Word: haldemans
(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...
...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...
...Spiro Agnew, I 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...