On January 3, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Stephen B. Bull, and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:05 pm to 2:00 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 831-007 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
We've gone.
personal side probably who's gone the extra mile and brought her over to see the decorations and say she was, you know, since she had, I told you she hadn't invited her to dinner, but she did.
Of course she had.
She'd been invited to dinner with you, not to the cabin dinner, but to the, you'd invited her to a family dinner, too, we had.
Oh, yes, that's right.
Oh, we invited her to a couple nights before, and then you tried to, we tried to do a family dinner, so we, I guess I, I may have been right about this.
I just want to know.
We really, thanks to Julie, we've both been very required to do our best.
But also, I think you should know that...
I went into this whole thing with Pam and Celine and I. I said, you know, I said to you, I told you a little about me.
I said, it's time now that we recognize that it is not the responsibility of the president to try to win, and particularly his own Republicans in the Congress, his own Republicans.
It's time for them to try to win.
which is, of course, the total velocity of the ice in our hands, the total velocity.
And so it is with the governor's address.
I think that we subconsciously bother.
I think we've been too much over the past four years in a position where we are just saying, when the president's got to do this, he's got to do this for the blacks and to win the blacks.
Or he's got to do this to prove he's not mad at the press.
Or he's got to go to the Truman Memorial to prove he's a good sport.
I don't think you'll goddamn think like that anymore.
Do you agree?
Never.
I do what I should do.
I do the right things.
And I do it my own way.
uh i feel and don't you agree though there is a problem that our own people have got to be everything now this isn't a question being arrogant it has nothing to do with that right we're not a government we see people of all walks of life but we've got to go on our terms and they can't we can't have the feeling that we can't actually maybe we've done something wrong and so now we've got to go win back
Because they were hurt that they weren't consulted more often?
Or what?
That they weren't invited more often?
Because we had more dinners for them than what you did?
No.
You're even able to give that little thought to the whole point.
Oh, yeah.
I just think that's a terribly important thing.
I think you're absolutely right on it.
I think we've got to get Sam right with this.
I don't want him.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
From the time of Joel Carter, he said it was a wonder.
He totally cut him off the socialists in the White House, and he was never in the White House.
He was a wonder.
He never hit the general in the White House because he had an attack on him.
He never put Truman in the White House in eight years because Truman had said something nasty about him.
Now, that was right.
The Eisenhower, the great.
He had a lot of time.
He had a lot of time.
What do we do?
We have John, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert, and we have Gilbert,
I think that's the chairman's problem.
That gets to the plan.
I don't know what, I don't know whether you've got this straight, and I think it's for the early problem.
I shut that Schultz problem.
I shut that memorandum that you wrote.
I rewrote it.
I told you I was going to rewrite that one, you know, you covered on the reaction, the election, the Republican reaction, and the question of pardoning the president and all that.
I rewrote it as a, you know, not coming from you in the sense that you can't answer his comments.
And, uh,
I concur with several of the points that I made around it.
As we predicted, the President is getting negative treatment for not helping GOP candidates enough.
That was to be expected given our strategy of running as President in the White House.
Our strategy, frankly, was the right one.
The criticism was bound to come up, but the criticism is unfair, inevitable though it may be.
If RN sweeps the state by 60 or 65 percent of the vote and then the incumbent, whether he's out or a member, goes down the tubes, that's their fault, not the President's fault.
Though you will never convince them of that, so there's no point in trying.
Second, we live in the age of the ticket splitter, and when Nixon carries Alabama by some incredible total, and then Sparkman does the same thing against a Nixon Republican, what the hell are we supposed to do to save Red Blunt?
There's no way.
And he says, the President's charge was right for himself, and it was right for the party.
His political assignment was to win in a landslide, and he did it.
We should do the best we can to heal any wounds.
We could probably have done better, James, and go over our people, maybe, or something like that.
they all had the surpluses.
But he says, but Candler, I don't think the charges are justified.
One recalls, and this is a good point, that in 70, Nix Hardin and the vice president barnstormed across the country for them.
And then when they didn't win, they bitched their heads off too.
So let's face facts.
When we win huge and they don't win at all, there are going to be recriminations and we just have to live with it.
That's there.
The other point that the history books will get across, although the media doesn't today, is to point out recriminations.
against which the president has been battled for a quarter century and which he has survived to mount a political record matched only by FDR and anyone.
And this is something we should work on.
And he's right.
I mean, that's the pitch we ought to be pushing, not justifying ourselves against the goddamn Republican senatorial candidates.
Then he says, kind of interesting, he says, that's where the dominant point of the memorandum, I simply don't accept it.
true doctrine, that we're not given credit for having heart, for being warm and human at all.
He says, not knowing you wrote this, and I shouldn't tell you this, but he says that the author of this memo betrays a lack of knowledge of the world we live in over the past 25 years.
He says, a thousand PR men have broken their text trying to make Richard Nixon appear warm and human, a man of heart.
One thanks the Lord that this school of thought did not prevail in the advertising campaign of 1972.
Second, we have to remember it's the liberal press that says yes or no on the warmth and humanity bit.
They did it for Roosevelt and JFK.
They didn't do it for LBJ or Nixon.
But if we want to get some grace for warmth and heart, I can tell you how to do it.
First, have Nixon give an impassioned pro-civil rights speech carrying the southern and northern reaction, and then with tears streaming down his cheeks, saying we shall overcome.
I mean, his point is...
The way you're going to get it from them is a way you can't go.
That's the reason that was happening.
Yeah.
Although there's a lot more hard work than we think.
Sure.
But you carry it through the course of another thing, right?
Here's the point.
The president is not a heartless, cold son of a bitch.
And public exposure to him and his performance in office has shown the nation that he's not.
We knew that once the country saw him themselves without the filter of the media, we would accomplish that.
And we did.
And we should be satisfied with it.
His point is, you got 61% of the vote.
And that was a factor in it.
Then he says there's a contradiction in the article handed me.
The writer says Nixon should not do anything more himself to portray his heart than his top readers and people will do it.
So how the hell does he propose we accomplish it?
Well, my own view is the country ought to see more of the president in the second term.
He ought to be out and around more socially and unstructured spontaneous events.
To see more of the man.
Only the president, not his flax, can make appreciable changes in his image before the country.
To hire a new army of PR techs to devise ways in which I wouldn't have thought that.
And then he said, Bork, some of the image of this administration is not altogether inaccurate.
Let's face it, Coleman, Earl, and Charleston yesterday don't exactly come across as the lovable Lavender Hill mob, but so what?
If we have a reputation for being a little tough and mean at times, maybe we deserve a portion of it.
And he says, consider this, post-election, ten hours after it was over, the president called for the resignations of the entire government.
He then proceeded to the mountains, while here in Washington, terrified bureaucrats are being carted off in tunnels, and all that is absent is the sound of the guillotine.
That is what we are doing.
It has to be done.
I concur with the necessity to do it.
But damned if I can think of a way to make the process more inhuman, to show heart, while chopping up this hostile bureaucracy, bombing the North Vietnamese into submission, and attempting to induce a sense of responsibility in the networks.
Frankly, it doesn't bother me in the least that the president doesn't have Hubert Humphrey's reputation for HAARP, and apparently it doesn't bother the American people a great deal either.
It would be nice to have HAARP too, but we ain't gonna convince the media to write about it, and we might just as well face up to that.
Now, he's only partly right, but there is a point in his approach, which is that there are ways that we can, we've made a lot of headway on the HAARP movement,
It's more important than the heart.
It's more important than the heart.
Boy, and reading these books, going again, going back on the, it's kind of refreshing to look at how Newstead and Rossiter and some of the not our kind of people, they studied the presidency, the office, and they're trying to analyze the whole thing.
Boy, where it comes out there is it ain't the heart that sells the guy, it's the strength.
And it's the, how...
A president's strength is what determines a people's view of the president and his position in history, not his heart.
George Washington was not perceived as having any heart at all, and he didn't have any.
He was a total cold-blooded son of a bitch, arrogant, unsufferable, insufferable.
Lincoln, a myth was made up about having a great heart, which wasn't really true.
But Jefferson was, if you talk about political presidents, was the guy who totally politicized the presidency.
So did Jackson.
And Jackson re-politicized it the other way.
And so you take the great presidents, they were perceived as hark type guys.
was not perceived as a guy with heart.
He was perceived as a guy with great human characteristics, and he had that, the common man.
But look at it.
Teddy Roosevelt didn't have heart in the sense of caring about cold doctors.
poor people and stuff like that.
That's what Hart's being defined as now, really.
But warmth is a little different than Hart.
Teddy Roosevelt certainly had warmth.
And Franklin did in his own way, even though he was totally aristocratic and elusive.
Eisenhower basically had that.
Eisenhower's whole thing was that.
Eisenhower had an enormously captivating smile.
But Eisenhower was one of the coldest, most elusive men in the world.
But it was never protected.
Nobody ever got close to me.
And it was good.
Of course, that's the other thing.
They don't get close to me either.
But that's common.
I mean, you know, it's a lot of people come in the cabin.
Close to the sentence.
It's not normal.
Oh, well.
Maybe this is what you're saying.
No, I think, I think, I don't think it's part of what Pat says is right and part of what he says is wrong.
And there are reasons.
that, no, I tell you, I didn't make it unless we have, as he calls it, public PR blacks around the fair.
Well, I didn't sell it.
Now, that's not a great deal.
I think the PR officials, so he's right, he doesn't know.
So we don't want to send that big moron to the ring.
home for the incurable.
There's some of it that's a tragedy.
I mean, I was at that home for the incurable, and that was something I'll never forget for the rest of my life.
And I've talked to people about it.
I've talked to press people about it.
Nobody pays any attention.
I've given a lot of the story that the way in which you are able to
I bring myself to touch people like that.
And you walk right up and that hand waving around and everything.
You grab ahold of it so that you can shake hands.
There's a pretty good twist in that one.
corrected in the press, too.
He said that he'd been quoted out of context and hadn't meant that at all, and he was kidding about saying that .
I think he was, too, and he was drunk.
Allen said he'd had four drinks.
But some of those things, I've told at least six or eight
Commonly I would solve pet types and people like that and I just follow through that and I get emotional about it.
Because I am.
It is an emotion I've got.
And they don't pay any attention.
They, you know, they won't stop watching.
And that doesn't interest them.
I bet they do.
We ought to use Rose.
Well, we've tried.
We've tried to get Rose on TV.
We've tried to get her to solve pet reviews.
We've tried to get her to solve pet...
What caused the trouble?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Something there.
I don't know what it is.
It's funny.
You try to get her in things and she gets annoyed that, you know, bothering her because she has so much work to do.
And she made some crap to somebody here, which maybe this is what's bothering her.
I took a week off and some of the other people did.
She was here working.
She was supposed to take off too.
And sure, she did it for exactly the reason that the rest of us has.
This is, we call it stuff, it's a pure fetish of hers.
She always says it, and everybody takes one after her hand means.
But Bob forgot to say it.
First, she said they'd do it again, but she came on back to it.
Here's the leadership of the Senate.
Scott was unanimous, Griffin unanimous, Cotton unanimous as chairman of the conference, and Bennett unanimous as secretary of the conference.
John Tower beat Taft as policy committee chairman, 22 to 19.
And Brock beat Brooke as campaign committee chairman, 22 to 19.
So that was damn close.
In other words, Brock and Tower.
Brock and Tower for campaign as policy committee.
The Libs have 19 there.
Taft and Brooke picked up 19.
Paul and Pearson were absent.
So it wouldn't be a good thing for the campaign.
No, it is.
They passed a Vietnam resolution, resolved that the Republican Senatorial Conference fully supports the efforts of the President to end the tragic conflict in Indochina now through a negotiated settlement.
That's all we need.
Democratic leadership, this is saying Eastland Mansfield Byrd, Moss is Secretary of the Conference.
Here are the caucuses.
House Republicans and the same leaders, Ford, Ahrens, Anderson is Conference Chairman, Devine is Vice Chairman.
Edwards as Secretary, Rhodes as Policy Chairman, Conable as Research Chairman.
The GOP Campaign Committee will elect its own chairman at a later date.
The Congress didn't finish the agenda item, so Ford said it was impossible to come up with a new resolution.
He's called another conference later in the week and will pass a supported resolution.
The Democrat, of course, is Albert O'Neill.
The majority whip will be appointed by O'Neill.
And Harper's chairman is Olin Teague.
Well, it went just along the line we talked about.
And I'm glad we had a couple lines to throw out.
Like, there can only be one negotiator.
That's a good line.
That's moving good.
Did Bob tell you about it?
The Percy thing?
What's that?
The Percy resolution.
Oh, that's the Percy resolution.
Which is good.
But they were pressing on the congressional consultation and so forth.
I said, you know, you've been doing it since May 8th, and we reiterated that.
The point I made, though, I said I should add that members of Congress, and I said this was similar to last year, I said our policy is not new in the attitude of the Democrats.
Some members of the Democratic caucus is not new.
But members of Congress should ask themselves whether or not they want to take the responsibility to create doubt in the enemy's mind.
about the U.S. position that could prolong the negotiations.
So that's basically the lead-in, followed by there can only be one negotiator, and then hitting the point that we're continuing to pursue the policy as stated by the President.
We want to achieve the release of the POWs.
We want to achieve a ceasefire.
We want to achieve a settlement.
That is right, and we will pursue the policy
with that, which gets those basic POW points up and so forth.
That's really all we have.
You must have had fun when you had that Truman thing.
Truman's no problem at all.
They didn't even ask a question.
Handle it the way we discussed.
You know, it occurred to me, Bob, that that was one that we, that I, you were here at the time, should have been worried about in the first place, because I had the Colson running by, so I didn't have any discussion on this.
I didn't run it by anymore, and it's killing me.
Mark was victim.
He said, well, he's got to go, you know, because Mark always, like, he wanted me to go to that thing.
Remember, Mr. Justice, he's got to reply.
Remember, I listened to that horrible lecture from that son of a bitch.
You know, that priest, I mean, that dean of the school.
But anyway, but each leader changed his mind.
He came around.
Scali's reaction was absolutely not.
Did you go to, did you go to General Muntz?
Did you have good advice?
And no one questioned it out there.
I called him.
He agreed with me.
I referred to that.
Then I went right into the fact that he would receive on a courtesy basis a head of state and head of state government.
I'm here for that.
Okay.
And I mentioned about a partisan leadership meeting on Friday.
We'll talk about economic matters.
The way the parties control.
And the...
Right, I left it, you know.
We're just saying it was impressive.
As you mentioned, the reception.
Yes, sir.
What kind of leaders would be there for that?
The leaders.
Very good show.
Well, Rob, on that reception, I would have, I think you just might as well say something.
So that's time to make a viewpoint.
But pick up reporters for various new people that are covered.
How's that sound to you?
Good.
That's what we're going to do.
And use men and women, right?
Why don't we take the test?
We're going to do it as we discuss it.
And is that okay?
They can come and they can mingle with the guests, you know, talk with them and all that sort of thing?
We'll have a ground and pole from Louisiana because Johnson's a new guy.
We'll have guys from maybe Embry as you talked about this morning.
Whoever you like.
You see what I'm saying?
Yeah.
uh, it gives us a chance to pick up, uh, uh, I would include a follow-up attention.
It's a reward.
It's a reward.
Each time, a reward, one, one, one.
I think this is the way, you know, as Washington posted that, the worst of both is not.
And your, and your answer is always, you know, this is the new policy.
This is, like, the events in this house are national.
Whenever we have something that's for the District of Columbia, the District of Columbia will take it from Congress.
Otherwise, these are bumpy papers that will be treated just like the other papers.
You see what I mean?
Absolutely.
That's why I want a gun.
I place it right there on the end.
We'll find a way to see if the bull's going to get in for a hell of a long time.
Fair enough.
Do you?
Absolutely.
That's obvious.
Not at all.
You have no idea about it?
I'm sorry.
It's funny the way you stirred up the tempest for a day or two.
I don't know what they want to hear.
The Washington.
I think there's a hell of a lot of people who say, you know, right on.
Well, it went right down the discussion.
Okay.
I think there's something moving on the water about Henry addressing the members of Congress tomorrow in Vietnam.
I think you should do that, Judy.
God, no.
What does it say?
Because the UTI is moving, and I call it there.
Yeah, just cancel out of that on the basis of what the negotiations come up with.
No, I think what he can do is decide, we'll talk about foreign policy, but because of the, I mean, you could have a foreign policy.
I mean, it's not just because of negotiations, I can't say.
It's actually what we've done, we've accomplished a lot, we're not negotiating seriously, but nothing more.
Absolutely.
I'm assuming it's important Friday morning in the bipartisan leadership meeting at the end.
So I don't want to be in conversation.
I'm just going to say that I know there's a lot of senators who would say this is a concern here.
This is a very sensitive stage.
We're going back to serious negotiations.
Any comment that I could make could be harmful.
It might get minor developments in the negotiations.
That's all I can say.
Okay?
Okay.
You use Borussia as the, as the island to fill up the coast and I'm just thinking what do we do when we have to launch a counter-attacks attack
They taxed up basically Michigan Buchanan as the writer.
Well, the strategist.
He used Berube as the mechanic.
Well, that's the apparatus for getting the stuff out.
But Buchanan, Kachigian, and Morton.
Now, Morton was on that too.
I will tell you this because he's been going over this and trying to analyze how to handle this.
He is convinced, Buchanan is totally convinced, and everybody who's dealt with this is pretty strongly convinced that we've gotten about a 0.2% return on the effort we've put in in trying to get reactive step out of Congress.
Now, part of that's our fault because we've tried to do it by volume and tonnage rather than by selectivity.
What we've got to do, it doesn't do any good to write 10 speeches and tell 10 people to do something.
What we've got to do is, is when there's something to be done, we've got to have the right guy to do it, and one guy has got to lead a charge on it, and he's got to stay with it and become the spokesman on that thing for a while.
And then you shift to another guy.
You've got to have another thing.
but they're only a few that are going to do us any good on that i think you're right even though you're going to be heard well even if you don't get don't really get hurt much i mean even though you get john towering leadership john tower will get up and whack for us but will it do any good maybe no no scott because he'll use the colorful phrase
will get hurt once in a while.
Griffin never.
Griffin never, because he won't give us a call.
He won't go to the cameras.
He doesn't understand what it's all about anyway.
And he's about for re-election for six more years, so he isn't going to care.
But that is the single...
I mean, we did get some stuff out of Congress, but in terms of effort and investment, we got none.
So, now the answer is to invest in a better directive.
as much of a lettering and get at least as much and maybe more out of it.
And Chuck, I think, and what his conversation with me is, complete concurrence of that.
Why did McGregor do the kind of job he did?
He asked McGregor, I mean, it's sort of a half-assed lobbyist job, a defense contractor.
McGregor would have made himself double the money as a lawyer.
and being in here and sort of being on the sidelines after Watergate and so forth passes so that he could...
So what the hell do you want to do this for?
Because he had decided he couldn't be Attorney General right now, I believe.
Therefore, he wouldn't be later.
But he decided he wouldn't be.
He decided he wouldn't be.
He doesn't have the confidence.
He likes the public law, and this keeps him from public speaking.
assignments.
There's a, in addition to that, he isn't really the lobbyist.
He's got the lobbyists working for him and under him.
And he is, has sort of a Ronald Reagan type role of trotting around peddling that advice.
Apparently it's, it is only $60,000 or $70,000, which he's absolutely nuts if that's all it is.
He's 51 years of age.
He's a hell of a lawyer.
He's a fine speaker.
God damn it, this is your best earning time, and he is worth $100,000 to $150,000 a year, but he doesn't know it.
That's the thing.
He didn't set his own sights on it.
When he came in to tell me about it, it was done.
He didn't come in to ask.
He came in to say that right after the election he was going to do this.
Now, he's got a lot of things that he likes, and he's got freedom.
He's got a super expense account.
He's got a lot of money on that.
We didn't have him as part of the kitchen cabinet.
Very much so.
Colson was part of it.
We didn't have the colonies in town.
And I parlayed with him, and I mentioned him.
I think that's about it.
That's right.
Yep.
About the outsiders and everything they had.
Yeah.
A few others we touched base with on a different scale, like Billy Graham.
Oh, yeah.
If you don't have the men on them.
You know, Steve, Billy Gray reminds me, I was glad to see that Pat finally got recognized as the first straight woman in and out.
It took a little time.
She earned a number.
It was inevitable in her own scheme.
And you know that Billy Gray came second.
He has consistently.
Isn't that mysterious?
He's the chief of son of the Washington Cranston.
Of course, the first four, three of them, you, Grayson, and Kissinger.
Harry Truman got in third.
Did he?
Yeah.
Above Johnson?
Well, you see, they had that, Margaret Truman's book was out just before the balloting.
There had been a big cover story in life on Harry Truman.
And he was dying, so he was in the news quite a bit.
That week or two before the, uh, founding.
Before the fall was inevitable, of course.
And it is inevitable.
The president's gonna leave that list.
He's, he's, he's an old man.
He hasn't always done it.
Johnson did not always do it.
But you have all four years.
Billy Graham has three of those four years, I guess.
Come in second.
Well, I guess we can try to go on with this plan.
Like I said, I think Colson could be awfully useful on the side, too.
Well, yeah.
And it's getting his crib set up.
And if he's going to move out, I think it's best that he move out sooner rather than later, if you know what I mean.
Oh, he ought to break it off, so I'd have a strip roll on the 1st of February.
He had in mind about the 15th of February.
Well, and finish up, actually finish up the end.
We could watch and see what... Yeah.
If the thing doesn't break, it's better that we might as well get the U-7.
Wow.
Because I'm getting Baruti zeroed in here, and although Chuck can help, and he's helped, Baruti's already here right now.
Uh, not totally.
Finishing up over there.
Can McGregor help us?
When does Bush come aboard?
I hope I don't have to do anything more for the former national chairman, the present national chairman, do I?
Except that?
I feel for him, though.
I think he's just a rat himself.
He's just not a big man.
He's got a whole round of Christmas stuff, you know, he was in.
Well, I'll give him a hell of a sucker.
A bunch of those events.
Your wife will receive the next one.
We don't have it down.
You better.
I think you probably, since you, we, perhaps you didn't leave it down there.
Excellent idea.
Actually, we left it there in the chair.
reception okay but don't but not before the inauguration sure after the church service and before the manual reception it's just i go the other way around i have a banner reception after the church service
You know how many members of the family?
Why the hell don't we let them come to the church?
No.
Why not?
It builds up a lot of seeds.
You're right, 200 or something.
You're right.
Family members?
I think it is somewhere.
I don't know.
Have a family that will be in the afternoon so that we don't have drinks.
You know what I mean?
I don't want to see none of that drinking.
A lot of them don't drink, too.
You let the family first, and then I have them in the early afternoon.
Earlier, the family at 2 o'clock, and the next, the R&C at 5.
Yeah, the R&C at 5, right.
Or maybe 3 o'clock.
Must be the problem.
I don't know.
Not that they go to the endocrine halls.
Not that they're invited to the White House.
They're invited to what the hell?
You don't care what they do.
I don't really care.
What's that?
Make them at 4 o'clock.
Do the family at 2 and get them out at 3.
Fine.
Clean the place up and run an attack through the floor.
And at 4 o'clock, do the other.
Excellent.
I think we should do it and let that out.
If you could quite assume.
Well, of course, it includes the state chambers.
I just want to get all those knickknacks out of the way, Bob.
Yeah.
There'll be no mining convention for that.
There'll always be mining convention, but there's no way to get that out of the way.
I would just say a reception.
I decided to change the policy on the mementos.
Yeah.
I think we've gone too far on that, frankly.
It's my fault.
I think we have a day of things.
And I just don't think they're going to have to come and make it a president.
I agree.
Don't you agree?
I would eliminate it altogether, though, either.
No.
I think the other thing is, like, when George Allen came in with his parents from France, it was a time to give him something.
Right.
But I don't know if I can get this senator to become
That's the thing.
And to give them, you know, some of those guys that come in frequently, you give them, you have to keep looking for something new to give them.
And they don't, people that are running down here don't have anything as far as an actual committee to give them.
Don't you agree?
Yeah, I agree.
Because they'll get their, they get their election on their own anytime.
You definitely should not give them anything.
Should not a letter go over preparing all the electors?
I think that's significant.
I think we're reading that screen.
But on the beauty of the certificate, we really discovered that it does not have a necessity of composing the letter.
And it means an enormous amount.
Some ways it's better than a letter, because it's more frameable and all that when you make a thing out of it.
I said, did you happen to know that was the first letter I wrote?
And the other group, if you're not covered, is departing.
But then, you've got to take a look, as I said, at the whole schedule and get it very, very much under control.
I just don't want to appear.
I just can't.
I don't want to get into that impossible position where I'm pulled and all tugged
He could know how to go about it.
Show you how certain things were triggered.
I didn't really realize what the pressures were until I saw Maury Stantz's list.
A number of people.
Did you know that there are 100 contributors of $100,000 or more?
One hundred.
70 of the 100 contributors, one hundred.
So there's 200 right there.
Now they are the ones who will get into 1973.
Of course you can't do that.
He's done the two dinners now.
Two dinners for them.
You mean, they've done the two dinners?
No.
Two dinners through which you can do all of that.
Yes, but he wants the rhymes.
He doesn't want to go whitelisting the two.
No, he'll settle these two whitelistings.
We shifted to that, I think.
I think that's where we ended up.
Good, just have them at their wives.
Now, the other thing that he looks at them, that's why I'm going to go over the mathematics of it, is he then says that they plus all these others are entitled to come to one dinner a year at the White House.
Well, you know, you'd better have them or the others.
Or a dinner plus a business plan, like my 2000 number, if you had it all out, multiply it all out.
Yeah.
And the risk isn't there.
It's above you.
Three to four hundred and a half.
If you gave them all to the finance people, which we can't do.
You've got political people.
Boy.
I'm convinced, though, that far better for me, and we've already parted the conflict, far better for me is the ease of the violence.
than the dinner.
I think the biggest pain in the ass is the state visit.
That's why I want Henry to understand.
Because being a state visit might possibly avoid him.
I'll see the Hussein when he comes.
I'll see somebody else when he comes.
But the dinner will be given by the vice president.
And let him give the dinner.
Let the Rockets give the dinner.
You understand?
I'll give it, of course, to the loved ones.
That's all I'm saying.
And then, I don't know if it's nice to get in.
Some will come.
They're not going to shake hands with you.
Because that really isn't what they...
Some of you don't care about shaking hands with them.
They say they have anyway.
They've been, you know, symbolically they have.
I've seen other people that saw the White House there.
Saw the president there at the White House.
I saw him.
But then I'll just stand around.
I know I might not receive that.
I think you've got to receive that.
But on the other side, don't you agree?
Don't do it.
And I think from the church service, instead of standing there in line with a dumb preacher every time, that we'll just pass that.
And we'll walk in.
But you can start that and do it.
I may want to leave.
Someone may have had enough.
We say, you're invited to have coffee next, and we'll just walk right in and go around for a half hour, you know, 15, 20 minutes or so, and then leave and work your way together.
Right?
I think we can try those things.
These meetings at the White House are for this kind of stuff, too, that advantage.
You've got a lot of pluses.
One is that
the effort is a lot simpler.
You don't have to make a toast.
That's right.
You don't have to get into recognition of individual
I agree.
People in the back can't see a goddamn thing.
Of course not if we've got those risers and we just somehow have to use them.
That's a good idea, but I don't think she'll agree.
It's just tragic not to use them because they have two advantages.
One, the audience can see the show, which they can't otherwise.
But the other one, which is even more important in a way, is the audience can see the rest of the audience.
And that's a hell of a deal for them too.
And they can see you.
Marvelous.
Which they can't.
She don't even know.
That one night in Houston, it was sensational.
And maybe she can't.
But anyway, the next best thing is to have people, that's her name, the semicircle sort of thing.
And just say, well, it's a big or a small award.
You can't have it.
Or you can get it.
Put it there anyway.
Don't put it at the other end.
I just don't want it that way.
You can get it at the other end.
You can't do it for a dinner because of the reception in the East Room to begin with.
That's where you get screwed up.
But for an evening at the White House, it's no problem.
You've got to be set up just for that.
So it works fine.
The other thing, the evening at the White House, is that it saves an enormous amount of money.
Because those dinners cost $10,000, right?
The evening at the White House only costs about a couple thousand.
Dinner is just her and my son.
50 bucks a head.
Is there anything to be said to her?
Are we going to lard her to do something like that damn little Kennedy Center?
No.
I don't like it.
If you're doing that, you know it will.
very well by yourself.
Because you can get a lot more people.
Other than now, I plan at the White House.
I know that the limit of the state dinners are two degrees, I'm sure.
And there, the dinners that they ask and ranking means almost as much as they come to anything.
I think it does.
Or do you agree?
Yeah.
Almost.
They don't see, they see a different kind of celebrity.
It's true, they don't see the chiefs of state and all that sort of stuff.
But what the hell does that mean?
The big thing to them is being in the White House and seeing the president.
I think you're right.
Those evenings you have, actually they're more enjoyable, the entertainment's better.
People dance right afterwards.
Dinners aren't all that good that it's worth coming for dinners, for the dinners sake.
It's uncomfortable.
That place just isn't a good place for serving a large dinner.
I'll show you that.
I'm going to try to sit on those, though.
No use there, too, standing there.
Of course, those guests all march through and shake hands with you.
It's ridiculous.
Because, again, that's an hour's exercise, just shaking hands.
And don't do it.
Yeah, let's try and move around.
That's hard to do, too, because you get trapped.
I know you do.
What's wrong with that?
It's almost impossible to do anything about this.
You can keep flowing people.
I think whatever people around can bring people up.
If you get people out of that, yes, let's bring them up, except we've never done that well.
We've never had everybody bring up dumb people, even though I think they've got to stand there.
The guy doesn't watch close enough, but, uh, I don't know.
Maybe it's better he was a shitter than that man.
What do you think?
I think it's fair enough that he, that he figured a way to deal with it.
Because it is, you stand in line a long time.
And the people stand in line.
You're there a long time, and a lot of the people are in line a long time.
Some of them.
The church, I just know I don't have to do it anymore.
And so if you get the
What can happen is you won't get covered too much.
I'll tell you why.
It isn't like getting in the little rooms after the dinners, where you're a small room and then starting to get groups.
There are great masses of people, and they all start surging around.
And then an informal line
and shake hands so they come through.
Sort of start moving yourself.
If you kind of move through the thing, if you can, so that you just start shaking hands along the way.
And people that don't quite get to you, you just don't really get through the list in advance and have a couple of your days there.
So I have three or four of these people.
Be sure I do shake their hand on their head.
You know what I mean?
I dare you to never work with regard to diplomatic reception.
Are you convinced you repressed the real in him?
Well, that's my view.
I'm not sure it's Henry's.
I mean, you don't think that Henry's... Henry's done enough to... Well, that's just a damn lie.
When I say...
I don't say it's a lie.
I guess, no, it's not true.
That's McAllister.
He did the best job of...
I mean, the article of time this week and so forth was just a direct result of McAllister.
Kelly got out, but the network coverage in Saturday night, he got out.
You see this, it's probably one of the most valuable piece we've had, that's right now.
It's a very, that's the famous Kuhn collection.
It's called, it's called, in Chinese, or or something like that.
And it's sixth century, you see, brought from India to China.
And it originally was the back scratcher, and then they sort of made it into clouds, like that.
very, very well be beaten by a very special, special guest.
It was part of his father's collection.
There are probably only one or two of these left in the world.
And they mean all that your heart desires.
It's basically a back scratcher.
Well, yes, originally, you'd see this in the farm.
Yeah.
But it's an old iron.
That's a snake.
That's 25 years old.
It's been testing.
Yeah.
OK. We can do a few things like that.
That one is ripped.
That's our mine.
It's not long.