Word: ehrlichman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...media tended to portray H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman as Prussian drillmasters implementing with their own sadistic frills malevolent orders from the Oval Office. I was generally contrasted favorably with them. I was awarded the white hat, they the black. This was an oversimplification of all our roles...
...some respects, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were rivals. On the whole, Ehrlichman sponsored or supported domestic policies that were humane and progressive. He favored reducing defense expenditures beyond a point I considered prudent so as to free resources for social programs; several times I appealed his interventions to Nixon. Ehrlichman was shaken by student protest following the Cambodian incursions. He had three teen-age children, and their travail touched him deeply. But Nixon's favor depended on one's readiness to fall in with the paranoid cult of the tough guy. The conspiracy of the press, the hostility...
Rough talk and confrontational tactics did not come naturally to Ehrlichman. But every presidential assistant is tempted to purchase greater influence by humoring a President's moods. Ehrlichman overcompensated. To the mounting protest demonstrations, the leaks and the drift of the dissenters into extralegal activity, Ehrlichman responded with a zeal that was sometimes excessive...
Toward me, Ehrlichman showed a mixture of comradely good will and testy jealousy. Inevitably he resented the contrast drawn between us by the media. He had been associated with Nixon for too long for the President to tolerate on his part social contacts and attitudes that in my case were treated as a congenital defect. Torn between his prohibited predilections to conciliate and his political survival, Ehrlichman adopted a supercilious manner. Outsiders considered it a mark of arrogance; its real fount was ambivalence...
...received a phone call from the President. He said that the refusal to grant immunity would throw "the fear of God into any little boys" who might attempt to escape their responsibility by dumping on associates. Nixon asked out of the blue whether he should fire Haldeman and Ehrlichman; he was heartbroken, he said, even to have to ask the question. I was dumbfounded; if Nixon held that view, he must be in mortal peril. Not possessing any basis for judgment, I ventured a formulation from which I never deviated: whatever would have to be done ultimately should be done...