Nixon & Haldeman on Presidential approval ratings

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I was wondering, on this manual improvement board, perhaps you could get the word communicated.

We're not going to do it again.

Absolutely.

This is a total pain in the ass.

What I mean is, there's nothing for us.

We've got the whole cabinet over here.

What was it that was pushing you?

I guess I discussed it and I decided what I was going to do.

Now that was one, in other words, I was against, and that was when you were going through a generous cycle of doing too many things.

And so, you kind of, who was going to do it?

Who was going to do it?

Earl Clinton, Shultz, and one other.

I understand Shultz, the alumni of that area.

I would think that you ought to enlist John a little bit more in the schedule.

He has a divergent view.

He has also the feeling that, why does he have this?

I don't think he adequately weighs that.

His whole pitch on this is that it's good for morale.

No, no, not morale.

Good for the public impression of

the concern of efficiency in government, which is ridiculous.

And the person doesn't give a shit about efficiency.

They don't believe in it.

I want this to be quiet.

Because I asked you that question yesterday.

I delivered it.

I've had that Mr. Nice Guy stuff all over my ears.

I've been in an arms game every schedule.

Everybody is so reported.

The president's not a candidate.

They've not been in a way to fire you so far, and so on, and so on.

I've seen people that were very big powders, and so forth.

I've gotten very few talks from them.

Super social station.

I have a social schedule.

That's what I mean.

It's a nice guy stuff, too.

Well, I mean, all the nice good stuff in here, too.

There's a nice guy at the social stuff.

There's a nice guy walking off to have dinner and trade with him, and all that sort of thing.

It was led by the president, and some of the color story about the president was really not the best thing we thought.

And what does it do?

How many times did the poll go down?

Well, it probably didn't go down or up, perhaps.

But it didn't help.

I think it went down.

I think Gallup chose a 68 down to 65.

And we got a free ride on a two-year poll.

that was just taken March 10th and 11th, just a couple days ago, and it shows 62.

That's a pretty big problem.

That's a phone poll of the same type that we take, and our phone poll, as you know, a month ago, showed 70.

That was ORC before, and this is Teeter.

So it's, you can argue that they're different polls, but the point is, he's truly being anything by it.

The other side of that is that you held damn well against a super game as a result of the end of the war.

But why?

I'll argue that 90% of why you held has to do with the POWs and 10% has to do with maybe some fallout from your schedule, from the stuff you've done.

I don't think you've been, I completely

And I don't think it really has stopped its erosion.

Or looking at it the other way, if it hadn't done it, I don't think it would be any better or worse off than you are.

Therefore, why do it?

What did it accomplish?

It didn't accomplish anything as far as the public is concerned.

Then what did some of it, obviously it did accomplish some things that you felt you needed to do and that are important to have done, like cranking your own

But an awful lot of it is, this kind of stuff is, isn't counterproductive, I guess, but it certainly isn't productive.

Well, yeah. .

He could go lower for some reason.

I think he loads it tomorrow.

For instance, he pulled in mid-January on exactly the same day scale and got exactly the same figure, 54, in mid-January.

I hope we're not buying.

No, sir.

No, we're not.

We're not buying.

They're piggybacking.

No, I took it not for the approval thing.

We got some more good stuff.

Actually, it says exactly the same thing, which is kind of interesting.

Do you favor more government programs or do you favor keeping taxes down?

74 keep taxes down, 13 government programs.

The ones that result in tax increases should Congress override.

31 override, 44 suspend, which is exactly the same .

All right, and then it tracks a new question.

The President said if Congress votes money for programs that exceed the budget, he'll refuse to spend the money because it would mean more taxes.

Congress says it will then pass new laws to force the President to spend the money as it tells him to.

Who do you think is more right, the President or Congress?

46% the President, 37% the Congress.

Even when you put it that way, you've got a better answer.

President Nixon takes the position it's necessary to hold the budget on federal spending to control inflation and keep taxes down.

On the other hand, Congress wants to spend more than the President's budget, even if it means more inflation and more taxes.

Do you agree with the President or the Congress?

Similar to that question, we, M.O.R., have the same one.

64% agree with the President.

He got 16, agreeing with Congress.

Senator gets 31, agreeing with Congress.

Peter gets a much higher level of opinion than Senator does.

But he gets the same agreement with the President, 64.

It's estimated that for Congress to maintain their increases in federal spending, which the President will veto, and to do what Congress wants to do on federal spending, your income tax will be raised by 15%.

That is...

For every $100 you pay now, you would pay $15 more, or $115.

Are you willing to pay this amount for what Congress wants to spend, $72,015,000?

If no, what percent more would you pay in taxes to continue these programs that you want restored?

22% said some figure more they would spend, and 51% said I wouldn't be willing to spend any more.

And then they said, if they named a percent, the 22 who named it, they said, what items would this be for?

And the two big answers were aid to education and aid to senior citizens.

Now, on the Vietnam aid question, now that the war is over, there's been a lot of talk about aid to North Vietnam for the purpose of rebuilding that country.

In general, do you approve or disapprove?

29 approved, 63 disapproved.

Then President Nixon has said that aid to North Vietnam is a necessary investment in order to create a lasting peace in Southeast Asia, as it was when we aided Europe and Japan after World War II in Germany.

Do you agree or disagree with the President's position?

35 agree, 55 disagree.

The President has indicated aid to North Vietnam will not be from funds set aside for domestic programs.

It will come from funds already set aside in the national security budget.

On this basis, do you now approve or disapprove?

41 approve, 50 disagree.

And that's one we can't, as we've talked about, our strategy there is just the opposite of our strategy on the budget.

There you've got to sell enough individual sophisticated congressmen in order to get it through.

The other one, you've got to sell the people and have that hand in the congressmen.

We're getting back to this whole situation about the presidential thing.

You can't say that we haven't had visibility in the last three weeks.

You know what I mean?

I did.

There's pictures and quite a bit on the news and that sort of thing.

Sure.

Short of prime time.

Yeah.

You can't quote prime time.

That's right.

That's what we said.

That no TV visibility.

No prime time visibility.

It was, it was the, not, not really an enormous amount of money.

But I have loved the world since I started.

It was the only thing I saw on a, on a press conference.

It was the only thing.

The only thing.

I don't think we have, we didn't have any illusions about it.

I think they're necessary for other reasons, but, uh, but, you know, I have to, uh, I don't think we can cut these events when I go on.

and they were writing every day there is no president

Or if you are a Planned Parenthood sign, then I'm talking to her.

But even if it just plain didn't work.

So Planned Parenthood says you've got to do a little sign.

I can do what I want.

I can do one man a day.

You don't have to just build a schedule.

That's all anybody knows you do a day anyway.

And if there's only one paper that prints the president's schedule, they don't even print a little bit of it.

And they don't even print it now and then.

And it prints it in type that 90% of the people can't read anyway, because their eyes aren't good enough.

So, there's nobody who knows what the president is doing.

I'll give you the responsibility for this.

That's done.

We've done that.

Could I say also, we're pushing Trump.

That's done too.

That's done.

They're just certain things.

Okay, poster child, we retire the poster child.

Reaction to black men.

Agreed.

I mean, that's it.

That was one where it's easier to do than not to do.

You've done it this year, haven't you?

You don't have to do it every year.

You did it last year, I guess.

Sure, he came in after the show.

After they didn't see him over there, they brought him in again.

So I saw him, and they forget me.

They should forget me.

Yeah, they did.

It was funny.

I wonder if you included it in any of these polls, if you included that in any reaction to the water age and to see what it impacted.

I haven't seen any.

I don't know.

It might be good idea.

The January teeter, before the war

But interestingly enough, the last teeter before that was in September, and it was 62.

No.

Before the election.

Did it happen after the election teetering?

Not until January.

How was it then?

It was the same scale, right on, 54.

That's what we really kind of hold.

Gallup was 62 after the election.

59, 54, 68, and 65.

And Harris is 61, 39.

Yeah, I think, I think we, it was very experimental.

We were always trying to do these things.

You know, for a writer, I agree with that sometimes.

Like, see, departing staff members and doing management things, you have to do things because somebody, you draw to it.

I do it because you want to be nice.

I don't think you do.

I think, maybe I made a mistake on that.

I just, I think I made a little report on that.

What do you think?

You get one guy's thing, I'm sure it's nice for a couple minutes, and that one person goes away with a nice warm glow because the president said goodbye.

But Christ, they got a warm glow from working here.

I think you're right.

They didn't.

I mean, you can't personalize.

I don't think you can personalize this place.

I would bet you that none of the people who worked for Kennedy ever saw Kennedy or knew him either.

And they don't expect it.

That's like, you know, if you went over and see the White House phone girls and stuff, girls have been here for years and never seen a president.

It's true, I don't know, they don't expect it.

Did you get from earlier when his, on one, at most two pages, prospectus as to what he would have said in the State of the Union, if I were to say it within ten days?

Do you understand?

I, I sure did.

He reminded us, you know, which John would have to realize that we had an answer.

But, uh, you haven't mentioned it since Castleford, have you?

He just mentioned it to me last night.

He, he apparently, I think he has it written.

I think he's got the speech.

What do you think?

How long?

I don't know.

I haven't seen it, and I, but he implied that he had it.

and for the Congress, for example, I would well be advised, perhaps, I know I didn't mention this, but I would be advised not to go forward there with the procedure.

We very much are on our way to cutting out of this in the direction of our Republican government, and we're going to bear it on that motion.

But I think it should be done.

None more in terms of inspirational kind of speech.

Perhaps without reading.

Perhaps at the end, because a lot of us do knowledge and work and so forth.

Everybody, Bob, deals with programs, gets obsessed with programs and thinks that that is all that really matters.

And it matters not at all.

Programs are not sensible.

They do not sensible.

You're wrong.

No, you're not wrong at all.

And that's pretty cheap, you know.

No one can expect because there's no tax.

So you make a thing out of that ahead of time.

You do it at night.

You don't hand the envelope to the speaker because there is no envelope.

part of the end of the war, which I know we've got some great problems with.

Thank you very much, Sean.

But not getting into that debt of aid there.

Frankly, the National Council will probably get a cut.

You know, the numbers, we can increase this by 83% and we've done that by this percent.

What about taking the gamble, which is probably what you have in mind?

I'm looking right at the television camera in the middle of that and saying, after you've laid out sort of the thing on the budget stuff and saying, this is something where the Congress must work the will of the people.

It's representative to do that or something.

And this is a time when it's imperative that the people make their will known to the Congress.

And I'm asking all your constituents tonight

Whichever side of this issue they appeal on, if they take time right now to sit down and write to you, their congressman, and their senator, and tell you what they feel you should do, Christ, you've done the least goddamnedest pull of mail to the hill that they've ever heard of.

It'd be very, very mean to sell you.

It was recorded in the mail the evening we started later.

Yeah.

Because all the people that wanted to quote you would be lying all the time.

That's the record.

They said that there was no mail on Saturday.

They would say, do you see my wife?

So it's a good ending, but I think it's a good ending when you think about the day and not when you see what's going on in the market.

I would have to make something on Asia-Vietnam.

That's not bad.

Let's accept that again.

Sorry.

I can't always give a sign of something going on there, saying things that I think some of the people approve.

No, I was just saying it would get lost in there, but maybe that's just as well.

Because you can't, you're not going to win a mass battle against Vietnam anymore.

The one thing I'm terribly good at, I want to get that speech in the United States early this afternoon, because we're going to go on, you know, and we, whatever it's got, just a rough draft, you know, or a rough draft of the outline, anything, what do you have in mind?

I wouldn't do it for rights reasons.

I'd just go out and pay respect to the Congress.

Paying respect to the Congress isn't going to do a lot.

You've been paying respect to the Congress for a number of years.

All those people who have gone to that Kennedy Center now, that would be another area of respect.

That's why if you're going to do it, though, you ought to do it at night.

Screw the Congress.

Just do it.

If you do it at night, I can't read that speech.

That's the law.

There's a problem.

I can't do that.

The purpose is not to have a speech that reads well the next day.

It's not to be concerned about that.

It's not to be concerned about the writing.

I don't have a job.

It wasn't important before.

It wasn't important.

It's only important as far as the band of congressional attitudes.

How much it affects them, I don't know.

I don't know.

It affects them.

Let's go the other way.

If it goes way down, they'll feel less, they'll feel it.

Yeah.

Well, we're thinking about, basically we're just thinking about today, about 50%.

That's all you're trying to do.

And that's about all you can do about the immediate problem you've got.

I had this, I think I got the answer immediately.

Here's the problem.

We can't have that analysis deal almost exclusively with pointing out the problems, dangers, dealing with alarm, and almost exclusively also with the obvious.

All right, that's OK. We need that.

But what is needed?

and particularly needed from Buchanan, is what are the positive, what defenses we should erect against this, and what does he suggest are the positive issues we should ride and help?

That's what he doesn't have in there.

You see what I mean?

That's what should be added.

Don't you agree?

Yep.

And then that'll get him thinking in terms of, well, now there's some positive things we can do.

And he had a few of those in there, not so much positive as defensive, he had some ideas.

And it was all set basically, I didn't know what they were, it was all set basically in terms of trying to intercept the pass or something like that.

It was always in terms of the lead, in terms of the... And also, again, the question of mood.

It was in terms of saying, God, the Christ is bringing us all the problems.

Why don't we do this or that?

The mood is certainly important.

You should lay all that out.

Now, here's what the other side said.

Here's what we're doing.

But here are the points we should make.

Here are our opportunities.

Like you can and says, all right, do I take the media?

Right?

Just continue with the message.

Continue with the message.

Well, sort of, you know, continue with the message.

Because we get the tactics.

Well, it's because they got some new meat.

No, it wasn't.

It's exactly, it's almost like a, like we have some sort of death vision and never are, don't want to, because it's almost, so almost identical that the Clingy's pattern has to be ludicrous.

You remember, I was probably full of Clingy, and I made mention of it.

on the grave.

It doesn't do that much.

What it does is it's great.

It gives them that much more to write.

I'll give them a chance to write it again.

Plus you have a cycle store account.

Plus you give them some new stuff because just like Clint Eastwood and this deep was really concerned about so was Wally Johnson that the grave, just like Clint Eastwood

wouldn't listen to anybody else, said, you know, I'm handling my own case.

I'm my own counsel here.

I don't need any outside advice.

I know what I'm doing.

And the one guy they listened to was Jim Eastland, who has misguided him totally 180 degrees.

Even in the public question item, Eastland's announced he's going to vote for calling Dean out.

The awards presentation

I'll be happy to talk with people to bring this in and have it done.

We'll bring it very quickly and have a group photo over here against the window afterwards.

I wouldn't have a group photo.

Okay.

That's all there is.

Fine.

Roy, I will be positioned next to you here and you will call out their names and they will come forward then.

Did Dean see you this morning or last night?

You ought to see him as soon as you can, I think.

Well, he's got an idea that, uh, in my opinion, I think it is.

When you grow up, grade, you know, send fans.

Bill Sullivan wants to go up and pull a plug on the FBI.

And he talks about time work, you know, that he does.

But it's got to be done in terms of the grade here.

It's got to be done now.

You can't hold it off.

He was talking about what are you doing with your, you can't do that.

Nixon & Haldeman on Presidential approval ratings

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 13, 1973

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