THE DEMOCRATS’ NOMINEE
The 1972 Democratic convention in Miami was a political shambles. After Humphrey’s defeat in 1968, the party machinery had been taken over by radical reformers who sought to cleanse it of the “old politics” of the traditional organizations and power blocs by replacing them with the “new politics” of minority groups and radical activists. As a result the 1972 convention was unlike anything that had been seen before. Television audiences looked on hour after hour as representatives of the “new politics” used the convention to air and argue their currently fashionable frustrations: women, blacks, homosexuals, welfare mothers, migrant farm workers. Speakers were indulged and self-indulgent. There was no semblance of orderly procedure.
George McGovern had been one of the principal sponsors of the delegate reforms, and his nomination for President on July 12 was an indication of how well they had succeeded. He chose Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his running mate. Eagleton was young, attractive, Catholic, and a favorite with organized labor.
I invited John Connally to join me in San Clemente on the last night of the Democratic convention. After dinner we settled down in the living room to watch the acceptance speeches.
Hours passed as we waited for McGovern and Eagleton to appear. A new party charter was debated. Then thirty-nine other vice presidential candidates were nominated, including Mao Tse-tung and Martha Mitchell. The scene had the air of a college skit that had gotten carried away with itself and didn’t know how to stop. Finally Connally gave up and went home. Pat and I continued to watch as first Teddy Kennedy took the microphone, then Hubert Humphrey, and then, at 2:48 A.M. in Miami—prime time on Guam, as some wit observed—McGovern himself at last appeared.
Diary
They panned to Humphrey on several occasions. He really looked like a very sad figure. I was glad that Henry called him today. He said that he wanted to be of assistance to us in foreign policy and seemed to be disappointed at what happened at the convention, not just from a personal standpoint, but generally.
I called Haldeman immediately after the acceptance speech and he said, “Well, they nominated the wrong man.” Kennedy looked very good, although some thought he looked fat. He has a magnetic smile, a lot of style, and a brilliantly written speech.
As they had done on every other convention night in every other campaign, my family gave me their assessments of the opposition. Pat thought McGovern’s best assets were a rather dignified bearing and an apparent sincerity. Julie had pneumonia and had not been able to stay up, but she thought Eagleton was too glib. Tricia said succinctly of McGovern, “He’s a boring evangelist, and there’s nothing more boring than an evangelist who’s boring.”
My thoughts returned to the look on Hubert Humphrey’s face as he had watched McGovern’s acceptance speech. Humphrey was an honorable and resourceful opponent. He did not fear showing his patriotism, his feelings, or his flaws. However close he might come to getting the nomination if he tried again in 1976, I knew that he would never make it. Time had now passed him by—just as it would have passed me by if I had lost to him in 1968.
The next day I sat in my study near the windows facing the ocean and wrote a letter to him.
I had very little by which to measure McGovern personally. I knew only what he said on the issues—but that was enough. I thought it was critically important to the future of the country that his radical ideas not prevail in November. I feared he would now ease off his radical positions—something, I observed, a far-right candidate would never do.
Diary
The extremists on the right of the Goldwater type would rather lose fighting for principle than to win by compromising principle. The extremists on the left, on the other hand, have usually shown that when the chips are down they will compromise principle in order to get power. This is why the communists usually beat the right-wingers, because the right-wingers are always fighting for principle, and the communists are willing to compromise principle until they get into power and then they, of course, crush out their opposition.
Putting it in a nutshell—the radicals of the left want power. They will compromise on issues in order to get power, recognizing that when they get power they can do what they want on the issues. They don’t believe as deeply in principle as they pretend, and not nearly as deeply as do the radicals on the right.
In the first three days following his nomination George McGovern irretrievably lost the support of his own party.
Indications of his unreliability had appeared during the convention, when he had ignored or reneged on embarrassing or inconvenient commitments. For example, he had said that he would support a feminist challenge to the South Carolina delegation, but backed out when the challenge was made. Both before and after the nomination he asked Larry O’Brien to remain as Democratic National Chairman, and then backed down when his own staff raised objections. He introduced Pierre Salinger to a public meeting as his personal candidate for vice-chairman of the DNC, and then abandoned him when opposition arose. John Connally shook his head in disbelief. “Lack of character,” he said. “It will do him in before the campaign is over.” In March 1973 the new DNC Chairman, Robert Strauss, told Haldeman after the Gridiron Dinner, “You fellows just don’t know McGovern—you think he’s an evil man. He is just the stupidest man there ever was.”
In San Clemente the reaction to McGovern’s nomination and conduct was little short of exuberant. He had consciously abandoned conservative and moderate Democrats; and the ethnic groups, traditionally a Democratic blue chip, could find in him nothing of the hearty patriotism and pride that they had looked for in their party in the past. With these defections we had a chance not just to win the election but to create the New Majority we had only dreamed of in 1970. Only organized labor and George Wallace remained in doubt.
There were rumors that George Wallace was disgusted with the turn of events in Miami and was once again considering making a bid for the presidency as the nominee of a third party. Harry Dent, a former Republican State Chairman of South Carolina who served as a political aide on the White House staff, and several other White House political contacts were on the phone to Montgomery daily, keeping abreast of the situation there. Finally I asked Connally to take over the “Wallace watch.” “Go down there and see him, and let me know what he wants,” I said.
On Tuesday, July 25, Connally saw Wallace and told him frankly what he himself believed: that Wallace would not help himself by becoming involved with a third party, and that the only way to get the Democratic Party back on its feet for the future was to “beat the hell” out of McGovern in November.
Connally called me the next day to report that Wallace would announce that he was definitely not going to run for President on a third-party ticket. “And all he really wants from you is to be sure that his message on the issues was heard. He said the Democrats hadn’t listened to a word he and his constituents were saying.” Connally later told Colson, “We might well say that this was the day the election was won.”
I called Wallace and told him I knew it had been a terribly hard decision for him to make. “But you can’t let yourself get discouraged by this,” I said. “You have so many good years left.” I told him that Connally was my closest political adviser, and if there was anything he wanted to discuss with regard to political matters, Connally would be available to him at any time. I also told him that Haig would give him foreign policy briefings, because I knew Wallace supported me on national defense issues.
Diary
I spoke to Haldeman and he was going to have Sunrise at Campobello taken to Wallace so he can see it.
I am also going to look into the possibility of a salt-water swimming pool for him, since I told him this would enable him to swim with his feet afloat and would greatly reduce the effort he would have to make swimming only with his arms.
On July 17 I received word that after a three-hour meeting, the executive board of the teamsters’ union had voted 16 to 1 to endors
e me for reelection. I invited their president, Frank Fitzsimmons, and his board to come to San Clemente.
Diary
This could have been one of the most important watershed meetings in American politics in this century.
I told them that when I had a tough decision to make sometimes members of the Cabinet, members of the administration, most of the media, and even most businessmen were reluctant to stand up and stand with me; but that I found that representatives of labor were really tough and strong in the crunch when the interests of the country were involved. This, of course, is the gospel truth, and they all knew that I meant it very sincerely when I said it.
I also pointed out that as far as they were concerned that most of them were registered Democrats—however, I did not consider that Democrats this year would be deserting their party, because the issues, particularly of national defense and foreign policy, transcended party lines, and that the Democratic candidate, who was undoubtedly sincere and against whom I had no personal animosity and hoped he had none against me, simply took a line which was out of tune and out of step with that of great numbers of his party.
I had walked out to the driveway with Fitzsimmons. I asked him what he thought George Meany’s reaction would be to the teamsters’ decision to endorse me. “Well,” he said, “the old son of a bitch really has a problem now. I happen to know that 90 of the 130 members of the AFL-CIO board won’t take McGovern. Hah,” he chuckled, “after Meany hears what we did today, he’ll be in such a stew he’s gonna piss down his leg.”
On July 19, my first full day back in Washington, I spent most of the morning going over domestic and legislative items. Then I asked Ehrlichman for an update on Watergate. He said that Dean was meeting with Mitchell that very morning to discuss it. He said that he did not think that the defense that had been worked up for Magruder was going to work. In Ehrlichman’s judgment, Magruder would probably have to “take a slide.”
I asked what that would mean. Ehrlichman said that Magruder would just have to take the lumps whatever they were; he would have to take the responsibility. Ehrlichman said he did not think a story could be contrived that indicated that Magruder had not known what was going on. But, he said, Dean was working on the problem that morning.
I asked if Magruder had in fact known. Ehrlichman’s opinion was typically emphatic. Lord yes, he said, he was in it with both feet.
In that case, I said, there must not be any “contrived” story. I said I would like to see the thing worked out, but I knew that the two worst actions in this kind of situation were to lie and to cover up. If you covered up you would inevitably get caught, and if you lied you would be guilty of perjury. That was the story of the Hiss case and the 5 percenters under Truman. It was a tragic thing for Magruder, I said, and I hated to see it happen, but that was the way it was. I reiterated what I had said in San Clemente in early July: it would be easy to pardon Magruder later along with others in both parties who were charged with political offenses during the campaign.
That would do it, Ehrlichman agreed—as he put it, lay the foundation—but we would have a better feel for everything after Dean had talked with Mitchell. He told me that Hunt and Liddy were about to be drawn into the grand jury proceedings through the testimony of a lawyer Hunt had contacted on the night of the break-in and asked to represent the arrested men.
Still thinking about Magruder, I asked if he could invoke the Fifth Amendment. Ehrlichman did not think so and speculated that if he did he would still be convicted by someone else’s testimony. He felt that Magruder should simply go in and say that it was a bad thing, but that he had got carried away and now he felt terrible about it.
Magruder’s whole life would be ruined for this one mistake. I wondered if he could not accept only the ultimate responsibility by saying that he had simply given an instruction to get all the information possible but had not expected it to be carried out this way. I said I thought it would be unfortunate if he should say that he had actually ordered wiretapping. Ehrlichman agreed that it should be kept at the Liddy level if possible, but repeated that he had too little information at that point to say anything more.
I said that the problem was a tough one, but the important thing was just to get it over and done with. Ehrlichman said he had told Dean that things must move as quickly as possible.
I asked whom Dean was working with on this, Ehrlichman or Haldeman. He said that both of them had been talking with Dean more or less together right along. I asked what Magruder was saying. Ehrlichman said that Magruder was saying that he had wanted to get a lot of information for a lot of different reasons, and that he had given Liddy the responsibility for getting it.
As Ehrlichman saw it, the problem was that once Magruder started talking, no one could tell what the scope of the examination might be and where it might end up.
I said that I supposed the main question was whether it would stop with Magruder or whether it would go on to Mitchell or Haldeman. Ehrlichman agreed and said that he and Haldeman had raised that question with Dean. Dean was unsure whether Magruder was tough and stable enough to be able to hold the line if pressed by interrogators.
I asked Ehrlichman if he thought Mitchell had known about the bugging. He replied that he assumed so but that he did not really know. I said I could not believe that Mitchell knew. Ehrlichman said that transcripts had been made of the tapped DNC calls, and he had a feeling—which, he acknowledged, might be unfair—that Mitchell might have seen them. I asked if Haldeman had seen them. Ehrlichman said no—in fact, he could not find anyone in the White House who ever saw them or who ever knew about the Watergate bugging operation. He said that Haldeman and Dean had had a meeting with Mitchell, Magruder, and some others on an earlier and different intelligence plan that had been proposed but had been disapproved. As a result of their decision in that earlier meeting Haldeman and Dean had a right to feel that nothing like the Watergate operation was going on. After this earlier plan had been disapproved, however, others in the CRP went ahead with the Watergate bugging operation without there ever having been another meeting involving White House people, Ehrlichman said.
Ehrlichman said it was still a tough question whether Magruder would assume responsibility and say that Mitchell had not known anything. He observed that sometimes tough questioning can lead a man into saying things he does not intend to say. I thought surely Magruder would be able to hold up when so much stood or fell on whether Mitchell became implicated. But Ehrlichman said that a good lawyer could keep at him until he broke him down. This was a particular danger in the Democrats’ suit against the CRP: their lawyer was Edward Bennett Williams, who was well known for his dazzling courtroom technique.
I asked Ehrlichman what the best tactic would be on the criminal case. He said that if we had our way, it would be to let Liddy and Hunt go and to hold it there. But if Magruder was going to be involved through third-party testimony, he said, the next best tactic would be to rationalize a story that would not lead to his conviction.
I tried to estimate the public relations effect on the charges of a “cover-up” if the five men arrested at the Watergate and Hunt and Liddy were actually convicted. I said that even though Hunt had worked at the White House, I was not really bothered by the negative publicity that would ensue from his conviction. Ehrlichman observed that Liddy had also worked in the White House, and there would be some of that in the news stories as well.
Ehrlichman said that he was still hopeful that Dean and Mitchell would conclude that what Ehrlichman called the “Magruder scenario” would work. But, he said, there was no sense in starting it if it was going to be disproved; that would only be doubly damaging. I agreed. Then we would have both a cover-up and a conviction, which is what had happened to Truman in the Hiss case.
Ehrlichman said that Dean had been admonished not to contrive a story that might not succeed. He repeated his feeling that if any risk remained, Magruder might as well just go “whole hog.”
I was still
worried about Magruder when I saw Colson later that afternoon. I told him, as I had Ehrlichman, that we simply had to get the thing done and cut our losses. Since Howard Hunt was about to go before a grand jury, I asked Colson how he assessed the situation. He replied that in the first place he did not think that Hunt would feel he had done anything wrong. Hunt, he said, was such an ideologue and so committed to the country that, if he had a good lawyer and were properly coached, he would take the heat rather than talk. He said that the only place that he would worry about Hunt was that he might say that he had tried to “psychoanalyze” Ellsberg because the SOB was an enemy. I said I didn’t see any way Ellsberg could be relevant to this case. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said.
We discussed Magruder’s situation and my concern whether he would hold up under questioning. Colson said that if it weren’t for the political notoriety the whole bugging episode would mean nothing more than a suspended sentence for those involved, as happened in cases of industrial espionage. We agreed that it would be a terrible thing for Magruder to go through and have on his record. I mentioned to Colson the idea I had discussed with Ehrlichman of granting a general pardon after the election covering both Democrats and Republicans who were guilty of political offenses.
When Haldeman came in that afternoon, he was pessimistic about Magruder’s chances of not being indicted. He said that there would be testimony implicating Magruder and that the only thing to do now was to try to cut it off before it hit Mitchell. I asked if Magruder could do that. Haldeman said that Magruder said he would, but there was some question whether he could.
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