Washington Straight Talk; Scott/Lewis

the From Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Washington Straight Talk brings you a conversation with the leader of the Republican Party in the United States Senate.

The chief spokesman in the Senate for President Ford's efforts to solve America's economic and energy crises. From his office in the Russell Senate Office Building, Senator Hugh Scott, Republican of Pennsylvania and minority leader in the U.S. Senate, is interviewed by N.F. Act correspondent Carolyn Lewis. Senator Scott, we've just witnessed a building confrontation between the President and Congress, and now there's been a compromise and there seems to be an effort to negotiate. Didn't the President really have to back down because of the strength of the Democrats in Congress? No, the Democrats had to back down because of the calm and persuasive cooperative action of the President. The President clearly won this round. I can tell you we have 35 easy votes to sustain a veto if they want to try the issue out.

There's probably no need for it because we won anyway. Actually, we might be able to sustain a veto in the House, which was here before impossible. The President's strength and support is growing. The President had the only plan in town. The Democrats have had a succession of about 25 plans, and then they came out with two at the same time, ways and means, and the right-pastory or wrong-pastory plan. The President said many times our cooperate. The public's finally demanded that the Congress cooperate, and they did non-glets. Well, you're saying then that the President was using this as a tactic that he was trying to force the Democrats to at least think about an energy plan. The President said so to the Democratic leaders. He said, Carl, Al, TIP, and others calling them by name. You must admit for why I didn't have your attention. I took a strong action. I know it was strong, but I got your attention, and now I think we can get together. Aren't you really downplaying the fact that you do have so much power by the Democrats in Congress, and this President is going to have to in the future really negotiate.

He can't really be the strong President that he wants to be. Well, Carl and the President got to negotiate, of course, because the Congress has the votes, but he has the momentum. He has to play a sort of a gentlemanly judo game with him. He's got the leverage, as long as he can swing more of the public. But they have the votes, and what he's insisting on is that they get on with legislation that they make it effective, and he'll help them. Senator, the President now seems willing to deal directly with the Democrats in Congress. Where does that leave you? Does that leave you with any power or any role to play it all? Well, it leaves me happy in the first place, and in a better situation in the second, because the Republican minorities are not strong enough to do anything by themselves alone. But when I see cooperation coming from such splendid people as Mike Mansfield, for example, and such far brands as John Pastore, then it makes my job easier, because I see the President able to sustain his first veto in this Congress, and that's good. A lot of people are rather interested to see that when Congress decided to get together to propose an alternate plan to the President, it was the Democrats in Congress who did it.

It was really a partisan decision. Why weren't the Republicans involved in that plan? Does that mean you Republicans are merely rubber stamping the President's post? Now, you're asking tough questions, Carolyn, but they're loaded. It doesn't mean that at all. It means that the Republicans met with the President three and four times a week, often with the Democrats. It meant that our views were solicited, and our advice was followed. For instance, we almost all of us told him that $3 input tax should not go on at this time. We had real input, and we were persuasive. It was the economist on the one hand, and the Republican leaders on the other, and some of these matters, and out of it came adjustments. We are not neglected. I tell you the only place we're neglected is on television, because the President is treated whenever he gets exposure, as he does, as if he were the only Republican in town, and that we're charged with that. Then your programs put on the loyal opposition, which consists of the huge Democratic majority. You never put on the loyal opposition of Republican minority in Congress. We all have some programs available, and I'm here by asking you for 30 minutes, which you're giving me.

You say that, and yet one gets the impression that on the whole, the Republicans generally do support the President, and it brings me to my next question, what is your role? Are you the spokesman for the White House in the Senate, or what exactly is the role of a Republican, a minority Republican leader with a Republican President in the White House? Well, I have three hats. I have first the posture of being an individual in the Senate, and that means my first obligation is to the oath of office, and therefore to the people of Pennsylvania. And when we get matters like strip mining bills, when we get matters of minimum wage, when we get civil rights issues, I vote as I believe the people of Pennsylvania support. And of course, because I believe these things have proved it. I also, and the party's leader, elected by all of the Republicans unanimously the last two times, not ideologically. And therefore, I must seek to explain to them and discuss with them the President's programs as developed at the meetings.

I must also advocate wherever I can the adoption and support of the President's planning. Then I have a third responsibility, which is not just a messenger from the President, but very often as the President's lawyer on the floor or in the Republican meetings. They are complex in those, and I have had to resolve them. I have resolved them on matters of confirmation of appointees at times. I have had to resolve them in those issues I just mentioned. But this is the kind of President who understands that, first of all, you've got to stand up and be a man. You've got to speak your mind and vote your convictions. And I'm perfectly comfortable. I've said to him at times that Mr. President, you know that you and I had different positions as minority leaders. You take the mass transit highly trust fund argument. Jerry was on one side. I was on the other.

He knows that I'm going to go hard for urban mass transit. My job is to persuade him to go just as hard. Senator, you seem to have a different attitude toward this President than you appear to have with Mr. Nixon. I mean, you almost seem to be down the line loyal to Richard Nixon. Why is that so? Oh, that's hogwash. I wasn't down the line loyal to anybody. I can give you 15 or 20 votes where I differ with Nixon. Nixon staff would have definitely allowed to get me out. Some of them interfered with my activities in various ways. And didn't want me reelected. I as the leader of my party in the Senate, I was loyal to the party. And I did my best to present the Nixon foreign policy. For example, and there it was good and I could. I could not support all of the domestic policy and I told him so. Again, I mentioned civil rights, ways and millions of civil rights and minimum wage and tax bills and other matters. I often disagreed with the President and said so. I took a position that no man is that every man is innocent until proof guilty. This shocked our libertarian liberal press in the country and the television who assumed that every man is guilty until he's proved innocent.

So if you want a loaded question, I'll give you a loaded answer. Senator, do you consider yourself a good judge of character? And I am loyal to Ford. Yes, I am a good judge of character. Then how could you have misjudged? But I am loyal to Ford because I have an easier relationship with him. Well, how is that you appeared at least toward the end to have misjudged Mr. Nixon because he had lied to you or at least led you astray in a couple of occasions before? I didn't appear to misjudge Mr. Nixon, but I was not in a position where I should make a judgment of guilt until I had the information. And for me to have made a premature judgment before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee had made its judgment where the case lay before the people of this country had reached a genuine consensus which they were clearly moving toward. It was not my role until then to make the hard decision that I must turn on the leader of my party and tell him to get out.

John Rhodes and I knew for some weeks that we were likely to face that agonizing decision. When it came Rhodes, Goldwater and myself went to the President and we made it clear to him that it was time to get out. I think it was an act of decision, an act of leadership and an act of courage. I do not apologize for not being precipitated. But you really did go out on the limb for Mr. Nixon, didn't you, Senator, saying that you had seen evidence that could clear him and didn't that damage your credibility? Of course, I think it damaged my credibility because the evidence I saw was not complete evidence. And I was lied to by Mr. Nixon in my judgment, but that happened very late in the proceedings except for one instance where I thought there was an evasion of remark, but politicians at times do make evasion of remark. The only time I concluded I lied was after that he lied was after the tapes came out and after we learned from St. Clair and haig the really awful truth of this behavior. As a lawyer, for example, I have no right, whatever, under our system of justice, now Constitution, to presume guilt because millions of people hate a man. That is not to test.

And I met that test and I met it with courage. But I don't make any mistake about it. I think Nixon, I think Ford is about a president than Nixon was. Senator, there have been reports that, in fact, I think you have publicly stated that at the time Mr. Nixon decided on Mr. Ford, he had told you that he was not going to choose anyone from the congressional leadership to be vice president, is that true? Well, not exactly in that words. I said there was an evasion. I said that when President Nixon said he was not going to choose me because he didn't want to stir up any leadership fights in the Senate, among Senate Republicans, I asked him as the same sort of reasoning applied to Jerry Ford. And he gave me an answer which I think was misleading. And I guess he would think not, but he said, oh sure. To me, that was an evasion or misleading answer. I could not say he was lying to me because he might have made up his mind between 10 in the morning and 7 at night. I don't think he did.

But I did not go out and say, I have been lied to because that's the equivalent of saying that people of America, I worried so much to be vice president that I've been betrayed. Well, I didn't want to be vice president, never had. And me, I didn't feel betrayed because I was not accounted for the office. So you don't really feel in a way that, that the prize was taken away from you, you were given to the leader on the, the house side nuts. You wouldn't want to be president right now. I wouldn't want to be vice president and I would rather not be president and I have never seriously been a candidate for the office. And I was once the favorite son candidate of my state for vice president, which I made clear to all of Sunday at the convention was the device to hold the convention together, the delegation together. Now, I have never lusted for any office except to be Senator of the United States. I love the job. I do it as well as I can, as honestly as I can.

That's been, to my mind, the best job in the world. Senator, you are as Republican leader leading a dwindling flock. So it seems right now, which brings me to politics and I think it is. Well, yes, we lost three. That's, well, that's not winning three. You have thirty eight or thirty nine when I came here, we had thirty two and thirty four. So over that long term, you feel you've had some pluses. Yes, we've lost seats. We shouldn't have lost dwellings, do you pity? And sometimes why not facing the issues? Well, Senator, that brings me to the fact that the Republicans have been meeting over the past few weeks. The conservatives have met and the Republican national committee has been holding meetings and so forth. Do you think that the conservatives are priming themselves for another power grab just as they did in 1964? Is that what's in the cards for the party?

Well, I don't know what they're up to. It's a mysterious kind of an operation. If it is a power grab, I think it's divisive to the party. Unfortunately, I will try to do my part to save the Republican party for the Republicans. And that means the moderates, the conservatives, and the liberals, and there's room for all of them. I think in some of their aspects, in the argument, for example, of not broadening the base of the party, there is stupid as they can be, those people who feel that way. I think this party is, they call it the party of the open door, although if it's open, let's keep it wider for blacks, for nationality, and ethnic groups, and for everybody. And that's been my belief and my position. Well, former governor of California, Ronald Reagan, says that liberals like yourself, liberal Republicans like yourself, Jacob Javits, and Charles Percy, should leave the Republican party if you can't go along with the conservative principles. Do you have an answer for him? Well, no, not for Ronnie. He may be running for something.

But an answer for Hugh Scott, I'll give you that. And that answer is that my credentials are more deeply rooted than those of my critics. I've always been a Republican. I never was a left-wing Democrat. I never had to be converted across over or past, or whatever. I was chairman of my party. I have been elected unanimously by my party to be its leaders. I have been fair and inequitable to conservatives and liberals alike. I am neither. I am a moderate. And if anyone wants to call me a liberal, that will make some votes for me in one area back home, and he's welcome to do it. But I speak to Republican gatherings. I never charge a cent as some do. And I appeal to everyone there, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, moderate. Well, Senator, isn't Reagan saying that there isn't room in the Republican party for the Reagans and the more conservative people and the Hugh Scotts?

I just don't think that I want to accept advice from visitors. You don't consider him then a true blue Republican. I don't want to accept advice from visitors. I've been a Republican all my life. I know what the party is. I know what I stand for. And I would say that in my state, there are more people who would listen to Hugh Scott than would listen to his critics whether they define me as a liberal, as some do it, or as a conservative, as others say. Well, Senator, are we in for a struggle for the soul of the Republican party now with the gauntlet's round down on conservatives? It wouldn't be all bad if we did. The Democrats fight for their soul regularly. And as Abraham Lincoln said, no matter how often the Democrats fight, always seem to be plenty of kittens. And maybe it would be a good thing if the Republicans did determine where they stand and what they stand for and fight for it. I'll fight for my views here and fight damn hard for them.

That I believe we've got to listen to people. We've got to listen to the poor, the disadvantaged. We've got to do more for consumers. We've got to fight as I have all my life on adequate minimum wage. We've got to realize that unless we share the concerns that the people they won't share ours. Well, Senator, one of the things that the one of the people that the conservatives are concerned about, and we saw that in the filibuster battle on the floor of the Senate, is Nelson Rockefeller, who is an old friend of yours. And I know that you back Nelson Rockefeller for the presidential election. I was a senior floor leader in 1968. You speak of loyalty, Carolin. I was my candidates for Rockefeller for President and Romney for Vice President. And any loyalty I showed later is the same loyalty I would have shown Lyndon Johnson or Jack Kennedy, and indeed I did. Well, couldn't a Rockefeller candidacy in 1976, if forward for some reason, decides not to run, either as President or as Vice President, couldn't that really tear the Republican party apart, considering the way the conservatives deal? Carolin, you assume that any one wing of the party has a right to be prevalent, that isn't true, or to be dominant.

The party must make its decisions at a convention as a party. And if the party decides it wants to support the President to get, that will be the President to get. And no amount of threats from a very small, a dissident group is going to sway them. They sound more than they are. And sometimes I think the liberals sound more than they are. Most of us in the middle of the road is, it's been forgotten that Pennsylvania, Republican party, on my motion, endorsed the Ford Rockefeller ticket months ago. Senator, you're saying that you... That's 106 delegates. And I'm chairman. Senator, you're saying then that the Republican party can survive in 1976 if the conservatives walk out and leave? No party can afford to have large numbers of its people walk out and leave. But if a few people walk out of a party, as has happened, or groups of people, as has happened to the Democrats' time and again,

more people sympathize with the party because of that. And we usually get more accession. So for every person on the extreme end, either who walks out of the Republican party, no matter how visibly and to what fanfare, we'll pick up two or three from the independence and the Democrats. So I'd say let them walk out if that's what they want to do. But I would first read with them to be sensible enough to realize that the party with the smaller numbers can't win by division. You'll win by addition. And if necessary, by a little multiplication, but you have to wait for that. How deep is the disaffection with Mr. Ford as the party leader? Not very great. I think the very hard conservatives tended to blame him for that disaffection with one of Governor Vice President Rockefeller's rulings. Those same people have been down to the White House. It's very weak and professors are quite pleased with the cordial reception they got.

The party in the Senate is about equally divided between moderates and liberals and conservatives. And several who are not either moderates, I think. I'd put Senator Griffin myself in that category. Senator Baker. You know Mr. Ford and you know Mr. Rockefeller very well. And can you shed some light on the relationship between these two men? You know we hear all these reports that Mr. Rockefeller is a really strong, aggressive, active man. And how are you going to keep him down on the farm? Well, I can give you an illustration of that. That's sort of an hitherto undisclosed situation. They work well together. They respect each other. The president is not uncomfortable in the presence of talent. He welcomes men who have, and women who have something to get as a case of Carla Hills, his new cabinet officer. In this case, I suspect, I know more than I suspect, but I'll repeat this way. I suspect that what went on at the White House was that Rockefeller said the Ford on this rule 22 reform.

I can do it two ways. I can follow your orders, you're the boss, and I can accordingly so conduct myself. Or I can call the shots the way I see them. And knowing Ford, without knowing that this is exactly what happened, but strongly believing it did, I suspect that the president said to him, well Nelson, use your own judgment and follow your conscience. I may have a different point of view from you. Do the best you can now. I won't go any further than that because then I'm quoting people. Well, you don't think that there's a danger that Rockefeller with all his aggressiveness and power and intellect could really become the strong man behind the presidency. I think Ford likes strong man behind the presidency. I've seen strong man in other administrations about McNamara was a good illustration of it. Kennedy didn't have any strong man, as you know, because he was relying on his personal charisma.

But I recall that Harry Truman had strong man in his secretary's state, in men like Haramon and Atterson. I think good men and competent men are a threat to strong men. Senator, I want to go back full circle as we're beginning to run out of time and just ask you something about yourself as leader of the party. And we've just got one minute, but you are a moderate to liberal Republican and you're surviving among a number of conservatives. How do you survive? How have you managed to keep hold of this leadership in the Senate? Because I have had the support of people who have not been so bound by ideology that they would put me in a straight jacket. There are people who are conservatives and moderates and liberals who have supported me. And the fact that they did it unanimously, I think, indicates that they were reasonably pleased with me. I have tried to be extremely fair in all of the decisions I've made.

I have not sought to beat anybody over the head and force them to agree with me. I have tried persuasion and I have tried to be fair and reasonable and I think it appeals to people. I hope so. Any of that. I've gotten along. Thank you very much for being with the Senate. I think I have this stuff here, I'm glad. No, I didn't send it. Washington Straight Talk. From the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, Impact has brought you Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, with Impact Correspondent Carolyn Lewis. Next week on Washington Straight Talk, House Speaker Carl Albert is interviewed by Impact Correspondent Paul Duke. Washington Straight Talk. Production funding provided by Public Television Stations, the Ford Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This has been a production of Impact, a division of GWETA.