would be recommended.
Come on, sir.
Now, there's a way to get around it.
in a way that confused the whole goddamn thing.
Hoover made a very interesting point.
He said, regardless of who wins in 72, it should all probably be Alvin.
And of course he tried.
Why hasn't he announced that I am?
My last year in the bureau, I submitted my resignation effectively on January 1st, 1972.
So that the new president, I mean the president was elected, so that I would not be an issue in the campaign.
The president was elected and he elected anybody that he wants.
No, that's what happened for a moment.
The weakness in it is that we still got an inefficient FBI screw around with it for a year.
I'm not sure we could do a hell of a lot about the efficiency of the FBI in a year anyway.
The other weakness is that presumably Hoover's enemies would be so furious at having the issue removed, they would continue on it.
But it's pretty hard to continue on a man.
When he says, now, I think I've had it.
I've done my job.
And at the end of this, I want to give the new president, whoever he is, President Nixon or the other president, I want them to know that this is not done.
I'm going to take the hero out of politics.
Now, from Hoover's standpoint, he just, he has to realize that he can't stay forever.
He has to realize that the new president
that in 78 years of age, is that when you would be in 1977 now?
I don't know until yet.
The advantage of that is that, well, what I'm more concerned about than anything else, and I don't think we thought through that enough, is getting Uber out.
That's going to be a problem.
I just need confirmation.
would be one that would make the Supreme Court look like, you know, what you're doing about it.
What is the, what's that Hoover's name?
Hoover's name?
That'll call the FBI to find out.
Just look it up.
I think it's 76 or 77.
I don't know.
Let's just look at that in terms of... One thing will happen.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Maybe it won't work, but I guess...
I think that we can get Uber...
I think I can get Uber to resign if I put him to indirectly that I think he's going to be hurt politically, which I don't have to do.
He won't do it otherwise.
But I think if he resigns, and I think he's going to...
I don't think he's going to like it.
I don't think I know...
And I think your confirmation comes beyond hell of a job.
And you'll want to remember, whoever we appoint is appointed to the will of the President anyway.
And if they can, we lost the election.
Sure.
You take the position that you'll pick a successor if you're elected?
Yes.
In other words, there'll be no campaign if you're there?
That's right.
I'm not going to suggest it now, who's it going to be.
I'll just say that it's not going to be Nancy Clark.
So, you know, just say that's an issue.
The FBI is not an issue to the campaign.
It's the very best possible man we can get at that time.
And that's it.
Then he becomes a lame duck director.
Correct.
So...
How much are you going to kill the FBI at any point in the year?
We can't.
You can't do it.
It's incalculable.
I can see it.
It's shaping.
He becomes all aimed up, correct?
But also, he might become a little... Everybody maybe trying to let the ocean go out now.
Yeah.
And say, look here, let's... Yeah.
And he tries to...
He becomes a little one of a kind.
Maybe he just kind of...
What kind of a man is Sullivan?
I don't know him.
Well, I don't know him at all.
They tell me.
No, I don't think I've ever met him.
If I have, I've only met him once.
Thoughtful.
He's a student.
Very sensitive guy.
Apparently very well spoken.
And has...
very strong loyalties running down into the personnel of the Bureau.
And at one time had an enormous amount of power over there, delegated by Hoover.
Or did his fellow do some of the intelligence work for Hoover?
Oh yes, sure.
He will be 77 next Thursday, which is January 1st.
No, you see, there is no right in mind to say in 78 the President of the United States is going to be in the president's direction.
They'd be honest to all of them.
Sullivan was the man who executed all of your instructions for these secret tasks.
So he comes home.
Oh, I see.
It depends on how he's treated.
Can we do anything for him?
What he wants, of course, is vindication.
He's been bounced, in effect.
And what he wants is the right to honorably retire and so on.
I think if he did anything for Sullivan, Hoover would be offended right now.
It would have to be a part of the arrangement, whatever it is, that Sullivan could be given
an assignment somewhere else in the government.
We could use him on other things.
He's got a fund of information and could do all kinds of intelligence and other work.
He's got an international scope.
He's a student of Russia.
All right.
So he's a, he's a guy.
He's a great guy.
You know, he's a second man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He'd be very qualified for that.
It's a scum town, is that what you call it?
That's his favorite.
Yeah, and he's in Marty and Zorba.
He's treated with the enemy.
Yeah, you say that.
He's treated with the enemy.
And he has got Sullivan-delivered papers in Marty that are unbelievable that I've got up my sleeve.
All the inside documents.
What do you lead to at the moment?
Well, I don't guarantee that.
I've been hesitant to think it all through.
Well, don't mention it anymore.
No, I won't.
The difficulty is, and I didn't decide that during our agonies over the court, that from now on, this is the main reason we're not sending him to the barn.
We're just playing everything very close to death.
It's inevitable around here.
I'm sorry.
It doesn't affect you as much as it does the history of our planet to a certain extent.
You see that?
And Washington said that the backgrounders were quite awesome to meet with and so forth and so on.
Well, fine, that's fine.
You know what I mean?
I guess they know.
We do that for their benefit.
And frankly, I must say, son, I know we always think we gain from it.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
We get hit somehow.
Not because of your background.
They said, for good God's sakes, he's done this.
Of course, he's the eye of sin and so forth.
But they said they were particularly resentful of those, although they greatly respected him.
What the hell are they talking about?
What the hell do they want?
I close things to yours.
Oh, they're resentful.
Why are they resentful?
Because they always want them on the record.
I go out there and give a background.
Ron says, Ron Rosario is on background.
Immediately he gets an argument from me.
He says, well, why isn't it on the record?
Why can't we quote this guy?
What's the way you hide it?
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Why not?
And, uh... Why not?
Well, I'm about to that point.
Let me say, with Kissinger, it's a great problem, but I want to get him bundled anyway for a while, except when he is on the record, and then control it.
Because Henry talks to a hell of a lot of people, you know, and he buzzes around and so forth.
But I don't know his goddamn background, but I don't know him anymore so much.
I need more teachers.
Well, I think if you're on the record, you tend not to.
I say things on background that I wouldn't say on the record.
because it would, it would have been a cab copter or it would do this or do that, you know.
I saw that.
Just a one-liner.
I'll have to look into that and find out what he, what he really said.
He is right.
He is right.
Yeah.
He's a problem.
He gets out and promises everybody everything, but he tracks pretty well.
We got a rebozo problem over there now, you know, with this bid on this title insurance.
Miami Herald's got a story on title insurance.
What title insurance is that?
Well, it's on the Everglades National Park.
And the federal government's buying a lot of them.
And they need a title company to certify the title.
They're the only ones down there.
They're the only ones with a plan.
And they called for bids, and there was a defect in the call, so they called for bids again.
And then there was a legal question, and so they called for bids again.
Well, each time, they solicited bids from 18 firms, and each time they only got two bids, one from BD's firm and one from another crowd.
And finally, they got a decent call for bids.
It was legal and would stand up.
Rebozo bid, the other firm bid, and for some reason, the other firm went up $12,000.
So the rebozo was low.
Now the Herald has twisted it, that in order to get the business to the President's friend, the Department kept calling for bids until finally he was able to get the low bid.
We knew this was coming.
A week ago, I sent for the file from the Interior Department.
We're clean.
I know.
I know.
Well, it's... Sure, it's a moneymaker.
But the fact is, he's not going to be getting into the federal business.
Well, I've got to call in for Bob Hitt.
over there in the interior.
And I think there ought to be a press conference in Florida, where it will do the most good, where the federal guys will lay out all of these facts, one, two, three, and four.
So we'll do that and get that cleaned up.
There's a situation where Morton and Hipp did a damn good job.
They saw trouble coming.
And they were very... Well, there's that, too.
The poor guy's got to do business.
Well, that's another thing from a government standpoint.
But why should Rebozo lose out just because he's your friend?
You know, so you're pulled both ways on it.
But anyway, I will say that Interior handled it damn well so far.
Well, I digress.
Let me say that I think that the best way to do here is to, I don't know, get closer to election.
There are only entries you can see.
It's interesting that every time it gets out in the night,
Well, you see the problem.
Some low-level guy in the NSC could have been called.
He could have been.
He could have been.
There's another great problem, John.
These people are all human.
Our people are good.
I'm going to try to fix it.
There's another great problem.
They all like to work their knowledge there.
They all like to say things that are impressive and that's helpful.
And also, they all work hard and they're tired.
And most of them are great.
Yep.
And then they got in trouble.
I lay the money, three-fourths of the time.
It's like I'm driving, three-fourths of the time.
Any statements are made when somebody's in a traffic jam, right?
I'm sure.
And one of the reasons that I'm not going to campaign, I mean, anybody like, can I go to the campaign, restaurants and so forth?
You have to be just like God.
And he's smart.
And he may still make mistakes.
But the point is, these people, these people that try to handle things, they're just there.
They're just close.
Yeah.
I'm going to check.
That's like Robbie, you know.
Doesn't read at all.
He has his problems.
He's ranting.
He's crazy.
You know.
Well, thank you.
And they get caught off guard.
The damn receptions, you know, the press are floating around.
People can make a chance remark and they're good.
But all in all, I just want this so close to me, all that you've done to me.
Well, I won't say anything to anybody about it.
I would like for you to think about it.
I'd like for you to think about the proposition of my saying, Hector, I think what you should do, that you should have it out now.
I don't want to put you in a position of trying to make it successful now.
I think you should say, this is a matter that should be handled like a river, and the next election, and I do not want to be an issue.
So I've made my resignation.
I thank you for that.
There is a lot to be said for that.
A lot to be said for that.
I can see that.
So that I don't have, I mean, then we get his resignation.
I've got that for one.
But on the other hand, we don't have the act of his replacement, which I think would be a very great thing.
And before election...
You can begin the build-up of the adulation and the perquisites and the Medal of Freedom and all that sort of stuff.
I don't know when you should make this enough.
I think so.
And I'll tell you why.
I think this Princeton thing is going to get into the folklore.
It's going to become a part of the givens.
It's going to be part of the established plan.
Well, at the end of this month.
Oh, it is.
It's stacked.
It's just stacked.
So we let a man be crucified by a stack?
No.
I think if his resignation were in hand,
you could afford to defend it.
And I think you can afford to do a lot of things for him as a lame duck as you get into the campaign, which will be appreciated by his friends and will be virtually uncriticizable.
And I see that as really...
I will.
I'll tell you what will happen.
And you and Irvin and Maxwell and I
I won't say anything to the two of them, but when you're ready, we'll talk about it.
Well, what I've had is first you giving your judgment.
Well, wait a minute.
You can go.
I'll tell you what you can do.
Don't run at my expense, because I should do that, and I should feel that this is not...
I don't want him to deal with this idea of signing from somebody else.
Michael Dixie has to go.
But I would like for you to carry it around.
Do you think you should carry it around more, or do you just want to make... Let me do this.
Let me... Let Moore read Liddy's article.
And, uh...
Uh, I've got a copy of it.
Let me get it out.
I don't care.
And then I'll, I'll talk to Maura.
I've got the only other copy of this.
And, uh, and Maura.
And then let me say tonight, because Jeff and I have talked about the Hoover problem before.
He's very concerned about it.
The idea of just meeting them in one area.
And avoiding the confirmation process.
Yeah.
If we had an outstanding manager there, for example,
Well, it's hard to say.
I don't know.
No, I don't think it should be a policeman.
It's got to be a guy with great guilt and PR sense.
I'll tell you, there's a young attorney general in my state who's a very classy guy.
No, he's a Republican.
Well, he's damn good.
Yeah, yeah.
That's right.
Well, he's good.
The guy in Illinois, Scott, is pretty good.
He's a little on the liberal side.
Scott is, isn't he?
He's all...
he's all wrapped up in the environment business and uh but uh no this this guy in arizona is
Well, we have, of course, a recruiting problem for Justice, in any event, if John is... Well, Gorton is a possibility, although he has local ambitions, I think.
I don't think he can make it, but he's got those ambitions.
Well, on Hoover, when you come down to it,
The problem of going through that confirmation by the before and I just .
But I think what he could do, I really think makes a lot of sense.
He says, I'm resigning.
At the end of this, this is my last year, and I'm probably the president.
I want to, because the Bureau, I will not have the Bureau become an issue in any way.
And I think what I would do is call in and say, I need to go on and resign.
It gives him a three-month transition with a new man between the election and his retirement, which would be highly desirable.
He could say, I'm effective on confirmation of my successor on or after the 1st of January.
That's right.
on our act of inauguration.
I think it would be a hell of a lot to recommend it.
Now everybody, Peter Beaver, you want to clean up the bureau for us, that's really good for that, but you're not going to clean it up much anyway this year.
You know, another thing about this bureau, do you realize that it will be one hell of a plumb?
Yeah.
Did you know about one of those people?
I know, I know.
Well, they're appointed by the director.
As a practical matter, O'Rooney and the Hill have a lot to do with the appointment of these guys.
Yep, yep.
It has your, that discipline that this fellow talks about, that internal discipline that has been so important to the success of that thing.
Well, let me think about it, and I'll try and make a list of the negatives, if there are any, and drop you a note on it.
There are negatives.
No, just don't drop me a note.
All right.
All right.
Talk about this, and then we talk about this with you more, and...
What the hell would he do?
What can he say to that?
That it would impair his usefulness is the one thing that occurs to me.
It would be hard for him to maintain internal discipline if everybody knew he was leaving and so on and so forth.
But hell, everybody knows he's leaving now.
You know, it's just a question of time.
And they all now are on one side or another of either contributing to or slowing down his departure.
And there's an internal war going on there.
Getting back to the text thing.
Have you got a name?
Do we have a name?
Suppose we don't go for the quote, more taxes, unquote.
I can see your point.
No matter how we package this, next to that's for increasing taxes.
They need an issue, definitely.
And it's a, don't give them any issues.
Don't give them a hell of a program.
That's what you come down to.
Well, let me show you how this figures out.
Actually, it isn't an increase in taxes.
It's kind of interesting how it works.
Here are the two different plans.
This is a 2.5% and this is a 4%.
But that taxpayer has $20 million coming back to him.
If you go under 1.5%.
Yeah, under 1.5%.
And actually, the value added is only 12 billion.
So that the lower income brackets, as you saw in those schedules, actually get a reduction in their taxes overall.
If you go at this rate.
Now, here's another scheme that, well, let's say the actual balance is up.
The states have to raise 8 billion.
So actually, they get 20 back, and then they're paying out 20.
So it's a push.
Here's a system where they're actually going to get taxed more.
And the reason we do it is because we're pleased to have the budget in office, and they'll balance the budget.
And that one is an increase in taxes.
And you have to be guilty of that.
You wouldn't do that.
Well, it's an intriguing possibility because it helps balance the budget.
See, we're putting about $6 billion into education right now, federal budget.
What you could do is say, from now on, value-added supports all federal contributions to education.
And that's legitimate in a sense.
And you point to this and you say, look, everybody's property taxes are going to come down.
And this is essential.
I know that in several of the plans, at least one of the options, we're not going to, you know, it would be quite a mandatory.
Basically, the idea would be, well, let the states decide that.
You know that argument.
I think that this will not apply at all unless it's mandatory.
I've given the voice at that session.
Man, if you do not agree, boy, I don't need to apply because I think, well, the indicators, the local business, and all the rest, we'd love to have just the more money to multiply across the track line.
There isn't any answer to this on the new taxes charge.
Unless you can point to those real property taxes coming down.
And you look at those schedules and you see that actually, in terms of dollars out of pocket, people up to about $15,000 of income are actually better off in dollars and cents.
And then from 15 to about 25, it's almost de minimis.
They're maybe $10 a year, $15 a year.
And then from there up, it gets heavier.
So it's a progressive tax.
We've taken the regressivity out of the value added by this scheme that they've come up with.
Because the headlines say, at a time of economic slump, this crazy president has advocated new taxes.
And it just doesn't make any sense.
And the average working guy at the plant gate says, geez, I'm already breaking my factory taxes.
And now he comes along.
I am afraid so.
I don't trust my own political judgment on this.
I think from a standpoint of age of parochial schools, real property taxes, getting a value added in this country is what we should do.
But from the standpoint of its effect on your elections
uh it maybe it's something we should do in the second term i just don't know uh i'm too close to the forest right now and the society of broken schools would be the only thing that would really change votes for us that might change yeah we just got that across to the catholic hierarchy
Well, and you could go into the state of Indiana and say, you people are now paying real estate taxes for the support of your schools, and every one of you with two children or with a house, a $20,000 house, is paying umpty-umpty $100, and I propose to put an end to that.
Now, that's, you know.
I've got quite a list of things, and...
Tomorrow afternoon I can take you through those if you'd like me to.
I didn't bring that with me.
But what we've tried to do is take those issues that we outlined last night, match them up with what we're doing now, and fill in the gaps.
And so we've got quite a bit on jobs.
We've got a continuing thing on crime, on the environment, that sort of stuff.
R&D is now in sufficiently crystallized form, and we can begin to see the cost of it, and it's within limits.
We did some fairly exciting stuff there.
Let's see, what else was on that list?
Agent, Vietnam veterans.
To be frank, we did what I think we needed, and the only thing I think we needed, and something to do those things.
But we'll...
assistance that there can be in the systems of economy.
I don't think that we need issues at this point.
I quite think that right now, John, for better or for worse, we're stuck with what the hell it is.
And I say, well, in the domestic field, you know, you've got the line of evidence and all that.
We offer no programs.
Well, in fact, we've offered two of them.
That program's coming out of our ears.
We've got them, for Christ's sakes.
What do we want?
Right.
I'll tell you, we have nothing of any visibility in education.
Now, everybody says, well, education is way down on the shopping list, and it is.
It's clean, it's attractive, it's oriented to kids, it's almost unarguable in terms of the future of the country, and it's offbeat enough.
It's offbeat, too.
It's not in the mainstream of
conventional Nixon politics.
It's not law and order.
It's not foreign.
It's a little bit odd.
And for that reason, it's attractive to me as being a kind of a, as a broadening kind of thing, an outreach kind of thing where you bring in people, any age doesn't mean foreign.
So, yeah, oh, they, it'll just ring like a bell with them.
It will grab in a lot of people that otherwise we're not going to get.
It solves the problem of ghetto schools.
You can go into the urban areas where schools are running down and you've got something to talk about so you don't have to talk about blacks and whites and manpower training and that kind of stuff.
And you can talk about kids and schools and a bright new America.
It gives you a talking leg that you don't have.
On the bus side, as you say, it goes to that terribly difficult problem.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, it does that.
It does that.
It does that in a really beautiful way because you don't have to move anything to the Congress that says aid to parochial schools.
But you can go to the bishops and the cardinals and say, look, man, what I'm doing for you.
Now, you get busy on those state legislatures and the money's there.
And...
It has a funnel in direction to it that I kind of like.
Well, we've done it.
You really haven't decided yourself?
I'm very high on this, but I'm afraid I'm unrealistically high in relation to the political problems that are involved.
And I'd kind of like to hear somebody who's more distant from it analyze it from that standpoint.
I've got too much of myself.
I'm going to see Connolly tomorrow.
I think there are other people, some of them can keep their mouth shut.
I mean, this is not bad.
We're hoping to look at it.
I've tried it on Richardson.
He's fine.
He says that the new cap site is not a problem.
But of course, he's got a constituency he's looking at.
I have not yet tried it on Mitchell.
I think he would be a good one to try it on.
He's naturally skeptical.
And so I'll get with him.
I might try it on somebody like Colson.
Yeah, I'm trying to look at the camera, too.
All right.
Basically, it's so variable.
And then at the other end of the spectrum.
I don't know.
Is it price or not?
No, at least nine minutes.
They just go the right way.
Yeah.
I mean, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I think just the education aspect of it would get those titles.
I will.
Yeah, yeah.
And he can run it by, as Buchanan can run it by, on top of that generation, Sears.
All right.
Sears, of course.
All right.
I wonder if you should pick some.
I'll tell you, the guy that Mike Dole or Don Rhodes.
Yeah.
Yes, he's smart.
He's smart and he's conservative.
He's a conservative guy.
He's also going to be chairman of the platform committee.
So do it on a totally confidential basis.
I think we'd better get some judgment next time if this sort of thing flows out.
I don't want to tell them.
I mean, it's twerking the secrets of Gap.
But the reason I'm about to allow more discussion on this than on the Hoover thing is if this flows out, we can deny Gap.
You say, well, hell, right.
Well, I don't know.
I think we need to see political judgment on him.
The patio attic thing has been floating around for years.
Let's post a trial on Lou Harris.
He sees him all the time.
Harris will like it.
What do you think we ought to do on him?
I don't know.
I don't see any profit in that.
That's right.
I don't know.
to be honest.
I think he is using us to his advantage.
He wants to be friends with us on textiles because that's the south and that's his base.
On revenue sharing, he's broken it off on us.
And that's pretty much this year.
But you see, what he's doing, according to the sketchy information I get, is he's holding Bregman Church hostage.
And he's saying to these big city mayors, man, I want your support at the convention.
And whether that's true or not, it would be an explanation of why he has confronted people on this for his own purposes.
Almost everything he does now
is pretty much explainable in terms of his own end.
We're going to get some special revenue sharing.
We're going to get maybe one of the four reorganizations.
What about welfare reform?
Well, I've had two meetings in Long now since your breakfast, and one with Bennett.
Nothing is going to happen this year at all.
How are you?
Well, I have not confided in Bennett ever even that I have said to Long, but I have inkled the experimental idea to Bennett, and he is...
He had already been approached by Long on it, as Long as I did.
We'll let him raise that.
So he'll probably raise that.
How should I react?
Oh, I've indicated to him that it was an acceptable alternative.
That's right.
And if that's the price of avoiding a Ribicoff liberalization, which Bennett doesn't want, then we would take it.
And I have cut no deal at all long just because he's a damn mercurial.
He can't even find out where he is from moment to moment.
He finally came up with a bunch of smarts.
Oh, smart as hell.
Jesus, what a fast-moving mind.
All over the place.
And he finally came up with three or four taxidermists.
He's got in mind changing the basis for Social Security.
He's got in mind some new deductions and exemptions at the low brackets in the income tax, and a bunch of odds and ends that he was weaving into this as we went along.
And I said, well, on those things, he really ought to be called the Secretary of Economy.
I have no power of attorney to talk to you about any changes in taxation.
And I said, I think that finally the way it ended up, I said, I think perhaps what we ought to do is arrange an appointment.
for you as secretary.
Talk through those things.
And then I'll be happy to step in when you get back to welfare.
But for now, let's just agree that welfare isn't going anyplace in your committee this year.
And he said there's no question about that.
So that's where we're fixed.
And that accomplishes sort of your first goal, which was you didn't want any activity on it now.
Okay, comes next year.
Well, caveat.
Rivercroft may try and hang H.R.
1 on something.
on the floor.
And if he does, then I think... No, I don't think so.
I don't think he's got the horses.
Callan tells me that he does not.
So we have to hold the line firm against that.
And we've passed signals to everybody and anybody that we want nothing unattached.
And we do not want each other to come out on its own with the Social Security part of it and so on and go through in an orderly way.
So we've pre-positioned ourselves, and I think we can hold that.
But then there will be more committee work after the first of the year when they come back and
They'll come back fairly early in January.
And then we'll just tell our guys to hang tough.
We'll say no to Ribicon.
The probabilities are that that will foresaw any movement at all, and the thing will just be deadlocked.
The problem is the crystallizing.
To make people understand that you were forced and that you tried.
That's it.
It's a hell of a tough thing to try.
Look what we've done.
Look what we've done.
Look what we've done.
Look what we've done.
We've had these students walk in the column.
We've had the regional briefings.
We've talked about it.
The column has been a while talking about it.
And I don't know if you know, but at a second level, picking medium-sized cities, I've had my staff out since mid-summer going to places like Springfield, Illinois.
That's the highest place.
And we'll continue that now for another three months.
But the economy is the big...
is the big pivot.
And you're either up or down on that.
We have a serious problem, I think, with Connolly leaving on Thursday in making sure that he's on board on everything that the boys are doing on the economy, and foreign and domestic both, because he's been out of pocket this last week.
And so they've got kind of a management problem to make sure that he's exposed to all of this.
Primarily the McCracken, Peterson, Schultz lineup here.
It's a very sensitive issue here.
Peterson wants to
wants to hit that ball in front of him and we have to deliberately let him in and there's a group working that is supposed to be a working group.
Actually, because the bank is so, has such enormous political control, Connolly, Schultz, McCracken, Kissinger are the group that I have to get a judgment on.
I get ready to move.
And that is why I had to delay Peterson until I got a scratch of Connolly.
He wanted to come in.
He said he'd get him the guidelines for how to guide Connolly.
He can't do that.
Connolly has his ideas about this and they, this was all set up a month or three weeks ago.
Schultz, honestly, Schultz was quite aware of it.
Okay.
Well, I'll just stay out of it then.
But Peterson was holding forth at length this morning about this and I figured if they said, well,
I know, and he has every reason to because he brought him to it.
He actually was working on it in terms of decent separation, how, when, and where to move the surcharge.
And I know we do a lot of research on crisis and all that sort of thing, but he's working on it at the level, which is more narrow.
That's the other thing.
Where I am, I'm in a position of undercutting common, I understand.
I understand.
I have to read what I didn't know.
Okay, then he said that I'm right and that he wanted to see me before I saw a common.
Well, I can't be helped.
Mrs. Kissinger doesn't have a problem with that.
The relationship here is totally right, in my understanding.
Don't you agree?
Right, President.
Well, I'm an opponent, and also a partner that's got the same sense as you.
I know he is wrong.
You know, he's wrong.
You should have kind of advised him.
He's been aware of that.
Well, I must give him time.
Yes.
It's good to be with you again, Monsanto.
Well, I've asked for an appointment with him on this.
And, oh, yeah.
Oh, I thought that's what you meant.
Yeah.
I thought he's got to know before he talks to the Japanese.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think he's got to, uh, I mean, we'll get Peter in on that, too.
The situation, you see, John hasn't worked at Peterson's, at the Davidson Arts, he's capable of all, but he isn't basically an ideal staff man, and he may never be.
That's why we may have to move him to the stands of John or something like that at some point.
And in this scene, where you've got all these people operating,
Not to say there's nothing, but the economy is more sensitive about it than anybody in the monetary affairs except the treasury.
And Peterson actually rolls around the monetary affairs.
On the other hand, the surcharge part is basically a treasury thing, but it also, Peterson, is there an even justification that the state varies from that and the rest.
But here's where you come to the difference of it.
You cannot discuss the one without the other.
Now, you can have a situation of Peterson the franchise, in an area where he, let me say, is not as preeminent, say, as Dissinger is.
Dissinger in his field was so preeminent that
You get in a franchise where it cuts over into so many issues, where it cuts across state independence.
But you can't get pierced in an issue that cuts across the Fed, the Treasury, and the State Department.
mainly because there's a weakness in his part as an individual, but because he just isn't a fellow that has that enormous prestige, and I digress, but he knows a hell of a lot about it.
But when you take, for example, an international aspect of economic policy, you're up there.
I play the leadership part of it because I believe it's sensitive about
I think there's some skepticism on that, frankly.
Let me tell you about our concern.
I say ours.
I think this is shared by pretty much everybody on the staff here.
That college staff work is weaker than it ought to be.
for the amount of responsibility that he has.
And that a lot of his black books that he comes over with have a lot of blank pages in them.
So I think without impeaching him at all, you have to be awful sure
that he's really got what he says he's got sometimes.
I think there's a certain amount of bullshit in the assertions that are made out of pressure these days.
No question about it.
So I'm finding that proof.
I'm a tax guy.
What I was going to have to know was this.
It's not so much getting Connolly in prison.
Well, he's a master at that.
My point is, my point is, Peterson thought...
Well, I think that he needed to be able to speak up on, say, the money trade.
You couldn't.
No chance.
He couldn't stand up to Arthur.
No chance.
You notice how he had to roll Arthur.
Yep.
The man who rolled him was Colin.
Yep.
And that's the way it has to be.
That's right.
You see, that's my point.
That's right.
I think he can.
And he's kind of separated the search charges.
So I agree with the conscience of the piece, but I just know that at this point,
Don't misunderstand me.
I'm not holding any particular brief to the Peterson operation, which I have some real reservations about.
But there is an analogy.
Yeah, there's concern.
That's right.
And I think some of it's well-founded, my experience.
There's an analogy to the NSC and to a lesser extent to the domestic council in the Peterson operation, which is not asked.
And that is going to continue to be, it's going to eat away at this thing until Peterson is given some very plain marching orders.
And I think that perhaps will ease the situation.
But he sees Kissinger, Wheeling, Rogers,
And I think I doubt it.
But the yearning remains and I think it has to be turned off and
Otherwise, you're going to have conflict there, and you're going to have a continuing problem.
On my side, I just don't have that kind of competition.
The cabinet is much more manageable.
But when I have a problem in this area, I don't try and be a connoisseur.
And I think Peterson just is not sensitive yet to that necessity.
And maybe I ought to talk to him, or George should if he's closer to George, or somebody should.
and get him straightened around on this because he still has aspirations in that direction and not from any selfish standpoint.
It's his job and because he sees a certain amount of crappy staff work coming out of the Treasury.
No question about the staff work being there.
And I'm aware of that.
I have no confidence in Volker.
I think he's smart and tactful.
And Walker is a very clever, fast talker.
And there's that.
But I think that the other hand, that's where you have to put it.
That's why we set up the Schultz.
Schultz is a...
he works with millions of many fields is the key to this, because he really, frankly, knows more than either the modeling or Peterson about search artists.
Now, money is loaded.
Either Conley or Peterson knows a hell of a lot about them, and much more than I do.
I wait for you to say that.
I know that the ideal would really be to have Schultz out of Peterson, John.
Let me make a suggestion.
Schultz does not feel he has any franchise in this at all.
Well, except he's not just sure where he stands in all of this.
And he comes into me and he says, gee, I see this thing getting away.
He says, what do I do?
And I said, well, George, you better get in there.
And he said, well, I just don't know where the president wants me in there.
Both.
Both.
And I think it might be awfully good if you have the time to talk to George and tell him what you expect of him.
And then I think you'll find that he'll go all the way for you.
This is an OFD management property.
Well, you can put her on those terms.
And he's got to show us his TV.
Yes.
See, he and Peterson and I were the only ones who showed up for the staff meeting this morning.
So we had about an hour, and we just talked back and forth and around.
Well, we talked about it.
I said, hey, once in a while, my cousin, if I see Peterson today before I see Connolly,
See, Burns had lunch with Volker back here Saturday and worked on Volker very hard.
He had all kinds of things he was pulling out of his bag.
I couldn't hear enough to know exactly what they were on.
Arthur was working very hard on Volker, so I'm doubting Volker called Conley.
And Conley's concerned that Burns would get in and work on you.
So, you know, there's a lot of wheels within wheels.
But I do think if you want to strengthen George's hand, you can do it and solve some of this problem by just telling him what you'd like to have him do.
I'll do that.
I'll get George in.
And he can also be very effective with Peterson.
Yes, because he was in his protege.
And also it was his idea to set up this group.
It just hasn't worked, and it's not Peterson's fault at all.
It's just the personalities, really, basically.
You've got two powerful men, Secretary of Trade, and not a skull without a bureaucrat in Peterson's job.
Now, if Schultz had Peterson's job, he'd make it work, I think.
I'm not sure.
Because of Connelly's special relationship, I'm not sure that anybody could really make it work in that sense.
Oh, I understand.
I understand.
And you see, as a staff man, your problem always is that you don't know what it is that the president is looking at.
and what it is that he's approving or disapproving.
And you don't know whether he's seen any other viewpoints.
And, of course, what we try and do is to round out some of this stuff that comes at you.
So it's very frustrating for a staff man to have a guy who comes in and lays it all out and asks you for a go ahead and you say okay and then he leaves and the staff guy is sort of left wondering what's gonna happen and whether you got the balanced picture or not and he's accountable to these other departments and you know.
So actually I think
George can do a lot better job of this than Pete.
Well, not only that, but he's got, I think, Connolly's respect.
And he is known to have your confidence to a greater degree than Peter's.
And Connolly's sensitive to that.
And to the extent that Bob or I or Henry, for that matter, get along with Connolly, I think it is a result of Connolly's sort of reading of the White House.
And he gives when he has to, and so on and so forth.
That raises one little question on personnel cutback.
You know, we've got this 5% across the board federal personnel cutback.
I think we have a carbon exception out in the narcotics area.
And if you have no objection, I don't know.
We've made a point.
We'll still be very close to it.
All right.
All right.
Why?
Because I like it.
And because Macy is a superb Hill man, and we're out-flanked at every turn, I think we're just kidding ourselves on public broadcasting.
And you notice I wasn't on that memo that came through.
The reason I wasn't is that I don't agree that there's any hope of cutting our budget.
I think what we have to do is move in on that management.
And we've got some friends on the board.
Get the hell rid of Macy.
Get our own guy in there.
No, I'm sure we can't.
We'll take a lot of, we'll shed a lot of blood.
We'll be criticized by the liberals.
The Post will kill us.
But that's the only way I know to get at them.
No.
No, in the long haul, we'll be better off.
That's my point.
Sure.
And I don't think the budget route has any hope at all.
I just think the money route.
Well, I'm in the minority around here on that, and I think we'll just have to let it kind of come at you on a balanced way.
There are things like that.
We're hanging tough.
We're hanging tough with outfits like HUD and HGW and those.
Absolutely.
And we're going to make it.
We're going to make it.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
We're cutting the heart out of everything, you know.
Right.
that's the old game we're going to file a lawsuit against Ford Motor Company that I want you to know about clean air on the face of it it might seem to be contrary to the things that we've been trying to do in balancing the environment and industry and so forth but the fact is we're going to do it by declaratory judgment action rather than a punitive lawsuit
And we'll get the issues ironed out.
There is a legitimate law question.
And by doing it our way rather than the other way, I think Ford will understand that we're taking the easy route.
Well, it's inevitable.
They're going to catch it one way or the other.
They're going to have a lawsuit.
And so it's just a question of which way we go.
And we've been leaning on EPA and the Justice Department.
Yes.
They have no strong objections to it, as is lesser of two evils.
But I knew you'd be reading about it in your news summary, and I wanted you to know about it in advance as to why we're doing it.
I spent the day in New York last week with Alexander and Ritzel.
And with Kambach and DeMarco.
And we'll meet again the first week in November.
There's a lot of work that had to be done to get some facts together.
You've got a hell of a problem because you live in a community property state.
And so we're going to have to develop some fairly novel approaches to the solution of the problem.
I can't say that I know what they are right now.
But your estate looks like, with these papers and things, looks like about $20 million.
And that's a hell of an estate tax.
So make sure... Well, that's right.
If you give it all to the government, you may incur a gift tax.
And that's one of the open questions that's being researched.
It's not a charity, and it's taken out now, you see, as a charitable device.
Well, there's several ways to do it, and I'm glad Alexander and Ritzel are in it, because, you know, they've got a lot of resources for our research.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, they are already having it, and they've done a fair amount of work already.
Well, he was under your law, number one.
Number two, he was very liquid.
He had a tremendous amount of money of his own, and he was heavily insured.
And you're not in that situation.
See, so when you get down to looking at your ability to respond to an estate tax, even assuming we can get it down a ways, unless we can get it down a lot, we've got problems.
And we have particularly egregious problems, and Mrs. Nixon precedes you in that.
Because she owns some of those.
Sure.
And I have to pay for it.
So, the trick here is to develop a theory that a lot of this is separate property, number one.
We can do that by establishing time frames when you were a resident in New York, and we can get a lot of it out of your estate.
We'll get it into separate status, some of it.
Some of it is campaign stuff, transition stuff, and the first couple of months you were here.
That's right.
And then you moved your domicile, as I recall, in spring of 69.
So a lot of the stuff that would be enormously valuable, like your notes on the inaugural address and things of that kind, can be taken as separate property.
Now, I think all that damn stuff goes higher and higher.
Well, you'd be amazed.
They told me up there, I didn't realize it.
Well, I know, I know, but you see, you get these appraisers, and that's what they say.
Now, your yellow pad with your notes from Montauk on the inaugural address, they appraise it $50,000.
Your signature, interestingly enough, is bringing more
than Johnson's.
And as much as Eisenhower.
I don't know.
I don't know why that is.
But it apparently is scarcer, and therefore has a higher market value.
And that's very flattering, but it sure works against your interests in terms of your state plan.
I guess so.
I guess so.
Well, they can spot the machine.
These guys have no trouble with spotting the machine.
And...
So anyway, the work's going forward, and I would guess that by the end of the year, we'll have something for you.
But it's a hell of a problem.
DeMarco's...
It'll all be changed, so we can give it a different name.
Yeah, it's got to be changed.
I think that's one of the things we're looking at, is how to change it.
Well, we might be able to change it in an attractive way.
There don't seem to be any real good easy answers to this in terms of income.
Well, that's a possibility.
It's all a big open question right now.
We've identified the problem.
We don't have enough facts really to know how big a problem it is and how much flexibility we have.
Well, there's another way.
There's another way.
Well, all right, but you better burn them before you die.
Because if they're in your estate's possession, they're part of your estate.
Suppose I have a will in the case that they are.
Well, I'll tell you, the way our thinking runs is maybe you ought to create an inter vivos trust.
Appoint some trustees.
Transfer a lot of the stuff out of your estate to that trust during your lifetime.
No charitable deduction there at all, but just get it out of your estate.
Give those executors or those trustees certain instructions.
and then relinquish control over those documents completely.
So they're out of your estate.
Never.
Well...
I can't do it with any other confidential stuff.
Oh, no.
You'll have to select.
You'll have to select.
I don't care.
They have all the goddamn correspondence and that sort of thing.
But everything, for example, has to do with foreign policy.
I'm going to keep it.
Well, now when you say you're going to keep it, does that mean you're going to keep it for your lifetime and then let it become public?
Or does that mean... Well, all right.
Now...
Why don't you do this?
Why don't you create an intervival trust?
With those documents to go into that trust, you relinquish all control over it.
You still have access to them.
But you get them out of your estate, and the trustees are instructed that nobody is to see them for 50 years.
Now you see, that has the advantage of getting it out of your estate.
Bottles them up for 50 years.
One of the questions we started asking, of which there were very few answers, is what is it?
What actually is it?
What are we talking about here?
I don't think about it.
I don't.
I don't see it in mind.
But all the other companies, I'm sure they all have the right of those.
A lot of people call it, but they never like it.
Well, it certainly has some advantages.
The other thing is the time capsule approach, where you bottle them up in 150 years, and now somebody can open it up and say, oh, well, that's what really happened.
Well, anyway, there's that, and that's going on.
Senator Byrd sent you a speech that he made.
Which one?
Bob Byrd on school busing and forced integration.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I just wanted you to know that he had done this because he may mention it to you sometime.
All right.
So there you are.
Could have made his speech if he had made the call.
But those are only odds and ends.
Well, we have an appointment this afternoon to talk about the school business, and I don't need to take your time on it unless you particularly want me to.
You've read the paper and you know the problem.
Tomorrow afternoon we have this meeting that you asked for where we'll lay out the domestic...
initiatives for Mitchell and Connolly and you and Colson and a couple of other people.
And what I'm going to do in that is to take a highly political approach.
We've got some more recent polls.
We've got an analysis of what the other candidates or what the Democratic candidates are doing with regard to these issues.
That's kind of interesting.
And then swing into what your options are.
All right.
That should take more than about an hour.
Right.
An hour?
I think so.
Yeah.
Well, we both think it'll be enough for the superintendent.
All right.
I'm going to start an all-nighter.
I'm going to get Jared.
All right.
I'm talking about this.
Here's the thing.
Here we go.
Here's all the work out.
Get the...
Yes, for example, Stan does decide whether we want him to stay.
He does decide to become a financier.
He seems to be very confident and ready to join us.
Excellent.
Do well.
Yes.
That's right.
Well, I shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Well, we need to take the rest of the gun.
Yeah, well, there isn't any goddamn good answer.
There isn't any answer at all.
I've been meaning to talk to you all about it.
Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
That's nice.
To me, he said, well, he says, well, he knows the subject.
He's a totally negative person.
Well, it's not a problem.
We don't need a guy who knows the subject.
We need a guy who can sell.
And, well, we can't get going.
That's what I hear, because of the constitutional government.
Whitaker tells me that Mitchell is very strong on none.
And, uh, well, I am too, and Carlson is just not.
Well, I, uh, I think none would be as many problems as he would be answers.
I think he'd be, well, a real albatross in some ways, because of his, uh, yeah.
He's got lines out, you know, the Murchison's and the God knows who all.
The tobacco lobby, and I put it up to Connolly and he hasn't come up with a name.
It's like a kettle man.
Or something, I just don't know, but who the hell... Well, it's pretty much got to be a guy with practical farming.
But you don't like it.
You don't like it.
No, no, it's wrong.
I just, I don't think it's...
I wonder if Benson isn't probably a little, maybe we can be over-sensory about that.
Butts?
I don't know about Benson.
I've heard good things about him.
Good man, you know.
Apparently, I've heard he's now pushing ahead with his habits, too.
Oh, yeah.
He wants to go out and get his job.
We've got a problem at the post office that I'm just getting into.
Well, because all of one's top people are going to leave.
And leave that place devoid of any management.
We're going to have to talk to them and say why we don't do management.
We don't have management everywhere.
No, he's already been picked.
He's very grand.
He's totally unfamiliar with the problems of the place, the congressional problems and the other problems.
And, of course, the Board of Governors, again, the Board of Governors, they're here to point out one thing I do hope is this, that Bo Lewis and Gersh is the last member to raise these kinds of subjects.
Didn't speak about the fact that the magazine turned out to be a hell of a wrap.
Right.
And I didn't bloody lie on this.
I think Bo Lewis has always been, you know, you've got to see me.
Let's put it this way, we have subsidized transients over so long, I don't think even now.
Now, read the guy, he says, well, sir, you know, I mean, he'll make a little bit of $80, $90 less, but a lot of them are $100, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000.
Then he says, now, let me say, or mine more.
He said, so a lot of the left-wingers go down, so maybe it's well for that to happen.
Well, that is a whole sense either.
Hope talked to me a little at Camp David last week about this, and said that he'd like to come in and make a presentation.
I called him the whole time, and he wasn't good.
We'd see him.
You might call him.
He asked me if I would mention it.
I said, of course.
Thank you for the hearing.
Thank you.
Well, he gets given something, I don't know.
Our linkage is very bad right now.
We have no control over that operation.
But what he said was that they were going to go to Congress for relief, and he wanted the administration's support.
And I said, well, that's fine.
If that's what you're after, come on in, and we'll get the right guys in.
We'll listen to it, and we'll take a position.
Yeah, we do that, yeah.
You know, speaking of our Democratic friends, I think they're...
I mean, the candidates are sort of... sort of trenching around a bit now, aren't they?
Very interesting.
I think they are, but they'll be out about issues.
But I know it's the husky stuff.
He's doing it the wrong way.
He has to, but he isn't going anywhere at the moment.
He's not meeting the press yesterday, or one of them.
And it was very bland.
Now I just saw a statue.
And it was really quite flat.
Not exciting.
Not exciting.
Yeah, but Kenny is moving well because he says so.
Yeah, he says, oh, they should leave some art people with it.
Well, I don't, when I say art people, personally, I get away with it.
I mean, it's what they do to you.
Some of the things that some of the rich do.
He gets caught up in Ireland, though.
What do you think of that?
Well, you know, he's for doing away with the process.
He wants to cast a consolidation of the nation.
Well, that's the first account of the city of Gallup.
Well, he's just caught Mary Gallup from about half the press for, well,
but interfering in the criminal affairs and, of course, the racism on a life basis.
And that's been reflected in some of the incitement of the Anglophile press here.
And so he's got a fair amount of negative reactions.
Generally speaking, here's Mills.
Of course, the economy is a major issue.
I thought a very good reception to the personnel that the boys got.
I was surprised.
I was surprised.
Yes, he is doing well.
He's getting out.
He's going to get some coffee.
And he's right where he ought to be, I think.
He's in the Congress.
Poor agriculture.
Queenie, you know, suffered.
This money's going to be functional soon.
Shirley, we love her.
That's damn Shirley.
Shirley, oh.
Put yourself in the position of a house.
435 people hoping to stay on down here.
And your wife, you know, you know, and so forth.
And the poor factories.
They find that when people would get in the news, they'd have access to themselves.
He's a dummy.
I mean, not be smart, but he does it so he can make news.
And that's part of it.
And basically, that's basically about the people who get the press and the people who do the song.
It's a horrible, frustrating life.
We're a poor damn congressman.
What is he?
He's an errant boy, and he contributes.
He's got ideas.
He's got all his interiors and aides and the rest all the way to his service.
Really?
Really.
What do you think about a guy like Bob Mathias?
Who's in fine image.
He's dumb as a post.
He's from a farmed area.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm afraid he's a little too dumb.
Yeah, he's probably dumb.
He's dumb.
Is he dumb?
Just basically dumb.
I think he's got a great wife.
Yeah, his wife's smart as hell.
Somebody like that.
Who would be a figurehead?
How about Johnny Rose, sir?
I don't see there any connection to the farms.
He's a smart guy.
Lawyer.
I don't know what he's doing.
He doesn't have us forever.
I'm going to go to the members of the House.
All right.
I think maybe we need a politician at the job.
Yeah, let's turn around the governor so we don't find him.
Sure, I'll turn around the governor.
Is there any other thoughts about this?
No.
I'll get busy on the Congress, start putting together a witness.
On the Democratic side, they are stretching around, pressing and so forth and so on, which brings us back again to our school problem, which we really have to think of tonight.
I wonder at this point,
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
if it's wise to give them any new issues.
Well, that's the real problem we've got on that thing.
I think it's dangerous to judge that at the moment.
Basically, on a court date, we could have written her off.
So we just didn't.
We agreed to come out, so we got to come up with an end.
But we didn't give them any issues.
And that's why they're quite curious.
Because they wanted an issue.
I think you have to put yourself in your chair and genuine what's an army like.
You'll have been to China, you'll be going to Russia, you'll be...
Well, then that's all still ahead of me.
What do you say to the city when you get up?
And what do you need to say in that setting?
Right now, we're at the start of the turning of the tide.
Things are calm and diffusible.
They're going to heat up, though, between now and then on the domestic side.
They're going to make sure they heat up.
And next summer we're going to go all through the damn busing thing again.
We're going to have a lot of these issues.
You're going to have veterans marching for jobs and all that kind of stuff.
They're going to stimulate all that kind of thing that they possibly can.
Welfare mothers and so on.
Yeah.
So your point is that maybe having something like this is going to be very strong.
Could be.
I don't know.
We've done it better in the environment.
It's a big play.
That's it.
That's it.
And interestingly enough, the battlefield then moves to whatever it is that you lay out there.
That's what happened on... That's it.
And who knows what else of a negative nature
might have been brought up.
These guys have to spend their days up there doing something.
Well, that's why I say they're crashing around in a country like Kennedy works on Ireland, and he works on Pakistan, and he must be really serious.
Well, you know what he's working on?
Not much.
Not much.
It's kind of interesting.
And I've had the guys do an analysis of the issues that these fellows are writing.
And I've kind of put it up on a graph, which you'll see tomorrow.
And it's pretty interesting how narrow what the hand of issues is, that each one of them is working.
And Jackson's about the only one that's working your issues, in a sense.
And the others are off on little kicks of their own, one kind or another.
Well, I'll do a little canvassing with Buchanan and these other guys on this new tax business and give them the whole picture.
And we'll just take a read.