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From Buchanan to Haldeman RE: personal views on p.r. "successes and failures." 1pg. [Subject: Personal] [Memo], 1/14/1971
From Buchanan to Haldeman titled "Neither Fish nor Fowl" RE: p.r. successes & failures. 12 pgs. [Subject: Personal] [Memo], 1/14/1971
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From Buchanan to Haldeman RE: personal views on p.r. "successes and failures." 1pg. [Subject: Personal] [Memo], 1/14/1971
From Buchanan to Haldeman titled "Neither Fish nor Fowl" RE: p.r. successes & failures. 12 pgs. [Subject: Personal] [Memo], 1/14/1971
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1/14/1971
Personal
Memo
From Buchanan to Haldeman RE: personal
views on p.r. "successes and failures." 1pg.
1
3
1/14/1971
Personal
Memo
From Buchanan to Haldeman titled "Neither
Fish nor Fowl" RE: p.r. successes &
failures. 12 pgs.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Page 1 of 1
[Item N-13] N
January 14, 1971
MEMORANDUM FOR:
H. R. HALDEMAN
FROM:
PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
The attached memo is done in response to yours of the 28th
of December -- asking for my views on p.r. "successes
and failures." One of my views is that it has been a p.r.
failure that we have become too p.r. -oriented and identified
in the media -- and it is fueling some of the anti-Nixon
propaganda. But, instead of doing a "we won this one; we lost
that one,' memo -- I thought that a more thorough analysis of
the sources of one of our major on-going problems would be
more useful; and have more bearing on what the future contains.
January 14, 1971
MEMORANDUM FOR:
H. R. HALDEMAN
FROM:
PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
NEITHER FISH NOR FOWL
We suffer from the widely held belief that the President
has no Grand Vision that inspires him, no deeply held political
philosophy that girds, guides and explains his words, decisions
and deeds. The President is viewed as the quintessential political
pragmatist, standing before an ideological buffet, picking some
from this tray and some from that. On both sides he is seen as
the text book political transient, here today, gone tomorrow,
shuttling back and forth, as weather permits, between liberal
programs and conservative rhetoric. As someone put it, "the
bubble in the carpenter's level."
Nixon, the Plastic President, is a severe, even brutal,
judgment, but one held to our disadvantage by increasing numbers
of liberals and conservatives.
This impression is reinforced daily by the national media
which invariably discusses in depth the "political motives" behind
each of the President's actions -- whether it be a visit to a college
2.
campus, the appointment of a Democratic Cabinet official, or a
meeting with a black leader. Few Presidents have had their
"motives" inspected to the degree that Richard Nixon has.
(Further, we do not help the President by this very visible
e ampaign to present the media yet another "New Nixon, a
campaign whose existence is apparent from reading all the
columns and reports of the "changes" in emphasis and goal
and purpose of 1971, from 1970.)
Left and right, both now argue aloud that the President,
and his Administration, do not take decisions on the basis of
political principle - but on the basis of expediency; that ours
is "ad hoc government," which responds only as pressures
mount from left or right. Neither liberal nor conservative,
neither fish nor fowl, the Nixon Administration, they argue,
is a hybrid, whose zigging and sagging has succeeded in winning
the enthusiasm and loyalty of neither left nor right, but the
suspicion and distrust of boty.
This reality, as others see it, lies beneath many of the
"p.r. failures of 1970."
More important, this "reality" explains many of the
Administration's existing political and "p.r." difficulties, and
3.
probably has greater bearing on the President's future -- and
his place in history -- than any successful or unsuccessful
"game plan" from Calendar 1970 I can recall.
Thus, I am using the occasion of this memorandum, written
"in strict confidence," to focus upon this matter of ideological
direction.
SINCE NOVEMBER
The impression among sophisticated conservatives -- now
being conveyed to the rank-and-file -- is that the President, sub-
sequent to the harsh (and unjust) criticism of his 1970 campaign,
has moved leftward in force to cover his exposed flank.
The "full employment budget, the open embrace of an
"expansionary deficit;" the public confession that "Kent State and
Jackson State" and the defeat of FAP, were his greatest "disap-
pointments;" the admission "I am a Keynesian now;" the enthusiasm
for both FAP and for the forthcoming FHIP -- these are part of
a pattern left and right have both recognized.
The "clincher" for both sides came in the President's con-
versation with the anchormen. While the booboisie in the hinter-
lands saw only the President's mastery and skill (74 percent),
the sophisticates, on both sides, picked up unmistakable signals.
4.
It was not the Nixon deftness in handling questions that made Kay
Graham, Sander Vanocur and Joe Kraft, watching together,
credit the President with his most billiant performance -- or
that had astonished conservatives on the phone to each other
after midnight.
BALANCE SHEET
A close examination of the early returns, and the projected
returns, from the President's recent moves seems imperative
before the President sets his compass on the course indicated
in that conversation. The State of the Union and the Budget mark
the point of no return.
THE DOWN SIDE
In the short run, through 1972, the decision may very well
be the necessary and correct one. An electoral cost accountant
could argue cogently that Nixon must move leftward to win moderates
and liberals from Muskie, and anyway, the conservatives have
nowhere else to go. Just as the Gene McCarthy Left eventually
came home to Humphrey in November of 1968, so also, the
Goldwater-Reagan Right must come home to Nixon in November
of 1972.
5.
There are problems with this scenario, however. First, it
does not allow for the presence of Wallace as an alternative for
some on the Right. Second, it does not take into consideration
that the Republican Right is not simply a powerful struggling
minority in the GOP -- as the McCarthy Left is in the Democratic
Party -- it is the dominant majority, with the power to nominate
and veto presidential candidates.
Even more serious in my view than the long- shot possibility
of a Reagan-or-Conservative run for the Republican nomination is
the certain erosion of the President's historic base -- when the
accumulated news of the last few weeks filters down to precinct
level.
Over the course of two years, but especially in the last month,
the President has conspicuously abandoned many of the sustaining
traditions of the Republican Party, traditions Richard Nixon rode
to triumphant success in 1968 over the defeated "programmatic
liberalism" of the New Deal.
Two brief examples. In both "reducing the size of the Federal
Government, and "balancing the Federal Budget," the President
has swept these traditions aside with an ease and facility that must
have astonished millions of Republicans who have held them as
articles of faith for forty years.
6.
On his statements and positions of recent weeks, the President
is no longer a credible custodian of the conservative political
tradition of the GOP, Can one seriously imagine in 1972 those
little old ladies in tennis shoes ringing doorbells in Muncie for
"FAP," "FHIP" and the "full employment budget."
In the profit-and-loss statement drawn up from the President's
move left, we must not overlook the inevitable and considerable loss
in morale to the tens of thousands of party workers, the backbone
of the GOP, one of the hinges on which the 1972 election will surely
swing. The President once rightly identified the Left as the home
of the True Believer in the Democratic Party and the Right as the
home of the True Believer in the GOP. With Richard Nixon on
the ticket, the troops of the Democratic Party will be out in force;
where will the troops of the GOP be ?
The President's recent moves -- if publicized widely nationally --
leave the Republican True Believers without a vocal champion. One
has to guess that this political vacuum will not go unfilled, that the
old political faith will not go unchampioned for long.
Though a minority nationally, many millions of Americans
hold fiscal and political conservativism as gospel -- and the President's
rapid moves have taken him further to the left in a month than the
average Republican travels in a lifetime.
Further, in shedding some of the sustaining traditions of
the GOP, we have donned the garments of the same "programmatic
liberalism" the President scorned as outdated in 1968. Regardless
of our rhetoric about "cleaning out the Federal Government" and
"returning power to the States, cities and the people, the Federal
Government under the Nixon Administration has geown to a size
to dwarf the Great Society. What Great Society program -- with
the insignificant exception of the Job Corps camps -- have been
abandoned?
Rather than draw up our own yardstick of success and failure,
we have willingly invited judgment by the old measures of the old
order. Thus, we proudly point up that we are spending more for
"human resources" than for "defense resources." (Most Republicans
would argue that Federal spending for "human resources" has
proven a failure, and there should be less, not more.) We publicize
statistics on how much "integration" has taken place under President
Nixon! we argue that our welfare program provides a guaranteed
income for families and is bigger and better than anything they
have offered; we underscore how much more rapidly we are bringing
Americans home from Vietnam and the rest of the world; we
congratulate ourselves on each new cut in the defense budget. In
short, we ask our adversaries in the media and the academy to judge
8.
us on how well we are doing in reaching objectives which liberals --
not conservatives -- have designated as the national goals.
When the suggestion even surfaces that the President may
be disenchanted with OEO, and perhaps ready to scuttle it,
Rumsfeld and Carlucci rush to Capitol Hill to swear our eternal
fealty to the organization.
Truly, the liberals went swimming and President Nixon
stole their clothes -- but in the process we left our old conservative
suit lying by the swimming hole for someone else to pick up.
There is another theme abandoned with the new maneuver,
the "it's time for a change" theme, on which we had the patent
in 1968, and could have maintained through protracted conflict
with an "Establishment" during the Nixon Presidency. Roosevelt
maintained it through his first two terms in power -- running
against the "conservative establishment." But, in openly appealing
to moderates and liberals, in adopting programs and policies
warmly endorsed by American liberalism, we are becoming the
Administration of more of the same. On the Democratic side,
there is always the alternative available of more and faster -- and
now, on our right, there is available a clear alternative of a
"different road for America." Either Mr. Wallace or Mr. Reagan
can apply for the vacancy.
9.
As my own concern with whether the President wins in
1972 is of a piece with my concern for the President's place in
history, I have to view the sharp leftward move in disappointing
terms.
The President is now abandoning an historic opportunity,
the opportunity to become the political pivot on which America
turned away from liberalism, away from the welfare state -- the
founder of a new "Establishment." While the course of a "con-
servative President" would be more difficult by far, and politically
more risky, it would seem a preferable course historically if only
because the President would be assured an unoccupied niche in
America's history books and a following of millions of men and
women to honor his memory.
After observing what liberal journalists, liberal academicians
and liberal historians are doing to the most liberal New Dealer of
them all, Lyndon Johnson, I cannot think that they will be paying
much grudging tribute to the accomplishments of liberal-come-
lately Richard Nixon. One wonders who will be writing our epitaph.
THE UP SIDE
Clearly, among the primary considerations in the President's
"opening to the left" was the pressure of advisers that this was the
10.
only way to end the daily savaging of the President at the hands of
the liberal media.
The national media -- television and the national press --
dominate the impressions of the Administration conveyed to the
nation. From watching the media in the month following the
campaign, it was clear they were bent on the destruction of this
Administration.
In recent weeks, the assmit has abated. The strategy is
clearly working; we seem to be succeeding. Having failed to half
the liberal media's attacks by ignoring them until November of
1969, we took to the offensive that month and through the elections
of 1970. Originally successful, that policy seems subsequently
to have failed and now we have clearly sought an armistice --
with major political concessions forth-coming.
A strong case can be made that this new posture is the
only way the President can get tolerable coverage; and thus,
perhaps the only way he can survive the 1972 elections.
Over against this, one has to ask, not what the media
will say in 1971 -- about "new initiatives" -- but where will it be
when push comes to shove, in 1972. Where will the liberals,
columnists and commentators and reporters, go in a Nixon-Kennedy,
Nixon-Muskie, or Nixon-Humphrey race? Those who think that
11.
Richard M. Nixon, the man who nailed Hiss, can ever win over the
loyalty and support of a single liberal reporter, belongs, in my
view, in that asylum built for those ever-trusting Americans
who yet believe that one more gesture to the Soviets will woo them
away from the ends and means they have followed unswervingly
for a lifetime.
Truly, from watching the three network shows on 1970,
they have "had it up to here" with the President.
First, the Nixon Presidency does not even remotely
resemble their ideal -- a Kennedy-style Presidency, grounded in
intellectual and young-poor-black support, a presidency that wages
uninterrupted war on Congressional and Southern reactionaries,
not consorts with them, an Administration with a heart that bleeds
a little publicly, an Administration that will abandon interwentionist
nonsense from the days of the Cold War, an Administration that will
truly re-order priorities. We are not that Administration now.
The closer we approximate ourselves to it -- the better treatment
we shall receive.
Secondly, and as important, the dominant media views the
world differently than we do. They look, and everywhere they see
crisis -- regardless of the merits of the case. Neither statements
nor statistics can convince them that poverty is being diminished
annually, that the lot of our black citizens is improving monthly,
12.
that hunger is being defeated, that war aga nst pollution has begun
with a good chance of success.
There are none 80 blind as those who will not see -- and
the left intellectual does not want to see the far-reaching successes
of the United States at home and abroad anymore. He wants to
believe that stupidity and reaction and insensitivity are bringing
us to ruin -- and so that is what he sees. What confirms this
apocalyptic vision is emphasized -- what contradicts it is ignored.
So to have ourselves portrayed in a favorable light by the
media, and hence to the nation; to win the votes of that "critical
margin" of moderates and liberals, we have determined to com-
promise with established liberalism, no longer to confront it -- to
go along in order to get along. Perhaps that is politically the best
course of action -- historically, I cannot think so -- for us or the
country.
#####