Bill Moyers Journal; 712; A Conversation with Clark Clifford Part 1

and a by this station and other public television stations, and by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Every American has an ideal in his vision and concept of a president, and they reach very high for that ideal, and as a matter of fact, no human being quite reaches that ideal. Basically, however, the people want their president to be the kind of man, maybe that they hope they might be.

They want their president to be better than they are, more intelligent that they are, better educated than they are, better understanding of government, more diplomatic than they are. The power of the presidency is practically unlimited. The president can make out of the job almost what he chooses to make. From behind this desk across from the White House, a man once described as Washington's most powerful private citizen has advised and observed our presence for more than 30 years. Tonight I'll talk with Clark Tifford about Presidents and Power. I'm Bill Moyers. Two men in Washington have exercised power for as long, or in as many ways, as Clark

McAdams Tifford. He came from Missouri to Washington in 1945 as a young naval aide to Harry Truman, who soon made him special counsel to the president, a job that placed Tifford right at the center of the most critical decisions of those crucial years. He was a principal agent in shaping American foreign policy from within the White House, and in unifying the armed forces under a single Department of Defense. During the Eisenhower years, he became one of Washington's most successful lawyers. Super Clark, they called him the most powerful private citizen since Bernard Baruch. While advising many of the nation's mightiest corporations, he also became an advisor to Presidents. He planned John Kennedy's transition to the White House, and while still a private citizen became Kennedy's chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He was an intimate behind the scenes advisor to Lyndon Johnson, until in 1968, Johnson named him Secretary of Defense. A hawk until he arrived in the Pentagon, Clifford decided the war in Vietnam couldn't be won.

According to most participants, he played the key role within government in persuading LBJ to reverse his policies. He returned to private practice in 1969, until President Carter sent him on special assignment to Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and India. Now at the age of 75, still putting in a full day in his office, he looks out across Lafayette Square at the White House, and reminisces about Presidents and Power. You've been advising Presidents and observing Presidents through that window for almost 25 years now. Is it from your perspective an impossible job? No, it isn't at all. I have the deepest reverence for the institution of the Presidency and have made a good deal of a study of it. And I find that it has become more complicated. But the right man at the right time can still make a signal success of the Presidency. The fact is that in almost each era, there is the feeling that the job is almost impossible.

The splendid misery idea. The splendid misery, one of our earlier Presidents said, interestingly enough, President Polk, who was one of our more illustrious Presidents, served one term and said he just was not up to it physically, and he chose not to run for a second term. It was a wise plan because in three months he was dead. But he said that he doubted that ever again in American history would a President be elected twice, because the problems were so inordinately difficult that he felt a President would have no reputation left at the end of one term. Well, we've been through a lot of that lately. Would you be in favor of the six-year one term for a President that has been proposed widely by some political scientists? Not at all. I think it would be a mistake.

One of the main troubles with it is that occasionally the electorate makes a mistake. When you elect the wrong man, you have him in office for six long years. That would be a pretty bitter lesson for us, it seems to me. Four years is pretty long, but a good deal shorter than six years would be if we've made a mistake. Also, that's a long time to elect a man with the changing political attitude of the American people. Because he happens to be the man they want today, there's no saying that they will elect that man six years from now. Their attitudes may change. The world is in a posture now in which changes come much more quickly than they used to. That is another reason.

I believe also that as soon as a man is elected for one six-year term, he's a lame duck, the first day that he takes office. Everybody knows in six years he's through, and it is amazing the diminishing power that a president has as that time goes on. The fact is, I would like to see the Congress withdraw the 22nd Amendment. Which makes it impossible for him to have a third term. I think that's wrong. Why? Because if the man is the right man is first term and they want him, they should have him. If when he's up again for the second election, if they think he's the man, they ought to have the right to elect him. And at the end of eight years, they may say, this is the best president we've ever had. He's got a fine program. He's the man we want.

And way back ten years or so ago, the Congress said you can't have him. It doesn't make any sense. The fact is, the most ironic factor in the 22nd Amendment is that it was passed by the Congress at the urging of the Republicans after Franklin Roosevelt had run four times and been elected four times. And they said, we've had about enough of that. And they passed the 22nd Amendment. And the only man it has affected since that time was Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican. A Republican. If it hadn't been for the 22nd Amendment, the American people would have elected Dwight Eisenhower until he died. And to some extent, isn't the idea of a one of a two-term presidency partly a myth? Because if I remember correctly, there have only been seven two-term presidents in our history. So the office is not made for personal endurance, is it? No, it isn't at all.

And the fact is that the burden placed upon the president is an extremely serious one. But at the same time, our whole basic concept of government has been spectacularly successful. Under our system, our countries grown from a small agricultural community of only 13 states with four million people to 50 states and 225 million people. So that economically, I think militarily, and from the standpoint, whichever way you wish to look at it, we are very likely the greatest and strongest country in the world. And to a very considerable extent, that's the result of our system. Now we chew up our presidents badly, but they know it ahead of time. And so they come into it. We use them up. But they render an excellent service in the process of being used up.

What do you mean they render a useful service? But the power of the presidency is practically unlimited. The president can make out of the job almost what he chooses to make. Well, let's take the president you have known personally and observed from here for the last 25 years, and you give me a thumbnail sketch on how you felt the personality of each affected the office and start with your old mentor, Harry Truman. Well, that's quite an assignment. There is probably a way that in a word or two, you can describe each one of our presidents. President Truman, you would use the words decisive and courageous and modest. And those qualities together made him one of our more unusual presidents. Then you come to President Eisenhower.

The primary factor in the Eisenhower administration was he was elected at exactly the right time that the country needed him. What do you mean? Well, we'd had 20 years of Franklin Roosevelt with the constant pressure for social progress carried on to a great extent by President Truman. I had the feeling at some times that we were like a military commander who had outdistanced his supply train. What we needed in the eight years of Eisenhower was to stop, look, study, bring up our secondary troops, see where we were. And because he was a national hero and he was so greatly beloved, he served that purpose with almost divine guidance, it seemed to me, as far as our country was concerned. Then after him came President Kennedy. And there's one word that describes him more accurately than any other, and that is grace.

He had born with him the greatest sense of grace and consideration for others as any man I have ever seen. Mr. President Kennedy came President Johnson. There is one of our most interesting President, raw power. You've sensed it. And I'm sure that from the time, at first time I ever heard word politics used, he had his ultimate ambition to be President of the United States. He loved every minute of it, whether things were going well or going badly. You just had the feeling he reveled in the job. A very powerful, meaningful President. And I think because of what I considered to be the dramatic success of his domestic policy, he would be certainly outstanding.

Maybe ranking up with our greatest had it not been for the tragedy of Vietnam in which he got caught. Mr. President Johnson came President Nixon. He has some very real accomplishments to his credit. The accomplishment of opening the doors between the United States and China has been and will prove to be a pre-eminently successful move on his part. So I pay great homage to him for the success of Salt One, a fine move, and started a relationship with the Soviet Union, which if we can get back on the track will be very important. That again could have been a very successful presidency, had President Nixon really believed in our system. And I concluded after a while that he did not do so. He didn't believe in the First Amendment. And he didn't believe in the freedom of the press and the freedom of expression.

He just did not believe in it. He didn't believe in the Fourth Amendment that protects the man's home and office against depredations of one who would wish to enter them against the owner's will. He didn't believe in that. I doubt that he believed in the tenth amendment, which places the control of the government in the hands of the people except for those rights that they give to the federal government. He extended through the, I think, the doctrine of executive privilege. He tried to extend that way beyond what our forefathers thought. And I think that's where, unfortunately, the difficulty began. Forward. President Ford, I think, would come under the heading of the great healer. At a time when our country was destroyed, our people were discouraged. We'd been through Watergate, we'd been through the trauma of Vietnam. President Ford came, easy-going, understanding, a very decent man.

And he was exactly what the country needed at that particular time. And so the troubles began to subside. And the fact that this man presided at the time, lent confidence to the people who they otherwise might not have had it. And he came very close, of course, of being reelected for a term in his own right. Then we come to the last in our recounting to President Carter, the one word that I would use to describe that more than any other is an enigma. I watched it day by day, for every day. I was fascinated with that presidency, as I have been with all of them, because I've been privileged to serve some presidents. A man who's honest, able, intelligent, industrious, wanted very much to succeed, and yet the existence of blocks that after a while I was able, I believed, to analyze, kept it from

being a successful presidency. And I explained that, what happened to Jimmy Carter? What do you mean but blocks? Well, he had so much going for him. First place, he was elected without any real commitments. He had come from nowhere. And as a result, to come in with no commitments gives a president a marvelous, broad, flexible horizon of operation. And I got to know him. I liked him. I thought it was going to be a great success, and then I found that problems kept coming up into the matter. Now one of them was he attempted to operate the government without calling upon the expertise that the country could furnish. You cannot bring inexperienced men who'd never been in the White House before he was elected into the government and expect the government to run well.

You've got to have people of experience and ability who've been through it all before. And yet Carter could not allow into his intimate circle people he had not known before. That's right. You say, what is a block? I say that's a block. He would have done much better here in Washington if he'd gotten out and made contacts in Washington and on the hill. Now the reason he didn't do it, I know, is that he didn't think the rest of the country cared about Washington. And I believe that. He ran his campaign against Washington, against outsiders, against lawyers like yourself in Washington. And the country applauded. It is. But now the trouble with that is if you stop and think about it. The message that goes out over the entire country is the message that comes out of Washington. If he's not making good contacts with men on the hill, the press is constantly in touch with men on the hill. And so they say to Congressman Sanders, how do you think President Carter is doing? And they get a wrong answer. I saw columns day after day after way, critical of President Carter.

And that's what the people out in the other states were reading. I think that they never grasped that particular point. And that seemed to be awfully unfortunate. How do you explain Carter's weariness? Well, and I've thought a lot about that, and I do not know if this is correct because I said the whole administration was in enigma. One, I believe that there was in his mind the thought that to bring in experienced outsiders. I'm talking about younger men who could just work their day by day, men in their 50s. In their 50s? Yes. That's a younger man. Yes, you bet. And so that I think he felt that after the kind of campaign that he won, ran, if he did that, it would be constricted. It would be constricted as either a confession of inadequacy or even failure. So he apparently was just determined to run it on his own and show that it could be done.

In addition to that, some of the people who were close to him said that there was a certain southern defensiveness in the operation. Now I don't know that. I'm not from the south. I'm not conscious of any difference between me and our southern Americans. But apparently there was some kind of defensiveness about that. Well, in the Johnson head, as you know, Clark, we suffer from having lost the only war that Americans ever lost. So I think that entered into it. Now here is another idea that I have. And it's purely my own. There may be no merit to it. It was a very religious man, and he came from absolutely nowhere in politics. You remember the Jimmy Hude and then even when he was known, the polls originally showed him two or three percent. And yet in some way, some force, some power enabled him to get the democratic nomination. And then he was won an elected president in the United States.

Most people thought it wasn't in the cards at all. I've wondered whether because of that, that he might feel that he might possibly have been an instrument of divine guidance. Now it's possible because he made it and he made it on his own with practically no help from other forces that usually come into political campaigns. And I'm wondering whether that gave him such a confidence that he was a chosen instrument that possibly he didn't need the help that other presidents have needed. Now it seemed to me you put all those elements together and there is the answer to it. Now the fact is, however, history will treat him much more kindly than I think the American public treated him in the last election. Why? Because I think they'll find some solid accomplishments. And these attitudes taken at the time fade. When President Truman was president, I believe he was probably more bitterly criticized,

held up to more ridicule than any man since that fellow they described as the baboon in the White House, which you will remember was the way they referred to President Abraham Lincoln. And President Truman was criticized everywhere. I remember at the end of the first year of his presidency, there was a cartoon prominently displayed all over the country of a very large chair and it was marked the presidency. And sitting in front of it, a very tiny little figure, you had to look closely to see and it was President Truman sitting in this very large chair. He was criticized because of his background, criticized for lack of education, criticized for having once time been in the Haberdashary business, criticized for being a product of a political machine in Missouri, constant, unremitting criticism.

But he rose above all that. And people today don't remember any of that. Oh, they say he was one of our greatest presidents. And of course, I got a deep sense of appreciation and gratification when I hear it because I think of all those days in which they just wouldn't let him up. I think it appeared sometime as though the attitude of the press toward President Truman was, don't hit a man when he's down, kick him, and that's about what he got. Jimmy Carter felt that way. See, when you analyze President Carter and I grew so fond of him, the basic answer to your question is, he had a preconceived concept of the presidency, that he and the tightly knit group around him had. It proved not to be an accurate concept of the presidency, but he adhered to that original concept, stayed with it for four years.

You say, what could he have done? He could have opened that up at the very beginning. And he could have found any number of persons anxious to come in and serve him. It would have prevented many of those egregious mistakes that were made, that the people just sort of never recovered from. That unfortunate mistake that had to do with the UN in Jerusalem, which you will remember. I think that could have been prevented with people in the White House who were experienced. I believe they never should have tried that kind of rescue attempt as far as our hostages were concerned in Tehran. I think, again, a broader experience in the White House would have prevented that. But the larger part you're making is that you cannot govern in this town without the cooperation of the Washington establishment. I watched with the greatest concern over the problems that President Carter had with his brother Billy. Now we all have relatives that were not very proud of.

You and I know some presidents that also had relatives that they had lots of trouble with. But the one factor that changed Billy from merely a troublesome relative into a national problem was when he accepted a payment from the government of Libya. And that could have been prevented. People say, well, you can't control your brother. You can't control your brother, but you can control foreign government. If before they made that payment to his brother Billy, we've gotten word through our diplomatic representative, or through a third party, or if the president sent somebody over saying to Libya, don't give Billy any money because it'll be the most counterproductive thing that you can do. So I'm just telling you, they would not then have done it. And all of that could have been prevented. That's what made the Billy problem. And I must say, I think it hurt him very badly. When you talk to him personally, how did you find Carter in private?

Oh, very attractive. Easy, modest, intelligent. I tell you, some of the press conferences that he conducted were classics. The best press conferences that I have ever seen occurred in the Carter administration. And that is even including the Kennedy administration. Exceedingly well informed, industrious enough to prepare with meticulous care before he had the conferences. He had so many things going for him. Did you ever have the feeling that, like an engineer, he preferred to be down tinkering with the machinery instead of being on the deck of the ship charting the course? To a certain extent, but I would have difficulty folding him for that. If it is his nature to want to get down in the details, then certainly, I would commend him for it because we've had a good many presidents who did not choose to get down in the details. We know we've had some presidents who were pretty lazy sometime.

And that certainly cannot be said about present Carter. But there is another facet present in being an engineer that I saw. And it also, unfortunately, was a handicap. He prided himself on being an engineer and a scientist. And every now and then, he would say, now, as a scientist, I would do this. As a scientist, I would do that. And he had good scientific training. What scientists do is they start at A. They go from A to B and B to C and C to D and D is their goal. And they know that if they just stay on the line, unquestionably, they will reach D. I saw that in the President from time to time, that he had sufficient knowledge and experience to know that if he proceeded along a certain line, the result would be there. The trouble with that doesn't work in the White House. Because it doesn't take into consideration the House of Representatives or the Senate of the United States or the media or the American people or the permanent bureaucracy

or all these other factors that come in. The problems of the President of the United States are not susceptible to scientific treatment. There's a lot more that goes into it. The fact is, you almost have to disregard it. May I give you an illustration? He came into the White House. Carter. The President Carter came into the White House. And after a while, he got settled and began to feel more comfortable and began to look around for problems to solve. Well, one of them was the Panama Canal. Now I never had a shot at that because you cannot go to a President and say, Mr. President, you've not asked for my opinion, but I'm going to volunteer. You probably only do that once, and then you'd never see him again, do you see? But I know that issue. It came up in the Johnson administration. It was all talked out, I sat in on some meetings, and that is a perfect issue for a President to bring up in the third year of his second term when he can be a statesman.

And he can say, this is right. And then he doesn't have to worry about commitments that he's made. He doesn't have to worry about enemies that he has made. But he'd picked this one out. Now interestingly enough, he was right. And courageous. Absolutely wrong to bring up at the time because he absolutely froze a very substantial part of the populace in this country into a position of eternal and permanent enmity as far as he was concerned. Also, there were a number of members of the Senate, do you see, who just would not forgive him because he forced them into a position that made them very unpopular at home, and they felt they had to go along? There again, the right thing to do, the timing was wrong. A broader concept on his part of the presidency would have greatly facilitated that decision-making process.

Another 22 water projects out in the West, do you remember that one? He took a look at that. My recollection is, he said, about 14 of these, I think, have no merit, maybe 7 or 8 half. Well, right about that time. Out went California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and he never recovered. Never recovered. Not the way. Now later, he had to back up, do you see, and all. But there again, the fact is politics is a very important part of our government. It must not be denigrated. It's the way our country runs. It's the lubricant that keeps the wheels going smoothly. So when you hear Ronald Reagan advising his cabinet not to make any decision on the basis of politics, what goes through your mind? I say that that is an excellent statement to make in public, if he will say later to them in private.

Now if you have political problems that come up, come to me with them, do you see? And we will look at them together, because politics is our system, but define it. What do you mean politics? I mean that if a president fulfills his obligation, then he must have a program. And if he has a program, then he must try to get the Congress to pass the program. And in doing that, there occurs one of the most skillful areas. Our most skillful, our most illustrious presidents have been good politicians. Abraham Lincoln was, do you see, Teddy Roosevelt was, Franklin Roosevelt was, and Lyndon Johnson in the beginning. Oh, excellent, in the beginning. So you've got a program, you want to get it through. You got an energy program. You have civil rights programs.

You have human rights programs. A president has to have a program. He absolutely founders if he doesn't know politics. Now which is trading, which is compromise, which is persuading, which is saying, I have certain things that you want, but you have certain things that I want. And I will work out arrangements with you, and which you will get some of what you want, if you'll give me some of what I want. And it goes very nicely, and what you do, too, is you invite congressmen to the White House for dinner, and you know what it does? It puts them in great with their wives, because the wives love to be invited to the White House, do you see? And they love to talk about it to their friends. Well, I went to White House last night, and the president said this, and the president said that. You make a friend of that congressman, you make a friend of that senator, and then after while you can call him in, and President Johnson calls in a senator, and he says Joe, and Joe says, yes, Mr. President, he says, does that law partner a year still want to be a

federal judge? Oh, he says he certainly does. Well, he says, you know, I've been thinking about that lately, and we're going to want to talk about that. But in the process of talking about that, I want to talk with you about the fact that I think we've got to increase our social security program. Well, Mr. President, I've spoken against that. Well, I know Joe, but times have changed, and you think about it a while. Do you see? Why don't we go by you call me? Joe calls him in a week and says, Mr. President, I've been thinking about that, and I think there's a lot of merit to your position. I believe I can change on that social security. I want to come over and talk to you, and incidentally, I talk to Joe, my partner, and he has just tickled the death. Now people say, well, that's politics. That's the way the country runs. That's the way business runs. That's the way commerce runs. That's the way our government runs, is that you're constantly trading assets back and forth to get your program.

But Jimmy Carter said I'm going to come to Washington and stop that Washington game, because it's so expensive. It's the reasons that Carter and the campaign that we are in trouble, and I'm going to stop the Washington game. It just life doesn't work that way, but it sure doesn't work that way in Washington. And it doesn't work that way in government. If you feel you're right, then you do everything in your power within proper ethical and consideration to get support for what you believe, and that leads to success. And if you don't use all those other factors, then you get an unfortunate result. Now here we are with Ronald Reagan, just in office a few weeks. Do you think that his election was a mandate for conservatism? That's farther than I'd be willing to go. I think that his election is due to a number of factors. As all elections are, they're very rarely due to any one set of circumstances. Then I think President Reagan made an attractive candidate, and the people reacted well to

him. Easy, relaxed master at appearances on the tube and so forth, very valuable asset to him. So I think we had an attractive candidate. That was accentuated by some of the attacks that President Carter made. In fact, as some of his campaign proved to be calamitous, attacking Governor Reagan, and then having to rescind the attack. And then starting it out another line and later on saying, well, no, I was misquoted or something. Or I take it back, you see. Those are devastating moves that you make in a political campaign. Another factor, and I think a very important factor is that the liberal policies that over the years elected so many presidents and so many senators and congressmen, right

at the present time are not very popular. And the reason why it is is that the great majority of our Americans today are very badly pressed. They're pressed by our high tax structure on one side and pressed by constant unremitting inflation on the other. And hardly a week goes by, and which a man and his wife don't have to have some trouble over bills. The grocery bills higher than it's ever been and everything's going up. And they're under pressure all the time. And the idea of giveaway programs, of looking after a lot of people who won't get off their duffs and get out and work and so forth, cause I think a revulsion against many liberal principles that some of our best people had run on and been elected on. Now, I do not believe that this is a strong turn to the right.

I don't sense it that way. I think the country is basically still a fundamentally liberal country. But we've reached a stage where people were much more attracted to conservative programs than they have in the past. It's just a question of degree. We have come all this way with our social programs. We are not going to go back. There are too many American people now who are dependent upon them. There are too many who now recognize that as a matter of fact, in most instances, it lends strength to our country. Do you remember what happened in 1929 when we had the crash and people went out of work at that time? There was nothing to sustain them. There was no social security. There was no unemployment insurance.

There were no health programs. Depression just almost destroyed our form of government, and we've worked away from that ever since. We can still go into recessions, but they are greatly lessened by these built-in devices that we have, do you see, to minimize the occasional recessions that we get. We're never going back to those days. We're never going back to the days where we didn't have a securities and exchange commission. We're never going back to the days where we didn't have antitrust laws. All those have been great forward steps in aid of the public welfare and the public good. We're not going back. If you don't think the election was a mandate for conservatism, what is Reagan's agenda? I think I can never recall the American people being as unified on one issue as they are about inflation.

It's at every family, and particularly older Americans who live on fixed income. They're having an exceedingly difficult time. I hope that his program will aid in that regard, taxes will help. If at the same time, by reducing taxes, you do not reduce the value of the dollar. I hope that that doesn't happen. But the main goal that he must have domestically is to find the answer to inflation. It will not be easy, but the American people have lived with it a long time. They know that because we've had it so long, it will take quite a while to get rid of. But if he should succeed in that regard, he will endear himself to the American people. A broad, to me, the one great issue, there are lots of minor issues. The one great issue is our finding the answer to getting along with the Soviet Union. It's easy to quarrel with individuals.

It's easy to quarrel with countries. It's difficult to find a way to get along with the Soviets. They're extremely difficult people to get along with. But I've been a little concerned lately that President Reagan's comments and those of General Hague have been so harsh with reference to the Soviets. My own view is, I doubt that that's very effective. I think that in individual contacts, you can make your complaints. But I think it has a tendency to build a wall between the two countries if our comments are so critical. I note that today the Soviets are replying in exactly the same manner, very critical of the United States. So, my hope is that we will get that done. The fact is, one of the great, maybe the most important vital issue today is that we reach a conclusion and understanding with the Soviets so that we don't have to live

in constant fear of war. Because once war comes, then we know enough today to know that there's no limit to it. When you talked a minute ago about people being pressed, I thought of that very famous memorandum you wrote in 1948, outlining the strategy for the election, which no one, except you and a few others, thought Harry Truman could win. Did he think he would lose or was he always optimistic? No one will ever be able to answer that question. I know only that I never heard a word come from him, that indicated that he thought he was going to lose. And it was almost impossible to find anybody else who thought he was going to win. Everything was against him. In the summer before the election, we had two polling companies at that time. One was Gallup and one was Roper. And within a month of each other, they took their last poll and Dewey was so far ahead

that they said they weren't going to conduct any more polls because there was no way in which Truman could possibly catch up to Dewey. And that's the way it continued on that everybody accepted that, all in incident. Six weeks before the election in 1948, Newsweek came out with a story saying that they had picked the top 50 experts in the country. In politics and political science and sent them a ballot, which merely read, in your opinion, which man will win on November 6th, Dewey or Truman. In the 50 were Walter Lippman and Scotty Reston and Roscoe Drummond and Joe Allsopp and you name them the top big figures of that period. All 50 responded, one of the most unusual polls that was ever taken. And they announced the 10 days before the election. They would publish the result of this poll.

We on the train, we spent three or four months on this train. We knew it was going to be important. And we were out in Iowa and we came up to small town, chicken bristle Iowa, I think. And I remember slipping off the train and going in to see if they had a news stand and they did. And I got a copy of Newsweek and on the outside it said Truman and it gave the number of votes that he had and Dewey and the number of votes that he had. You know what it was? Truman zero, Dewey 50. All 50 of these experts said that Dewey was going to be elected. And when I got back on the train I put this under my coat and I had to walk through in the president was sitting there and he said to me, what does it say? And I thought I might get by and I said, what does what say? He said, come on back. And I said, what does what? He said, really got under code. I said, I haven't got anything. He said, I saw you go in the news stand and let me see it. And I had to hand this magazine to him that said, Truman zero, Dewey 50. And his attitude was they just get more wrong all the time.

Is it true that while you were on that famous train that he took across the country, you would help write the speech and then you and your colleagues would slip off the train and go out into the crowd and applaud while the president was speaking, applaud your own lines? It may have happened once or twice when we didn't expect a very big crowd, but it wasn't a regular event. I don't want you to think that we were just the clack on the train. But sometimes he had been very critical of the Republicans in his Dexter speech, for instance. He had said that GOP stood for Glutton's of Privilege and I think if we had it to do again, we might have read it a little differently. He said that the Republicans had plunged a pitchfork into the farmer's back. The rhetoric was getting a little stronger all the time. So they started the crowd, started the cry when he'd come out on the back and say, hello

and I'm glad to be in your town and one thing or another. Somebody out in the crowd would yell, give them hell, Harry. And then that would whip up the crowd. So occasionally if that hadn't happened early enough in the speech, I think I've seen some of our fellows slip off the train in the back of the crowd and yell, give them hell Harry. And that had a tendency to revitalize the audience. Do you think we've lost something from politics in the time since then when television has taken the place of that kind of personal experience on the road that kind of direct confrontation between a candidate and the voters? I think not. The fact is that very likely it has greatly increased the personal contact between the voter and the candidate. Because I remember one time the president went out and made a speech in Chicago and we

commented coming back on the train how marvelous it was. There were 100,000 people in that great stadium. And just think you see that one speech we said reached 100,000 people. Do you know what I read in the paper some time ago? There's some soap opera about Texas or something. I don't know quite what it is. Oh, Dallas. And they put on some installment of that and then they took the test and 100 million people saw that installment of that particular opera, whatever it is. But suppose you get a campaign that has vital issues in it and both candidates are arguing them well. Well, a candidate can go before the American people and maybe get 50 or 60 million people. But it is a simply marvelous medium for that kind.

They're not going to go down to the railroad station and hear him. We went almost every state in the union and maybe 5% of the American people saw him. When you were in the White House, there were only six senior assistants to the president and you met every morning at 8.30 and that's when you got a lot of business done. But you were the one of the six who discovered the importance of staying late in the afternoon. And of discovering that the roots of power in the White House are often bourbon and branch water taken alone with the president at the end of the day. Right? Well, in the White House, there is always struggle and contention. If you're going to be worth your soul, you have to take part in the policy decisions. There's where the excitement, there's where the provocation, there's where the challenge is. And so I did that and I had a definite position on the different issues.

I learned after a while that at the end of a day when the president was relaxed a little, if I would drop in and talk with him, it gave me an excellent opportunity to present my view. You could work it in an ostentatiously almost with considerable naturalness. And as a result, it established something of a precedent and so I would always manage to drop in at the end of the day. And then he would have things to discuss about the next day. And after a little while, I decided I wouldn't trade that half hour with anybody else in the government. If they could see the president every week for an hour or two hours or something, just that time at the end of the day, every day gave me a great advantage. Poker was important to him. Yes, it was, I think, for two main reasons. He loved an eight-handed game.

So that meant that I would sit in them, that means I'd have to get six other persons. And they'd always be people that he was very fond of. The Chief Justice and Senator Anderson and George Allen and occasionally Lyndon Johnson after a while, Senator Stewart signings and sat in, and then Avril Harman, he had a group of about 12 and you could always get six in. And it served more as a medium to get together, because he'd go down the boat Friday afternoon and place in poker that evening, even at the poker table, subjects would come up. And then for a half an hour, there wouldn't be any poker. I will wager, I heard him tell about the Chicago Convention of 1944, I bet I've heard it 40 times, because they get talking about, it was enormously important to him, because that's when Roosevelt selected him as vice president.

He was 44. Yes, that's right, do you see? And it almost was Bill Douglas, it almost was Henry Wallace, it almost was Jimmy Burns, but it wasn't, it was Harry Truman, then the phone conversation that he had with Roosevelt who was way on one of these inspection trips and all. And then the men that he knew all were experienced men, either in politics or government. And the discussions were exceedingly valuable, sometimes quite erudite, other times quite political and all. But he loved this, and it was a great relaxation to him. Is it true that he wasn't comfortable in the presence of women, and that's why so many of these were stagger fairs? Well, he just liked to be with men more, that may have come from his days in Kansas City. Well, perhaps so, he was a man's man and he enjoyed very much being with men and he kind of put up with mixed parties, but you would sense a little impatience in him.

He was always very pleasant with the wives of staff and wives that would be invited into the White House. One interesting facet of the man, he actually completely adored Mrs. Truman. It was the one great love of his life. What about that story I heard somewhere of his actually, a playing poker with Churchill? I've never heard it before, until somebody told me recently that he'd actually gotten in Churchill playing poker with him. The curious thing happened, there's a small college in Missouri, named Westminster College. And the president of that college, one spring, had a real mental aberration. He said we're going to have a proceeding here in the spring commencement, and I would like Winston Churchill to come and make the commencement address. Well, I'd say the odds were 10,000 to 1. He writes a letter to President Truman. President Truman said, well, by golly, what a good idea.

I wanted to get to know Churchill better, and this would be a great opportunity to get him over. He writes to Churchill and says, I think this is a good idea, and three days he has letter back, Churchill says, I'll be glad to do it. So Churchill comes over and the president planned the trip very well. He planned it by train. So the president at that time had a private car, a very comfortable private car. And so he took six staff members, those were the six main staff members, and we all lived on the train. And we started off on that train. It was to take six days, three days out and three days back, and that would give him a chance to get to know Churchill well. Well, I might digress a moment, but they didn't know each other well. They'd only met each other at Potsdam. And that had been a very unfortunate situation, because halfway through Potsdam, they'd had an election in England, and Churchill had been defeated after taking the British people through the Second World War, and Clement Atley, his bitter enemy, had been elected. So we all sat down on the back of the train about noon time, and it pulled out.

Mr. Churchill said, Mr. President, he said, I want to suggest something to you, and he said, what's that? He said, now we're going to be together for six days, and he said, I would like to call you Harry. President Truman, a very modest man, said, I would greatly be honored, Mr. Churchill. But he said, Mr. Churchill said, you have to call me Winnie. President said, I couldn't ever call you Winnie, or the first citizen of the world. Well, he said, you have to. You have to learn to do it. Well, he said, all right, I'll try. So it wasn't very long before it was Harry and Winnie. President wanted to make some conversation, couldn't think of anything much, and really I made a rather bad choice, because he said, Winnie, about a month ago, Clement Atley came over to see me. There's a dull silence. Churchill says, there is less there than meets the eye. Well, President, knew he'd gotten off on the wrong foot, but he had to try again, valiantly, so he said, well, he's a modest man.

Churchill said, yes, he's got a lot to be modest about, he wouldn't let him up. So after a little while, he got to going a little better after a while, and Mr. Churchill said, I understand you play poker. Yes, right inside. I played a lot of poker. Well, Mr. Churchill said, I first played poker in the Bohr War. Oh dear, that sounded very impressive. So he said, you think we can play some poker presents said tonight, we'll play tonight. So as soon as dinner was over, they put a green cover on the dining room table, eight of us sat down. But before that happened, when Mr. Churchill was taking his nap, the president called us all in there. We all stood in front of him like this, you see, almost at ease. And he said, gentlemen, the reputation of American poker is at stake. And I said, this fell as awful bright. He's probably a very fine poker player, but I don't want him to go back to England and say that he took us all, you see, because poker is an American game, expect, I expect each man to do his duty.

So we all fight. Well, we got into poker game that night, and we played a pretty good game. We played for about two hours, and Mr. Churchill was over $700 in the hold, you see. He had to excuse himself to go to the men's room, the president said, now look here, man. He said, this man's our guest, and you're treating him very badly. General Vaughn spoke up and said, boss, you can't have it two ways. You're going to make up your mind, which do you want? Well, it finally worked out all right. And everybody eased up a little. He was a terrible poker player. In that memorandum you wrote, you came at the conclusion to saying in effect the re-election of Harry Truman was ten amount to the salvation of the Western world. Did you really believe that? Yes. I really believed it because I had developed the most enormous faith and respect in President Truman. I knew that he was the kind of man I wanted to be president again. I knew about the issues that were important to him.

I knew how he felt about the American people. And I knew that we had come through the Second World War. We had lots of problems ahead. Governor Dewey offered nothing, really, that was appealing to me. Very conservative program, a laissez-faire attitude. And yet President Truman had programs going that were to be of immense benefit, not only to this country but to the world. When I reread that memo yesterday, I thought of John Mitchell testifying before the Watergate hearings. And Senator Talmadge said to John Mitchell, are you saying that you put the re-election of Richard Nixon above all these other considerations? And John Mitchell said, yes, sir, I thought that the re-election of Richard Nixon contrasted to the alternatives was the most important thing in America. And all of us who work for presidents get this sense of obsession about our man, don't we?

Yes, but I was just more objective than always. This has been part one of a conversation on presidents and power with Clark Clifford. We'll return next week with some fascinating tales about the men he has known and served. I'm Bill Moyers. For a single transcript of this two-part program, please send $3.00 to Bill Moyer's Journal, box 900, New York, New York, 101, 01.

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