Word: haldeman
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Once, in the summer of 1972,1 asked Haldeman what Watergate was all about. "I wish I knew," he replied, and changed the subject. In late January 19731 ran into Joseph Califano, a former Johnson aide and old friend. To my smug remark that I did not see how the Democrats could recover from their electoral debacle, Califano said Watergate would bring a Democratic revival. I passed this view on to Ehrlichman, who snorted: "Wishful thinking! If that is what they are counting on, they will be out of office for 30 years...
...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...
...Haldeman, though by instinct conservative, was at bottom uninterested in policy. Convinced that image defined reality, Haldeman went along with, and frequently encouraged, Nixon's nearly obsessive belief that all his difficulties were caused by inadequate public relations. Nixon never could rid himself of the delusion that only the failings of his media staff kept him from receiving the acclaim he associated with John F. Kennedy. President and chief of staff devoted much time to discussing how to manipulate the press-a doomed quest so long as both rejected a serious dialogue with the hated, feared and secretly envied...
...Later, Haldeman was accused of isolating Nixon. This was unjust. Nixon's isolation was self-imposed. He dreaded meeting strangers. He was unable to give direct orders to those who disagreed with him. The vaunted Haldeman procedures were an effort to compensate for these weaknesses. If Haldeman was eventually destroyed because he carried out the President's wishes too literally, it is also my impression that many instructions given in the heat of emotion never went further than the yellow pads where Haldeman dutifully noted them...