Conversation 851-005

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Jesus Christ, you know the worst things are the stick pinners.

Goddamn, fucking the worst.

Because they require

Horses have stuff and having to meet them and take them to the old room and sitting by them again and talking about nothing.

And he's got them to us.

And he's meeting all the people that he don't meet one damn single thing.

And meeting all the people again.

It really is a ritual.

It's a ritual and it isn't worth a damn.

I've got, I told him today, do you have some of my teeth?

I've got another can.

So I can go over there.

I said, I ain't gonna be any more straight business this year.

He doesn't have any money.

The average man.

Oh, the demand, yeah.

But I said, I'm not too anxious to do that.

You may not start with that.

I may not.

But they are.

They are.

I just can't see those things.

I went to that luncheon.

What the hell was that?

It was just terrible.

Everybody stands around.

They all back, and that's typical racial, too, you see, no toast.

They came to me, it was great for me, I loved it, but what the hell do the guests do?

They go there to talk to each other.

Oh, and you get seated between two people.

Now, fortunately, I sat by Sir Herb Trent, which was great, interesting, I enjoyed that.

That really was nice, but unfortunately, the other side of me was Magnus Weinberg, what's her name?

Al, sir.

Susie Weinberger, couch life anyway.

Oh, she never quit talking.

Oh, I didn't mean to talk, but she was like, oh, she, one of the ones, this time she wound up, she just went all through the whole thing.

I thought he just let her talk into the air, talk to server, because he was at least interesting.

But on the other side, you know, I saw what Sonnenfeld's wife, who was a blue perfect vintage, I was right with her.

She's a love coming.

She, oh, I think so.

I don't know what the plans are there, but I've been doing some thinking, and we must not let Henry get people that he can run over to.

He hates Slughead Hall.

Because Hall talks bad about him.

He talks back to them, and he's as smart as Henry.

Just as smart.

And also involved in the game.

And he knows more than Henry does about his areas.

Yeah.

He knows more about the Soviets than Henry does.

I know.

And he, I know he says it in here.

Anyway, Henry can't .

But his knowledge should be kept there so that he could possibly keep it.

And you may have gotten the impression that somebody had told you that he was going to leave because it was

I don't know if she's right or not, she's just kind of like obnoxious.

And so she's not as obnoxious as he is.

But this reduction of the, now on the foreign subject, we are going to a country abroad, is sometimes worthwhile.

I'll tell you why I think the American people like to see their president abroad sometimes.

But he asked about Mexico, and I said, never come.

We've done the Mexicans.

I'm not going to sit down and sit still for one goddamn Mexican.

I've done that all.

I'm not going to do it this year at all.

We have an invitation to go to Brazil.

I probably won't do that either.

But just for your information, all you've got left here this year, then, is .

dinner, Christ.

All this work, you know.

They get something to say.

I've told it three times already, you know.

Nothing more to say.

And nobody pays attention except the guests.

They sit there.

That's what they come to hear.

They come to say it then.

And it's a...

for a person who hasn't been here.

It's an overwhelming experience.

The problem is that too many of them are people who have been here.

It isn't an overwhelming experience.

It's just collecting more .

It's an interesting thing.

So many feel that they are being

And that, I was astonished at how the world has gone in.

Back from depression, this is terrible.

I am going to cut those political ones out, probably this evening, until we get more.

Yeah, we know you're going to invite more people in the evening.

RAs and Colson's are far more important than political lunches.

Well, and the evenings are just as good or almost as good.

Great job of the Iraqi cracker thing, however it is, when you re-elect.

They don't really, it doesn't really, I'm sure there are three or four out there who just poke their ass, but for the most part, you know, they have a lot of money.

The state chairmen don't expect to be invited to the White House for dinners.

They just have state elections.

Many of Delaware, of Vermont,

I don't know.

Mr. Mallick was a very interesting gentleman.

He's a wonderful fellow.

Well, he's probably working his way through the regions.

He's probably been told that he gets ten feet thinner or something.

So he's figured, you know, he's the first in.

There could be no more.

Those, these plucky people, I'm sorry, they're all happy.

I was wondering if there was one thing that we could talk about on the planet.

So we've become a hell of a whole in terms of somebody in charge of what the hell I'm going to say and so forth.

I mean, speeches.

I like running into some economic men today.

And I have a first-time woman who I'd like to tell you to who comes up.

I didn't want to tell them.

I don't want to let it down on her.

Chilis and Burns are both pushing for some time, and maybe next week, just to talk about the international monetary situation and international trade.

Now, they undoubtedly will want me to do that on television, and under no circumstances will I.

You, of course, will probably recall that what made the August 15th speech acceptable on television was the fact that I wrote it with weight

Here's a different huge action.

But in this case, we'll talk about a change, a re-evaluation of the dollar of 6.5%, the yen of 6.5%, and something in the way of safeguarding American products and the world markets and the rest.

But it's a whole other business for most of those people sitting out there.

So I'm telling you, it's radio.

It's radio aimed at the right people rather than the others.

And I will not fear anything else.

I really won't.

An article will be made by some of your people.

Our people will be on any subject.

It's over the heads of the people.

It isn't really that way.

I have not used television, not primetime television, for a subject that turns off those sets.

I don't want any shit or something.

We, you remember, came on the base.

That was the closest I came.

I made a mistake.

I probably should have put that on.

I remember we went to base two.

It was not worth it.

But they insisted because they all thought that was common, of course.

Well, August 15th was great.

You didn't do that in my time.

I didn't make the day.

It was not good either.

It wasn't worth doing the middle of the day, but many of them.

Well, I didn't compromise until the goddamn thing in the middle of the day.

But why not just raise the bill?

Do it on radio.

I think radio is a hell of a medium for an economic speech and all that sort of thing.

Don't you think so?

Yes, sir.

Absolutely.

It doesn't make any sense to do it on television.

Not to the people who watch television.

It's not important to the people who watch television.

That isn't even important.

If you go out and say, I'm going to reduce your taxes by $100 or cut your grocery bill next week by $1.5, that would be important.

And you did.

That's what you did, in a sense.

I suppose what we need here is somebody in command of what the hell comes into me to read.

At the present time, it's the way that everybody comes to Steve and throws it in there, and he just breaks it underneath.

And I was sort of surprised to see this arrive at 5 o'clock today.

I was going to read the speech tomorrow, and Steve knew that I had a better time.

I mean, I said, I'm hungry.

And they had in mind I was going to read this damn thing.

That should have, normally that would have come to me, and had it come to me, it would not have come in to you.

See what I meant?

I think that's where it's, we've got a bunch of people here, but the reason I went to Steve is because they were assuming it was a planned event, and Steve put together the folders for you for your desk.

I'm giving Steve all the odds and ends.

The thing that does involve, the thing that does involve a public presentation, you're aware of the fact that I just am not going to take, unless it's just crap, I'm not going to take a major speech and just take something that he or somebody has written and just read it.

I'm not going to do it.

I've got to do some work on it and change the way that you read it.

It's better for all of that to come through meaning.

Like I said, it normally does.

That normally wouldn't happen.

For example, it's a small problem, but they're willing to do these speeches for about 100 words long.

And you said you could take out 31 places.

And it's too short.

I mean, that's still too long.

But I'll cut it.

Well, he also is...

You've seen the first example of the exercise.

I've read the speech.

I just got courage in here.

I went back and got it.

And I kind of looked at the cover of it.

Eight people.

Yeah.

Including a guy I've never even heard of.

This guy named Ed.

I've never heard that name.

I have the vaguest idea who that man is.

I asked Erland, and he didn't know who he was.

And Erland hasn't seen it.

Well, that list didn't include her.

So he had to sign off on that draft.

Which is, of all the people that should see her, it should be her.

I don't know why you...

The thing around that is right in the middle.

You've got an economic one, you've got to check.

But, the other interesting thing to me, though, was that

He started that totally on nothing that should come into you now without the lead line on it.

So he took a stab at the lead line, which is a total disaster.

The bottom.

He said, that's the lead line.

That's the best proof of all that the speech isn't ready to give.

He said, look at that.

That's the headline you're going to have on the paper tomorrow.

He doesn't know what a headline is.

I want somebody like a Buchanan to look through and pick out the lead line, or a Ziegler.

That's exactly the point.

What you have is that Ziegler's got to agree before it comes to you that that is the lead line.

And that's an adequate one.

And then the other is that they ought to say it isn't one.

Somebody's got to go through that to be kind of right about it.

He doesn't understand the leads.

You know, none of our speeches are human, that's exactly the point, and why I think it's an excellent exercise to make them put it on, because it makes them think that way, and eventually they will understand leads.

Because then, you make them write it down, and then you run the speech, and then you show them afterwards what the lead was.

I've been doing that consistently with stuff that you do, you know, in criteria and everything, to make the point that what gets the lead, almost invariably, is not included in the material way, saying it's something you add to it.

But the point is that that's the job I'm supposed to have, and I am supposed to have the intent, and I do have the thought that they ought to have some lines that they suggest.

Let's face it now.

I get down to this.

The line of getting the guy to pick up and off your back and out of your pocket was not mine.

But you saw it and picked it up.

that came out of this meeting this morning, talking about how the things you had picked up and used and the way you had, he was just awestruck on your performance this morning, because he said,

you know, you made, not on the substance, on the general basis, because he said you had taken those guys and put them back together as a Nixon team.

He said, I don't know whether it was sick and whether it matters, but they went out of there thinking they were the president's men.

They had stood with him through the dark night.

Now we were out to the dollar, all this stuff.

And he said the story of the Oly family was just really dark to them.

And I was thinking, you know, I talked to Xavier a little bit about the color stuff.

I realize here that we just really ought to sort of not try to get anything out.

He makes an interesting point.

He says that one of the reasons we had vaguely got it out is that you tried to get it out.

But on the other hand, so I was thinking if you come full circle on that, we don't try to get it out.

And then it doesn't get out.

And because, you see, Ron, all of his enormous capabilities, he is not a colored man.

He does not feel them.

He does not sense them.

I mean, I don't mean that he's a man who does not feel them.

He basically is a, oh, how long are they there?

Who wants to leave?

But in this instance, when I was with an opening family, it was quite a new experience.

It was more of a surprise, but he couldn't do anything about it.

He may.

Because he will do the surgery.

It's a back-down surgery.

Yeah.

Maybe we should try it.

I think that's Sigurd's point.

I don't need to talk to him about it.

He probably thinks the more of an exercise is a bad exercise.

Only because it doesn't work.

Nobody thinks that the precedence would be drug-impressant.

Maybe that's it.

But if it is a bad exercise, they're hell with it.

Let's just let it go.

And, uh,

I'd still like to tiptoe gently into this giant Peter Spire in a totally different way.

The guy who is sharper than Thor.

Not as wise.

Well, the thing that I think we have to do, I mean, everybody is so busy on substance that it

It's all work and no play and they're so busy on substance that sparks don't come.

I mean, I think that's the trouble with the Domestic Council, why it's so incredibly dull.

I think the charts are good, I understand.

God damn it, they're good charts.

But Bob, you know, I mean, I know all the charts.

John Weinberg is perfecting a budget presentation.

But believe me, it is not any way to get a message across to those congressmen that they can use.

They will not study those charts and figure out what a lead is.

You have got to put the goddamn lead down there for them.

In other words, I would have given six or eight things this morning.

In your language, I would have given these five points, or these six points, or these seven points in that subject.

Withholding, if anybody cares about it.

We've been around this track so often, it's probably not worth wondering, but we're starting to turn with all the new people in the restaurant.

You've talked about it.

Isn't it really a question of two damn many people?

I wonder.

And not enough single responsibility on an individual.

It may be not enough.

I don't know.

It may be not enough single responsibility.

I don't think it's too many people anymore.

Because they're all working.

I know.

Well, yeah, but the work.

That's the Parkinson's Law operation.

The work expands to the number of people that contract.

And boy, that's absolutely...

Without question.

Oh, yeah.

If we cut it to two, we'd get along fine with two.

In fact, we eliminated the whole plan.

We'd get along right now.

We'd have a problem, but we'd get along.

Well, you're in it, and I am.

I mean, you're in a ceremonial office, right?

There's a lot of stuff that has to be done that doesn't, I mean, it doesn't, I mean, a guy, a guy is not doing a bar bite at these dinners.

He's got to walk around with you and so forth and so on.

And they are great.

Those military days, those social ages, those things, they're great.

When I needed to spend 50 bucks apiece on those 20 damn station tracks in small states, it makes, the only big state of Texas, it makes me stare at my stomach.

God, that's a hundred dollars.

is that in my public presentations, I simply have got to have a little time and have some, and let me tell you another thing, and I know this is something that nobody thinks this is important except me, but you know where I got that line that I use, which most people look quite effectively at the prayer records, that

I started that at home.

My daughter finished it, so she did the name of the song.

All right, all right.

I never heard of the name of the song.

But I noted it, so you might just see whether anybody in the staff can get it out.

I mean, prepare the materials for the program.

Thank you.

And they circulated about 50 of the wires and told that on the beach thing.

Maybe I've seen 75.

That's all.

And that's all I needed to know.

And the wires and letters.

And a letter from some woman in the country had that damn thing in it.

So I read the letter and just wrote it down.

That was about a week ago.

Now, my point is that they're out there in those letters.

of good stuff.

Sure, you've got to mine a hell of a lot to get a little piece of gold.

I don't think they ever understand how to use the mail.

I used to remember, I told you, as a congressman and senator, I read my mail.

And I used to get stuff out of the mail all the time.

And I just use it.

Because that's what people are saying.

And the rest.

And what these fellows produce, again, all of them, I read a lot of this stuff, it's very literate, and the rest.

But what they produce is what they

frankly, reducing out of their own experience, which is limited, or what they themselves may have studied or read, something like that, rather than reaching out to the, that's so obvious.

Now, can we get somebody over there, the only girl, you've got that little girl that we used to have up in New York, who the hell also reads mail for little girls and such, and then the writer would read that?

They run the mail at the rate pushed back through a couple of years ago, and they have pulled some stuff out of it now, but they sure as well don't get very much.

But it isn't much in it.

But that is a perfect one.

Sure.

Wasn't that a structure of media?

I saw it in that, but the reason I didn't get it.

Remembered it.

And developed into a sensational thing.

And it's a well-known song, apparently.

Yeah, it is a well-known song.

I don't know what it is.

I had never heard of it.

But as I say, I got home at dinner that night.

I said, you know, the president of the prayer breakfast this morning based his thing on a song.

And my daughter said, and let it begin with me.

She played it right back.

And I said, well, do you know that song?

And she said, oh, yeah.

And she sang it.

It must be something.

It was probably one of the easiest.

It's a piece next door.

It may be one like that, you know, the thing Huffman used for his service.

But that's all right, too.

Twist their stuff around.

Why not?

The communists did a creative deliberation to put it around.

But you see, I was thinking of the manual, the use of the manual.

I'm trying to think of ways that I'm thinking of the knowlies.

I'm thinking of

Well, part of the people have got to.

Nobody will ever get it unless they feel it.

And I guess that's why most of them are in office.

Because goddammit, the politician is just six cents for him, I guess.

A lot of them don't either.

But I just think we've got to do a little better.

It'll be an enormous help to me if I'll get out and something comes in.

Even if it's nothing, but here's a link you might use, you know, here for once a week, something like four or five striking things out of the mail.

Actually, what I did with the leaders today was to talk, and I didn't do anything.

I had to sort of carry it with me a little bit.

You moved some of the things in, though, apparently.

But what I did was, you know, we met.

but I couldn't leave there, so I just went on.

I talked a little about it, but the point of the matter wasn't to talk about the domestic stuff.

It was to talk about the peace issue that I gave away.

And Wade, as I say, we have made a very grievous error over these years in our lives so heavily on Henry.

Not only to the grief, but to self.

He cannot do it.

He cannot do it without believing.

He impresses.

And to the intellectuals, he may so.

But to the average person, he's right over their heads.

You got to listen to the audience on that program you did, didn't you?

And there's 10 minutes.

It was 7 in New York, and we began at 5, and we finished.

It hasn't dropped more.

In Los Angeles, it was 5, and now it's about 3 and 1 half.

And other orders were 22, 28, 32, so forth and so on.

Well, that's what she expected.

I'm the nation to drop out of that.

I said that it would be a two rating in the end.

I didn't even worry about the content because there wasn't anybody better.

It's not a dollar of that.

It's not good television.

It's good in the sense of it's constructive television.

But it isn't good television.

It's good for nothing.

Nothing else.

Well, anyway, the way you sell horror policy and other things basically is that it's an emotional pitch.

It's emotional and cerebral and melodramatic.

thing he can get when he gets wound up he can be fascinating and he can be melodramatic and he can be still scholarly but he plays off he leaves the the you know the historical significance into the current thing all that in a way that is spelled by him but when he gets on that stuff he just he's losing a lot of them too he's lost his he said that you reach a point where

He made the case that when you get your energy stock, no, that when you come into government, you have, well, Cal said when you get time to think, your idea was to come in here and your role was going to be long-range, overall big planning, it's not implementation.

And so when he got time to think, he said, well, I'll try to get time and all that.

He said, you've got to face the fact that when you come in from outside, you have a lot of time to think.

But you don't have any real feel of reality.

You don't know what can be done and how to do it.

As you get in here, the curves start crossing.

Your thinking goes down.

And your knowledge of reality goes up.

And at a point, those two lines meet.

And that's your optimal point.

That's when you still have enough left of what ought to be done.

But you also know how to do it.

So you do it.

But that point passes pretty soon.

And all of a sudden, pretty soon, you know all of what can be done.

And you've lost your thinking.

And at that point, you ought to get out of it.

And he said, that's something that concerns me and that I have to give him thought to.

And I'm not sure when he reached that point.

And then he said, the real danger is the individual is probably the last one to realize when he's past that point.

I think that was very introspective.

I think he thinks he has.

And I think he probably is right.

We were talking today about the future.

I mean, I don't know what we can do.

He's obviously trying so hard.

He's probably about, you know, to him, wrapping up this thing now is not challenging.

It's a pain in the ass.

And I had to rearrange him about the importance of getting this economic thing in a way that would be self-explanatory.

He likes to make the big plays and walk away and let someone else clean up the dishes.

I'm going to bet you sell this and that.

The military's got to...

He's going to swallow this in case we make this deal.

We'll never be able to get it from the Congressional.

Well, we made a commitment.

I mean, we subject the constitutional process.

I know that we're going to try and simply tell them, you're just a son of a bitch.

You've got to get this.

And it's good that I talked to them.

But then we went on.

And he was trying to say what we would do about this.

We've got to make this.

and a new European charter and so forth.

And, of course, the Russians on the Nile, Russia, whatever, and I'm constantly bringing back to the Mideast and to those early elections that are coming up in October.

And so I said to Henry, Henry, I know.

And then our elections come up next November.

I said, we have got to move on now.

He's back keeping his feet to the fire.

He doesn't want to do a goddamn thing about the Mideast.

And I said, you know, we're going to be going for that.

And I told him that I was going to come.

The difficulty is kind of a lot that you were going to get.

The difficulty is that he had to tell us his name before voting.

I don't know how he even tried.

It's all about, the problem is, the writer's problem, too.

He's standing there because if he does see an Egyptian...

It really has to be handled, in my view, probably in a presidential challenge.

Because if it's ever handled up there in the state congressional party ground, they'll have a big sign, a big public confrontation of it, and it'll collapse, and there will be a war.

But Bill doesn't say it that way, Bill Rikers doesn't say it that way.

But, you know, it's fortunate that people have been there.

And we sweetened it to the grave.

It did not come along.

It's made me not sweet.

I can't tell you how sweet it is.

But what I mean is that I can see that Henry's enthusiasm for this project was at best cool.

It's what has happened to him.

is that there just can never be another year in the whole history of a nation like 1972.

I mean, you can't have China, and you can't have Russia, and you can't have everything on Vietnam, not just the peace, but May 8th, and the bombing in December.

All these tough, rough decisions.

Like, everything else, Bob, is going to look pale.

People come in here like they came in here earlier.

Borg that died and had nothing to talk about.

And it was interesting.

He was an interesting man, and so forth, with the problems of Europe and Britain's U.O.

and the rest.

Johnny Lynch of Avira was coming in here.

God almighty, I'm just stunned.

I mean, I'm bored with it all day, because I'm not interested in any of the big plays.

And if it's that way with me,

Because I'm sure I understand.

You can imagine Henry.

Henry now, I think, has reached a point where he knows that there's probably, it's like in acting, you know.

You can never repeat a performance, and you can never top a performance.

And I constantly try to emphasize that to Henry.

That's why, with Art and George, when they come in, they steal that letter August 15th.

Yes, August 15th is done.

There ain't got to be no more August 15th announcements.

And I've had a crisis in that way.

That's why I think you and I agree.

I really feel that it would have been a damn near disaster.

I think it would have really hurt.

I don't think it would have hurt if I had gone on television on a budget Sunday night after everything that Nick, the Ed, the, you know, you realize what's going on.

As it turned out.

We had a peace announcement on the 23rd, right?

Yeah.

They wanted me to go on the television on the next Sunday, the 28th, right?

Which was the day of national prayer.

It was the end of the Saturday.

That was when I started.

Saturday was the day.

Right after the day of national prayer, after Johnson's general, after the peace announcement, after the Holy Church, for me to go on television on the budget for Crosby Saints, it was incredible.

It was incredible.

Radio to the people who care about it.

That's right.

You take withholding in this whole fight with the Congress.

The average person does not care about this one.

The average person doesn't care one bit.

I keep telling them over and over, I'm fighting to keep your taxes.

And we put the spending monkey on their back.

But the thing that I was going to say is that I feel, I can sense that Henry has this problem.

I think that's his problem, that he's going through a psychological depression.

Simply that he let down after enormous exertion.

And then, of course, he's had enormous, let me say, he's had great disappointment because a lot of people didn't recognize the thing.

He thought that the whole intellectual community

Well, he's just like a child.

He really is.

But he's

And the day, I think, one of the biggest things that really happened to him was something that I hadn't even noticed or hadn't opened through the paper until you told me about it.

You said, well, you know, this thing must be coming.

You said, did you see that golf course?

And I said, no, I said, no, of course not.

And he said, well, 68% of the time.

And I said, well, that's pretty good.

I said, well, at least it's called the council.

But...

That's right.

That is, it's a little tough.

That, that won't hold because the corrosion will get passed on that.

I don't think there's any way to hold that.

If you remember, he was 66 right after the election.

Then he dropped down to 61 before he sent for bombing.

I don't think he dropped, frankly, as far as Gallup says.

He had another five months.

He had it down.

I think he may have overreacted the other way, too.

He is, as you know, he is really, when I say he...

all the time, every time they say it goes up and down because of bad things about the war.

And I know this goes up and down because of bad things about the war, as much as he said it.

But yes, in some events the war did, and the ending of the war would give it a kick up.

Well, you know what did it though?

That's what I'm saying.

When was it taken?

What was the date of it?

I don't know.

I don't have either.

Whether it was taken over the weekend or whatever.

It would be the weekend.

Because they do all their field work over the weekend.

So it would have been that January 28th, that weekend, which would be rather a high point.

That's right.

It would have been the day you went to church.

But I would think we would have probably maintained it pretty well this week, I guess, than the last week.

Because we certainly aren't going to be on our last week by things like the program, even what they carry on television, the press conference.

You know what I mean?

But what I'm getting at is the name of the game

The name of the game was told us.

Let's face it, in the region, we would tread 66 downs, and people didn't see us.

I knew that.

And it wasn't so much the bomb, the rest of it.

All they heard was no grenades, with nothing to counter it.

And all they were hearing, I think, that's all we said was, you're out.

The moment that I came out, I came out there.

But you see the mass, the inauguration,

the son of John Sabino, and Vietnam, the disorder capital, also goes to 68.

That's a hell of a thing to have happen right now.

But that was a week of .

It does show that you've got to get out there.

You've got to be out there and go over the heads of the writers and the commentators with direct television.

And you must be able to find a way about what's wrong.

But don't be concerned when you can't do it.

If, as a result of that, you're pulled, robbed, and you're punched, it's going to go away.

It's just, it's natural.

Because just going on television with something that doesn't, if you went on with your international economic policy, you wouldn't be doing it.

Well, you've always noticed that our troops are nonsense.

That's right.

They never came from them.

That's right.

So they held their own.

That was about all of them.

They never left.

I was on the event, November 3rd, which was a different kind of thing.

Now, uh...

But nevertheless, it does show that it's a damn good thing to have something like this come out at this point.

But I'm just curious.

I didn't see it in a post, but it must have been way back.

Where'd you write it?

About page seven.

But I think what we need to realize is that the most important thing is not what I do in the area of leaders, all that is necessary, the practice of the cabinet is necessary, the reading of the will is necessary, and all that's part of the game.

I guess what is necessary most of all as a fine play is to

get on television and tell them something.

Were you sure?

Yeah, but not only when there's a reason.

There's a press conference.

Yes, absolutely.

Even though it's not an event, at least it gets our side of the story across.

It just keeps, it's like the troop announcements.

It keeps you, you don't gain a lot from that other thing.

But it keeps you from eroding by non-exposure as you do

As you did during the December-January period.

Just because when you're not out, the negative is always going to be there.

That's a given fix.

We're not even assuming that taking the 24-figure and the second chapter, that's not bad.

Yeah, well, 54 means that we're against this and everything that we have in common.

And, obviously, I decided to go out and work.

Correct.

Barrage of attack on me at that point.

And that was one of our...

overriding the body.

On the other hand, this goes up to 60 years.

We all know the goddamned congressmen, senators, they follow those polls, don't they?

They're affected by it.

Some of the press are.

They very much are.

Irritates them terribly.

They have to recognize it.

They can't ignore it.

Well, for example, the stories that they've written, that nobody was particularly enthusiastic about the piece, and what are they going to say about that?

That St. Gallop doesn't pull it, or the Jets have 14 points, what are they going to write about Johnson's funeral?

Or the inauguration, maybe.

No, they don't.

They know it's a piece, and people are excited about the piece.

And they're not excited, perhaps.

I think Sindlinger is a lousy pollster, but I think he's an interesting analyst of...

Well, that's interesting.

And it's useful in that sense.

I think he's got some, you know, some of what he was saying makes some sense.

And this point that the peace was discounted, I think it's true.

The war was over for most people back in October.

That's why December was a shock for them.

Yeah, but not an overriding shock.

It didn't knock them out of the ballpark, because it came and went by the time.

See, that's the other thing.

We are acutely aware of each day's news.

And people, it takes them weeks before something sinks in.

But on the other hand, they dropped out.

And for a part of the reason you brought it up, we weren't out until we got to remember it.

All through the month of November and all through the month of December, I didn't do one goddamn thing publicly.

That's right.

Most of them told me.

That's right.

We're making some news, but not you.

Well, you were making news about changing the government.

Which was played as bad.

A lot of plays that I did.

I'm not sure that that hurts.

I mean, I'm not sure.

Well, I don't think it did.

I don't think...

I think that what happened is the play...

I mean, it's just the fact that people hear negative things about a person over and over.

It plants a little seed.

And they've got to hear positive things.

That's why we're moving people.

Well, now, that was a damn rough period in public.

Oh, pressure stuff.

Because all...

They hear all of the media...

that are normally for us.

Like Chicago.

We're hitting hard.

Not hitting, but hitting hard on this terrible thing the president's doing.

And he won't explain why.

And that was simple enough that people understood.

He's bumping the shit out of me.

He won't tell us why he's doing it.

And then the political leaders expanded on that.

He's gone mad.

And the president's insane.

And nobody believed that, but it's an erosion kind of thing.

And then you stopped.

And they stopped and went back to Paris.

And all of a sudden, there they are with another problem in their face.

And they wondered.

And they still passed their resolution.

So those pastors are going to look bad.

Carlos told me at his call, you know,

He's actually talking to somebody about this letter he wrote to the state that they are better than him.

He said, well, Carlos said to me, he said, what do you expect from a man?

I said, well, he's fine.

He's not bad.

He's not as fine.

Well, it's taken me by the senses.

It's taken me by the senses.

And Carlos, you know, he's not an impressive looking guy, but he is.

The more I see him, the more impressed I am with him.

He's a pretty good operator.

And he's got a good rapport with a lot of those guys.

They're just like children.

The governors are like children.

The country's like children.

The businessmen.

That's the problem we've got.

That's the legacy of the Kennedy-Johnson era.

They treated them.

We're going to have one hell of a time to turn it around.

That's part of the problem, you know, on the budget and all the rest of it.

And yet, it's probably worth making a fight.

And they sort of ensure it is.

We might lose it.

We're certain we're going to lose it.

We'll lose some public support, that's for sure.

But if you stop to think, though, in the board of policy, if you do not leave, you can still come back later in places you've got to get on to and all the rest.

But when you stop to think about what you've done in that period,

Well, coming back to the point that I was making, we have got to get, and I guess what has happened here is that we're two

Even though the staff is smaller, there's too much decentralization and responsibility.

We've really got to get us, particularly with anything I do, there's got to be somebody sitting on top of that damn heap and looking it over and saying, well, is this the right way?

Do you have something that is going to lead?

Should this be done on radio?

Is, does the President have the time that he needs to look it over?

How much are you putting on his plate?

And I think that's your response to it.

It is.

And I think you've got a tall moment.

It is.

The cameras are in here.

There's a radio speech now.

I know how this one happened.

They came out of it some way.

They decided it better go on.

Let's do so.

There's no way I can.

Well, you can if you buy the block.

To me, it's just totally inexplicable.

That's why they don't understand automatically that if it takes them all those days to get everything put together, how can they expect you to take it on a random shot?

I mean, that they can lob it in whenever they want to lob it in, and that you're immediately supposed to drop everything else and get it wrapped up.

Did they want you to cancel the dinner tonight so you can work on that?

I'll tell you what I'd like for you to do.

Seriously, if I'd had it last night, I had some time.

I know.

I could have spent, I used time while last night was over.

I could have taken two hours working the speech, dictated my changes, so forth, and then been ready to flip it over again, work again, and deliver it tomorrow.

But I didn't have it last night.

Normally, we do that, though.

You see, when a speech is scheduled, we schedule a due date.

Ahead, well, when it's time to do justice, and then whenever you schedule a speech in the future, I was going to give a damn about the tape, or marry a senator, and break down and all that.

I'm not going to read that.

I'm not going to bother.

But whenever I've got a speech, I like that.

Even if it's...

or a statement, you've got to see him.

You've got to be sure that Steve doesn't, that he's aware of this.

Now, what is the time that is set aside?

What about two to three hours?

Maybe it's in the evening, or maybe it's in the middle of the day.

See, now we'll say this afternoon, we're holding them, the president, for the purpose of working on that speech.

See?

Yeah, but you can't be even that tight, because you still need to, you can't lock it to that time, because you may decide, like, you know, that you have to see if there are deferments or something.

Yeah, yeah.

There's got to be some other balance in there, too.

Oh, but you see what I mean?

Sure.

Schedule the speech time, right?

Just like you said, there are deferments, right?

Except I would say, now, we're going to schedule three hours a second, a free time, purpose, work on speech.

That's just .

And I know it.

And then they get it there, too, and I work on it.

But the other point is, if we had scheduled three hours this afternoon for you to work on a speech, you still should have had it last night, which gives you that much more leeway.

When you have a free evening, we ought to.

And that's what we've tried to do, is give stuff to you.

So if you want to use that time, you've got it there to do it.

I've got to go up.

Do your SOS tonight, chowder, and marshmallow tomorrow morning.

Good.

I'll ask him where I can't go.

I can't.

I can't go there.

You agree?

I sure do.

I mean, I guess many people want to share one of the goals from last night.

I've been saying something about it.

No, I didn't.

You were talking about it before, and I didn't.

it would have been just a few congressmen and senators with Dole.

But that club is a collection of lobbyists.

That's right.

And that's what this obviously is called.

Capitol Hill Club's Kansas night.

It wasn't congressional.

Was that right?

Thanks to Bob Dole.

It was Capitol Hill Club's Kansas night, and they slated it Bob Dole.

And so I would say that it was good.

Plus, you've done Bob Dole several times.

And Bob Dole is not...

Got to pay this back.

Not very responsive, I'm sorry.

He has at times, but he has at times not meant to.

And I think we tend not to play, we've got to not look like we're doing nothing.

But a guy like Dole, he's back now, he needs us a lot worse than we need him.

That's right.

He's up for re-election.

The idea, too, that somewhere or other, we owe something to Bob Gilliland.

Oh, we made Bob Gilliland a national figure.

And he traveled a half a million miles, and he had his Cadillac, and he did all that sort of thing.

How the hell was all that?

The idea that we owe something to these chairmen of the committees to re-elect the president in Maine, in Vermont, in a one-day event.

No, really, we don't.

Many of them are paid anyway.

They all do it for their own reasons, too.

I think they do.

You wonder what issues .

How often should one of those press conferences?

I think we have found a good device.

I think this one in the office.

But we don't always get that kind of play.

But it is a very good, it's certainly an infinitely better device than bringing it in here.

I mean, just get out there and you should get out to all the people know you're on there, so they know you're in charge.

That's the only thing.

Doing it in here is a total waste except for the people who come in.

Totally.

In the sense of, sure, you get the coverage, but you don't, you get the same coverage from going in the room.

Plus, the film.

I still think that four or five times a year is all you should do in the evening.

Is that right?

Yeah.

And do these, others.

I do these once a month.

Maybe a little bit more.

You can do these every couple weeks.

I also don't think you want, I don't think it's desirable to maintain an even level of exposure.

I think people think in peaks and valleys, everybody has to have, he's got to be relaxed a little.

Now this is the Dewey theory.

Dewey often said,

public man on that retreat from you.

And he said, don't worry about what happened here.

Go back and come back again.

You've got to surge back.

Oh, I think that's right.

You can't.

The higher you surge, the less room you have to surge.

So you've got to get back a bit to surge again.

And I think part one, sometimes we've made an effort to try and keep moving up.

And you can't.

Well, you can't.

I don't think that people could stand you that much.

And frankly, it throws the press off guard, letting them get out there, kicking around and squealing when they got you down and then come out and whack.

You got to watch them because you got to watch them getting down so low that you can't tell them.

Well, but we're never going to do that.

We've been down as low as they're going to get us.

You never know.

That's a lot of certain chances, but we'll handle it as well.

But we don't care what the hell we've been through in terms of economic and war and riots.

And basically, let's face it, the media.

We can talk all we want.

The more you succeed, the worse it gets.

Well, we had committed for them the unforgivable sin, particularly on the vacation to Vietnam, for when they were home.

90% of them said it couldn't be done.

And 90% of them, frankly, didn't want it to be done.

They wanted to lose.

They wanted to prove they could.

Vietnam was morally wrong.

That's why they're up on the wall of options.

You've got to have a pull together sometimes.

It's a pull together.

pulled then, but I don't know.

It has to be pulled away so that people know what amnesty is.

And I just can't assume that those who, instead of serving the country, went to Canada and so forth, there is some recommendation that now that the war is over, they should be allowed to return to the United States without serving any, without returning to the United States to be forgiven, you know what I mean?

But you see, you've got to spell it out.

Might have helped me ask before.

We've answered this question before.

You've got huge answers, haven't you?

And so have all the other pollsters.

Did Gallup and Harris hold?

Well, you might get a different answer now that the war is over.

Yeah.

I don't think you're going to get a very different answer.

But if you put it right.

You've got to be sure the guy in that question is going to be proper.

And then you've got to believe the President Nixon that says they must pay.

I'm going to say, in other words, they're struggling with this.

They want him to see stuff on the news.

But I think they're hurting their own cause, because they keep putting the people on, the drive-by business.

They're ratty-looking people, and they have this antagonistic attitude.

And I think what they're doing is solidifying the public anti-amnesty view, because these people come on with, you know, they're those heat field type people.

They come on saying, we don't want amnesty.

We don't want forgiveness.

It's the government who waged the war that needs to be forgiven, not those of us who refuse to fight.

And, you know...

They get all hung up on that.

Well, the 2.5 million guys who fought the war and 45,000 next to 10, this was no peace.

What do you think they did?

And of course, you've got 45,000 times at least 10.

So that's half a million people who are closely related to that guy that died.

But then you've got the 2.5 million times at least 10, which is 25 million.

That said, of course, you've got a lot of guys who served at World War II and whatever.

So they were not ashamed of any career.

And even those who didn't like it, you can now pretend that they did.

Sure.

You take the veterans.

You take, you know, a very shrewd comment, though, about the .

He said it to a hell of a lot of people.

He says it's just a question of selfishness.

He says it isn't a question of a moral issue, whether it's moral or either that you forgive a guy for what they're deserving.

If you, therefore, condemn a person because it's immorality, you condemn a person for immorality, you serve them, which is exactly my point.

I would never be better.

And that's the point I made to these congressmen.

Because I was not going to have any of them walking out there not standing for everyone and the state.

And I think what he said, the other point is you realize there's just a hell of a lot of families of kids that were drafted and served, and they just get pissed off as hell when they see a kid running off to Canada.

And, you know, the jury's shooting up as Julie said.

Julie and David, here they are.

His dad is out there, and his dad is there.

And he's taken three years out of his life, three of his best years, when he should have been in law school.

Now he's never going.

He should have not been in law school.

But three of his best years is what he did.

He's sitting out there.

His life was worse when we were all in it together, and all sacrificing together.

But here he is, sitting on his ass in a goddamn can.

Well, everybody knows that here.

And so we say, if you're going to provide for an asshole, the better we're going to cannon it to avoid it.

You're going to say, you come back, boy.

It's always forgiven.

No, sir.

And not by piece of card either.

Especially when we forgave in advance to the people who wanted to make a case that they couldn't in due conscience serve.

They had the opportunity.

These people could have said, I refuse to serve because of my conscience, right?

And then the driver would have said, oh, that's fine.

And if you don't need to, you can go drive a truck in the beet fields or something.

And that would be just fine.

Sure.

Instead, they copped out and they violated the law.

How the hell can you do that?

What do you do with that?

That's one thing.

Compassion.

Now they're doing this because they're citing Andrew Johnson, who was the only... Johnson was the only president who actually granted an overall amnesty, supposedly following the Lincoln tradition or the Lincoln position.

But Johnson's amnesty was to the rebels, of course, who deserted.

That's why I said when I read the James Johnson piece, and I tried to tell it, you know, in my time with Harper and all that bunch who were in there, and I said, and Price, because Price was very strong, and I said, no, Lincoln's tradition was not, you know, and I got the damn book out, and I said, look what he did.

Johnson provided amnesty to the rebels who fought us.

like an inhabited people that deserted, shot, shot, or served a prison sentence.

Now, that's the difference.

No, I don't think we want them back here.

Well, that's your better off without them.

But I'm sure they aren't going to serve any abstract and likely idea of having them come back here.

Or the other thing of going into the Peace Corps.

What the hell do you think these people are going to say from behind the scenes when they go along?

Well, sir, they're not what you want out there.

You're going to put on a Leo shirt.

Oh, and he's a pirate.

See, his name's the one that marks his concept.

You can't, I said.

Not if you can't, brother.

Leap out of this sack.

That's fiction.

Sir, this way.

I hope to find something to hunt, sir.

I need to turn out the... Get a dog back there.

Just a dog is going to get me.

All right.