On January 9, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Frederic V. Malek, Stephen B. Bull, Oliver F. ("Ollie") Atkins, John D. Ehrlichman, Roy L. Ash, Col. Richard T. Kennedy, Albert L. Cole, unknown person(s), Manolo Sanchez, and the White House operator met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:09 am to 1:23 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 836-009 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I've got a working picture.
Can you get it from the left-hand side?
Where's that problem?
All right.
All right.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Well, Frank, I just thought that you were .
You feel that it does have sort of an authority.
You just said that you should take a lot of the wedding license and say, well, the President wants this or that or the other thing.
You just don't say it, you understand?
Yes, sir.
Because there's one thing I have found that in my probably long life, that it is that when you get good men, you've got to rely on them and back them up.
Don't worry about mistakes.
I mean, if you pick an assistant secretary that's an ass,
And there's somebody down there that's schedule C's and so forth and we've got the wrong kind of people.
You know what the guidelines are.
The only one thing that I would tilt you a little on is this.
You basically are a hell of a manager.
And you're a hell of a good judge of managerial talent.
And you obviously feel that
that what we ought to go for are people that can run this government.
That's important.
More important, I want to tell you, more important than that is this old business of loyalty.
There must be absolute loyalty, and there must be the ability that when we speak out to this government, that then the government will start to act.
And I want you to, I'd rather they have done loyalty
I really was.
You lean that.
What I mean is, I find you, frankly, I've always leaned to, I'm bored to death with, frankly, double aisles.
And we have a few round enough.
I love them.
But I just, you know, they drive me up the wall.
On the other hand, believe me, they're damn comfortable to have around when you're in a crunch.
If I have some guys real wild, real wild, I'll do that damn job.
So if you just have that in mind and tilt it a little bit in that direction, I know you do anyway, but I mean, when you're talking to people about it, you take the situation in the IRS, you probably aren't going to be able to go to Webster, which is fine.
But I want to tell you this, I want Webster, I want Webster and Colson to give us the name.
I don't want an independent son of a bitch over there.
I'm not looking for an independent guy, you know.
I don't see the end of mine.
what's the name of the kind of in other words just getting a good tax lawyer in there it's not what i'm looking for i mean the guy over there has got to be and that's not what happened with the man who's already right because we have well i mean barker
Super floating position where he can go in another position where I have a new man understand that he is the man, our man over there.
No question.
And he's not to be pissed on.
No question.
And that's in position now.
Now, I have another thought in mind.
Since that is so heavily loaded with Jews, if you could get a loyal Jew, that's a very risky proposition.
If you, for example, had a son, a first son from Toronto,
See, there's nobody that can handle a Jewish group better than one of them.
Yes.
No, not one on the outside.
Who's the tax guy from Chicago that you had on the list as a guy for several other job possibilities?
You're talking about Simon?
No.
That's the Jewish one.
Yeah.
Alibrandi?
No.
Something like that.
He's the president of a company now, president of Northern Corporation or something.
Well, I forgot.
There was one, we had dropped, you know, all the IRS.
Why don't you go back?
Alamo, yeah.
Well, let me say, I do not know, but there is no appointment, but there is no appointment, Fred, I consider more important than the IRS appointment.
And there's got to be.
Now, let me say on this one, Bob, here's where Webster and Colson...
They question, likely, very likely, most of the people in the tax bar.
I get some of their input.
And so maybe we don't go with that.
Do you agree?
Yeah.
But anyway, kind of on speaking of your, I just hope that we are, Bob was telling me, the job you've been doing personally, you've got the personnel,
PIOs and that sort of thing around.
And it's been an awful, awful burden.
And he's only taken two months after the election.
We all should have arrested him.
This is a critical time.
Yes, but I'll tell you, Bob feels, and I hope he's right, that it's worth it.
Well, it costs us a lot now in terms of our having to fight the press and everybody else.
It'll pay off later, you agree?
Oh, if we don't get it done now, we'll never get it done.
And if we don't get it done, there's something not going to...
The thing that we've got to do, though, and are doing, we don't really seem to agree with these people that you appoint.
The ones that really can screw us in the end are these people in the Schedule C jobs and the agencies.
Right.
And what we're doing, we've got...
And we're putting in place now a team of loyalists in each department who are going to watch this.
These are people from the campaign, people we've got in other ways who are totally loyal.
We have a five-day school.
In fact, we've got a class running through it right now where they're totally back in five days on all the tricks of the trade, everything you can do in personnel, the importance of the political aspects of the personnel selection process.
And these people are going to go out loaded for bear and
and they'll be they'll they'll be put in each department and i'll remember the first of february well plus you'll have fred as deputy in the omb right running them i didn't want to have you in with ash you're the deputy but not providing which which one do you want to be well we're in the deputy there'll be one deputy overall he is going to be concerned with the budget
He is?
No, not really.
Oh, I don't want you to get, don't get bowed down to the goddamn budget.
I'm not going to get bowed down.
Let me say, the OMB was set up in the first instance, not simply as a glorified budget bureau, which it has always been, but basically as a managing bureau.
George Shultz didn't do one damn thing on the managing side.
He was a very good manager.
Kath Weiner has done less.
I mean, that's not saying that critically either.
Both Weinberger and Schultz were basically budget men.
Am I correct in that?
They did not manage anything.
Schultz wasn't supposed to have been because his, but he was an academic, and Weinberger is a budget man.
But, on the other hand, when we put Weinberger and Schultz to jobs, we haven't had anybody doing the managing job.
That's right.
Now, Roy Hatch, Roy Hatch.
Absolutely.
He sees the Bible as a tool for getting control of things, not as the reason for it.
Let me say, you could have done a lot of other things, and I realize that, frankly, Kevin and I and so forth, you could have done grants or deductions and things like that.
In terms of your value, your ten times as valuable here is who's ever going to be, who isn't going to be Secretary of Transportation on St. Paul's Day.
I'll be a very good man.
It doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference who's Secretary of Transportation.
You've got Krogh over there.
But anyway, that's fine.
You get my point?
That'll come later.
You've got your time.
But you do this job, and I really can't do the damn job.
And let's manage this government.
And I think it's a tremendous opportunity for you.
But I don't know that you've got enough horses over there with you.
Oh, let me tell you what we're going to do.
And you're shocked.
Most of those guys are pit sweeps.
When I say that, I say it.
They put down every little piece.
It's the bottom number and all that.
Which is great.
We need people to
But who the hell is the guy that's going to look at the horse like?
I agree with you.
We don't have the horses in the state, but we've got to get a lot more people.
But we've got that in the workshop.
What we're going to do is we're going to have four line directors who are going to be primarily concerned with management.
They'll have the budget under them, too, but they're going to worry about the management.
And then we're going to have under each of those about ten guys like me
seven years ago, ten little mountains in each of those offices.
So when we want to get something done, we can just grab a team who will be familiar with an area and send them out and they can do whatever the hell we need to do in that particular department.
Reorganize it, restaff it, change this policy.
The way we tried to do in the White House through the Domestic Council with a half-assed way and with people who really weren't capable, they were loyal.
Always, but not always capable.
Here we're going to have people who are first loyal.
Yes.
How the hell did we cut it back?
We can't.
How did we get our cut from 4,000 to 2,000?
We get it from other places than OMB.
Good.
We got the cut without cutting OMB.
We're cutting the White House staff.
We're cutting the big cut, of course, comes from OEL.
That's where most of the 2,000 to the 4,000 people are in OEL.
That is a known cut.
A cut?
It's not appreciated on OEO.
It's suspected.
It's not confirmed.
But that's where the big manpower cut comes in OEO.
But the numbers, because that's where the numbers are.
Let me say, whatever the numbers are, I'll be damn sure it'll be right here in this west wind.
So we have a damn substantial cut zone.
so that they can't say we didn't cut here?
No question.
We have a 50% cut, which is what we're going for overall.
We have a 50% cut in the White House staff.
On the non-career side, on the career side of the White House staff, we can't cut because we're dealing with the mail and the mechanics that run the place, which you can't cut down.
Cutting a little bit there, but not much.
The big cut will be in the non-career.
support staff, the professional staff, whatever you call it.
But that includes the secretary, so they don't know a lot.
There'll be a 50% cut on all of that.
And we're down to that.
I want to go over it with you, sir.
I don't need to go over it.
Well, but you ought to have a general awareness of what you've done here so that you can talk about it.
All right.
You don't need to get involved in it for approval.
No, not at all.
But you ought to be aware, just on a general basis.
And you cut the secrets first off, for example.
Not much.
They don't attach to us.
That, I was, well, I'm not going to have them around so much.
That military aid, you're going to have one of those on the base.
You can't have more than that.
No.
And you really can't.
You can't for, you know, there's substantive reasons.
I know.
Why don't we use that?
No, it's truly true.
There's a hell of a job that they do.
Okay.
The other, some of the other things we're doing is trying to get control of this in your presence.
You might be interested in
One of the key positions in each department is the Assistant Secretary for Administration.
He controls the budget, the personnel, many of the policies.
Doesn't each department have one?
Yes, sir.
While the FAMSA has an Assistant Secretary for Control, they call it different things in certain places, but basically they do.
We're picking those people.
Ash and I are making really some top decisions.
Man, you are loyal.
And I ask this, who were they before?
Basically, didn't Romney have a good one?
Didn't Schultz have a good one?
Didn't Schultz have a good one?
Didn't Congress have a good one?
In other words...
I assume all of these are people that are people that want to get their thing.
Well, they are.
Or are they some of the holdovers?
Some of them are holdovers.
They're all holdovers.
They're out.
There are some.
Right.
There isn't any of them worth a damn.
Some of them.
We made some bad apartments earlier in the administration.
Fine.
The other one's not.
People were bringing out two of our best assistants in the administration in the OMB and were replacing them in apartments.
They've been there for two years.
They've done the job and they've earned the opportunity for
and then the other thing we're going to do in each of our regions each of our regional offices we're going to put an OMB
man who will in effect be the director of OMB's representative, but he's also going to be a political loyalist.
He's going to be one of our better advanced men or one of our people who we've really got a confidence in who can perform.
So when we want something done out in the region, we'll have the ability to do it.
We'll have a guy out there who's kind of like... We're talking about loyalists here.
What we're really talking about is people who will do what they're told.
That's right.
on the basis that this is what the President wants done, rather than looking at it and saying, gee, I think it might be better to do it this other way, or letting someone underneath tell him we've always done it some other way.
Let me ask you, in that connection, whether there is a system that they have in the Army, in the Airmen, in the Services, and also in the State Department, inspectors now, who go rushing around, you know, and they let the sea, let the people, let the shoes shine, the heads are clean.
and the State Department people who examine and see whether the stenographers are shagging off of the this and that and the other thing.
It's a damn good system.
It isn't worth a damn in both these or those places because they're usually there.
It depends.
It depends.
I think the State Department, Inspector General, they run around and entertain with certain investors and they deny a margin of that we don't.
What I'm thinking of is an Inspector General for every department.
And by that, by department, I don't mean just the cabinet departments, I mean the other departments.
And I mean going out into the regional office.
Let's take a small event.
Brandon walks into the second department of labor.
He walks through the offices and has a little old boy with him.
He doesn't, he finds, doesn't find any pictures of the president.
So he says, I didn't find a picture.
And I said, all right, this would be a president's picture in your office.
Doesn't mean a damn thing to me.
But it ought to be done.
And it could.
We should have a new one sometimes.
We've been trying to get one for two or three years.
But he doesn't make it.
And that's a small thing about it.
It is really a question.
I don't know what an inspector general can do.
Maybe they're on the news.
I think they've got to look over those offices, look down at the regions, and you go through there, and it'll scare the little bejesus out of these people.
I mean, when they get their so-called fitness reports,
well this is exactly the kind of thing we can do with with this kind of makeup we can just call our assistant secretaries for administration and say okay this is what we want done we want you to set this up and we want you rolling we want to report on the first of each month the inspector general role you can perform really better from the omb the omb guy that's responsible because he is
is that he doesn't have to carry it out.
He goes in and looks at it and says, this is right and this is wrong.
But he doesn't have to stay there and get it taken care of.
You get a hell of a lot better at it.
Why don't you have an inspector general?
Why don't you have an inspector general?
Have the concept in mind.
I don't know.
I'm trying to see how it's done in the state.
the dam and let's see whether we whether your state can be shaken up i want to be sure i want to know who that inspector general is first thing get bill casey to check check that out right away go find out about some of these damn ambassadors
And we got, you know, we, most of our reports have been fast and fast, which is, you know, longer-racing.
Some of them spend money, but I sure that we got one that's a jackass, one that's pretty good.
or Shakespeare, if you call it.
Of course, that's one of the best ways to get a report.
I know.
I know.
But my point is, why not have somebody who covers 140 embassies and takes a damn heart out of these people and sees how they are?
Now, the State Department does that, but they do it in terms of whether they're loyal to the State Department, Foreign Service, bureaucracy.
I want the Inspector General of the State Department.
I think we've got to get a man from outside of the Foreign Service, or a man, if he's in this Foreign Service,
That's what we talked about using cars But are you getting pretty good people willing to come?
Well, we've had a lot of disappointing turnouts, but we've got some damn good people coming in.
Yes, sir.
I'm sure you haven't turned out.
But the people, I'll tell you something.
You've got the money to pay them.
The people that turn you down are oftentimes the people you really ought not have anyhow because they just don't have the dedication and the breath to do it.
We're not doing the begging that we do.
We shouldn't.
We need to take them to the mountaintop.
We need to get the guys...
to come when we got a good man, if we can get him.
But we sure don't, we're not, well, you know, in 69, we used you all the time, and then you were stuck with some son of a bitch.
Please let the guy to come.
Well, basically, we used me in a big catalog system.
That's right.
Now, it's totally different.
We're not asking any of them.
If they don't want to come, fine.
We've got a long list.
It puts you in a very different relationship.
Dean, if they want to come to you, rather than you're going to them, right?
That's right.
The people we're putting in the OMB, we're moving a lot of people out.
We're going to have to move a lot of people out of there.
Where are you from?
We can move them out to an agency or a department or someplace else.
We get jobs, and we have to do civil service.
But the kind of people we're bringing in are going to be, are really top notch.
We've got some already recruited for OMB and for these assistant secretary folks that are unsatisfied amongst the best young managers.
And they're good.
We're not just looking for managers.
We're looking for people who are political sensitive as well.
Right.
Because these guys are going to be jacks of all trades.
And they're going to have to do a hell of a lot of things for us.
We also want to watch them all in terms of...
looking to those that want promotions and so forth, let's have a good bank and depot so that we get opportunities to move people.
We don't just say, well, I'm your old show.
He went to school with my father or my father's brother or something.
That's really the way most apartments are made.
We don't want to do it that way no more.
I don't want any apartments ever made that way.
We're out of the list.
Basically, that's what we haven't had out of the OMB.
Would you agree?
Yep.
Well, we do now.
We haven't had it in the past.
That's what we set it up for.
We generally sit around.
and try to think of who we can come up with there, and everybody tries to think of who we can come up with.
And I don't think that's how to have an answer.
It's much better than that, because if we find, for example, we're working with ambassadors and special agencies, and you can check around and send in a great list, but often we'd sit around and say, well, what do you think of the list we can do?
And there's so much that we can do.
somebody that i see i just want to move that way now we're trying i think we're away from that now although sometimes we get into a into a crisis and we resort to being a bunch of guys on the table and sometimes it works well that isn't too bad a way to do it sometimes
The one thing you do, you know it as long as you know its velocity, if you actually know it.
But what we've got to do a better job of is reaching out and finding people we may not know who share our velocity and who are capable of doing totally well.
And there are people out there.
Well, there are some.
That's right.
There are some who share our velocity.
And a lot of them do, really.
There are a lot of them.
The point is that we've just been in this
We've heard about this terrible myth that you have to get everything from here in the east.
Oh, that's, I know, I know, that's really...
It's really quite there, isn't it?
The problem we run into is there are so many good people.
It isn't just a myth, that's it.
Oh, wait, let's face it.
If he's got a damn good law school, he wants to go to the Harvard Law School.
If he's a damn good fellow in the field of business administration, he wants to go to the Harvard School of Business Administration.
If he wants to go to the best medical school in the country, he goes to the Harvard School of Medicine.
Correct?
That's the way it is.
That's the problem we've got.
Now, one area where that is not the case, though, which I will insist, is Henderson.
Now, there, it doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference.
I mean, the Harvard School of Political Science isn't worth a damn.
uh, bunch of assholes, uh, they, the school of diplomacy, not worth a damn, they're all pacifists and worse.
That's the point.
And out there, and he's out there in the boondocks out of Montana State, and they get a better person in that field, then you get out of Harvard, because he has some guts.
That's where we have a problem.
We're putting a definite emphasis on getting people away from it.
And we're coming up with quite a few.
Occasionally, we come up with an Easter egg.
Hey, you can't avoid it.
You probably have an idea of how he was for the other Secretary of Labor.
He's an ethnic.
He's a Czech.
He'd be the only high-ranking Slav besides myself in the administration.
He was active in politics.
He worked in our campaign.
He was such a...
He's fine, except we found out he went to Yale and how we lost him.
Uh, way back when.
But we think he still might be the guy for the job.
Not only Yale and Harvard, he also went to Cambridge.
Wow, thank you.
Does he get bread at once?
He does.
All right, get it.
I, look, the only reason I get this Yale, Harvard, and Fred is to make you compensate the other way.
Mm-hmm.
In other words, so that we just, you know, and you'll be compensated more than anybody else.
But I, you know, I can't rule it out.
I'll be the person I am for the job, though.
Okay.
Hi.
How are you?
How are you?
Nice to see you, right?
Well, granted, that's where mine is a few loyals.
Yes, sir.
Roy has what Roy wants, too.
He can leave it alone.
Uh, I think it's very important, uh, for you to, the things I talked to, A, I talked to, uh, Schultz, Steinbaum, I, I think you, and that sort of thing, too, by Roy.
Roy, obviously, is going to be a bucket in that, in that sort of thing.
But where we have economic policy,
Obviously, he's a major member of the fund, where we have economic policy like wage and price controls and so forth, and selling that policy.
In hand, we have a Paul Brangley who has a much bigger stroke than Cat had.
Cat was basically a budgeteer.
Roy, we're in the business.
Roy could go out and say 1972 was a good year, a very good year, as I have said.
I predicted, and it was, and 1973 and 1974 will be very good years, unless the Congress blows the button, and that's the great threat to it.
See what I mean?
And you could do it with the enormous, and I thought that there was, I know that I always shake George Soros when he comes in, because he's a good guy, he's a good man, he's signed the papers for S. and Stein, but you understood what I was trying to get at.
I just dictated the memo which Senator Roy was doing,
But what I want to come out of that briefing, above everything else,
Your prosperity, Mr. Ernie, your new prosperity, faces a mortal sin.
That is, in this Congress, spending more on the full employment budget.
That could destroy our prosperity by it.
And raise your taxes, and raise your prices, and destroy your prosperity.
In other words, overstate it.
Now, Roy can say that.
Major Casey is a budgeteer, he should say.
But you see, he can say it because he's a businessman.
George was not a businessman.
Weinberger was not a businessman.
Roy Ashley can sell this better than Conley did because Conley was not a businessman.
It's a great salesman.
But I mean, what I meant is, I'm not referring to the business community.
The business community is talking about many of these clubs or anything.
I'm not referring to the business community.
They're doing it so much publicly, television and all that sort of thing.
But the business community
business community address.
You can say it.
This is where you look at it.
They will listen to you not only as a government person, as a budgeteer, but they'll say, well, now, Roy Hatch, he's the head of the list.
And so he's got to know something.
So, but you're great.
Absolutely.
And all the other issues fell through with that.
The economists will sell us time.
I would say, after they create yourself, you will.
But let's be sure we remember we've got to afford it.
And we'll get burns whenever it is.
Conservation of God will allow them to do so.
Thank you.
Thank you.
He's an artist.
Let me say, he played a greater game for us during the campaign.
I don't care where they kept the discount or re-discount.
It's going to rain.
It's going to be low and long.
And the money supply is too high and too long.
The finance didn't work.
Now that we've made the move, there's another direction for the finance.
We had to go up there, and art wasn't taking risks, right?
So he held on probably longer than he.
And a right dude over there.
He was going to move now.
But he must not move by just firing himself.
If I hadn't played, we should have just torpedoed the whole thing.
I think you could.
But you can talk.
Roy, you see, you can talk harder.
A little more.
That's all we can say.
I think we're all friends.
See?
You may not like to think that.
We got a little puppy.
No, I think that's right, because he does acknowledge any peer in economics.
That's right.
But he has to acknowledge, you know, if not a peer, at least a distance.
You don't claim to be a peer.
That's right.
That's all, Mr. Pratt.
It doesn't bother me because I know the facts, but on the other hand, I'm only worried that they're going to criticize you for me, and I feel that that's not exactly what they are trying to do.
Well, they just do all of it.
They, they, uh, you can be very sure that they weren't going to get somebody else.
So...
I'm here just to watch.
Maybe they'll shoot everything there is to shoot.
Then hold on.
Shoot.
Then it'll be.
Hold on.
Shoot.
That's the way it ended.
Hold on.
Shoot.
And I would never, I would handle it.
Never with anger.
You don't have to.
You wouldn't.
But Marge, well, I guess that's, you're learning a lot.
I mean, apparently it's a pretty rough deal.
I'm personally fully prepared.
I just hope that it doesn't, that anybody else has to worry about me.
I'm told that it doesn't make any kind of impact on my people.
It just makes me, it's that stronger core.
I don't think there's going to be any of that in prep.
I don't think it's possible.
I didn't get a question on the program.
It was raised up again.
And we have handled it.
Well, our enemy we find is partly in common.
It's almost like the number two issue here.
No, Dietrich is a guy.
He's over 80.
82 years old.
But he's there.
Still there.
He's just a dastardly fellow.
I don't even care if I get sued for life or what I say.
Don't let it go.
Let it go.
It is what it is.
It is what it is.
As you know, you are not a traditional official candidate as such, and therefore you have a confidential story.
But I want you to know that as a designated member, that your status is exactly the same.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that, well, mainly, it may not bother you, but I want the members of the cabinet to understand that.
See the point?
Because your position, when you develop, you, in business, I know, I miss, maybe you didn't have these, but around government, everybody around here knows who's got the biggest catapult.
And so therefore, it's quite important that
John, you and Bob, be sure that from the moment, I don't think you're going to have any problems with the cabinet issue, but I want them to know that one of the reasons that I'm saying to you, Roy, is so they know who's getting the signals around here.
Because I don't have to use you to borrow me some of them.
I came here to get some work done, and I don't care what comes out.
We all know that.
We all know that.
But I know that even now the relations with the county assess that it is working and will work.
Another point that I was going to make is,
We set up this office.
It's called the Office of Management and Budget, which you well know better than anybody else.
Under both Schultz, under Schultz and Weiner, and even more under Weiner, under Schultz, it's become simply a glorified budget.
It's got a damn level of management side, awfully.
Now, the reason is that neither Schultz
Our manager, basically, is a management type.
Schultz is a good manager.
He runs a good shop.
I'm not saying what I meant is it.
But on the other hand, he didn't think in management.
He was burdened down with the budget.
He had to learn.
And on your point, if I could just strongly urge that, to the extent you can get a good budget manager, somebody that you can really rely on, because the budget is a total pain in the ass.
all this crap that you have to look at.
If you could get stuff, in other words, if you could get a bucket of light, like, early woods and coal, you know, fellas, you could really rely on them so that you do not have to worry about whether it's going to be 15 acres of earth, or the sewers over the road line, like somebody else would over a plane, so that you can spend some time managing some of it.
I acknowledge what I had to admit, but I think you're
that what you bring to this office that neither of the other two men have is management capability.
And if you come here, Roy, and just become a glorified budget man, you see, we could have got somebody else for that.
So I wanted to hear that directly from me.
That's what I was expecting.
And I'm not going to – don't be worried.
If some of the budget items come in here and get screwed up a little bit, it doesn't make that much difference.
The overall numbers, you've got to worry.
Or do you think we're building a new market?
Well, I think it'll take care of itself.
The budget kind of has a life of its own, and it demands a certain attention from the people that are working on it.
And there are, said over there, several hundred people who do nothing else but worry about the correctness of those numbers and all that kind of stuff.
Sam Cohn, just to pick a name, a career man.
I know that Sam Cohn will keep me out of the budget trouble.
He's a career man.
Nobody knows who Sam Cohen is, but he's so professional.
He will just make the budget process operate right, and he's a good bell ringer.
You've got to avoid having to bell ring so much that all you're doing is answering Sam Cohen.
Well, there are a lot of crossroads in this budget, and I'm going to watch and I'm going to interrupt John.
I want you to have the earliest possible time to have a talk with Bryce Harlow.
The Budget Bureau, of course, they have a lot of professions, but also those professions have constituency down in Congress.
And it's an essential relationship that introduces my relations.
It's what I was urging Bryce Harlow to notice this.
Because he's dealt with it.
He feels very strongly that we've got to watch these bunch of guys.
John, Bob, beyond that, you set up the field where Bryce and John and Roy meet.
John, I think you could sit on the tooth to get a little feel of that.
Bryce is outside the government office.
And it took a long time.
He goes beyond that on the thing, too, of which you may want to try to do, and maybe you can't, which is his firm conviction that every desk man in the budget bureau, regardless of his competence in the field and everything else, should be changed in his substantive assignment at least once every three years.
Even if he's the world's foremost expert in transportation, make him handle health and...
recent for it.
You move, you move the following.
Mike, Elliot Richards is very capable, and out of tenacity, I get the inevitable.
He's an advocate of all those man programs over there.
We move on to defense.
and you you take the catwine or herd of courses and so they can budget them and you put them in the agw uh you move uh and because then they are no longer captives of that constituency they start new and they'll be beaten down and they will be moved again i think the budget thing is correct if you could move some of those guys that say look you're the transportation man why don't you become the hud man
I don't know whether this will work or not.
I think it will.
Most of those fellows are generalists.
They're interchangeable on the kind of talents that they have.
Which is fortunate.
If they aren't, they ought to be made to be examiners.
Generally, they are interchangeable kinds of talents.
Now, the one thing that this side does not have is any political gender.
That's right.
It's totally devoid of political gender.
It is.
We have injected political judgment from the White House into the budget process over the years.
I come in as a political novice, as everybody knows.
I hope to learn as fast as I can, but I know that I will not learn fast enough to be able to do that.
We're going to lean more heavily on folks like Butts and Lynn to sit in those budget reviews
with their guys and offer political input.
And I don't know how that's going to work, but one of the things we'll take on is what job will make that work.
Let's look at the case.
We can tell you two or three of them have it.
Miles has political judgment.
Yeah.
Lynn has political judgment.
Weinberger has pretty political judgment.
He tends to talk about the regime at times.
And it's not any greater.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We've got it in Kansas City.
It doesn't have to be a pretty good group.
But you see, Brandinger has Crowe.
And Crowe is based on what Brandinger likes.
Brandinger will learn.
We're in pretty good shape on that, which is part of the way that cast has been set up.
When I say a novice, the business is with us and not without.
And I come in with a lot of good and generally favorable relations with a number of key people on the Hill that I'm working with, whether it be Mayhem or Stennis or Mills.
I've already developed outstanding relations with all of those.
The place you get it, Roy, is in a situation like a decision to withhold or impound, where budget guys have tremendous drives working on them to impound money.
And in the past, we've run into a situation where no one has asked a political question until after the fact.
I'm going to lean over backwards and ask the question.
That's all you need to do.
That's all you need to do.
That's all you need to do.
That's all you need to do.
I don't really have the senses of that.
Well, I guess you don't.
Let me say one other thing.
I know that budgeteers always want to fight every battle.
But believe me, give them a little.
Fight the big ones.
And emphasize the big ones.
If you fight every battle, you'll find some of these congressmen and senators.
Thank you very much.
It's a very big problem.
I think, John, sometimes when we, it just is worth the cost.
I really feel it.
I mean, you go out and get rid of this one.
So what does that add up to?
$10 million.
What the hell is a $10 million?
None.
You've shed more blood.
You're not going to get it.
That's the other thing.
So I would like to see if there are some of those items.
Maybe you've got to have a little bit of sugar, but maybe $100 million.
Basically what you're talking about.
When you talk about the neighbor of 4.5% of the climate, so it's 5.2.
When you're talking about a $250 billion budget, what difference does it make?
Is it $250 or $200?
$100 million or $200?
I don't want to bust it totally, but we must not get in a position where we shed too much blood over rather modest items in the budget.
Now, there are some that are just impossible.
I noticed Romney stepped up the house.
Yeah, very.
There's a young fellow named Paul O'Neill at Roy's place who wheeled Romney.
He wrote the speech.
He taught Romney in giving.
He positioned him beautifully, and Romney is now sold.
And he will continue to support this.
And by golly, Paul, I think he has the lion's share of the credit for that maneuver.
He didn't just read Paul's speech.
He actually was convinced that that was the right position, which is better yet.
This is a fine boy, and Romney's a hard guy to handle.
He's tough.
That's the understanding that we can have a keynote.
Although on the outside, it might not be very helpful.
If we can continue...
to position him on some of these things.
And Jim Lynn seems to think that we can, in the long haul.
He could be a lot of help to us.
At least he's not going to go out and cut us up on this thing, which is important.
I think we need some outside help, too, let alone are we inside stages that we'll all be making about the validity of this impoundment process.
And we need to...
The scaly and the...
The propriety of the whole thing.
In addition to...
I'll crank myself up and I don't know if the rest of you are able to carry the arguments on that, but the more that we can get others supporting.
If anybody will support it, the better.
Will anybody in the Congress support it?
Not many in the Congress.
Who's going to support it, John?
What are you talking about here?
Well, I think we can get you guys first.
I'd like Barr to support it.
Well, former secretaries of the treasury, George Shultz might get all the former secretaries of the treasury, and frankly all the former budget directors, and get them to speak up on this thing.
I don't think he'd get all of them, but he'd get most of them.
Most of both.
That's another idea.
I think we worked over the budget directors and the treasury secretaries.
Oh, you didn't get a budget director.
I mean, they're so political.
I think it's like those guys have to be responsible.
We did get into this.
I mean, the press is pretty heavy.
There's a lot of press.
What I was last talking about is that
As, of course, you're quite aware, it's not new.
It's been done for years.
What's that?
I know that you've already got it.
I read the Weinberger thing in the briefing paper.
It's too long.
I think what you need is just a page about the content.
First, what is it?
Second, how long has it been done?
What recent presidents have done it?
And then what is the purpose of it?
The purpose is to stay within the duty.
And there you've always got to get down to the bottom line.
Only through impounding are we going to be able to avoid a tax increase.
And then point out the alternatives.
Or avoid excessive spending if we leave with a tax increase or a low price increase.
The alternative would be.
This is what we're going to have.
Tax is the only alternative.
Higher tax is the only alternative.
Congress has got to choose.
So it's up to the Congress.
They either impound, the Congress shows responsibility on its appropriations and we won't have to impound, or the Congress shows excess impounding, or the Congress is going to have to take responsibility for increasing taxes.
I get off of the issue of impounding and get off of the issue of spending.
The issue is the tax taxes.
The tax is taxed.
The Congress, by opposing
A lot of the writers, the analysts, are coming to that point all by themselves.
And they're saying the President's put the Congress in a nifty bind.
And they need to go along with his decisions or take the responsibility for their taxes.
And did I hear this point about government spending?
Two hundred million people believe that if it comes to Washington, it's free.
That's right.
It didn't cost anybody anything, though.
It's got to go right through the taxes.
We've got to connect that with taxes and...
I've tied that to a poll in Canada tonight.
I've tied that directly to taxes.
You can tie that to an extent before more sophisticated people are priced.
In other words, inflation at the bottom of the state.
I think there's another point that we talked about earlier.
We could probably join with much of Congress in making a case for any one individual spending bill.
After all, it takes any number, but we can't join for the total.
Rather than have to feel compelled to be defensive on each and every item of expenditure, that's a poor position to be calling for the defensive on each item of debt.
We...
Yes, but we can't join with you on the total.
That's what the congressional responsibility has to be.
That has to be one of the things that I'm thinking.
If you ever allow the debate to be about the individual, that's a spending proposal.
There's a question of being against folks.
But if they ever raise that,
must immediately transfer the issue to, that's a program that's very interesting.
And we would normally like to be for it.
But on the other hand, when we have all those programs, many of those that are desirable, that we consider desirable, they all lead to an undesirable tax return.
So we have to balance that.
And to be there at $250 billion is enough, as much as we would think.
But get it on the tax increase.
I think we ought to equate the tax increase right around the line.
We talked this morning about the question of how the 74 budget presentation, which
picks up right after the inaugural and all.
And Cap was intending to make the presentation on that and do the pitch.
The press conference and all that.
The press conference and all that.
We all felt very strongly that Roy should do it.
He is the budget director.
Absolutely.
Cap, it is Cap's budget.
He made the budget, but he's now the secretary of HEW, and Roy is now the director of the OMB.
I should tell Cap that, though.
We'll tell him that.
fighting over his new departments and their issues and so forth.
And he'll come out there like Scrooge.
He can't do it.
I mean, you've got to be like Scrooge.
That's right.
The other thought that came out this morning was that you had said you'd set a bipartisan leaders meeting on the 23rd with Republican leaders on the 22nd.
The thought...
was to wait until the 26th, which is Friday of that week, for the bipartisan leaders, and you can do the budget at that time, because it comes out on Monday.
That would be Friday, which would be the normal time to hit them with the budget.
But you can't hit them as early as Tuesday, the 23rd, unless you have some...
If they know the meeting's going to be Friday, it's just as good as having it...
The thing to do is to let them know they're at a meeting, and it's for our purpose and the budget.
And then with the Republican leaders, you can still do that.
We'll do that on the 23rd.
We're also going to do the cabinet on the 22nd, the Republican leaders on the 23rd.
You can cover the 73 budget with them, which will work out fine.
The impounding and the wake-up calls and all that, enlist their support.
You don't have to do that.
That could be the agenda.
Explain the legal rationale.
The current general will come over and tell us the legal and how you've been sharing it with the forward.
This is crazy.
Remember, we don't put the arm on them.
We'll be for all of them, just as far away from you as they can get.
Oh, sure, sure.
I think they will anyway.
They may.
On budget.
They may.
I pay a loan on taxes.
They don't want to be caught on the fine.
We can put this in those terms and say that as a party, the Republican Party has pledged, and this is in the plan, no new taxes.
Incidentally, it's interesting to note that not only your national polls indicate that that is what people want.
Incidentally, that Gallup question was not a loaded question at all because it did not have the tax item in it.
No, yes, it did.
Not so strongly.
It was more a question of whether the social programs
My point is that if you put it directly, do you favor spending more spending?
I don't get it.
Do you favor more the federal government spending more if it requires a tax increase?
Uh, do you favor holding a line on standing in order to avoid a tax increase?
I think you'd get people to just strictly in that case without confusing it with social programs and harassing people tend to be bored.
You'd get a one hell of an answer.
What I'm going to say is that, but, uh, Mexico and Connecticut has come up with a very tough,
austere budget.
Rockefeller in New York, and he's, he polls virtually every day, or he, if there's any place, has come up with an austerity, and he's, he's talking attention to an austere budget.
In other words, what, now they're doing this because they believe that's the wave of a future at the moment.
At the moment.
I think the reason is, and I have Rockefeller circle in Texas, so the reason is that they're
It just may be the people are against it.
What do you think?
I just think across a broad political spectrum, I think there's a lot of common beliefs that taxes are bad.
But the issue must be put in that way, just as strongly as it must be kept.
Now, the way people always try to divert attention from the domestic programs is they welcome the budget to the tenants.
The budget to the tenants is not great.
That's the whole problem, particularly with these huge costs.
Going down in percentage of the total, we are cutting the percentage of the total in terms of hardware.
But that will come later.
But if we could just, if every time they open their mouths and they pound me,
The bottom line of everything you say, if you will, is that it's a tax increase.
The President is fighting this battle not because he's against milk for middle-income school children, but because he's against a tax increase for their parents.
That's what I believe.
He's against a tax increase.
And the only way we can avoid a tax increase is to stop it, is to impound these funds and stop some of these programs.
basically or could be desirable that we had to hold on to one, but are not.
Absolutely essential.
You, I think, I think it's very important to do it, but you will do it.
You have the connections in the government.
As much time as you can, your office numbers up there, and the, et cetera, that hold their hands.
And whenever you're talking, use
a lot of the wedding licenses say, the President asks you to come, like when you go to Chuck E. Jordan, or Mayhem, or Russell Bell, and the President asks you to come down and just have a very frank talk, he's very receptive to you, and he feels that you've put work in place.
He was very generous, and I want to use it, very, very generous, because it's very effective to those guys, and they think you're just not that great.
I've asked you to come down and consult with him.
He's just a consultation, sir.
One thing that we need to do, and that apparently is the worst it does, as you know, Congress itself is wrestling with the issue of how we get control of total budget spending.
We've got to decide which of the possible ways they can do it that we would like to side with, not that we can openly do so, but they have alternatives.
One of them is
Strengthen appropriations committees and run it through the air.
The other one is create a whole new structure to do so.
And then before we've done our own path, we ought to have thought of our own, which path we would prefer later on down.
who's sponsoring which.
You've got Henry Royce on one, and you've got Brock on one, and you've got different ones.
And who might end up in control of the process, if they were to ever crank up a process to deal with it.
Maybe one thing is to hope they fail in any process, so that we can manage it from here.
Always keep your own hand in your pocket.
I haven't, well there's a very clever call, but we need, and for reasons, I know we have nothing to do with liking us and maybe for us on certain issues.
I haven't met a public, if only a public, one of my near past private actions in Lytton was to have made a personal contribution to the mills.
School of Public Administration down in the University of Arkansas.
Right?
I'm not going to make it public.
I didn't know I was going to leave the business.
One thing he may want you to do, you should do.
Like all these people, he's like a sponge.
He might want you to go down and make a speech.
I know whoever knows this, whoever we work with.
But he's smart.
He's smart.
He's smart.
His pronouncements were just about right so far.
He'll come down the right way.
on the way to the young board and they said to the people over OMB, it's like jumping on, jumping aboard a 7-0-7 full speed and the weather being all right.
So, 7-0-7 full speed.
He said the only reason he was calling was to wish the President a happy birthday, first of all.
And secondly, he wanted to express his deepest personal gratitude to the President for letting him serve.
And he wanted you to know that.
Some of what he's hoping for may be coming to pass.
And that, I guess, tells you what it is.
He urged, and I say more than any other time, that you, and he said you and I and nobody else read that, that it not be seen by anybody or known by anybody at this point.
He must have sounded very honest.
No.
He was obviously playing it cool.
Well, he was playing it cool for the reason that he didn't want to be respected or overheard.
That's right.
And the first paragraph is quite interesting.
We celebrated the President's birthday today by making a major breakthrough in the negotiations and some, and some of all the outside questions of the Texas agreement made in progress by the sign of the agreement made at the show.
And then the fact that this is the media, but it must, it must not be the news to create the chance of this tomorrow.
We should create this on the agenda for tomorrow's session.
We need a protocol that's extra stringent today.
But we have to use it to bring our children forward.
We just can't.
There's some press success, but it can't be done.
The movement is much more disposed of.
There's not going to be a slice of it, but it's the issue of bureaucracy.
Cabinet members and members, I couldn't agree more.
The way we've already begun to question it.
Thank you very much.
Rogers calls.
Just say it.
Not just say it.
Just say it.
I'll get it.
You've got to say it.
Let me get it.
I have to study my new procedure.
I think I will change it.
This is it.
Uh, Ken Cole?
Yes, sir.
Are you ready to speak?
Tell Ken if he could at 12.30 and have Colonel Kennedy come in right now.
Colonel Kennedy at 12.30.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
I think in terms of just getting along, you have to understand that I am going to be every day, Monday, Tuesday... Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday...
I've got a figure on, and of course what changes the signals on this, in each case, we'll be, we'll always keep Wednesdays free.
I actually think that's a good idea, don't you?
Yes, sir.
I don't think there's any need for me to go out on Wednesdays, and also that allows me to Wednesday always prepare for the jackass precedents that I have to do.
So you know nobody's hanging around waiting to see if you can, you're...
But I want Monday and Tuesday, unless we're in Florida at Central, on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, I would see Fridays, or maybe we should make it Thursday and Friday, too, as a matter of fact, unless we're in Florida at Central, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
I think we should do business from 10 to 12 a.m.
In other words, have appointments.
and run by people, that's the way I can do individual cabinet members, et cetera, you know.
I can do, if there's a congressman or so forth, it has to be seen, I can do that.
You understand?
And if somebody is out on the outside, I can do it.
I find it useful, for example, what I've done today, I did this as an experiment, that all of these people were seeing, I don't have to see my life now for quite a while,
But there are people around this government that we're seeing.
There are people outside.
And Don Kendall will be in her report.
You know what I mean?
And I know that some of us yet, but some of it is very essential.
I can hold on to a member of the Congress.
But I will schedule from 10 to 12 each day, each of those three days now, that when we have it.
By scheduling, I mean on some of those days there will be a leaders' meeting.
On some of those days there will be a cabinet meeting.
See, what I mean is the 10 to 12 is the time to do the business.
Then we'll leave the afternoons free for the real business.
But 10 to 12 should be the period for leaders' meetings, for cabinet meetings, and SEC meetings.
Another Sunday.
And that gives Steve, I want one of you to get the hell out of having to be stuck in this thing.
You give it to Steve.
And Steve can come in and he also will have a really good chance.
Sure.
And he can come in.
You think so?
Yeah, I'll go through them on the first track just because there's got to be a central point because he doesn't know what's going on.
I won't.
I won't.
I'm talking about what I'm doing is I'm going through something that's going to take about 10 minutes a day and that's all.
Good.
What I was going to say is that on Henry's message
except for Al Haig and yourself.
I don't want to go to anybody else.
Now, with Rogers, I think you should call, I don't know to what extent,
Let Paul, let the writers just say, well, it was just tough going at the end of the day.
Tough going.
It's too early to tell whether they're going to make real progress, but it was tough going, poet and all that.
Don't you think that's the way to ask me, exactly?
The same with what's going.
We, at least the presidents, thought that at least they should keep talking.
Keep talking, and they're going to talk again tomorrow.
But there's really no, nothing reported except that it's tough going.
Nothing conclusive, that's the way to go.
Nothing conclusive as yet.
whether they make a breakthrough or anything, it's not inconclusive on them.
This is exactly the way I am.
And then, the other thing I would do is strike back from Zeger.
Zeger should still play a very, very cool, not one indication of any optimism like ever.
Not at all.
Well, this is one where you should give Ron no indication of optimism, so that he can't get... Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Ron is not to notice.
Ron is simply to say that, well, there's... You go in with those long faces, and you talk, you say, long-faced, and say, well, Ron, I don't mean to go pessimistic, say it's the same as it was the other day, and you should play it absolutely cool, not to...
If they ask about it, there's nothing to add to what we said previously.
But he's good at that.
Poker player.
Okay.
Yes, sir.
Because what has happened here, what has happened today, I mean, has kind of split the big end.
The big end is if they go downhill again tomorrow.
My guess is, I don't know, it would not be okay.
Do you think they will go downhill again?
Sir, I don't think so.
I think they're going to finish it up.
That's interesting.
Okay.
Well, I know it's just, but my point is, Henry, is about the perennial options.
I mean, he's either up or down, but as you know, he's either up or down.
I think they're there, as we indicated.
The clue certainly was that they decided to do this before the new year.
If they had decided to do this a week later, I would have had serious doubts in my mind what they were up to.
Because they did it before the Congress came back, before the magnitude of the press pressure in the county had built.
They could have waited another week.
They could have pushed off of it.
They could have put it all in the context that they only acquiesced in an hour and wished to come back.
I know, I know, I know.
But on the other hand, here, all the press pressures and Canadians and all those jackass in the back, I would think that they could now just say, well, because of all that, why did they do that?
I think they made their decision.
But then...
Isn't that just to be a devil's advocate, a good reason to think that maybe they'll back down the old Americans, the A3, the press writers, and all that other crap?
I think they've made the long-term decision, and I just want to stick with it this time.
It's just my guess.
Of course, that's the way sometimes things happen.
Sometimes they don't.
But one point that I would disagree with everyone on, I may be wrong.
We in any event still face a massive problem in Saigon.
We have a problem.
Just like it was in Nelson.
Do you agree?
I agree.
I think it's very, it's quite, much more hopeful that we would be able to pull that off now.
But it's going to be, it's going to be tough.
Well, it may be tough, but it may not be that tough because
Well, I mean, they can play that kind of a game, but if they do, it's going to be really brutal on our part.
And this is a cue that's got to be expected, because I can be brutal with the North, but I can be goddamn brutal with him.
I'm going to stop giving these people a cue to screw this thing up in October.
He's not going to screw this up.
That's just the way it's going to be.
If we get this far, he can be under no illusions.
From your letters to him and Al Haig's discussions with him, there are going to be just many more questions.
The only point that I would, I think you should message him.
I appreciate his birthday greetings and his report.
I totally agree with the need to maintain absolute eyes and secrecy on developments until we have everything nailed up.
And to Colonel Kennedy, to Kennedy and Hawth,
If they don't go down the hill tomorrow, this is
Your work, what you have done today, is the best birthday present I've had in 60 years.
He's a son, I don't know if you like that.
Don't you think so?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, it's good.
Right.
Because he was quite sentimental when he operated it.
Yeah, that's right.
Continue.
Continue.
a tough posture.
And above all, do not let the other side fall off.
Now, the only question that I want you to also put in that, and you can work this out, is about A,
uh i think we've got to get uh uh he would not be back until friday he didn't think and
Absolutely no later than Saturday.
He will either come back Friday or Saturday.
He doesn't see any possibility of coming before Friday.
His message indicates that he'll be meeting on Friday.
Did he say that?
I don't remember his message, but his phone call said that.
So he'll either be back Friday night or Saturday night, it would appear.
Because if he stays, it would be because of a long meeting Friday or a Saturday meeting.
So that would mean, I would think, that Haig wouldn't go until some time.
Well, the moment he gets back, we are in Haig, and Haig goes, and I'd like to get the hell out of there.
Now, I feel, don't you, that the Haig, I mean, Martin, was, yes, or was that, was just, well, he, I don't know, he said, whatever, what's that called?
His commanding officer, I don't know.
Well, why does he need to know?
Well, he needs to have a feel.
He needs to know.
If he's going to go out there and use the game himself, that will be a question.
And I think he must be going until Sunday, and it's Tuesday now.
I'd wait.
I'd wait.
I'd just give him the same thing right now.
No, don't do it.
I don't think that.
I just think the less people know, the better.
I have utter confidence in Hayden.
But he's sitting there, and I don't want him to have to lie to you.
That's the problem.
You know what I mean?
It's like you wouldn't want to light a hammer.
That's the whole point.
It's just why you're not held.
No, sir, I don't believe you're telling anybody a goddamn thing.
I need you to say about nobody in this matter her story.
I never told you before.
I'm sorry.
The President asked me to inform you that the work is still going on, and last time the President told you to stay on, go the extra mile, right?
I was trying to say, you see, the tender flow, there was a certain plan that I was planning to do.
Happy birthday to you.
Thank you.
Let me tell you, you can stay live, but this is mainly to indicate how I wanted to operate
I told him, I want him to undertake more responsibilities in the whole PR field.
Thank you.
you being his deputy, that I have just as much confidence in your recommendation as I have in his, which is true.
I want you to know that you prepared all those papers and everything and so forth.
You sent them and things down.
And I will depend on you for, to be responsible.
If your name's on it, it's going to be the same firm.
Don't run anything by him.
Don't bother him with anything that he doesn't have to deal with.
You have all the ground.
But then don't pretend it's coming through.
I think it should come directly from you.
And don't have his desk piled up with a lot of things that he doesn't need to get.
Keep his mind and desk clear.
You'll know the kind of things that he ought to know about.
But generally speaking, don't bother him.
But,
Don't be worried about the man mistakes.
If it was this way earlier than I do, I don't give a damn about it.
I'll back it up totally.
I never criticize the people for their mistakes and never will.
You just do the best you can remembering that.
Now there's one other thing that I would have ever strongly urged.
I suppose doing a lot of paperwork is essential in order to see that the work that you've run down every trail
I feel strongly in that we don't, as far as I'm concerned, I don't ever see a lot of paperwork.
Don't make up a lot of paperwork.
Most of these things don't require that much.
Understand?
You just tell people that you don't need to have a 40-page memorandum about this or that or the other thing.
You only want two papers or three papers or whatever the case might be.
What I'm getting at is cut the paperwork down.
Could I suggest, Mr. President, that when the paperwork comes in to you, we cut down a lot.
Oh, I know you carry a lot.
That's right.
It comes in from, it's not so much from you as it is from the NSC.
But what they do on all the attachments, we take it all off.
and only the top paper comes in, or with the note to the president, because the backup paper, if he wants it there, it's going to be moved.
I think we ought to stop putting that note on it.
I don't want you to be bothered with that.
And you ought to assume that, of course, there's backup paper, and that if you want more details on anything, you can always say, give me more details.
I think 90% of the time, you don't want to.
90% of the time, I don't even read the memorandum.
I know.
So you see who recommended it, but the options aren't assigned.
That's right.
And the key there is you, in your files, can have a backup.
And then if he has a question on anything, he can say, I don't understand this, or give me some backup, or this hasn't been thought through, whatever his feeling is.
Then you can come out with your backup and do it.
But the point is, what we do now is we back up into him everything on the chance that he may want it.
What we should do is back up nothing on the assumption that he won't want it.
Because 90%, at least at 90% of the time, we'll be right the second way rather than the first way.
So we might as well go for that.
And on the 10% or the 2% or whatever it is, it'll be less than 10.
Really well.
It's almost zero.
Looking back over the four years, when we started out, when you were staff secretary, we kept everything.
But things weren't as voluminous.
We forced them to be thinner.
Now they've gotten voluminous again.
We ought to force them to be thinner.
But you ought to force them to be thinner in the input to you.
No, I'm trying that.
You should.
You don't need all of that.
Then, though, cool it all off and get down to one or two pages for the present.
Don't let a word get out here that the present will only take a one-page memorandum, because that isn't true.
Send out the paper.
If he needs a nine-page memorandum, send him a nine-page memorandum.
But you know perfectly well that on 99% of what comes in, one or two pages will suffice.
Because all he needs is, this is the issue, this is who recommends it.
That's right.
But I, those guys at least in my office have got to think that I read every damn word that I see.
And they never know when you are going to.
So they have to assume that.
I think we can do the same kind of thing that we've been trying to do.
We don't always get there.
We have one or two pages and tabs, and what I'll do is when we come to the main test, we'll take the tabs off and let it come in in the one or two-page form.
I'll always have the backup and we'll then throw it myself.
That's what we do now with you.
That's what most of you always say, is the tabs have been removed and available if you want.
And on that note, we've been doing that.
I was just going to say, we've been doing that for almost a year now.
And I did it without telling anybody, including not telling you.
We just did it.
And you have never, in that year, asked for the test.
I don't either.
Never once.
And we've done all the tests on every memo Henry has written.
If I ever read, if I ever read the end paper, I'll ask for more information.
I generally have been around the track so much, I know I can tell this by glance, but if the paper is worth my attention, you know, right?
Whether I'm going to get bothered with it or not.
And most of the time, it would depend on the man.
If you've got the work, I figure this is good work.
But now, the main thing I want you to do is that I don't want you to, I want you to, Earl is pretty good at delegating, but I want you to also help him.
Don't take the damn matter of him and be a boy.
Don't do it.
He doesn't need to get everything.
I want him to get out here and start fighting some of these battles, you know.
I want you to do superbly well.
All right, sir.
I think we can do that.
Try to keep this desk free.
Oh, you know, also, there are other reasons that she must go to the end of times.
He's got to be informed so that he can be on the big issues so that he knows what the hell the debate is about.
He can read the input very fast.
It's easy to keep informed if you don't
What you could do is give him the papers that you send to me, just without the tabs.
What I would do, I would give to John papers that you send to me, or you send the damn papers to me, without even discussing with him.
And after I have sent it to him for information, then he reads what I have read and knows that I have made a decision on something.
That's, that's what sees you in the schedule stuff, so that, you know, we are aware of what's happening.
That way you see you're preparing for him and exactly what you're preparing for me, and he'll know I've decided, and we can always change things, and he'll say, well, obviously you shouldn't have done that, and he can tell you, but that way he can be informed.
On the biggest subject, you go ahead and talk to him before it comes to me, and that's a very, there are many occasions when I want to know what is there in the thing, right?
See?
Like, what is the opinion on impounding funds or something?
I want to know what is her opinion.
And that'll be in the memo that Ken sent you.
Right.
Her opinion is that we should do this or not or whatever.
All right.
That'll be easy to do.
He gets copies of most of what I do now, which probably he never will accept, but at least he has an opinion.
You can go through that stuff.
Awful facts.
If you don't have to sit and make the decision, if you do it on the basis
In the meantime, to get the people here to come to the council, not through the organization, through the government, but through the people.
Finding an occasion to bring men to the White House for gatherings.
You know what I mean?
To meet with you.
They love the Canada officers when they come to the White House.
So do people here at the White House.
Right here at the Roseville, the whole day.
We kind of talk to them, you know, in a group.
We've got a team spirit of our people out through that.
People particularly that have come from the domestic counselors that are out in the country.
So they feel that they're still a part of the team.
We've got to do that.
Yes, sir.
Working on it.
kind of training program right now for undersecretary and assistant secretary.
So we'll get them in, get this team kind of thing going.
You're 32?
34.
He's old.
He was young when he started, but he isn't young anymore.
Almost 35.
A couple of weeks.
It's already...
One thing, Mr. President, John mentioned to me yesterday your thoughts with regard to many states of the union, if you want to call them that, or several radio speeches.
The state of the union in sections.
Right.
I've talked with Ray Price and Bill Timmons, and we've worked out several different options, and we're going to be getting together tomorrow.
We'll have written for you a proposal as to how to go about this.
Everybody thinks it's a good idea.
You see what it does.
First, it will allow consultation with the Congress even on some of them.
Although there may not be, some of them may just be, you know, the political economy.
But what it allows, instead of putting eight stories in one speech, you put eight stories in eight different things.
And I can do that, and I'll do a radio tape on every one of them once you're prepared.
Well, I don't think it should be a 30-minute rating.
What do you think?
Well, it depends on the subject.
Some of them, there may be one that is a 30-minute rating.
Most of them run 15 minutes.
See, you can do a message with some backup patients to the Congress, too.
for example, capital punishment for drug pushers.
You've got that one right here.
It's a question about what he did.
I keep polling.
Nelson Rockefeller lives by polls.
Anyway, that's why you're not going to ask me.
I'm a voter for it, but I'm wondering if the judge is worried about it.
I don't know what I'm saying.
We've got a few things to focus on, but I don't know.
What else?
Great libertarian, civil libertarian, coming up for this.
Hardly repressive issues.
What really got to him is the son of a very good friend of his got hooked on heroin.
I don't think he's died, but he's an addict, and it's a thing that's just, he's a very close personal friend of Nelson's, and it's gotten to the point where... Who is the rock and roller man?
Who makes the calls?
John.
John does what I've been talking about quite a bit the last couple of weeks.
I want you to call him.
Just as you were in talking to the president today, going over some domestic matters in the State of the Union of the Press, and that he said that he was, that he was totally behind Dr. Rockefeller on the drug, what he's done, if you want to know what I mean, on his...
He's totally behind it.
He knows there are legal problems and so forth.
And then he admires him for taking the heat that he's taking.
But he's on the right side of the issue.
The right side of the issue.
Now, he says, well, can I say that, sir?
Well, no, we're not in a position at the federal level to move on it yet.
But he thinks having a governor move out of the state level is the way the federal system should work.
But he says it there.
The only reason the president has to move in this direction is that we haven't, you know, we haven't got a clear justice department.
But I think that he has, I'd say, 70% approval in the country for taking a specific attitude to stuff like this.
Let's point it out.
He loves to be critical.
He always does.
He loves it.
Okay.
Yes, sir.
He's good at talking.
He talks a lot.
If you call it back, we have a meeting this afternoon.
I'm just having some time.
We're going over a number of things.
Also, we've been talking to the President.
I mentioned to you earlier that we've been talking about some contracts for New York.
The President personally is getting a few asses to see what we can do to try not to get his hopes up.
But we personally said it's time that New York got something done.
He's got one concern with regard to the AX contract, which is there's no experimental .
Well, it's between Northrop in California and Fairchild in Long Island.
It's the first fly before you buy a contract.
So they have the points for each of these planes.
And basically, the plane with the highest number of points on whatever basis they chose the one should be the one with the contract.
That's one awful idea in the middle to blow up if you say.
They don't know yet.
Both planes, by the minimum standards, had two fly-offs that they had.
I've taken the liberty of...
around about the term letting Secretary Samuels know of the governor's concern on Long Island on the economic impact on Long Island because of the Grumman situation and if Fairchild will for some reason or other not get this contract, we really can't go beyond that.
That's right.
We've done that on a couple others.
It's worked out pretty well.
They do a pretty good job over there.
Yeah, but they've done, we've moved a lot of stuff.
Sure.
Northrop will get along without this.
Yeah, they'll do fine.
Southern California will get along fine without it.
The governor sent a list about three pages long of all the contracts that have come in California versus those that have come in.
We did it.
We did it.
That's one that we worked.
Well, California had a worse problem than New York did.
Oh, the other day, I want you to be the fellow to keep in touch with the mayor.
I'm pretty sure that he knows that we still care for him.
I called him on Christmas or something like that.
He's got a terrific problem up there in the schools.
We've been through every jump here starting in last September and there is no way because of the way the grant system is structured for us to get money to them.
They've come up with one last thing and possibly we can help them out, but it is really impossible.
And Shapp has just cut off his water, totally cut it.
We're trying.
We're trying.
We shut off the line.
At least all of you have had any control over it all.
Jeff is really sticking to it.
There's nothing we can do about it.
We're trying one last thing.
Sometimes the state doesn't use all of the education money that's to go to them.
And if that's the case, then it comes back to HEW.
The secretary of HEW, as I understand, has the discretion of then spending the money in some other location in the state.
And if somehow we can identify the funds and get a hold of them, we possibly could transfer this back to the city of Philadelphia.
But that's the only option we have.
All of the only options management budget is looking at that.
But when you talked to him, I took it as a leap of faith.
I really feel for him on this thing.
I'm throwing it all on the chap and saying that he's an old and screwy, and that we just had a more cooperative governor here, but that we are cracking the whip around here in East Carolina.
Just to put it in a personal note, anytime you're talking to me,
He knows we care.
He did support us.
Oh, he was great.
And he and I have talked about it every day.
Just so he knows that we chat again.
All right.
And I'm sure we'll be coming to the inauguration and all that.
He apparently has a personal problem that's going to prevent him from being here.
That was the last report I had, and I don't know exactly what that is.
A personal problem.
I think it might be some kind of illness in the family.
Because he was on the phone with me maybe three weeks ago and said, you know, will you set something up for me down there?
And I said, absolutely.
We'll have a good hotel room and get a good thing for you to do.
And they had a thing that they were going to ask him to be chairman of.
And then he called down and said that he couldn't do that.
He had a personal problem.
I wonder if it's political.
Maybe he decided to.
No, sir.
When I talked with him last, he said that he was at the point where, when things were going the right way, he thought that he would try to switch parties.
And he wants to run for governor, you know.
And he wants to run as a Republican.
You better keep touching and see what this personal problem is.
I can't imagine what the hell a personal problem is.
Something that kept him from being a chairman of something might not keep him from coming to the... No, that's right.
...to the inaugural...
President personally wants you very strongly to be here just because of the deal.
We have an amnesty.
If you raise it that way, he'll probably tell you what the problem is.
All right, George Romney did a good job yesterday.
No, that's good because we had him down and sat through an hour with him and got him all positioned and he went out and did for one of us.
Let's kind of do it from here in a fast way there.
George, I just wanted to know how great it was.
Thank you very much.
He doesn't throw a lot this week.
As long as we can keep him talking favorably, it's good.
We're in good shape.
Well, I'll take a few bites before the other guy comes in.
Okay.
You're going to have a different situation all the way around.
I mean, you're going to have limbs, you know, you're going to have all of that.
Wanderer's going to be your man.
Not the agent.
Remember that whenever the issue is not spending, it's taxing, right?
Taxing, taxing.
Oh.
Oh, could I get Mrs. Romney on the phone?
He's in Texas, so I'll be back in a couple of weeks.
Oh, I already had a letter from you to him in the mail, so that will be over here for your signature, just to let you know I did a good job.
All right, we'll send the letter, too.
All right.
Anything we can do to keep him quiet?
On this final spending issue, our people are working together with Chuck Colson's people and congressional people and Ken Kloss and Ron Ziegler to put together a plan with fact sheets and all this business, and so it will be a
I'll call back.
I'll call back, thank you.
Of course.
But he'll be a much better pastor than he was in the second year of the institution.
Again, he'll be very good.
Oh, I love him.
You'll love that.
He's got to be a nice guy to be a pastor.
That isn't for most of us.
Okay, thank you very much.
When a foreigner comes in and being right, just like when I see him, there is a reason to talk about something that overloads my understanding.
All right.
And I will.
You don't need to come in with John.
Only if you feel that his presence is needed.
It's not that you're ungrateful.
He doesn't matter.
But you know, of course, if you think you can, you cheat him.
I can say this from an important, but basically critical point.
All right.
I will do so now in front of it.
If they get any more ears, I'm going to need them most likely to go on paper.
But not on any of the departments.
Okay.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Good luck.
Well, with this operation... Oh, it's scheduled.
Well, we'll schedule it.
We'll realize what you can do.
We'll...
We just do on an organized basis what we had been doing previously on our site.
We just take the content on it.
Two hours a day for that purpose is just, I mean, two hours a day, three or four days a week is worth it.
It's just worth spending time on it.
That's really...
which I think it is, and I think it's better than your one hour thing that we talked about in the 15-minute shots.
Now, some of these will be 15-minute shots, some of them half hour, some of them hour, some of them two hour.
I mean, as you said, the cabinet meetings.
Thank you, Steve.
You've got to go over to your cabinet meetings, for your quadrat meetings, for your NSC meetings.
I've got to meet with the councilors from time to time, you know, that we have at the congressional meetings.
The business group comes in, or a labor group comes in, so we'll just go right down the damn line with this stuff.
Then afternoons for your own needs.
Afternoons for your own needs.
Yeah.
Take it again and get it again.
Well, your own.
So you can call them in on your own initiative and send it to me.
Yeah, call them on your initiative.
What you're doing there is really giving up the career from 10 to 12.30.
Yeah.
10 to 1, actually, because I usually like to go to 1.
Well.
The last appointment should be scheduled at 12 o'clock.
That's right.
And then you just give up that time to other people to take away from your initiative.
That's right.
It's being done to take care of all the other things.
Then you've got the thing you want.
Do you want John Connolly some time?
Do you want to spend some time with him?
Have him come in at 3 and spend the afternoon or something if you want to.
Or John Mitchell or if you want to get into...
a long session with Henry about something.
You know your afternoon's clear to sit down and talk about it.
In other words, if you have a course, I'm going to try to run the government.
In the morning, I'll try to be head of state.
Well, partly that, but partly also the afternoon is conducted at your initiative.
The morning, that two-hour segment in the morning, is it that you're at their mercy?
It's a reactive thing instead of an initiative thing.
Which isn't necessary.
Some of that will be running through.
It will.
Some of it is also good for me to... Well, that's a reasonable length of time.
You don't need more time than that.
It's eight hours a week.
And it's really funny the way you call it.
But he gets you on the phone this time, you know, he missed you quite a few times before.
But then he said, I just want to wish the President a happy birthday.
And then, what did he say?
Well, he said, I don't want to, he said, you'll be getting a message from me in an hour or so.
The cable.
But he said, and I don't want to get into it on the phone.
But he said, the only reason really that I'm calling is that I wanted to wish the President a very happy birthday.
And I wanted you to tell him that – and he said, I was going to call him myself, but I figured I should – it would be better not to show that I made a call to the President.
And he said, just tell him that some of what he was hoping for for his birthday may be coming to pass.
Anyway, he said, I'll be here until Friday, it looks like, but no later than Saturday.
And then I'll send a proposed schedule to you tomorrow.
scenario, how it will work.
He said the vital thing now is to keep the lid on on all the matters that we discuss, and the cable that's coming in should be confined absolutely to the President only, and just, you know, you should tell no one now about it.
And then he kind of talked a little bit in generalities and said, well, the only reason I really called was to wish the President a happy birthday, and if you would tell him that I wanted to express my deep gratitude for his letting me serve his life.
And it was an emotional kind of thing.
But he didn't say, well, we've got it, or anything like that at all.
Well, if it survives, he's got a breakthrough.
Basically, if what they say today, they do not back off on tomorrow, then we'll actually be on the line.
The only problem we have there is not Ted telling him to go to hell.
The problem we have there is whether the minority Vietnamese can make a deal with us without this going on.
Well, it was valuable for me to have all this time in his last few years, not a lot of time, but it was a part of bringing him on, and what we could and could not, and so forth and so on.
And he needs that, you see, he needs that.
He doesn't have, you know, jealousy.
He's gone.
He doesn't have anybody there with him.
He doesn't have any conscience.
Now I think he's...
Client's problem, briefly.
Do you have any further thoughts to get him in?
Frankly, I think I should talk to him.
I must say, the more I think about it, the counselor, if he did lose his story, it was a stupid thing for him to do.
You know, even though he put it out for the purpose of getting us to keep it.
In other words, to deny it.
Your point is that he put it out to get us to deny it, right?
I'm not so sure.
I don't think he put it out in the thought that he was putting out a story.
I think he may have ginned up the story by his answers to somebody.
Yeah, correct.
Well, if you want to do it, can I?
I think if we can do it on that basis, and I'd like to satisfy myself in talking to him that we can.
I mean, at the end of the day, we can do it.
Yeah, I know how you take it.
I heard presidents and just Dan and Preston, we do want to make a change.
I don't like to think we're not going to change.
We are going to keep the office separate.
You see my point?
Yeah.
I don't think it is that we understand that.
You see my point?
Yeah.
Well, it basically,
You should have the destiny to see if you should have been logged out of the tables on that circuit.
Because how do you do that?
Your faces are pure.
Your arms are effective.
And sales.
And therefore you might, I bet you, but to raise your stature,
So to make you a counselor of communications, a counselor to the President of the United Nations.
On this means, sir, that you will sit down and look at other meetings.
And on occasion, some NSC meetings, where NPR is involved, and I think we should have leaders meetings as well.
Leaders meetings.
On the other hand, we want to make it very clear that you've got one press secretary, so we don't have a situation where two people have to advise on that matter.
You've got to have one press secretary.
The president looks upon you as, frankly, an individual animator.
by your telephone calls, by your conversations, by your speeches, and above all, by your television appearances all over the country.
You are a salesman.
Now, what about as far as your, what you had previously done with regard to programming cabinet officers and that sort of thing, that no longer is your responsibility.
I think it's important that you understand that, and I do agree that you can give advice and so forth, but we just can't have any difference of authority.
That will not be your responsibility.
You've obviously given advice and so forth.
The idea would be that you would be a counselor, you would be an AOB, along with the other two or three counselors.
No, that's one of the negatives.
The negatives I suppose is that, what, you want Frank Bale to come in, you shouldn't have him come in.
You wouldn't have him.
I'm not, I, there are other places you can use Frank Bale, and there's, Rose is giving me a strong pitch that, anti-Bale, which I didn't, I didn't know they were a faction, but she says Preston Wolfe is, is pretty much down on him.
I don't know what the ramifications of all that are.
Well, she's probably got the,
But anyway, let's put it this way.
Let me say, whatever the situation is, we can be very sure that we don't downgrade communication.
Everybody will think he's in there telling the captain how to handle himself.
he becomes in a councilor role rather than an operating role as a director and because the operations are handled through the press office and the setup there.
Now on the other hand, on the other hand, you've got to figure out what substitute we have for the, basically the, what is the co-sum?
I'm trying to check about that.
We've still got to work that out.
You've got Berudi as the out front substitute.
What do you call him?
Special assistant.
I see.
He sits over there.
And he runs that part.
And who does, for example, letters, editors, and so forth and so on, making for editorials?
Well, Herb does the next thing.
Herb can still do that.
No, we'll do it for Herb's signature.
Who's we, we're doing out of the, out of the, what was the post operation, the Baruti operation.
I see.
The attack group, the thing that's still, still not absolutely, that we don't have right yet, is the attack group.
I was trying to check that, that's why I'm worried.
Still got to go at that.
I don't think he knows yet.
No, he does?
But with her, and frankly, he wants to stay under those circumstances, he's a good man to have around.
He's really been under quite a few.
He said one of the negatives, the only negative is if it doesn't work this way.
If it works this way, there's no negative.
It's all good.
It's the way that it will work, and he's got to do it.
By the way, he comes over there to stay under the barrier that we're going to be there with him.
His staff is limited.
We have one administrative assistant and a couple of girls.
One for each.
Correct.
And that's it.
As far as getting out the letters and mail and so forth and so on and so on, that's done through what else did you want to mention?
You know, we've got an officer that's...
He may sign it.
Better if he didn't do it.
We can shoot him over there, bring him to sign, you know, and he's got to review him.
Anything goes.
He's right.
He wants to see stuff that goes out of his name.
Yeah.
Because he knows the people, you know, the first names and that sort of thing.
There's no negative on the name.
No, the point is the negative means about his name.
Because if you copy and miss it, it's a stupid thing for him to do.
And if he does so, I do not.
Except that what he's talking about going out to do isn't going to do any good either.
Like copying?
Oh, copy.
Copy would make me do it.
And if he does, this is a way to do it.
He can get his line out to copy and in the meantime take this, which enhances his stats or something.
That's right.
It really does.
To be ready to move into copying.
It does enhance it.
Also, Bob, it has another thing, which I'm sure is very huge.
It doesn't smack a bunch of young White House clerks with an old, fine ass.
Which you've got a little of them, you know.
That's why I didn't like that kind of story.
Yeah.
And that's... We all know why we have to use it.
Right?
Yeah, but you can't avoid that.
You're going to... That's the way they play those stories.
I'm sure of it.
Our major factor is that he can be useful in that capacity if he's going to stay.
And I don't see any downside to him if he'll stay under those circumstances.
But there's going to be nothing.
But it's to be, if you get into it, it's to be cold turkey.
No S ands or buts.
Don't indicate that we're going to retain the damn office.
You know what I mean?
I really feel that I just think we've got to...
I wouldn't retain it.
I'd say we're dividing up what was done in it.
The personal thing you keep on doing.
That's right.
The support stuff and all goes over the broody thing and the press, the programs, the PIO talks about the bigger staffs that are impossible.
No way.
Why not that the counselors are bringing over you and all these are not going to have staffs?
No.
That's, you just can't do it.
It's a different thing.
That's one thing, of course, in the Army.
I remember her staff, of course, she'll have a staff.
She's got to have an assistant.
So if she runs the Bicentennial, she'll have a staff there.
Oh, yeah.
And she can, you know, in any... She fortunately knows she's not a manager, apparently, if you were talking.
If it's not being a manager, she'll hire one.
I'll bet you she's capable of doing it.
She should have a manager in the deal.
She should be counselor to the president and then hire an executive director for the Bicentennial.
A real good, a word to agree.
Are you going to have a chairman of the Bicentennial Commission who reports to the president through him and is then the chairman?
No.
But then, then.
And then there's a staff for the commission.
Who, who is the, who has the executive director?
I don't know, somebody that works for Mahoney.
I mean, you know, Mahoney, the chairman of the commission is Mahoney.
This colony, which we're going to change, I understand.
And then, but that, you know, we'll give her the responsibility and work with her on how we put it together.
The guys should have been working on it.
What is your feeling now about the, what I can't do about the, trying to get off the floor here to write this, finish this thing.
I can't really do it until I know what happens in these negotiations.
Nope.
But you can go on.
I can't do the writing.
I also can't do it.
It's like the tone, the temper, and everything is going to depend on how the law, how the state is sitting at the moment.
The economy is safer.
Not very good about it.
You would say to say you don't have to get spanked?
Yes.
That's what I would say.
I think you got that right.
I can't go far enough.
The question is, is it worth considering going after he gets spanked?
Yep.
Or is that, what is it like, going off of the time?
Nope.
No, it's a matter of fact.
I could go down there and say on a Saturday goodnight.
Well, if he comes back Friday, you can go Saturday.
If he comes back Saturday, you can go Sunday.
Well, if he comes back Saturday, just go back after I meet with him.
That's what I meant.
Well, it depends on when he comes back.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
Maybe late.
Well, even late Saturday night.
If he comes back, I'd have a meeting.
Take him.
Keep him hitting.
See, you don't, you'd have to, you ought to come back up here Thursday.
You don't have to come, no reason to come back before.
I don't think there's a meeting.
You don't have to until Friday.
You don't do anything until Friday.
Yeah.
I think I can come back Thursday night.
And I've got my back until Friday.
In some ways, it's not bad for you to be out of town.
It eliminates any question of your going to some of those other Rikita events, which you're not expected to, and there's no pressure on, there's no problem, but... And where I'm going to be, really, everybody will know when I'm there working the mine.
getting everything cleaned up, the pre-inaugural, all of your pre-inaugural work, the final stuff on personnel, the final stuff on the congressional messages, all that stuff.
Because as soon as once the inaugural, and you've got to start your cabinet meeting and your leadership and all those things, and you go into your budget and economic and all that stuff that goes into the cycle letter and the state of the union.
I don't think you have any problem at all in doing that.
Well, I think it would be a good thing for me to be...
I think it would be a good thing for me to just get out for three or four days by myself.
I'll have a proposal down there in the evenings, and that's all I will do in the evenings.
I'll have dinner and things, what have you.
But I can work during the day.
get out and get some sun you ought to get some sun and some rest because you it's you're talking about the importance of looks that inaugural period is a period where you do well you'll be on television a lot
There'll be close-up television coverage of you coming in and out of the concert, and then in and out of the balls, and of course on the inaugural address, the parade.
People have a more intensive look at you during that period than
really any time they have in a long time because of sort of a pack up of actions stacked up well but even there it wasn't that was pretty late well it wasn't very much i mean you were on for a few minutes but here you'd be on with the speech but you'll also they'll be covering the activities the parade see during the parade they carried the whole thing live
And they'll shoot you a lot of the time as the units go by you.
And this is just you coming down the street.
The main picture is you in the reviewing center.
And they'll cover those band balls that night.
That'll be big coverage in the morning show and even the following night.
And they'll cover the gays the night before.
They're covering the balls live.
Are they?
Oh, yeah.
I think they should.
Sure, they should.
That's a big Sunday with you.
And it's probably late at night, so it's not super prime time, but it's interesting.
It's the kind of stuff like the Miss America contest people sit up and watch.
Inaugural balls are a big thing.
We're going to, unless you have any objections, probably the proposal's been raised.
We're checking it out, but I don't see any problem with it.
Let them have radio coverage of the church service on Sundays.
I've always thought they should.
It's a good idea.
All the ecumenical service.
Sure.
But we always, I've always thought that they should.
I think that could always be done.
Matter of fact, there are all church services in the future.
Why don't we?
Or you agree?
Yeah, I do.
You have to mind me.
They're good.
They're totally positive.
There's no possible reason not to.
You know, we might as well get a little dividend out of that.
We'll get something like 30 to 12 that can cover that.
But doesn't that radio... You know, a lot of people listen to the radio on Sunday.
They tune in these preachers and these evangelists and so forth.
They probably listen to this, this White House radio thing.
Yeah.
What would you do?
Make it available for network coverage.
Some of them don't carry it live.
They tape it and then release it a little bit later or something to fit their broadcast sign.
Which is fine, too.
I don't think we care whether it goes live or not.
Nothing to lose from that at all.
and 530 are taken over to the house and .