Conversation 824-003

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One of them is Wally Johnson.

Wally would like more than anything else in the whole world to be an assistant attorney general for Lance.

What's your picture?

No.

a young guy that got so long.

Yes, sir.

It's going to be long, big, and a star.

But Hill said, fantastic, fantastic.

He said, as a matter of fact, he said, today when I was Bush, this is the old man, I said, I fought a skeleton, I said.

And he said, because you know, that guy's been around a long time.

Well, you had a skeleton.

Skeletons had moved into China and the Soviet Union and other countries of the world and covered the UN, the White House, the State Department.

going to this country for the president, he also has been a China police.

He went in, you know, on the .

He's got a regular radio .

We get a job, a chance to talk to .

And you've got the stars, you know.

What time will you do Henry tomorrow?

11.30.

11.30, yes.

Now, you have a good talk with him.

You read my hammer and the only other thing.

It's not from the mountaintop, Olympus.

I haven't thought it through too much.

But what I'm trying to do is tone, rather than this belligerency and explaining.

And second, I'm trying to make those three strong points.

particularly, you know, you know what the three push-ups are, the U.S. ceasefire, and no communist government, and so forth.

And the other, putting more emphasis on that.

And also, I'm trying to make the point that you made that, which I'm underlying in that, that we don't want to end the longest war in modern times with the shortest peace.

All the combinations, all the Bureau of Land Management work, all that stuff.

And apparently, he's in that direction in his career, in that direction, and so on.

That's important enough, right?

He thinks so.

It's an important spot in this sense.

What does it do for us?

You know what I mean?

I just think it's a politician.

It's doing it for us.

You're just going to get it.

Not from there.

Probably.

Now, Sally and Peyton's the same way.

You say to her, where are you going?

She says, by the time I'm 40, I want to be a banker.

And she says, I'm too young for the court.

I've not had enough experience.

And she said, well, I laid this out for her.

And I said, let's assume that you were standing here on the threshold of a new term, and you could pick off any job in the federal government you wanted.

What would you aspire to?

And she said, well, this may sound very dumb to you, but I'm taking into account the fact that I'm very young, and I've only had a couple of years of practice.

I said, I'd like to be a general counsel.

and get some practical experience.

And she said, because I aspire to go into banking, I'd like to be in one of the financial departments or agencies.

I'd like to take over treasury.

Oh, she said, federal home loan bank for it.

She said, that's savings and loans.

And she said, when you're black, there isn't any bank except for savings and loans.

And so she says, that's where I'd like to head.

Good.

You've got to help me.

I'm going to make it open.

I don't know.

I'm just hurting.

Just throw them up.

Anyway, I said, well, how long should you stay there?

She said, I don't need to stay there, you know, four years.

And I said, do you want to go on the court?

She said, I don't have any business on the court.

I'm too young.

And she said, someday, when I'm 45 or 50 years old, she said, I'd like to be on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Not through banking.

But I said, well, now that's two different things you just said.

She said, I'm a little mixed up.

But she said, if I stayed in the practice of law, I'd like to be in the Supreme Court.

If I go into banking, she said, when you're black, the name of the game is money.

And she said, that's where I could make a lot of money.

And so she said, I think I've got a chance to make a lot of money and probably be one of the first black women to ever really make it.

that way she's married no is she interested in that i don't know i don't think maybe she just probably feels the hell she's going to marry some black son of a gun that's going to hold that's it i think that's true in her case

She said, when you talk to the president, tell him how grateful I am.

She said, I don't know why he has any confidence in me.

I'm overcome that he does.

And the experience that I've had here has been the best thing that's ever happened to me.

I said, well, do you think you ought to be still in the District of Columbia picture?

She said, no, I shouldn't be.

She said, Croke was the right guy to have in there, because he was white.

She said that it would be wrong to pick out a black person and try

run the District of Columbia through a line person.

Yeah, I was embarrassed.

Well, she said, you're subject to too many pressures.

And she said, it creates a distortion.

And I'm sure she's right about that.

So anyway, that's good.

And we're making some progress.

I had a long talk with Harper.

And the vice president's made an offer.

And I think he'd probably take it.

And that will help.

Can you get the vice president's office, vice and the county, I don't know what your name is.

The other thing.

On that score, have you heard from George Schultz, whether Ed David will go to now?

Ed David has now come back with a condition.

And I said to George, no conditions.

and so he was to have contacted ed david this morning to say i guess it's off now he says he won't take anything except that he sees because he's got some kind of a fat off on the outside good and so i think he'll probably leave good and that's that box yep now the woman's to go there and i want to agree blown up okay okay i understand now now that leaves us an accident i have no obligation reflection

NASA's a big job.

Why not one of our managers?

All right, I've got a good idea.

Why not for the head of NASA, that battalion vice president?

Chrysler.

That's a good idea.

I understand.

We've got an antagonist.

Oh, she's Skelly.

That's the greatest unguided missile I've ever really seen.

Super effective, huh?

I've got a meeting with Malik today, and then we're going to have a major sit-down meeting with him tomorrow.

He had some turn downs, and the reason that he has, I think, is that we didn't

We didn't rush these guys enough.

We didn't bring them back here for undersecretary and take them to the mountaintop and show them the way out of this mess and all that kind of stuff.

So he's going to revamp his style some.

But I'm hoping to get out of here about the same time you do.

Are you done?

Man, take some time off.

Work your ass off.

Everybody's done.

All of them each time.

Yeah, we're working into the regular day.

So, well, it's useful because that gives us a line to work against.

And we'll have all of that stuff.

The turn downs don't bother me too much.

If we can make points and if we can still get people that are active to do the jobs.

This is the one that worries me the most, I don't know why it is, it gnaws me on, is the Brenner.

And I know that Webster worries everybody else.

Webster didn't worry me so much, me and Sheriff.

So he fought by IRS and lost five cases.

But he paid the money.

I talked to Bud again today about Brenner.

And I think you can stay loose on that.

I think that's going to work out all right.

OK.

Bud has a series of meetings with him.

They're getting him prepped up for his confirmation.

And Bud says he's beginning to loosen up.

And he says, I think he's going to be all right over there.

Now, we've only seen him on short acquaintances, and he was very tight and very brave.

I know, I know.

I think when he gets settled in, and Crowe will keep him.

You know, I'm actually saying it last night.

I'm going to lose.

This means nothing, I know, to most of us around here, because where am I American flag people think it's a little jingoistic, and it is, and deliberately intended to be so, but nevertheless.

And there will be, when he came through the line, once again, I had to get through my car, and he said, you know, he said, what I did today, he said, I went through the labor department.

And he said, your picture now is in every one of the offices, and it wasn't there before.

We had a hodge in there.

We had a hodge.

So they never do the president's picture.

They don't consider it important.

I don't consider it important in a personal way.

But he does.

He thinks you're a democratic Irish politician.

It's like the pictures abroad in the embassies.

They don't have them.

Or if you live in them, they have them upside down.

Or they're backlands.

And it is important.

They have them in Sweden now, because when I was there, I assisted.

They didn't have them before.

Can we have a project?

to get, for example, whoever's in the State Department needs to get the pictures up and all the evidence.

You know who can do that best?

It's the guy we make the inspectors now.

All right I

It doesn't deal with me.

We're in one damn camp.

It doesn't deal with me.

He gives anything to us.

And I don't think we owe him anything.

We didn't promise anything.

We had a very good man at the job.

Why not put a businessman, pro-Nixon, hard for Nixon, politician in that job?

And one of these men is around the public.

We've got a pretty good list on that.

And if we get by, see, the Scott thing was a sticking point.

If that doesn't bother you, then we've got a list, and we've got some good ethnics on the list who've been damn good businessmen.

And we can move to that.

We're just saying, Scott, look, we thought the other part was terrific.

We think this thing's good.

But you and we had to make some commitments in the campaign.

Do you understand that?

And we'll be around when we want something else huge.

But they don't have a range of these jobs.

They don't have a range of these jobs.

That's a revelation.

Are we beginning to get across the fact that they don't have a right to these jobs?

That's a revelation that they're getting at.

This budget thing is going on over here across the hall, and I probably better get back over to that.

But I did want you to know that we're coming on some of this stuff.

And the budget issues are gradually combing out.

Was there some reason that, and I assume it must have been Weinberger, that we had to get to the crack of all things about paraplegics, coming back from paraplegics?

Did you see Marty Vinson around there?

I didn't.

I looked it up.

I'm sure it's Captain.

It sounds so much like Captain.

I love it.

Look, I just want to make sure he doesn't cut the wrong thing.

according to Kirsten's unofficial threats of cutting the .

Remember, don't ever let him in.

A request by .

Today, he was disappointed .

But it bothers him more that our man gave ill fiscal responsibility as a reason, since his duties to Vietnam included calling in airstrikes, et cetera, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to kill people.

Now he's told it costs too much to give him and others adequate care.

Now, the point that I make is, he agreed we had hospitals that had gone down since we were working with the 13th and 15th, and they were the best hospitals in the U.S. for some of the reasons you're reading, Gloria or Victory.

et cetera, et cetera.

The US doesn't have a sensitive death care now.

How else could R&D do such a decision before the election?

You may ask.

Did we veto any legislation that had to do with barricades?

If we did, somebody has to ask us.

We're not getting care right up until about that point.

You know, what he's lumped together there is that veto you did of the 12 categorical veterans programs that were booed on.

I think the day showed somebody should get a people time, Don Johnson, and say that's a goddamn lie.

Or they have the disabled veterans or somebody else.

It's a goddamn lie.

The paraplegics are getting every sentence they can.

Our speaker is a paraplegic.

The speaker there is a paraplegic.

I think I just referred to him.

Yeah, but there were no programs for paraplegics as such involved in any of those vetoes.

He's just generalizing that we vetoed.

Some veterans bills, which we did, but they were, they certainly were not parapsychotic.

You signed a good one very well.

You signed a good one and you got no heat at all from the veterans organization.

This guy is just taking a free shot at you.

We'll get, we'll get somebody like Johnson on there.

I want that.

All right.

That's a vicious thing.

This has been the best friend the veterans have ever had in the White House.

He signed these bills.

He signed this one and that one.

This is a total lie.

Did you see where Tiger Teague is going off as chairman of the Veterans Committee and he's going on to space and technology?

He's getting tired.

I think he's kind of worn down.

He's going to stay on the committee, but he's going to stay on the committee.

Find a pole, perhaps.

The black doesn't worry me too much.

I think we're doing well.

The woman, putting the woman in here, and if we can get Ivy Ray, the priest, I don't know what his name is.

Dixie Lee Ray.

I think that will have symbolic meaning.

Or do you?

Oh, I don't think so.

I used to.

Yeah.

She's not very damn feminine.

I heard a shit about the feminine.

She's a woman.

Okay.

That's right.

And, uh...

And David, does any guy have any conditions at all?

He's a nice fellow.

He's kind of cute about it.

He imposed a condition that on the face of it looks pretty reasonable, but it has enormous policy implications.

And we just can't agree to it.

Going to read any conditions.

Matter of fact, as you said yesterday, John, we were elected now.

Let me say.

It's a very important thing to remember.

The great problem with individuals who are elected and don't have to run again is that then the only responsibility they have is one that they must impose on themselves.

Not the only discipline they have.

They must be self-imposed and therefore there's a very high

Responsibility.

You've got to do the right thing.

You can't kick people if they're bad and this and that.

Except you don't let the Washington Post in for good reasons.

They're never leaving the goddamn White House again.

It's personal fee and fridges.

I can't.

I will not have that goddamn sheet in place again.

Never.

And if anybody in this staff ever sees anybody in the Post, he will be out his ass.

Even the highest person, including Henry Dissinger.

I'm kind of scared of the Post.

I can't scare them off.

The other point I want to make is, though, we haven't had this.

John, you've also got to figure that we are in for so little time, four years ago, I'll keep that, I haven't mentioned this before, in that time,

We've got to get real control of this goddamn government.

Do the best we possibly can.

We've got to play it skillfully, and we've got to try to do some good things.

I mean, your idea of remaking the two-party system, maybe that's something we'd like to leave as a legacy.

All right, I hope we could.

I doubt if we can.

We've tried.

At least we'll improve it.

We'll improve the Republican side.

I just had a long talk with Mike Manfield alone.

He said, Mike, I'm in a certain different situation.

This will get all, this will rumble around, get back to Scott, which I believe he did before I said, and talk with them and Carlos.

I don't believe that we should go forward as we have previously with just a weekly meeting.

The Republican leader said he think we should have a meeting to recover.

not on an absolutely frigid schedule, but with Democratic leaders.

And I realized when I reached out to the embassy secretary, naturally, I want to continue to have a meeting with you from time to time.

And I'd like to see Wilbur Bell separately.

And he said, I understand, Mr. President.

I'd like to see Russell, and I understand, Mr. President.

But I said, when we've got something like the reorganization, or we're going to reorganize my league with the U.S. Academy, but it has no effect on the feelings of

departments of the Congress.

I said, I'll only get you in on a bipartisan basis.

And I said, all I need to do is talk to you all about it.

I'd like to talk to you about it for a second and arrange for a sermon thereon.

I said, that's fine.

I said, Mike, we're in a new period in American history now.

I said, we're in a period where people are voting for the man of the party.

We've got a man in one party in the White House.

We've got a

the other party in Congress.

I said, this is going to end into a terrible battle, which I hate always with the minority.

I've never seen the minority work and ever cooperate.

Now, let's see which we're going to have to command.

He's delighted.

He's pleased.

And I said, well, you just think about it.

And I said, I'm going to think about it.

And I haven't got any ideas.

You can talk to various people.

Then let's get together.

And we're going to .

I said, now, Mike, don't let the league even talk to people.

But I said, the league should realize that I've got some partisans to raise hell with me, and you've got some partisans to raise hell with you.

They all want to have a party fight.

But I said, it's going to be that way, Mike.

We're going to play this game very differently.

Now, John, that's exactly the way I think.

That's exactly what I feel.

I'm not going to have a fart down here like a Percy or somebody.

He's a different kind.

He's here only for his own salsary.

But a totally partisan Republican down there who says, don't ever have anything to do with it.

Never, perhaps, God damn it, I don't even stand to mind.

And I'm going to have people that are going to get along.

And Scott's the man who has little problems in this respect, because he ain't going to be Mr. Big in this.

I'll have to see Mansfield, and Mahon, and Mills, and the rest of them.

You've got that bad.

You understand?

I'm going to see those Democrats who supported us in the Senate a hell of a lot more than I'm going to see in the Times, on Kersey, and Brooke.

I'm just going to do it that way.

We've got to start playing our new majority.

The other thing to remember is this, is that it does not necessarily

when a president is in and has a Congress not of its own party, and they point out that it seldom happens when the president is elected from the first, is elected.

It only happens in the off year, but it is happening.

But even in the off year, it does not mean that a president goes in and then he accomplishes something.

We gotta remember that Truman

in 1946 at the unity of Congress.

And the unity of Congress in terms of really, oh, they fought like hell out of Tad Hartley and some of the controls.

And they denied him some of his way out absolute domestic things.

And foreign policy and some other areas of domestic problems, like getting rid of controls, cooperating between the Congress and the president.

was that the 80th Congress, at that period of 46 to 48, was a hell of a good period for this country, and not a bad period.

That's the line I want you to get across, that it can be done now.

It can be done, and that's what we're going to do.

We've had four years of trying to find out how to work, but we're not going to work on a partisan basis.

I am speaking for the Republicans a little.

They are the ones that are, and the Republican governors are mine, and the president should sit down and eat with us every quarter.

at the Republican Congress.

I mean, Jerry Ford said that he could have breakfast every week with all the, you know, so he could cover all the entertainment.

The point is, what does that do for the country?

All it does is to play a part.

The president is going to help his party, yes.

But the president also, his first obligation is to help his country.

And so he's got to work

those people who will work together for the great goals and things we believe in.

How does that sound to you?

It sounds very good.

It sounds excellent to me.

It's the kind of thing that only you can do.

The Congress can't do it.

Nobody in the Congress, you know, if there's anybody else in the country can do it, except you.

And it's a good thing.

Figuring that you're going to start thinking about State of the Union and about inaugural.

I'm not going to do State of the Union.

Well, that's my problem.

Obviously, there's got to be a relationship between the two.

Well, State of the Union, which all of you should be working on right now.

You can make it $80,000.

I'm having Ken put together for your weekend reading just a kind of a road map

of the direction in which the domestic work has been going.

We've had people going during the campaign and since on problem solving.

And there's some interesting stuff that they've come up with and some projects for the next year and some things that are going to have to be done, some legislation that we're going to have to ask for.

And you want to have that kind of in the back of your mind, I think, as you tackle some of this.

this speech recommendation I'm having to do.

Obviously, the second inaugural isn't going to be a laundry list or programmatic in any sense, but, you know, I just, I finally, I just, I kept telling Holden, he's been trying to get it across to Price, and Price begins listening.

I said, how short the second inaugurals usually are, and the most effective ones are even some of the first.

Roosevelt, of course, only had one marker, but it was basically the second T.R.

You know how long it was?

Many guesses on how many county words.

This is T.R., one of the great American orders.

Anyhow, I don't know how much you meant.

You know how long the speech is?

Yeah.

Chairman speaking, 10,000.

My, no, no, no, no, no.

Not that long.

Maintain it, brother.

3,000 words, 25 minutes.

Yeah.

Okay.

2,300 words, which are rare or something, whatever my verse number was, was around 80, 90 minutes.

Or 2,500 words is 20 minutes.

3,500 words in some of the novels, not 3,500, 4,000.

Make a guess at all.

TR, which is one of the best I remember.

Just make my own.

If you say it was short, it was probably 1,000 or something like that.

990 words.

And he said it all.

And that was in an era where orations were very exciting.

990 words.

All right.

That was the opening argument.

And that was after he won big.

The other man who won very big and who made his speech was in that FDR 1936.

He's a little longer.

A little longer.

Each night.

80?

14?

Yeah.

Jack John F. Kennedy's in Auburn.

I'm sure everybody in Cambridge is going to be in Auburn.

That's extremely well done.

Since medicine shouldn't, it's got us in trouble here.

The better speeches are short, you know.

And I keep pounding it into Henry, and I try to get it through Ray's head, but no success there at all.

And the rest, but if you want to say something, God damn it, say it.

Gettysburg Address is, you know, it's carved in stone.

That's a little different.

I understand, but that was a great moment.

That's a pretty good speech.

What you really come down to is that my announcement to China

sure is the most important announcement ever made in world history.

But when you've got something big to announce, you don't need many words.

When you have something little to announce, you need a hell of a lot of words.

But at the present time, my view is that we ought to shoot for a thousand words.

Or you agree.

That'd be great.

I mean, they just cross them.

I still would come up with 1,500.

Price would come up with 1,500, 15,000 words, some amount of them.

But that's another problem.

But I'm simply telling you that I like these long papers and so forth, and they're very good.

But this will not be, I'll read them.

No, no, no, I'll read them.

But I think in terms of the lifeline, in messages, speeches, messages to the Congress and the rest, don't try to write a magnet, so to speak.

Have a smaller staff and just say a few words.

and have a veto message be, I'm vetoing this because it costs too much money, exceeds my budget, sign Richard Nixon.

See my point, sir?

I think you're going to have more effect with that sort of thing.

We're in this habit that everything's got to be wordy and long and explain everything.

That's because we use your records.

Start using our own.

Because they learn in school, they see the present schools do not teach disciplined type writing.

Which is harder.

You know why they don't teach it?

They teach, that's why you have the long books, you know, you have these horrible long books these days, no discipline at all, and so forth.

And the present writers will not learn, and some great books will come along.

But the present teachers in school do not teach disciplined writing, and so forth.

When Winston Churchill went to school, they taught him.

That's why some of the Churchill speeches are some of the greatest speeches of all time, because goddammit, he learned what the English language was.

Not every word was fresh down there.

They didn't waste any.

See?

And we are not teaching people to write that.

They babble on and on and on and on.

And that's supposed to prove that they're smart.

And we don't have the time to edit.

There's the problem.

T.R.

wrote that speech, of course.

And Winston wrote a hell of a lot of his.

And he was a hell of a writer.

He was a natural writer, which I have not.

Teddy didn't write his.

Teddy had a hell of a good writer, frankly.

Price's and things.

But that's not a matter that Teddy had, you know, who wrote those speeches.

He had that balance.

The words did sink.

I mean, I would say that Price's has a

Well, as Henry says, just fatty, gladly choked.

And he's quite right.

He's quite right.

That's uncommon.

Well, you have never had, at least I don't think you've ever had a writer who responded to your natural style like Teddy's writer responds to his.

It's a little like a suit of clothes.

Well, the point is that whatever speeches that I have made that have had any impression

The problem, as I see it, is that nobody works to write your speech the way you work to write your speech.

Well, I know, but they, you know, the outline and the structure and all of that, it seems to me that if they got into your frame of mind and approached a speech the way you do, that you'd get a different result.

They've got to make an outline first.

They've got to decide.

They've got to read it a lot, then they make an outline.

Then they figure what it is, and then they get something written.

And then out of that, then they begin to hone and move things.

And you spend more time on two parts, the introduction and the conclusion.

You spend 15 times as much time on those two things, and you're doing all the volume of the speed jump.

That, nobody around here understands.

Nobody understands.

People remember when you bring it into a speed jump, and it's terribly hard to write.

And people remember when you conclude it's terribly hard to write.

And Christ is the word of God, and you can't miss it.

Nobody over here, the others are, well, the others are too young.

They're just too sappy and this and that.

I mean, the young guy, he's a very nice, nice boy.

And a very good boy, basically.

I mean, get it.

He's got a kind of a poetical look in some of his side ears, but he's a little juvenile.

He needs some experience.

But he's a little juvenile.

Sapphire, basically.

When you read the Sapphire speech, you know it's a Sapphire speech.

That's the point.

It's good.

But, uh, I mean, you know, like that reading speech that you made about Jesus, wasn't that mine?

Sure it was.

What about the reading, you know, that Sapphire wrote, that I did?

Yeah.

Well, Bill writes for himself.

And it's not going to help him.

Yeah.

He's 50 years old.

Yeah.

What kind of crisis do you expect?

But the writing of this thing, the writing is a tough thing.

Lawyers don't do it well.

We write turgidly.

I can write pretty well.

I have a tongue.

Like my 19, in fact, all of my acceptance speeches, I wrote them.

I had some finally home lines in them.

And they are .

None of our staff has the good sense to use them afterwards.

But that's another thing.

That's another thing.

What they don't realize is that speech writing takes

Oh, I know they work on it.

I know they work on it.

But it takes agony, agony, agony.

That's right, right, right.

For everything that goes down, you must think about that outline and think about that introduction.

Think about that conclusion.

What are you trying to do?

What are you trying to leave?

And all of a sudden, you're building a beautiful building.

And they don't do it that way.

They fit it together.

I can see how I hate her without a speech.

I talk about anecdotes.

So they put anecdotes in what they put them in.

There are anecdotes that don't fit, like Sue.

The anecdotes don't fit.

They don't have to.

That reminds me of the story of that.

That sort of thing.

And I recall when I did the move.

Sometimes it comes off.

Sometimes it doesn't.

I can't speak for anything in one of the greatest reasons.

I don't think anybody would understand why we've got to hire somebody.

I know they're trying.

So they get some guy that used to write for the Rockefeller Foundation.

That won't do.

Or somebody that wrote for Brock.

That won't do.

You know, they're not up to it.

What we need, basically, we need to live the style

right or left.

Somebody with a little of a Moynihan.

Yeah.

But or discipline.

And planer.

Huh?

And planer.

Yeah.

Moynihan just can't be understood.

Well, it was Moynihan's style.

He wouldn't sit low with you.

That isn't your style.

You know, that's, that doesn't stand out like a sore thumb.

Right.

There is, it is unbelievable to him.

So that's why I just dread going to Florida.

I don't want to do it myself.

You'll write that speech again.

I won't have a goddamn thing there for the price of people to come down.

Well, I want to lay this, I want to lay this domestic stuff on you just so that you're not just a complete vacuum on the subject of where the hell we're going in the next four years domestically.

uh there are some things that we have to do and ought to do and uh i think this lays it out reasonably well give you a little just a little feel for it there are a lot of a lot of very positive things you can do for well we've done a lot of good things what's the reason nobody ever says we've done anything

They say, no, we can only make progress in this.

You know what it all gets to, don't you?

Maybe quite again.

Race.

That's all they interested in.

What has he done on race?

What have we done to bring the people to go?

And it's the one subject there isn't a goddamn thing to do.

that we haven't done well.

And if we did the things that people wanted us to do, it would be the wrong.

And of course, that comes back.

Race, race, and race, and race.

And that's the median.

They've got that right there in the front.

It's safe.

And almost to the exclusion of everything else.

When you come to think of it, revenue sharing.

It's a hell of a story.

It's a major change.

And as a matter of fact, you know, this ACIR met yesterday, the governors and the mayors and the congressmen.

They built up something to the effect that they had rejected our property tax.

And I read that and read all that kind of advice.

And here's what we wanted them to do.

that it came out.

We're in beautiful shape.

I think the best thing we've done in this whole area is to send it over there because they have now let you in the captaincy.

You can go any way you want.

But what they said was, Jesus, now we've got revenue sharing.

These are the merits the government had on them.

And we're going to be able to handle a lot of this stuff good.

So that's about what it comes down to.

And I got a question yesterday.

I said, how can you claim any accomplishment in the urban crisis?

And I said, well, now look, you've got to understand our approach to this.

And our approach has been this, and we've done these things, and look at the end result.

I hope you find it out.

Is it the urban crisis?

Do you see any cities burning?

I got into that.

And the crime rates are down.

Drug rates are beginning to be under control.

We've got a big management program.

And also revenue.

What did they say at the end of that?

Well, it's interesting.

I left before things over because Klein was up.

A rabbit came up to Ken Klaus.

Yeah.

And he said, this is the best briefing that we've had around the White House on domestic subjects.

He said, I learned a hell of a lot.

Now, it will never be translated into CVS, you could bet.

But I think it was a revelation to a lot of these clients.

You just have to find a way to find a way.

It leads me to think that maybe about once a month, I ought to have one of these where I just take any question on a domestic subject, and we just keep banging away at them.

and keep peddling our line, and eventually some of it will get through.

That's right, that's right.

Because the revenue share cries for money.

If the Kennedy had done it, it would probably be in the second coming.

Yeah.

Like the credit makes so much out of that, and the foreign policy people ought to be out of the test bench.

Yeah.

We're still testing.

So are the Russians.

Yeah.

The bombs are getting bigger and cleaner, and more dangerous.

Of course, the media by and large have a vested interest in the failure of revenue share.

Because in the first place, they said it never passed.

And it did pass.

And so they liar out 90% of it.

And now it's beginning to work.

They said, well, there'll be a lot of corruption.

Well, what's happening is that all over the country, as you read the press, there are decisions being made out in public by city councils and county supervisors about how to spend revenue sharing.

And you're getting a whole new hierarchy of priorities in these communities.

That's what's important.

Lower taxes versus lighted streets, or lower taxes versus schools, or more cops, or whatever it happens to be.

And I think out of this is inevitably going to come different public officials.

Because you're getting a lot of citizen dissatisfaction in some areas with the choices that are made.

John, let me ask you this.

Speaking about race.

Except for tokenism.

And that's something I need to do a lot more of.

I'm not going to do it with our enemies.

I'm going to do it with our friends.

They've got to be goddamn safe if they ever come in here.

It's like what you do with a black girl's spine.

And one day when she takes the job, I'll come in and say hello to her.

Well, Walter Washington is a safe token.

I know.

He's a...

He's a national token.

He's not just a local phenomenon.

You've done it so often already.

I understand, but you know, you don't have a lot of them that you can do it with that'll go out and shuffle around and say, that president's a great man and he's doing wonderful things here in this city for you folks and all that.

And this old boy will do it.

Coming back to this, what can you do to the voters?

What in the name of Christ can you do?

We can't have a great House of John.

No, I'll tell you.

I can't integrate the schools.

It's wrong.

I'm sad.

And I cannot increase welfare.

I cannot do family assistance.

It's wrong.

I'm not going to get more food stamps.

It's wrong.

Oh, yes.

I'll do that disease that they've got.

Sickle cell?

I'll do anything.

in terms of providing more money for little kids.

Well, let me tell you a safe line.

But if we could get some line, I'm sure we'd care.

But I just don't want, I cannot do the things that are going to put the blacks and whites in confrontation.

Education is a safe line.

And you're on that.

You're already on that.

Yes.

And that's money for disadvantaged schools where they are.

Improving the neighborhood school.

Pumping the extra money into the disadvantaged school.

Improving the plant.

Improving the faculty.

Improving the .

It'll help some.

Because it's so crappy now.

I know.

I think it'll help .

You know, they swing from area to area.

Once it was all environment.

And now it's all directed.

And frankly, it's a little bit of both.

Well, it's a hell of a lot more directed than environment, let's face it.

Environment can't take it.

It was a moral element made for genius.

But you remember, even though we got into this subject, talking about tokenism.

OK.

is in the neighborhood, it's highly visible, it is visited by the people of the community, and it's a superb token.

It's a hell of a lot better than a minority business.

There's no governmental connection.

Well, you've got legislation that died in the last Congress.

You've got some that passed.

You could go to schools

on a before and after basis.

And that's a safe thing to go to.

You pick an elementary school, you've got the teachers and the little kids.

You can't miss on a thing of that kind.

And it gets you into a black area on neutral ground, because the school is always neutral ground.

And so if you have to do tokenism, that's where you can do it.

You can be for better education.

That's a cinch.

You can be for better reading programs.

Again, you know.

And everybody accepts the truism that you don't get advancement for minorities until they are educated.

Now, maybe that's not true, but everybody accepts that.

How do we get it?

Well, Jesus God.

That's good.

Weinberger now is totally on board about family assistance having flushed.

What do we do about family assistance?

Well, I said yesterday that the election results were a mandate for a tougher work requirement.

That was question number one.

Question number two was the administration sank family assistance.

And I said, no,

The Congress, the Senate, deadlocked on family assistance.

And what we had proposed, obviously, was not acceptable to a majority of the Senate.

We worked hard.

The president worked hard.

The secretary worked hard.

Everybody worked hard, but we couldn't get it through the Senate.

So they said, well, what does that mean for next time?

I said, well, you have two things working.

Everybody out in the country who ran for office this time had to take a position on welfare.

Because it was an issue all over the country.

So you have a much more informed Congress with regard to the will of the people.

Everybody who ran, ran on the platform that welfare had to be changed.

It was a mess.

So you got a climate of acceptance in the Congress.

Now, I said, we're perfectly willing to go to the Congress with a proposal that conforms with the president's platform during this election, which is to do away with AFDC, to

Devise a program that will move people into work that will eliminate fraud.

And I said, we've had experiments going around the country.

We know quite a bit about how to do this kind of thing.

Oh, I didn't say a word about family assistance.

And I said, you've got congressmen up there now who have run for office and been elected on a welfare reform proposal at one time or another.

And I said, I'm confident that we can find a way to move away from AFDC into something better.

No, I didn't.

And that's as far as I went.

But I do think, you understand, with the blacks, the thing that I'm really concerned about more than anything else, basically, is really to be concerned.

I mean, this is a...

Not something that you say, but it's something that if you, you haven't got any of Lincoln's, any variety of thinking about Lincoln.

He didn't believe in equality.

That's right.

He believed they were basically

going to be a jury for a number of reasons, not only having a background in basic slavery and a lot of other things.

That was one of the real tragedies of his assassination.

But on the other hand, Lincoln had a great feeling for parents.

In other words, all the blacks thought he was their friend, even though he knew that they didn't have him.

Now, I don't go along with the phony liberals when they say,

Why does the University of Southern California have number one football team this year?

Why does Stanford have it last year and the year before?

These are two schools with the same average requirements.

Why?

Because, like every other goddamn school in the country, they don't have to have those requirements for blacks.

Black athletes.

And so the black athletes, again, were morons, but great football players.

That's right.

They don't just get in.

They go out and recruit them.

They bring them.

Yep.

That's right.

The difficulty in my case is that in terms of the blacks, I looked at those black leaders and all the rest, you can't cope and feel for them.

You want to help them.

You see the little black kids, you want to help them.

You see these poor waiters shuffling around up there, you want to help them.

But unfortunately, you see, it is true they are behind.

They, and so many of them, aren't very, very dumb.

Sure, you run into one girl like Sally, like, that's why I raised her, and you run into this nice Jules LaFontaine who's quite outstanding.

I mean, we know she's no damn genius, but she's above the average, even among whites, no matter where she grew up.

But thanks, too.

My point is, John,

We really feel for them in a personal way, and not in an inferior way, I don't consider them inferior.

I know a lot of whites that are so god-damn dumb, I can't stand them.

You may ask what I mean.

We've got to quit killing ourselves with this malarkey to the effect that the blacks are equal and that they can be made equal simply by putting them and forcing them into the same schools and into the same housing as the whites have.

That isn't going to happen.

So what we've got to do is to get some honesty in the top half,

And I think as far as this office is concerned, the best thing I can do is just reward the good buyers, be nice to them, shake their hands like the Sammy Davises in the restaurant.

But God, that's too much.

No, you can do more than that.

And maybe improve their schools.

You can improve their education, for one thing.

I think we ought to keep this minority business thing going.

It isn't costing a hell of a lot.

And it's a good thing to point to.

and uh it helps at the margins of the problem but the thing that you've done in four years that has probably helped them more than anything else is deflate the expectations in the in the black community in this country that was tearing them up you had people who couldn't cut it

thinking that they had gotten given the right to be members of the cabinet or presidents of General Motors or something else.

And over a period of four years,

That whole thing has come down to... That's why it was good not to appoint one of the candidates.

I think so.

That's why, however, it will be good to appoint a couple of ambassadors.

I think if you could... Let me say on ambassadors, however, I'm not going to send one to Sweden for the reason I don't want to be a black.

It's a library, yes, it's always black, but rather than Sweden, we'll send it tomorrow.

Mm-hmm.

Don't you agree?

Yeah, I think it would be a bit much to follow Holland right now.

That's right.

Besides...

for the fellow you sent.

He was very innovative.

But I think you can continue this business of saying, look, I'm colorblind when it comes to appointments.

And I appoint on the basis of worth and merit and so on, and just keep saying that for four years about everything.

Look, I'm colorblind.

This is a school.

It's a bad school.

It isn't well-equipped.

There isn't enough money going into it, so we're going to help, not because it's a black school or a white school, but just because it's an inferior school.

And if you just keep that kind of thing going, you're going to help them more in the long haul.

Although they won't realize it.

And the leaders of the civil rights movements will kick and scream and holler and all that.

I think he'll help them more in the long haul than if he coddled them and kidded them and over-promised them and all the rest of them.

That's hard to understand.

Why doesn't he have a better call than Archie does?

He knows better.

He must progress.

Oh, I don't think he does.

And I think he's captured by that sort of civil rights community.

He'll come.

Well, it's that, and it's like the Georgetown elite.

There's a kind of a milieu there, and you get into that, and everybody talks to everybody within that group, and they have certain accepted assumptions, and so on.

Now, I think we're well rid of Hesford, but the problem is who you get to take his place, and that's a tough one.

I think Popinger is going to be ideal in the civil rights division because he does travel with that civil rights elite, and yet he's been in the field and he knows the moves and he knows the jargon and all that.

But we've got to get a hell of a guy now to go into the civil rights thing.

Why don't you get a good intellectual who's on our side?

Well, I'd love to find a guy that could pack that.

Oh, that racism.

Fish came in this morning all concerned because Romney is about to take the leadership of that National Voluntary Center.

And Bob takes over.

No, he just thinks Romney's a bad guy.

And he's going to run it into the glass and so forth.

I said, well, I thought that you had talked to Ramey and that you'd also talked to Clem Stone about it.

Am I right about that?

You talked to Clem about Ramey?

Okay.

Look, I don't know.

I think we ought to let it go.

Did Ramey run it?

No.

I didn't tell Romney that.

Did you tell Stone that?

I didn't tell Stone that.

You told Romney that.

I cannot do the debtors and I want you to hit that hard whether it's the Stone or the Crescent.

I'm not going to do it because I'm not going to sit down at the debtor again and tell them to strike.

That will all be here.

I'm not going to do it, John.

I don't believe we should.

I think we should just start with the idea that the White House will not be used.

for funders across the board.

How does that sound?

That's a rule that we could keep.

The White House, the president feels, has to be done for.

And what about having a dinner for the board of directors and the rest?

No.

Directly or indirectly?

Now, you have to be willing to hold that line with the boys' clothes and all the rest.

But if you hold it, you know, OK, if you hold it, then we're safe.

directly or indirectly, and we're not going to be used basically as a chum to get people into time.

That's great.

We're going to represent, and we can say we consider this to be a money-raising deal.

We're just not going to do it.

Yeah, that's great.

I have one, of course, very good thing going in that direction, too, the fact that creating an operation with the business council makes it possible to say, well, I expect the business council to service the money-raising.

But they are a bunch of people that I don't think serve a useful purpose, and I'm not going to have them in my house.

So God damn it, this is why I'm not having the business council.

But we're just trying to talk to some new people, some different people.

I mean, the old elite has had it.

Let's just understand once and for all they have.

And I'm not going to have the gardener group in again.

I'm not going to have that coalition group in again.

Don't ask me again, Mr. Bevel, to do that job thing.

I'm not going to do it.

I don't know who he got that job for.

You remember, I've done that every year.

Well, that's what?

He's the one that Kempel had.

Kempel?

Yeah.

Oh, Kempel had it.

NAP.

And then the Chicago had it.

uh all the rest but they always come in i've got to do it i've got to do the job thing because this is the thing traveling we subsidize the god damn thing it will not be done in the white house it will not be done in the white house it will not be done otherwise i'm not going to do those people anymore

Well, as long as we have a general rule, I don't think we've got a problem.

Unfortunately, that has to do with a program.

But I just believe that program should be the hell out of here.

Well, give it to Brennan.

That's his program.

He'll be the one hitting it.

No, but it's basically a business.

Yeah, but it's run out of the Department of Labor, you know.

Well, can you, in your little conversations with the rest, say we're going to get the present out of that when we get into the different things or certain groups?

Sure.

I'll tell you what it's run out of.

It's run out of the Eastern Stafford.

That's what it's run out of.

It's part of the whole business that came out of the Johnson administration.

I want you to look at those programs.

you might have somebody look at the schedule of things I have done that sort of find out how many of them really we came out of the great society, John.

You see my point?

And knock them off.

I've got a schedule of those.

I've got a tabulation of those.

I know exactly who's the one for the program.

I'm not going to do it.

And they say we can only have a president for this or that or the other guy.

We can only have another very different sentence.

Jerry Ford with his goddamn preference for the congressman.

What, Dan, earthly good does it do?

I must say, I think good relations with Congress, talking to them on the phone and so forth, probably helps.

But I don't know that sitting down to practice with them does all that much good.

What do you think?

Well, you know what they do?

They go back and they say, you know, why isn't it in the White House?

They say their staff sent it to the White House and put it in a newsletter.

What does that do?

It doesn't do you anything.

Well, it doesn't do thee so good with them because it does them so good with them.

Kicked you in the ass because you didn't have them twice.

You agree?

I'm sure.

I know that's what happened.

We've been through it before.

We had them all down here for breakfast, you know.

Every single guy down here.

Sure.

Yep.

You were gracious.

You were nice.

You lost time.

You bored ourselves to death.

That isn't what got Revenue Sherry passed.

It didn't pass her.

Two and a half years after that, the Bears went around and just beat him over the head.

That's what got it passed.

And yet, and yet, you can't get around the fact the president's got to have some friends now.

No question about that.

Some of them are good, loyal people, and maybe, maybe I just credit my own with the Christ they are.

Forge a team.

See them from time to time.

But this idea of just sitting down with a bunch of the whiners and the pitchforks, for example, what good does it do to sit down and talk to John Tower?

I mean, not really.

John Tower is never satisfied.

Never.

What good is it to sit down and talk to Peter Dominick?

None.

Goddamn, all he is going to do is kick us in the ass.

He's just a crybaby.

A chronic crybaby.

A guy like Brock is another story.

And Brock will produce.

And he's not demanding.

It's an interesting difference.

We've got to look it over that way with a Harlow syndrome.

We got to the bad habit, which Timmons was finally and graciously growing out of.

McGregor wasn't in long enough.

McGregor was great.

McGregor saw in himself, which was marvelous.

And Timmons can't quite do that, because he doesn't have the presence.

That's the word.

He doesn't have the presence.

That's right.

Timmons, when he comes in to see people, is considered to be kind of an errand boy, I would say.

Right?

Yeah, that's pretty much his own doing.

Because of the way he handled it.

He didn't walk in as a commander on them.

And he must go in there and say, I wonder if I can see your minutes in here.

You know how he talked to us?

He's got a good choice.

He's got to be changed.

I don't know when.

We haven't got a man, though, and that's a problem.

Well, Jim Smith's going to stay at Treasury.

He can always sit there.

They elect four voters in the Senate, apparently.

Well, Tom's a little more on the ball.

Tom's very effective.

But there again, if Tom were in the top spot, he wouldn't be nearly as effective.

Because he isn't the top guy.

He isn't that kind of a guy.

Tom is superb as an operator.

And he gets around and he sits and gases with them and all that.

And he's just got it.

I think Smith's got a lot of, he's got the presence, he's got the bearing, and he's got the balls, and I think you ought to, we'll run him in a few times as you get acquainted with him.

What we want to do is a battle of this.

I'm going to do something for dinner.

I just want to sit by and hear the visions of the cabin officers that are leaving and all that sort of crap.

And I think it's only bearing that I've seen the others.

I thought that I would have this right in there.

For example, sit on my right, and an undersecretary's wife sit on my left in this cabinet here.

How's this on here?

Pretty interesting.

Like that, Mike?

Yeah.

And move the table around a little that way so that they get to sit.

And we're going to knock off this bullshit that you've got to read this and that.

Otherwise, I sit by Adele Rogers, who's lovely.

Yeah.

But there she had been to say, neither have I.

Have you ever met Krogh's wife?

Young, redhead, very bright.

I've never seen her in my life.

Lived in Japan for four or five years.

Been around the world.

I probably would be better advised or educated to be new under Secretary Krogh's wife.

But I, it was not around me.

But I never met her.

Isn't there anybody new?

We don't have a hell of a lot to do under Secretary Krogh.

Yeah.

I don't, I've never seen her.

Yeah.

I would think so.

Yeah.

That could be good.

That could be great.

Yeah.

Or somebody that you want to favor?

Cliff Harden or somebody?

I don't know.

Or would you have Romney?

I don't think that's quite the signal to get Romney right now.

I think Volpe is the signal.

I think the postural that was Romney is that he earns his way in here.

Volpe did what he was told, and he did it like a man.

And why not Volpe who stands?

You know?

Volpe would be damn glad to let me sit with him.

That's a good move.

Very good.

Any idea who survived it?

I have no idea.

Well, the captain, the undersecretary.

We aren't, and the White House staff's only down to assistants.

They won't have a one.

You don't have any undersecretaries but the Blacks.

Not unless they rank Sam Jackson as an undersecretary.

which is, I doubt that they would do.

You know, in a sense, too, I just think because he's leaving,

Why the crisis, even though he wasn't the system?

We have Bob Brown.

It doesn't make any difference.

Ray Price and Herb Klein, I think they're going to have Klein.

I don't know if they are.

But they're going to have Finch, I'm sure, and Rumsfeld.

Why shouldn't Bob Brown be better?

He's better than Jackson.

All right.

Bob Brown.

That's very good.

Yeah, because he's leading.

Yeah.

That's great.

And he tells me

I see your point.

When we have these affairs, they go back.

You put it in the news.

I was at the White House.

The president looked tired.

He looked great.

He gave a nice talk.

Or when I went through the receiving line, he said to me and I said to him, that gets it.

Right.

All right.

But I'll have to be very, very honest about this.

I'm willing to do anything that will help.

You don't think it helps us, John?

I don't see it ever translating into concrete results.

What you would do is to do that, do more with the people that will lose.

That's right.

And it's purely a basis of, are you on our side, boys?

And if you are, you get down here to talk to the president.

The sessions that you had with the good guys on the Senate Finance Committee contributed more to stopping family assistance than anything else.

that any of us did.

Really?

Sure.

Because they got to say what you wanted them to.

You didn't have to say it flatly.

But you were down here, and it was that exposure, you see.

And I think that's a much more effective use of your time when we've got something that we need.

Get in the guys that'll work for you.

All right.

I'm writing about a few of these things.

You pass those to the lighter.

I will.

To Bob or whoever works the schedules.

And we'll have some fun.

And I'll be here tomorrow.

All right.

Available.

All right.

Tell it's secret what I'll do.

And I spent two hours talking about...