In this holiday season, it is clear that Richard Nixon’s gift is the tapes that keep on giving.
“So what’s the deal with you and Nixon?” a few folks have asked me.
I explain that 445 hours of recently released Oval Office tapes are a treasure trove. And as there is no rush to the National Archives to listen, I’ll be happy to hit the start, stop and rewind buttons (over and over) and try to make sense of often hard-to-hear conversations.
And, truth be told, they can be engrossing, if frustrating, especially if you can’t hear certain snatches.
For example, there’s July 2, 1971, when he’s chatting away with aide H.R. Haldeman shortly after 9:15 a.m.
Haldeman has had breakfast with two heavyweights, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) and House Speaker Carl Albert (D-Okla.). He claims that they support some Vietnam-related maneuvering by Nixon.
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“Both have said independently and strongly this is clearly an outgrowth of President Nixon’s initiative and that it definitely looks as if something is possible,” says Haldeman. “It got very good wire play.”
He then alludes to some withdraw-from-the-war resolutions offered by Democrats in Congress, which have failed, and then cites some new Democratic gambits. In the process he mentions Sens. John Sherman Cooper, a moderate Republican from Kentucky, and Frank Church, a liberal Democrat from Idaho.
“They were losing their propaganda war and they had to do this as a move to prop themselves up again. Of course, the idiots, like Cooper and Church, are offering their resolution . . . a new resolution to get out, with no date set.”
Nixon’s response? Well, as far as Cooper, the words were pretty clear. “He’s an old fart.”
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One, of course, does inevitably find the Bad Nixon, a man who did go over the legal line at times. A few minutes later, Nixon and Haldeman start talking about excess campaign funds that they have hidden, apparently for myriad purposes.
But they don’t necessarily want Nixon chum John Mitchell, the attorney general, to know what they’re up to.
“I am trying to retain control of the funds to some degree,” Haldeman says. “Now John’s obviously got to manage the money and all that. We have as, you know, that money stashed away. We’ve used some of it, but we still have quite a bit. And I think you’ve got to keep that stashed away. And I’ve really got to hang tight. Now, the trouble we get into.”
“John (Mitchell) knows we got it?” asks Nixon.
“John knows we got it, yeah. And that’s all right. I just tell John that (unintelligible). You can use (it) to hire somebody to get on Ted Kennedy or do some polls.”
“How much we talking about?” says Nixon.
“. . . $5 million,” responds Haldeman.
Money stashed away, perhaps to be used to snoop on Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Ah, Nixon and the abuse of power.
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Unemployment statistics have come out that day and, though the economy is not in great shape, the figures are not bad. Charles Colson, Nixon’s fabled hatchet man, indicates that the White House will lobby the three major networks to give the story good play.
“So if we don’t get pre-empted by some bigger news, I think this will be it,” says Colson. “They have to give it a good story. The question is how much time.”
After assuring one and all that “it will get good play,” Nixon moves on to the whole matter of economic forecasts and their often dubious nature. He then waxes vaguely philosophical.
“There is a difference between the big men and little men in government. The little men are those who make predictions that turn out to be wrong and then are more interested in their predictions coming true than for something good for the country coming true. The big men make predictions that turn out to be wrong and then are so delighted they turn out to be wrong and are more interested in the country looking good than themselves looking good.”
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Mayor Kenneth Gibson of Newark, N.J., has appointed a 17-year-old high school student to the city school board.
Nixon asks Haldeman if he has seen “the jackass piece on the 17-year-old high school kid in the Newark school. Jesus Christ!”
But, notes Haldeman, kids do go to school, suggesting that maybe the idea isn’t so far-fetched.
“I dunno,” says the president.
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There’s a very odd discussion among Nixon, Haldeman and aide Leonard Garment in which Nixon, out of the blue, starts reading aloud from a Civil War history, extolling the virtues of Ulysses S. Grant. He goes on for about 10 minutes for no apparent reason, reciting matters such as how Grant led his troops through rain, wind and must and handled them superbly.
“A grim, silent man,” says Nixon.
He then is musing about the funeral of John Quincy Adams and the attendance of a teary-eyed Henry Clay. He moves on to James Monroe, Napoleon Bonaparte, the American Revolution and Thomas Jefferson in what essentially is a drawn-out monologue on leadership.
“Having that understanding of history is so important,” says Garment. “Without it, you can’t relate things.”
Nixon is soon talking about the speechmaking abilities of his predecessors. Eisenhower was only really good at memorizing facts, he says, and Kennedy at reading prepared texts. “Johnson, of course, no way. Truman, of course, no way.
“Franklin Roosevelt,” he continued, “the stuff came out of a great staff. Hoover was too inhibited to do it. The only one was (Woodrow) Wilson and T.R. (Teddy Roosevelt).”
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The Nixon administration has proposed a welfare reform plan called the Family Assistance Plan, hatched by Nixon aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the brainy Democrat and future U.S. senator from New York.
Nixon: “In its crassest political terms, let’s face it, in its crassest political terms, do you think Family Assistance will help us?”
John Ehrlichman: “No. It doesn’t show up on any of the polls.”
Nixon: “What about people, the working poor, all start getting checks and they’ll all be for us then. I don’t believe they will be. Do you?”
Ehrlichman: “Nah. They’re not our people, they’re not our people basically.”
Nixon: “They’re people who just basically aren’t going to vote for us. You say you can’t generalize.”
Ehrlichman: “Well, to some extent, you can. Under $8,400, there are damn few Nixon voters in that group. In all the demographic breakouts, we just don’t show up.”
Nixon: “They’re damn few but there could be a helluva lot more.”
Ehrlichman: “OK, if you can go to them and make the argument that you’ve put money in their pockets, and translate that into votes, ah, that’s not an assumption I’m willing to make at this point. The first place, I don’t see you making that argument. And I don’t know of anybody who’ll make it for you.”
Nixon: “That’s the problem.”
Ehrlichman: “And, secondly, I’m not sure that translates. The guy says, `Gee, I got this check and I never got this check before and that’s a good person who did that.’ “
Nixon: “On the other side of the coin, are you convinced the goddamned thing will work?”
Ehrlichman: “No, matter of fact.”
Nixon: “It gets back to something that is very fundamental. With all of our concern about poor, hungry kids and the poor, charity, etc. etc., I have a strong conviction that there is a point where societies become basically bread and circuses as they go downhill. I am convinced that welfare, generally, is bad.
“Bad not because the fact that somebody gets something for nothing, the clothes and the rest. But bad because I think it does something to the character of a person and his attitude. That’s what I’m concerned about.”