On December 8, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:25 am to 10:18 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 632-002 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
resolution things.
They were all up on 4 and 8.
And they've got Carpets, sure they know that that worked out.
They're going to have one.
Well, Mansfield, Ellington, and Scott are in favor of a 60-day continuing resolution.
They're going down to meet with the House leadership this morning and tell them we've got to have a 60-day continuing resolution.
The House leadership will say that's not satisfactory because that only carries us to the Lincoln reset.
Therefore, we've got to have a 90-day.
and out of that we'll get somewhere between a 60 and a 90 day resolution.
We will not have the resolution today, but we'll have an agreement that there will be one, and we can then go ahead and run it through, and there's a possibility that it won't work.
They're moving on counter-attacking Kennedy on India-Pakistan, but it's...
He's getting signed a lot, but not very much.
And I was hearing a new sign.
I think it's a new sign.
Well, Henry's story carried much more trouble than Kennedy's, and said, well, I'm asking you, I'm asking you, I don't want you to hear this.
And Henry said, it's not the story of the Washington Post, but it's the story of the extremists.
Well, they tried to make it appear that the White House was, in effect, chastising the State Department for their strong condemnation of India.
Well, Henry was trying to be very clever.
Yo, yo, Joe.
We'll probably get the bill today if they're trying to work out the strategy on the veto.
On that and how we need for dramatizing our positions of the opposition.
Line across.
That's one that could set either way.
It's not going to be done on the position on whether or not you have struck out a fatal blow in the hearts of all the mothers in America or whether you've done the right thing.
All the children in America have just got to come out the right way.
Well, it depends on how you look at it.
You're going to start a fatal blow to mothers who want to get rid of their kids.
I mean, there's a whole lot of people watching us.
We've got Dennis, Charlie here.
That's what it is.
What do you got for me?
I mean, it's a blast.
What's that matter?
I've been spending a lot of time in personalization.
You're the one that takes care of the children.
I'm not sure, but I think you're good.
Yeah.
I don't want to talk to you.
I heard you look better today.
No, worse.
What's the problem today?
The same one.
There's something deep in it, though.
I think he's fatigued.
Well, Flynn felt that over the weekend, because of various voices out and so forth and so on.
He is.
He went into quite a tirade at the staff meeting, and I don't...
He's on this skit.
He called me last night.
Oh, okay.
I mean, when he retired, he was, the question was being raised as to, you know, what the position is.
He says, well, we're, he keeps going back to, well, we're safe through the election.
We've got no problems now.
But we, he talks about Chamberlain and this is our right line and all this kind of stuff that we're, we,
have no problem now, but the consequences will be, in the next two to three years, are going to be dramatic.
And we'll start seeing a little of it, but nothing that will matter before the elections.
And he does it in these sort of strange tones of what he quite understands.
Essentially what he comes down to is that Thailand, Iran and so on are going to start drawing the obvious conclusions that we stood by and watched our friend murdered without any help from us.
So he doesn't suggest what we do.
And he says we're on the right side of the immediate issue.
And all that.
And then everybody said, you know, everybody asked the obvious questions.
Well, you know, what should we do?
Well, we should do just what we're doing.
Well, but then, you know, why are you saying what I'm saying?
Well, three months ago, we should have started moving on this.
We should have started screaming about India's intervention.
We should have taken the steps three weeks ago that we're taking today.
They said, do you mean by going to the United Nations?
And he said, no, that's ridiculous because everybody knows that won't accomplish anything.
And, uh,
He got very emotional about how the Pakistani Air Force, he can't criticize them because we won't give them the pins to start their airplanes with, so obviously they can't use them.
And there's an emotional time, this is almost like his Israeli time, that he said, you know, we were...
We're all not to stifle this to begin with.
It was obvious it was coming.
I built meeting after meeting, and I was sabotaged by the bureaucracy over the last three months.
We could have been tough with the Soviets, or we could have done it at the end.
He's second-guessing on the Soviet side.
Do you have a doubt on that?
No.
Is he encouraged?
We've done everything.
Being tough with the Soviets, we could have done this.
And we sent messages to the police that we told him to stay out of this.
So then he says, any country within reach of the Soviet power will now adjust to the facts of life.
He says, it may help as far as dealing with the Chinese.
Going the other way.
But only if it was a concern, maybe, partly, maybe.
Steve Dahn recognizes his own failure.
Now that's what my guess is.
When I came out of the meeting as far as the conclusion I had, I asked a couple of questions.
And it clearly comes through to me that he recognizes that he should have done other things or more things or something.
Not in your work.
No, but he thinks maybe it would have or something.
And that's the problem.
I think there's a self-healing.
But I think it's wrong to try and do it the wrong way, especially for Egypt, because he sees that any time you try to help him out, it's worse than that.
Where he comes to on his position now is he cites his old diplomatic adage, you know, that when you have the margin of maneuver, you don't have the evidence to support the maneuver.
By the time you get the evidence, you no longer have the margin.
And he said, that's why I can't believe this.
I made a point to it.
He said the bureaucracy had sabotaged it earlier, but he didn't say that they were now.
He can't see, because the state's public line is
Absolutely solid.
If you don't get any nice on that, there's nobody else that says it.
There's some fine decisions.
Of course, that comes out of the... That's hard to count.
I don't know.
And the other position, of course, is that there are public relations standpoints, and it gives a democracy that looks like with 60 million people, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, 60 million people, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship, like the way Pakistan is a dictatorship,
Got into this Chamberlain thing again.
I think this is what, it's that...
He doesn't seem that bad when you ask him.
He says, we should have done.
He never says what we should do.
That's that sort of rusty remorse.
But he doesn't come in, Bob, also, because he knows.
I know.
He doesn't come in and say, we should have done.
I really don't know.
I don't see it.
So you said you sent a message.
So we did.
Right?
Yeah.
We should have told the Indians not to do it.
Well, we could have cut off the Indians.
We've been cutting off the Indians for a long time.
That's right.
He goes through the dire predictions now with the Indians.
They're crushed.
They're not just trying to establish an equidash.
They're going to do that and get control there.
Yeah, that's right.
So I think the point that, you know, we're, okay, so we're in a good posture currently on a public basis.
Yes, he says we are.
But then he gets mad that we're concerned about that.
He says we shouldn't be worried about a public posture, we should be worried about the substance.
But
We've got a problem because you have to have India, who has the capability to do it, determine the quadrant I understand.
And in the mind of many people, despite all of their yanking about morality and everything,
Six hundred million people are looking.
Sixty people sitting on the winning side of that lead.
That's the kind of morality we have these days.
And if it's a democracy, anything they do is right.
If it's a dictatorship, anything they do is wrong, you know.
That's what they're saying.
What do you think about the public position?
And there's nothing to do with Henry.
Henry spent, Henry was there over the weekend, you know, he could, I could tell, I'd come to all the conferences with him and I'd get, that's what he was going to do by cutting this off, you know, and he was pressing all the time.
But I think, I think he's got an emotional, he sounds a lot more fatigued to me when I talk to him in performance than he is sounding fatigued.
Well, look,
Ron said, you know, he goes through these temper tantrums all the time.
Ron sees him.
Sometimes I see him all the time.
But Ron's what it was, and I think he's right.
This time, he's irrational.
Where before, he's been mad, rationally mad, but emotionally too.
You know, he's got a specific point of grievance, and he's mad about it.
On this one, he doesn't make sense.
He may do it.
There's no problem with that.
We're expecting what that is.
I know you just can't blame yourself about this, but it was terrible nights.
I know, I know.
You're rushing it all the time.
I know, I know.
We didn't think it was too bad.
Germany taking the Rhineland or something like that, but I mean there's
There's a little difference there.
India doesn't have a plan for a world conquest.
Of course, I guess India does not have a plan.
There are other areas.
Why the hell are we still fighting in Vietnam?
We're going to walk to the next world.
It's not true.
We don't have it.
I think you've just got to ride through it and basically go have things on a normal key and not react and not try to come and say I'm crying.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
He really has the inability to see that he himself, to admit, he knows it, to admit that he himself is ever wrong.
I mean, that was set up, and that set up a whole cast, et cetera.
And it was a bunch of fellows that did this and that, in a sense, as well.
It's the bureaucracy that did it.
Now, the bureaucracy's bad, I agree, but the bureaucracy had moved to the, we didn't ask them to do a goddamn thing.
Now, if they'd done it three weeks ago, it would have made a difference.
He makes it more attractive to India.
He cut off aid three weeks ago, and India wouldn't have moved.
I don't think it's getting that.
More attractive.
It's over.
It's over getting that.
That's my view.
I certainly don't know.
We track like cattle.
We get an awful lot.
Very well.
Don't ever let me get away with the fact that I was out front trying to stop Triton and tell him all the facts about what we can't do with this.
I agree.
Yep.
I think Henry should solve the election.
Let me in.
Tina, this is the bottom of the queue.
It's your turn.
Okay.
Yep.
It was good right back to Henry, which is the only thing that he used to not do, but I think he should.
Well, maybe not.
Maybe not quite as examinable.
Because, I suppose, what we'll have to do is try to find out what the core is.
There may be some way to...
I think the core is that he thinks those are the other things.
It's just bad, you know, his idea that we don't want to have wars.
Our great foreign policy, we have great successes, and now here's one where we stood for it and succeeded, you know.
Yeah, but we have so much on that table, and this is not...
I don't think so.
Do you want to remember anything?
Or... You are, sir.
His own recession is rolling.
One of my scenes at Doomsday...
you know, business that everybody else topped on because we didn't come to save Pakistan apparently.
The thing that concerns me about this is that he, when we finish something and he talks about it,
And he talks to everybody outside, but he reflects.
Well, he's got his attitude, that's all right.
And he can get into the, well, you know, he's canceled his Galbraith dinner.
I don't know whether that's, I guess under his present condition, it's good.
But he told me last night he canceled it because, probably not true, he should have just said so.
He's not...
He's an individual, not a senior.
I don't know what it is.
I think it's current report.
What it is, is Galbraith is against him on the fact that he doesn't want to give him the paper.
Calling him to ailing for launching the China-Soviet initiatives.
And it was clear to him he wasn't going to be ailing anymore.
He was going to be raked over the coals for, not for what we're talking about.
He wouldn't be raked over the coals for what he thinks is wrong in this case.
Which was not being done.
He'd be raked over the coals for having
Then what do I know they did not bring on the side of the deal?
Say, the poor.
These back-refugees.
In this case, it is a cracking bureaucracy.
There is some things in the bureaucracy, but it's way overstated, Bob.
It's way overstated.
Well, there always is.
I mean, we always have a problem with the bureaucracy.
A few things that they aren't going to get into as fast as we want and so forth, but it isn't all that self-contained in the bureaucracy.
Just from my own personal viewpoint, when he has a problem, he usually comes running and he motives about it.
And over the last month, he has not come in saying, they're sabotaging us on India and Pakistan, or we're doing the wrong thing, or we're failing to move.
He always has before.
If there's anything happening, he runs in and worries about it.
I don't think he thought we were doing the wrong thing.
He may have thought that we were resigning.
He may have realized, but there was nothing we could do about it.
That's the point.
We trapped the soldier.
Maybe he did not realize the fact that he realizes it all.
It talks to him.
It's over-stimulated, you know.
He gets over-excited about it all these times.
And I'm sure over-depressed about his failures.
Everybody does.
And sees all of these more than he could be living.
You know, he was going through that great line of triumphs we were going to set up this Chinese, all our dreams of Vietnam settlement, then the China summit, then the Russian summit.
He said, if we could get any one of the three, we might have a congressman who had two of the three.
And the other one probably was never given.
All right.
He's never liked that.
He doesn't like the word you're spearing me out of.
I don't either.
I'm not sure.
Yeah, I'm sure.
He's been in front of the prisoners, trying to open the nightgown from the left.
That's not good.
Also, he likes to... How do you feel about his background?
I don't think everybody...
I don't think he didn't mind about it.
Everybody told him, you know, that's what we're talking about in there.
Mm-hmm.
and the need for some backlog of support now, and asking for a solid talking paper out of the background.
I don't know if you, you know, they prepared it.
They have a lot that they're going to refine.
I'm wondering if somebody's going to...
Well, that's that's what they're getting more cracks.
Cracks saying five move up with him.
So it's true.
That move on Cooper Island is already.
A good statement that can make a.
Make a more detailed one.
Cooper.
That's the expertise in the area.
I know Henry's big kick.
It's a big kick on the State Department and on our whole thing.
He was saying to the State Party, he said, it's no noble thing for us to be declaring neutrality in this.
For us to say, take a hands-off policy and say how it's not, is nothing for us to be proud of.
And the goddamn State Department's running around saying that.
That's how we've been hearing the President say that to the leaders.
You can't just hang the State Department.
We said we were not.
We were pursuing a policy of non-involvement.
That's correct.
And I didn't use the word non-involvement.
It's not non-involvement.
I'm going to get into it, but I went on to say we would cut off any.
We worked that out ourselves at this time.
I would hurt anyone that would hurt a faction.
We'd already cut off any of them.
See, what are you going to do?
You're never going to have this question on their side.
No, we didn't.
It wasn't a question of neutrality.
It was a question of non-involvement.
Did somebody raise the question, are you arguing that we should be sending troops and bombers in or something?
And he didn't respond to that.
No, no.
It's irrational.
It is.
He's got this thing of being too big for himself.
He's very sensitive.
He says, I'm going to have control.
I'm going to have service.
Maybe he can stay channel and all that sort of thing.
I guess that's the only way he can do it so far.
Well, he does very well.
It may be, it just may be, he can't survive it.
I don't know.
I think he'll get it.
We can do something about it.
We're trying everything.
He knows God can help while we're trying everything.
We're not saying anything about it.
We're not adopting
You shouldn't be tired, huh?
You shouldn't be tired.
I don't think so.
Over the weekend, he was.
I asked him about his voice.
He said, no, I guess it's because I talk on the phone so much.
I noticed it again last night.
The voice was bad.
And I thought he had a cold.
I didn't ask him.
I think what it is, it's tension.
Tension makes his voice.
And actually, I was just passing through that room.
And that's, that's it.
We're not going to let you sleep on the chest.
There's something wrong with that.
I agree with all of you.
Thank you.
Uh, Mr. Rogers, yeah.
It's a terrible story that they did, you know.
And respect.
So on the other, yeah, I asked the, you know,
We ought to be happy to the client.
I didn't get it last night.
What's the party about, sir?
Alcohol.
You have a good day, if you want to.
I have not gotten to him at all, so he doesn't have who I'm talking about.
No.
We're clear.
We're clear.
Yeah.
Well, we'll leave Sunday morning.
Or Sunday midday.
Okay.
You have nothing on South Friday.
You have nothing today.
You have nothing Saturday.
Do you want something?
And you're cleared.
Tuesday evening.
And you're cleared to go to Florida then.
Stay cleared.
Well, we have a time magazine thing.
I've got to get it.
I've got to get it.
I didn't understand the possibility of pushing hard.
And the big problem is whether Biden wants to stay with this request.
He asked whether he's planning on it.
They've got a cloture motion, but it takes a day long to get that into effect.
But they're in a frenzy state now.
They're just looking everything through and getting it done fast.
So they may get it pretty fast.
And I'm speaking, leaving out the merits of the Indian past.
I'm sure you've thought that.
But here's the thing.
If we had done it, it would have affected this.
Let me put it in a better perspective.
It's like Henry's constant, constant going over and over again the fact that, well, we've got to...
We let them come in.
They're glitching, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And then the Congress did this.
Rogers said this.
And this hasn't happened.
They haven't done this and that.
You know, it's all a victim of the imagination, I'm sure.
Those things that this is not true.
Now, this instance, this instance, this is a terrible, I think, terrible thing.
I think these are terrible bastards.
I think you're right if you get whipped.
There isn't a goddamn thing that if we had done it a different way, it would have changed it.
You know, three weeks ago, we were very tough on him.
He was determined to go ahead.
But Henry feels that the world, you know, he's sort of like God.
He feels that it's like God.
It ought to be, you know, that things should come out perfectly, and they don't.
And so you lose one family, you fight another one.
I don't know, but in this instance, I do not, in my view, we cannot pay the price of
He's been pretty bad before.
Yeah.
Maybe not.
It's been clearer to me what he's disturbed about before, so I don't know.
Maybe that's part of the problem now, taking the records.
He doesn't know himself.
That could be, you know, and it's quite clear to him that that's bothering him.
The Harvard thing, there's something there.
He just canceled for that reason.
This paper caught me about it.
The problem he was going to have after the operating dinner was that said, you know, the funny thing that happened is they were going to have this great homecoming thing, you know.
We should have heard some of that.
And it's a great peacemaker stuff and all that crap.
And then a funny thing happened when the Indian backers said war broke out.
that they'd be disturbing more than anything else.
It could have been, but if you look at it, you realize that he's like Mount Moynihan.
Because it probably meant an awful lot to him that he was going back on his triumphal.
When did this happen?
I didn't know about it until last night.
The column ran probably on Monday.
This has been irking him about something that may be more backless than you think it could be.
He says he had told God that he
as if it were brand new.
Somebody wrote a story.
I forget whether it was a byline columnist.
I think it was.
I think it was like Tom Brady or somebody.
But it may have been just a wire story or something.
I'm not sure.
But it listed the men who were coming and that they were, you know, it's just going to be a big thing.
But now it changed it.
Gallagher even said, you know, I'm very happy about it.
That may be.
That may be.
He may have thought he had finally bought himself back into his own society, and then all of a sudden, zap, this threw him out of it again, and that may be what's getting to him more than anything else.
Let's look at the real topics.
The real problem, and it's not, in turn, solely a problem.
I would like to never let her out again, but I'd have to do it myself, she said, because I had to, because I was in front of her on her call, and she said to me, you know, you'd have to do it myself, and it'd be hard, tough to do.
I would have to use hate.
I mean, you know, sort of as a, there as an outtaker, sort of watch, you see, that I'd be over, you know,
It's the real, you understand, I've never been to Russia, because it's much too superficial.
He wouldn't know, boy, boy, he could do it with chain shots, you know what I mean, do this, do that, the other thing, you know what I'm saying.
The problem with the Chinese is that Henry's had such detailed discussions with them.
Is that all recorded?
Yes.
You can read every word of it.
It takes a lot of work and studying it.
And reading doesn't give you the feel that you have at the academy.
But the difficulty with the Chinese thing is that, with both the Chinese and the Soviet thing, there is a great deal of, well, it is an enormous advantage
Have someone, you know, you have colleagues who can bother and make the deal before you go in and talk to me to the chair.
You know, that's what we will allow.
See, we can't cross-border.
I hate to do it.
Oh, I hate to do it.
Well, to be perfectly frank, I don't think it's terribly dangerous, because I don't think Henry would get himself out of that China thing, no matter what it costs him to stay in.
Well, let me put it another way.
I'm thinking Henry himself, I'm thinking about him.
I mean, we really are in a position that he cannot...
constantly go through this sort of thing.
You're just kind of fishing out.
That's what I've often said.
What you didn't give is extra.
What you don't give me.
God, my shots of the fire and the empty shells.
Jesus, keep your eyes shut.
Yeah, although a lot of that stuff, he couldn't.
Yeah, pretty much.
He does not bother them now.
He knows who on the staff is doing the backup and stuff.
Yeah, that's true.
And reuses a lot of people there and takes them out of the event.
He almost got to go the other way just as he started to have a garage engine.
He can't...
You can't back down with Henry on these problems, but you also really can't afford to put him down.
You've kind of got to deal with the problem.
The trouble is, he proceeds on that assumption, too.
On a problem, in the state of mind, he shouldn't talk to him.
You should let him know how he feels about this sort of thing.
That's the problem, Henry.
Remember I've told you quite often that his son gets reflected, his things are out there, his shit's around.
Remember, it's all over the, all over this town, Henry.
You know that?
Yep.
And he's that person.
And he's that person.
That's right.
And he's...
Well, maybe getting kind of running through it with the staff this morning gets it off his chest and that maybe that was good.
Well, I don't think he should do it equally with that group of people because they're common knowledge.
He says he's trying to justify it through his liberal friends.
The fact that he and we are on the right side and being on the Pakistan side is against India.
And then for a week over, he reads these things and says, well, India is a moral country and it's in Congress.
And there's 600 million of them.
Why are we picking the wrong side?
So he overcompensates and then thereby saying, well, there, those bastards are wrong.
And because we believe that what this is is such a terrible pattern for the future.
So we were right all the time.
The critics are wrong.
Some of that's motivating and true.
See, that's exactly the algorithm then.
If you were to survey Harvard opinion, it would be 9% for India.
For the wrong reason, because basically Harvard opinion is not moral.
Harvard opinion is power or envy.
See?
It's fashionable that they're angry because India is big, and it's supposed to be a democracy.
And everybody's supposed to be for India.
India's supposed to be for peace.
So when India engages in aggression, you turn your back.
And he argues against that line very strongly.
That we could turn our back?
No.
Well, it gets the line that India is for peace, and that because of 500 million of them, we should be on their side.
I totally agree.
That's my point.
I totally agree.
But I think the general is over.
He's out.
Because everybody else is on that side.
All of his friends are on that side.
He's trying to prove, by God, they're all wrong.
And he's right.
He's right.
He's right.
I'm completely aware of that.
Well, I'm not sure, you know, looking at it in cold, dirty terms, the proposition of public relations in that way.
I'm not sure that India is all that popular in the United States.
Well, that was the people who were over the spiking.
Well, you just said, you know, don't ever get the thought that you've got a strength in this country on the side of India.
You used a historic example.
You said anybody who fought...
And the war that was in India would be actually horrified if he thought you were going to the defense of India to say, eat the people.
Well, the closer you can get, the better.
Middle American, copy.
America's having the back of the mind in India.
It's been...
Most of them are grateful for its aid, and most of them have the highest sanctimonious about criticizing the United States and supporting the interests of every German in the United States.
And any reader of the Drury books, you know, Drury just slices the Indians to ribbons on them.
Because he, in his novels, his stuff on the U.N., you know, he's the Indian ambassador.
It's always, it's Abraham's total caricature, you know, that.
Sliding, principle lifts, maneuvering.
Oh, it's bad about a diplomat.
Maybe condemning India, but I like to use the word condemning India.
The U.N. vote, in fact, should have condemned India.
India and Russia, they're satellites, they're on one side.
We do not have any agents.
You know, Henry was so rapid with the thing he did.
Even though I didn't think he could go there, I just didn't think he could suspend it.
He worked it.
I'm not sure it's about politics, but I think it is.
He said he wanted to talk, he wanted to get together with me this week.
Why don't you get together with him before I do?
Maybe, could you, could you do it today?
I'd like to see if I can.
So that I can be in, because I want to be in a position to talk to him too.
You call him, I'll see what I can do.
I can see him sometimes.
Before we start the long series of critics, it's making fun of me.
I don't know what else to say.
Speaking of the relations with him, I appreciate this part of the story.
I don't know.
I don't have any indication of that.
I talked to him about that at dinner dinner and he was in great spirits then.
He's got a problem.
He says so.
Burns and Peterson, all that group, they're all, they just never know what they're up to.
I mean, I don't have a good reason, but you know what I mean, they've some... Well, Shultz has been moving on a lot of ideas he's got, but directly to the company.
He's not up to anything.
Directly to the company, he's been trying to push for the... his concern, and he's got his theory now that this week proves it, that...
What a bad idea it would be to go back to convertibility.
In that the German mark has gone up, and they said it would have to go down to deal with the French.
It shows that we're—and they're buying dollars now, as the dollar goes down.
They've got $50 billion or whatever it is.
They're starting to look around for converting.
He said, that's exactly what we don't want to convert.
And he said, they'll keep buying dollars as long as they think that's to their advantage.
At some point, they'll quit buying dollars and start doing something else.
And the best thing we can do, from our viewpoint, is to stick them with the dollars, not to convert.
So he argues.
What he wants is a thing.
He has some theory, some idea that you ought to be given the discretion to deal with the convertibility.
And McConnell doesn't agree with him on that.
Then he had the other thing.
He had the idea that if we move this week on bilateral lifting of the surcharge with Canada, Mexico, Brazil,
Based on you having Canadians and Brazilians in here to talk, it would be a hell of a coup.
It would be a damn good leverage move and all that, which is his understanding of how it was in favor of building.
And we're going to propose that.
He got kind of like that idea.
But I asked him this morning about it.
He said, apparently, it's too late.
I didn't want to do that.
We've got a strong opposition from both George and apparently Stein, although I haven't talked directly to Stein, on moving more to the CDA because you're putting a part of it as well, because it's a bad move.
The guy isn't a good man.
He isn't a good economist.
Very narrow.
So we'll leave you working with the narrow blinders.
But mainly that he's 100% Arthur's students.
He's also concerned about her getting into a confirmation battle and putting a new man into the BLS.
No, his view is that by getting Goldstein out and reshaping the rest, that we can avoid him putting the screws on him.
The board is a weak character and a terrible spokesman.
Very bad, incredibly ill speaker.
And the board played the Darwin and the unemployment as well as he could.
And so I worked that out.
But there is a lot of concern on the coastals.
But Charlie is just adamant.
But there's a pretty good argument for the fact that you're creating a big problem in order to solve a lesser problem.
And that may not be the right thing to do.
Maybe even live with the lesser problem.
Yeah.
Well, I can see the bigger problem that might be created.
You just decided.
I just thought that everybody would vote.
Well, I don't think it makes a difference who's on the CDA.
Of course, that's where George doesn't agree.
Well, except the guy has a potent platform.
Of course, you can tell him to keep quiet.
Yeah.
All right.
I understand.
You worked it out with Smith.
I mean, Snide showed up.
So see what...
I'm not sure.
That's what I've told myself.
It may not be.
I understand.
I understand.
I use Mark every time.
Yeah.
I don't really look...
I don't care that much about it.
I know there is a problem regarding the...
Okay.
Anything else?
I suggest if you have a little time today, he and Chilts ought to chat with the others.
Let them wrap up some team resolution strategy and the other will be ready.
It's very interesting.
I'm working out.
I'm going to sit down first with the colleagues, all right?
We're going to schedule it, all right?
Not yet.
He'd rather wait for tomorrow.
Tomorrow's just as good a day as for me, and today is for me.
You know what I mean?
The day of tomorrow, I'd like to send some kind of message.
He and I can talk a little about it.
If I can get the position before he comes back.
We're going to get to time.
We're going to get to time.