On April 18, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:56 pm to 4:56 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 712-001 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Well, we're hatching a lot of plots.
We've had a long article by Pickle that appeared this week that I think is going to
It's going to screw up the detail pretty badly as far as the Congress is concerned.
Yeah.
It's unconstitutional.
And it's in the New Republic.
But it's going to get a lot of circulation among the opinion makers.
I think one thing we have to do is muddy those waters quickly.
Well, with our friend Bork, who's also a constitutional lawyer, Bickel's colleague up there,
We're going to get him down this week, and we're going to have a press conference.
And put him on the front if he's willing to do it.
We're still negotiating with him on the way of doing it.
If he won't come, why don't we go out and do it?
But I think we have to get the other side of it out this week, and that will stir up some controversy, and it will get the thing lit up again.
We've got our friend Mrs. McCabe coming along.
She's about, what now, seven days out, six days out, something of that kind.
And I think this woman is walking down from Michigan.
And that's going to light the issue up.
Is she walking down?
She's against busing?
She's against busing, yeah.
She's this National Action Group of Pontiac.
So we'll be playing off her next week.
You think it'll be a big play?
Yeah, that'll be a big play.
Big play.
There's a hell of a fine article on busing.
I don't know if you ever see this in the National Journal, but we're going to get a lot of regrets of this and get it around.
And they have... No, this is a political piece that's done here on issues before the Congress.
and in the government.
It's probably the authoritative outfit down here now.
No ads, straight back, and just about as factual as you can get.
They've got Mrs. McCabe in here.
She's going to have a rally down here on the 29th.
But their analysis of the busing thing covers the opposition candidates, the situation in Congress,
Well, we'd do that if we can't get to Bork.
See, Bork has the advantage of being Ivy League.
Sure.
Bork is better.
He'll do it.
Yeah, he'll do it.
And we think he did.
Yeah.
So, anyway, we're working on that.
And that'll be this week and that'll be our meeting.
Where do we go?
I think the main, well, first, in the meantime, how are we doing getting Southerners understood about that?
I think better.
That's coming along.
Yeah, I really think it is.
But that's being done on an individual context.
We all see it.
And the Marvin group is moving through the South.
They're going back around, though.
And what they're going to do is use the pretext of disbanding these biracial committees.
They've done all they can do now.
So they're going to have an event in each of the southern states where they disband those committees.
And then Margaret O'Quack bussing again each time.
Now, of course, the reopening of the cases has, of course, got a hell of a play because Clangy said it, and actually they were doing it in order to hurt it.
But nevertheless,
That was probably a good thing from our side.
It came out very clear.
But he said, yeah, absolutely agree to reopen it.
It does reopen the kitchens.
He has passed the law.
But John, as far as what you expect will happen is concerned.
So this is where we see where we are.
As I understand it, you don't need the moratorium to pass.
I know.
You will not be included in the conference report.
I seriously doubt it.
There's still a chance, but I doubt it very seriously.
So what do we do if we do?
We'll kick the stuff inside of the conference at this point.
See, the message in this whole thing is the president is against busing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we can do that.
We can do it either way.
The thing you should do, if you will, is treat it solely as a public relations exercise.
You're going to want it.
and just get out and press the signals by saying I'm dead.
By the same token, it's for better education for the poor goddamn blacks, which we own.
Well, that's make way.
The only purpose for that is not for blacks.
Let us be a little bit more, you see, that's all I can.
Or do you agree?
I don't think it matters.
I don't think it matters.
Well, here's what happens here.
You're not extreme enough to pick up all the anti-busing people.
That's the point.
Do you think that was a mistake?
No, I don't.
Looking back, do you think it was a mistake?
We talked about it at the time, and I said, well, maybe we're buying the worst of both worlds.
Well, it's too soon to know.
It's interesting to see how these fellows analyze.
And they think you've dominated the middle position.
and that that's where most of the fish are.
Now, that's probably right.
Most people don't want to be black.
They don't want to be.
The Constitutional Amendment thing really is, as you say, a blunt instrument.
It won't work.
It won't work.
Do we have to come to that?
Well, here's what you can do.
You can go around the country saying, I'm against busing.
The Congress can still enact this moratorium when it comes back in January.
elect a congressman who will vote for the moratorium.
If we can't get a congressman to vote for the moratorium, then we're going to go for the constitutional amendment.
Of course, the congressman won't vote for the moratorium if he can't pass the constitutional amendment.
Well, all right, but let's not go into that.
I don't think you need to be quite that discreet.
I'm not going to lie.
Yeah, yeah, but I think you can use this as sort of a, as you've talked to your right, as you can go around being foreign in those circumstances.
But I think we can get the big blank title clear.
You prepare, in case I probably may have a short answer.
I don't want to give any long guesses.
Guess is answer.
Just if you would work on an answer, I'm on bussing.
Not red hot, but you can better.
Very low key.
I'm against it.
This is a super article in that it summarizes all the northern cities that are about to fall.
Detroit, Indianapolis, Denver.
Well, like Richmond.
where judges have said, I can't solve this problem without including the suburbs.
I want the suburbs joined in this lawsuit.
I'll now hear the case with them as parties.
Well, at least one thing we are getting credit for, John, I presume, are for our interventions.
That's right.
Is that making local news?
It's making local news, but not with maximum punch.
As a matter of fact, I've just come from being where we've been talking about this.
And it may be that what we want to do, oh, excuse me, it's getting awry, but rather than have Pat Gray stand all over the White House and announce that we're going to intervene here and intervene there, something ought to go to that community.
It's worth the trip to go to Grand Rapids and announce that we're going to intervene.
And, well, I can go, Morgan can go, Gray can go, there are a lot of people who can go.
I'm not sure that it is better to have a director in the White House.
And you could go out and you make a better appearance than either of the other two.
You could go out and you understand it and say, I come here authorized by the President and the Attorney.
You sit down with the U.S. Attorney.
He's approved the intervention in this case by the U.S., by the Department of Justice for these reasons.
So you plan some tricks.
Get the hell out there.
And we should be getting the mission the time we can.
If we still have any left to intervene in, I don't know.
Well, see, we turned Pat Gray off last week.
We didn't have him announce all of the new interventions.
Yeah, because of the findings problem.
Well, we were going to get all screwed up in that.
And so we've got a few of those backlogs.
And I will.
I'll get out and do the programs and the intentions.
That will be the best way that it's going to be safe.
The President has authorized you to come to announce this decision by directing the Attorney General to intervene
Yeah, we'll get your friend Sneed up from Duke or somebody like that.
I don't know what grade he'd be in.
He's all right.
He scored it.
Well, this is your government.
Get him out of there.
That would be excellent.
All these guys are potential judges, you understand.
They understand.
And by God, let them know.
I thought of Steve the other day.
We were talking about Attorney General.
I said, I'm going to go with this little scheme.
The power of paper.
I said, I'm not Steve.
It's good enough, but right now, it doesn't look like we're going to play them when we see them.
We've now offered to plant them down.
They're screwing around about that.
That's right here.
That's great.
That's great.
We can use all of the bait we can get right now.
How about having that debated tomorrow, too?
Well, that is... We'll have to take it off tomorrow and be in that session for a while, you know.
See, there's a Senate session...
For the war business, yeah.
I'll toss this article in your weekend reading and you might look at some of the voting records and some of that kind of stuff.
It's pretty fascinating the way these records have changed their spots up there.
Do you have any doubts yourself about the wisdom?
I mean, not the wisdom.
Wisdom is not the question.
But basically, the rightness of what we've done.
Now, you're exactly the only one who believes.
Could we just have let this thing go?
Now, we couldn't do it.
I mean, when they say it, that's not a charity.
It's a part of their goddamn job.
That's evidence of cases.
Isn't that true?
You see, I mean, you read the
their lips squealing around like news magazines, and you'd think that, gosh, we were horrible people.
What would they do?
What really would they do?
They would compulsory basis squeeze, isn't that what they wanted?
They wanted revenge.
Revenge on whom?
Revenge on the white middle class who moved to the suburbs.
In other words, where did they fit in then?
What the hell did they, I'm speaking concretely, do you mean they send their kids to private schools?
Well, I'm doing a little check on that in response to your suggestion.
We're going to get a catalog of who these
Who of these reporters around here have kids and where do they go to school?
Great.
Great.
So that I could use that in the press conference.
You can use it.
You know, if I could go to an international press conference, I said, I'd check if the reporters in this room were actually 95% of you.
There are only 5% of you that have your people.
Wow.
Only 5% of you live in the district.
Yeah.
And of the 5% who live in the district, only .003% of you have children.
No.
The way we know how to do it.
I would say, of all the reporters that live in the D.F., the Columbia area, that only so many have even on your right.
You're right.
If you get in the district, there's too many of them to be embarrassed every day.
Well, I get your point.
Those reporters who live in the District of Columbia,
one percent and i'm thinking also the person you see basically that doesn't screw them enough though moving they've moved out of the district it's white people have that too but what i was thinking if if uh climate each dryer on meat press right now you got no vaccine
We've got to know where Novak's kids go to school.
You've got kids.
You know, that has been very disturbing to some of the Democratic candidates.
The fact that only Scoot Jackson has his kids in a public school.
Right?
And we drum that all the time.
Yes.
As I was speaking to Drummond, did you or did you not get in the...
Washington cried, they used to cry about crime, and then Prefuse would play at the Washington Post this morning.
I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
I don't think Bob told you.
He told me you were going to bring him in today, and I said, well, I'm never going to bring him in today.
I'm going to bring him in a little later on when we get another bounce on this.
And I don't think this is going to be Thursday.
When you get another bounce?
Yes.
And I'm going to go out to the morning briefing on Thursday.
And I will have had the meeting with him.
Well, my point is, how do you get out of the balance?
There's going to be new statistics.
Well, no, but there's going to be another story out of this.
You're going to create one.
And then I'm going to create one here by saying, this morning I had a meeting with the same group that I met with, and they came to you and they talked about terrorizing you.
Business was leaving.
I heard it now.
They were terrorized.
Business was leaving the city.
People were moving out of the city.
They had dangers to do something about it.
Crime capital of the world, the president described it in the campaign in 1968.
And he was correct, because it was number one or two or three in crime year after year.
It was always in the top three, Washington, D.C. Now it's at the bottom of the list.
In other words, he had a hard time.
Crime capital of the world.
I don't see that.
There are a few singers out there.
That is quite a record, isn't it?
It really is.
Well, and it helps so much with all the other Lockhart things.
That's what I meant.
It's about the only thing a law and order agreement can get, because I notice that we're constantly hammered.
You know, the Democrats are saying LEAA is a failure, and this is not the latest in failure.
It would be worse to invest earlier than use this.
LEAA is where we got the money to do the job of the District of Columbia.
The difference in ingredient is what was done with the money after it got there.
That's it.
We're hurting other people.
That's the point.
That's the point.
That's the missing ingredient.
Do you have any thoughts on the dope thing, Mr. Anymore?
I mean, there's no more spectaculars there.
Well, I'll tell you what we've been talking about just now upstairs is getting this as the vice president's issue for a while.
Great.
And letting him get out and move around on narcotics.
He's never touched it.
Hasn't he?
be ideal for it, because he could be for these things.
He could be for both sides of it, law enforcement and rehabilitation.
He could be balanced on it.
He could excoriate the pushers.
Well, that's what we've come up with today as a new frontier to this thing.
And we're getting together a fact sheet with more up-to-date facts to give him to try and sell him on.
I'm going to do quite a stylized set of those one-page fact sheets with a logo so that it's identified as coming from you.
And we'll try and get out a minimum of one, but probably two a week now.
We've got a whole bunch of them in train.
And then get the guys to call a few of them and get members talking about the allergies that this fact sheet we're getting from the White House is terrific.
You know, they could start getting that one.
All right.
And then if they start talking about it, it's interesting.
Most of them don't know what the hell to talk about, John.
That's right, speeches.
That's right.
Most Congressmen, they love speeches.
Well, they do.
We can lay before them three points on the subject.
And they can make a 10-minute, 12-minute speech on that.
And they can learn it all off one piece of paper.
And as the President mentioned, a minimum of five up to ten times on that piece of paper.
And hopefully they'll mention you once, and we'll be that much ahead.
But I think we have to merchandise this.
I think we really have to lay it out for them.
So we'll be starting that this week.
I noticed, incidentally, speaking on another subject, that the economic figures were pretty good.
Yeah, I'll say that.
What did you think?
Yeah, first quarter.
If that inventory ever catches up, we're in for a hell of a boom.
The inventory is still low.
Still very, very low.
Sure.
But that's a big backlog of demand that hasn't yet been released.
But the economy did move some depth.
It's very much so.
Ezra Solomon was at the morning staff meeting and was giving us a rundown on this.
He's very bullish.
Is he?
He's very encouraged.
What is the CDI?
I don't know.
Probably.
Well, it can't be worse than last month.
Now, last month was a bad, worse bounce, I think.
But on the other hand, a slight decrease, well, not decrease, but a decrease in the wholesale food price.
But that will not be felt this month, unfortunately.
It will the next month.
which might have picked up toward the end of its running down.
That issue becomes...
It's a funny thing.
People think of the goddamn thing that it's being written about.
Dead meat, let's face it.
A smart housewife going into the store doesn't have to be all that worried about it, unless she's insisting on beef.
You've got chicken.
You've got all that crap.
But she comes on the bitches about it.
That's right.
And my point, no.
That is my point.
But she'll be about it more, too, if it's on the television.
Oh, sure.
That's my point.
Absolutely.
It's the issue.
Let's just say everybody's always bitching about the crisis.
I remember when the depression, when they were 22 cents a dozen, people thought they should be 18 cents a dozen.
And the point about it is everybody lives above his means.
all housewives, your family and mine, say, God, I have prices that are too high.
The grocery bill is too high.
What am I going to do?
We can't buy shoes for the kids.
The point is, whether we're playing for it or not.
Well, but if you had to have this flare-up, and if you had to have a Life magazine story on it, this is the time to have it.
Because it's a monumental job line.
Fires drive those prices down for a while.
Now you have the natural...
easing up of prices in the summertime.
He's got all the fresh produce coming in and everybody buys corn on the cob and all that kind of stuff.
Oh, he's well under control.
He's talking about Russia?
Oh, yeah.
He was called on that
And he understood completely.
He's true.
He was totally tracking.
He was totally tracking.
He's a hell of a fighter.
He just helped off the farm, though.
If you at any time see anything turn up and you want him to deviate or change the line or try a new line, all you need to do is tell Ken or tell me, and he'll come around just like that.
He's totally trackable.
Trackable.
He's very political.
Yeah, yeah.
He's good.
And he's now being given praise in the, yeah, I was out in Denver this weekend and there was quite an article about what a change he has made in the viewpoint of the farmer.
He told me today briefly about things that turned around in the farm.
My own view is that they weren't that bad, but nevertheless, whether they were bad or they were indifferent, at least they're more positive.
The farmer's always a pitcher.
You never can tell about the farmer until you give him a choice.
But now, the farmer is doing better.
Yeah, the moose test.
Well, the moose test.
I don't know whether he's got any more dollars in his pocket, but the mood in the agricultural area is... Yeah, that's quite a story.
That's quite a story.
That's for sure.
But it is a real...
The jaw-bone has been good.
I think it's all of the good.
All of the good.
We've done enough.
What have you done?
Well, it's going on, as you know.
Peterson had the guys in about shoes, and this indirect... Oh, sure.
Yeah, he had the shoe manufacturers...
Shoes are ridiculous.
Yeah, and it's because of the price of hides.
They say.
Well, he tells me that's true.
And the hides are in very short supply worldwide.
I see.
And so he had everybody in, and he jaw-boned the hell out of them last weekend.
Now, you see, we can do that.
Well, and you don't have to do it.
See, these guys will do it for you.
Sure.
And so we're concerned.
And it does have the effect of burning prices down.
It sure does.
Food prices are down, but they are.
No, they're down.
And what you had is you had market chains.
that have either frozen or reduced a list of things.
And they're running big ads in their papers about us.
Safeway's running big ads in the local paper.
Are we scaring them?
Sure.
You're darn right.
They don't like to be the butt of criticism.
They also don't like criticism.
They figure we just might slap the goddamn control on here.
It would be a horrible thing for the minister to repeat it over and over again on us.
Well, they hate it.
I'd hate it too, kind of.
It'd be a terrible thing.
But I'm going to try to think about you in the war.
Yeah.
Couldn't even work.
Couldn't even work.
Not at all.
I don't think it would.
And, uh... Oh, the cattle growers say, well, that's fine.
We'll just keep our cattle off the market.
Where do we stand?
Yeah, I asked them.
I finally, uh, got a real deal.
They're working on a, uh... That's a crime.
That's a crime.
Prices.
Prices.
Now, what about the tax, property tax?
Well, I've got an appointment.
I don't know what the hell you do about property tax in my school.
Yeah.
We're in a holding pattern right now because of this ACIR thing, but it won't wait.
So I've made an appointment to see John Connolly tomorrow afternoon.
I sent him quite a long option paper on the subject.
I sent you an outline of it, which you probably didn't get, but...
I'm going to wait for your discussion.
Yeah.
I felt that was the place to start.
And there are several action-forcing events.
We can't wait on this thing for the ACIR or anybody else.
The boys have got to testify on the debt ceiling.
Who?
Well, Connolly, Schultz, Stein.
And the loophole thing is going to come popping out.
Connolly's got a good answer.
Go ahead.
Well...
He thinks he does.
At the same time, Wilbur Mills has announced he's not going to take up health this year.
He is, is he not?
Well, that leaves a very big vacuum on the House Ways and Means Committee after we get through with pensions.
Aren't you just glad he isn't?
Oh, delighted he is.
Delighted.
But that means that the House Ways and Means Committee could handle a tax bill.
They may have already handled revenue.
That's right.
That's clear to committee.
What about pension?
Pension are foreign.
And then where is the HR1?
HR1 languishes in the Senate Finance Committee.
And they are screwed up too.
It won't come out of the way.
Well, something will come out of the committee.
We had the Republicans down here the other day, and we told them that loans changes cost $30 million.
And so they all went out of here shaking and went up on the Hill of Caucus and decided that the Republicans were going to have to resist the majority on the committee.
And so now that committee is more screwed up than it was before.
$30 million a year?
Yeah, first year.
So, well, we did that just to screw it up, and it did.
Well, yeah, I haven't heard from him yet.
He blasted you on Flanagan, which I think was probably a reaction to this, but I don't know.
Anyhow, so there's H.R.
1.
But we've got planning now, so it's not going to be a hard time.
Unless he's going to say, no, Irvin, I think Irvin accepts planning.
I said he would.
Irvin said he would.
I don't either, but I just took Long's reaction as sort of a...
I really think it was because we flanked him with the Republican Senate Committee, but I don't know.
Anyhow, revenue sharing is backed up behind that in the Senate Finance Committee.
Do you think we're going to get it this year?
It would be a minor miracle.
Do you hold on?
George holds on.
Do you want to?
No, we've had our win.
We've rolled Wilbur.
That's satisfaction.
What do you think in terms of those people?
That doesn't make any difference.
It doesn't make any difference at all.
And on revenue, man, for those people that are interested in it, that's good.
Whoa, that led to a noble fight.
Hell, you're going to get a medal from the mayor if you ever go around and collect it.
All right.
I think this, that the best maneuver available to us, and this is what I'm going to urge on economy tomorrow,
is that the Treasury issue a white paper or a policy paper on taxation now, as soon as we can put it together, and that it be an administration statement against property taxes, against unfair taxes, you know, kind of a populist position on taxation.
But pointing out that
We tried in 69 and we tried again in 70 to get tax reform, and all we could get was a little bit of relief for the poor people and so on and so forth.
The president's always been for major tax reform.
We just haven't been able to get it through this Congress.
And the voting records, we'll supply this on the side as a political document, the voting records of the candidates on the other side and the voting records for special privilege, for loopholes,
against reform and so on and so forth.
These two things side by side will give our guys enough to get up and speak on the tax issue.
Now everybody's running for cover.
They don't know what to say.
And they don't want to defend the existing tax system because they're not sure where we are.
We've got to have a clear voice speaking out.
And Connolly, as the administration spokesman on this, it should be his department, I think, that speaks out.
And I've got a whole list of topics that I'm going to nominate, at least, for inclusion in this document that would cover the whole range of things.
He may not buy that.
The alternative would be some policy-setting speeches by Connolly and others on the subject of taxation.
But sometime in the next four weeks, we've got to get a very clear line out of this, where we are.
Where does it put us in terms of property tax relief?
No, I think you can still postpone a decision on that.
You can take credit for studying the problem.
You decry the trends, you decry the rising taxes, and you've been hard at work on this for two years, and so on and so forth.
And that can be right in as part of the line that we take.
And just postpone the decision on that.
You mean you really could just come out and say there's a chance of modifying the taxes and we ever have to reduce property taxes, but you're not suggesting any alternative?
No, you can say there are a number of alternatives that you've been hard at work on.
This is not a new subject, and so on and so forth.
But duck the issue.
To give you an example of what you're up against, I got a wire directed to you from George Wallace.
It says, Mr. President, the American people demand a change in our tax system.
It is unfair and ominous.
Yours truly, George Wallace.
The one of the things I want to talk to Connolly about is an answer.
I'd kind of like to have Connolly write it back and say, Dear Governor,
Very interesting wire.
The president's fascinated with your suggestion.
Specifically, what do you have in mind?
Draw him out.
He's got no staff work.
He's got no background in this.
He's got to be very happy to have your recommendation.
Yeah.
Good.
And smoke him out.
I do that anyway.
Well, you've got to see how the secretary lives with that.
No, I can't do it.
No, he can do it, though, and I think he'd get a lot of fun out of it.
So that's one of the things we're going to talk about.
But the other side in this whole thing, this whole tax thing, is very superficial.
And irresponsible.
Yeah, very.
Oh, she's talking about loopholes.
But as John, what I said, he had a pretty position on loopholes in the election.
I got that.
It came out of the bed.
Yeah.
Depreciation on your home.
Mortgage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, that's a murder to be handled with that.
You know, for example, you take the capital gains, you knock the capital gains out in the market and go down 500 points.
And I needed to go down 500 points, wouldn't I?
That's right.
Now, you can't say, that is not as strong a point to the average guy who's upset about taxes as to say, Senator Muskie doesn't want you to deduct the interest on your house.
He didn't want you to own your own house.
You won't be able to afford your own house, you know.
You'll have to go out and rent, which is not deductible.
That's what Senator Muskie wants.
That's what Humphrey wants, and so on.
And I think we can, I think we can make some music on that.
The Democrats aren't really playing the line of the, basically they're being against, except for Wallace and his party, they're being against
Charities, homeownership, families, exemptions, those are loopholes for your kids.
They don't want to close those duties.
Gas tax, deducting the tax on gasoline that you drive in your car.
Sales tax.
They don't grab those duties.
Well, those are all loopholes.
They don't specify anything.
They just talk about loopholes.
Yeah, what are they?
Why does a rich corporation do this and that and the other thing?
Well, you do know very well that taxes in the United States is less loopholes and it's just been a little.
That's why it's... Every dollar that a corporation is exempt or has deducted from its income tax is as a result of a law passed by the United States Congress.
Every one of these guys running for office except for one is a member of the Congress.
Except George Wallace.
Except George Wallace.
He will have some dough by Friday, the first federal money.
Really?
Yeah.
We're going to begin.
Oh, God, I have squeezed blood out of the turns right here.
Because we're in the last three months of fiscal year, most of the dough has been spent.
So we're just literally taking it away from people.
Is Weinberger getting along all right and spending his defense money and everything?
I don't know.
I don't know how that's going to work.
Don't buy it with him.
No, I want to make a note about Rizzo.
I think it might be a good idea, when that money is delivered, for you to give him a phone call, because you have talked about what you saw him do.
Yeah, I'll call him and say, I understand you got your first check today.
What are you giving him for?
Oh, law enforcement, the narcotics control, there's some child care money in there.
Are you sure you're going to get a note out of him?
Sure, sure.
sure that I tell him first.
Well, it'll be law enforcement money this weekend.
It'll be the first money.
That was the, he did, we got a third.
We had no applications on the fly.
We had to start from scratch.
So we had to sort of swoop deep through this thing.
But that'll help him somehow.
Yeah, it will because he'll be able to say, see, the president's my friend and here's money we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
And that helps him with his, with his squirrel horse, which is what
That might be great.
Yeah, that's a good bumper sticker.
You're going to have gold in my hair over here on your front door.
No, my life is great, but I don't understand the difference.
Did you see where Kennedy sponsored the bill to make a national monument out of Chappaquiddick?
Can you imagine that?
I heard about it, but I think it's probably kept from the government.
think that this isn't you know lousy staff work i think more than anything else really oh yeah they didn't have to do that yeah there's some things that you just don't have to do it will not be forgotten it will be in four years not this year you agree oh sure that was every newspaper in the country and the people got a big play sure i got a big play in it out of denver this weekend
Did they point out that?
Yeah, it was good.
Where, and it was derogatorily put, it was where he had, how the hell did it, it inferred that he had a girlfriend in his car and she'd been killed in the accident and that he had failed to report it and that he'd been convicted of failing to report the accident.
Was he convicted in the accident?
Yeah.
Oh, sure.
I had suspended his driver's license for a year.
God, that's a hell of a damn thing to have in the record.
Sure.
Even that alone?
Yeah.
And then, of course, the grand jury proceedings were locked up.
Yeah.
But, no, he's convicted of a misdemeanor in connection with the accident.
But that's why he isn't getting into the strike.
Connection of his name and Chappaquiddick
It's news.
Every place.
I remember the day that happened.
I think we were on a plane.
You came in and said, Senator Kennedy did this.
Do you recall what you told me?
You were the one that told me about it.
You had an accident.
Yeah, I remember we were on a plane.
You came in and said Senator Kennedy was right at the building and falling off.
Yeah, we had the wire.
I forgot where we were.
You brought it in to me.
Yeah, we just sat there.
It was just amazing.
Yeah.
Thank you.
You got it someplace.
I don't remember where we were.
Well, I remember where I was the night he made the speech, you know, in the library where the book's gone.
I was in New York that night.
I heard about it.
Where was I?
I was abroad.
You were gone.
I don't remember where you were.
I'm out of town.
I think I was abroad.
I'd taken the metro line.
I had to rush to get to a television set because I wanted to see it.
Well, it didn't come off.
It didn't come off.
You didn't think it came off?
No, I think the fact that it's still an issue proves it didn't come off.
He believed it.
If it had been a good job, he would count it.
He was really trying to make that kind of speech.
Sure he was.
It didn't sound.
And I think the reason it didn't is it didn't have the central truth to it.
That's right.
We were telling the truth.
I wasn't on that speech.
He wasn't talking about this.
He knew damn well he wasn't.
And there were too many unexplained, extrinsic facts around it still needed to be rattled into the thing.
Didn't these say in the speech I had?
Yep.
Talked to that effect.
And there was a moment I wasn't proud of it.
It's a hell of a thing to rerun in a campaign, I'll tell you.
Well, you know, the only thing that troubles me about the busing thing is if you want to do the right thing, you know, you don't want to be in it, which is to make it terribly explosive, a visit issue, and make it worse than a job here at the end.
That's my point.
My view is, and I think you ought to get this hard when they ask you about it, that the president
giving a lot of thought to this problem.
And frankly, my kids have all gone to integrated schools.
I mean, Friends is integrated.
You know, I really consider that.
What are your wife's vote?
Public school, irascible public school, bi-irascible public schools, Mexicans and blacks.
And Ian Whittier, of course, had the Quaker tradition.
But my kids, of course, well, when Julie went to Smith, they had blacks all over the ice.
They only had a couple.
You know what I mean?
That's not that.
New York is not a, basically, a... Well, we've been playing this, that this was a personal decision on your part, born of very strong convictions.
And trying to do the right thing.
And rejecting the simplistic approach of the Constitutional Amendment.
Trying to find the right answer.
Trying to think frankly of how do we get kids better educated in this country, and yet how do we not turn the clock back racially and so forth.
Well, the line we've been taking is that the best judges of the right thing to do are the parents of the kids.
That's correct.
And you look at these numbers, they've got a poll in here, the Gallup poll, in which they've broken out favoring and opposing busing by supporters and candidates.
That's pretty all the same.
First of all, it's 76-18 against busing nationwide.
Then among blacks, it's 47-45 against busing.
And then among the three candidates, Wallace, Nixon, and Muskie,
The Wallace people are 89 to 8 against.
The Nixon people are 85 to 10 against.
And the Muskie people are 67 to 25 against.
And then it's practically a constant 80 to 15 in every section of the country.
Now, that's your evidence if the board is right.
There's hardly a single issue in this country on which people agree like they agree on this issue, regardless of party, regardless of candidate, regardless of section.
So, under those circumstances,
and basically what is supposed to be a democratic system, a system of representative government, how the hell can you possibly represent people without at least reflecting those views to an extent?
Particularly where the expert testimonies about education and so on is so uncertain.
The sociologists, the educators...
They're not sure.
That's right.
They're not sure.
and so uh you you have to come down on the side of the of the instincts and the inherent abilities of the parent to decide what's best for their child now you know and i know that race is at the root of this but so be it people are willing to take down the barriers
but they're not willing to force people across them.
They're just not going to go that much further.
That's right.
Well, it's the parents against the courts, the parents against the sociologists, and I think you're in the right light of that argument.
I'd refer you to the sociologists.
That's a bad word.
Yeah, that's a bad word.
Okay.