Pat Buchanan at the Nixon Library | Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

[Music] [Music] good afternoon and welcome to the new Nixon Library I'm bill bear ball president of the Richard Nixon foundation we are honored to have several presidents council members here today and a very special president's council member who is joining us today Shelly Buchanan shellie actually started working for richard nixon before pat did has that ever been pointed out maybe her book will be next we look forward to it thank you all for the support that enables us to promulgate President Nixon's legacy and encourage civics and citizenship in our community I hope everyone can hear today consider becoming a president's councilmember I'd like to introduce several people more than we might because this is almost a family reunion and you'll tell when I complete how many alumni from from the administration and people that were close to the president during his career are here today it's a very special group first Larry Higby who served as conservatives assessment to HR Haldeman Larry is a member of the board of directors of the Richard Nixon foundation we certainly appreciate his service and the focus on advancing the legacy of Richard Nixon Thank You Sandi Quinn also a board member and former foundation president sandy we have one individual that I don't see here but I really want to recognize them because he's very special to the foundation Colonel Jack Brennan [Applause] Colonel Brett Brennan is a Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient Jack was the first marine military aide to the President of the United States he became close to President Nixon and served as his chief of staff in San Clemente from 1975 to 1980 he was memorably if not necessarily accurately played by Kevin Bacon in the film frost/nixon Jack's the treasured friend of the Nixon family in a mainstay of the Nixon foundation wish you were here he's in that chair next to judge so next to a colonel Brennan His Honour Judge James Rogan of the Superior Court of California before ascending to the bench gym represented California's 27th district in the House of Representatives under president george w bush Jim served as Under Secretary of Commerce and as the director of the US Patent and Trademark Office for many years Jim was taught at the Chapman University Law School overnight Ben Stein became one of the most famous people in America because of his ability to repeat one word in so many inflections Bueller well while he's so often noted for that he's an author actor economist attorney TV pundit been served in the White House as a speechwriter for President Nixon among as many important assignments was writing the groundbreaking Nixon healthcare message to Congress in 1974 thank you I'd also like to recognize Frank Gannon who joins us today Frank was a White House Fellow that became a special assistant to the president he co led the design and construction of the new Nixon Library library which has received two national awards already and hopefully a third next month in New York Frank currently acts as a special adviser to the Richard Nixon Foundation Frank when I make a reference to reunion there are two other very special individuals I want you to meet in honor they both joined the staff of Senator Richard Nixon in 1951 working with Nixon's loyal and loving personal secretary rosemary woods since then Marge Acker and Louie got have been mainstays of every Nixon office and campaign and close friends to the Nixon family Marge served in the White House is the assistant to Rose woods LOI was with the foundation of the Nixon Library from before its opening in 1990 until she retired in 2007 she remains assistant treasurer of the Nixon Foundation Board their combined knowledge of Richard and Pat Nixon and their careers their combined loyalty and their dedication their intelligence and their integrity have guided and inspired generations of their colleagues and friends we're delighted that Marge Acker and Logan are witness today Lillian marks and now the reason we're here today to welcome Pat Buchanan in his new book the White House Wars the New York Times has already recommends the book that we should purchase and read and it describes Pat as one of the most consequential conservatives of the past half century to introduce Pat we called on his Nixon White House colleague and longtime friend can katti chiyan a native california can join the 1968 campaign while he was in New York at Columbia University Law School as soon as he graduated he joined the Nixon administration as a staff assistant and then as a speechwriter and a special assistant to the president can join the former president in San Clemente to work on his memoirs and he was his chief researcher for the frost/nixon interviews in Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign Ken traveled with the candidate to enhance his speeches and in the White House he was President Reagan's chief speechwriter among the many memorable and historic speeches Ken wrote for the President Reagan was his stirring and moving farewell address to the Republican National Convention in 1988 ken then worked also worked then in vice president wishes successful campaign today ken is a veteran of nine presidential campaigns he has been an advisor and strategist for governors and jurists in many of California's most distinguished public servants he served for many years on our Richard Nixon Foundation Board of Directors and continues to advise and contribute in its current emeritus board capacity rule thank you Ken Tim Ken still lives in San Clemente and it remains active in law in politics in a community life we're delighted that Ken and his wife Meredith are here today and don't get me started on Meredith's impressive biography now please join me in welcoming a great American a great California and a great friend of the Nixon family and Nixon foundation in a teach-in [Applause] 50 years ago as a student at Columbia Law School I seen an article in New York Times about the staff that was surrounding the then potential candidate Richard Nixon and among that those members of the staff was a fella named Pat Buchanan I had read no so I wrote a letter to Nixon asking if I could help on the 68 campaign and mentioning that maybe one of these fellows like had worked for them and and I didn't get a letter back the first time so I wrote it again and Meredith worked on Wall Street about three blocks from the Nixon office so she this time she hand carried it there and so a few weeks took a take a while but a few weeks later I got a letter back from one of his assistants that assistants happen to be fab you canon and I've got that letter here Pat fifty years ago [Applause] I showed it to Shelley and I'll give it to you later with a copy so I met Pat and his cubicle on that is in the offices that were on Fifth Avenue before we went over 450 Park and told him I'd like to do some research and among other things I was a law student but I was raised on a farm in California and told them I knew farm issues I got a first taste of his brain power when he started shooting questions to me he asked me about an obscure agricultural concept from the Harry Truman years called the Brannan plan and what I knew about it and I knew nothing about it so I thought I'd messed up my interview and all my chances about working in the campaign not only that I later found out that because I was from Columbia Pat thought I was a spy from the Rockefeller campaign to this day he still thinks that so he must have taken pity on me and told me to come on in and and put me to work and answering correspondence in the rest of his history that began a 50 or friendship as a colleague and work mate Pat became my boss and mentor I started working in first for her client in the communication shop and then shifted over to Pat's office but now give you a little insight inside art ball from the Nixon White House I had a title when I worked for a Pat and it was emanated from our good friend here Larry Higby now Larry Higby became a noun in the White House he worked for Bob Haldeman so amongst those of us in the White House the number two people that work for anyone in the White House became a Higby so Larry Beil Aires and that last name became a noun so John Ehrlichman assistant Todd Holloman Hollenbeck was Holland was ehrlichman's Higby and the coward was strike Coulson's Higby and Ron Ziegler had Higby she happened to be Diane Sawyer and even Higby had a Higby Gordon stron so I was Buchanan ZigBee and that became that 50-year long-term friendship Pat was part of a White House that was very unique it was a part of a murderer's row of speech writers that they've never had ever since it was Pat Buchanan bill sapphire who want to pull a surprise Ray Price who came to the Nixon staff from the New York Herald Tribune and he had written interestingly enough the editorial that endorsed Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater and you had two journeyman speech writers bill Gavin and Lee he burner was the most remarkable speech writing staff ever I mean I think Ben Stein and I were in awe of them for their talents as we were loading speech writers and but Pat mecan't began his remarkable career with Nixon or as he affectionately called him the old man in 1965 when he became mr. Nixon's writer researcher briefer traveling campaign aide and along with his current book which I know you've all purchased you really have to buy his other book the greatest comeback which chronicled this remarkable period that Pat worked with President Nixon from 1965 to 1968 when he worked so one-on-one with Richard Nixon and closely during this comeback period where Richard Nixon rose from the political dead to become returned to become president United States it's really a really remarkable book in the white house Pat was not only the conservative conscience he was the premier political strategist for the president no other single person in my judgment had the same shrewd creative insight into the American political mind and able to capture the unique forces shaping America in the 60s and 70s as Pat did moreover more importantly in terms of that White House he knew our President Nixon better than anyone else because he had spent that time with them in those three years is one on one in such close contact at his sight in the 60s so you'll find in this book when you read it it's a really a roadmap to the great battles with the American left and the media as they were fought from within our white house and if you were in the White House at the time when we were there it's really a true insight into the years that we were there it was all done in the grip of the social unrest and the Vietnam War and frankly the wreckage that was left behind by Jack Kennedy and LBJ in the Great Society it was the era before the computer keypad by the way the computer keypad took away one of the great fun of writing speeches the computer keypad has no noise to it we had IVM typewriters back then IBM typewriters we had a lot of noise and some of the speech writers like Ray Price he could make the the typewriters sing Pat when Pat was working working he can make the typewriter smoke I can remember because I shared the office with him the last year year and a half and and I can remember next door when he was working on a speech because he had his speeches were always the ones that were little more on the attack side that rat-a-tat-tat when he was wielding the strongest weapon in the world his words and I was always trying to emulate that but to hear that IBM typewriter just boom boom boom boom boom you just knew that that was pounding out something was going to be very important he left his mark of loyalty to the man whose name is on this building but equally important he leaves loyalty fidelity to ideas and personal conviction the old man enjoyed Pat and when we were here in San Clemente and Pat and Shelly would visit and the old man would be so happy that have path there and the room was just full of laughter and all the political gossip that would bring back from Washington and the back and forth they would have stories of the great battles they worked on and the inside and the president would ask Pat what was going on and they'd share stories it was a lot of fun to watch the interaction but finally throughout those years we had fun and wasn't all work and that's because of Pat's humor and joy of life he made it so so Pat welcome to the left coast especially glad to have you especially glad to have you back in the house with the old man's name on it maybe we could suit up one more time and turn this country around huh [Applause] [Music] thank you thank you very much again I can still remember him coming down from Columbia University up there at Park Avenue after the interview with me he was going down the hall and I did say check this guy out I think we've got a Rockefeller spy here and the Rockefeller spy went on to be a strategist for the greatest political mind of the 20th century Richard Nixon and just and a speechwriter for one of the greatest communicators of all time Ronald Reagan you know I've just been on the tour of the library now that Frank Gannon and others and Dwight Chapin and others and Bill have really fixed it up and it was the first time I've seen it and I will say for the folks and their folks out here on the c-span audience and of course everyone here having worked with the old man for eight and a half years Shelli worked even longer with him that you can't watch that film without having your heart really torn at it is magnificent I barely got through it but you ought to see it let me talk now about about the Nixon and what was in the book the Nixon's White House wars the battles it made and broke a president and changed America or basically divided America forever ken has listed some of the key what was going on back in the 60s LME began around 1968 the year before Richard Nixon took office we took off for January 31st for New Hampshire 1968 Romney had been in the race for a couple of months not doing well we flew up to New Hampshire and I remember Teddy white asking me about the Tet Offensive which had just occurred I had a brother in Vietnam at the time and that of course cost thousand American lives and many weeks before they got back to capital it way I was the first event and Walter Cronkite came home and said the war is basically lost we went into New Hampshire we ran a tremendous opening month campaign intense when the president was there and then we could go back to Florida to make sure he was rested come back and went after Governor Romney pretty hard because at the end of February Governor Romney dropped out of the race and Richard Nixon was alone and that was followed then by Nelson Rockefeller who was supposed to get in he got out of the race and then began what we called crazy March gene McCarthy won 42% of the vote against LBJ people don't remember LBJ was a write-in he didn't even add his name on the ballot I don't know what political intellect what that up anyhow he but McCarthy got 42 to LBJ's 49 and then the next rate after that happened we won the course a landslide right after that happened Bobby Kennedy in the Senate went to the Senate the same Senate room where Jack Kennedy declared for president declared for the nomination when around March 17th a few days after New Hampshire and in Richard Nixon had me at the end of at the end of March had me waiting at an airport LaGuardia to report on him on what Lyndon Johnson said on his speech on Vietnam because we had canceled our speech I'm waiting in that limousine and I'm listening to and listening to LBJ and that's when he announced he wasn't going to run again and he's out of the race all of a sudden four days later dr. King was shot to death in Memphis the riots and a hundred cities my hometown Washington DC I got calls from friends seventh Street was burning up 14th Street was burning up federal troops in the nation's capital Marines on the conic steps of the Capitol itself this is what was going on in that spring then came Oregon Nixon President Nixon won six straight states they no one would contest him and get in against him my main fear was a fellow in California named Reagan because as long as we have the Goldwater conservatives were in the Nixon Republicans no one on the left Rockefeller Romney I believe could beat us so Reagan didn't get in except in played in Oregon for about a month or so he was yet a film up there and but he only got 22 percent of the vote Nixon got 70 percent of the vote so Shelley and I were at the Bentson hotel that night it was May 28th and I waited at the hotel we went down the old man was having dinner celebrating because we won big and we want early but the interesting thing that night was the first time a Kennedy had been beaten in any political race since World War two and Bobby Kennedy was coming up from California Gela and I went down to the front of a bench in her kennel to watch him come in he had the dog with him and he came in I went down to a room it was like this and watch him give us beautiful concession speech to Senator McCarthy and say we're going on to California one week later I was back in New York when an aide of mine Jeff Bell called me from the headquarters and said Bobby Kennedy's been shot and so I called the president who had been mr. Nixon who had been awakened already by Julie and and and already told about it then I asked the president that same year if I might because I thought a former journalist I thought it might be interesting if I went to the Democratic convention go to be fairly exciting more so than are since we had a we had a walk in ours and so I went out there and I happened to have a suite up on the 19th floor of what we call the comrade Hilton Hotel and I'd gone down in the street and went across the street and I was born raised you know Catholic Jesuit school so I was in a coat and tie and everything down there in Grant Park and everybody it seemed they always would point at me and yell FBI FBI and they veiled a lot of other things as well so I was up on the 19th floor watching what was good the scene in the park where they raisin came and who walks in but Norman Mailer with the light heavyweight champion Jose Torres there was I was alone there and we heard a racket down down in front of us and so I we looked out and this phalanx of police came down Malvo turned to the right grant parks right across it's Michigan Avenue and they headed into that park and wailed on these folks for 15 minutes and the Jose Torres was cursing the police I remain silent because I was rooting for the police after what those fellows had been doing to me but there we saw the Democratic Party come apart right there in the streets of Chicago and historic event you know and I almost felt I did feel sorry for his Hubert Humphrey coming out of there the phrase dumped the hump remained constant attacking him for the first five weeks he couldn't get any speeches done without having disrupted and in sure enough he gave his Salt Lake City speech and he started moving and I think Larry he'd be compelled remember that he came started moving it was 43 for Nixon at the beginning of October 28 Humphrey Wallace was 21 seven points behind Humphrey by the end of October it was 43 43 all we had lost 15 points people don't recall Hubert Humphrey had a phenomenal comeback in the month of October 1968 so then we are in the White House we arrive at the White House in America was coming apart after 1968 we had 31 thousand dead Americans in Vietnam when President Nixon took office no end or victory in sight President was the first president since Zachary Taylor in 1848 to take office without us either house of Congress behind him he had a hostile press corps Supreme Court was led by Earl Warren not exactly mr. Nixon's friend from California days and the bureaucracy had been built up and the New Deal in Great Society so it was replete with hospitals there that's the nation mr. Nixon inherited he had it but if you take a look back at the president's a novel in 69 it is immensely conciliatory in other words he held out his hand to foreign powers the Soviets and others at home he said you know we you know let's let's listen to each other let's hear each other and let's stop shouting at each other and I think that's what he wanted to do in his whole first verse nine months I think we're sort of positive he kept a lot of the Great Society which I didn't agree with he went on a very successful early tour to Europe the European capitals Apollo 11 the first launch of astronauts and into space came in the middle of July I was Canaveral with him watch that go off and all I can remember is Ray Price saying we are about three miles away Ray Price my fellow speechwriter it was guest magnificent this gigantic rocket as I say two miles brave but very visible and I remember a place in the the noise alone was worth the twenty three billion when that thing Rose off so the person went out to Guam then and welcomed the Astra and he gave us be chat in Guam and he talked about a new foreign policy where we help our friends themselves I think he was a speech I think really far far ahead of its time and and frankly rate as far as I'm concerned right on the money then came October and all of a sudden these massive demonstrations were forming up it was a calm before the storm and the president had that successful summers as first one implemented and I know David Broder who was a leading liberal columnist of the day for the Washington Post he wrote on 8th of October he said we are glad to see the breaking of the president it is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson's Authority in 1968 or out to break Richard Nixon in 1969 the likelihood is great that they will succeed again at that point looking at the demonstrations I wrote the president I think a significant memo one of many that are in the book and we were been asked I think by Haldeman for name the eight successes we've had during this year or something I wrote the president back saying no these are this is like asking Louis the the way the sixteenth about the eight successes he had in 1788 we're in the eye of a hurricane and it was said sir of louis xvi that he would have been a great king but he inherited a revolution and it was about a day or two later Bob Haldeman called me here that day and said when do you think the president should make the speech and I say we got two massive demonstrations coming up the biggest in history in Washington we don't want to be in effect spooked by these things and so do it midway between the two and sure enough the president took November 3rd between October 15th demonstration and the one coming on November 15th to make his great silent majority speech now let me say that and there's a lot of people who have claimed sort of credit for that but the entire credit for that speech belongs to Richard Milhous Nixon as far as I know no speech were there I surely did not I've looked in my files to find out if did not contribute something to that speech or write something to that speech the president United States wrote that himself he stood up in the teeth of this storm he realized his presidency was real danger of being broken by Johnson's and he delivered it and he called on the great silent majority to stand behind him for peace with honor and Vietnam and they did the response was phenomenal in something like 70 percent of the American people supported the policy even the Congress 300 members of Congress members of the House of Representatives or members of Congress endorsed the President's speech and he was I think the real making of the president and it but about did at night that night something happened something else happened after the speech was over the three networks crashed it the anchors trashed it they inherited an instant analysis they trashed it one of them brought on Averell Harriman who had failed miserably in Paris and he trashed the brought what the president has done as well and so we got messages the next day or so saying you know call them and write letters and things and so I did send again a memo to the president it said in effect that it is now time to go public with the hostility and deal with the hostility and power of these networks two-thirds of the American people we're getting their primary that was their primary source of information about the nation and about the world was three networks where you had about 12 men in New York and Washington deciding what people saw and heard about their country and what they should think basically in a lot of ways about their president so I told the president that we had to take him on and I would be delighted to write a speech for vice president Agnew and and and we had a plan and we sent it over to Bob Haldeman he would took it in to the president and there's a photograph of the memo back it's got Bob Haldeman writing on it he has seen go ahead that mean the president has seen go ahead get the vice president right to speech for him we'll deliver it you know and a couple in a couple of days which is what we did and vice president went out to Des Moines des Moines Iowa and delivered a speech on the 13th and the speech was one of the greatest successes certainly in the career of vice president Agnew who had been really ridiculed for a great part of that time and I can still remember it when after I finished the speech I went over to that was called over by the president the United States to the Oval Office and he was doing some editing on my work and I was a little concerned about this because I thought the speech was a poetic masterpiece and he was dead yet yet his coat and tie on it heads glasses on his reading glasses and he had a pen out and he would write words in one of them that you know these guys are licensed by government now was jolted by that and then as he read on he said quietly and sort of a murmur this will tear the scab off those expletive deleted and I broke out laughing and he did too because we knew that this was going to really set the country on fire the first president ever to take on national press and national networks and I'll tell you then when I was done the speech and sent the final draft up to the vice president with two changes and the only two changes came from the president because I wouldn't have send any others up there and I I remember I got word because we'd had put something in the speech did really bug him to see whether people hear what I say tonight depends on them not us ABC decided to go live at the speech and then I went up to the University Club a little nervous swimming in the pool Sally Brinkerhoff called me and said CBS and NBC are going live with his speech said that this is either going to be a great speaker this is the end of my political career and Agnew speech was that almost as much of a sensation as was the President of the United States Richard Nixon and Agnew gave them next week another speech which are helped him with attack in the post and the times and so that what had happened President United States in his first year had tried to reach out and work with the Democrats people who tell you he didn't aren't telling you the truth Ray Price worked on that inaugural of his it was conciliatory but what happened is they were going to break Nixon as they had broken Lyndon Johnson but at the end of that year 1969 that divisive year in America Richard Nixon if you can believe it was at 68 percent approval in the Gallup poll and nineteen percent disapproval astonishing and big here is Nixon seven years before had been written off as the biggest loser in American politics astonishing let me move forward now could I uh Larry you got that water up here thank you Thanks he's always done this fine work [Laughter] thank you a little more energy also in their glare let me advance now to another event and it was April 28th 1979 I office in the executive office building looking out on 17th Street and I got a call with the president of United States he said come on down to my EOB office so I did so I came into his office and he said quickly we're going into Cambodia we're sending American forces into Cambodia we're going to clean out the fishhook and the parrot speak both of them he's one of them it's a Cosmin headquarters for Vietnam of the Communists the other was the closest area to Saigon where the North Vietnamese would remain they would strike into South Vietnam and retreat to sanctuaries they had eight of them Nixon says were going into every one of them and he said we've already started bombing and I was taken aback because I said sir keep started bombing they know we're coming and that's where I learned the secret of the administration he said we've been bombing those guys for a long long time and this was a famous christening the bombing of Cambodia for which allegedly later is they're going to try to impeach Richard Nixon but they dared not do so so Nixon gave me a draft from the National Security Council that he didn't like he said there's some good paragraphs in here but it's bla it's dry and we need something else so he dictated paragraph after paragraph to me and I wrote him down on those famous yellow pads and he says give them back and get this back to me in three hours and don't tell anyone and don't give this speech to anyone and so I said well I gotta have to tell my secretary because you're going to have to type the draft as I start writing them said tell her but no one else I knew this would make a problem for the individual who is the national security adviser dr. Kissinger so what I did is I worked up the draft took it down to the president in about three hours if when I was done with it then headed up to the universe Club where they all we all swam is in all men's club so we slam with our bathing suits and I'm swimming up and down the pool and I somebody comes into it mr. Buchanan you've got a phone call from the White House and I go to the phone and pick it up and it's a dramatic voice of our foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger there is de speech so Henry and I were going back and forth fighting over this and Nixon the president did his final draft himself and the speech was explosive for the reason that most of the country assumed we're just continuing to move out of Vietnam and he was going to clean out the sanctuaries basically so the American troops in Vietnam would be secure while were withdrawn and also to reduce the casualties but the country sort of exploded and it did added to it the president went over to the Pentagon to get to report the next day on how well the troops were doing and when he came out it was a woman her son or her husband was in Vietnam and she said thank you and so President Nixon said you know those guys and my son or my husband's over there so the president said you know those kids over there those men over there are outstanding they're terrific and then you take these bums blowing up campuses and he came back to the White House so the bums comments started to rise and two days later on Kent State the National Guard shot four students at Kent State and wounded nine and the full story was that in Kent Ohio that crowds in the city at canter the town of Kent had burned down much of the Main Street the governor had come in they called out the National Guard then they burned the Auburn ROTC building Monday or Sunday night on the campus and then and then on Monday the crowds got out there and the National Guard were backing up a hill and he says the concrete and rocks and things were thrown at him but they were for dead in Ohio as the song goes and nine nine wounded so this was a true campuses exploded Richard Nixon was blamed he was saying he called them bombs and then people shot the bombs it was really awful for the president and he had a press conference at Friday night and then the Saturday morning he had that famous visit to the Lincoln Memorial where he took Manolo he got up in the middle of the night went over there took Manolo up to the Capitol and over to the Mayflower for breakfast and and he was and then two days later the students at Jackson State were shot African American students who had nothing to do with the riots that had gone on in the street but the police had fired at him so Richard I mean I saw him in those days and I think that was the Gethsemane if you will President Nixon before the Watergate broke on him I've never seen him so down and I've gotten my book I've got memos from Pat Moynihan the White House staff was divided the country was divided and I've never seen the president have it have it so tough and how and how he got through it alone is remarkable attribute to the man remarkable tribute because there were a lot of people who were even inside the White House I let the president know that they thought he had not done the right thing let me move from there who to this the politics but Kim talked about adumbrated briefly the the political grand strategy of the Nixon administration why I think he's he ranks right up there as a success politically in the 20 20th century with FDR who created that New Deal majority that got five straight presidential elections and Nixon ranks up there let's go back in 1962 after Nixon lost to Jack Kennedy and got beat by Pat Brown badly during the time of the Missile Crisis Howard case method ABC ran a documentary on the next weekend the political obituary of Richard Nixon and invited in Alger Hiss to testify on TV - what a failure mr. Nixon was and what a loser mr. Nixon was and he was at the bottom of his career by 1972 Richard Nixon was back and had won the greatest landslide in American political history now how did he do that in terms of political strategy basically when I went to work for Nixon in 1965 you know I argued that I know all about the pact of Fifth Avenue with Nelson Rockefeller in 1960 where Nixon tried to bring together the Nixon Republicans and Rockefeller Republicans who would have been strong enough I think together to beat John F Kennedy in rockefeller of course behaved badly and the president didn't take him as VP or didn't get him as VP and I told him by 65 because I had been a Goldwater right I said the center of gravity of this party has shifted and so we just seen a bunch of outsider conservatives student types you know and in the tech Joe shell types in California have taken over the Republican Party nationally at the same time you are mister Republican you have the center of the Republican Party locked up if you can marry these conservatives to the center of the party right and forget about the rockefeller wing they're not going to beat anybody anymore that you've got to get these two together you've got the nomination this basically was a strategy Nixon took ooh Dickson's very much more able did not read the Liberals out of the party but he did put together this coalition to keep Reagan from country coming in against him successfully and that won him the Republican nomination but when we got into the White House the question was we recall I said it was 43 all we were tied up at the end of the at the end of the race with Humphrey coming back and so we needed a strategy to build a majority and so you've heard an awful lot about the Southern Strategy there's no doubt there was a Southern Strategy but there was also a northern Catholic strategy you know I grew up Catholic in Northwest DC and you could call it a ghetto but basically it was a community and they were all they loved Harry Truman and they didn't want much for Dewey and people like that but they liked Nixon Nixon was an anti-communist he was a middle American he had a lot of things going for him that they don't they didn't have the hostility to Nixon you found in the New York elites who despised the old man so I said the thing we if we can do there's two huge blocks of the Democrats whom we can get on a variety issues one is the northern Catholics folks like the people I grew up with and the others obviously the southern Protestants now you've got you've got the mr. Nixon had a solid position all along he supported every civil rights bill hidden we didn't change our position on civil rights we got some new we had some new issues it was a time of riot and anarchy so we were going to be the law-and-order party we're going to back up the cops and we did that it was a time the counterculture all the revolution sex drugs rock and roll all this other so foreclosed rock-and-roll and so Nixon was the traditional culture and he stood up for it you know we had glasses dizzy but Gillespie in the White House that was not Woodstock but Woodstock they had that summer so we did that we had the traditional culture versus the counterculture and then you had supporting the troops in Vietnam most of the working class middle class folks oh they're the ones had their sons over there so Nixon stood behind the troops in Vietnam for peace with honor in Vietnam and against the demonstrators and against the radicals against the guys who in doing that new mode moratorium in 1969 who had spun off from the crowd on the monument lot and going over and you know tried to assault the Department of Justice they raised the Vietcong flag in place of the Old Glory right there on Constitution Avenue and John Mitchell I remember was on the fifth floor looking out and it took his wife Martha it looked like the Russian Revolution down there so we stood with those folks unabashedly and on the issues of elitism we mr. Nixon stood with populism not a harsh populism but he was with the average guy he's with the middle Americans he's with the Forgotten Americans he's with the silent majority all these folks which were then the broad majority and silent majority was exactly right we stood with them and all these folks kept Mook started moving out of the Democratic Party or away from the Democratic elites like Kelly Kennedy and McGovern and the rest of them and a number of Democrats have got a piece in there or the scammin in Wattenberg wrote a book in 1970 the real majority they said Democrats better wake up he said because these folks are they like Agnew and they like Nixon and they like the views they've got and they don't like all this radicalism so the country was basically we were redefining the country differently but Richard Nixon and the Republican Party amazingly were winding up with the larger half which was astonishing when you considered that in 64 when Goldwater lost we had less than one-third of the crowd of the house and the Senate less than one-third of the governor's publican party was flat on its back Richard Nixon had rebuilt it in 66 and now he was proceeding to make it the center core of a vast new majority which would do a win four or five presidential elections in coming years and for all four those would be by 40 state majorities with 149 state majority that's the Strand strategy that Nixon had and we got to get into where Ken and I I must say we had some additional opposition work on a fellow named Edmund muskie when 19 after 1970 was over 19 Thunder it was January 20th 1971 Nixon sent me he sent a memo to me wanting to know why we weren't hammering muskie harder that's one thing which we both agreed on most dangerous enemy adversary Nixon could face in 1972 was head muskie he gotten tremendous press as VP candidate in 1968 1970 when we ran a pretty wall campaign he had given a nationwide speech which condemned Nixon and Agnew for McCarthyism and all the rest and the press liked him and his positions were ideally suited it was a moderate liberal he was a Catholic real threat to our Catholic strategy so I wrote a memo to the president that said it in very strong terms saying we're going to have to go after him going to have to take this fellow down he's the main one and Teddy Kennedy can't beat us Humphrey can't beat us and scoop Jackson can't beat us I said we ought to go down to the kennels and turn all the dogs loose on ecology ed three years later I was explaining that memorandum before the Watergate committee butt-nik President Nixon was constantly prodding us even Billy Graham was counting mr. Nixon sir you know that muskie is very strong in the south and the president would send a memo up what are you doing begin and I thought you're supposed to handle this and so we had a little interlude there and I have to tell you a story and it ended thee it was the Pentagon Papers was a day after Julie got Christian excuse me Trish got married in the in the Rose Garden that next Sunday New York Times full of memos from the department events secret classified put all together they weren't from the Nixon administration from the Kennedy Johnson administration's and and they were clearly designed to damage war effort clearly designed to point out that we were lied in to war and the New York Times had supported the war and they turned against it as opposed and the rest of them had but Henry Kissinger was outraged by and the president was outraged by it and they turned out to be a fellow I guess was Daniel Ellsberg the name surfaced very soon very quickly so mr. Nixon it I don't think it was a wise idea pushed her look minim alderman and Colson to head up get a investigation going of Ellsberg and run it right out of the White House because Hoover Ellsberg father-in-law or former father-in-law apparently was very close to Hoover and Hoover wasn't doing it so they said the president wants you to do it began in the investigation and honest said well you know I'm not Eliot Ness I don't know how to investigate anything and so they kept pushing me to head it up and get together a team so I said I will go over and talk to these investigators and people they'd gotten together from various departments justice and elsewhere who knows where but I went into this meeting with these characters had sideburns and they had guns and none of them had jackets on or anything and I'm supposed to head up this group and so and I as I understood it were not only to get tie Ellsberg to everything that was done which wasn't going to be difficult the FBI was doing that but gig up anything on Ellsberg's background which would discredit these people so one of these guys gets up and says that buchanan uh I'm not sure this but I've gotten before the report said you may have been getting engaged in orgies and I said orgies he said yeah I said well look Ellsberg's at about five percent in the polls you guys let that out and he'll shoot right up to 15 percent at these guys all the Cowboys started laughing I went back to the White House and I said I am NOT doing this job I'm not doing this job for Greta bleah my good friend bud crude you could uh took it over otherwise I would have been in charge of gordon Liddy and he Howard hunt so but he he'll then the muskie thing I will say as an adversary strategy with opposition research and again Ken and I were in on this working together it was as effective as anything I've seen against muskie you know and if you got muskie got going and was doing extremely well and he looked like the nominee and then up in the up in New Hampshire somebody sent us we didn't add to my knowledge I we didn't do it to this day c-span is listened we didn't write the Canuck letter but this letter arrived where muskie has laughed at an insult to Canucks who of course they're French Canadians men many of whom I found out later living up in New Hampshire who were not amused by this and my friend Bill lobe the publisher he published this and denounced muskie so muskie Co shows up in front of the union leader and breaks down in tears and from the union leader and this is all filmed and so what happened after that is muskie won New Hampshire by about ten points over McGovern but it was a small amount considering muskie came from next door and so then he goes down to Florida and muskie is wiped out by George Wallace who swept every county in the state of Florida on a knee busing issue and wiped up the floor with six liberal Democrats including muskie who ran forth so muskie was pretty much out of the race and you know I had written Ken and I had written and I just put it into my notes here when I wrote Nixon a memo after I did an analysis for him of muskie Humphrey Kennedy and scoop Jackson long analyses took thousands of words just studied and researched all the the press clippings and everything we had from the RNC in the new summaries and I had it done and then I wrote the president this note I said muskie Kennedy Jackson Humphrey are the only credible ones we see as Democratic candidates as no president is so virtuous as to be granted George McGovern to run against and we had gotten in June of nineteen by 1972 we had gotten George McGovern let me move now to the Watergate thing in Watergate events June break the break-in of June 17th and let me deal with it this way the whole thing of Watergate lasted 22 months from the break-in to the president's resignation and again I got a call from Ken on June 17th after they had broken in saying five people broke into the Watergate headquarters of the DNC and I knew instantly it was probably our folks probably from the mean almost surely from the committee to reelect so that proceeded and it was not too huge until the spring of 1973 and then through the that was what time we decapitated the entire White House staff the President did and then we went through and the tapes were revealed in the Watergate hearings and I testified for five hours before the Ervin committee because of a pack o lies released that we had run some dirty tricks strategy which we had not and it came to October and one reason I want to mention this is because it was brought up in the firing of James Comey everybody I didn't I told folks I did not arrange to have the firing of James Comey have the president announced that the day my book was published with a chapter on the Saturday night massacre but I have been bill labored about this so let me tell you again to put this into some perspective of where the president was it's October I just testified to the Watergate committee so Shelly and I were down and keyed asking president said come on down take a couple of days off and we were down there and on October 6 the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal and a surprise attack they moved anti-aircraft guns to the canal they shot the American f-4s out of out of the sky killed a thousand Israeli troops they were punching through in the Sinai Peninsula and they were breaking through and Moshe Dayan who was the defense minister caught by surprise because it was a Jewish High Holy Days he said you know he was said to be preparing to fix nuclear nuclear weapons on his aircraft and he said this may be the end of the Third Temple so you had this war started in the Middle East and going then you had the vice president resign on October 10 and then you had the great argument in the White House over who should replace him and then we had worked out a deal with the special prosecutor we thought we had worked out a deal to turn over the subpoenaed tapes to the special prosecutor and here's what the deal was we would provide summaries of all the Watergate materials in the tapes but not the tapes themselves senator Stennis Democrat from Mississippi would validate they were complete and accurate regarding Watergate and that then they would be provided to the Watergate committee they've been provided to judge Sarika be provided to the prosecutors Elliot Richardson I was told was a Boyd with the deal Howard Baker was aboard senator Ervin was aboard everybody was aboard and so we weren't sure Archibald Cox the special prosecutor was aboard but my understanding was that Richardson had said that if Cox refuses to accept the deal he will not be allowed to subpoena any more tapes and if he balks I will tell him that is it and if he refuses and goes after more tapes and I will exercise my duty that this is he's gone beyond the bounds and I will remove him myself so we were all set and so I called I'll called me and he said here's the deal where we're going to be surgery Friday night I said is Elliot aboard he said yes so then we find out he's not aboard and so I sent a member over to the president and he said come on over to the Oval Office and this is around 3:30 on Saturday and he went into the office and he very calmly explained he said I've got Henry Kissinger in Moscow the Russians are reportedly have been putting nuclear weapons and ships that are moving toward the Bosphorus and Dardanelles the Airborne Division's are moving toward airfields and we've got American forces on heightened alert I cannot have my Attorney General successfully defy me when we've got Brezhnev over there watching my reaction to what's going on I've got no choice but to do it and to this day I think the president had no choice I think he did the right thing maybe they're going to call me back to another committee a B so that's the circumstances of this are all lost in what you see is though you know the president just went went over to just throw everybody out of the special prosecutor's office when they were doing such a nice honorable upright job so so let me now turn you know I don't we can't go we want to get to some questions let me talk about what we're really the achievements of Richard Nixon and again this this this library really has it done magnificently you know med Greenfield who was an editorial editor at The Washington Post said and no kin of the president said I think we belong to the Nixon generation we've built we've never known a time growing up when he was not an issue in the election and we are likely in our lives never to know a time but he is not a matter of discussion and I think that's right Doug shown I don't know if you had him out out here he's a democratic I guess they call him Democratic strategist a very bright fellow worked in their campaigns he says Richard Nixon was the most consequential political figure of the second half of the 20th century Bob Dole and his famous eulogy said this ours was the age of Nixon considering only two men in American history have been on five national tickets Richard Nixon and FDR Richard Nixon set the all-time record for being on the cover of Time magazine 55 times from the Alger Hiss case through the Senate races or the vice presidency to the wilderness years to his own presidency and beyond in foreign policies what did he achieve he promised to bring all qsr troops and POWs home from Vietnam and he did he negotiated the greatest strategic arms limitations agreement since the 1922 Washington naval agreement he opened up China which is communist China which had been sealed for 25 years since the horrors of the Korean War it is in the six-day war I turned out the Six Day War the Yom Kippur War I just described he saved Israel go to my air herself said among American presidents Richard Nixon is the best friend we ever had he drew Egypt even at the end of his presidency he brought Egypt back around out of the Soviet bloc into the Western camp in domestic policy he ended the draft he enacted the eighteen-year-old vote some of these things that certainly I wasn't that much for he created EPA and I wasn't involved in that a member day and all of these issues I do remember one comment as it was sitting in a meeting Howard Baker was there and the senator we'd gone in for Baker in 1966 and helped elect you and Senator Baker was there and he was they were working on the Clean Air Act I think and I do remember a comment the Senators made he said when we get finished in this with this thing the only thing that's going to be able to move in America is a small pony what else did he do it created OSHA he index Social Security to protect it against inflation he elevated the National Cancer Institute and declared a war on cancer he got four justices elevated to the Supreme Court including one president one future chief justice he desegregated the southern schools even Tom wicker Liberal Democrat and anti Nixon columnist for The New York Times wrote a book called one of us about Nixon where he said believes it was his greatest achievement he moved the nation also off the gold standard ended Bretton Woods a lot of these things are historic events so politically I think he was rivaled only by FDA and he prepared your ground frankly for Ronald Reagan who got another 49 state landslide 12 years later and I've worked for Ronald Reagan and one time he pulled me aside and I think mr. Nixon I think mr. Nixon had a pretty good foreign policy this despite what he had said about Kate Scott so who was Richard Nixon well as politically speaking you know and again let me tell you a story her green warts thorn was a famous British correspondent had been writing good things about President Nixon and he wanted an interview and he got to me and I told mr. Nixon he should do it and so I was in the room with oval office when worst thorn and Nixon knew he was good said the great British writers don't take notes they just sit there and listen and they memorize it and they can walk out and they've recreated so but he remember worse don't ask Nixon if he would have been a new dealer if he entered politics at the time of the New Deal rather than when he did the post-war era and Nixon wrote him a long memo which is in my book of just how the way he grew up in Yorba Linda affected who he was he was not against government action but didn't believe that folks liked him and should really rely when it people should only use government that really needed it so Nixon came to power in the post-war GOP in 1946 anti-communism and the Cold War these were the issues that initially I think made him and defined him from six-time 46 for the Alger Hiss case the battles against Helen Gahagan Douglas the battles against Adlai Stevenson but by 1968 he had clearly moved on I do think he'd moved on from an anti-communist small C conservative to a much broader vision of the world and I do think he generally it was a touch of Woodrow Wilson Manning this idea that he could create a generation of peace I thought myself nodes we hadn't had one of those in world history so it might be utopian but he generally believed that and so in domestic policy I think the term for him is progressive or pragmatic Republican when it comes to two issues like EPA he was not averse to using government or not if he felt it could do good for the people he was not averse to that and a lot of the programs you'll see described here indicate that he was not a libertarian as Barry Goldwater my first political hero was Nixon was also an internationalist but not a globalist I mean you get to go back to 1947 on the herder Commission where he's going off to Europe and he and Jack Kennedy was like that in a way they both supported the Marshall Plan they both supported NATO they both supported containment of the Soviet Union unlike the old CAF conservatives when politics Richard Nixon I think it's fair to say in his strategies political strategies and tactics he was he was anti elitist partly populist middle American as I said forgotten Americans representing those who are unrepresented in his own way and the combination of those three things I think were the things that gave him that mammoth landslide in nineteen nineteen seventy two socially and culturally he was a traditionalist and if there aren't idiosyncrasies about the old man one story I think it's it's in my book I did the briefing books after Agnes Waldron to get them for Nixon when he was vice president and when I went to work for him in 65 66 she had done the briefing books and so Nixon pretty soon had me doing the briefing books for him up in New York and then during the campaign of 68 then during all the presidency I would he would go over to his office in the EOB he I want my briefing book by such and such a date and I would get I would go through all the papers and get all the questions I hope that the press was asking I go through Ziggler's briefings get the questions they're asking I call around the major departments what have it the over there pushing the secretary on is there anything there after him give me a call give me a heads-up if they're after something and after a while it got so I could predict almost every question that was asked at the press conferences and sometimes I actually predicted every single one and after one of those press conferences when Nixon when in in 1973 I've gotten every question and it was obvious I'd predicted everyone and so he called as he did after press conferences and well be ten began you did your usual excellent job I noticed that you predicted heavy question that the press asked actually yes sir I believe we did sir yes sir he said well there are other questions in the briefing book they were not asked and I paused and then he said next time leave those out one other time and it in a dates to my one of my various runs for the presidency in 1992 I decided to take leave from crossfire and and run against the president the United States ten weeks before the New Hampshire primary and so my sister and I put together a little organization we went up to New Hampshire and Nixon was saying I think President Bush was about at 70 percent I was about at 15 and I think David Duke was at five so I went up there and really worked in campaign and we did well and sure enough we cut it down to where President Bush beat me but it was only 51 to 37 so we done that in 10 weeks and so I went to Georgian we did as well but then came Super Tuesday and there were eight primaries and I was wiped out in all eight so we were sort of like feeling down and so I called up President Nixon and he came on the line I said mr. president ten for ten not bad eh and Nixon said Buchanan you're the only extremist I know with a sense of humor well thank you very much [Applause] you Thank You Pat Pat has agreed to answer some of your questions but before he does I just wanted to plug the book the via are available for order in the museum store and down the colonnade our first question hi mister began the first four months of our over here on the on your right on the right ovary salons are good I can't stop thinking during the first four months of our current president administration about Nixon's final speech the morning that he resigned when he said things like those that hate you don't win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself and also he said never be petty and he was telling people like Monica Crowley at the end of his life he probably told you he was asking rhetorically why the hell did I go through the fire if others were not going to learn from my mistakes and are you afraid that you know the current president is doing things that are going to hand the same sort of enemies the proverbial sword so that his Nixon said defrost they'll stick it in and twist it with relish I do think this I think you know President Trump has gotten the worst media I've seen of any candidate or president for the last I'd say eighteen months of his campaign and first four months of his presidency there's no question about it and the mood in Washington DC let me say this about all the the things that have broken so far in terms of substance this is no Watergate we didn't even add a single crime yet that has been alleged against the president or his White House staff and yet the mood in the hostility and the animosity on the TV and the cable TV and the rest of it are unlike anything I've seen I think I was quoted in the press and I don't know how you sustain this kind of intensity and hostility it's only been four months and you got 44 to go in his first term so I don't know how this has gone to going to end but I don't know that it's going to end well for the country I do think the president is in some danger now of losing the critical margins that he's got in the houses people moving away from him in the Congress so that he's unable to do really what he wants to do now I've supported Donald Trump one reason one reason was frankly he came down and the issues I had raised the border security staying out of Foreign Wars interminable America's business new trade arrangements whereby we don't have a four hundred billion dollar trade deficit with the Chinese taking all these factories out of the country and all these jobs so he had all these issues and I supported him and I do think he's I do think he's got some we've got some real problem and I do think quite frankly there is some Dyneema tending to how he's handled it I mean we didn't we didn't call the press names when we did it we had a speech major speech two speeches and then we would move off it I mean President Nixon there's no doubt he felt he was getting a terrible press at times but he contained himself and he was very disciplined and I don't think self-discipline is not the first phrase it comes to mind when I think of the president yes wait a question on the back row okay hi I'm as a young individual I'm very much concerned about the massive immigration and I just want to make sure that what can we do to modify and repeal the 1965 immigration law that has drastically changed this country I've had a huge impact in California and what's your thoughts about Wall Street worked I worked in mr. Nixon's office at the corner of wall and broad for three years on the 1965 act I will say I was a editorial writer in st. Louis and I don't recollect even taking a position on it and I don't if you read it Lyndon Johnson's memoirs heat that act was enacted I don't even think he mentions it in his memoirs I looked up looked it up one time and couldn't find it in his memoirs I agree with you this is one of the issues I ran on in 1990 which was I called for a moratorium on all immigration cut the numbers down to a certain level until we could assimilate and Americanize and and acclimate everyone who had come and almost many many millions over those years the way the folks that came from eastern and southern Europe came in the 1890s to 1920 and then you had a period of low immigration so that by the time you got up to 1960 97 percent of us all spoke English and we all had the same culture traditions histories holidays and but uh to your point to your point I don't know that you could get that through if you talk about repeal of a 65 Act I don't know that you could get that through the Congress of the United States right now I don't know though all the Republicans would go with it I don't know that I'm not sure a president Trump would go with it but I understand that I do believe immigration and I've read to read and write a great deal about Europe I mean immigration is the great problem the great problem I think of Western civilization could you tell us a little bit about what to your recollection mr. Nixon thought about George Wallace and how much he was inspired by Wallace a success in getting white working-class Democrats to vote for him uh you talk about governor Wallace well they when we were with with Nixon the Wallace Wallace had in 1964 had come out of Alabama and torn up the Democratic primaries he even did tremendously well in Wisconsin and in Indiana and Maryland I think he won a majority of the white vote in Maryland coming out as a governor and he started off as basically it was anti the civil rights laws and the things were being imposed on the south and Wallace then in 68 of course he ran as a Democrat which meant he wasn't going to run as a third party candidate in 68 so but Wallace's appeal there was no doubt about it he had an enormous appeal that Nixon recognized and it was populist and the longer Wallace was around from 1964 66 68 the more his he added to his repertoire and he was talking about you know when he gave the audience's he'd say I know some poor letter words to wor K and s Oh ap you know and so he Wallace was really starting to move people along those lines and there's no doubt that the votes Wallace God where the votes we wanted to get the Nixon had a position when civil rights he wasn't going to abandon so what was best for us was to get Wallace out of the race or having lose a Democratic nomination but you know and then in 68 governor Wallace was shot right out there in Laurel Maryland 72 I'm sorry was shot in 72 he was leading the Democratic Party in in votes and all the primaries and he won Michigan and Maryland the next day so Wallace was a powerful force but you know I think my own view was that Wallace was could not win a Democratic nomination and he could not win general election and if he got into a general election as he did in 68 basically he siphoned off votes that would otherwise go to Nixon I did look after the 72 election Wallace had one precinct where Wallace had gotten a hundred and seventy three votes Nixon got a hundred and seventy two of them in other words they didn't go to George McGovern they came to us so this was the whole idea of the Southern Protestant strategy in the northern Catholics bringing them both but you needed to get Wallace not to Ron to do that as a third party candidate but as rising any higher he couldn't do it but in a way Nixon couldn't couldn't compete with him he couldn't compete with her we we used it in 68 we sent Spiro Agnew down to the upper south I went down there with him because he competed very well you know getting those votes with and and frankly there's a quote in my book from Frank Gannon got it from mr. Nixon where Lyndon Johnson told mr. Nixon on the ride up to the inaugural that that where everybody was praising muskie what a wonderful job it's done his vice president and Johnson didn't say anything about him but he thought Agnew had really done a whale of a job and had won states like you know helped us in North Carolina Tennessee or I guess yeah North Carolina Tennessee in states like that with a question of the setter holes they're right here which was okay ah you speak a lot about what President Nixon inherited in Vietnam next Monday's Memorial Day and I actually lost my dad in Vietnam looking back at hindsight are there a couple of things that President Kennedy President Johnson or President Nixon might have done to either change the outcome of the war or speed up the country's withdrawal departure from Vietnam obviously since I was that my brother was over there and since I was supporting the war from the very beginning from the time I was in journalism school and Jack Kennedy put the 16,000 the Green Berets went in my view and and you know Wallace George Wallace in 68 wasn't all wrong when he said his slogan was win or get out it wasn't all wrong I think the United States of America which had reduced the Japanese Empire to rubble greatest empire Asia had seen in four years could have won that war but I think what happened was the American establishment was broken on Vietnam it lost the will it would not take the measures necessary to win the war and therefore when President Nixon came in in 69 he had decided we have to get out and the consequences could you had to know the consequences could be bad you know my view was and President Nixon I will say this talk to me I talk to him after after he left office he says he should have done in 69 what he did in 72 which was mine the harbor at Haiphong and bomb had no I and unleashed full power of the United States to win the war or to break the North Vietnamese and I don't know why he didn't do that and I'd you know I don't know why course yeah I don't think you can blame President Kennedy did put 16000 M but I think Lyndon Johnson raised that up to 500,000 troops incidentally the new National Security Advisor McMaster I just read yesterday his book he wrote a book I think about 20 years ago which he really blames the Johnson President Johnson McNamara and the others as really having behaved dishonorable during that war and not not realizing what the outcome was going to be so I mean that's something well I would almost if you had a microphone I'd like to give you over there like to hear your view because my brother came back with a lot of people's views about what was going on we have time for one question good just as a reminder comment right right I will say the president and the Cambodian King was a success even the standpoint of it costs a lot of people but the American casualties struck straight down from Cambodia at Kent State all the way to the end of the war I remember when we came in they were losing guys at 200 to 300 a week yes yes we have time for one more question I just want to remind everyone that Nixon's White House words are available for purchase in the colonnade and in the bookstore and Pat will sign your books for you our final question it's an honor to ask you this question Pat you they might float idle since I was a kid my question to you sir is how do we go about bringing younger Millennials to our cause thank you you know it's as they say on TV that's a great question which means I need time to think of it it is hard to say because you know I've written a number of books I really think the 60s was a time when it was a time when a part a significant slice small but articulate slice of the country basically threw over the ideas and it animated the country and its growth and all through all the generations previous to that on on culture on morality on issues of race on various things like that in that ideology if you will that ideology has spread and deepened to the point where you know where we could win 49 states and 8472 we can't do that anymore the country is so changed and the academic community is so changed and the school systems are so change and the values are so changed that it is very tough it when you say winning over to our side you mean winning over to the Republican Party publican party is doing okay at the state and local level exceedingly well but I'm a believer that the and I'm a bit of a pessimist if you've read any of my books I am a believer that that that things that have changed or not going back again and that if you're talking politically what they call the blue wall those eighteen states and the District of Columbia that before 2016 went Democratic and all the previous six elections that is growing demographically it is very difficult for the me to see how the Republican Party at the national level has any great longevity especially with the gentleman's question I'm continued mass immigration which mostly comes now from third-world folks who depend heavily upon government who don't understand the ideas many ideas of Republicans of the smaller government less government programs I remember when I was running in 1962 - I was in a gym working out in his Villa with an Hispanic American he said what are you going to do for education you know I said education by and large is a local state responsibility and the federal government only spends about six or seven cents of it every education dollar so you really need to focus on me on state and local said what are you going to do for education because that's what I care about he wants the federal government to do it and I think Republicans have a very difficult time reaching these folks there's no question about television broadcasting and yet Fox has got some problems these days though well I mean they look thee there's look I went to journalism school in 1962 and there's ty at Columbia University top journalism school in the country sixty-five Americans fifteen foreign books I was the only Goldwater individual in the school I knew which way me here we're going you know they were the guys are my contemporaries and friends and they wanted to go water folks thank you very good Hadley available in the lobby to sign your book thank you so much for coming

Channel: Richard Nixon Foundation

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Keywords: Richard Nixon, Pat Buchanan, Lecture, Book Tour

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Length: 88min 12sec (5292 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2017