Transcript
Edited by Nicole Hemmer, with Ken Hughes, Kieran K. Matthews, and Marc J. Selverstone
President Nixon asks John B. Connally, former secretary of the treasury, about how best to use Vice President Spiro T. Agnew in the 1972 presidential campaign. Connally had stepped down from his post as treasury secretary two months earlier to head up “Democrats for Nixon,” and had been a Nixon favorite for the vice presidency during earlier discussions about a possible Agnew resignation.
Well, that’s [clears throat] . . . This obsession about—well, this obsession about presidential . . . misreads history. [Franklin D.] Roosevelt was presidential, but he kicked the living bejesus out of his opponents.[note 1] Franklin D. Roosevelt was president of the United States, 1933–1945.
That’s right.
He just murdered them.
That’s right.
Ridiculed them, and lacerated them every which way.
He had people like Wendell [L. Willkie]—I mean, Harold [L.] Ickes destroy [President Nixon acknowledges] Wendell Willkie as “a barefoot boy from Wall Street.”[note 2] Secretary of the Interior Harold C. Ickes dubbed Wendell Wilkie, the 1940 Republican nominee for president, “a simple, barefoot Wall Street lawyer.” Susan Dunn, 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—The Election Amid the Storm (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 160.
That’s right, that’s right.
Hell, just—he was mean. He had some real [unclear].
But even Roosevelt also gets pretty damn—
Oh, he sure—
His speeches were not much softer.
Oh, sure.
Not soft. Obviously [Harry S.] Truman’s in a different situation because he’s fighting from behind.[note 3] Harry S. Truman was president of the United States, 1945–1953. [Dwight D.] Eisenhower didn’t, but I did.[note 4] Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of the United States, 1953–1961. That was the difference there. In ‘56, I just kicked the hell out of [Adlai E.] Stevenson [II].[note 5] Adlai E. Stevenson II was the Democratic U.S. presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956. I just murdered him on, you know, [unclear]. We just took—we decided that it had to be done. Now, I want to ask you, though, a very critical point about [Spiro T.] Agnew.[note 6] Spiro T. Agnew was vice president of the United States, January 1969 to October 1973. How much do we let him go? How much do we unleash him if he lays off the press?
Not yet.
Not yet. You’d hold him, yeah.
Let him refurbish his image a bit.
Good. But still let him go. All right.
Yes, I would. He needs—I just wouldn’t throw—
He needs time, all right.
I think he needs about two or three weeks at least.
Past the convention?
Yeah, he needs past the convention.
Yeah, we ought to maybe wait till about the 20th of September.
I might wait that long. Depends on what happens.
Cite as
“Richard Nixon and John Connally on 14 August 1972,” Conversation 768-004 (PRDE Excerpt A), Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [“Vice President Agnew,” ed. Nicole Hemmer] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014–). URL: http://prde.upress.virginia.edu/conversations/4003055