Nixon, Ehrlichman & Bull on 1972 Presidential Campaign

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Right.

I'm going to send a message to the Congress tomorrow, and then I'm going out in the background.

Right.

I think we'll save that.

Particularly if you're going to have a press conference this week, if you bounce off this, you get a chance to hit it.

And I don't think it's heavy enough.

Well, actually, that was my view.

Well, it's a drum fire thing.

See, we had yesterday.

Well, now tonight we have the same thing with Schultz and Weinberger.

They testified today.

And we'll hit them with this thing tomorrow.

Then, if you get a chance to hit it at your press conference, we'll hit every day this week.

And I think with this kind of saturation, four or five days running, that we've got a fair chance of penetrating.

But for you to go on or to go out and make a speech someplace I don't think would get us anything, considering the

Pretty good message.

Well, no, we kind of took it away from him and put it in the hands of a speechwriter.

Yeah, a fellow named McDonald.

Seems to be pretty good.

He can write plain English, which is a breakthrough.

Now, there's an issue involved in this thing, which I might as well get your view on.

Weinberger would like to telegraph which bills we're going to veto in advance.

And he's got four or five of them.

My feeling is...

I think, really, this whole veto strategy catch that Chris obviously has succeeded when he has voted, which is true, but he wants to succeed in the strategy.

I don't know if there's support for it or not.

Our interest, basically, is to recognize that he's a loser, and therefore, frankly, not to have such high visibility.

I thought about it on your example, and I didn't sense the rest of it.

I kind of feel that, frankly, I think not raising taxes is a winner.

Cutting spending, unfortunately, is a loser.

The one leads to the other, and we'll have to make it as we go along.

I'm afraid, John, to get into this thing of having a big strategy, that could be the big issue for two or three weeks.

The President has strengthened the Congress, he will be doing.

Let's say you say, I'm going to veto the water bill.

Then let's suppose they table it.

Then you're on record.

You're going to veto a water bill.

You may never get the chance to veto it.

And so, as you say, for the rest of the Congress, you're going to be flattered for what you say you might veto if it gets it.

So you've got all the losers and none of the winners.

So it seems to me that we go heavy on spending ceiling.

Congress ought to discipline itself.

It ought to have a spending ceiling that should be airtight.

And it should put the discipline on itself.

Now that shifts the burden on the governor.

Why doesn't the governor and the other senators put a spending ceiling on the Congress?

They're the only ones that can do it.

And then it says this hurts the taxpayer at higher taxes and higher prices.

And then it says, you're going to have to, if they don't, then you're going to have to do the only thing that's left available to you, and that is veto.

But you don't say what?

Or you don't say that.

What are you going to veto?

Well, I'm going to indicate that.

I'm going to soon reach out to people and find the Congress guilty.

I mean, after all, the Congress is innocent until it's true guilty.

I think that's what I'm trying to do.

Absolutely.

We're not going to find the Congress guilty before it's true guilty.

of people of this sort of responsibility.

And I think the Congress needs a responsible man.

I think they have to be given an opportunity to know the problems that we have, to do what is the right and responsible thing.

Until they do, I don't know if they have any bill or if we fight hard for our provisions.

So it doesn't matter.

I don't fight too damn hard.

We can lose it.

It doesn't matter.

Now, the education point with this rural development thing, I've got a very good memo.

I thought you said I had a sign.

Well, I'm not so sure you do.

I'm not so sure you don't.

The agricultural boys, Clayton Oyer, who's a guy on the committee, and Earl Butts, both come on very, very strong and say, we are losing all the good gains that Butts has made with the farmers.

And they say, this would just be one more blow.

They say, all this talk about food prices, all the talk about don't eat beef, eat chicken, all that kind of stuff, it's hurting with the farmers.

And they say, please stop talking about it.

He is, but his argument is, I've done very well.

I've turned the thing around in eight months.

Between now and November, we'll be blowing it.

We're not careful.

And he says, quit talking about food prices over there in the damn White House.

Play it cool.

Talk about something else at press conferences.

And don't take any further actions that will be interpreted by farmers, especially cattlemen, as being adverse to their interests.

I've got an idea.

How would you like to blame that on George McGovern?

You know why food prices are high?

Because we've added 9 million people to the food stamp rolls, or 7 million or whatever it is.

I grant you that we signed it, but it was McGovern's bill.

And what's happened is that we've added buying power to this market.

in and they send their food stamps on grape olives and hummingbirds' tongues and maraschino cherries and all that kind of stuff, as to which there is a short supply.

That still is food prices.

And those are food prices that are going up.

And it's the food stamp legislation that is partially accountable.

Now, that's what I heard.

I don't know.

Very good.

I know you have.

Well, here's what I've done.

I don't know if this theory is right or not.

I've tried it on a couple of businessman audiences, and it's gone over pretty well.

And so I think it's time I check my facts, so I've got to go over for the income.

Would that mean, John, that the other side of that, that we should then come out for reducing the number of people getting boozed?

Now, I indeed think

The alternative to it was commodities, where you give people flour and milk and sugar and staples, and they're low-cost items, and they're in surplus.

The argument is that all these poor people are just entitled to maraschino cherries as the rich people.

But that was eliminated.

I was in this great hunger in my head.

Well, I suspect we were right in there with the rest of them.

But let me try and prove it out, and we'll see.

But otherwise, I think the only thing you can do with food prices is to say, well, the economists tell us that we've done all the right things, and things are going to get better.

And other prices are getting better.

Buying power is going up.

It's easier for the consumer now to buy food.

So that's a net plus.

Certainly, when the housewife goes to the food market, she's 4% better off than she has been for the last 15 years.

And, you know, you talk around with that one.

But I think we're just going to have to, I think it'll get better.

I think we'll have to work our way around it for the time being and just let it come unfold.

Coming back to her, I'm sure.

It's authorization.

Right.

And we can start to appropriate it.

here this week.

Now, Whitaker has put together a pretty dang good piece of work on this, which you may want to read.

You may not have to.

It's a political decision.

Yeah, we don't need to read it.

Well, it's a political paper.

And what I mean is that I think that I know what the issues are.

I'm just trying to think.

What I agree, thinking on the vital side,

how bad is it?

The conferees have reduced the outlay, in fact, from $700 million in 73 to just under $400 million in excess of your budget.

What is it next year?

In the next year, it is $500 million over in 74 as compared with

well that's it that's the over it's 473.74 oh sure absolutely now let me just look out the line because of the legal services thing we should be though absolutely absolutely and definitely well they tried to begin we'll able to veto

I don't think they can sustain it either.

They may clean up the legal services.

They may split legal services off and just send you OEL, which they haven't been willing to do in the past, as we've asked them to do.

And this is Javits from Maryland.

What do we need to do?

We don't need to be sustained.

Oh, I think we can.

Oh, we can?

Yeah.

I think we can.

See, that was sustained before.

See, the idea of being against the court, what would happen?

No.

No, we do it on the same principle we did before.

We say, does legal services sustain it?

unsigned governmental practice.

We've asked them to separate it out so it can be considered separately.

They haven't done it.

OEO can operate on continuing resolution, so we're not doing any violence to the OEO program, so we veto it.

It's a caretaker operation.

He does a good job of campaigning.

He's out around the country constantly.

Do you want me to leave this rural thing with you?

I had been talking about this for a hell of a long time, you know, if you get out around the country in Fargo, everybody's all steam on it.

It's a pet idea of mine.

If it doesn't, if you balance, if there's too much balance to the idea, I just think it's a waste of money here or someplace else.

I mean, I just think that you can't be in a position of taking the farm.

That's what I think.

We did that with the old

There are constituents who like being on the face of the OEO constituency.

That's a different matter.

And the governor's going to try to take these people away from us.

Because he's got a natural base in the Midwest.

He can't do it.

Oh, he can't do it, but he's going to keep us busy.

I agree.

We'll have to get him to that server.

That's really the best place to do that.

He ought to get the hell out.

And I think it's good to get him to Alaska.

I'm out in space and stuff.

I can say a lot of other things.

I should read.

I should get him off this youth and war thing that he's on.

Jesus Christ, I'm quiet.

Why are you in the war?

First of all, you aren't in the war.

It's actually basically why I separated them out.

And, you know, instead they just, we as fathers, as brothers, we win.

Well, you know what I think.

I don't know if he can do it.

He may not be tough enough, but I think Morgan could be of some influence there.

He's got good credentials with the vice president.

He might say to the vice president, he needs a man who's close to him in the domestic council.

The rest of the way he'd go, all right, would you try that?

If you want to do it, sure.

You can tell him, mention it to Bob, but I think Marvin, and it's hard with none of them, but it's hard with Marvin to go along with some of the bases.

You're going to have somebody with you from the domestic council, and he should have somebody with him, and he can tap into the instant answer desk and all that kind of thing.

But Marvin then would have to...

He doesn't have any rightful ones.

Marvin could at least speak up.

He's got balls and he's got some political instinct.

Excellent.

Excellent political instinct.

I think he's great.

All right.

I haven't thought about it.

A couple other options.

Would you agree on rural services that would be better?

Well, I certainly am strongly persuaded by Butts, and I think it would be too bad to hand McGovern a ready-made issue in our constituency.

All right, so that's exciting.

Okay.

We don't need to say anything to anybody for the moment about it.

And I won't say anything to Kath or anybody for the moment.

Hold on.

I had a long visit with George Romney on Saturday.

Okay.

I think that's a pretty much rough life now, the more I think about it.

I mean, I don't think I have to.

I just want to have one.

Yeah.

He said he would.

He said there'd be no, no problem.

But he just wanted to keep his.

You want to keep his scalp?

Well, yeah, we are, in a way.

he is see that's the point all right that's the other way to go on this he's under heavy fire there are a couple of other guys out around outside of government but uh runny's firing away the best one inside

Okay, I'll pass the word.

We've been arguing that model cities should go.

We've been arguing that HUD should be folded in the community development department.

He ought to agree generally to the special revenue sharing list.

of HUD programs that are going to be eliminated, he ought to agree to the consent of the Department of Community Development.

That's a condition that's doing, you know.

We may get that today.

We may not get it today.

Okay.

The other, let's see.

I have been passing the word that you're firm on the veto of the water bill.

Okay.

That's an appropriation.

Right.

And there's all kinds of hair on that regardless

The burden on the private industry is such a hot topic.

Can I suggest this?

We agree that the private industry and all of our so-called vested interests for Christ's sake have got to step up.

They ought to be doing it anyway.

And I suppose they are because they have a government economy.

So they don't stay here.

We still don't know.

And also, it relates back to this message that's going tomorrow.

I don't know now.

It's slowed down.

They can't clean it up very much.

But the timing is haywire.

I don't know when that's going to come.

Maybe next week, it may not.

John, what are the degrees you want?

I don't know if you've ever heard of Leslie Bacon, but she's a little fat girl in Seattle who blew up the Capitol.

and she's been indicted for perjury.

She's part of that commune.

And the Grand Jury in Seattle indicted her for perjury.

And they want to track her.

The judge has compelled a disclosure of domestic tax that might relate to her.

And the fact is that the Justice Department has authorized tax on four peace groups prior to the May Day effort to tie up the government

and Leslie Bacon was a member of one of those four peace groups.

So there will have to be a disclosure to that judge and to the lawyers on the other side for the fact that we have four peace groups.

It doesn't change her case.

She could still be tried and probably convicted.

But the Justice Department called over and said, how do you feel about disclosing the fact that we had these taps, which has subsequently been declared illegal, on these...

against the war groups.

And I've counted those as around here among the senior staff, and they're about evenly divided on this.

About two points of view.

I wonder if you have any strong feelings about it.

Well, you can refuse to disclose, in which case you'll cost the indictment.

If you disclose, the attorneys for the defendant will undoubtedly leak it.

I would have been supposed to be.

Not.

We haven't even shared it on the internet.

Okay.

But it's not my judge.

It's, uh, yeah, it's old Bill Beeks who was appointed by Truman.

He's now, he's right at the end of his career.

He's about to retire.

Well, that's all my... What I was going to say...

all of these domestic things when you're prepared, you do get in, get in the very, whether it's on drugs or parks or anything like that, get your people to be very, like, points, the talking points in there are going to be going to impress.

Try to think, to put in what will make those, in other words, grab a, uh, a, uh,

That's far more important than the rate of protection.

They're not useful in terms of that sort of thing.

Somebody ought to sit down with the price group.

You just got to do this yourself.

Somebody said, what the hell?

What is the gravity on this?

I thought of a couple of things.

He already didn't share on the live.

We were on the defensive.

Now we're on the offensive.

All that sort of gets a little bit to legal intent rather than we double the number of people that are going to get my comments.

I talked about the passage along, and I just think it's right now.

If I had to tell you the whole stat, you might have to think of a tooth right now.

Everything is political.

The facts are not great.

They are relevant, but they're not important to me.

That's all.

They're really not important now.

The programs are relevant, but not important.

Everything is floating.

And just think of things that, you know, codes, slogans, code words, I mean, code words, slogans, little one-liners, it's the one-liner kind of thing.

You can sort of pop right out there.

People can say that you can use, readers can use, all the rest.

I think it's a very useful thing.

I don't know whether...

It's one of the very sensitive things.

The environment is so important.

In the 1990s, a TV man was caught in a situation with James.

I know it by sight, but I've never had anything to do with it.

uh... uh... uh...

Uh, we had a situation where, uh, in fact, the president, we were wrong in the Eisenhower administration.

We, we fried one of Trump's men, you know,

for a new small bakery.

Is that Bob?

Oh, no, Lamar Cottle.

No, that's him.

Oh, that was right.

I mean, later on during the NIR, or five years later, his secretary or something like that.

My point is, if it's in the campaign, if it's a bigger matter, if it's an investigation that he likes to course to,

Years later, you don't take a White House man in crime, in my opinion.

I mean, it just, it just, it's too, too, apparently it's a dangerous thing to do.

I stand out in the 2000s.

You can always find someone who can do something about it.

But I hope, you personally, you see, you talk to Mike, you can.

And you're talking to Mike, he said, we need changes.

And I want, I mean, I want him graciously out of that.

And he calls on us, he's saying, we've got to, we've got to do this.

I'm here to say, I'm here to say it's a good protocol.

We just aren't going to have this done.

Thank you.

What was your feeling, John?

Well, I'm surprised.

Nixon, Ehrlichman & Bull on 1972 Presidential Campaign

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on July 25, 1972

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