Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 647 › Conversation 647-017

Nixon, Anderson & Jonsson on Institute for National Goals and Systems Analysis

Thursday, January 13, 1972 · 1:24 PM–2:14 PM ET · Oval Office · 1 hr 22 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Anderson, Robert O.; Jonsson, J. Erik; Cole, Kenneth R., Jr.; Garment, Leonard; Butterfield, Alexander P.Conversation647-017 on Tape 647 (tape position 03:03:37–03:55:02)StartThursday, January 13, 1972 at 1:24 PMEndThursday, January 13, 1972 at 2:14 PMRecording deviceOval OfficeSourceNixon Library record for 647-017 ↗

President Nixon met with Robert O. Anderson, J. Erik Jonsson, and other advisors to discuss the creation of an "Institute for National Goals," a project designed to help cities and the nation engage in long-term, consensus-based planning. The group explored using computer modeling and systems analysis to identify societal priorities, contrasting this pragmatic, goal-oriented approach with the perceived indecisiveness of traditional foundations and academic idealists. Nixon expressed support for the concept and directed his team to coordinate with George P. Shultz and David J. Mahoney to evaluate the initiative's feasibility, potential funding, and government role.

  • Institute for National Goals
  • Systems Analysis
  • Urban Planning
  • Consensus Building
  • Public Policy
  • Corporate Management
  • Goal-Setting

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Position in tape: 03:03:37 – 03:55:02

part B, 31:04

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On January 13, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Robert O. Anderson, J. Erik Jonsson, Kenneth R. Cole, Jr., Leonard Garment, and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:24 pm to 2:14 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 647-017 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 647-17

Date: January 13, 1972
Time: 1:24 pm - 2:14 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President met with Robert O. Anderson, J. Erik Jonsson, John D. Ehrlichman, Kenneth R.
Cole, Jr., and Leonard Garment.

     Greetings

     Delays in the President's schedule
          -Meeting with Neil H. McElroy and Commission

     National Football League [NFL]
          -Playoff games
          -Super Bowl
               -Dallas Cowboys, [Miami Dolphins]
                     -Play

     Cities
           -Los Angeles
                -Atlantic Richfield Co. headquarters
                     -Bank of America
                     -Move from New York City to Los Angeles
                -Living conditions in New York City
                     -Schools
                -Aerospace industry
                -The President's airplane shuttle trip to New York City with "Pete" Jones
                -"Charlie" Jones
                -“Pete” Jones
                     -New York Times
                -“Charlie” Jones
                     -California
                           -Bohemian Grove
                -Jonsson
                -New Jersey

           -Dallas, Los Angeles
                -Expansion
           -New York City
                -Deterioration
                      -Possible handling

Urban problems
Show the rest of the log (258 more lines)
    -Possible handling
          -Dialogue between urban leaders, professionals, and academics
               -Lack of common background
               -Mayors, governors

Project
     -Timing
           -Senior Executive Council of National Industrial Conference Board
     -Business
           -Urban problems
                  -Need for understanding
     -Institute for National Goals
     -Precedents
           -Dwight D. Eisenhower administration
                  -Charles H. Percy committee
           -Magazines
                  -National Purpose
                  -National Goals

Institute for national goals for the future
      -Naming
            -Difficulty
      -Priorities
            -Education, health defense, space
                   -Space shuttle
                        -Recent announcement
                              -Support by Floridians, Californians, New York Times

Meeting at Links with foundations
     -Dining
     -Results
           -Agreement and disagreement

Foundations

     -Compared to business people
     -Advisers
          -Compared to executives
          -Functions
               -Examples
                     -Money to Whittier College and Occidental College

Dean Rusk
     -Qualities
          -Loyalty to country, Lyndon B. Johnson
     -The President's talk with William C. Bullitt
          -Bullitt's background as US ambassador to the Soviet Union
          -Rusk's origins
                -Foundations
     -Qualities

Foundations
    -Type of life for executives
    -Reluctance to make decisions
          -Studies
    -Compared to lawyers

The President’s talk with Ehrlichman
     -Anderson and Johnsson
          -The President’s concern

National goals
     -Economy
           -Peter G. Peterson
     -Life magazine
           -Article on national purpose
     -Action on issues
     -Young people
           -Professors
           -Editorialists
           -Decision making
                 -Compared to words, idealism
                       -Rising expectations
                             -1960’s
           -The Peace Corps
           -High expectations

                -Lack of action
                     -Frustration
     -Contrast between idealists and pragmatists
     -Businessmen
          -Compared to idealists
          -Pragmatic men with ideals
     -Young people
          -Idealism

Computer model of world problems
    -Economic systems
    -Weather
    -Variables
         -Jobs
    -Long range planning tool
    -Congress

The economy
     -Automobile production
           -Transportation
     -Increased production
           -Highways
           -Energy sources
           -Ralph Nader
           -Questioning
     -New York City
           -Empire State Building
                -Taller buildings

The nation's future
     -Targets
     -Production
           -Transistor radios
                 -Prices
                 -Building a factory
                 -Costs
                 -Risks
                 -Goal-setting, planning
     -Systems approach
           -“Goals for Dallas” program

Nation's goals
     -Institute's “Goals for Dallas” program
           -Methodology
                  -Number of people
                  -Duration of time
                  -Reading of briefs of inventories
                       -Subjects
                             -Education, welfare, recreation, government, cities
                  -Revisions
                  -Sample of 10,000 opinions
                       -Right-wing, left-wing views
                       -Consensus
                  -Town hall meetings
                       -Results
     -Tools for projecting future needs
           -Computers
           -Industrial community
           -Validity, credibility
     -Proposals
           -Rockwell International
           -Costs
           -Loose ends
     -[Willard F.] Rockwell, Jr.
     -Bernard D. Haber
     -Problem of implementing goals
           -Time
           -Costs

Computers
    -Use in weather forecasting
          -Satellites
          -Effectiveness
          -Speed in processing information from satellites
          -Change in forecasting
    -Use of models
          -Dr. William D. McElroy

Nation's goals
     -Institute
           -Purpose
           -Leadership

                -Political aspect
           -Consensus on plan
                -Black communities
           -Solution

American Revolution Bicentennial Commission [ARBA]
    -David J. Mahoney, Jr.
    -Local communities
    -North Carolina

Senior Executive Council of National Industrial Conference Board
     -Meetings
     -Proposal
          -Institute on goals
                -Possible government sponsorship
                -Foundations
                -Purpose
                -Forthcoming 1990 conference
                -Administration support for Institute
                      -Possible message from the President for meeting
                -Foundations
                      -Experts
                      -Bureaucracy

Rockefeller Foundation
    -Studies
          -Nelson A. Rockefeller's candidacies
          -Lack of action
          -Staff
    -Government and corporate bureaucracies

Institute on goals
      -Organization
      -Role of the government
            -National Science Foundation [NSF]
                  -Model
                  -Presidential commission
                        -Problem
                              -Politics
                        -Presidential interest, support, participation
                        -Eisenhower’s goals commission

NSF
      -Use of money

New institute
    -Relationship with foundations
           -Credit
                -Funding
           -Effect on those who join foundations

The environment
     -National Center for Environmental Research
          -Proposals
                -Value

Goal-setting
     -Goal institute
           -Establishment of priorities
                 -The President's role
                      -Foreign policy
                             -The People’s Republic of China [PRC] initiative
           -Compared with foundations
                 -Percy's report
           -Businessmen
                 -Pragmatism and idealism
           -Value
           -Government involvement

Goal institute
     -Cities
            -Instruction and assistance in setting goals
                  -Teams
     -Budget
            -Costs
                  -Mahoney
                        -George P. Shultz

Mahoney
    -Cole
    -Garment

     Presentation of gifts
          -Money clips

     Pragmatism
          -Appeal to the President
               -Idealism

Anderson, et al. left and Alexander P. Butterfield entered at 2:14 pm.

     Schedule
          -Meeting with Jon M. Huntsman
              -Children
              -Taping of audio message for Vincent T. (“Vince”) Lombardi Dinner, January
                    14, 1972

Butterfield left at 2:14 pm.

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There we go.
Thank you.
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All right.
All right.
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.
Also, he wants the members of the board to be independent, too.
But literally, he wanted to listen to me today.
Every time the word...
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So, in the sense of the present time, you know, basically, you're a middle-of-the-road, decent dog, that you're the kind of dog that you have to have.
Now, I know that you can get up there and beat around, but at this particular time, we've got the goddamn war we're in, we're moving to China, we've got the Soviet, we're going to have a nuclear reform policy,
I agree with you that it would be very important.
So I just want you to know that I have to argue with you about that.
And I'm not asking, I'm not going to stop you from arguing with me about that, but also I think you should send it to me.
And that's not where it's at.
Well, I think I have a question for you.
You're in the court.
They are modifying it nice.
I'm sure we'll see.
Oh.
Oh.
There's nobody else we can talk to before we do this.
He was the last one who took my quicker shirt and I said, well, good.
I told him that we're not going to be going to the NFL.
I helped $70,000 more than any person, and that brings it down to $69,000.
Well, anyway, may I go to the scene for that?
I don't know.
It must be terrible.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
You always talk to your, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

— 1 min 52 s with no transcribed speech —

I know how you fought.
You're an honorable man.
God damn, you're a great human being in this world.
Well, they're crying.
One thing I know that, you know, I believe in Satan, and I don't know who he is.
And I just don't like to make fun of you.
Good.
Well, I'd like to say to Paul, you know, it's an impossible situation.
He is ready for the hardest moment.
It's about...
I mean, how kind of all this .
Thank you very much.
He's very good .
I think there's still a chance for .
Well, I appreciate this.
I mean, how's the suggestion?
Well, she had great success in that.
She did a good job.
And working day off and so forth and so on, she did great.
I love it.
You know, I think, actually, that we're doing reasonably well at this point in time.
We've got this problem in India.
We don't have an answer.
You can only just say one thing.
Anybody says, I am an Indian.
For Christ's sake, sir.
You're very nice, Vice President.
I talk to that lady literally every year.
I, we put some energy into it.
All we were trying to do was to keep the energy from rolling last time.
So, we had to do that.
When I say go, when I'll go, I will go.
When she was here, she was here.
Well, it's over now.
Well, not really.

— 1 min 13 s with no transcribed speech —

Yeah.
All right, well let them come in.
and forget a little of the impression.
Now, you're going to have a, I don't know, maybe 10 is your best name.
Or you can clarify it to the other.
They are students named Ricky.
Yeah.
All right.
And also take the T to the three.
A little over 10.
All right, all right.
You're a teacher, huh?
Well, I'm so glad to see you.
How long have you been a teacher?
I mean, you're a kid.
You're a professional.
I didn't, but I don't get very good at telling my mother that I had people who were proud of me.
I was proud of you.
I was proud of you.
I was proud of you.
All of us, all boys,
Oh, I see.
I see.
Well, I mean, how I need them all.
Tell me your first name, Tom.
You're my first name.
Okay.
Thank you.
I don't know, let's see.
You're the, uh... She's the director of our school.
Oh, you're the director of the school.
She was the director of our school.
Ah, I see.
All right, uh, you'll go, uh, we'll go to some such places.
You on one side, and I'm on the other side.
And you, you stand on this side, and I'm on the other side.
And you all sit here.
And you sit here.
And you sit here.
In the papers?
I heard in January that you were going to make it, but I can't believe you're going to make it.
Yeah, I'll see you down there again.
Listen, that's what it is.
You're going to make it.
Thank you.
Now, I'm going to hold it here.
You all remember this?
Let me say that I have many birthdays in my life.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, that means that you have as many inspiration teachers as you need to learn.
You know, I, uh, I'll let you in on a little secret here.
My, uh, everybody at one time in his life was really supportive of him, you know.
Uh, when I was a man who was there, I had to go over and I remember writing a poem to my brother, who was very young, and I had to write this poem.
hard work everybody right
You were born in Germany?
Well, let me tell you.
But I'm going to let the members of the press see what you have to say.
I'll let you put this out there for a second.
Let me draw it.
I'm going to let you put this out there for a second.
I'll let you put this out there for a second.
Get ready.
I think we're running out of rocks.
I think we're running out of rocks.
I think we're running out of rocks.
I think we're running out of rocks.
That's better than most of the cars in the district.
Anybody have any of the cars on the street?
This is the last one.
I'm just going to introduce you to my brother and only brother.
A birthday is something good.
And if I could, I would celebrate with you today.
But I would just be in the way.
Where are you going?
This is now his first book.
Because I don't read them all, I'll give them all to the press.
Here's his drawing.
I hope your day is filled with fun, because your job is not just that.
You're right.
Really, I wonder, you know, how many times have you had this feeling of...
Uh, there's a bunch of things.
And, uh,
Thank you very much.
We have no poets here.
We have no cartoonists here.
We have no presidents here.
What do we have?
Boys.
Oh, good.
It was made at a school and we hope that you find it useful and interested in our different music.
How many of you like to go in there?
Well, I'll tell you, you can't go late here, because it's time for the development of the curve.
But one of the reasons I'm going is that I hope to be able to take a boat in the world of olden times, so that we can start to see the differences we have between the past and the present.
People like yourself, young people that you're growing up with, you know, who live in a world full of people like yourself, you know, so there's a time you're going to be perhaps not my age, but perhaps half my age, and you're going to have to, you know, spend money.
You're going to have to spend a lot of money.
And there's nothing good about that.
uh... uh... uh...
It is.
.
.
.
.
Well, I guess we have to go now.
I'll get you some sun from the airplane on the way to King's.
We did an interview a minute ago.
This is a study.
This is the pen, this is the pen with the, when I'm trying to tell, you know, when I'm trying to tell you, you know, the Congress, the Congress, the Congress, and all the back and forth that they want to be part of, and then I sign it with this pen, 32%, and I get each one who's going to respond to the bill again.
Now, what I'd like to do is to each one of you, if you'd like to do it again, if you'd like to do it again, instead of keeping the box, keep the box.
Okay, okay, let's do it again.
Now, the key is, given and to, let's see, the pen should be your next column.
The pen should get something else.
It's rather than just singles and this floor and this ceiling.
That's the ceiling.
That's the mark.
That's the rule.
Okay.
And here it is just a little, a little hole.
Be aware.
If you want any time, I want you to go.
That's what we have to relate to.
So there we are.
So those are the services there.
And that, you know who that is?
What?
Good.
You can see that is one of these portraits that very few have seen.
It was by one of the Peagles.
There were several Peagles, you know, the Rembrandt Peagles who painted it.
But this is Peale, who was, I think, the father of one of these, his painting, Washington, showed you, with a different face than some of the others.
That's how it is.
Mr. President, as they pass out, we're going to go to the second head, and we'll follow them right across the room.
Yeah.
This, that's right, the eye is the theater.
There are many, there are paintings of that kind that are pictured in such a way, because whenever you're looking at that, the head is looking at you.
And down beneath that is a char.
As you see, that's a student glass that the president concealed and put it in.
That's the first one.
Goodbye, and good luck, and it's good to get out of homework for a little while.
You all come visit Carol, don't you?
Have fun.
It was a great impression.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My geography was more than that of geography.
I developed an interest in geography and never came across it in the county line.
But I remember this girl, I'm not sure how many years now, and I was the best geography student in that school.
Well, I think there's a lot to do with that kind of thing.
I think there's just a lot to do with it.
You bet.
And I'm delighted to share your birthday with you.
My birthday is August 18th.
Oh, I forgot to mention that.
I forgot to mention it.
Your birthday is the second day.
Right.
And I, for years, I had wanted to send you a birthday card, and I haven't had so many days.
Yeah.
Also, I had... Yeah.
Well, get me a, uh, so that you can have a birthday present.
You were bringing, uh, bringing your, uh, one of those contacts, if you will.
And, uh, I got you another little contact with the CLN.
And you didn't have one of your birthday presents.
No, no, no.
Yeah, no, no, no.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Happy birthday.
Thank you.
This summer y'all
We'll bring it over.
This ball, they're called wigs, and wigs are formed out of our hands.
Thank you.
Oh, yeah.
Yes, sir.
Two or six years.
No, sir.
You know, we've been working together for five years.
We've been working together for 30 years.
We've been working together for 30 years.
We've been working together for 30 years.
We've been working together for 30 years.
We've been working together for 30 years.
We've been working together for 30 years.
We've been working together for 30 years.
.
.
.
Because you do what you want, but you deserve whatever you're going to get for it.
It's only by the end of the prison that you know where you're going to go.
But, I said, I appreciate the time I did it.
I was going to pay for it anyway.
You sent her, I said.
Oh, did I not?
I didn't want to.
I didn't want to.
I didn't want to.
I didn't want to.
I didn't want to.
Oh, God.
All right, now we've got a couple of things for you.
This is for you.
There's a comment for you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We're glad to have you back on the lake.
Thank you, sir.
Glad to be here.
But, I see you can all be proud of your guys' service.
Yes, sir.
Because we're running off the cap.
Thank you.
is is

— 1 min 1 s with no transcribed speech —

Very well, I'll read it, if I can read it.
But though Aaron isn't our neighbor, and Aaron isn't our client, I'll tell you, we must apologize in time.
I parted myself in running out of time.
I remember more than five minutes in here.
You were here ten minutes behind, so we got into a long meeting.
You don't have to run.
It's real.
They're supposed to leave in 30 minutes.
They don't in an hour and five minutes.
So, there we go.
We have a low schedule now.
Let's go over and sit down.
While we're doing that, folks, we've got to get a good job.
You don't have a group.
And it's not a quest.
You're right.
And I'm going to do the next thing.
All right.
Next, you're right.
Are you going to see me?
No.
That's not it.
I'm going to take a look at you and see how high that you are.
I can see the .
I may see this .
Yeah.
And I'm sure that's the best way you've decided to do it.
You seem to be willing to cut me back a long time.
Are you really?
It's just regret, yes.
We already had a good part of it.
That's right, we all did.
Well, I don't think we can't do that.
Well, you can't possibly live there.
It's too costly once you get in and out and so forth.
It's a lousy school.
I just thought we had to move it back to 10 years and all of a sudden realized it because of the slowdown.
There was space, but there was still a lot of space in our tower.
And you're not, I just said, hold it, and it cracked out, whatever that would do.
I understand that Charlie would eat Joe's lunch.
Oh, there's a good wedding up there.
The only guy who used to do this was Charlie.
He would have loved coffee.
It would have been great if they were married.
He, of course, was a New York Times editor.
Not a Times, but he was basically a countryman.
He'd build new New York archives.
He'd get away to get out of town.
All the other things.
All the other things.
He didn't want to disappear from, just tell them about the war and the broken group and all the new characters.
Oh, gosh, man.
Yeah, I was a professional writer.
Well, Dallas, of course, there cannot see white people.
Dallas is an exciting city.
I mean, sure, like all states have one, like Dallas and Los Angeles and so forth.
You're still building.
They're not dying.
And most people, unfortunately, feel that the day of the others die.
And it reflects the day of the attitude of the man on the street.
Just, man, I want to go over here and go.
You know, he has to do and hardly commute there practically.
I don't think it's...
It's going to be dead.
It's broken.
He talks about it.
Yes, sir.
I think when it gets bad enough.
That's what happens with the rest of the great cities today.
You have to talk about it.
The people, the builders, the changers, the people who did it.
Maybe some people here have to do that.
I don't know.
Sometimes when...
I can, I'd like to get, I'd like to gather with the special agents and all the people who might make contributions that are in problems.
And the troublemakers on one side of the room, trouble other counties in the state, what have you.
And all the people who have possible answers on technology and social science and whatnot, on the other side of us, the professionals, the lawyers, the engineers, doctors, what have you, all would do this.
But there is no common background, no common knowledge.
And I think if you could get the mayors and the governors to stop about their problems and ask for the possible answers, the answers
can be had on the other side of the grid.
Well, I can almost hear it now, that kind of dialogue in which the proposal of a solution, say, oh, hell, we tried it 30 years ago, didn't work.
The answer is that usually the mayors don't know the conditions in which all these pyramids might make it work.
But at least those talking about it, with the professionals, the universities, okay, should take that into account.
And I think we should be coming out of this.
We haven't done this.
I'm trying to get some of the people to do it.
Yeah.
When I start to do it.
That's a good introduction.
That's a good introduction.
We have a question.
Why do you have to say this?
That's what I mean.
We've worked on a project that we deal with our sponsor, the University of Michigan, which is a national significant venture, where we have made a significant amount of money.
And we've had a complete course on the project.
It's been slinged forward.
It's been stored for four years.
And we've assessed it.
I just hate to use the word go, because it looks as if you don't know what go is.
No, you need to tell me, and I'll show you an email.
based on the fact that
Senior people have a feeling that at some point, uh, business had better not ignore what was happening in the cities and other national and service offices in one kind or another.
They had to at least understand and see how there was a trust relationship.
And the other was that they treated the problem as though it was their own.
probably not as successful as if we had some early warning systems on the radar, some way to anticipate these things.
Many of the problems could be minimized if we had an effective advance warning.
And let's say that we, I think we'll call this the Institute for National Goals, I don't like the word goal because it looks to me like an old boy.
We've been through that track so much.
Do you remember it was the first committee in the last four years, and the first that the magazines came in, the national purpose, national goals and so forth.
If you want to say something, you can put your teeth in it, something to lift people up a bit, so I can call you my colleague, or maybe not, or maybe not.
So alternative, not alternative.
Or simply, maybe a national center for the future.
that simply indicates that you're thinking ahead.
That's right.
In a more general way.
In a very general way.
Because the moment you say, go, you're absolutely right, then you have those priorities.
And then what comes first?
Is it education?
Is it health?
Is it defense?
Is it space?
Or is it nothing?
And you don't want to get into that.
So you don't want to fight it.
The moment you start to pick and choose, you have that.
Right.
The last time we met was at the Ninth House State Show, and all hell broke loose, people.
It was in Florida or Florida.
It was in California or Florida.
Even the other time it was Florida, and I decided to reach out to the city.
Yeah, here, with the help of all the major foundations, please let us know.
Thank you.
It's a wonderful place.
I have a bed next to this.
Are you there?
He was there last night.
Oh, I'm sorry.
It's a great place.
They still have wonderful food.
We want to catch their deal here on the fourth floor.
Perfect.
We had a discussion, and we explained this night and the day that the, the Easter dress, and, you know, we were, we were ready quickly as to who we were, and whether we were the appropriate sponsors.
We quickly agreed that we would buy it, and, ah, they bought it, so some appropriate sponsors would, you know, be happy.
But after we were back and forth with the foundation, we saw the project went up.
And I must admit, it was a serious reticence that they wanted very much to get together with us again to discuss it.
They all agreed it was good and questionable, but they completely disagreed with both of themselves, and now it should be done.
And I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I thought about it,
Uh, so we need to go to the west, right?
The two, uh, Crusaders out there.
Work it.
You and your friends are in a good place to go out there.
Well, uh, I need to go out to that canyon to find my mom.
Oh yeah, Tucker, I think the difference is this, that the treatment associated with Venice is very rarely the center of the action.
And these are people who reflect, consider, and advise,
Absolutely, that's correct.
What if the chief executive officer of a company or any organization, even a political entity, is wondering if you can make decisions, if you can do it, you move.
Foundations have a luxury of just talking about things and putting out grandiose decisions and all that sort of thing.
Okay, you can make decisions, or not decisions, whatever they give.
100,000 for Whittier College in Oxnard, but they have a hell of a decision to take.
But then it's a matter of giving away some money that isn't there in the cell, which is part of their opinion.
You know, let me say that I share with you the confidence of this room.
The description was, the description which has applied to this man is unfair.
That's why I say, I think Dean Russ was loyal.
He was loyal to his president.
I did many things and I'm sure he didn't have much heart.
But for the last, he stood up under an enormous barrage.
And as I believe he did a lot of things, my congratulations to him.
But I remember when he was called to the position of Secretary of State.
And, uh, I was talking to an old friend, an old friend, some of you may have heard of Bill Bullock, who, Bill Bullock used to be a Master of the Russians, and Bill had an inheritance, and he was an actor in God.
And I said, what do you think of Rust?
He says, he's brilliant, and so forth and so forth.
And he says, he won't do the same thing.
I said, why not?
Because he comes from the marshmallow world of the foundations.
That's beautiful.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Rust case, Rust turned out to be a stealer.
I am very much their pretentious.
I mean, because of that son, Kendall, well, that's true, he's a pretty strong man.
But telling Steve, foundation line, I don't think you're seeing all the rest of it.
I would recommend it to many of my friends here who went to a confessional to talk about it.
Foundation line doesn't require a tough decision to make, but you wouldn't lose it all.
And that's what you guys have been through, right?
You've got to put it on the line every day, all the time.
You've got to stick to the compass.
That's right.
You've got to make sure you're right to yell at them.
We're in an emotional group, both of us, because, you know, only the minutes you remember can ever be that.
And it doesn't mean you should look upon others as the same.
Period.
The point is they're different.
That's right.
And they're different and very necessary.
But you're not making people.
You must never take that as a judgment as to what is on the table if you've got to be done.
Because usually it isn't worth a thing.
They will never face up to the next.
They don't regret it.
They need to study, study, study, study, study, study, and come up with working different things.
That's the lawyers.
I saw you were coming in and I told our people to hurry up and I said come.
Bob Anderson and Mary Johnson, two good friends, two inevitably successful men.
And here they are, they're plunging into this spongy, nomad line in which people plunge for a year of national purpose.
And they're going to plunder around and do their very best and prepare a great continuum of stuff.
And people are terribly frustrated because they are men of action.
rather than words.
That was my reaction.
I thought of him, and I realized it was the other way around.
I said, well, there's an awful lot of people in this country, you know, going around and talking and thinking about this problem.
Where should the United States go?
And I thought Pete Peterson was doing a lot of thinking about where we go to democracy.
You know, you have the, of course, you know, all that.
It's very interesting.
And if you want to talk to him, he could be a moment that you should talk to him.
You've got to get his, if you want to talk to him.
But actually, he's been kind enough.
I've got to write a piece for a blog or magazine for their son-in-law or sister-in-law who has a 50-year anniversary or something like that.
And it's about national purpose because I wrote about it years ago.
and believing in this the most, I got the verdict.
I made some stuff up to you.
Nice and so forth.
You see, the thing we have to realize, you are not a bachelor.
We live in a time when young people, the college professors, the extracurricular writers, the academic majors,
They say they're interested in action, but they're really not.
They're not deep down in action.
They recalcitrant.
They hate decision-making.
They hate cues.
But they love words.
They love idealism.
To them, that's all that matters.
The time to do the matter didn't mean both.
You've got to have the words, the lofty words, the little people honored.
But to have all those words, which raised high expectations, which was the record in the 60s, and then no action, no action can be done, is the worst thing you could do to a little country.
And it's a fantasy for young people.
We've got people today, I think, and everybody else is young.
Believe me, I know what it feels like, what turns the monster cut out.
Talking high food for terms, about how you deal with something, you know, how to serve your country, how to serve yourself, that business is wicked, and all the rest.
If you want to be out, you know, working on the cesspools, or picking out the tin cans, or something of that sort, or working in a tea store, all of this, that's very beautiful.
When you come right down to it,
Take a young person, as he grows older, and he sees all these high-rooted plans, and all these ideals spread before him, and then a dull thug, with regard to what he's done, he is going to turn on
can lift almost a violent reaction because the ideal is that way.
The pragmatist has to view his business under pragmatism.
Let's put a little idealism on it.
It's going to be self-reliant just a little bit.
But the pragmatist basically is a man who
who does not become frustrated, who does not give up, and does not throw up his hands and say, oh, I tried something that didn't work, so the system is bad.
The idealist is one who, if something doesn't work, says, this hand doesn't throw it out.
Now, what you need is a combination.
And let's hear it for a reason to what you folks are doing.
What you need are pragmatic men with idealistic vision
That's what builds great companies, that's what builds great countries, but if you do not have, if you just, if we have a country run by idealists alone, I would say, on the other hand, if you had a country run by pragmatists alone, you wouldn't have a lot of money, you wouldn't have enough inspiration.
They come, particularly the government, I mean,
To them, inspiration is to manage that.
They've got to be inspired.
They've got to manage that what they do matters.
And what I've had to see come out of this is a sort of a feeling of getting people on the mountaintop.
Let them see where we go, what we have to contribute, and so forth and so on.
In other words, it actually kind of made a very good foundation for that.
Because I wouldn't, I'd like to stay away from all these facts.
We have today, I think the first time we came to Belvedere in this country to build a computer model of
with the entire world.
He's now assisted in one of the first floods in the U.S. and truly a natural phenomenon.
He went in, stormed hurricanes, all of them.
And this would be the last period
kind of system.
In other words, if you're very active, you could have a pleasure in the property of Imperial Valley and be involved with that when it comes to turning jobs or this and that.
If this can't be done, everybody agrees that this is doable, it would take some time to learn how the job is going along with it.
But you would have a lot of that for your, just looking at where you are, but we have to somehow accept our business, which is a long-range planning tool.
We get the best answer we can with a lot of credit service that we can't do without.
But I should think for any of those presidents, or even assistant congressmen, or other corporations that have
Where do you want to be if you do this?
And the other is, where would you like to be if you have a chance to get there?
That's the other one.
We really don't know that.
We've got, we really haven't come up with the same thing.
Smooth down, and the world peace came up, and we haven't done that.
It's very frustrating.
But we'd like to do it.
Yeah.
Start thinking now, not waiting there.
You're sitting, drifting around.
In other words, do you expect Bill to sell more and more cars?
No.
Or is he good, strong, sturdy?
Well, he's got to find a solution, not the glass candle.
Or the electric, right?
I don't know.
Or public transportation.
Well, what if this is why social is supposed to involve the P2D?
What are you going to do?
More and more cars, more and more highways, more and more oil and gas propulsion already.
Is that the answer?
I don't know.
There's certainly time and place for this.
I mean, which is purely, you know, well, not purely, but a great portion of which is sensationalism and just distraction.
But the answer is, you've got to question.
Is more always the answer?
It's more always the answer to a problem, and it is very basic, but it's a job.
Maybe you know, I noticed in New York, they're very proud of the fact that they've got two buildings downtown that are taller than, like I said, they will work, but not taller than that part of the street.
So it's not a good time.
I think they've gone bad.
That was stupid.
but that's another story.
I'd like to tell you a little of the things I've lived in the last five or six years, and worked with in the last five or six years.
I would like to persuade you that there are some things here that are both completely useful in the way of setting up targets that are reasonable, accessible, reaching,
but it seems kind of difficult, a little of the idealistic, you know, that many people want to go to see if they can get there.
And when I found myself doing it, when I was new at the job, it was just simply responding to emergencies and reacting.
I wasn't doing what I'd done all my life in business, which is trying to think in terms of 20 years from now, what would we be doing?
What would be, what kind of products would people use?
And why, how can we design and get them into production, knowing that both those who are going to buy it must know they want to believe it?
When you do this, when you, for example, transistor radio is the one that really kicked us off in a big way with transistors.
There's a question of taking a product that was then selling at $60 apiece and taking the first pass, maybe losing your share, selling it for two and a half a piece that you could afford to build something that would sell.
We took that risk, and we built a plant that borrowed money,
Those products have never been designed yet by processing the national flux through the estimated costs of Earth.
in that kind of world we worked out devices for a long time years ahead and goal setting and making all the plans and the devising means to
Take advantage of the years when things went all our way, and when things went all the bad, we had plans on the shelf for that, too.
So when they happened, we weren't completely surprised.
Very rarely were we.
We knew what we'd do if we were troubled, or if we had a chance to really go.
So this, I think, was what occurred to me after about six months.
Get off the corner of a boy and think this through.
I know that if I said we must use the system to approach and solve our problems tempered by the human things that no system can handle.
and that no one would know what I really was talking about.
So I said, we're going to have a program called Goldstrand House, and we're going to set up the broad philosophical concepts of what we'd like the city to do and be 25, 50 years from now.
What kind of a heritage would we like to leave to our children?
How would you, sir, define what this town of yours means to you, what you'd like to see the government do, what private people should do?
Well, we used the technique of the American Assembly of taking 87 people away for three and a half days and having them know this effort, having them force them into a pattern of reading briefs of the inventory of where we were at that given moment, given the 12 most basic things that we faced, education, welfare, recreation, long government, the design of the city center.
We did this and we came back and we realized 87 people were now in positions to write a book that told people what they ought to have, but that wasn't a representative sample by any means.
So we took this into neighborhood meetings and in 30 days we saw a damn near 10,000 people and made them go through the agony we went through on a small scale just attacking one or two of these girls in the meeting.
And in the process, they found out what we had, which was that if you put the far-left liberal labor leader in the same place as the far-right conservative industrialist, these guys don't want to talk to each other, but after you let them spout in their hearts content, they find out the other fellow is completely crazy.
And you can't bring them into consensus, and we did.
Now we have, in 10,000 people, we have a valid statistical sample of three quarters of a million people.
So we then said, okay, now we've recorded all that you've said, in these words of you 10,000 people, we're going to alter what the 87 said to fit what the consensus of a valid sample says.
And out of that grew a lot of serendipitous things.
Here's a word I just love, it's probably the simplest word, eradicated, you know.
But we got heated up about that too.
I know.
We found out, for example, that we could bring the government to the feet.
So we brought town hall meetings to every section of town, even areas that were completely black and somebody hated our guts.
We wanted to.
We got a consensus out of them of what was really on their mind, what was making them so mad at me.
And the next day, we began giving some of that out.
And in my cases out of 10, sir, the problems on their minds were small, inexpensive, and didn't take much time to heal.
There were one or two, there were two big forests that belonged to the state of the federal government.
Weren't our vision to build a levee, for example, and change the course of the river?
But Eric is pointing out that if we're just tackling it the same way as the national bills probably would be tackling it the same way, there's no way we could hold it.
It's a sponge.
You just can't have complete things with a
the computer devices available to handle variables in infinity and memory capacity, that today we could build a tool.
I'm not going to say it's the perfect answer, but we could build an effective tool that would be infinitely better than the way we're going at it, because neither of us could run our company without some of these radar tools in Florida.
that we really would hope that, we don't, we're afraid, we really think we might as advocates in this current, because we don't want to be laid off in the industrial community.
Shouldn't be laid off to that extremely high validity and has to have a great credibility.
Mr. Anderson, you've seen a lot of what else is modeled.
We were talking, I haven't, but Eric was telling you about that.
We spent quite a lot of time, Eric, with the Rockwell people and their consultants.
They're accomplished.
And it's a very interesting proposal.
We had some outside people take a look at it.
The cost is enormous.
It's just astronomical.
And there are just a lot of flapping loose ends in the list of which they have no answers.
And if you could help them to get down some of the corners of that, it might be a very progressive thing to do.
I asked last night, I had thought on the way down, why we should have El Rockwell or one of his people in this council, the abused first gator who grew up that post.
I saw him last summer, and we spent a day going through what he thinks he's doing and what I thought had an input to it.
And Mr. President, this thing is doable.
I've checked it with some of the best scientific and engineering and business minds in the country.
They all say it was doable.
The only two questions that remain is how long it would take and how much it would cost.
And I can assure you it would cost money and how much time it would take and how deeply it is entered and to what degree of refinement you want to bring it.
But it is doable.
And what it would do for you, I used last night an analogy that occurred to me that might be a quick and easy way to understand what we're getting at.
Now, the weather managers used to make a prediction, and then it was pretty loose, and maybe it worked that way as well.
Now, your weather data from the satellites takes something like 16 hours to process.
By that time, it's all different anyway.
So they use what they can out of judging quickly, and they come out with some pretty reliable forecasts.
The weather is different, and people now see these satellite maps on TV, and they begin to understand the phenomena associated with the weather.
We built a TIA, a computer now that's working in Austin.
The version is to be delivered in August and be in the hay while you're welding your coatings.
And this thing is more than a barter.
I think it's just faster and bigger than anything that exists in the world today.
And I'll process that same information in about 16 minutes.
So you can really take all the data, get it through in time to make a forecast that is meaningful.
Now this means that you've changed the forecasting business and you've changed the business of all the people who use the weather forecast.
I'm saying to you that that is a model of the weather around the world that you look at.
And if you could model your alternatives and the decisions that you make, and we think you can, because we're doing this every day, and Bill McElroy over at NSF is modeling all areas now.
And if you can model a town, you can model a whole area, you can model a nation.
It's many times more complex, more difficult, more expensive.
And you can take a choice.
You can make a quick pass at it and begin to learn the techniques for very little.
You can begin.
Our word to you is that we think you cannot afford not to begin.
Now, how far we go, we'll share that risk with you.
We'll do anything that we think will make this thing useful.
to you, the institutions you stand for.
That's what we're here for.
And all we ask is some real thought to give to it.
If we're wrong, all right.
We lose that game, but we're very sure.
I can show you so much that comes out of it.
And in a political sense, I would like to mention one thing.
I knew I had something that would be hard to attack by the sentient citizens.
So I could build in my support with this.
What I found out was that I had discovered a new kind of military, and I would look.
I was pretty nice because everybody who I found, for example, in a group like this, if we sat talking about goals for Dallas, there'd be six different opinions, but before we got through, somebody took the rough edges, knocked off of each one of us a little bit, and we took the consensus, and each one looked back off a little from the conclusions he had drawn earlier, and the views that he so firmly held.
And we found this even more true in American black communities than we did among well-educated people.
This is why I think it will work.
And if you then have these people make their consensus of goals,
and they know that the input is accepted, not to be taken without any temporary, but to be part of the total input and carefully consider, let them take that temporary and it becomes not your plan, hand it to them if they must.
But their plan, that they're not going to deal with, I think that's the way it must be solved.
And in the Revolution Bicentennial Commission, I talked to Dave Harmon this morning, and there's a man I hope we will talk to because he's a little discouraged.
They need you.
But this operator has no money.
They have decided that in the horizons part of the concept,
that they will encourage every city and state in the country to set its goal by this process.
Now, all of them can't do that, but at their own expense, not subsidize it, perhaps, as a voluntary thing.
And many of them are already doing it.
I can show you, for example, the beginning of the state of North Carolina, which came a few days ago.
They're thinking, in terms of the state, and very well,
We've reached a point, I think, as far as executive council can go on this.
What's the next step?
That's where we are.
We have a meeting with the council.
We have a meeting next week.
I've got it reported back to them.
We would make it appropriately as should that the archivist would be sponsored in some way, by God, under your auspices.
whether it should be half of it or half of it.
I don't know.
I would honestly prefer it to be two of the main foundations.
I don't know why.
You would get corporate support for it, I suppose.
You know, it's a big thing to talk about.
I know.
No, I'm American.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I've worked in the streets.
I would like very much to leave it in your hands and your people to decide what role, if any, you might want to play in this.
I know you have this 1990 account that's coming up.
In that next book, my name's Ian, and I'm going to build a castle in the church.
I think it would be great if you could effectively develop such a device that would probably be successful.
But to some extent, you're going to have to tell them that.
In a collective society, we just have short-term things to build on.
Two-track power.
That's right.
And, uh, tear it off the next time, we'll do the next, and all that stuff.
We have a, a, in our system, surely, where we're flexible enough and smart enough to figure out how we can get out these, how we can make people make these cars, instead of waiting for prices to rise, and then treat them with a hat.
But we are taking more of it.
I know this is very important, but I don't know.
Well, then, if you'd like, if anybody wants to, you'll need a message to carry to the meeting.
Well, I support it.
I support the idea.
The question is to what the government participation is.
I couldn't agree more.
I mean, if they have to send along the little jackasses, you know, that are their experts, forget it.
Because otherwise, the tail wagged it off.
They were going to invest over it.
In fact, they're talking about it.
They're talking about the foundations.
They're basically, like everything else, they have their little bureaucracies and the rest.
And they don't want to come in and do this and that.
You know, they take the Rock Park Foundation, which is one of the best.
They did these five little studies to my knowledge in the last 20 years.
I mean, if you count Nelson Brand, that'd make a lot, you know?
I mean, they have every right to.
And so, if you have done a deal, and actually, they've got a lot of experts over there who paid far more than you'll ever be able to pay, or the government can pay.
They'll want to do the deal.
And the whole point of this, when you finally get down to it, it doesn't, you see, and you cannot, and that's not good for the staff.
It gets you to, also, I must say, the parent is, now, maybe we don't have much time for, or too much time.
We're called bureaucracy, and so forth, and we want to be on first.
But what we really need is
It does not need to study enough of an organization that can do the job.
You can have government assistance, no question about that.
You've got the National Science Foundation, you can find out.
There may be other areas where this could be done.
Government assistance, government cooperation.
You have presidential members trying to treat it.
Now whether or not, the key point is whether it goes so far as to say this will be a presidential commitment.
My question is, that would not be the idea for the reason that it would be solely political at this time, this year.
There's no presidential interest in finding out that this is for the period ahead and presidential support.
And to the extent that I can, the participation, all of that shouldn't happen.
I was going to ask you.
Yeah.
You see, you set it up as a presidential commission to be resizing ourselves to the goldsmiths.
Hold on.
Every 10 years, we have a goldsmith.
That would be just as boning as a, you know, don't you agree?
Well, I agree.
So then I think this comes from you.
This is a great idea.
It's a great idea.
We throw away formerly the National Science Foundation by financing lousy professors in second grade or sometimes third grade universities than I can possibly imagine.
And we can pass this matter even with you.
Well, we would be more than happy to work on that place.
I think my feeling on the part of the nation is that they know that this has been tried repeatedly and judged.
People, they try.
Well, they're trying to judge us.
We have to be the winners.
We're the winners.
They want to get this money on the phone.
That's right.
And it's just that cold bloodedness.
That's right.
The analysis, the fact that they want to be on the first and also they want to be able to take the credit and make it then go back to their raised and privileged interests and say, look, this is what we did.
And we have to, because the President, I think if we can get it done, because they put the money in for a long time, so they can hide the credit, we don't want to always have to hide it and take it from them and then buy the credit.
They want the credit.
In fact, if they want to put their little boat in this yacht and run it,
They know that the foundation tries to do it, but they aren't heard by God, and I know them all, and they can't.
Well, something happens to people when they go to foundations.
They become washed out.
They become, frankly, rather than being more of an enemy, they become less.
It's terrible when you say it.
It's just in a great, great match with all that money and all the rest.
No responsibility, all automatically staying on the rest.
I've seen more people with balls put up on the list.
And intellectually, you've got to do it.
Intellectually, you've got to do it.
You have the National Center for Environmental Research?
Yep.
We've got it all over the place and some of our people have become addicts too.
Did that vehicle be used to test on that?
The environment of course is naturally going to be one of your primary concerns.
I don't think we've got any great brains working on the environment around here.
I don't see a crack that comes across this desk.
It's pretty sad.
The environment cannot be separated from the social environment.
And if you look at the environment right now, it's the whole human environment.
I wonder if I could suggest this, that we continue to ask the question that we have established here and pursue this and develop it a little bit more to answer some of the questions that we still need to answer.
Well, what we need to answer is, you've heard what I've said.
I'm interested in the idea.
I think it ought to be done.
I like to think that the foreign policy people might have to do the thinking.
So we've got to build a new structure of peace.
So this is about that.
But in this area, we're not really comparable to .
and the rest, they're not deliberately not even conscious of the fact that it's real or it's perhaps not.
But my thought is that what we get here is at least an active on the part of dedicated people who have no ask for granted.
I think they have something to offer in this field, an approach that has not been made before.
It isn't the muddle-headed, soft-headed approach to the foundations, which isn't worth a damn.
I drew it off.
It isn't because he got the first city for it, which was a white cop.
Not because it was the first city, but because he used foundations for it.
and the second graders that we had in the garden at that time.
And frankly, at this point, I don't think that all mountain wisdom is in business now.
You may not have any there.
You know, I'm just gonna be brief.
My point is that this approach is worth trying.
It's hard.
It's pragmatic.
It has a nice little dose of idealism in it.
And so one job, how the government can participate, how presidential support can begin, presidential participation to the extent that they want it, however, not controlled and not in a way where I am in fact saying, well, this is my thing.
This should be yours, we know, and we give you the boy as they can say, Mark, how are you?
Anybody that can come out and say, well, how are you?
Just one thing that I didn't get to mention, a nice important thing.
We plan to have about five teams, or six perhaps, in regions around the country teaching the people in the cities how to go about setting these goals and how to do it by consensus.
Now this, this is not going to cost much because the cities and states will pay their own expenses.
The only thing we have to have is those schemes for teaching and for promotion of the reading materials.
I'll do it.
We've done a lot of that work.
It's already ready.
If, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if,
So it's not a, it's not a tremendous risk.
If you would have asked us to look at that with a piercing eye, and get with Mahalik, I know he's got evidence, we get that he's going for it.
And that's part of the truth.
That's just information that has never been available to any president.
Because he now will hear what the people think they need and want.
And those are the parts of it that they can't completely ignore.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. President.
  • 647-011 12:36 PM · 38 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 12:36 pm and 12:38 pm.
  • 647-012 12:37 PM · 22 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Lt. Cmdr. James E. Sheehan, John Sheehan, Kathleen Sheehan, Kelly Sheehan, Kevin Sheehan, Eugene T. Sheehan, Edward J. Sheehan, Geneva Smith, Adm. Adm. C. D. Griffin, Louie B. Nunn, John Sherman Cooper, John J. Sparkman, Arthur F. Burns, J. L. Robertson, George W. Mitchell, J. Dewey Daane, Sherman J. Maisel, Andrew F. Brimmer, Robert Holland, George P. Shultz, Herbert Stein, Peter M. Flanigan, Frederic V. Malek, Oliver F. ("Ollie") Atkins, and E. Pendleton James met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 12:37 pm and 1:02 pm.
  • 647-013 1:02 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 1:02 pm and 1:03 pm.
  • 647-014 1:03 PM · 16 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Arthene Cevey, Andrey Pontier, Karl Wunderlich, Peter Yu, Michael Slattery, Billy McNight, Richard Buck, Stephen Bazo, James Toomey, Russell Burke, Brian Clark, Phillip Beauregard, Pete Wyrough, Brooks Ross, Robert Jones, Brian Bunce, John Sharood, Peter McMahon, Francois VanDerMenbrugge, Christopher Cook, White House photographer, Ronald L. Ziegler, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:03 pm to 1:19 pm.
  • 647-015 1:19 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Stephen B. Bull, Edwin M. Fauver, Mrs. Edwin M. Fauver, Ray M. Zook, Ronald L. Ziegler, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:19 pm to 1:23 pm.
  • 647-016 1:23 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:23 pm to 1:24 pm.
  • 647-018 2:14 PM · 18 sec — President Richard M. Nixon, Stephen B. Bull, and Manolo Sanchez met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 2:14 pm and 2:16 pm.
  • 647-019 2:16 PM · 6 min — Jon M. Huntsman, Mrs. Jon M. Huntsman, Jon M. Huntsman, Jr., Paul Huntsman, Kathleen Huntsman, Kristina Huntsman, James Huntsman, Paul Huntsman, David Huntsman, Alexander P. Butterfield, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 2:16 pm to 2:21 pm.

Conversation 647-017, January 13, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/647-017 (accessed November 2, 2026).