1971: A Prologue, Starring Richard Nixon



Rod Stewart, Amazing Grace.
John Fahey, Amazing Grace.

I would like to leave a renewed conviction in America that the system does work, that democratic government is better than the alternatives, that reforms can be made through peaceful change...In a sense it's all right here in this room, right here in this chair. Whoever is President of the United States, and what he does, is going to determine the kind of world we have.

Pres. Richard Nixon, to Allen Drury, 1 April 1971.

Star of show--square type--named Archie. Hippy son-in-law...The show was a total glorification of homosex. Made Arch look bad, homos look good. Is this common on TV? Destruction of civilization to build homos. Made the homos as the most attractive type. Followed Hee Haw.

Nixon to H.R. Haldeman, ca. late May 1971, the morning after Nixon watched "All In the Family" for the first time.

We've checked and found out that 96 percent of the bureaucracy are against us; they're bastards and they're here to screw us...You've got to realize the press aren't interested in liking you; they're only interested in news or screwing me.

Nixon, speaking at a full Cabinet meeting, 29 June 1971.

You hear a lot of stuff around that the U.S. is not to be trusted with power. You hear that our presidents lie us into wars. You hear that the U.S. is imperial and aggressive. But we build up our enemies after wars, and we ask not for one acre. What will we get for ourselves after Vietnam? Nothing.

If we retreat from the world scene, who's left? With all our stupidity, with all our impetuousness, what other nation in the world is as idealistic than the United States?

Nixon at the first meeting of his Productivity Commission, 29 June.

Washington is full of Jews...Most Jews are disloyal...Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?

Nixon to Haldeman, 3 July 1971. (At the end of the conversation, Nixon sent out a presidential order to a staff member to see how many Jews were in the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

He has to realize he can't stay forever. We may have on our hands here a man who will pull down the temple with him, including me. I don't think he would want to. I mean he considers himself a patriot, but he now sees himself, as McCarthy did, and perhaps Agnew now does, he sees himself as the issue, rather than the issue, which is the great weakness of any political man.

Nixon to John Ehrlichman, discussing J. Edgar Hoover, 25 October 1971.

"Amazing Grace": from Every Picture Tells a Story and Fahey's America. All quotes are from Richard Reeves' President Nixon: Alone In the White House. Top: Nixon meets Pierre Trudeau, December 1971.