Conversation 617-024

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The first part was just terrible because Rogers and I were exchanging sarcastic notes back and forth.

And, uh, what do you do?

Well, I don't remember.

Was the goddamn thing on the schedule?

I can't imagine.

Why didn't he put it on the schedule?

That should, that kind of thing should just never, the report on the trip, we just gotta, I think we just gotta declare our law that people don't report on trips anymore.

That was just, that was ludicrous.

But the other thing was even worse.

He had some poor soul in there.

I don't know who the guy was.

I didn't go in.

He had slides on the slide projector and those charts about transpose 72.

But he had this guy up there who was quite articulate, you know, like an advertising agency presentation man or something, you know.

and he was clipping through all this, but he told us how many cars this parking lot would park, and how many cars over here, and he's got 500 policemen donated from the state of Virginia, and that the so-and-so is handling police and sheriffs that they're shipping in from somewhere else, and how long he thinks it's going to be.

Well, I'm just curious how early we've been tracking this.

Probably just been pushed so much.

But we should, but you can say this now.

I don't know.

However, I'm not going to see Goldie.

He doesn't have the report with him.

I certainly hope not.

The one, in fact, we'll work in tomorrow for a few months.

You do have to see his contract because he's leaving for Europe tomorrow.

And if I call him, he'll know what we're going to do with the guy.

We're going to be gone the rest of the week.

And what he wants to tell you is that he is going to leave.

He has to leave.

He extended, you know, he goes in July on the waiver, or in June, or whatever it was, he said he can't right now.

And he cut through one more semester.

new semester starts january 1st and he can't extend his leave so he wants to go as at the end of the year and he's doing it on a very upbeat positive basis he feels he's made a real contribution in getting the new thing going you know say that well so he was saying to me that you know you had said he couldn't leave and i said well obviously from an appearance sake it would have been a problem but far more important which the president he couldn't fully tell you at that time

He knew he was going into this whole economic unequal business, and he knew that he had to have you here to try and hurt on it.

But he did do a hell of a job in putting the program together, because a lot of the staff I can't think of.

That's what he recommends.

I think we ought to talk to Schultz.

He was the guy that talked to you about the fact that you didn't have any really distinguished people.

And I don't know whether Stein's a distinguished people or not.

political question there, which may or may not be of any, I don't see a sign of a fit.

Totally against the council, except for Solomon.

Is it?

I don't know.

This would have been a good day, Bob, for you to run through that damn thing.

Yeah.

Pop it in and out of me like a cat in a box.

I've got everything I've got.

Before we block on the, I mean on Pantscher, they, in the original plan, I can't track down where it came from.

I suppose you would say that I'm not sure.

Was the idea of Ed Brook in that delegation?

No.

And I want to be sure we don't want to do that before we go to Johnson.

No.

We'll go to Johnson's last year and try to understand that.

The other thing is the probability that the time of her trip will be the time of the advance trip to China, which Hughes was intending to send coffee on.

And the question of whether, and his thought was to send Brennan with Mrs. Nixon, whether you wanted to, because coffee is a stronger man for running that.

Brennan is fine.

I don't need to eat coffee.

I got to thinking, before I even raised my cue to see, I was kind of wondering whether sending a block is the right thing to do anyway.

Is that right?

Well, I didn't just call to say that.

It just kind of looks like you tried to get her to say, look, I've got one just right here that I've done.

Is that right?

Well, I just told Colin that I...

Oh, because it's nice and dry.

We've had a hard time making those back here grow.

Did they know that they have a... Well, they announced, no.

I'm not going to vote today, but they announced that they offered to announce that he's going to have his committee meet on Lake Street, and he'll do it on Lake Street.

But they will do it.

So therefore, we just go ahead, depending on the ground, and just, you know, they're going to do it.

You know what it won't be then?

It's a polished tragedy, though, isn't it?

It is.

We've got to get him out of the cabin, Bob.

Don't you agree?

After the election shift, if I were even before, I'd just wonder if he was just a jackass.

You know, he's just a, he, well, look, he's so full of beans and everything, he's just got to, got to get him going.

I think, Emily, I think you do fine there.

It's an incredible business of telling him, you know, going through all the, who he met,

You know, the one thing that he gives us all the way, and I've never known the tale, I could just see that poor guy, that prime minister, and I just could hardly suppress a laugh, where he said, I mean, I was only able to see three of them.

Yeah, I saw him in power.

John, why did you let him do it?

I don't know.

He looked over at me and said he didn't see him.

He couldn't get out for an hour and 15 minutes.

Don't raise the question of John.

I said, boy, John's always happened so often.

I'm just, just getting to the point that he's, he just drives me home.

It's just, 1100 years, it's, it's, with that kind of thing, it's embarrassing, I think.

Because you just, you know, it's past any point of, well, yeah, they probably just saved a little.

I was glad I came back after a little while and got a heart in this chair.

I just got that out of the way.

Totally.

Strange little fellow.

Henry's got a batch of Germans in that they wanted you to have a reception for, which we turned down.

Now he's asking if you'll see him for 20 minutes.

And it's the same old stuff again.

It's the Minister of Agriculture and the Mayor of Berlin, and the Secretary in the Chancellor's office, and a senior Bundestag representative, the CDU.

My parliamentary secretary from the Foreign Office.

I mean, they're low-level type people.

Henry Smith.

Here for that German-American conference.

They come to meet with our parliamentarians.

Oh, I love it when somebody else gets a reception.

I don't really have to see the damn people.

that's today or tomorrow is when you have to do it.

We had, you know, turned it down and now he's asking you to join Trump.

Do you mean Trump and Drew here?

No, he says 20 minutes.

20 minutes means an hour.

You know, a brief meeting with Lee and Jeremy Douglas will be at 1.6 of a minute.

No, no, no.

No, I think not.

I think not.

I think we ought to say no.

I think we hang with it.

We've got to have a rule.

Well, when I put Henry to the wall, he said, you should raise it.

And I said, well, does he have to do something on his desk?

And he said, no, it isn't.

Yes, we say that I've got to say it, but with my call, you shouldn't have to make excuses.

I mean, we've told him that you aren't going to meet with that luxury.

That's right.

The party that the other government meets with doesn't really make any difference either.

I don't think it really does in the end.

We're good with Moussaka.

But we're different.

We're talking one thing.

We call it ever-weakening.

And he's ever-weakening.

And we're certainly in his position.

I don't think we have to meet with everybody that comes through here.

Well, it becomes routine if you do, and then when you do, it doesn't mean that much.

It's better to leave it on there.

He's pressing me on.

The Brazilian ambassador said, I cancel the visit unless I would go to return there and then see Brazil.

Then they would cancel it.

Were you here when he told you that?

I was here when he was raising the point.

I didn't hear that he would cancel it.

And I said, well, Henry, I'll never go to return there.

He said, well, it would be a resumption.

I said, no.

I said, I wouldn't do it.

I said, I cannot change for him what I've done for others.

He wanted to come to Canada.

I said, fine, go to Canada.

But you cannot change that.

I'm not going to get a next chance going to something.

And he came to a second-day meeting, too, which is even that's only too far from Brazil.

It is.

That's right.

Well, it really is.

It's just that he's not a Latin American.

But I'll tell you, he does start to be hard-nosed about.

That's right.

The reason Julie canceled her request is that she's not making the trip.

to Cleveland, whatever it was, that she was right, she was in Cleveland the day, all day, met the press, she just called me.

Met the press, went over the line, she wanted me to go and get the staff order made, or the four of us.

Well, then probably you see there was some confusion.

She told them she wasn't going, that the thing, maybe the press thing was canceled, so she didn't want the Q&A, which is what he was working on.

You know, that, that article was pretty good.

What's the situation?

Would you hand me another copy?

Do you want to pay?

There's a small match just outside the door.

John, uh...

I heard you said you didn't and they would be ready to go over that budget stuff.

If you wanted to do it in California or on the plane on the way out or something, you could use the plane time and they could just actually go back and do that.

All right.

We've got Bob here.

Thank you.

It's a good picture.

It's the best picture.

It shows you what an asset you've got in this job.

I've got to get this across to the staff.

I know what we've got.

Our people all know, believe me.

Do they?

Okay.

And help her prepare, spend time with her, you know, all the things.

Even though she may not know.

Oh, I'm just going to get this in them.

Her schedule is planned and shepherded not by Mrs. Nixon's distaff staff, but by Larry Parker.

It isn't Larry Parker.

It's David Parker.

And she goes over them.

It's just her interview.

Don't worry.

That was just kind of up the wall.

Maybe she did it on purpose.

Maybe she's trying to back them up a little.

It's a very good story.

Thank you, Patrick.

and that's good because, you know, getting that sort of thing.

She really cares about the boy.

She knows just the right things to say.

but she doesn't, because she's not comfortable in public speaking.

Now that's a dang good one.

In other words, here's my mother.

Her mother will like that.

No, but it's a true thing.

It's a right thing because she doesn't look comfortable.

And it gets her off the wicket of having to do a lot of public speaking, but it still makes it believable that someone cares about people.

Most people aren't good at public speaking.

Hell no.

Most people do care, or some people care about people.

Everybody wants people to care about them.

I think we've got to find some ways to do it.

What do you think?

I really think that maybe the time is coming when we've just got to go about these packages, you know, smacking and cutting.

Yeah, I think we did.

Especially with

You know, look for the right ground.

Like this thing today.

We're on very solid ground.

The compass is wrong.

Let's see if we can cut it out.

Let's see if we can put it down to a little.

Figure out a football game.

Thanksgiving Day.

Let's see if we can put it down to a little.

I think it would be good.

It's good to do a college game.

Yeah, I'm inclined to do it.

It's a way to hit Oklahoma, which I want to go in and do.

I'm inclined to do it.

Hit Oklahoma.

I have a lot of times already.

Yeah.

It's all right.

I'm inclined to do it.

It's sort of identified with Nebraska, too.

Governor and Senator Hubbard.

Just not having even Carl Albert.

Well, Carl will probably want to go up in some way.

I mean, he has to go up.

He has to.

But I know they all are probably going anyway.

But I hope they go.

Delegation, I'm going to let it to that.

Oh, Peyton Welch.

Christ, I suppose he's going to go.

They'll already be out there.

So if we just kind of work out some more, maybe they can sit in here or something.

I'm very, very careful about the shirt page.

He's the only person coming from Oklahoma.

Three months.

That's the part we're going to be using back this week.

But this week, what I think is going to be, we had, we had two of the back ratings come in.

Well, it looks like,

We have one for next week.

It's delayed.

Well, that's the thing.

I don't know.

We just got it.

I'm trying to get it checked out.

Now, we've got a follow-up report from Rizal down there.

His view is that you, by all means, should do it, that the Democrats will be doing it, because they'll be working the Democrats.

And they don't have any of them scheduled,

scheduled speakers at the convention, but they will work them in between sessions and stuff.

According to our lifestyle data now, if he speaks, and he has it now, if he speaks at 10.30 on Thursday, and he feels strongly that that's the worst possible day he could speak, because it would appear to be trying to win on his own day, that Friday is Hodgson's day,

Although Hodgson thinks he's on Thursday.

That means he's on Wednesday, but I'm sure, but I think Hodgson's wrong.

That's what I'm trying to get straight at.

Scoop Jackson is probably going to appear on Friday and is probably going to announce his candidacy Friday in Tallahassee, as well as appear at the Labor event.

His feeling still is the day for you to go is Monday or Tuesday.

But he says you can go any day.

I don't know if you should do it at all.

I wonder, too.

Now, Monday and Tuesday is a problem, because Thursday night, press conference.

That press conference on the Quadrihead meeting on Wednesday.

Well, another way to do it is not to try to impress Congress at this point.

There's another way to do it.

It's just a community thinking.

Well, let's talk about it tomorrow.

Okay.

Do some more thinking.

We have a legislative meeting tomorrow.

You know, I felt a little sorry about the cabinet motion and having that decision.

It was such a bullshit.

I didn't do it again.

They understand it because they don't want that and they know what the problem is.

God, we sit here early and talk about important things, but I don't know.

I don't know what in Christ you can't earn any worse for.

You can't ask them to come in here.

They want to be your advisors.

That's what Pope Young said.

Advise me.

He doesn't know.

Jesus Christ, he wants to tell me about the, you know, I try to ask and answer some questions.

Yeah.

You know, I try to be nice to ask as they ask and talk about it.

Because he would be looking for something else.

You know, he's still looking for something.

It's good for us around here.

It's good.

I've got to keep Henry from fucking knocking it down.

He's my greater.

My greater has helped me.

He gives me a lift.

That's the fight.

Because everybody lived by it.

Yep.

And Christ almighty, we just gotta be thankful for it all.

And then he doesn't fool himself.

And that's what bothers Henry.

He does look at the question of, you know, what are we up against?

He can't come in here and say, oh, look, everybody says the president's always right, and this and that, and they ought to be supported.

Henry says, well, you ought to fight.

You ought to stand up.

Craig is fighting.

He sure is.

But he's just not fighting smart.

First Henry doesn't realize how often we have not taken his line.

I mean, even in the press conference, I was taking a lot of subtle lines.

I mean, he bought it.

He would never approve.

I mean, he would never.

I mean, he thought about it too much.

But they were the right things to say.

And afterwards, he was just great.

But Henry was awful rough.

He said, I got this.

It's the teacher for you.

But McGregor's a real champ.

God damn, he's a fighter.

He's got a pretty good mind, too.

He's smarter than I thought he was.

Oh, hell, he's smart as hell.

He's, uh, he says, you know, he kind of says, you can see his wheels running almost.

He thinks it through.

He would have been a hell of a center.

God damn, but he wouldn't follow him.

He's persistent about it, too, isn't he?

He wants it so badly.

He loves it.

But he doesn't discipline himself tightly enough.

He just went into a campaign.

If we could get a good campaign manager for him that could run it, he might.

He can't do it, but he ought to start running it two years ahead.

He ought to start running it next year, like he did for Lieutenant Governor.

He must have learned to campaign in a modern way.

He thought we had a tough time moving down to government.

I think he didn't.

But he looks back on that and thinks that it's all sort of his doing, and a lot of things came together for him, but the language didn't come out for him.

Right.

The guy is, because he runs ahead of the waterfall, but the other one didn't help him.

Ha!

That's not true at all.

The question, I mean, he would have won last year.

Oh, my goodness.

Boy, every time I see Murphy, I can hardly speak to him.

It's a damn piece of animal.

And you, yeah, it's very, really so disappointing that this man let us down like he did, and he really did it.

And that's a press conference thing that occurs to me in a sense.

We certainly are going to go for it.

I'm going to use the TV thing, but I'm thinking now.

There's something in California maybe.

I don't mean to tunnelize it.

Maybe other types.

We got, it seems to me, a very

It had to be a respectful reaction to listen.

George Allen, you know, was mentioned in the season.

You know what I mean?

This was a very impressive press conference to the press, right?

Yep.

It was.

And therefore,

My feeling on that would be to do it Monday.

Would it not be not yours then?

If at all, yeah.

And even then, yeah, I think you just gotta see whether it's...

The advantage of doing it Monday is you know what you're doing.

Right.

What I would do then, I suppose, is just stay here, just lie down and don't come back.

We can go over to see him.

We can stay here.

We'll go down to keep his game and just go over there on Monday.

There's not much to go there to for the purpose of being there to prepare a speech.

You see what I mean?

I don't...

I don't see much advantage to be there and keep his game.

He bothers no good for me unless it's not worth the life I'm assigned.

Go ahead and take some time.

I'd rather do it here than there.

It's like California, yeah.

I mean, it's just as well not to go down anyway.

You'd be leaving.

Not to go to Florida.

You're not making speech.

If you're gonna go down, travel a little bit further to the west.

I'm having a speech on Monday.

I'm having to do a press conference next week, right?

Would you agree?

Or do you?

Yes.

We can do both.

We can do the press conference.

Yeah, we can do it Wednesday night.

Thanks for the date, though.

Let's go back.

You lose the China tie-in.

I'm waiting on the press conference.

It's better if you come back.

You know what's again?

Can you imagine?

In Kennedy era, they got that kind of stuff all the time.

Yeah, that kind of thing.

We don't get that on any paper except this.

I mean, any paper.

We don't get it.

Maybe check off the back of it.

It's really great to see it here.

But those girls on the other side, I think she's exposed to a lot of shit.

You can't expose her too much.

She's out every day.

You don't want to expose her too much.

She's out doing three events in one day and only gets covered in one of them.

Well put.

As long as she gets covered, she's not exposed.

Wow.

That's a big game.

Because she doesn't make national news.

God bless her.

I don't know if she's slaughtered so much that it hurt her head or what.

We'll get her out of here.

Oh.

Oh, I said it.

That's what I'm talking about.

I'm not talking to the shed.

So many of you, you know, I must have been 15 cops as much.

But you know, we've got to do this.

I'm sorry for this.

Thank you, sir.

It shows the advantage of keeping a day, keeping all the days fairly loose, though, so that you can, even if this one wasn't perfect, but so that you can run the second congressman you want to run in or something like that.

It shows you the bottomless, so much is not important.

We all know this.

It also shows you what you can do with this office.

You did not.

I have to worry.

Of course, it's important to have to worry about building the nice things, like seeing those guys in Browning Hills.

These really cool boys.

It's nice to be out with this.

What's the point?

Well, what's the point?

Well, one of the things that is the point, though, Eric, and that shows your respect, one of the things I think is the point.

I'd like you to work on it a little longer.

I, uh, I've been making more of these calls, and I do the birthday calls every year, because I, I figured, yeah, there's no better congressional relations than those birthday calls.

You know, Howard Baker's neighbor, I don't know.

Howard was just going to have a warm blow for a week, right?

Yeah, his family and others remember him.

Yeah, yeah.

But he's stabbed.

Yeah.

Totally stabbed.

Yeah.

You know, the person who's gone.

Yeah.

And, uh, the other thing is that, uh,

The call is going to go to a person who's supposed to be my mom.

You're having a chat today, aren't you?

So, the idea is to cross it after, right?

And the whole list of all the people you want to call, right?

Yeah, they're in the air.

That's right.

But the other translation on these calls is paraplegics, wounded veterans, people who died on the rise.

That, whether they ever get the paper, you're not to say wrong, but most of it is.

Do they?

No, no.

Whether they ever get it.

It's a great thing for you to do.

It's good for you, though.

It is.

Obviously, I mean, it's hard work.

Yeah, but it's a good thing to do.

You feel it.

You're in touch with the people.

You answer a letter with a telephone call.

I called three guys.

I signed a paraplegic in charge of the Coastal Little League team.

And there's those, there has to be a balance on that that, you know, you don't see any holes or anything like that.

Well, it's part of the, you know, you read back to the story of the present, you know, like the war, all the little kindnesses are usually recounted.

We must do that.

All of my hundredfold, you know.

But you, it's just part of the job.

It's part of the job.

It gets away from the impersonality.

It's so much better than just sitting here and running through it.

That's what I say.

You can go back to work.

There's some nice old people out there, worthwhile people out in the country.

You know what it is.

You have to be in the people.

Actually, it was so bad that it wasn't kind of good.

It was kind of funny.

You know, Roger, do you really think it was funny?

I said, no, the president and secretary both of you took some time off at church yesterday.