Conversation 658-005

TapeTape 658StartThursday, January 27, 1972 at 10:27 AMEndThursday, January 27, 1972 at 11:12 AMTape start time01:31:03Tape end time02:16:17ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Scammon, Richard M.;  Colson, Charles W.;  White House photographerRecording deviceOval Office

On January 27, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Richard M. Scammon, Charles W. Colson, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:27 am to 11:12 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 658-005 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 658-5

Date: January 27, 1972
Time: 10:27 am - 11:12 am
Location: Oval Office

The President met with Richard M. Scammon and Charles W. Colson; the White House
photographer was present at the beginning of the meeting.

     Greetings

     [Photograph session]

     Seating
          -Prime Minister of Ghana [Kofi A. Busia]
               -Education
               -London
               -Coup d’etat

     Scammon’s book with Ben Wattenberg, The Real Majority (1970)
         -Effect
              -1970 election
         -Responsibility
              -Soundness of theories
         -Marijuana legalization
              -John V. Lindsay’s position
              -Polls

Politics
      -Prohibition Party
      -Use of election process
           -Robert M. La Follette
                 -Effect on politics
                       -Political orientation
                       -Grover Cleveland
                       -[Thomas] Woodrow Wilson
                       -Progressivism
           -Herbert Hoover
                 -Depression
                 -Contribution
           -History of politics in early twentieth century
                 -La Follette
                       -Compared to Alfred E. Smith
                       -Historical speculation
                             -Theodore Roosevelt
                             -Wilson

Book on historical counterfactualism
    -Charlotte Corday’s murder of Jean Paul Marat
    -J. William Fulbright
    -Edward M. Kennedy
    -Civil War

Social issues
     -Busing
           -Richmond decision
           -Forest Hills
     -View of whole country
           -Feasibility
     -Voting blocks
           -Philadelphia
                 -Frank L. Rizzo
                       -Republican coalition
                       -Jewish votes
                       -Black votes
           -Cleveland
                 -Ralph J. Perk
                       -Black votes

         -Black voting psyche
              -Education
                    -James M. Carney
              -Rizzo
              -Difficulties
                    -Party identification

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BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2
[Personal Returnable]
[Duration: 13m 28s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2

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         -Perception of the Administration
         -Rizzo
               -Law and order
         -Samuel W. Yorty
         -Tom Bradley
         -Liberal views
         -Forest Hills
         -Jews
         -Perception of public
               -Supreme Court
         -Presidential action
               -Lyndon B. Johnson
               -Effect
                     -Compared to Rizzo
               -Johnson
         -Busing
         -Housing
         -Public wishes
               -Crime
               -Morality
               -Marijuana

     -New York-Washington axis
     -Los Angeles, Chicago
     -Commentators
           -Problems
                 -Liberal viewpoints
                 -Lack of “guts”
     -Strength of America
     -George Meany
-Busing
     -Milton Viorst
           -Judith Viorst
     -George S. McGovern stance
     -Court decisions
           -Detroit, Richmond
     -Problems
           -Fear of violence
           -Public education
           -Internal Revenue Service [IRS]
           -Edward M. Kennedy
           -George C. Wallace
     -Economic issues
           -Social security
           -Unemployment insurance
           -Government spending
     -Individual and group fears
           -Ghetto problems
                 -Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans
                 -California
           -Montgomery County, Maryland
           -Black residents of Washington, DC
                 -Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
                       -Sidney Poitier
                 -Bourgeoisie
                 -Race relations
                       -Social mobility
     -Polls
           -Busing, crime, housing
                 -Economic issues
     -Leadership
           -Message to Democrats
           -Encouragement of strongest elements

     -Fitness to rule
     -The President’s reading
           -Biography, history
     -H.G. Wells
     -Nineteenth century Britain
     -Wells
           -Importance of education
     -History of ruling classes
     -Politicians
     -Intellectuals
           -Use of intellectuals
           -College environment
           -Elites
                 -Fitness to rule
                       -Republicans
                             -New York, Los Angeles
           -Resentments
     -Vietnam
     -Meany
     -Peter J. Brennan
     -Frank E. Fitzsimmons
     -Intellectual in power
           -Democrats, Republicans
           -Washington Post
           -New York Times
           -Time, Life
           -Networks
           -Consequences
                 -Analogy to France
                 -Isolationism
           -“Guts”, coverage
           -Henry A. Kissinger
                 -Background
-“Hard hats” compared to intellectuals
     -“Know nothings”
     -Blacks
     -Farmers
     -William F. Buckley, Jr.
     -Problem with college graduates
           -Scammon’s military experience
           -Willingness to fight in war

                        -Stamina
           -McGovern
                 -Programs
           -Democratic Party
                 -Henry M. (“Scoop”) Jackson
           -Abdication of power
           -Shame
           -Power
     -Presidential qualities
-US leadership
     -The President’s reading
           -Editorials
                 -News summaries
     -Ultra-liberals, right-wing
     -Prospects of US in world
     -US sense of destiny
     -Desire to excel
           -Effects
     -Compared to other nations
           -British
           -French
           -Dutch
           -Danes
           -Swedes
           -Economy
                 -Japan
                 -Britain
                 -France
                 -Japan
           -Chinese, Soviets
                 -Governmental system
                 -Strength of people
           -West Germany
                 -Britain
                 -Problems
                        -Division
           -Japan
                 -Courage
                 -Drive
                 -Socialists
           -Turn inward

                            -Consequence
                                  -Decline
                      -“Intellectual incest”
          -Strength of US
                -Majority
                -Public perception of issues
                -Rejection of permissiveness
                -Size of strong elements in population
                      -John Wayne
                -Qualities of majority
                      -Religion
                      -Compared to intellectuals
                -Administration strategy
                      -Doing what is fashionable
                            -National Press Club
                            -Compared to doing what is right
                      -Presidential qualities
                            -Responsibility
                      -Appeal to majority

     Presentation of gifts
          -Cufflinks

Scammon and Colson left at 11:12 am.

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.

Thank you for watching!
I'm still here.
All right.
Worked out well.
I told Chuck when he was talking and chatting with you that I was fascinated by your, that famous focus of yours, which had such an effect on both parties in the 70s and 80s, and I didn't know what it was.
...candidates wearing flags from the palace... ...and... ...anyway... ...the point is that...
It must have been quite interesting, you know, we all know what books are and how much work goes into them and the rest, and that kind of a huge thing has such a limited effect, and sure, it's always pleasant to meet people who read your book.
But the book has an effect so nasty that it's written about people bailing out of departments, financial departments, properties, for a small, small book.
But that must have been really something.
It's a little frightening, doesn't it?
Yeah, it's like your power.
It's like you've got my back.
You know, you mean I see something that put those people really... Yeah, yeah.
So then you realize the power and responsibility...
And the rest that you also realize, in terms of responsibility, how important it is that the theory that you put out in New London is sustainable.
I see it working out, I would say, in terms of John Lennon being here, in terms of being part of the platform, because I think I'm against the legalization of marijuana, which obviously he needs to do, because he's the senator of the majority, but he came out against it.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
It was one of, it was an academic, he would quote all these, he would tell those, all the colleges, wherever they are, you know, there's a lot of good and bad that could happen.
Why did he tell those?
Why?
He read polls, too.
Yeah, he read polls on marijuana.
He didn't hold it, he didn't hold it about the same, because he had, after all, he was trying to lead for the center.
Unless you're trying to conduct a sort of prohibition party education campaign.
The man who perhaps accomplished the most in that direction was Bob LaFaude.
LaFaude had five, you know, he thought five was the most, which was quite something in early Chinese.
He had considerable effect.
He probably, although he was a maverick republican, probably had more effect than Obama had.
Instead of taking that huge republic, which had already been stomping into the country since the Civil War, except for the two Cleveland episodes and the Wilson aberrations, he had the effect of, and this was four years before, or eight years before, of building the,
Right.
But Hoover, basically, was a progressive, you know.
Yes, that's right.
He was in the... and on the fall of Poland.
Correct.
Well, this is very true.
You take the fall of Smith.
The one on economic and sort of armed folks.
Yeah.
And Smith...
Both were the people who built a foundation on this world that they didn't put it down.
Yeah.
All right, now it's 1964, or, uh...
I can't tell you any more than that, uh...
No, no, it needs to surface.
I mean, of course, we see it in terms of busing, direction of decision, forest heralds, et cetera, et cetera, some of those things.
And, you know, it's very intriguing to find out how this was the coalition case there.
Over on both sides, the Republican coalition, for example, that gave them a lot of black votes in their head, but they had black and Jewish votes.
Not so many of them, as a matter of fact, Franco carried the Jewish votes.
He carried the Jewish votes.
He did.
But, but, but, they got most of the blacks.
They got most of the blacks.
They got most of the blacks, because this, this place in Cleveland, which is like a bird, with
A quarter of a black stain in Carnegie out there in Cleveland.
Yeah.
Interesting, you know, there are interesting reasons I have out there that, on that election that we asked, and they gave us two basic reasons.
The first was, the less well-educated Chico never got the word that he was supposed to be getting from Carnegie to the black men.
And the well-educated Chico said, you can't push me around like I said, believe me.
I voted for Carnegie on the whole market, and I respect how long people are going to be buying and selling off the market.
But the...
Basically, each of the social issues there resolves the living group of it.
I think the difficulty is that its political traceability is less in the sense of planning implications than...
If you don't express it, the whole product really is built out of this kind of little, little thing.
And in the, in the social issue of business, I don't really think your administration, I say very frankly, I don't think your administration has been able, or at least has not been perceived as being definitively on the side of the angels of the other people who you can pretend to be on the side of the devils.
And then, of course, it was all like Brazil.
It was very hard to, you know, it was a hard day.
It was like, you know, it was all over Brazil, and the city was all falling apart.
You already knew that he was a Democrat.
He was a Democrat, yeah.
He was a Democrat, yeah.
He was a Democrat, yeah.
He was a Democrat, yeah.
But you take it out right there and rub it right next to them.
A lot like the Forest Coast times.
You go down around the back of the city called the Torch, that area of Fairfax.
And, you know, that's where you spot other people.
And the black line is all there.
And maybe more so because you tend to find, unless it's Jewish, the only Jewish people there.
More work-intact experience and less professional experience.
You get more workers who are owners and you are professor, professor, doctor, doctor.
That's right.
That's right.
They feel it.
Just as they would hear it in Washington, R.C.O.
It would not be perceived that way now.
It wouldn't be perceived that way.
It wouldn't be perceived that way.
Well, you know, if we think it's good for all to do it, then we can still be responsible.
We, of course, have moved very strongly in the court.
I agree.
We take a little bang there.
That doesn't get across to the average person, I'm afraid.
Moreover, there's a nice place that you say that first.
I think Mr. Johnson said the same thing.
You're not just a party leader, you're also president behind the state.
And you don't want to say or do things when you are president.
perhaps centered, a little left to center, but on the other hand, from a political standpoint, i.e.
a model of defense, that whether it's busting or enforcing integrated housing or anything like that, that they are down on these truths, that they've gone through these files, they've gone through the whole crime thing, the countries that they're against without any question, they're...
I guess we're missing this.
They're casting marijuana and stuff and the rest.
They're not in college.
They're not in college.
They're kind of square.
I think the tendency is that here they sit here in this town.
So many people who hold the U.R.
Washington Actions.
And of course we have this type of people that
In Los Angeles, you've got that kind of a setting on the shelter in Chicago, and they run and they all drink too much, and talk too much, and think too little, and all these paratrooper-wise, but basically other people think.
And also, basically, they lost their guts.
That's something else.
I tell you, you know, the real guts of this country, the real guts of this country, I mean, you know, I had, you know, I was supposed to have, I had this little black man serving me, but the man who did this, you know, this officer, I don't remember him, also, because he basically is a decent person.
You know, God-favorite American.
And that's what happened.
You know, you take, there was a piece in one of the papers by young Bjorst, whose wife makes this wonderful poetry.
Bjorst wrote the piece about, he was very happy to just see the uncertainty about Busset.
He started to develop a new approach on Busset.
And the fact is that the court has pushed this so far beyond the non-segregation area that
You get now, with the Detroit possibility of the British decision, a real crackdown in which, of course, the real problem doesn't become the British, the real problem is still with the French islands.
In other words, you and I can keep together a majority of white Americans to agree even to integrate schools on a busing basis if they weren't afraid that a kid was going to come home with his bills knocked out.
Right, right.
Just like the people in Congress who got their kids out of the pockets here, and the Air Force has always designed for them, if the IRS ever gave the taxpayer a deduction for when they spent a brand new education.
In other words, if they lowered the top-off level from wealth to little glass, which is really what it is,
But the effect would be, you know, they'd have to evaluate that.
Your feeling is that we haven't taken that application?
I don't think so.
No, I'm not saying you may have.
More so, but you know, this is a problem that we have to ask.
How can you identify?
The only way you can really identify an issue is if you're not present in the United States or Kennedy County.
is to get out on the roster and scream.
The more you scream, the more extreme you sound.
And therefore, the more of us, the less likely you are to be able to hit the center.
It's a very typical story out of the media world.
You have to be like, you've got to be like, you've got to be false, you've got to be like, you've got to be like, you've got to be like, you've got to be like, you've got to be like, you've got to be like,
You put your finger on something else.
They are decent people.
They aren't greedy or racist.
It isn't to beat down the haters of blacks or Catholics or...
This is not a black thing.
It's a spirit.
It's a spirit.
It's a pure faith.
But we've got to face the fact that it, and it's not just true black people are greedy.
It's true for a lot of others.
It's true for all Mexicans.
...now becoming true in California, that in these so-called galleries, these kids that aren't going to have the same background, that it's extremely easy to have your kid go to school.
Isn't that what you said?
Well, first of all, you have to have a class of five families here in addition to Columbia who pay Montgomery County Mayor.
These are ways for you to be able to send their children out to the Montgomery County Public Schools.
Now, this comes out of a situation where, these are very decent people.
You remember the picture, I guess it's coming to dinner.
These are the kind of black people who are the letter carrier father of Washiach in that movie.
Very decent, honest people.
They just want to get ahead like everybody else.
They want to go to war.
Somebody wants to let you know that these aren't the people who denied the bourgeoisie.
These are the people who seek back to the bourgeoisie.
But when you come down to something else, I think that, and I can express it if you want, I think I catch this in your book, but if you haven't been hitting it, I can certainly take it from some of your democratic friends, because we've got to take it back a little bit.
In this country, there are better elements.
And by that, those elements that deserve to survive must be encouraged.
And those elements that do not deserve to rule, cannot rule.
Let me give you my own view of what I heard at the moment.
I'm here.
The reason why I'm here today, and everybody else is on that occasion, is to be breaking a biography of history right here.
There it is.
You can take Wells' history of civilization.
You can take history of British 19th century.
These are reasons for you to be able to send their children out to Montgomery County Public Schools.
Now, this comes out of a situation where
These are very decent people.
You remember the picture, I guess it's coming to dinner.
These are the kind of black people who are the letter-carrier father of Watt, the agent of that movie.
Very decent, honest people.
They just want to get ahead like everybody else.
They want to go to the war.
Somebody once said, you know, that these aren't the people who deny the bourgeoisie.
These are the people who speak back to the bourgeoisie.
I agree with you about the total social issue, and it depends on how it will be, whether it will be busing, whether it will be crime, whether it will be immigration, so it depends on the enforcement of customs, of course, the customs are real.
I think it goes into economics as well as the other things, and that reverts people.
But when you come down to something else, I think that, and I can express it if you want, I think I touched this in your book, but if you haven't been hitting it, I can certainly take it from some of your demographic friends, because we've got to take it back a little bit.
In this country, there are better elements.
And by that, those elements that deserve to survive must be encouraged.
And those elements that do not deserve to rule, cannot rule.
I'm going to give you my own view of where I'm going.
I'm here.
The reason why I'm here today, and everybody else is on that occasion, is to re-break the biography of history right here.
There it is.
You can take Wells' history of civilization, you can take the history of the British in the 19th century, and not just what you find through all civilizations.
The British in 19th century is a good example.
That as the civilization becomes wealthier,
And this Wells, for the contrary, I understand, he has ID, right?
And he's a magnificent historian.
His whole idea was restored by the idea that he thought that only people were educated, that the common man meant the right and safe, and of course he was wrong.
But nevertheless, history of civilization is all about that, and it's people who have been better and more and more educated, and so on.
After then,
The better people would make the decisions, and all these crude politicians and others, these mediocre men and women, the mostly men who had ruled, would be cast aside, and that would be a very good thing.
Now what is happening?
And what has happened, and I say this as one, if you are, who did go to college, has great respect for the intellectual.
We must use them, and all that sort of thing.
What has happened is that
that we have developed particularly in the elite colleges and universities in Trans-Armenia now, and together across the country, and it's in the Midwest and the South as well, but not as great, but coming across there as far as a period, but throughout these years.
What's happened is
That the new intellectual elite established in this country is not fit to rule.
I mean, and that's not saying this in the farthest sense, because the Republicans, who were in this elite, who circulated in the cocktail party and so forth in New York, Los Angeles, places that I used to go, are just as bad as the Democratic friends.
What it is, is that they have gone through the intellectual process, and they've come out of that process with a feeling of lack of faith in the country.
All the old ideals are bad.
They listen to professors who are frustrated, and keep their lives, their own lives, and keep those that rule, and think, well, we were here to be better, and so forth and so on.
And that's been so when the great issues come up.
Some of the decisions I had to make on the Vietnam War example, I had never been involved.
I'm sure this is, I could always have been on a meeting.
Yes, I'm sure this is not.
Here we are, and the reason is that basically, me, me and his friends, and Terry Grant, I mean, I'm sure, and Pete Grant, and fellows like that, and O'Frank, and I'm surprised they come in, and they decent those, and this and that, and they go by, but they saw the issue.
Now, what is happening here is that the United States does come,
And I speak to the Democratic politicians as well as the Republicans.
The primary is the problem of the Democratic politicians now.
If they go over the first thing,
And by this line, that the intellectuals, so-called, the intellectuals, those that write the editorials for Washington Post and the New York Times, the elite editorials of Time and Life, who generally parent out of the network, well, some of them are good people, some of them, they're all decent people, and they just believe wrong.
And if they, however, prevail, this country's head...
Because what will happen is that we will go the way of the church, we will go the way of the French, we will go the way of others who turn and because you will find that church finally birthed intellectual generally loses his guts, he loses his courage, he thinks too much about our problems and he paralyzes them.
Now, the investigator, who is an intellectual, is an exception.
He's an exception for reasons.
He's a Jewish boy who came out of there, and he's been through the fire, and so forth, and he believes in certain principles, but he's very emotional.
Anybody with his brains and his education, and that's why he's a forensic.
He's a forensic.
That's right.
Now, my point is that
What is needed now is not that we simply have a, that we, that we, that we not go to a know-nothing, a heart has to hold you right, held in tears and all that sort of thing.
We know that's wrong.
You can't do that.
But what is needed are, are leaders in this country who understand this.
who understand acting, who realize that while our heads are not always right, they, on facing issues, are usually closer to the truth than the highly educated electorate who stares at us because the guy's got modest feet.
This is what we are saying in that book, and we're saying that if you have hard heads, you've got to do this.
What we're really going to need to take is a wonderful location of boundaries, you know, that
I remember when I was in the war, one of the officers, junior officers with us, the second person general who would work,
They bombed.
They haven't got the stamina for it.
They just can't stick with it, because some of this is wrong.
The dream of a home government, for example, of how you can crack a thing back, and programs will solve all your typical problems, and the intellectuals that you get to say these are destroyed, they're not going to worry about how many somethings I can't reject.
These people simply are not in a position to succeed.
It's the application of power.
It's a sort of a new variety of 12th century children's reality.
The knowledge and power of their society and everything that's created in the United States, and because it's rich, and because it's powerful, and because it has done frankly right.
They are so ashamed of power, that they also do not know how to get it to the person they ask.
Except that the puppeteers, there are a lot of people who sit in this room, must, must not become basically their puppets.
It's very important, it's very important to believe the one thing I know for sure, the fact.
I read everything.
I mean, I probably read more editorials for them.
I used to do a new song, and I heard a little kind of it.
But I read them only to know what they're saying.
Well, sometimes they have an idea or two.
But basically, you cannot take people who are sitting there behind the desk, you know, they're all entertaining, they're hatred, they're frustration, they're all pro-liberalism.
You can take a far-right nut and say that he's there.
I don't believe it.
My point is that you...
Yeah, that the United States at this point, now I could make you go swear at a couple of Canada people, but the United States at this point is very sustained in the world.
You might not be surprised if you're a Democratic colleague.
See the next 25 years you've got to look at.
This may be the last of the period in which the United States has the opportunity to be the leader of the world, and even the leader of the free world.
And the two are different, of course.
We're holding them all.
This is the first one right here.
What's more important than our wealth and our power will be our sense of destiny and our guts and so forth.
We can call it about wanting to be number one, everybody.
This is all that, right?
All right.
Maybe we don't want to be number one for number one's sake, but you've got to try.
Because if you don't, then you'll become, you'll turn into, as the British have, and the French have, and the Dutch have, and the Danes have, and the Swedes have, and all these great people.
There's still wonderful people.
But, once a nation loses the trust to greatness, they cease to be a great people.
Now, the difficulty is that it would be fine if all nations wanted to live like we're the white ones.
So we could, after all, we've got a $30 economy, and that's $500 like Japan.
That's ten times as much as Britain.
Every year we grow in Britain.
Every year we grow in France.
Every two years we grow in Japan.
So it keeps us on the low end.
That's another problem.
In the world today, basically, there are people who still have guts.
Let me say it about the Chinese and the Russians.
Their systems are abominable.
They will not succeed.
But the Russian people and the Chinese people still have got drive and guts and the will to do something.
Now, in Europe,
So the question is, what kind of a world would we build?
Where do we come out from all this?
We can turn anywhere.
We can say we're all the men and the gals.
And we can say, well, all these great ladies and men and so forth and so on.
And the United States will move down very, very fast.
Because this intellectual incest is the worst kind.
Much worse than this incest is.