On January 29, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Stephen B. Bull, Barbara H. Franklin, George P. Shultz, Herbert Stein, Marina von Neumann Whitman, White House photographer, Charles W. Colson, unknown person(s), White House operator, John N. Mitchell, Idanell ("Nellie") (Brill) Connally, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:05 am to 12:10 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 660-008 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
You see, Rob, you may not be aware of the fact enough that with an old like Connelly, who's not sorry, you can see, he doesn't know that early on in his mind, he would not be pushing, you know what I mean?
That he would not be doing what Harry Whitehouse said first.
Because every time he goes to the White House, he's always talking about the White House.
You know, those fellows in the White House.
You know what I mean?
Well, we thought maybe around noon today.
Yeah, yeah, we're trying to... We're trying to... You got coal?
Oh, good.
Well, I hope not.
Yeah, we got...
I'm going to do an interesting thing.
I'm going to nominate for Melania Whitman, who is the daughter of the great nuclear physicist, John von Neumann, as one of the three members of the Council of Economic Advisors.
That's the first time in 180 years, the whole history of the republic, of course, that there's ever been a council that a woman has been named to it.
So that's been great.
So that will help people talk to the women.
Now this is what, this is a quarter-even.
Yeah.
What are the thoughts that occurred to you?
I don't know.
You might point out that, uh, you, uh, I, uh,
and that he had a duty to you, because you both learned sports by going to the games with him whenever he could or watching him play.
And the one thing that impressed you was that the people in sports, that is baseball and football, they were
And Brooks Robinson is typical of this, are not only fine athletes in the field, but fine citizens.
That sports teams, team play, spare play,
trying to do your best and so forth.
You might say later that your father, you often ask him why it was he was so interested in baseball.
I guess the reason was he never made the team.
And he never was much of a, he always liked to go out.
He liked it because he just, he enjoyed it.
The comradeship, the comradeship was
without something like that, sorry.
And then I have to say this very clearly, that is that this is a, if you want to get along with me, whether you're going to give me some sense or not,
Yeah, and even risk-losing mistakes.
That's right.
Sure, sure, sure.
And that's excellent.
That's excellent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
Well, that's fine.
That's fine.
Sure.
You just have a lot of time.
But they can't go to the company.
They just can't do it, you know what I mean?
I don't want them to strut around.
Not that they would strut, but, you know, throw their weight.
And my view is that because of the price we have to pay, that's what I'm saying.
I know your order.
I just don't know the other's.
completely is, because Pete has sensed this, you know, the other practice, basically aware of the problem that he's talking about.
I have not raised the basic problem at all with anybody else.
Oh, don't mention anybody.
I never want to raise.
Never, never, never.
It'll never hold.
It'll never hold.
We don't care anything.
We'll let anybody believe, you know, but anybody isn't necessary.
Just say that's what I want.
That I have great confidence in my relationship and it's different.
And that anything that involves his field, he's got to be asked.
You've got to get Robert Shultz on that, too.
Plaintiff's made a great deal of a con.
Yeah.
Shultz works awful hard at doing that.
When he can get to it, they all have trouble getting the con.
Yeah.
Which is another, well, maybe another harangue and so forth.
I wish he could get some more of his own people in under him.
People that he trusts.
Yeah.
And just people that will do some of his work for him.
He just needs people that he trusts and people that our people will then work with that he'll accept.
Part of it is there's no way for him to and he says he doesn't want to deal with everything that comes along.
And yet if he says deal with his staff and then his staff
twisted or to a just some way, some way.
Take some of that burden away from him and make it clear that he's just taking it away for the purpose of doing the work and then we'll submit it to him.
don't consider anything in the higher priority.
We spend a lot of time trying to keep everybody happy and so forth, but let's remember, everybody has no choice.
The economy has a choice, and therefore you've got to watch it every day, you know.
I feel it that way about my wife.
She sees people every day, and I sense their moods, and you can't let it drive you, because that's when things get out of control.
Alex, it's about how they should be.
He does things by the book, which is his job.
But, for example, getting them to Camp David, he should make special efforts to get there, not just for a weekend, but the other whole time.
Go away just in the middle of the day, go up there and enjoy it.
I'm sure they enjoy that place.
I want them to, for example, bring their family up there.
I've told you, but, you know, you've done it.
Well, he'll never ask you that.
I don't know.
But Alex is to sort of press on then.
Or maybe you can.
I don't know.
Maybe that's better.
But I'm sure there are ways to do it.
You can sit down.
And Alex should follow up on that side.
I'm going to make sure to go over and talk to him about politics, but I don't think he can just go over and sit down and put his feet up and chew the fat people that talk to John like he does.
But he's got to give the impression that God damn it, he's dead.
Anything political.
He liked it.
What the hell, he didn't want to be a secretary of the Treasury.
He didn't give a shit about the Treasury.
So it's all about politics.
Henry's better.
He was buying the foreign people.
He was buying the Supreme Court.
Well, that's the problem.
On Henry, he does realize that, I guess, but then, you know, there isn't a thing he can do about news.
except that high profiles is that they're going to shoot the show.
It's going to hurt.
Although, I don't know, they started shooting maybe too soon.
Yeah.
You mean Andrew?
Yeah.
Yeah, they may be able, he may be able to,
to ride through this, particularly since he is aware of the danger now that he's running into.
In a sense, the Anderson papers helps in that respect, because he took such a horrible beating from his erstwhile friends, and now he'll be able to recognize that he did not come far enough, that they're going to just chop you up in the city, chop you up.
That's John Stacey Collin.
Basically, to that effect today.
Target Kissinger makes the point that... Target Kissinger.
Yeah.
It goes both ways.
It makes the point that he's...
Which Henry will love.
He's going to go down in history as one of the great negotiators of all time or something because of the missions he was sent out on.
And...
and he's trying to handle, but he's, he must get across, which Point Scully has been sensitive about, he must constantly get across the point that he doesn't do all these things, you know what I mean, that he's only an agent, and is there for that purpose.
We talked about that yesterday.
He, you know, he says that's what he's doing, and I think he probably is.
He gets life on these cover stories.
He says the stories will be good if the problem is just the fact that it's me on the cover that's what is worrying him.
Well, well, one way or the other.
The press has been too bad in that respect so far about this issue.
The whole thing has been.
There hasn't been nearly as much fascination with how the hell did he get in and out of there, just the mechanics of it.
I thought there was a lot of things to look at.
I mean, how the hell did he get to Paris 12 times?
That's right.
And it's been
covered a little bit, but it hasn't been really zeroed in on as a big thing.
One of the reasons is they want to build up as much, you know, China, they want to build up.
It depends on the story, you know, they, this irks the shit out of them, you know, they don't even have it.
I'd say they have it, but I think that's true.
I think that self-consciously affects them.
Subconscious about, they tend to build up those things where they want a favorable story and tend not to write about those things and not make a big story out of things where they don't want to get out there and focus on the balance.
That's part of it.
And the other thing is, China's more mysterious than Paris, which is something to it.
Well, yeah.
And the other part is that Howard Hughes story, which is still writing, as I know.
is the big mystery story, and it sort of takes the... What do you think of the latest part of it?
This is Irving, this is his wife, from the money from the Swiss bank, and is holding a pre-used ship.
Well, she isn't holding a pre-used, she's going up herself.
I saw this this morning, and I noticed that she's holding a pre-used.
What's your guess on the holding of the ship?
I don't know.
The guy's got to have something, but I don't know where he got it.
Well, McGraw-Hill thought he had Howard Hughes.
And that's where they gave him the money.
And then she signed... No, no, McGraw-Hill.
The money is from McGraw-Hill.
And they thought... Well, they thought they were... She, the woman, put it in the Swiss bank.
They wrote her the checks.
They wrote the checks table to H.R.
Hughes.
They thought they were paying Howard Hughes.
And then the woman opened an account at this Swiss bank in the name of Helga R. Hughes.
And then when these checks came out saying to H.R.
Hughes, she endorsed them.
H.R.
Hughes deposited them in her account in the Swiss bank.
And then there were three checks.
And then after all she had to do, they were five.
And then after H.R.
Hughes, the son of a bitch, the thief,
Well, of course, his argument is he's holding money for Hughes.
That's his only money he can take.
See, he's claiming that he wrote the book as an authorized biographer.
Actually, it's supposed to be an autobiography that he ghosted.
I know.
That's totally true.
But you know, his wife wasn't.
She used to put money in the bank to help Howard Hughes out.
And then what she did, she opened this bank account and took out a false passport in a little town in Switzerland.
That's how they tracked all this down, because her passport was for too small a town.
They don't issue passports for that small a town.
And so it turned out to be a false passport.
And she deposited these three checks.
And then after the three checks were deposited in the bank account, she then withdrew all the money from the bank account.
And nobody, I guess, I don't think they know where the money is now.
She's probably got it in her pocket or something.
But she took the money out of the bank and went away.
So all the bank account was, it was a way to convert the checks payable to HRUs to cash in the pocket of Mrs. Clifford, Mrs. Irving, Irving.
Wow.
It's fascinating.
People love it, don't they?
Well, it's ridiculous.
It's a lead story on all three networks last night.
Was it?
Yeah.
It's a big story from page to paper.
I guess it's just the kind of story people are fascinated with.
It seems to me it's a good time.
I reiterate again, Larry O'Brien, who worked on the Italian thing, he might as well spare him up, but he did with us.
Yeah.
That's good.
The problem is there isn't anything in it in that material.
We've got to get it in a different direction.
It may still have it.
Kept it for a while after it was turned.
It was turned, yeah, because it was supposed to turn around.
The whole thing is foolish.
See if that girl is coming today at 10.30 so I can say goodbye to her and have more help out there.
You know, whoever, she's on the News Army staff.
She's going to the campaign, I think.
I hope so.
And the right people, that's the only bright one.
When I say the only bright one, the brightest people we've got, as you well realize, are the super conservatives, too.
You know, it's a funny thing.
The right people always are never in the center.
They're on the far right or the far left.
Yeah.
The center of pragmatism.
You know, they're just good, swear, do your best for your country, God, and this and that.
But the extremists are the brightest.
And here's old, here's old, and here's people like me.
Population is bright as hell.
More down in that group, you know, they're ratty, bright, mean.
I love the other bunch of bright people we had with the one-hand crew over on the left.
Oh, absolutely.
That's not that.
Some of those that, uh, that's not getting priced at lunch.
And the kid that went up to Harvard, you know, just told him.
I think it's fine.
We'll get it.
Because he's going through the test program now.
You end up with a test, you can claim that's what you want.
Get the damn thing out of the way without the program.
I'm sure there's a chance for the other guys to focus on the distribution.
It's a tough statement.
It really goes further.
It says, why should we spend days in a program that is untested, you know?
Kelly was wanting to spend more of it.
All of a sudden, he says, let's test it first.
Kelly's gone the other way.
They think that the damn program has made people unemployed.
They don't have the sex appeal that they thought.
See what I mean?
That's what I think is happening.
Well, the thing is, if you look at it outside, you'll never get a cheer anywhere except at one of those hunger conferences for saying, we've got to get more people on the welfare rolls.
You'll get all kinds of cheers when you say, we've got to get people out to work.
No, as much as I mean this to my end or ask, I mean it's a good thing.
And if it works, it's fine.
But people don't want what they're working for on growth variables.
They just don't want more people on growth variables.
Our kids, it's us.
It's like that food stamp in the parking lot in Mississippi.
But I think I was the light in the city.
Or well, you know, my aunt died.
We did not, we're not caught.
We didn't put him up to this, did we?
I'm sure we did.
It was his own idea.
It was just what was installed to our lab.
How much in the budget?
There's a third chunk in that third family assistance, isn't it?
Yeah, the first year's cost.
Over the years, it was a lot.
Karen, that's better than the other way.
We had to go back and revise it, but I thought it was great.
Now, I think for next year, you see that because of the pushing back the date, the out-starting of off-site doctors get lower and lower and lower.
I don't know if anybody likes them because they're for the program.
Well, it probably takes enough time to get it in here that
I mean, I would be glad to test.
Well, you sort of get the best of both worlds.
If you get a test, you can say you're making progress on your program.
There has to be an overhaul of the welfare in the broken-down system, which is a step towards it.
I think it's a day-to-day thing.
I don't think... Watch Kissinger, too.
Now, Kissinger is a very rough shop kind of ball, too.
He's not just sending things over there.
There's a great accomplishment.
He's been talking to me about everything.
And just in any way, he's supposed to be the hell out of the economy.
So, I mean, I mean, I've got to go ask.
You can't find the mind.
It's waiting in the earth.
John's three-year-old, John's early in his life, he's got a hawk.
And I think we should get him to sign off, because you see, commonly Bob will sign off because he thinks, well, that's what he wants, and I'll do it.
But then he'll feel bitter about it, because he'll figure that I was really up to it.
God damn it, I'm not up to it.
I want his judgment to be saved.
My job is in asking me what to do about the value added and so forth.
That's the strategy you should do.
I said, well, John, if you don't even start to talk about it, do you have good experience or not?
What's he going to do?
I said, John, if you don't want to talk about it, then I'm not going to be bored.
It doesn't mean that much.
So, see, that's what it's going to be.
Now, John says that this meeting on the meeting on our collars, I mean, will be this fall in the Justice Department with the crew of the company.
It was.
It was originally approved by him, and then someone in the department got it built back up, and then John got back to me and went over it specifically with him personally.
You're right, it's a very big proposition, but you watch it every day.
And I'll watch it, too.
Well, our guys like, you know, John and Ernie Schultz or some of the old folks say they have trouble getting to Connolly.
Now, I don't have any trouble getting to them, and I think they have trouble.
I've heard of this isobrasive thing with Connolly and Clout.
They do want to do things this way.
And how does he want them to do it?
I'd really rather deal with a second man who handles however he wants.
Who is his most trusted man that we can deal with?
We like him.
And I'm not sure there's so many people over there looking to destroy his man.
Well, he does have that.
We'll say that that's Pennington.
He's got a name, Pennell.
Bill Pennell.
And he's a second man?
He's a second man.
Yeah.
John Ehrlichman has been just...
very impressed with Connelly's own men as contrasted to his inherited men.
And some of his Texans.
The problem is his own people are all Texans, and I think he's a little reluctant to sap himself with all Texans.
But his people are just damn smart people.
I don't know.
It's a surprising thing.
When I was vice president, I had mediocrities.
But the reason, well, pretty much.
The reason was I didn't have any money.
I couldn't afford to hire anybody.
I mean, Bob King was no, you know, Bob Black and those guys were no great chefs and great fellows.
But the people you had that were sort of your team around, as contrasted to your staff, were certainly not mediocrities.
that got to the election.
Well, yeah, the people from outside and some of your allies within the government and all that.
Oh, that's true.
But I met my own staff this week because of the financial problems.
But he's got a lot of slots.
He's got no problem as far as
And he could get good people.
But he doesn't seem to be attracted to good people.
I think he's not comfortable with good people.
I guess.
Because it's right on through at all levels.
Even at the low levels, you can get good people.
As we have here, you can get good young people.
He goes more to the back.
It's sort of a governor's type.
He doesn't have a sense of separation.
Connie very much has that sense.
I mean, Connie's very, you know, he's a very, you know, he's a good fellow, but very, you know, your wife, he has people take where they belong.
They're acting, so, yeah, he deals with it.
But you are the guy he treats nicest, to be the elevator operator, the policeman out here.
But not in a fraternizing way, only in a way that recognizes the difference.
That's right.
He doesn't tell me how anybody would know.
He may be running and burning himself off.
And particularly up here, he just goes by a house fire.
He's just totally exhausted.
And I just thought, I think there's something with that.
Yeah.
Why can't they?
The first choice is gone.
First choice.
Head of the staff, head of the cabinet.
You kind of want to go, not just choice, you find a way to
They look nice out there this week, or whatever the case might be.
We're fighting the weekend now.
I don't know.
I don't know.
We can't just have it.
the weekend here in Florida.
There's no problem if you want to use it when I'm there because those two cabins are so goddamn nice.
I think he would feel bad not wanting to hear that.
I agree.
I agree.
I'll feel obligated to bring him over.
Why don't you go out for a walk and run into him on the road?
There's plenty of time here and out there you don't use it.
You know, apart from that, though, I think the use of it during the middle of the week is very interesting.
There's no reason for that.
It's beautiful in the middle of the week.
And it's a good time for it, you know.
It's a way to get out of the water.
That's what I'm just saying.
Whenever you clear at 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, go out there.
Always have a use of the helicopter.
Always have another time.
Others use cars.
They drive.
You can use a helicopter.
You can use a helicopter.
Takes 30 minutes to go over here from Bangkok.
It's up there.
It has dinner.
Back the next day at noon.
That's a hell of a thing.
I wish we was about to have a little talk with him about it.
That's my desire, and I think that he will enjoy it.
There are others that are worried about what people might think.
I'm just wondering if it is worth my sitting down and without getting into anything else, but just saying, you know, it's clear by, you know, these little things under the counter and everything here that there are apparently some, still some riddles of problems with White House staff and all that, that you said, as I've talked with them about before, that there is to be none of that, and that that's my responsibility to make sure there is, and that
We talk about it a little bit.
Where are the things that need to be hired out?
What are the things that are, even if they're little things, let's get, sometimes those, that may be what it is.
There may be some, you know, petty little things that are just sort of burrs under the saddle of a washerer.
He might say, oh, well, there's nothing in the arm.
I don't think he'd react adversely to doing that.
But you could say this, that I think he's a hard-working man.
I can't start working.
I'm concerned about how hard you work.
And that I do want, by God, that I know that I can lead the judgment.
I think everybody tries to do this, but if he puts up with it,
that he's exactly that kind of, he feels every performance has to be created, and he works his butt off on every one.
Now, second point, that he has to be reliant on the person running around here.
I just want him to be, have available love.
Very much.
You know what I mean?
I don't want any, we don't want to have any small things that are burdening him that we can handle.
Our staff is available for that purpose.
Because you've got a man, and you monitor everybody.
He's in a different position than the other crowd men.
He doesn't want the job.
He's solely on public service.
That's a little bitter for some of the others.
It really is.
All of them, to a certain extent, but some of them never like it.
Let's face it.
That's why, as we've talked about before, you've got to thank all these people.
Yeah, yeah.
And I've always thought that in a campaign.
I know a candidate has to go through the format, but how people don't support candidates out of any love in their hands.
They look for their own glory, first of all, and because they think it's worthwhile to
or whatever it is, out of being involved in whatever way.
That's what fundraising.
Ed Valentine told me that in the 62 campaign.
Called me and said, don't get cross-eyed with these fundraisers.
He said, don't.
Just remember, they're not doing it for the candidate.
They're doing it for themselves.
The motivation of a fundraiser is the glory of getting that money away from another guy.
And that's the kick that he gets.
Always remember that.
He uses a candidate, and that's true whether it's for candidate fundraising or for the United Way or to build a symphony center or whatever it is.
He said, you just got to remember that, though.
The kind of guy that can do that is the kind of guy who does it.
It's the same as the guy who sells vacuum cleaners.
It's the satisfaction of making a sale.
He doesn't give a damn whether people get their homes vacuumed or not.
Very good point.
And there's a lot to that.
They go in.
They may be sort of overdoing it.
In my case, they, well, you've got to do a little belcher and all that.
And I'm talking about staff and cavern and all that.
The staff and the cavern people that you appoint, if you basically are your creatures,
And they ought to be coming to lift you rather than you're trying to lift them.
Would you really agree that's the case?
Well, sure they should.
Plus this hypocrisy of, you know, they've got to kid themselves.
Like I say, I've performed in great public service and I've given up a lot to do it.
But basically that's bullshit.
Every one of us is here because we're better off being here than we would be if we were.
Well, the point is,
They'll all learn when they leave.
The most honest statement that's been made by anybody who has left the cabin, the clerk who's made the cliffhanger, he says, anybody who tells you he doesn't miss it, he was a liar.
Now that's an honest, honest statement, you know.
Wasn't it?
Yep, totally honest.
It started working out.
I heard it all out there, you know.
Well, you know damn well, it's the high point of their lives with everybody who's here, at every level.
But the currency.
I mean, you know, I'm just saying, boy, you know, even if people like coming in the afternoon, they're going to slide in the bus.
It's a hell of a thrill to be in that goddamn house and dance with the White House and drink champagne with those black-backed gunners and the Serbs and, you know, the militaries and their splendid uniforms and the pretty little girls.
It's Jesus Christ.
It's a hell of a thing.
No question.
It's a hell of a thing, isn't it?
You know the parties that we've gone to that had to go through New York and Los Angeles and the rest?
And they, I mean, hell, I remember out of Los Angeles, people, they thrilled they could get the Consul General to come to something.
We don't even have ambassadors.
You understand?
That's right.
Goddamn ambassadors up in here.
Or, hell, you know, if Mayor Yorkey comes to a dinner or something, and everybody...
I remember particularly in the International.
So yeah, that person on the bench has probably been hoping all of his life he'd get a sign in Washington as the second secretary.
You know, so that's all a question of life.
So for times, the second secretary never gets in this place.
I know, at least I always would love to, but.
Well, we finally had her hurt a kid last night.
And I said, Jesus, how did that happen?
And I said, it was awful.
Horrifying.
It really was.
It didn't bother me.
It was really shocking, the path.
And Rose, of course, who came up after I had passed her, was, I mentioned, and the thing, she, of course, had been drinking on the L-set.
And she was sitting on the end, and they had to restrain her.
She was going to go up and tear her to death.
Rose was?
Yes, sir.
You're going to tear the goddamn girl's eyes out.
I see Martha Mitchell's coming.
Martha Mitchell, you're a terrible person.
That's good.
That's good.
That's where, you know, she is a problem in some ways.
She is called that.
You know, she says what people feel.
You're damn right.
And she's not, she's terrible.
When Mark was sitting with me, Anthony is from here, but it was the guy, the woman, the girl, she changed her name off to Jew from Canada.
And it wasn't a regular member of the race.
I remember she would pick up the building and she got out of L.A.,
All of a sudden, she had a man in the street corner.
I said, what do you call her?
And he says, you know what that is?
Daughter of a whore.
And that's a bad word.
He says, oh, that's just not bad.
She says, well, she's a whore.
Big whore.
Very big whore.
Some of our, I know, softheads are covers for her.
Why don't I get up and stop Colin from throwing her out?
I couldn't.
The audience was, you see, what happened is she hadn't gotten that thing up there and made this little speech.
And what, you know, she'd been smart.
She'd hung it up and made a speech.
Please stop the war.
Stop
But when she went on and said, God bless Daniel Ellsberg, God bless the Americans, then you knew he was a communist.
You know what I mean?
Or a total radical.
Because the Americans had nothing to do with wars, you know.
They had to do with other things.
They were bomb-throwers.
So then he stepped back in there.
That happened.
Everybody was shocked.
They sang the first number to the smattering of the clothes I had bought in the conflict.
A clerk on it started to say that you didn't trust me at all, by the way.
He started to say, I didn't plan it.
We didn't plan it first.
We're very honored to be here, but I was all there to him.
And somebody in the back of the room said, well, that's right.
And they all started, and then Rose, they all started getting young, and I didn't relax, and I didn't, there were at least probably a dozen that said, throw her out, including some of the singers, apparently.
At least that's what the paper said.
I don't know what the paper said, but anyway, what's the post?
Post says that there were a ton of singers that said, some of the people in the singing group also said throw her, that some of the people in the audience said throw her out, and then some of the singers said throw her out.
But that, and the comment on all of it said, leave her.
Because he tried to take her sign away, and she would get up.
The singers afterwards were all crying, girls.
Everybody noticed that.
I don't have to thank them.
But when they said to throw her out, I know that.
who find people who say that I should have gotten out, says, oh, no, this is a free country.
Those that I've heard of are thinking, oh, so this is a free country.
He was right to say, not to arrest you.
Not to arrest you, that's fine.
But the point is, it is not a free enough country to be have bad manners.
And if I had, I mean, I did go, you know, several Singapore beers and all that sort of thing.
My whole goddamn group might walk out of the city.
Yeah.
So I couldn't risk it.
I just wasn't going to get it myself.
So I just sat there and looked at her with a little smile.
Let her go through.
God, what a stinking feeling, though, to see something like that.
Of course, the net is all the other way.
She does her own cause if she truly believes in it.
Oh, well, if she gets off the horse line, she'll be sitting on all the clothes.
I don't know.
I don't believe her.
It didn't help her in the kit.
She didn't do it like it did bounce, a bad bounce on her in the kit on the basis that it was bad manners.
And we'll on this one, on the same basis.
If you want to protest, that's fine.
But not when you've been invited to the house to sing in honor of the president's guest.
That's right.
And we agree on that.
Congratulations.
Well, if you're thinking about the Marine Band, everybody played that.
I said, I'm impressed.
I did it.
I didn't do the pitches.
I said, I thanked them.
They were such pretty girls.
I said, I hope they have 50 years of success like the later years.
I said, we all should.
Those aren't fighting Marines.
Whether they fought or not, if they were in Vietnam, that's all that matters.
I thought that some man pressed me, you know, to find out whether he ever been there.
Well, if they've been to Vietnam, they've fought a lot.
That's right.
You're there.
You're there.
No question.
No question.
All I hope is that some of them have been to Vietnam.
I know.
That's what they have.
Well, then, it's really unfortunate.
Well, you know, you check out, you would think of all the groups you could find, Ray Connors, Ingrid Moss, Squares, and you could, well, it is.
That's the kind of group it is.
They're like, they're like Walmart as well.
And, uh, and they found us, picked up, they could have got the word in our convoy, she was in a little more control, perhaps.
She was the only one in the group who came to the rehearsal in hippie clothes and, uh, whatever.
I've got a watch.
Along with those entertainers.
You look at them, you know, we had that before.
Hell, we've had, you know, we had that communist in there in 1776, Howard DeSilva.
Oh, yeah.
Blame Ben Franklin.
We knew he was there.
We were worried about him.
But that was fine.
Here we go.
It's a different era.
Well, I think we did handle it right.
Absolutely.
I don't feel like it makes sense.
I thought Connett proved throwing her out was correct.
Particularly after the audience.
I wouldn't have asked her to be thrown out.
But on the other hand, she knew it was so.
Well, it was right to have her thrown out.
Because she clearly wasn't there to entertain the guests.
And that's what those people were there for.
Connett was the right one to do it.
He had to.
And it was very good of him to move to Atlanta.
And the poor guy is probably only dying.
You know, just the high point of their life, these little girls that come across in this plane, that actually in an airplane, they're all sobbing and staring at one another.
They're all the girls, of course, and the seven others.
And, of course, what really put the, it made them sobbing because it was, like, it was a pain in the neck for them to expect that.
For once, I got that.
Well, let it happen at a better time.
If you're going to get a war protest.
I haven't heard it.
It was so good.
Oh, yes.
He said why.
Because I didn't know this was going to happen.
Apparently, she hasn't read the President's speeches.
Good for him.
See, it's still the President's time first.
Or they missed it.
They didn't miss it.
They deleted it.
They don't miss stuff like that.
No, it was clear to everybody.
Everybody was talking about how great it was.
I mean, how insistent it was.
But he didn't have the good sense to mention that.
It's something like that.
No matter how you screen or anything else, it's inevitable.
It's something like that.
Thank God.
I hate parties anyway.
That's one thing I would do.
The one thing where I can't help but comment on, they are serious.
They love to sit and visit with people.
If I want to visit with anyone, I'd like to visit with them.
But I don't like to do it with anyone.
That's my problem.
See what I mean?
That is where I'm at.
Well, if I'm mad at them, I just don't like it at all.
Well, when I say I don't like it, I do it with mine once a month or...
They love to do it.
You know, Johnson said around here, after every goddamn nightfall in the Leehars, they live and eat and breathe.
And that's the problem.
We don't have anybody in the goddamn cavern or anybody that can set on gas.
You know what I mean?
About important things?
Yeah.
I'll make myself a little more serious.
I don't think that's the problem.
I think the problem is that to the extent there is one, it's just freezing the skids at the
Yeah, I think it's a lack of enough staff to do a hell of a big job.
And trying, and you know, despite his brilliant ability to analyze problems and so forth, I think he tries to take a hold of and march too many balls.
You know, God damn it, he's so good at that.
I mean, the Treasury, the United States, or the Council, they've done a lot of political work.
That's right.
Now, you know, it's the way I avoid trouble.
Just don't get worried about stuff.
But see, he's on guard because they keep him on guard.
He buys this myth of looking out for those White House guys.
They're going to run something by him.
That's true.
And the press is always on there.
That's right.
Lots of bastards.
Well, two bastards.
We just got into this, and the White House guys are on his side, and they ain't got to run the other side.
That's my name, John.
Whatever it is.
I ain't going to work with him.
And Irvin.
Irvin will have something.
Just tell Irvin to forget the goddamn vaccine.
That's what I'm going to do.
I'm not sure how much longer.
I don't care long about it.
I'm not sure I'm poor about it.
Maria and equipment.
That was leaked, you know.
It was in the paper.
Oh, yes.
Inevitable.
It doesn't matter.
No, it doesn't matter.
But it's...
Your university leaked it.
What?
Yeah, we've gotten, you know, some kind of grants that we had to work out, you know, a lot of things.
Well, I thought most people should actually talk about it.
She was, you know, of course she might have had
Well, that is such a question, since she was supposed to.
I said, first of all, they'll write about the party because they haven't been doing it.
I said, the second point is that most people are going to be on our side, not on the side of the pitch.
No question.
And I just don't, and I think that's true.
Absolutely.
And she said, there's other people that are on there.
Somebody in the back of the room said, well, don't throw her out there.
I don't believe her, but we can try to find her or something like that.
That's the softheads.
We've got softheads around poverty that are always afraid to say anything.
It would have been terrible if you used to throw her out or arrest a girl or something like that.
I sat there like a mummy.
I never moved a muscle.
It just paralyzed me.
It's one of those things that
Especially that audience.
You can talk about as square a line as long as you get hit.
Yeah.
Ooh.
Spirits.
Irish camera.
Yeah, well, Kimmy probably had her bumped off then.
But that gave everybody something to talk about.
Of course, it was a beautiful party up there, wasn't it, sorry?
I bet it was.
I called on Billy Graham, Bill Rauner's father,
They're not bad.
They're fine, fine people.
Were they surprised that Michael B. and I didn't get hurt?
I think so.
I can't tell, but at least they had me surprised, which was important.
That's great.
That's one of my most inner-toilet concerns.
Can you imagine what Chris Grudenveld is for a conversation in New York and most of us in other places when we get back?
Everybody knows the whole story, you know, every step of it.
They'll get embellished and expanded.
That's right.
That's right.
That's it.
Take care.
Take care.
You don't have any help, Ray?
I'll start with her.
Oh, I think we probably will.
I don't hurt Ray.
I get him.
I get each other.
Most people in the country wouldn't have noticed that Ray Cunham was entertaining at the White House last night.
And now most people will not be entertaining at the White House last night.
And people go to Ray Cunham concerts.
Bill did a lot of good, I think.
Any notoriety is good.
And he didn't do anything wrong.
No, he was perfectly nice.
Except to have not screamed the girl.
After we got hot open.
She carried the goddamn thing in her dress on her head.
She had told Pat, was it a sign that she pulled out?
Yeah, it was a false sign.
What did it say?
Stop the killing.
Stop the killing.
And she hung the gun in the out there.
And Pat said she'd done it very carefully.
She would notice this, that the sign was exactly the same color as the dress.
Huh.
So it had been made carefully.
My guess is that she was planning on this.
You know what I mean?
My guess is that somebody wanted to make an incident.
Do you remember how that was like?
The bitch?
Yeah.
And those two senators brought her in.
These things are not accidents.
I don't think this 30-year-old Jew from Canada who, you know, brought this up and all that, and all that sort of thing.
That's my guess.
You don't have everything.
These things just kind of...
We heard a sign.
This is just the press program.
Five minutes.
Five minutes.
And they'll walk out in the press room.
You're not involved in the press room.
Oh, no.
Yeah, they weren't going to.
You can't.
You want to.
Yes.
What they wanted was a picture.
Oh, hell, I can't even walk out.
Say, I'm delighted in Jesus.
Then I'm going to suggest that it's really not necessary to have a picture in here, sir.
I don't think we'd be very happy unless you ever let them happen in here for the reason that we give that to her, see.
Better picture.
Or do I swear to her?
Well, why don't you, if you, no, she's not being sworn at.
You know what I mean.
Do I later?
I mean, there may be, well, yeah, I mean, she did swear.
Yeah.
And there is when we, see, that's when we want to get the other women in and sort of a battle club.
We maybe don't want to.
Or we've got low-key in too much for my not going out in the nose.
We don't want to low-key it.
You see what I mean?
Swearing it in is never a story.
I mean, that'll be a nice story for the family.
But I think this is a story, isn't it?
When the fact that she's in... Yeah.
But we... Well, we figured that she didn't need to... Did she have a concurrent there?
No.
No.
I said, no, that's right.
He said, no.
I said, they belong to us.
He said, Tom, why don't you go with his client, Isaiah Harris.
I said, no.
Well, think a little about it.
I said, I'm glad to have her.
He said, okay, he's a pretty woman.
You know, these things are the duty that you want to do.
I don't know what happened last night.
What do you have in mind?
Sarah.
You want to do something to her?
Sarah, go ahead and do something to her.
I don't know what happened last night.
I don't know what happened last night.
I don't know what happened last night.
I don't know what happened last night.
I don't know what happened last night.
There is a press out there.
There's a press that's there.
And then you can make some remarks in here, and they'll catch it in here, and then use that if you want to say anything.
And then we'll do what you want in here.
There is yet to be confirmed.
We don't know where.
Well, that's the other thing.
Maybe if she is to be a burden to you.
Maybe if she is to be confirmed, it would be better to swear her in later and make something out of the goddamn thing and call the press there.
Because it should be said, I've got something to say, and I...
I mean, we're not exploiting the story enough.
That's my problem.
The members are confirmed.
The chairman you applied, there's no confirmation of the chairmanship.
I think you have to confirm the members.
And I think that's why you're not swearing in that.
You're simply announcing...
I don't know.
...the original nominator...
And I'm sure we don't have any people here, but I'll be sure everybody.
Well, Frank, I don't know.
She's, that's her job.
And they're all set for, you know, making a major push on it.
And that, the thought here was the still picture that you had heard that I was going to send.
It's really a Sunday paper story.
Well, it's a no, Mr. President, you've required this confirmation.
Yeah.
I haven't come in.
I haven't come in at the present time.
Well, it's loud.
So the press is actually having him sit down.
If you're ever sitting over here, you can stand.
Yeah.
Perhaps sitting as though you're meeting Mr. President.
Yeah.
I'm standing watching you here.
I must say, I'm sorry people missed that last night because it was an interesting event.
So, this is my new servant, and I'm going to work with her a little bit.
Oh, I have to come afterwards.
Oh, Sarah, she loves you.
She loves you.
She loves you.
She loves you.
She loves you.
She loves you.
Well, good morning.
Good morning, President Perry.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Herb, how are you?
How are you?
Hello, George.
Good morning, President Perry.
Are you?
Can I just see you?
You're down.
Are you?
Get on over here and sit down.
I'm going to give you the best chair because you are the nominee.
I was going to make a statement today.
I mean, you're not wanted, Mark.
You sit there.
George, you sit there.
You said that good.
I was going to chat with the president.
You said .
I hadn't realized that you had .
So you could go back .
Yeah.
But I learned later, I didn't have to do it this way.
And George, probably, he had read a few of those, and he learned a lot from them.
but an indication of what a momentous work it is that you don't even understand.
You don't know what it's about, but you think it may not exist.
You see that?
I'm not sure.
Well, when did you write that book?
Um, right at the end of the war and after the war.
Yeah.
Right at the end of the war in Chicago.
Where from?
No, in Richmond.
In Richmond.
In Venice.
Early in the morning and late at night, no?
How did he move, say, from nuclear physics?
There is a relationship there.
Was he always interested in economics?
Well, he never was in physics.
It was always mathematics.
But, well, I don't think there's a story.
I see.
This is all, obviously, hearsay.
There's a story that when he was at Gideon, I think he was doing grad school.
I had a professor, I guess.
He was having a friendly drinking evening with a group of companions.
And one of them said, I have this interesting problem here in economics.
And maybe you'd like to take a look at it.
And so he did, and he jotted down a few notes, which later became one of the basic articles in economics.
But his background, in the first instance, mathematics.
And then the mathematics moved into science, of course.
That's a weird field.
And then also, do you understand what Mark is talking about?
No, I don't think so.
That's why you haven't read it.
I haven't read the council book.
But it is important to know that it's not a corporate politics book.
It's a theory of change.
Yes, a theory of change is the subject of that book.
It deals with the problem of how people contend with each other in various situations.
Each party doesn't know what the other party will do with this national political situation.
I agree with you.
Well, uh, Ms. Whitten must be confirmed in the Senate, so she will not be able to say anything on her own behalf today, but, uh, we're delighted to meet you.
She has accepted the appointment, the nomination, and as our chit-chat here indicates, while I'm sure most stories might not have been inspired, which appeared in the papers this morning, this is a very important, because this is the first time
So be it.
That is important.
But what is more important than that, I think, is that of those that were considered for this motion that Herb Stein had, this is what the first comment was, and this is an indication of our concern.
I think it's the beauty of this administration.
I think that most people who are Democratic or Republican in New York are calling particular grains of concern.
that we don't, we are not concerned about color, we're not concerned about race, we're not concerned about religion, we're not concerned about sex, we're concerned about quality and ability.
You don't have to feel the, I always say this about people, but in this field, we have now added to the council staff
an experience despite her years, and also an intellectual ability of the first time.
And that's what Stein wants.
That's what Solomon wants.
Your alt number is 2-1.
2-1.
That's better.
That's better.
Well, I guess that I can say how very, very pleased I am to be here and how pleased and honored and excited I am to be coming and to be given a chance
to tackle some of the most exciting and important and difficult, challenging problems there are in the country today.
One of the things about being an economist is that, unlike doctors and lawyers and so forth, we very seldom get a chance
to practice our profession as well as to teach.
And so it's a very unique, really, opportunity to be given this chance to practice, I hope in the highest sense, my profession.
And also, I was on the council staff last year, and I left Friday, August 13th, which was for many, many reasons a bad time to leave.
When I was just packing up, I left the council, and I had a call from a member of the council staff on Sunday the 15th, saying, be sure and wash your television set tonight, because the president's really going to drop a bomb.
And my eight-year-old daughter said, ah, he is?
Where?
But in any case, I really feel that I'm coming home to work again with Herb and with Edgar Solomon.
I'm very grateful to you, Mr. President, for inviting me back.
Well, we're happy to have you.
This is a very important time for the Council's work this year.
It must now be a very good year.
And also,
getting, which is very important on the council, a variety of experience, raw basic experiences.
And with the experience she's recently had, she will conduct our relations, mainly with the Price-Ways Control System, which she is now an expert in.
She has led a number of the price control systems for three months.
That's more experience than anybody else.
And so she has a lot to do, very kind, very helpful.
Well, we'll get to you when you get off.
Your husband is a professor of English.
Professor of English.
So yesterday, we were chairmen.
No, I'm not going to point that out.
Well, I was an English minor, so I managed to take a lesson.
Well, if you don't like the scene, I don't want you around.
It's an elephant.
Anything that goes right with the economy, now you get credit for it.
Anything that goes wrong, perfect for you guys.
Wanderer!
Wanderer!
Come here, Harry!
that I love fair.
I think this is .
The women I have talked to are absolutely ecstatic.
Well, Barbara, the thing that I want to do is this, if you will, and you would remember this, because people will ask you.
I want to be sure that we do emphasize the point that I made, that she was not selected because she was the one.
As a matter of fact, in fairness, I will say,
that in a matter of our Supreme Court experience, I know George.
I said, now, George, from now on, in every area, I said, I don't want you to be blind to the possibilities of if a woman is qualified.
I put her on the list.
And so in this area, when this came up, I said, and George was mentioned in various names, and I said, well, your name is on it.
So we checked it out.
But she was selected because she was first qualified.
I mean, top quality.
And I think it is very good what the woman said, because as distinguished from the court, my guess is, considering the number of economists in the country and the number of lawyers in the country, there are probably a greater percentage of women lawyers than there are women economists.
You see, the woman economist is a very, I think, unusual, I don't know if that's true.
It is true.
Now, that being the case, this breakthrough in terms of, you know, the fact that we really want to find qualified people, this breakthrough, it seems to be very significant because in the field of economics, at the top, right in the White House, the top...
Presidents, advisors, we have a selective environment.
Are you lawyers?
No, no, I'm not.
I told people, I said, John, prepare me a woman who can get by the mirror.
Well, it takes about 20 years to make a lawyer.
All right.
I mean it, I mean it, I mean it.
If you do it on the basis of, ah, here's an attractive girl, we want to put her on the stat, and we'll go out and broker it with women's revenue, right?
I mean, that's fine, too.
But my point is, that is increasing.
I don't think we're going to find anyone with a better problem.
One thing I think is very important.
John is here today.
John Conway.
You know, he's got that, too.
Yesterday was a day.
But at the earliest possible time, I'd like for you, Herc, to escort Mrs. Whitman over to have a good talk with him.
John, she's going to have to work with him.
And I talked to him on the phone and told her we were going to send an audition over.
Because you'll like it.
He's quite involved.
And on both the price and the address, there's a few men working on those.
As a matter of fact, you might get a call later today and say that this one seems to be just traveling.
We'll write that down.
I think it's going to be done.
We're going to go to Paris.
Paris, OECD.
Well, I and I have worked quite a bit.
Well, that's true.
Yeah, that's fine.
Just so we cover that basis, of course.
And I know Paul about it.
I had a talk with him about it last night.
Oh, yeah.
Tell everybody.
You would, if you could get maybe, you might get John a call this morning and tell him that we just got nominated.
We're going off to Paris.
He's going back to Pittsburgh.
Since you're not here, we're going to sign this tour.
very well.
I think it's good there.
It's good to have him, you know, well, or get him worked up, yeah.
But, you know, we haven't discussed what we're going to try for him.
I know, but I just, in fact, we don't know.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
You have two, two, two.
A boy and a girl.
A boy and a girl, right.
Which is the older.
The elder's boy.
How old?
Twelve and eight.
Twelve and eight.
Well, I don't know.
Twelve and eight, eight.
I don't know.
I think you missed it.
That's right.
No, Mommy, you can come.
All right.
All right.
My daughter, Julia Trish, will be pleased to be named your mother.
They're always bugging me, you know, they, I, I, I, well, I just do.
The, uh, Brown Christmas, and I'm all talking about it, and I thought the court, and I said, hey, we are sure there is a qualified woman for this degree.
And I said, I'm sure there is, too, but the American Bar won't say so.
So, uh...
She's pretty.
That helps.
Both are both good looking gals.
You can tell that Brian knows us.
And this isn't the kind of thing where it's a big story anyway.
It's one we'll seek out.
It's one we can start playing up though.
Then, on the scoring end, I think we ought to get all our top women appointees at that, on the basis, not that we got them, but that they insisted.
They wanted to be friends with a lot of it, that you had a woman in this unique new post, and had that expertise.
Then you have Mrs. Ben Lois and Ellen Bentley and, you know, all that crap.
There.
And you get through the spring, and they put them in.
Oh, couldn't reach her.
Well, I will.
Now that's, uh, did you see Colson's end?
But it was fun to talk to her, too, you know, about her father.
I mean, she said that beautiful little story about her boy trying to drop a bomb.
Oh, did she?
Where?
You know, I missed Wallace at first, as he did, as he did, or almost did.
But she said, apparently, you know, I'm an old bottle of this.
73?
No, no, no, no, 69.
I thought he was older.
No, no, he's 69.
Good God, how could a man 69 look like him?
He's astonishing.
He was one of the most amazing men of all time.
And she sat by me, which was nice.
She said a very, very interesting thing, which I think might be true.
It'll depend on how long it remains true, because the job is about that wearing.
You see what it does to people.
But she said she observed Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy
And I don't think it's quite true, by the way.
I didn't see any.
But again, Anne Johnson.
And she said that, and of course, Roosevelt.
You could see Roosevelt aging.
If you looked at the Book of Inaugurates, at the end, he's a ghost.
He just went right out.
Well, he really was.
She said that she's, of course, she's been in a long time.
Well, he's been in a long time.
But he died.
He's about to first turn.
But she said that
that she thought that I had aged less than anybody she had seen.
That human, as a matter of fact, looked better than before, which is a curious thing.
But what destroys most of them is they sit around and worry the shit out of themselves.
Johnson destroyed himself by worrying about his goddamn press.
So it's always a few things.
To take those things in there, you're bound to kill.
And the rick of the ticker, you go in the other room, rick the thing off the ticker.
Bound to kill.
You know, every time, did you know that every time that this poor son of a press official, press secretary, breathed, he'd rick it off the ticker and read what the poor guy said in the briefing.
Not only that, he had a bug in his office and listened to the briefing.
He hasn't said so.
He could listen to the briefings.
And he'd hit him in the middle of a briefing sometimes.
He'd call him on the phone.
The poor guy would be briefing and he'd call him on the phone and say, God damn you, that isn't the way to say that.
Cuss him out.
And then the poor guy would have to recover himself.
Go on.
But you can't do that.
You can't do that.
But that isn't an unusual comment.
That comes from
I think it's basically true.
It is true.
But the aging factor is extremely important.
What she was, Mrs. Holt was saying, I was remarking what an amazing man he was.
He's 69.
He was born in 1903.
Some of them just came back from this trip around the country.
He's out every night fighting in New York to do Jewish, then flies back to San Francisco to do a Catholic thing.
does the bad things, does movies, does television, the rest.
And here he is, this jaw-dropping, unmasked man.
Also, that's the reason I never let you know what I think about you.
Of course, Hope, Hope just gives me hell every time.
He says, you've just got to play more golf.
It was 20 years ago.
He had a severe case of high blood pressure.
You know, the question was whether he could stay in it.
Well, you see, that's one thing I remember.
But she was remarking that I had gave you us in the office when you came here, Johnson.
Which, fair enough.
Kennedy looked bad in it, you know, because it was fucked up, and it wasn't that good.
But Jackson, almost overnight, turned into an old-looking man.
Part of his problem was he drank too much, and he ate too much.
But he just lived heavy and hard in that.
Shows up.
But he had done that in the Senate when he was majority leader.
My God.
But he didn't sit there with his arms triggered going obsessed with those.
Although, you know, I never forget those horrible days in the Senate when I had to go in there with him.
You know, they used to have an all-night drink.
Well, I would start at four in the afternoon in that little room off the floor.
How they dealt with it, I don't know.
I used to do a little, but I just never did much.
Sheltz was just telling me an interesting thing.
He followed up your phone call at the meeting by offering to come over and do the economic call.
He offered to come over to the economic meeting.
He said, fine.
They set up an appointment for Monday.
A little while later, the PR guy at the budget office called and said, what is this about your phone call at the meeting on Monday afternoon?
George said, how did you find out about that?
He said, CBS called me.
And I said, well, what do you mean?
And he said, Mike Wallace is doing a special on me for 60 minutes.
And they are going to have a camera covering your thing.
And Sir Henry goes, when you go over,
It's very important that they know that they are going to do that.
I tell you, the way to do it is to go in the back ass way, get ahold of the walls, and say that Henry Kissinger is going to breathe.
And then you see that I think it's fine for him to kind of walk down and breathe George.
What breathing counts is that Meany stands with us on four or eight.
Meany had the White House entrance over this week, and Mike Bolas was doing filming.
And Meany asked if it could be, if that portion could be filmed.
Well, it's interesting.
Meany wants to show that he isn't broken at all.
No, because he says that he had cut the rapport with the White House.
Is that funny?
Well, no.
No, it's not.
I think it's very significant.
I think he learned in this deal that the White House was more important to him than he was to the White House.
Exactly.
Precisely.
And also, it's all of his pride and everything, and his partisanship.
He cannot help but think, basically, the warm-hearted, you know, Irishman he is appreciating a little courtesy.
He would not reflect it, and it's what he says, because he's a terrific partisan.
But the Irish do appreciate courtesy.
It's the British who do not.
Thank you.
I totally agree.
As I say, who knows what goes through the mind of a man at that age.
He might take his last hurrah in a very odd way.
The way he turned on his own people this week, that was just extraordinary.
That's never happened.
And then we were just talking about this magnificent woman, Maria Whitman.
She's pretty.
She's brainy.
She's obvious.
She's one of the great fans of America.
And she's articulate.
You've got three people that can talk to her spokesman like that.
All three of us.
And she's going to be great.
And it's about I want her.
She should be on today's show.
So let her get her teeth in them.
Confirm that her teeth have been confirmed.
Let her get confirmed first.
And then come out.
I'm just a faction proud to be here.
This is the time to strike.
It's a big story.
Well, it's a big story now anyway.
It's not time.
It's a little difficult before she's confirmed a week.
My thought is that...
Confirmation is a fall.
Well, but see, she can't get on the Today Show without taking questions, and she's got to take what questions are asked.
But my thought is that we've worked up some things this morning, getting in with the women's magazines, and also all of the economic business leaders.
The point that I made in my brief today in the press, after they left, was...
this, that this was more significant in terms of recognizing a woman who was qualified in appointing a lawyer.
Because the percentage of women lawyers, of all lawyers, is far higher than the percentage of women economists, of all economists.
There are very few women economists.
But Woodard Stein, you know, had low key ways of doing it.
He said, you know, he said you could have a Marine on equipment.
And then you have to drop down 100 before you get to somebody else.
That's just as even in her league.
I mean, as he approaches her.
So, you know, she is the one in the country that could qualify.
Isn't that something?
It's surprising because out in the field, there's no reason why a woman couldn't excel.
The women who are good at math are very good at math.
And it's a professional field that a woman would have no problem with.
But you see, the reason is it's so closely related to business.
Yeah.
Business is a man's world pretty much.
Other than old Sylvia Porter, there's been no woman that's really gone anywhere.
Sylvia Porter, right.
We don't want her to lose her credibility.
We want her to lay it out and say, boy, this woman can't be one hell of a manager for us.
But we've got that whole team now.
The council can be used.
And I didn't see them or anything.
I just tried to be sure that the sign that checked us would come.
And he said he'd had it checked with him.
Oh, yeah.
You're sure?
Yes, I am.
But he had not had it, because I asked him about it.
I don't think he had it.
He only had it.
Of course, I must say, I was probably a little bit influenced by that recollection of a half hour presentation.
But I want to show you how much a guy impressed people that he said, well,
At that time, he had cancer.
I didn't realize that.
This game theory book?
This game theory book?
It's fascinating.
Have you read it?
Yeah.
I read it some time ago.
I think I read it as a textbook.
It's a basic.
It's a great book.
It's a great book.
It's a great book.
Well, it's this whole period, gaming period, they've built all kinds of stuff off of it.
On that, it entered steel, especially in the whole international.
I think it makes you think better.
I was just looking, I haven't had a chance to give Chuck the, uh, dope on that pole yet.
Before we get into the pole, what'd you think of that, that, uh...
ringer hauling through into the line.
I said, we won't get any play out of our party.
So I told my wife, I said, of course, it's like all the mortified fire.
That's terrible.
Now I'm supposed to play that one.
Anyway, now the party is out and at least it got in the story to the width that people were being honored.
Isn't that in the story some time?
Oh, yes.
It got on the radio this morning.
It came up.
And they gave it a very thorough play as to what the occasion was, as well as Gail's badge of peace.
Those things really, I don't think they help the opposition.
They just make people feel sorry for it.
They may have the opposite effect.
They feel an argument.
Because our people get so goddamn mad, and I think the opposition would say, well, it's sort of a poor show, poor score.
Oh, it doesn't help.
Especially where she was not an American citizen.
I've made it even more rare.
She hadn't even applied for citizenship.
She wasn't going to be black.
But also, doing such a crude, goddamn way.
Pulling things out of her grasp.
Pulling things out of her grasp.
So forth.
And it won't happen again.
It's a protocol.
Protocol out.
I don't know whether I heard that, but you could hear the jeering and the yelling, and you knew that everybody was just as mad as in hell.
Well, I think that, oh, wow, I have the, I have some of our...
But the audience was out of control.
Well, your line, which played beautifully about, let's have a hand for the Marine Corps band, many of whom have been in Vietnam, is great.
Play it in the back.
That was a good needle.
A marvelous needle.
A marvelous needle.
No, this is kind of a defense manager that would be able to say, well, what do you think?
Well, especially when it happened, Mr. President.
If it had been during... Connor, did they have what he said?
Well, apparently she hasn't been reading the President's speeches.
Who said that?
Connor.
Connor?
Well, he apologized.
He apologized.
I heard her apologize.
Apparently she hasn't been reading the President's speeches.
I think if it had happened in the last week in December when we were farming, it would have been rough because it would have given a little fuel to get out.
And the whole country really applauding your peace efforts for someone to get up and do it in such bad taste does not hurt you at all.
That helps if anything.
And she said, I was going to charge out there and tear her eyes out of the head.
And I was going to throw her out myself.
She's one of those men who's done it.
She would have.
Oh, yes.
She reemerged the middle of the cousin.
She's a terrible widow.
I don't think, I don't think that kind of stuff is good.
I don't think anger, for certain senses, is unnecropical.
No, you're good.
She's going to be here in a while.
She's going to be here in a while, that's okay.
If she gets here, you can never come in.
I'll throw her out.
No, I believe people like to see you angry.
Well, I just sat there like a snake and smiled at the whole thing.
Well, under those circumstances, I hate her.
But it was a cold deal.
I never mentioned the little bitch.
I couldn't get her to mention it to me.
Oh, yeah.
It's all right.
You used the perfect way to respond to it.
You couldn't have found a better way.
I mean, you didn't acknowledge it, but you made your point very well with the raincoats.
Well, thank you.
You're the same person.
I thank you for that.
Thank you so much.
It's okay.
Turn it down, please.
You mean about my procedure?
He did not say much about that.
The press reporter, he was saying that as he was dragging her out the door...
Yeah, one little thing they're doing with Martha, which is fascinating.
Clark McGregor said, Barbara McGregor, the one thing that the Congresswives kept saying to her is, what's Martha Mitchell like?
So Barbara always said, you know, that's a thing we can do.
So she has started a series of lunches.
And she gives her, for a group of about a dozen or two dozen, congressional wives with white potential.
That's a series of people with white potential.
And she said, number one, everyone turns it down.
They cancel all their other engagements and everything else because they're just absolutely out of my land or so.
Beautiful.
Yeah, she does in a good way.
Very, very well.
All of a sudden, Colson actually sent me in.
We were deciding, who's going to, how are we going to divide up those limbs?
I thought that was the reason, seriously.
Because she said this about everybody who fell.
Wasn't that the god damnest thing you ever saw?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you know what?
Either way, John, if she had just said, stop and kill us, now that's fine.
But when she said, God bless,
Well, I know she just came in.
Well, no, I don't think it was an accident.
I think it wasn't planned.
Somebody just set her up and put a planet on the floor where he caught it.
He was embarrassed.
They had to be very careful to be sure that it wasn't a person who was a bitch.
I'll tell you, I don't know who it was that set her up.
Rose said it was Mulcahy, but
I think that was the only choice we had.
I had to get out because the audience was so cold.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I thought it was, he was, he started telling me something and I said, look, I says, we're people who come here, we're running interested in therapy, and they're busy, and I'm right here, and I'm just worried, I don't have any advice, and so I said, that's it.
But I thought we had one better track of what he was saying, and I said, let's get a little ahead of the Marines, and yeah.
Well, I tell you, they didn't take pictures, John, the latter part.
I don't think that they took pictures of the presentation, but they did not take pictures of that.
Yeah, so they didn't take that.
Oh, that's hard to do when people tend to, you know, remember there was a Kemp incident.
They tend to line up, they just don't like bad manners.
That's right.
Yeah.
Oh, she sure was.
Well, you tell Martha that, uh, that if you take her out of there when she does the, uh, the carry-up, the, the deep, she'll just want to let me do it and have a match for her.
Okay.
All right.
Martha says...
The only thing that was televised, I understand, was the presentation of the medal.
They're not never supposed to televise a program.
I don't think they did.
I know I can throw a perfect straw by the way.
Yeah, the plan was just to cover the presentation tonight.
Because it wouldn't be you, isn't it?
Tonight's news will carry on.
They'll have a bitch on.
She'll be on the Today Show all day.
She'll be all around.
She's like, that's all right.
Oh, I don't think so.
I don't think they'll.
You mean that Gallifrey?
Sure.
It's different.
That was a kid during the height of the anti-war movement.
Oh, they'll pick this one.
Oh, they'll pick this one.
She had the courage.
It's all depressing.
They all know who did that.
I don't care.
It's a different movie.
No, it's different.
And it's exactly right.
Coyne did very well.
He got her downstairs and let the press talk to her, and she left.
It's a different mood in the country today, the expression, I think, as a result of your speech.
And for a while, it will be.
Well, you know, when I was talking to Robin about last night, the most significant thing about this last poll, Angel, when you were here, were you going to say something?
Well, I decided to give Chuck the dope on it.
And I just got that.
The analysis, Tom ,, I think that was fascinating.
Go ahead.
Well, he was just saying that it shows the size of the upsurge, both in terms of overall approval and in the handling of Vietnam.
Commander Headline and some steady union in Vietnam have been major factors.
He said, he makes the point that the strong edge the president shows over all three Democratic contenders may well represent a peak of approval that will gradually dissipate in the days to come as other events take over the headlines.
And these recent exposures you see in public conscience are presenting very strong support.
These things go on and on.
Yeah.
But he makes the point that the Gallup trial, he was taken January 7 to 9, the one that shows 43-42.
that that was right after Muskie's announcement.
Right.
And after a bomb in Oregon.
We were getting a lot of the lead, and all the lead had been on the Randall Show.
And we were on the third.
Right.
Yeah, but that's it.
It didn't get a huge amount of an audience.
It didn't get a big audience.
It has an effect on the people that see it.
And our telephone call, of course, was right after the peace thing, so you had the dominance.
Now,
We also, they had their state-by-state study in the field, which is a personal interview study, and that comes out next to 46, must be 37.
And it was in the field from January 3rd to 20th, so it covered the whole range up to the State of the Union, but nothing after the State of the Union.
And even that showed, and that's a secret ballot.
Oh, Jesus, that's pretty complicated.
Yeah, but there's something happening to them.
That's a national study, because they expand.
There's something back down in the United States that they, you know what I mean, there's something happening to us.
There's something we don't care about.
Okay.
A similar guy has a fascinating theory that he... Go ahead, Bob.
He said, I see, we could, I mean, if you could read, and I talked a lot about this last night, two summers and everything else, and, uh, God damn it, uh,
Everybody is, you know, we all go to extremes.
Four months ago, everybody said it's going to be Kennedy.
They're bound to be Kennedy.
Everybody, I mean, I can tell you that it's not going to be anything else.
You said it's going to be something else.
Four days ago, if you read this on the Internet, everybody's going to be musky, landslide or musky, maybe, soon maybe.
My point is, it's never that way any time.
These things don't change as much.
That's what I don't think.
I don't think they change as much.
He says the Gallop Old Town, he seems to be the one in variance with the other two.
Because our first hours take the same time.
Gallop, 46.37.
Gallop is taking 47.30, but it was before the Vietnam thing.
Ours, Chuck, taken the last couple of nights, shows 47.32.
47.32 on Husky.
Yeah, 46.33.
Yeah, I wrote it down.
What did it say?
It says 4632.
Well, 4632 is what it was.
13-9.
Now he's changed it to 4732-12-9.
It may have rounded off his .
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that's all right.
Thank you very much, Steve.
Thank you.
But he says the Gallup trial seems to be the one that learns with the other two, that all three are based on registered or will register voters, so it's the same central criterion.
He says the Gallup figures look a little peculiar in that there's only 3% no opinion.
If the Senator Gallup had 5% no opinion, our secret ballot thing is 6%, and our phone thing is 9%.
You'd expect another phone vote.
3% is too low for a no opinion.
It would be unrealistic to think any of this is stable, that any event that calls attention to an individual will register a short-lived effect that would dissipate with the occurrence of the next event involving a different personality.
Sure.
I'm quite disappointed.
Before we get close to the election, we have to remember that the electorate is tremendously volatile.
Because we all think politics, they do think politics.
But the average guy, you know, sitting there and watching his pretzels and drinking a beer, wondering about whether the Cowboys or the Redskins are going to win.
Shit, do you think he's going to be thinking, is it going to be Musk or Nixon?
There's a note right up there if you want it.
The President will tend to crystallize data becoming somewhat more stable.
Obviously, Democratic candidates will be getting more attention during this primary period.
The gap in the trial heats will probably close somewhat.
If the President can maintain his edge through the primary period into the start of the campaign, it will be a highly satisfactory situation.
Only when the final contestants are named will the figures really start to stabilize.
Then he goes on the performance question.
He's correlating the Gallup and Harris type of question.
He has some good, fair, poor versus the good, disagree.
And he gets into a little bit of a cross-tab type thing.
But getting back to the trial, he's given us the trial.
He's from our last home.
Oh, that's interesting to me.
From our last telephone call.
Yeah.
Well, Muskie is 46, 32, 13.
Kennedy is 45, 37, 12.
The third figure there is walks.
That's what walks is.
He has 14 points on Muskie.
Kennedy, which is a couple of the others.
And Humphrey, 50, 30, 12.
Now, when you do it without walks, which I think now would
He's been in the Democratic Party, yes.
He says he is, and he's playing it stronger now.
He's got a problem in California.
Well, he has to file, the AIP has to file that they're going to go for a slate of candidates in about the 1st of March.
So he's still in the Democratic Party.
I know I'm in the minority here with regards to Walsh being turned around.
Do you want him out?
i think if if we could win and get close to a 50 percent rather than having to get 42 or 43 that's good for the country that's true that's why what the second point is that with him out wow in the big cities of the north
The areas, the areas where he probably takes more of the Democrats than we are, that tends to really shrink up at the last, just as it did in 1950 and in 68.
You know, it shrank up.
He didn't help us in 68.
Not, not, not in 68.
In the South, I know he hurts us more than he works.
There's no question.
Nobody ever, now in the South, frankly, let me tell you, if we can get that goddamn South out,
140 electoral votes.
Yeah.
Now that also— Well, there's also the point that he wins the stop big.
You've got a real opportunity to move Democrats over to the Republican Party.
If you win the stop close with Wallace in, you don't.
Now, with the stop two, the problem I see there is that—
Oh, yeah.
It's all the way.
as far as he can go.
He'll go to them every time.
He will, but unless he gets a party out there, which is what we've just got to do.
If we can get McCarthy in, that's fine.
But he'll be in the center, just as, frankly, Kennedy stayed in the center.
Huber tried to stay in the center, you know.
Although Huber, of course, the beauty of having, if you haven't,
If you have a monster, now that's the other side of the Wallace thing, so we've got to think that out.
With Wallace in, I'm speaking out of the darkened space, then they've got to fight over there to get some of the Wallace vote.
That's right.
move further to the right.
So with Wallace Power, their tendency is to let us have that spectrum and then move a little further up.
I'm just thinking of how they're all going to start out.
Wallace Power, they will right off the side because they know they've got no chance of carrying a lead sheet in that zone.
Yes.
Because every pole shows that, and their poles have to show it, too, that you can carry every state in the South.
Oh, yes.
Absolutely.
We're going to get into some stepping positions around our campaign.
Yeah, they'll try to use that against us in the North.
These trial geeks are the best we have had.
and, frankly, the best we've had in 18 months.
So let's look at Wallace out for a second.
Yeah, great point.
When you take Wallace out against Muskie, he goes from 46 to 52, up six.
Muskie goes from 32 to 36, no change.
Why is that?
Because it must be more centrist.
Go ahead.
you go from 45 to 52, up seven.
He goes from 37 to 41, up four.
Same thing, and I decide he goes up one.
Against Humphrey, you go from 15 to 58.
He goes from 30 to 33.
And then decided to go straight.
All right, there's my theory.
All right, but that's the national votes.
Now, the next poll we've got, the Steele poll, which is the one that's personally re-polled, which we have the results but not tabulated yet, will do this by all the key states.
Then we can look at it on that basis.
and see whether it's a never-figured thing.
It's a never-figured thing.
It's that Wallace thing, though.
You know, it's a great organization, but they won't shrink on every California Wallace group.
That's right.
Well, that's not 5%.
Third parties always shrink when you get down to the final vote, because you don't realize there are these big Wallace voters.
But let me say, to have a solid sub, if we can get it, and we've got to play it where Wallace works,
You won't have to play it again.
No, we're about to play it.
Never call with my neighbor, Grant.
Sir, you've got to sweep that thing.
The other thing is, uh...
The numbers are interesting.
If you take that over... Over to EOB and get the pipe and tobacco.
There's a can of tobacco and pipe.
Yeah, go ahead.
Numbers are very interesting.
If you take that solid 140 votes out of itself, you only need one.
big northern state, along with the rest of the smaller states that we know we're going to get.
You only get 130 electoral votes in addition to the Senate.
if you start figuring the utahs and wyoming but you had them all up there's a possibility
I think the farm guys, the people who come in from the farm lobby, ditch and strain and scare us to death.
I think we're better off here than we think.
And it's improving daily.
And Butts really has turned out to be a great political asset.
Oh, the greatest belligerent in the whole world, Bill House, wrote me a letter.
He said, Bill House from Kansas, he was the head of the cattlemen.
He never heard him say a good word.
He's always writing with complaints.
He wrote and said...
I've got to hand it to you guys.
You've turned this whole of Butts into a great asset, and you're going to win this whole area.
He said everything's on the way afterwards.
Butts is exactly what we knew he was.
He's a guy who will go out and fight politically.
Butts is...
I'll tell you my conversation with him when I asked him to write the Democratic candidate.
I said, there's some feeling around here.
I said, Clark McGregor expressed it.
It may be a little too partisan for you.
He said, well, you've got the wrong fellow, the Secretary of Agriculture.
He said, you can't be too partisan for me.
And he wrote a piss-card of a letter.
None of them are going to answer it.
Well, he's going to have a press conference Tuesday and just cut their nuts off for not caring about the farmer.
And that's what we did.
Of course we did.
And when he's got an issue, it can be a good one that the farmers identify with.
Just hit it.
It won't be stand responsible.
That's right.
I'd like about three more like that.
You could really make some hay.
Some of the others.
That's what we were at.
I was just telling you that, Mr. President, that I called him the other night to suggest that he write letters to each of the Democratic presidential candidates who are in the Senate asking them to help on ending the doxia, because none of them are taking the position.
And I said in the course of the conversation, it's a great idea.
It's a great approach.
He said they won't be able to answer it.
And in the course of the conversation, I said, I think I should warn you, Earl, that there are some people in the White House who think that might be a little too partisan for you.
And he said, well, if they do, you've got the wrong Secretary of Agriculture, because there's no way you can be too partisan for me.
And he went off and said, well, that is just failing the market of war.
He's great.
You see, he's thinking also of the team and avoiding.
And how is it going to affect them?
are so concerned about their images.
Well, Buck says, no, you know, he says, I work for a great president.
I'm just a great man.
And he just got here afraid to say that.
But he's turning people on.
John Johnson told me that the two cars he took you up in Iowa just went wild.
And I was embarrassed to say what he was supposed to say.
Well, he's probably talking about the Farm Bureau thing or something.
Probably, yeah.
They were regular business people.
But it's all right.
Well, that's the constituency.
We will, uh, we will, uh, we will have it at 12 o'clock.
I said that.
I'll talk to her at 12 o'clock.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, this thing, I think, is interesting, kind of, Charles, at this point.
Well, they, that way, if you take, they evaporate, they, okay, because they have a hell of a lot to do with news, news, news, at this point, because I see people are thinking that the main thing, and it's not to get concerned that when they go up or down like there is, you're concerned you're just, well, Gallop and Andrews must be very close, so you're very close.
What are we?
And they're pretty volatile.
Next week, we're way ahead.
Every trailer.
And it's neither great or bad.
That's the whole point.
We just block along the best we can.
Our approval is still only 54 to 36.
I don't know what it is.
36 or something.
Oh, 56.
Yeah, but that's by telephone.
His scale is probably 51.
Okay, but that's 10% undecided.
Allocate that and it's 60-40.
Right.
That's 60% of it.
Look at it by party stuff.
Then you get some stuff.
Even among Democrats, it's 38-51.
And that, you can get 38% of the Democrats
Yeah, but Eisenhower's personal thing was totally different.
It was before he's dead, which is still pretty good.
Everybody thought he was going down.
He was on the down curve.
This has been holding us up.
The one thing we have going for us, which is very, very important, is the fact that we have a certain base that doesn't seem to change.
I mean,
So he'll go down to 49 or 48 in Gallup or 47, I don't know, whatever he does.
But you don't go much lower.
Oh, it's in that ballpark, 48, 49.
Well, that's low as you go.
Now, if you've got a low base, a base, you know, when you do not go, that's what something Johnson didn't have.
That's right.
And Truman didn't have it.
And it doesn't take a heck of a lot to build whatever you need on top of it.
What does this show with the Jews?
Three or two?
No, no, 29.
But it's 29...
I don't believe it.
That's fantastic.
I think I wouldn't be surprised.
I don't know where it is, but I don't see its face.
I'll tell you where it is.
It's in the law and order of conservative Jews.
That's what Gammon is talking about.
The Jewish vote.
Not necessarily.
Just a couple.
The other, where it may be, is in the Zionist Jews.
Or the Zionist Jews.
Because there is a little straws.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Orthodox.
Orthodox.
Orthodox.
Also, also.
No, I think, no.
I think there's more to it than that.
You know what?
You know what?
John, that's enough for us.
Because in Israel, they know that their big threat is Russia and the nines, and they know
You know that poll that I told you about, Mr. President?
They don't release that, but...
number three on the list.
And that's all over New York.
But the interesting thing is that the Jews stayed with Rizzo in Philadelphia because
They still have, they're very conservative when it comes to the police.
And they remember that the brown shirts went through the streets of Germany in the early 30s, and who did they go after?
The Jewish shopkeepers.
So they, anybody who blacks went through the streets of Washington, did they go after the Jewish shopkeepers?
So they get very conservative.
And of course, I mean, on the part of the Jewish school system, it's in the same shape the Catholic school system is.
And they...
They're very interested in protecting their own identification.
There's a few things going on in that area.
I wouldn't... You still have the run-of-the-mill, non-educated American who hates Nixon, and you've got a problem getting him to swing around to recognizing these other factors, but I think maybe you're getting some.
Well, it doesn't take a hell of a lot.
It isn't worth fighting against the blacks.
32.
32.
That's my approval.
Yep, yep.
Yeah, but I'm currently...
I'm currently...
I'm currently... 32 on blacks is awfully good.
For approval it is.
That's Muskie.
That's 2162.
Blacks.
How about yours?
You'll do well against me.
3154.
Yeah.
Goddamn.
What?
I guess they've all got 50 Jews in their sandals, so it doesn't mean anything.
But the blacks, one of the things we want to do is our husky against Kennedy.
Businesses have got David Humphrey, who was really the real test, beyond the two known quantities.
The damn thing is a, that's a bigger landslide than we used to go to the EDI convention in 1968.
You know?
That's right.
Because this goes at 20 miles per hour.
That's right.
And if you take and compare the two men who ran in 68, which is what the American people are comparing.
You get 12.82 on the box.
That's right.
He picks them up.
It's sugar.
That's what law says.
All those are the laws.
The second point is, they do talk all about your sending the tolls.
but whatever's in there, what's out is fine.
Our whole line should be that we've got a hell of a lot of race in this country.
But on the other hand, looking at the Wallace thing, I don't think, Bob, we ought to make any effort in the people in our state.
I think Wallace should stay in the Democratic Party.
Let it be their problem.
What does he do?
The thing that shoots down completely the argument that we want Wallace in is the point that Wallace's strategy, if he stays in, will be to run only in the southern states where he can run.
And stay out of the southern states because his strategy will be not to delude himself and try to win both sides of that coin, but rather to get enough southern strength that he can screw up the electoral college.
Now, if that's his strategy, then he hurts only us.
He doesn't hurt the Democrats one eye or the other if he runs for Senate.
But if he runs nationally, he hurts them, I think, a little more than us.
Probably, but our state-by-state things are now that he does.
But I think the President's point is exactly right there, and history certainly shows that.
What people say now when they get down to voting, they don't do it.
And especially when the unions get panicky.
This time they're panicking now, not later.
And they're going to keep him out of the Democratic, of the Northern states.
The unions have come solid.
Those that are against us are pretty clear with the Democratic Party.
Any Democratic nominee, even though they said they won't vote for some of them.
We're going to get hardship.
Harder than you guys will be for us.
I think we're going to get some.
Well, as union voters, we'll get some offenses.
No, we're going to get some offenses and some offenses.
All offenses.
a hell of a lot of Brennans and that level of people.
And you said the Wallace men even in the North, there's a clear cut.
You'll get some of the Wallace vote in the North.
Sure.
Come on.
The racist type guys.
One of the most interesting things that I got from talking to Senlinger last night, he's an interesting guy.
Some people think he's a little screwy.
I think he's very perceptive.
He sits and listens five minutes, not at all, every night of the week.
But he said the polls this year, he's convinced they're going to show a close election all the way through, little ups and downs, and you ahead, and Muskie ahead, and you ahead, and whoever else ahead.
But then he said it's going to be an absolute landslide.
And I said, how do you reason that, Alan?
He said, because listening to the tone of voice when people say that they're for Muskie or they're against the president, or they're for Kennedy or they're against the president, he said they're very hesitant
They really aren't strong.
He said, they're not coming on saying, we've got to get rid of Nixon.
We've got to get rid of Nixon.
He said, there's not an intense feeling on the other side.
And he said, it won't come through in the polls.
He said, a traditional Democrat...
will say, he has time for the Democrat, but when he gets into that polling booth, it just won't be that clear.
He said, you guys are incorrect.
Big surprise.
The polls aren't going to...
He said, this is one of those elections where the polls are going to mislead you.
This is where he thinks the comments he would hold.
Yes, sir.
And that's exactly the point.
He said, if you were on the outside, it would be reversed.
He said, the sitting president this year is going to benefit from a lack of strong hostility on the Democratic side.
One thing, the Democrats are right.
heard by the still very strong feeling in this country that things are off the track.
And a good boy, a smart opponent, is going to play that line completely.
He's going to say, things are wrong in this country.
The only thing, though, that the Democrats have used previously, and they have failed both cases, they're trying to dig up now, is that they're trying to do basically a hatred for Mexico.
Like David Lopez.
People hated Johnson.
Now they're having a hell of a time on that.
And one of the reasons is that we're keeping them off balance.
Well, people used to hate Nixon, and they're going back to them, thinking that they still do, and in fact can be put.
I don't think you can build that back up.
That's the thing behind... Now, you look at this.
It's all dropped.
All of the pornographic anti-Nixon stuff, the dirty movies, and this vicious satire and all this stuff.
They launched that in the last part of last year, and it's all disappeared.
People didn't take it.
And the test runs here in Washington and in New York, and they've dropped those films.
They're not in the theaters now.
They're not pushing that stuff.
Those books have flopped.
It didn't take.
They got kicked harder for doing it.
People don't like the president being torn around like that.
We did it to Roosevelt, or tried to, and it hurt us.
It helped Roosevelt.
When we started kicking him out of the room, it hurt him.
They did because he played to them.
He pulled up and opened his shirt and showed his fat belly with a scar on it.
He yanked his dog up by the ears and belched into the microphone.
He was a disrespectful guy.
But what he did was more important than what he did to himself was what he did to the office.
He tore down the dignity of the office.
You have rebuilt it, and that's a hell of a difference.
That's a hell of a difference.
I mean, you could play on Johnson, and people just were sickened by what he did to this office, and that's different.
Well, there's no defense either, turning off the lights.
Yeah, all the things we do that people say is square, quite a few people lie.
The country is square.
Sure, I know.
Including the Wallace dinner last night.
I'm glad you had the incident, Pat.
Because it got the dinner that much more attention.
Mitchell came up with another interesting point.
I think he mentioned to you that Eastland told him he was with Kennedy at the alfalfa dinner.
And both of them had three or four grains.
And Eastland said that Kennedy has always played everything straight with him.
And he feels that he and Kennedy have a relationship where they disagree on some facts, on everything.
And Eastland says he's never misled me.
When he tells me he's going to do something, he does it.
And when he says he's not, he does it.
And we've had that kind of relationship all along, always.
He said, I...
After we had a few drinks at the dinner and I was talking to him privately, I said, what are you going to do?
Are you going to go?
Where aren't you going to go?
And he said, I'm not going to go.
For anything.
And Easton said, well, you know, have you really made up your mind?
He said, I absolutely have.
I will not go.
I'm out of it.
I'm staying out of it.
I'm going to stay out of it.
And it was a sudden switch.
It was about November 1st.
I'm convinced of it.
Bob Muntz, who was his college roommate, was running in the Republican primary against Margaret Smith, called me to say that, and they've been very close personally, although Bob is kind of a conservative Republican, said that there's a girl, and it is very serious, and that
Teddy claims, I haven't been able to find that out, and I haven't wanted to appear that eager.
And the Teddy really believes he's in love with her, and this is, they break up with each other.
In love.
Yeah, but no, when that decision was made, when he reached that conclusion, he just decided he didn't want to.
No, no.
being loved and finding people.
Mrs. Wallace, of course, is very old and very forgetful and everything now, but she's been a great gal in her day and is still lovely to look at.
And we were talking about Mrs. Henry Luce, former Mrs. Henry Luce.
Mrs. King was also sitting in front of a lovely person, and she said, you know, I liked about her.
We've always been close friends.
is she's Henry Luce's mother to me.
And she told me all the story about Henry came and said she wanted to marry a very good Luce and so forth.
She said ever since then, she's never said a word against Henry Luce.
Never said a word.
She said there was one other person that was like that that I remember so well.
And she said, you of course, you're Paul Somerset's mom.
I said, of course.
I've been dating Henry Luce and so forth.
Well, he had a very nice wife, English.
And he went off and divorced her and so forth.
And she was this big, big wife, son-in-law, now divorced, was at this party.
And several friends, and he never went to be played to her set, per se, to have an energy.
It wasn't terrible at the time.
And she said, no dinner.
All I remember is how very much in love we were.
That's a hell of a story, isn't it?
That is.
All I remember is how very much in love we were.
God has.
Well, for a lot of these people, he told the whole rest of them, screw all that stuff.
He says, go to the Times.
Some people run without.
They've got Kennedy.
Kennedy's an ass.
He's confusing love and sex.
Which poor old George managed it.
Kennedy's just a... That's a good-looking girl, George Perry.
George?
Oh, she's a... She's one of the greatest.
She really is.
I congratulated George yesterday when he said, well, the pictures didn't do...
He said, the pictures were high school pictures.
He kept trying to make her sound older.
She is.
She is.
She is, huh?
George has always been a great guy for gals.
His wife, Rosemary, is a great gal, too.
And you know, he didn't have to co-marry an off-man girl, because she worked for him anyway.
Funny.
She's been around there at the villa, at the hotel, all these years.
We've been going down there.
I know, but he didn't tell you he was in North America.
Well, he didn't for a long time.
He wasn't missing anything, though, yet.
That's right.
And that's the greatest story.
Coming back to the situation, though, I think that...
I think we want to avoid getting that hate personally.
And I think we've crossed that pretty well.
Dave Dragster at Muskies said we can't trust him.
That's his line.
Well, the trust thing is another one that they may be able to build up, not because of can't trust Nixon, but because you can't trust anybody.
You can't trust the government.
That's true.
You did more this week.
That doesn't get the hate, though.
No, it doesn't at all.
Hate is a different thing.
Hate is personal.
The distrust I don't think can be made personal anymore.
That's another thing they try to do with you with the used carpet.
But I don't think they can do that on a personal basis anymore.
They're going to try and they'll make some headway on distrust institution.
Just general distrust.
I think people, there is a kind of thing.
People just, they don't trust the products they buy or the
cops on the beat because they know they're taking grafts and the dope.
But what this happens, I mean, Senators, right, this is up for us.
And then there will be a, as they get through their primaries, getting arms publicity after he muster the teal clothes.
And it can be, we'll have our ups and downs because of bad news from Vietnam or some of the goddamn things.
You go up and down on that in common.
But the final analysis
you get down to two men then incumbency will be worth a great deal and it'll be it'll be a liability to the parents of thousands of people who are just sick of government it can be worth a great deal in terms of the everything we've got going for us in terms of the fact that
Nobody has a strong feeling against the incumbent personally and not a strong feeling for his opponent personally.
That's right, that's right.
I don't think that anybody, I think for Teddy Kennedy, I think Teddy Kennedy would have a strong personal following.
Humphrey used to have it, but I don't think he's got it anymore.
I think Humphrey used to, what do you think?
I don't think he has any of that.
And I don't think Muskie has a strong personal following.
I don't think Muskie's personal following is anything but a strong personal following.
Yeah, Eggman steers it both ways.
I know, but he's got a lot of personal knowledge.
Oh, he does?
No, of course not.
Now, would you not agree, though, that you've never seen him use, I'm crazy about musking?
No.
No.
And he won't.
He doesn't do that to people.
And he won't.
There's no way he can.
Now, we have, we have, despite what Captain Howell and the rest of it,
They overlook the fact that over a period of years, I don't have a very, not a massive response rate, but I have a hard core of about 30 to 35% that is personal.
It goes back to his case.
It goes back to Khrushchev.
It goes back to trying to build a Republican Party.
Well, there are some strong, that's something that our friends always underestimate.
Otherwise, we couldn't get these goddamn receptions in these cities.
I put it at 30, not 35, but at
I think it's very solid that about 30% that you couldn't lose no matter what you did.
Then what you've got to do is find 20% more somewhere, and I don't think there's going to be much problem.
Yeah, but I think there's 5% to 10% of the people in this country who are going to vote for the man who is president because he's president.
I still think that.
I think you're right.
And one of the things they said that was very positive is that, well, one thing very positive, and that is that many more people, a vast majority feel that the president is a better president than they expected him to be.
And that's a very interesting barometer, Mr. President, because if you start with... Well, but you started as a minority president, and now a majority of the people say he's better than we thought he was going to be.
But that's where you exploit the incumbency.
I wonder if you would give a comment on...
Would he be well enough to go?
Would it be helpful?
Because I could easily take him up there today.
It'd be fun to have him sit there, breathe some fresh air and so forth.
Call an ambulance.
This is Paul.
Can I have a minute, please?
Very easy, very non-pride, have the whole cottage.
All the others have men and I.
Otherwise, they can do anything they want.
They're in a movie.
Because I enjoy having interesting men.
And she's an interesting woman.
Isn't that content?
Aren't you really surprised by that musky pull, John?
I am.
Very splendid.
Yes, sir.
Take that gal.
Come on.
And Harris.
And Harris.
I'm very sure of that.
I've heard about Harris .
Oh, yes.
So he doesn't cover his .
I don't want him to go that much, but he won't.
He's convinced that this speech this week has had a tremendous effect.
Credibility.
Similarly, you said the same thing.
Credibility, yeah.
That people now say, you have to really .
Is he getting better?
Good.
The President asked me to call.
He's going to be able to get away by setting on up to Camp David and wondered if it would be good for John to go on up.
And I would love to have the two of you come up if it worked out.
You know, whatever you think.
Sure, the President just thought that it might be nice to get up there and a little change of scene and all.
And it sure is.
OK, good.
Thank you.
He's sure a nice guy, isn't he?
Mrs. Connelly's going to call me back in a few minutes.
Would you run it through on this one, please?
I don't think she's going to want to go.
She said, I think I'd rather just keep him in bed here and get him.
But if they want to go and send a helicopter every block, right, and go right along, it's all right.
Don't worry about it.
That's a very nice touch in view of the way the Democrats are desperately trying to get him to sit up.
And finally, James.
Sure.
I think that was strong, man.
Let me see.
I don't know.
Well, what do you attribute to Muskie?
And incidentally, Vanderman's told us that his shirt is Muskie Baker's.
He thinks Gallagher's an aberration.
Yeah, because we've pushed him hard out of it.
He's even sure because this other... What was the name of the...
Okay, fine.
Well, he just thought that, you know, if it would get him back in good shape quicker, it'd be good to have him up there.
But that's...
All right.
We'll tell him not to do a thing until he's ready to do it.
We won't call.
Okay.
Thanks, Kelly.
It's hard to figure.
The best thing for him to do is not to do a thing.
So we can tell him not to do a thing.
But when you don't feel good, you feel better just
If he's really got the flu, you know, you get sick.
You're just better off to lie in bed and feel sorry for yourself than you are to go someplace.
Hoping you'll die soon.
Yeah.
Why do you, uh, why do you agree with him?
I can't, uh, recommend.
I don't think it's a speech because you're haters with more of a speech or research.
That's the interesting thing.
It is knowing the speech.
Because our other pole, China,
Yeah, but it's still in town to make it a national standard.
And it's just 46-37.
Well, 46-32.
Well, he said 46-32, but now it's 47-37.
So we didn't get anything.
He dropped off.
The only thing you can explain it with, Mr. President, is that the Gallup and Harris polls were taken.
First of all, Gallup never has a very big base.
I don't know what it was on that January 7th tonight poll.
Do you remember the base on that?
The base on the January 7th tonight Gallup poll?
Was it the 15th?
Yes.
He almost, well, he often goes with a small one.
Not on the monthly poll.
That's very hard to reconcile a difference unless the two national polsters caught it just before he slid off.
Now, unless he's done this before, you know, he gets up and he's strapped sharply.
He doesn't seem to have the same power.
He's a little bit ahead of him.
Yeah, he's ahead of him.
But then he went sharply off, and we were 12 points ahead of him on Harris' poll and 10 points ahead on Gallup's.
Must be he was ahead in July, or was he?
Well, on Gallup in June, it was 39-41.
And Harris in July was 40-42.
Then it shifted in August after the economic statement.
And then it went up in May.
Gallup then shifted to 42-36.
Then he was 41-37.
4-3-35.
Harris won 47-35.
That's right.
In October.
End of September.
And then, uh...
He doesn't seem to hold it.
4-4-41.
November 44-41 in December.
I think the only thing you could really attribute this kind of a disparity to is either different factoring in of voting blocs, very significant differences, or...
muskie's strength is very ephemeral he can get it up one week when he's on tv for seven minutes on cbs but we've got to remember also mr president that the power of the media if you
The attitudes of the people will be serious about selecting a candidate, selecting a president.
Now it is kind of a popularity contest.
You could... Yeah, and it's starting to say, well, I just saw Musty on TV last night.
Yeah, I guess I like him.
But that person hasn't made a serious decision about who he wants to be president for the next four years.
It could be one of those periods when people aren't saying what's on their mind.
That's Singleton's point.
48, he said that was evident.
He said that was 48.
People just, they didn't have the feelings that the pollsters were getting out.
The degree of intensity of feeling.
That's interesting.
Mitchell and Eastman have the theory that Kennedy, Kennedy's tactic,
This wouldn't jive with your new girl business necessarily, except even with the new girl, you'd be planning to go with 76.
But is that Kennedy is pushing Muskie because he wants Muskie to run and be defeated out of the way.
The only way that he might be the only one young enough to run again.
Also, he thinks Musty will run Humphrey.
Humphrey's out, that's right.
Yeah.
But he's afraid it must have been the nomination to Humphrey or somebody else.
That he'll be strong enough to challenge Kennedy for the nomination again next time.
Or if he loses the election, he won't.
Who is Musty?
He's 57, isn't he?
It's pretty common.
He's 59.
I have a feeling that he's...
I've been very close to your age.
He'd be gone in 76.
No.
They can run for president as evident in 65.
65.
65.
Over 65, they can't.
See, Eisenhower is no exception in this respect.
We've had several presidents that ran, that picked the time to run for president basically in 65 to 65.
But that would indicate that it would be to Teddy's interest to be sure, the strongest thing, to Teddy's interest, regardless of who's nominated, and the only thing he can do and not get
screw himself up with the Democratic Party is to make sure that his people, first of all, lay low on the Democrats, but more importantly, that McCarthy gets the biggest possible vote.
That'd be the best thing that could happen.
But I don't know.
I just can't see...
He can solve that.
Well, that's a money problem.
And Teddy doesn't...
If there's a money problem, we ought to be able to help on it.
Rather than putting on more PR people on our staff, whatever he's making sense of the McCarthy campaign...
Sure.
Good.
And see, that solves some of our problems on the money.
See, everybody's moaning about the money thing.
We can't spend any money on it.
The point is, you can't spend it for TV advertising, which is just great.
That thesis that you're going to raise, I'm all for it.
I think this campaign spending bill, I think you should sign it and be exact about it.
Because I think we need to know a lot more in this election.
They heard the Republicans later.
I don't think it'll even hurt later.
Probably not.
But in this election, I think it helps enormously.
Because this bullshit about the Democrats having so much less money is simply not true.
They have to.
Not only that, but Fingerhut's theory is that the more that we spend on TV advertising, the more we bring out the Democratic vote.
Because it just inspires the Democrats.
And since they're in a majority, we push them out.
So the fact that we're limited on TV, I think, is true.
The less interest there is in the campaign, the better.
Because the Republicans will vote no matter what.
That's right.
But it's getting that extra 10 million of Democrats who might not come out.
We do have a foal subject must bring the one.
Yeah, it shows he's moving up on that and ahead of us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, he's supportive.
He's supportive.
He is not.
Oh, yeah.
What is that?
It's a china book.
Oh, yeah.
If you have a little china, let me carry it for the rest of the year.
Our people were told that Manson understood it, that
I'm sure what your people were told is that you can't just put a reading book together.
But I don't like it either.
But what I wanted to say is that we won't have a full response from them next week.
We won't have the military fully developed next Thursday.
And I think that we can, the potential of getting into trouble on the 3rd is so much greater than on the 10th.
Well, this is going to be an in-office boss.
We're all going to a TV press conference.
The in-office one is the same.
In a way, if you don't have the in-office one, you can turn off a question.
Mr. President, I've been talking to these press people now.
Now they are looking for subtle points.
Yeah.
We've got them totally confused.
Teddy Kennedy called Tom Braden yesterday and said he had made a mistake.
He had shot from the hip.
Rowley Evans and Braden called Kay Graham and said their editorial was the shittiest thing they had read.
Really?
And she called me this morning and said, would I be willing to talk to her editorial writer?
No.
Well, that's what I said.
I said, our view is coming to you from Marshall Green.
Oh, Marshall's doing it?
Yeah, we drafted it, but he's signing it.
Was he glad to do it?
Yeah, and actually he was very helpful.
He wrote half of it.
True, true.
But all I'm saying is, Mr. Pritchard, almost anything you say now, they're looking for cracks.
And even if it isn't focused on Vietnam, it is certain to focus, they are certain to focus on Vietnam.
They'll focus on Vietnam, that's right.
No worries, I think we won't do it then.
I really would strongly urge on the 10th, you'll have the world report out on the air.
And you can see the global statement.
You can focus it on going to China the following week.
And I find, summing up this last week, you have made a coup beyond anything that I could conceive possible.
And, uh, Percy was at that dinner last night.
But Percy was at that dinner yesterday, and you would have thought that he was an original charter member of the Nixon for President.
Oh.
Uh, he, uh, he jumped.
Mary McGrory was there.
Percy jumped all over her.
And she was mild.
It was at Peterson's house.
Gabrielyn was there.
It was a...
I really think if we say nothing, they're going to divide among each other now for a week or two.
And on the 10th, because it's now off into esoterics, I think it's so well-positioned.
That's what I was going to say.
You have two choices now.
Either we can decide now not to have one and just turn it off, or you can decide now that you probably won't have one and go ahead and refer the book to anybody, which won't do any harm, and decide on Wednesday whether or not to do it.
I don't think anything's going to change.
Nothing's going to happen.
I agree.
The only thing I was thinking now about everyone was just domestic issues Wednesday.
That I would say is fine.
John, you've been in the foreign policy field, and I'm going to have a press conference.
What do you think?
Do we want to be in the foreign policy area?
Let's make this one domestic policy.
You don't want to go into foreign policy.
You go to China, and you assume this will mostly be... Well, that's how we can prepare to .
All right?
I think, Mr. President... Now, it's not bad to do that anyway.
See, I told you, because... Also, there's something that...
He said it was more of an interesting idea to say, look, fellas, I just feel that we've got your interests primarily here.
I made a speech on it.
Before I go to China, I will... And after I return, I will be having press conferences on it.
where foreign policy will be the primary.
So I want to use my momentum as domestic and actually take a shot at all the foreign policy.
And a number of you have expressed a concern that you never get a chance to get into the domestic questions in the press conferences.
Because you've got a reason to do that.
And that's because I wasn't in preparation.
And you put Zicker down on that, because he always is the one that says, don't limit it.
They liked it.
Screw them.
Let me just call the commotion.
I have one on the domestic issues.
And I think it would show your concern for the message.
All your news is going to be foreign for the next four weeks.
Good, good.
I think that would be excellent.
No, no.
But your party was all right?
You missed the best White House party of the year.
Well, I thought it was a disgrace.
It probably did.
No, I think it makes you look good.
You're getting picked on.
I treated her to a nice little press party.
No.
She's sleeping with Henry Kissinger, she said.
Actually, the thing that was interesting was that probably the biggest applause of the evening was that when she left, the cops were around.
At the end, when I went up and thanked the singers and told them how pretty the girls were on this and that, I told the great comic, we haven't had as much discussion in the last 50 years as the reader guys had in the last.
And I said, I know that they all applauded, and I said, now, I know that when you're applauding, I guess that you also want to show your appreciation for the Marine orchestra that you come in with, many of whom served with honor fighting for our country in Vietnam.
And you should have seen the three men at that dinner, incidentally, ostentatiously warm, ostentatiously saying,
What he said, they were talking about peaking, and he said, let's preserve your judgment until the President comes to Moscow.
That's going to be a great...
Yes.
Oh, God, and he was saying... And he was saying, we've never... Oh, God.
I don't think I could do it.
I'm sure that's what she needs.
But the freedom was really...
you know, ostentatiously putting himself on our side.
He said, one thing that's interesting that we are, on our Jewish thing, that Bob was telling me, that apparently Moshe Dayan is putting out the good word on me, not just the Mrs. Maynard, but I've been saying some good things, and that's good.
They are saying that we want to keep, that we take care of the plain thing.
It's done.
It's done.
It's done.
Bob, let me say it's just done.
We've got them all on track.
As far as dragging the feet, I think that's done too good.
And I guess that if we can get the Middle East one for the summit.
One other thing on your side, if you would give me a pure oil plate.
little summary of the reading payment.
Don't say how long it was.
Just say, like, for Rogers.
And then you say, also, at dinner there, he was ostentatious, et cetera, and did this and that.
But that you have said, let's talk.
Let's wait until after June to talk about the...
I'll get that to Bob on Monday.
Right.
Send it to Bill.
I was going to write a memo to the president and send a copy of it by secret.
I was going to tell him to run.
He's going to be like a gun on the other things.
In other words, this man is going to be burning here.
Well, so do so.
Give him the message.
Don't say that.
Just say to bring him.
Call him and say that he had a message to bring.
And I sent him a copy of the press release.
I can put in the salt stuff, he told me, except for the timing.
And I can put in everything except Vietnam and the Middle East.
Vietnam, there was really nothing.
You indicated the President's great interest.
He just didn't get any...
I won't tell him.
I won't say it was raised at all.
I'll just leave it.
I'll just say he brought this over and I sent him the version of message.
The more you can give him, the better off we'll be.
The more often you can give him something, the better off we'll be.
There was a good spirit in his behavior.
He came last night at a very short post when somebody got sick, which was a good thing.
And now he came back, and he's healed.
He's got a little feel of where he's going.
But I'm sanitizing all the China mencons, and they're going over to him today.
Great.
So he can't say he doesn't have that.
And on the press briefings this week, I left word in his office every newsman I saw.
And I said, but the substantive briefing, I said, all we are doing is give color.
The substance is State Department's responsibility.
Well, incidentally, getting back to the little girl last night, I tell Bob, he's like a really good kid when he's spitting in the face of a ladybird, but worse, because it was a really sparking experience.
But I'll tell you, if I hadn't been there, the cool pro that I am, I can imagine so many of you, but I just sat there and looked at her with a snake smile through it all, clapped at the end of the number,
I didn't.
I wasn't going to get up and try to stop her from being thrown out.
Oh, yes.
Don't you agree?
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
You can't have.
This is an offense to the Office of the Presidency.
And that you can't have.
She said you're killing.
Stop bombing animals.
Stop bombing little children.
God bless the Barragans.
God bless Daniel Ellisburg.
Did she say that?
Yes, sir.
Yeah.
That I didn't read.
Yeah.
Can I check a couple of scheduling things before you let me get out of here?
You've got, as you know, the Republican governor's in this week, and there are two sets of questions.
One that makes some sense, which is to take a brief meeting with Reagan, McCaul, and Evans.
I'll talk to Dr. Stokely and hit that point, since you've got the three of them here.
All right.
You're, you know, just make some more heat on it.
The other one they're asking for is Reagan, Rockefeller, and Hogan will be on revenue sharing.
Sure.
Now, the question is whether we can do those on Wednesday.
Sure.
Well, you have the final press conference on Thursday.
These would both be very quick sessions and should be, because you shouldn't get into sessions.
Well, all right.
All right.
Can we take, like, an hour on Wednesday?
All right.
Midday Wednesday?
All right.
Call 1130 to 1230.
and half hour for each group.
Now, Tuesday, as of now, is basically clear, except for a couple minutes.
Maybe we can get them on Tuesday.
I'd much prefer Tuesday.
And just get it out of the way.
Then I might go to Camp David.
I'm going to go to Camp David a little more often, because I think it clearly is.
You know, like, I get a few memorandums off that I never think of.
And you've got to be physically up on this trip.
You know, I was going to move by.
You know, Harry Connolly said this weekend that
And everybody gets sick around here except me, and one day it's going to happen to me, and I'll drag my ass, and I can't go.
The other question is whether you want to try to do this, you know, your Republican members of the House and Senate.
I think we said you want to start some breakfast on them.
Whether you want to try to do them before the Lincoln recess.
No.
Which would mean you'd have to do them this week.
I wonder about what we really don't.
What do you think, Rick?
Is it maybe a good idea?
Well, you thought it was a good idea.
The Congressional, you wanted to do it by age and service, you know, and the Congressional guys urged that it be done by committee assignments instead because you can do a better kind of session and be a better session on the budget.
You have the problem of this gets Shirley and Riegel in and gets Ashbrook and McCloskey in.
I don't think so.
I don't know.
I don't have the feeling that my partner on the Republican Congress would make that much of a difference.
I think before China, as much thinking I've got to get, I've got to keep.
And I was thinking another thing, you know, I don't, my sleep patterns are very off these times.
I think, Mr. President, the best thing you can do for the country is to be in good faith.
And you've had an enormously tense two weeks, and it's
One always pays for it a week or two.
Why don't you just fill in for his, but only for his very confidential information on what the latest trial he just told me about.
After the, we had a quick poll after the broadcast.
And as you probably know, the latest Gallup show must be closed, which was taken right after his announcement, 43-42, and Harris was also 43-42.
We've been honest with this.
Ours, right after the speech, show, this is without Wallace in, which we don't expect he'll be in, show against Muskie, 52-36.
12 had decided against Kennedy, 52-41.
Kennedy was a little stronger than Muskie, which ours have always shown.
And I think he is.
The other polls don't show that.
The others are building Muskie up now.
Humphrey, 58-33.
It's a higher than it was in the other Republican convention.
Now that's a shift.
In the last poll, we did higher than that.
The Republican convention was the biggest spread.
And the Democratic convention, after they ended their fight, it was about that.
But not that high.
We never could deal for a tree.
It was about a 15-point spread.
Well, that is a 15-point spread.
I think this is kind of, if anything, may lie.
Well, but you say that...
No, no, no, no.
These are already following him.
They're basically a reflection of exposure.
Unless he was up early January because he had his announcement.
He went to the answer primary.
He'll go up against one point of this again.
This is very interesting.
It shows the dramatic impact of that speech.
I think that approval, approve or disapproval of the way President's handling Vietnam is now 54-38.
higher than this, which is the highest it's been for a year, which is the last time it showed up.
We have two years.
Can we get that out?
Is there a way of getting that out?
We want to, yes.
It's just good for us to know it.
We want to know it, but we don't want it.
I don't think it's a close case.
I think, Mr. President, your speech last Tuesday, and I didn't anticipate it, I did anticipate it with you November 3rd, not to a great extent, was one of the big events.
The favorable reaction on the speech was 73 to 24 unfavorable.
Which is?
That's unusually high.
Yeah, like the economic announcement on August 18, the favorable was the same, 73.
On the China announcement, it was only 68, which is very high.
I just feel, because take the issue of Vietnam and get it favorable.
Now that doesn't mean very favorable, only 30% are very favorable, but that's not bad either.
Yeah, but Mr. President, as you said, to take that issue, which everyone thought was run dry, and to come in with a new twist, and what I think impresses people more than anything, is that you endured all these criticisms,
Oh, yeah.
These wives.
Oh, yeah.
I said, did you tell Bob about the wives?
Have you heard about the wives?
But I came into the wives yesterday.
Well, they cut up.
They all cut up and applauded.
And, you know, before, every time, I could just barely keep them from rebelling.
When I kept them from rebelling, I thought I was doing well.
They applauded.
Every question, oh, some kissed me.
which, of course, I loved.
They're really, really women.
They're all Air Force wives.
All the questions were friendly questions.
One of the ladies who had been most troublesome got up and said, of course there has to be a ceasefire in a withdrawal and a deadline.
You couldn't do it any other way.
At the end, one of the men got up and said, I want you to know something, and please tell it to the President.
my son has been a prisoner for six and a half years now that i know what he has been doing if you tell us he's got to be another two years whatever you do we will follow because we know you're doing the best you can and you're using your best pressure everybody applauded five or six others then got up and said exactly the same thing not one person there was one question that said
There was one question that said, why don't you do this, or why don't you do that?
And this is... Well, but it isn't me.
You asked, Haig had met with these whites about six months ago.
And he was so shaken by that, that he could, that he... That's right.
And did she use it?
Yes, you asked Hughes.
And Hughes' replacement came up afterwards.
And it was really an emotional experience.
We got Hughes over there last night, too.
We had seen.
Did you know that the blue was so bad, and lost Johnson, Mrs. Connolly, that 10 of DeWitt Wallace's friends came to the yard, canceled the day before.
So there's an epidemic.
Yeah, there is.
But I think now this thing we can write until you go to China.
Then that's going to give us another month.
And I think that the North Vietnamese, well, they haven't dared to turn it down yet.
Yeah, but...
The mere fact, everyone is confused.
For example, at that dinner party last night, some of them said they heard a rumor that Lee Dotto was coming back.
That's in the paper?
Yeah.
Yeah, the news says Lee Dotto is coming back.
Well, if he's coming back, we've scored a spectacular, because he doesn't come back unless something is going to happen.
Also, once we said yesterday, they're prepared to have secret meetings again.
So that one is ruined.
He said, we are holding them for our own reasons.
I like it.
I agree with all of this.
I mean, it far exceeded any expectations.
I don't know what your expectations were.
You always thought this was here.
The one thing I was wrong on, was I thought there would be a very heavy overriding story on just the mechanics of it.
Well, we get a lot of questions on the mechanics, and that's slowly tripling out.
But the substance is what, and the beauty of it is, Mr. President, they're all finding us on the wrong ground.
Because whenever they raise us up with an issue, we can say, hell, the North Vietnamese have already settled on it, and the North Vietnamese can't come back in their turn without looking like intransigent.
Well, one of them is the only one.
He's still playing that.
But you know this Kennedy has shut up?
Yeah.
They've all shut up.
And the rest of them?
Well, Muskie.
Muskie, me.
Well, Muskie played that ceasefire thing for a while.
Not the ceasefire.
Since my briefing on Wednesday, no one is mentioning the ceasefire anymore.
You killed that man.
That is that.
You killed it live.
I don't know whether that son of a bitch Clifford did it or not.
Open Clifford.
We have quotes from him in the World Report.
You may not want to keep them in there.
No, I won't.
Where he said there won't be any withdrawals in 69, and they're not planned for 70.
And then three months later, this bastard comes out when he's out of office and says 300,000 have to go.
But also, I can never ask for a ceasefire.
You remember the people that are saying, why do we insist on a ceasefire?
The ones that in 1970 were saying, why do we offer a ceasefire?
Oh, God, you remember that was the argument.
That was the argument they were all making to us.
So, can I tell my people...
Yes, tell them about that.
Good.
Now, I don't know whether you want to... Now, let me certainly explain what these books are.
This is a book of the mammals that I've always asked, and I gave you a summary.
This is really some intelligence and some, you know,
What I'd like right now is sort of real background stuff, so I can sort of get interested in the subject.
The memos and so forth, I could do closer to the event, so that I have them very sharp, as long as I'm hoaxed, I'm supposed to have them.
Oh, Christ, no, I would never read a book.
I don't know.
I don't.
But I think I should get into his background of atmosphere and so forth.
But what I meant is... Go ahead.
Now, what would you like...
I'm trying to think of something to write, which is a more leisurely reading, if I can.
It's sort of requiring quite the concentration.
Let me get some of this.
I have some books that you can pick up.
It's about the Chinese civilization.
And these are drafts just for reading, but you've all brought those up this weekend, haven't you?
I think I was, I haven't got the time.
You've got some, you mean some books that are out of time?
Yes, sir.
Just to get your mind working.
All right, fine.
You've got one that's sufficient to read at that time.
I thought it was that good.
It's that good.
Okay.
But this book out here with you, she did.