Nixon, Ruckelshaus & Cole on Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Senate

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Well, that's true.

Everything we do, at least 50% of the people get mad.

to be perfectly candid with you at the moment.

It's really unbelievable.

You've got an application.

Your main interest, though, Bill, basically is, let me talk politics a little bit before we talk about this.

I mean, everybody's been talking about you running for the Senate again.

And you may not want to.

Why doesn't that thing come up?

Well, there's a vise up in 74, and I have by no means decided that that's what I want to do in the first place.

He's extremely popular in Indiana, and remains so.

He has been hurt somewhat by becoming involved in more controversial issues, particularly these judgeships in the last few years.

But what that's intended to do, I think, is to narrow his support somewhat, but deepen it.

Within his own park, in particular, he had, when the first time I ran against him, he had 75% approval rate.

I thought he was doing an excellent job.

First of all, I think that was 1963 to 13.

That's right.

I don't believe in that anymore.

I think there's a good sense of clever likely.

And God will find you then.

He's a good sinner.

Now, the trouble is, if you're a party out there, they all have each other.

That's not a big difference.

And who else is a good sinner?

If I don't, I have to decide by the end of next year.

Yeah, Governor.

Governor?

Well, not Governor.

He's not just a governor.

He's now, he should have run right from there in 1976 for presidency.

Uh, a little, a little quick.

But he could be a presidency governor.

Yes.

I, in other words, he doesn't plan to run for governor.

No, he doesn't.

His present plan is not to run for either governor or senator.

Well, for new things, the same.

So it should be a very interesting year.

Yes, it could.

He never figured it out.

Everybody figures it out.

So far, he is not doing a lot.

He's not demonstrating any particular...

But there will be a terrible fight, and a very good fight.

It may not be terrible, it may be good.

Yes, and there will be a nomination.

I think he'd get Connolly to decide to become a Republican, which, of course, is still going to happen.

He'll get the nomination, I would think.

Yes, that's how it's hard for any other Republican to understand him.

I would say that because of reasons that haven't already been received.

He's inquisitively very formal.

That's what it would be impossible.

Even if I say he gets a nomination, that would only depend on what I can do to him.

If I can start him now, he starts lining up the Southerners and all the Reds, you know.

And of course, he runs around very hard with the nomination.

That's what he does also as Vice President.

He's got a few little problems.

But it's a long time.

Yes, yes.

Now, on the other hand, you're interested also, of course, in the Justice Department.

Yes, definitely.

What's your age now, Bill?

Forty.

Forty?

Yes.

Oh, you're a great, great person.

You wouldn't want to be governor?

No, I thought about running this last time, and I could get the nomination the last time.

Oh, yes.

Dr. Boland, who was the Speaker of the House.

He's a very good guy.

Yes, he is.

He's a good man.

He's as solid as the majority of the House when he was my Speaker.

How was he?

My good friend had a point-and-seek and started to strike out there.

He wasn't very... Oh, right.

It's just intelligence.

Yeah.

That was it.

It happened there.

He's a real nice guy.

He looked like a governor.

His wife looked like a governor's wife.

They had all that.

And I've got him elected, but he hasn't called back one official in the state.

And he now needs a new governor.

A new governor.

He may help that state too.

I think that's right.

You see, the curious thing about Indiana, of all those great western states, it's the greatest nation state.

You know, it has been for years.

I know that.

I don't know why that is.

Every time I run there, I mean, I even...

I mean, most of the people think that I served in Eisenhower.

I didn't have many places in Indiana, I did.

Well, you have traditionally been the most popular public figure in the country here.

Ever since I've been old enough to understand what the population is, I suppose the family that cut it there.

I do well in Ohio also, but Indiana just a little bit.

Yes.

So I guess that's why I feel that 74, by God, if it ever goes to the Senate, it's going to win.

And five sure is going to be tough.

They're all tough.

They look tough in the beginning, but then you knock it down because you're tying to every vote and everything.

And some of the speech think those aren't going to look very good by the time that rolls around.

You see that?

Time passes awful fast.

Yes, I know that.

He can't, any of them can't be seated in those battlegrounds, but he is by no means a pushover.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Well, the other thing, of course, you could take us toward the judicial, you know, everybody wants to be attorney general, judge, and so on and so on.

You, uh, you like law enforcement, don't you?

Yes, yes.

You like the judiciary.

Well, not at this stage.

I'm too young.

Yes, I think that's kind of almost giving up, it seems to me.

unless they were very high.

Yes, I suppose that, but even, I don't know, I like it more active than that.

Do you think you should move something?

We've been, frankly, your name has been taken around a lot for a lot of things, you know, Kevin, the rest of us.

One of the reasons that we have not moved on here from out of this is because this is an issue where we've got to keep credibility and, you know, withhold the funds and that water that we're having one hell of a time.

So we're not keeping them in a very good political position.

That's what concerns me.

But maybe that's already too controversial to suffer, right?

Not really?

I really don't mind that.

I recognize that in this kind of a position, you're not going to always be in the most popular position.

posture in the world, I don't, that doesn't stir me.

Well, it wasn't any of your friends, so.

You got any police work?

No, I have not.

I was in the Attorney General's office in Indiana for about four years.

I was his chief counsel, and I was in the legislature as a majority in the House.

And then, sometimes, I was in the Civilization Department.

So, yes.

But none of those have been facing the law enforcement.

It's viewed as, unfortunately, it's viewed as a regular, I mean, it's hard for anybody to be objective about themselves.

Would you consider yourself a good administrator or would you pick a good administrator?

Let me say, I consider myself a good administrator.

I don't think my lawyers are, but I pick good ones.

That's right.

What do you do?

How do you operate?

Do you administer yourself?

No, I do.

I try to stay out of what's happening, honestly, but I have a number two man who's head of management background, and that's who we look for.

Are you with people?

With people.

Are you with people?

I think so.

I think I am.

I think we've got both there.

Very good.

team of people, we had an awful problem in the beginning with all those pieces we inherited, turf fighting, to get it all straightened around into some kind of shape where we could move forward.

I saw my responsibility at the beginning viewing this problem of credibility as convincing people that we were going to do something about this problem.

I think we've accomplished that.

There was a Harris poll that came out just two days ago, or three days ago now, that said that the vast people is the

This present administration is going to do a thing about air and water pollution.

63% of the people thought that we were going to make solid progress.

Tommy, you've got to put up with her.

I can't do all these things.

You, even though you're not going to Harvard, you're going to Harvard.

Harvard loves you.

Couldn't you get another year?

I've tried, but I can't put anything in my resume.

There it is.

You go to Indiana, but Princeton is not a good place.

Princeton?

You used to work in a bar.

Born in Atlanta.

All right.

At least you've got a hat.

I was eight.

I was six.

My grandfather was the public state chairman in 1900.

His republicanism doesn't bother me.

Yeah.

And we were solidly against it.

Not one in Augusta stand.

And then when we looked at the, when we polled later, we polled the faculty around the country, which I mean, the faculty's down there are, there are about three, two to one, I guess, in the Ivy League, it's 10 to one.

But beyond that, among students, it's about,

free to one in the Ivy League, even across the country.

Is it right, the college students?

We don't care.

We're glad we have the one.

It's pretty hard for these people.

But you see, it's a different thing.

It's a softness, a sustenance.

It's the, the thing that's happening here, which we have to be greatly concerned about.

I say this as one who's got people like Weinberger and

I guess there are others around, strong men, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm looking for quality and quality only.

But you look at the great societies, and this is something that they all have a course over in Harvard, and in Princeton, and in school, basically, and it came out, and it's there.

But the great societies, the very main ones,

Long before that, long years before that, in their own lives.

The others have gone down when their leader class goes soft.

Not when their people go soft, but their leader class.

They are the ones that bring them down.

The very curious rhyme of our present situation is that

of the non-communist nations that are potential great powers, the ones who have not gone down yet, or at least where the erosion has not set in, to a great degree for the Germans, the Japanese, the defeated nations.

And the reason is most of their leader class was either killed or off into exile.

So who sure had an arm or so, but he was different.

What I'm getting at is he was not, instead, basically the leader class here in America, the leader class.

I'm speaking of those that are supposed to take the responsible positions in the great universities, the heads of the great networks and so forth, not the editors across the country.

We have most of them.

I'm referring now to the ones that really matter, the opinion makers in Washington, the people that guzzle up the gin in Georgetown.

I said, well, Mrs. Alvin had nothing to do with personalities.

I said, as a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there's something that might have been important for me.

But he must remember, and this is what graced him, and this is what killed him, he stood for everything they stood for.

all the erosion, the so-called movement that we're presently seeing.

Oh, not that some of this is not progress.

We understand all that.

Basically, this time, the Libs, as some of our conservatives call them around here, have their candidate this time, just as the reactionary right had its candidate in 64, and they had to help you out.

Now, at least in 64, the reactionary right had the

He said, see, not to blame the poor old Goldwater.

Because finally, he said, probably he had that one looked on, and he shouldn't have said he was going to sell the TVA, at least not when he was at the TVA.

But he was an honorable fellow in the grass.

But this buck looked like a bunch of piranha fish.

I mean, so Marcus Giles and Scotty Reston and all the rest, instead of saying, well, just me, we, who has supported him, whatever it stands for,

This may be an opposed President Nixon and everything he has stood for that mattered over four years, everything.

Maybe we were wrong.

And maybe the 60% that voted the other way were right.

I mean, they may not be right, but they are the majority.

I don't know.

They said it was right.

If he had just handled people differently, or if he just had his television people work it out so that he slanted them better, it's not bullshit.

See what I mean?

That's typically your intellectual.

Whatever we call them, like that.

And the kind of people you work with, and Woodford, both of them, they're the leader class.

Why did they do it?

Well, some, because they deeply were concerned.

They had thought it through, and they should be, about air getting dirtier, and water getting dirtier, and the poisonous, the streets becoming polluted, and all that sort of thing.

It's the new thing in the block.

I mean, in the 60s, it was March to Mississippi.

But now the black thing is beginning to bother them a little now.

And they realize that they brought all the black youngsters into the colleges and so forth.

They can't hack it.

And so they say, well, we're going to do well.

So now they're being very smart.

White is staggered.

So they tell year in and year out, have the best football teams in the West Coast, and they have the highest standards.

They don't have to pass it.

They have to choose to have a mention.

So they got up and they played football.

At least they could be graduating captain in 10 years.

Anyway, they made great progress.

But now they're quite as, it's a life thing.

And then the war thing came.

And that will pass.

And then the environment thing.

Earth Day is 30 years old.

It's all Earth Day.

And then the population came, and then all of a sudden, a couple days ago, you probably missed this story, came out saying, the zero population growth over in the United States, all that crap that you've been hearing about population growth, go back to the drawing board and start figuring it out.

What are you going to do with the zero population growth?

See?

So now you come here, here, John.

What I'm getting at is that...

It is important.

I understand it's important.

So you've got to keep it in perspective.

You must never allow, obviously, yourself to become the captain of the extremists and the rest, who really, for them, it's a plaything.

It's a plaything.

It's the way the leader class says, the courage itself.

of a deep feeling that they have deep down, that they are told that they should have character, that they should have backbone, but they don't have enough backbone and they don't have character.

And so they've hurt themselves by going off in these kicks that escape.

It's an escapist way to get away from the real responsibilities that they have to stand up to keep this damn country going down the tube on everything that's on it.

a strong economy, like, for example, the leader of the class.

We have to make this turn because we're qualified to keep the Congress 250 billion dollars.

Take your editorials and just represent us in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Day in, day out.

They will say, why is the president being arrogant with all these months and so forth?

Never, never, never.

Just possibly.

We are terribly interested in all these other issues, but just possibly.

There is a responsibility not to exceed what we did yet.

You see, you know, that's right.

I think it's certainly true of these water times.

You couldn't spend that much money and you poured it out there anyway.

I'm not sure when

I'm not either.

I think it's decided in six months.

Don't wait any longer.

Eight months maybe.

I think that's good advice.

What I'm getting at is this, you don't have to leave, but you've got to decide, and other than keep the record for yourself, as you know, you've got to decide to tell a few people so that they know you're there, you're going to come, you come late, and you're going to have a miserable time right now, some jackass, and you're going to get all petted up.

That's right, everyone's got this advice.

You ought to know what you're saying.

Is he going to do it or not?

He's a poll taker, a big poll.

I said, run a poll for me, that damn thing.

They don't know anything now.

I mean, sure, you're an outsider.

You've been out there as much.

And Stevenson is a very good man.

So I said, go out and do it, because you know him.

And I said, Stevenson.

Stevenson is running a lot in his father's name.

But he's basically not heavyweight.

Rumsfeld isn't heavyweight.

Rumsfeld has potential.

He's for higher leadership.

You've got to get in there and take risks and fight.

And if he doesn't do it this year, he will never go.

Vince is going to run for something, I don't know.

I hold this under me.

He's an industry governor.

He's a much better senator than Cranston and Stumper.

But Vince can win.

Vince can get some money from the senator.

Yes, I agree.

I agree.

I also agree.

You've got to take risks.

You've got to take it.

There are worse things than those.

Let's win.

Well, anyway, we appreciate what you've done.

Thank you very much.

And glad you're young and vigorous and everything.

You've really done a hell of a job keeping these things down.

We've tried to get you some money now and then so you can do some nice things, but I don't know.

Coal will never help you spend it.

I understand that, but...

Nixon, Ruckelshaus & Cole on Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Senate

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on December 19, 1972

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