Nixon, Ziegler & Colson on 1972 presidential campaign and Press relations

Yes, sir.
former Governor Alan Shivers of Texas, please.
So that you can give it out.
I think you were going to give it out early in the morning.
Sure, I'll give it to the USA so they can have it.
Well, I'll try to have it ready by 5 o'clock.
Good.
I hope by 5 o'clock.
I'm trying to get a little bit more loose.
There's not anything in it that provides some of our scars, but I just want to repeat that it's a better idea to have it ready by 5 o'clock.
Without even a radio, then, we wouldn't have recognized it.
They're crying, by the way, if that didn't reach.
Yeah, yeah, that's kind of gross.
We've got all of it.
On the fellows last night made a little bit of a point which I'm going to ask about this morning.
You said there'll be no presidential tax increase in 1973.
That is not at all backing away from urban.
In other words, you don't intend to have a tax increase.
Your approach is not to have a tax increase in the second term.
As a matter of fact, I put that in there.
Unless you want me to say this.
The president has advocated it will be the policy of his administration.
avoid a tax increase for the next four years by holding down government spending.
That's why he's interested in not only appropriations, but authorizations programs.
Not only programs for this year, but programs for the next year.
The water bill is a case in point that it does not affect the budget significantly in 2003, but there would be devastation to it in 2007.
I can only say here that we were talking about this conference.
I just don't want to say something.
I think the point that I just want to talk about
You read Buchanan's analysis?
It says a real job.
Well, Nelson put Dr. Moore down last night.
This was determined.
It's Buchanan's view is that the health don't ever do what it can.
Croson, uh, Croson...
just as sensitive to the criticism as what Alan is.
But we came out of the three in very good shape.
We thought there were a few things where they stuck it in.
But we got it.
We led all three networks, number one.
Number two, they all made our points in varying degrees of snide-ness, if you will, in a couple of areas.
But they still made our points.
I mean, we made our points.
I thought that the fact that the leading Democrats
So, Alan, I was surprised to read this morning that my old friend Alan Shivers was actually a little older than I was, and I had to congratulate you before you began to realize it.
So I wish you a happy birthday, and I want to tell you that, you know, I had just finished the 50s.
I started in the 60s in 1973.
Do you think they're a good year or not?
Do you recommend it, or do you think I should just give up now?
Good, good.
That's right?
Sure.
Well, you know, every time you get to the security, you're thinking about that.
A lot of people live like that.
An hour, an hour.
They're trying to get all of them after they were sent to you.
They're pretty good.
So let's not even think the 60s.
Oh, God, I already had Social Security.
All right, I'll raise Social Security for shares.
It probably won't even take care of your debit money.
Now we saw up here that one of our guys, I don't, you know, I don't follow men these days, but I thought, my God, that's a boy, he's 65.
And I said, and I saw him, I thought, my God, I can't be 50 now.
Yes.
Your wedding anniversary too?
That is terrific.
Yeah, you, you, you give your, you know, I hope you know, did you know that there's another great fellow who worked with you, who had the exact same thing, Jimmy Burns.
Jimmy Burns' birthday was always on his wedding anniversary.
And I went down to, it was just, oh, two years before he died, I was there, in South Carolina, and I celebrated his, his theme, I don't know, his 60s, fifth wedding anniversary, something like that.
Well, anyway, I hope you live as long as he did.
You know, the thing is, Ron, and I know you haven't worked with these assholes, but the thing is that when we do a press conference, most people around here think it's very effective.
It's somewhat discouraging to see
None of the assholes impressed with their single-spanning, which they are so deeply devoted to, ever indicating a thing they are.
I mean, they don't, I mean, oh, they'll come in and say, you know, we should have had more.
But, you know, have you ever noticed how those assholes are just a, just really, pretty goddamned double-handed in that respect?
Carol Kirkpatrick had a paragraph.
He did what I said.
Yeah.
of the story, which is .
Devoted a whole paragraph.
You guys .
Carol Kirkpatrick had a paragraph.
He did what I said in his story, which said the tone was good.
He devoted a whole paragraph.
You guys like Kirkpatrick will do that.
My impression, as I said last night and remains today, I think that the impression of our coverage was good.
The television was medium.
By that I mean, you know, they did recap our points.
I looked at it again this morning.
They did focus on the tax reform, and they made the points about the corruption, how you brush that aside.
But my point on the networks, and I think this is probably, although I haven't talked to Pat, what his impression was when he wrote that summary, which was mine last night, and that is that we're moving into a period here now where there's a little bit of tendency of the government period to maybe get themselves a little bit well.
And if you compare the two
reports, one out of the press conference here, with a report of his foreign policy, McGovern's foreign policy statement.
The effort and the temptation on the part of the reports last night was to immediately move the president and the presidential press conference into the context of the campaign and into the political thing, which is fair enough.
And to put the little giant, the jab in, which is something that I just think that
cautious about this move in the next four weeks to talk about how we deal with it.
I don't know that we can do anything specifically to deal with it.
The guy on the coverage of the
Hilariani, I'm going to spend some time for today.
Well, I think we can't.
Hilariani, Hilariani has, I mean, I'm as hard to notice about news coverage as anybody.
But Hilariani, if you look at his reporting on the government,
He just cut the limit.
He's just a mean, nasty son of a bitch.
And when he cut the limit, that's where you want to be as governor.
He killed him.
He talked about the cab driver in Chicago who said that Kennedy was here.
I mean, if he'd done that to us, I'd have been screaming to hide him.
Well, anyway...
I don't, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
We've got a good barrage of them this weekend.
We've got Laird on face donation.
We've got Rogers.
I talked to Rogers this morning, and he's now angry over that Cleveland speech.
And when Bill gets angry, he's good.
He wants to have a press conference Tuesday.
which I kind of like rather than jump in immediately.
I like it for two reasons.
One, it sets the stage for McGovern's Tuesday night show.
And the second aspect of it is that it gives Bill time to really take this guy apart.
He said there was one line in that speech he said he wants to really have some fun with it.
McGovern said that communist China should take over responsibility for the security of its neighbors.
And he wants to say, can you imagine the Indians going
the Koreans, the Koreans, the Koreans, the Koreans, the Koreans, the Koreans, the Koreans, the Koreans, the Koreans,
It's Sunday, and if Rogers doesn't undo something, well, maybe it needs to come to light.
I think you may need that.
It may be, at this point, even if it's very factually aggressive.
You don't need to go as far as he's going, but if the stuff is too goddamn bland that they're putting out, you should start talking about that.
Okay, so, Ron?
We've gone right up to the line, sir.
All right.
Really good.
All right.
In fact, the vice president has, a couple of times, said the little kid was a government name more popular in Illinois than in South Dakota.
It was a bad one.
And I had a bad call at that point.
But that's who that was, actually.
Bill Robinson.
Bill can do that.
Bill can say that's the Fox guy eating chicken food there.
He wouldn't one day be a better date for Robbie's.
Well, he won't do it Monday, except it's a holiday.
And the guy with the press corps won't be coming and saying it.
He would prefer Monday until the, well, if he calls the press conference at the end.
Then he'd have to worry about us being kind of holiday.
Some questions come in.
See, because Tuesday looks too hot.
I put in one Monday.
I put in one Monday, and that was a special.
He'll get enough.
I think we have a question.
I think we have a question.
I don't want to get
I would still argue that we took the first three minutes of each of the three networks last night, and the coverage was medium to good.
We wouldn't have had those first three minutes making hard points on taxes, on helping the elderly, on no communist takeover of South Vietnam, which is, to me, a very popular line.
Absolutely, if you use the word comments.
Right.
You did, you, you, you, you.
I realize the policy of the New Assembly and more down the line, especially with us as a legal leader, watching these people make their next decision.
What really I didn't know was the next thing.
That's what really I didn't hear.
So this, I think that caused this whole judgment on the New Assembly last night.
It wasn't, at least just as I've known, it's like we gained square points.
First of all, the press conference.
had impact.
My point is not that yesterday was a waste of time.
I think it did have impact.
My observation of last night, and it still remains, is that I don't often make this point about the network.
It's on the way.
I just think that in this five week period, four and a half week period,
Well, I think the problem is that your network
political context in a way to possibly run it differently, to be less political, you know what I mean?
Well, if they do that, I mean, there's what you do.
If you, every move that's made, including doing that, is political, and that's the context in which they're doing it, they won't be discovered.
You win the role as president, they take in the role as candidate, along with the other guy.
The clearest thing of that was last Saturday, signing that song that I'm sure Martin wrote, which was played as a political campaign.
And then there's no way we can get more presidential than signing an international arms agreement passed by the United States Congress.
Standing there with Bill Fulbright and Scoop Johnson, they're out campaigning.
Of course, that certainly was not the overall impression.
It is the overall impression to get out of the press conference, isn't it?
I don't know.
I don't ever get that line.
I remember the Ekman book.
I mean, no other crime.
We have not you, not Hall, or anybody else in real life got a bad screwing.
We were getting 68 because we did not get those innuendos and those things and the rest.
In the end, they hurt you very badly.
You know, John, those were negative in a different sense.
And this was the mud thing.
Sure, you had your campaign.
That's a way to downgrade it.
But it was still a totally positive presentation.
I mean, that's the argument we all make till my dying day, which is that it's a waste of time to call the goddamn press into the office and have an in-office press conference.
I believe that as a basic point.
Nobody agrees with me, including you.
I think it's absurd to not give him an audience if you're going to have one.
That's what he did.
The greatest mistake he could make.
He had a bigger audience than we had when he went on.
Terrible mistake.
His giving him an audience doesn't bother me in the least bit.
You put in an equal reductionization for me, and I did one, and they're putting him on and on.
That's the debate that we're not going to get into.
First of all, he wouldn't get a bigger audience.
They wouldn't run him all at the same time.
Yes, sir.
Well, there's no point in arguing this anyway, because we aren't going to do it.
I agree with not doing it.
I understand that.
And be true to it if you have a quality of question.
But don't...
There's no way you're going to score on television with an in-office press conference.
Period.
Can't be done.
I'm not going to do what we're saying here.
Maybe the difference in the semantics of what Ron and I are saying.
I think for an in-office press conference... How do you get it on television?
You don't.
An in-office press conference is not a television.
All right, fine.
All right, so it's the conference.
So have a little night.
Have a little Indian boy come in and give him a plaque.
That'll get you a good... Well, it comes down to this.
We just have to equate it.
They call it political, but the people see it.
They call the treaty signing political, but it was a sensationally good thing.
It doesn't matter.
The people saw it.
But the press conference, they didn't see it.
So what they call it is what the people get.
If they don't see the event, then it's portrayed to the people through the words of the reporters.
If they do see the event, it doesn't matter what the reporters say.
Well, aren't there really two points here, though?
First of all, the more senior television problem that I was in.
Look at the total impact.
You're absolutely right.
But you're not doing that.
You're evaluating the president.
I'm saying there are two aspects of it.
The in-office pressure.
What's the total impact?
The front page play, the radio over and over again.
The president walking into the room here smiling, being seen here in the Oval Office.
That impression that goes up to the people on television.
I agree.
Totally.
So the total impact of the press conference yesterday, without arguing anything,
Now, then you move to the next point, which you made earlier.
You move to the next point, which you made earlier.
And that is, when you do it in the office, you really never can win overall in a segment of that impact, which is television.
I totally disagree.
I've seen one network.
I totally disagree with Buchanan's line I made last night.
I'm still an alter.
I'm still an alter.
One network would be a big issue.
given the effort that the president made, and we sitting here knowing what that press conference potential was.
We sure as hell didn't get its potential.
No question about that.
But we did not take a beating.
Buchanan is 180 degrees wrong.
We didn't take a beating last night.
And I'll give an example.
Everyone would have said the same thing.
I agree.
We came out ahead on television last night of having done nothing.
We didn't come out ahead.
As far as what we could have been, it has been a lot of press conferences.
That's true as it's imagined.
That's right.
You will never get the right kind of coverage on television out of an in-office press conference.
It can't be done.
But for an in-office press conference, we did well with the one yesterday.
It's what SDV is.
And so you get between the three of them.
But then if Lehman and O'Keefe are out, and they got earphones out, and then it's concerned to me about basically the fact that your press, even more than 68, has got that negative.
I mean, it really is.
I can tell.
I see them.
I know their moods.
So forth and so on.
And don't have any illusions.
I mean, I can tell someone that you've got to bear everything.
Now, they try to compensate a bit by giving them a gun or a hook, but they're not doing that.
They're doing that in order to set up their own harm.
That their views, they don't want them to be the issue.
They want them to be the issue because they do, and they know they're the issue.
But after the way you treated the rest, the disrespect...
The attitude of the press is really a pretty shocking thing.
I mean, they are a bunch of shitasses.
This is what really was bothering Ron last night, wasn't it?
You said they've been begging for this press conference, and when they finally get it, they don't even give it the treatment it deserves.
Again, it has to be separated in terms of press coverage itself in that view.
I walked out of the room.
I thought the press coverage beautifully handled it.
It was a good session.
But I walked out of the room.
The first thing I said was, sorry about that, that was a dirty rash.
Two weeks they're out there asking questions and wanting to mention when we're going to have a press conference.
They walk in here and they really don't ask one question that, as you said earlier, wasn't asked.
Or something that they covered in a briefing.
Then I would take the second step in terms of the attitude of the press.
I think there is some negative attitude within sections of the press corps.
Looking at the press generally, I still hold to the view that it is a different metal frame and a different posture than it was.
Well, I agree.
I agree.
The big conference.
Sure.
That's
All I'm arguing is that you've got to measure it against the objectives for that act, whether it's a good thing to be on a big Eastern press conference, but it's basically a total confrontation in the 90% which will be, I'm not sure, that right now the conservatives are not being badgered and pushed.
I think it would, but I think it isn't.
So that's an honest answer to the question.
But that, you've got to...
So, the ground rules and the way we use those ground rules, Paul's press conference yesterday, he thought we were doing it in order to screw him a little bit, twist things around, that was his decision.
He did what was set out to do, and he's

Nixon, Ziegler & Colson on 1972 presidential campaign and Press relations

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Also recorded on October 6, 1972

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