Nixon, Price & Gergen on Speechwriting and Media strategy

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All right, you're all guys.

You're gonna whip and sit back.

Why don't you gather and we're gonna all .

Well, this is message number one.

Oh, we'll be out in a minute.

You made this good messenger.

How much time?

Oh, that's okay.

You guys are getting real.

That was good.

Well, let's see.

The pen, Ray, who's the main writer?

Well, the writers are actually right here.

Where?

Behind you, right?

There you are.

You get the main pen.

As you all have, anyway, so one of those are going to get something different today.

Now, this is an individuality that's obviously for a woman.

I mean, I don't think men wear pens, unless they're deaf and can't.

So basically, if you're a wise girlfriend, so that's what you get for a weekend.

Or if they can't get their own, because they don't have to spend any money buying anything.

And everybody has a silver hand.

President, Jeff Shepard just got married.

He came right back to work the next day.

So congratulations.

This is my school wedding, President.

You did?

Yes, sir.

I married a girl on the stand.

You did?

Yes.

Is she going to work with you?

I'm going to try to get her out to an agency, so it's just not quite as hard.

I know that she worked for me and for you.

Did she work with your permission?

Did you marry your secretary?

No, I married my boss's secretary.

Who's your boss now?

My boss was Bud Crowe.

Yeah.

I was curious to hear about it.

Well, I don't really think she's going to work with you.

I'm going to have to, I want to get back to some of these radio weeks.

That's an excellent comment.

Next week in the moment, we're going to do a little, we're going to do some time, we're going to postpone the free speech program.

Yeah, all right.

I'll see you in a minute.

Aren't you going to be riding a poster?

I can get a chance to up a girl first.

Well, uh, let's look, uh, up for, uh, say, one of the possibilities is somebody can give you the state of the world as, uh, I don't know how much time we'll be ready tomorrow, or some of this early March, unless I'm talking to you in a few, like, late February.

Okay, because we're coming up on a brief way back.

Way back.

Well, but we can very well do it even, so that's fine.

Well, I mean, other than the state of the world, it's a long one.

probably it's worth putting it down to a 2,000 word thing, or 1,800 words.

You know, when you think of the flood, that budget, this is the reason that we, or John, or just Bush, you know, and I, we stood by the vote on television.

They would not have gotten, you couldn't follow, you couldn't follow the massive exposure that people would have on the inaugural for two days, and then the Johnson death, and the Johnson funeral for two days, and then the Vietnam announcement, and all the rest of the camaraderie, all the, I don't know what else, it was too much.

But by doing that radio thing, and rather than just putting it on Johnson, I guess you could just put it on the supplier by domestic, but that's a good thing.

But what do you get?

You slap somebody.

And you've got a tremendous loose tape of that in it, and you've got a big one you'll play with, right?

And that's the thing that we all wish.

I think, for example, we did something once, right?

We were having a queue, and there was no one out there.

Probably don't have a race in the little hill around here.

Curbs dying.

You know, they're being honest with you.

It's not going to happen.

He had no reason to know that we were stuck for Wednesday before he could come out.

He had no reason to know, because we couldn't tell anybody, that that was the day we had agreed with Northgate to meet and announce an on-the-way trip.

All right.

As soon as I got over with Ziegler, that day when I saw the reports coming out, and I said, you know, if you put that report out tomorrow, you'll get a play, but it'll be a secondary story at best.

We'll make it an annual meeting.

And I said, yes.

They work all year for this damn thing.

And I remember about two years ago, I'm tracking him.

We're both incarcerated because we had a cross-contamination or something the same day.

And it ruined, I mean, his story.

I said, we've got to get it out of there.

But he went on as well.

We can't do it because there's not enough Congress.

It's to help the Congress.

I mean, things leak.

And this is the route.

So the way that Rob worked, he said, well, I don't see what we can do.

So what he did, he went out and told the press, because of it, without it, you know, there had already been some leaking in the story.

He was taken right to that deadline and put it out for wet V.A.N.

papers.

Did you see him play that story back?

If we had, but do you see what would have happened if we had waited one day?

and put it out the day that the business were announced, and the first day that I didn't press them.

Now what would the economic story be like?

And the best indication of that was only the president.

There was not one question on the state of the economy.

So the thing we've got to do is take any little, any state plan, even take a rather ordinary state plan, and if you happen to get it on a dead news time, that's why the weekend thing is Saturday for Sunday release, Sunday for Monday release,

You can use radio almost any time.

It's very easy for me to do.

You can get any kind of a radio format.

It can take five minutes or ten minutes.

He spoke to an nationwide radio network.

You see?

And you can get it rather than distant.

And then engage in a nursery.

We can find other equipment like live forums to do things too.

We just don't want it to be forgotten.

We got to broker everything.

One other thing I was going to suggest, I mentioned the rate.

I want you to have in mind the whole thing.

Plenty of prepared names.

Prepared names.

I want the editors or a group, I mean, to read it over afterwards.

Not anything in terms of exceptions, but you read it over and then put yourself in the position of the virus that was reported.

or television column who's trying to pick out one to lead line and put it in there.

Put it in there, even though, and that's where you've got to go for basically oversimplification of the demodactory if necessary in order to do one demodactory for a reason or for the right purpose.

But I think if you could look for that and say, here's the lead line, and if it gets in there, get one in there.

And this is a, this is a, because we help, we, our job is just an excellent job in terms of writing very good messages, but we just don't get the credit for it.

Now part of the reason is that we do not have a press corps that is as anxious to give us the credit.

We understand that, you know, that during the Kennedy years and the first year of the Johnson administration, the press would obviously take all this editing they had and say this was the greatest thing that was a sermon on the mountain.

It's irrelevant whether he likes it or he doesn't like it.

About everything else, he likes the story.

and we can remember that and play to that, give it a start, give it a lead, and then write it in.

Like that little bank grade that we put in that, the Sunday night speech.

Actually, I play director of the Fifth Senate.

One of our hard-hits is to be able to say all of the grammar.

But I said, we've got to get a big cover on all of our backs and all of our pockets in the Fifth Senate for business.

The way he said it then,

But anyway, appreciate it.

But you know, what I mean is that you fellows are all capable writers and directors over and over.

Remember, we want to see the light of day.

We want to have it.

The only way you're going to get it is to sit down and take a break.

uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh...

And that, I think, is a question we can't approve or something.

That was a problem with this.

I just see you putting paper the next morning and saying, oh, God, I wrote all that.

And I do this case.

Or maybe this deadline.

Maybe it gets to the evening news.

And the whole final thing is, don't be concerned as to whether it gets on positively or negatively.

We prefer positively.

act for anything you say or anything you write, because you're people who make no mention.

The worst sin is to be dull.

To be dull.

Now, that doesn't mean that you, uh, you've read Barrow and Smoker on that, on the Kennedy case.

It doesn't mean that, that you create a crisis every day, that, that you, that you make everything, uh, basically, uh, uh... How many of you read Barrow's book?

You buy, and to my surprise, I have the best many copies of the Farrelly book.

You read the Farrelly book, and not many of the terms of it tell you much.

The Kennedy scandal, and Farrelly is a left-of-center, not far left, but a left-of-center of typical British liberal, and he comments on the Kennedy years, but his whole theory is the raising of expectations and so forth.

And how they did it.

Now, the point is, though, that you've got to hand it to them.

For three years, they took basically a great number of failures and costs.

and from a PR standpoint, made them triumphs.

We have had successes in policy, which, by reason of our not being able to handle them as well as we should have been able to, by reason of our not less favorable attitude towards the press, successes and uses in the period of occasions.

Now, the point is that what it is is a technique, and the technique is to, of course, do all these different things.

We do not want to get into a position of overgrown rhetoric and overgrown promises and all that sort of thing.

But I think that we can, and we owe it to our staff and the council to do a better job of taking some very solid achievements and proposals getting across.

But the main lesson of it is that

Don't be concerned.

I get back to it.

Don't be concerned about controversy.

Don't be concerned about the fact that some people aren't going to like it.

Don't vote for consensus.

uh the main thing that you have to remember is that we uh there'll be times we'll be on the wrong side the main thing is to be on that public life the main thing is to be on the right side and to constantly hit that and put ourselves in a position where we are battling for what we believe is right and the congressmen do but in order to do that it must be controversial

In order to be exciting, in order to catch the public interest, there has to be an appearance of debate.

Not belligerence, not meanness.

There has to be an appearance of honestly standing up and fighting for what we believe.

So don't try always to say, well, on the other hand, we know that there are well-intentioned people who disagree with this and all that.

We all say that sometimes.

Leave us to take over.

It's not going to be just going to say, this is what we do.

It's not going to happen.

That was a fun one.

Okay.

Get that book, too.

Now, that's two things.

Or two things.

Go bring it.

Next time, there's no money in that either.

Thank you.

Goodbye.

Give your wife my best.

Hi, sir.

Tell her that I sent that project to her, will you?

All right.

Nixon, Price & Gergen on Speechwriting and Media strategy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on February 2, 1973

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