guide - ProQuest

diff [difference] btwn [between] Cons [Conservative] rad
[radical] + lib [liberal] rad
conserv. is consistent•that's why he's Cons.
lib will change to win
Cons wld rather lose w/ [with] principal
lib will win•then screw us later
people around McG [former Kennedy people] know what
power is + they want it•at any cost
look at his record•speaks louder than words
100% ADA [Americans for Democratic Action
rating]
over the years
use guilt by assn. [association]
Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, A. [Angela] Davis
recog. [recognize] L [Left] wing rad is different than
r [Right] wing rad.
ie all wore flags + rode police cars
then take it off day after election
get max [maximum] pix [photographs] of ratty people
w/ [with] McG
messy kids etc.
we go for all-out square America
why did margin shrink in 68 [regarding Nixon's drop in
polls during the 1968 campaign against Hubert
Humphrey]
1. maybe running around country making speeches
isn't right•the momentum Theory
2. they [the Democrats] had big event•bombing halt
[of North Vietnam]
3. we got shafted by the press•main reason our cam-
paign made no diff. [difference] cause it wasn't
reported.
The meetings at Camp David were normally used for long-
term planning. This meeting, which begins with a brief round-
up of pending legislation and the consideration of possible
appointees, lays out Nixon's basic public relations strategy
against George McGovern. This strategy of smearing his
opponent as a radical liberal harkens back to Nixon's 1946
campaign against Jerry Voorhis for the U.S. House of Rep-
resentatives, and against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950 for
the U.S. Senate. The notes end with Nixon's favorite complaint
about the anti-Nixon Bias of the press. Here the President
blames the media for the narrowness of his 1968 election
victory.
The last example consists of the notes of a telephone con-
versation between President Nixon at Camp David and H.R.
Haldeman on July 21, 1972, at 3:30 PM.
other side has serious prob [problem; this relates to the
disclosure that Democratic vice presidential nominee
Senator Thomas Eagleton had a psychological breakdown
and had received shock therapy]
we had not antic
dropping him [Eagleton] in lite of poll
makes move 1) unpopular+2) weak
not stay [staying] by yr [your] man etc.
mixed bag for us
he [McGovern] eld [could] be hurt by dropping him
so keeping him on not nee [necessarily] to our adv
[advantage]
that there was more sympathy
than edit [editorials] wld [would] indicate
his strong pub [public] support
eld give him more leverage
we shld [should] consid [consider] on Mon. the p. c. [press
conference]
if throw him off•then no p. c.
if stays on•go ahead
P. wld keep him on•unless can get K. [Kennedy]
to avoid campaign bogged down
for 2-3 wks [weeks]
not because of merits
natural desire of press to help
wld swing behind him
also prob, of replacing him+delay campaign
so•adds up to keeping him on.
This appraisal by Richard Nixon of the Thomas Eagleton af-
fair is both politically sophisticated as well as probably cor-
rect. This should not be surprising, as Nixon was and still is
one of America's top political experts. George McGovern's
actions•initially supporting Eagleton "1,000%" and then
forcing Eagleton to leave the ticket on July 31 by leaking to
the press that he would be dropped•produced the very results
that Nixon had predicted. The selection of Sargent Shriver as
his vice-presidential running mate brought McGovern little
help in his ill-fated campaign. Shriver, though married to a
Kennedy, had no personal constituency and had never held
an elective office. For McGovern's campaign, which had
always seemed doomed to defeat, the Eagleton crisis was one
more disaster.
The conversation reported above also reveals another recur-
ring Nixon theme: the Kennedy family. Nixon still respected
the voter appeal of the Kennedy name, even though Edward
Kennedy's involvement with Chappaquiddick was still fresh
in the public's mind.
There have been many accounts of the Nixon presidency by
former insiders as well as by H.R. Haldeman and Nixon
himself, but one always suspects the motives and veracity of
these reminiscences. There are, in addition, millions of pages
of official documentation from the Nixon White House which
are now being opened that are extremely useful in the study
of the Nixon administration. The documentation suffers from
the official's knowledge that what is being put down on paper
will become part of the permanent record, which usually
means that the writer is guarded both in what is stated and
how it is stated. Haldeman's notes, which were not supposed
to be part of the official record, give researchers an extreme-
ly rare opportunity to sit in on the most private of presiden-
tial discussions. These papers are both important and
fascinating because they provide a firsthand, spontaneous ac-
count of one of the most controversial of U.S. presidents.
Paul L. Kesaris
Vice President
University Publications of America
Nixon Papers, Part 5. H. R. Haldeman Notes