Nixon, Haldeman & Colson on 1972 election and Vietnam War

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a tower is not flying down i know

Absolutely.

And that's, that's, we're set right on that.

Now, what I can do with the car, which I've got no reaction to, is to see him the next morning.

He can ride with me from over the colonies to the other, or he's going to be at the meeting.

Yeah, you don't want him over the colonies.

Okay.

What you could do for a few minutes is on the flight from... Are you going back to Mars?

No.

He's not coming back to Washington.

He's going from Harlingen to San Antonio.

That's after you're, well, you know, you're still going to get ready for the evening.

But you could, you'll be on that flight.

You could catch up with him.

That's my concern.

Tell him that I want to see him right after we meet the Republicans.

at that gathering, so you can just come on to the plane with you.

And everybody will notice that.

But then come on to the plane with you and just sit in your cabin and talk to your friends on the plane.

Then he gets off and leaves.

That's what I thought, and I think that we don't need to talk about this.

I want to make sure that I want him to come on the plane alone.

Right.

You know, so we get .

Well, before we go here, you better get to the .

So you can do canon analysis on the cover.

I haven't seen, I've never done canon analysis, but I'm not sure I'd call it skunky.

I think the lead on the pre-network scene of casualties at zero was a lead.

It was a lead.

That's interesting.

The Washington Post put it on the first page.

First page, yeah.

I mean, make the first section.

I've got to separate your posts.

I don't want to be too long on this.

I think the opinion, I think the opinion that you can express is that now that he's back in the war issue, the media now will go all out on the war story.

It is true.

Could be.

The media is so vastly boring on the war.

What's your analysis of that?

Well, on the other hand, it's better for me to talk about the war.

I think it is.

Of course, he thinks it is, too.

So somebody's wrong.

And I don't know.

Well, the war is not winning the nomination.

The war cannot win in the election.

That's what would appear.

Everything, all the items we've got would indicate that.

What about the news analysis of the article reporting that the great deal they lose is Iowa?

Did you see that article on Iowa News?

The Green Deal has apparently some farmers who sold early somewhat annoyed because they didn't get as high a price as they should have gotten for their wheat.

But those same farmers have a new crop of wheat already out of the ground.

Well, not only that, but the farm economy as a whole has just been given such a hell of a shot in the arm by this that everybody, Bob Doolittle, everybody should go out there.

People have just got a lifted feeling.

The prices are up.

The price is up.

They'd be pissed off about that.

But there's cattle and so forth and so on.

Well.

You've got a hell of a good economic date today.

I saw that.

CPI.

Yeah, and personal income.

take-home pay, actual take-home pay, which is a good one.

And then you've got big new orders of durable goods.

The big news, Bob, is the economy is moving up and people feel good.

It's the gut age of God now.

Now they don't really mind if the prices go up or go down.

You talk to the more intelligent, the two marketers, at least the better educated, Pitts or whatever his name is, or Sennels or something.

Pitts.

Pitts, yeah.

And he said, well, that's what this Harris Bowl Monday says.

Yeah.

The other thing I was going to mention was the... On the news that...

don't have our little boys go rushing around saying they've got to get.

I have a reason for that.

I don't want to vote the Jews or anything after the election, because we're going to squeeze it to the left leg.

And so this idea of saying we're going to put a condition on the Soviet trade in order to get the Jew vote, I don't think we've cleared up any of this stuff.

We get this one.

It was raided.

I just did it very hard.

There's nothing really politically to talk about, because you're going ahead with the trade.

And you can't put any restriction on it?

That's right, Bob.

Henry totally understands this.

Henry's working on it with Rabin and the rest.

But I want the Jews, I want a hard line taken with Max Fisher and all the professionals with Jews, Bob.

We are not going to.

We just can't.

But we can't do it.

And frankly, listen, the country is going to like our...

The country doesn't want to lose anything for Jews, believe me.

Do you agree?

Absolutely.

Are we wrong?

No, we're not wrong.

You've got the bleeding heart of the police, so we don't have anything to do with that.

What's the Jewish community?

Why are they bleeding about the run-in?

Well, the Jewish community has to look at the bigger stakes, like the troops being taken out of the Middle East, and the case can be sold to them.

Maybe, maybe not.

Well, he's never carried this.

I mean, he's never carried this.

He's written both the Jewish issue and the parochial school issue.

I mean, he's just going straight out for it.

So that's the kind of stuff he's going to do.

All those things, he's trying to get well on things that he's bad on.

So he will get well with a few people in those groups that want to find a way to get the main point that we've got to get across to them.

are all of our people who agree.

And I just think that this morning, it's totally predictable that the press, that MacGyver gets, once he gets in the war, will pass elections and be very favorable.

And we've just got to just fight it every minute of the time.

We just know that you're going to get screwed.

But you see, this is, well, we'll get screwed in terms of total coverage, but the point I made yesterday, I don't think exposure, per se, is helping him.

kind of coverage he's getting.

I don't think that Wednesday night would do us a great favor to keep running at it if they went that particular kind of basis.

And if we come back to how hard with Connolly on the fence and Rodney to see the message, but the counterpoint to it, if he wants to really get into the foreign policy today, the counterpoint is when you have Romico in, when you're signing itself, when you're renegotiating and that's announcing the next round itself, there's rules going

If he wants to counterpoint with his arguments, he's going to lose.

The media can give him five minutes at night, and that doesn't bother me.

If he had five minutes talking about tax reform, and really getting under people's skin on a financial level, Vietnam is a winner.

Are you a mason?

No, I'm not sure I'm a mason.

No, I thought I was.

I'm not sure I believe in any of that stuff.

Nixon, Haldeman & Colson on 1972 election and Vietnam War

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 22, 1972

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