Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Source Description
This file contains:
From Patrick Buchanan to Haldeman RE: "Letters to the Editor." 4 pgs. [Subject: Domestic Policy] [Memo], 9/28/1969
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
26144909
label
WHSF: Contested, 6-25
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
26144909
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
WHSF: Contested, 6-25
description
This file contains:
From Patrick Buchanan to Haldeman RE: "Letters to the Editor." 4 pgs. [Subject: Domestic Policy] [Memo], 9/28/1969
citationUrl
collections
Richard M. Nixon's Returned Materials Collection
Contested Materials Files
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
26144909
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
d2c7b148aaa352f2
ocrText
Richard Nixon Presidential Library
Contested Materials Collection
Folder List
Box Number
Folder Number
Document Date
No Date
Subject
Document Type
Document Description
6
25
9/28/1969
Domestic Policy
Memo
From Patrick Buchanan to Haldeman RE:
"Letters to the Editor." 4 pgs.
Friday, April 02, 2010
Page 1 of 1
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
September 28, 1969
Hold
MEMORANDUM TO H. R. HALDEMAN
FROM: Patrick J. Buchanan
RE:
Letters to the Editor
The only truly successful and enduring Letters
operation I have ever seen was Buchanan-to-Whitaker-to
the Advance Men which operated in 1967. I would call
Whitaker, who would call his advance men and we all would
write letters on the same subject to a national publication.
For example, we flooded Time Magazine with RN Man of the
Year letters one year -- and did well. Another time, some
six of the seven letters printed in one LOOK issue were
our team's attacks on an anti-RN article.
That operation worked because the Advance Men were
far above average in intelligence and ability; they could
write a good letter, and more important, they were part
of a close knit existing organization that was geographically
as diverse as the country. Still, even with this, all
we did effectively was to gang up on a single article in
the national press, and do it occasionally.
I would recommend the following steps:
1. Chairman Morton should sent a specific directive
to all state chairmen, asking that they establish a
monitoring committee in their state of local television and
local press and that these "monitors" write regularly to
their local tv and local radio and local press, arguing the
Administration's positions, and attacking when attacked.
2. Each of these state chairmen should report to an
officer of the RNC the names of the men and women on their
State Monitoring Committees and writing groups, who would then
also become members of the RNC national letter writing team.
We could send these groups all RN's statements, all GOP
publications which they could use as background for writing
letters.
-2--
3. In doing this, the thing has to be non-secret,
it has to be de-centralized, and we have to rely on the
individuals in the states to carry it out themselves in their
own local area. (When I say public, I mean it cannot be
clandestine as was our Advance Man team -- because to be
effective all over the country you are going to have to
involve dozens of new and strange people, and something of
that magnitude is certain to be public.
4. Now, at the National Committee, I would hire full
time for this one purpose only, a young fellow who can write
fairly well -- who would be responsible for overseeing
the state operations (which simply have to run on their own
steam, for reasons detailed later) and for conducting the
rifle shots at specific egregious attacks on us. My experience
with this is that we simply cannot rely on the average
volunteer: you cannot designate the project to somebody as
a part of their responsibility. Volunteers don't produce
and if this is a part of somebody's assignment, invariably
it winds up as the thing he first discards when he is
pressed.
This fellow, who would key the whole thing, should be
paid very well --- in my view. This is the reason. You can't
expect a sharp, incisive letter to the editor to come out
of the typewriter of an ordinary party worker.
In fact, if the kind of talent needed to write first
rate publishable letters exists at the National Committee, he is
doing something of far more importance to them than writing
letters to the editor. This, again, is one of the problems.
If somebody has what it takes to write first rate letters to
the editor, the last thing you will find him doing is writing
letters to the editor. This is why, if we are serious about
this, we are going to have to hire a GUY WITH SOME BRAINS,
knowledge and ability and pay him.
5. As I see it, this fellow who oversees the state
operations, also spends most of his own day writing letters
to national publications on various articles -- he should
have, at hand, a list of some 30 "names" which he can use
as signatures on the letters --- people who will let him do
it, and who will take the heat. (One of the central problems
is finding people willing to either write letters or let
you write one for them. But these names are indispensable;
otherwise, we are going to end up writing a lot of anonymous
stuff, which will end up in the waste basket at the daily press.
6. This fellow, once appointed, should be made privy
to the President's morning news summary; and he could on
the basis of that be able to fire off letters to the major
-3-
papers protesting this and that, or commending this and that.
7. The fellow should collect from the State committees
all the carbons of all the letters they write -- but more
important, clippings of the letters they get published. He
could send these back out to encourage other letter writers
and to show them the type of things that get into the press.
8. The fellow should maintain a file of "printed
letters" which he drafted himself and which others around the
country drafted and on which he should report formightly to
an administrative fellow in Haldeman's shop.
WHAT CAN'T OR SHOULDN'T BE DONE
1. While Buchanan can and should, in the interests of
speed, draft single shot letters to the editor of a particular
publication which the President might want right away --- we
simply have neither the time nor the manpower to produce
"20 letters to the New York Times" on some editorial. There
are time when the President wants a particular point gotten
across to some individual -- and when a single letter can
do the job. Don't hesitate to call when this comes up. But,
again, we cannot run an operation out here of getting five,
six and seven letters on the same subject to a national
publication; it is simply not cost effective to pay me an
exorbitant salary to spend the day in that kind of writing.
2. We simply lack the necessary control to administer
day-to-day operation from here. (As you know, we set some-
thing up along the above lines at the RNC, but without
constant attention and ram-rodding, it peters out, because
everybody has something else to do.
3. Sometimes the President makes recommendation on
letters to be written, which may not be the best way to
handle it. For example, "twenty letters to the Times" is
really a waste of time. We would be better off getting
someone prominent to send one --- it would have a better chance
of being printed. Have you ever seen the Times print twenty
letters disagreeing with their position on some subject? A
day spent on those twenty letters would be a day wasted.
Secondly, we should not be sending any large numbers of
letters out of D.C. to out-country babers -- that is why
I sent two, rather than six, letters to Conrad on his good
cartoon. If he, at the L.A. Times got six letters from
D.C. on a cartoon he did in L.A. a week ago -- he might
get the impression the letters were rigged.
-4-
In this business, I am a believer in quality, not
quantity. The one letter we shipped out on EMK and sent
to Time, to Newsweek and the Washington Star ran in all
three publications. One sharp thought is worth ten pages of
B.S. in the business.
RECOMMENDATION:
Call in Morton, impress upon him the tremendous
importance RN attaches to the operation. Get some top-
flight, maybe $15,000 a year man (we can forget it, if you
get somebody who can't write, or hasn't really got something
on the ball) put him in charge. Don't keep it secret. Order
state parties to set up committees, and report the names of
their members to the contact man at RNC. Instruct Magruder
or some ramrod here to keep in weekly touch with this guy ---
to call him at once when RN recommends action on some article.
(This guy could use the phone to call his own people). Let
the guy know that the President is concerned about his stuff
(there is a problem here of getting RN attached to such
a project, but if the guy is sharp enough and is being sent
the daily summary, he should be secure enough. )
I can see a group set up nationally called Republican
Correspondents, consisting mainly of housewives with time
on their hands, who could be tied together with their own
newsletter, their own identification card --- competing with
each other all over the country in letter writing. I can
visualize the framework but it cannot be run as a parttime
job; and it cannot be run out of Room 122 of the EOB.
Another suggestion: There was a woman in California
who used to spend her days writing letters to the editor for RN
all over the country; some of the best I have seen. Rose
probably remembers her name; she would be my choice of the one
who wrote the letters, though she may be too sweet a little
old lady to ramrod the thing from the RNC. Most important,
it has to be a paoject apart, with the blessing and solid
backing of: the Chairman, with paid competent staff.
(I will be sending along another memo on the monitoring
of the TV networks, and the five major markets. You can't
let amatuers or volunteers be given responsibility for doing
the kind of pb on these tv shows that we do for the President
on the network news; you couldn't rely on them to make
judgments which we could use; only to raise some hell.)