after, when a man is again president, what will happen to the first lady's role after that? will it revert? or will it have moved in a direction that is maybe more freeing to the woman who then becomes first lady. >> lisa kathleen graddy, thank you very much. >> thank you. you can watch american artifacts and other american history tv programs any time by visiting our website. c-span.org/history. the richard nixon presidential library convened a symposium titled "understanding richard nixon." this hour long discussion focuses on the president's economic and environmental policies and reviews the administration's civil rights record as well as the expansion of the white house staff and its authority during the nixon years. >> well, as one of the coordinator of this event, you know that -- and i say in all sincerity that i'm very glad to

see you all here. so this is the panel that -- one of the panels i've really been looking forward to. the domestic panel. we've really got some amazing scholars who have some very interesting and understudied topics. starting with nigel bowles. educated at the university of sussex, georgetown university and oxford university. he's taught about the university of edinboro and university of oxford where he's been a lecturer since 1988. his books include "the white house and capitol hill," "nixon's business." "authority and power in presidential politics" which won the richard e. newstadt produce of the political studies association of the united kingdoms in 2006. his current project which we're all looking forward to is "the politics of money: presidents, congress and the federal reserve board 1945-1988." and he's currently the director of the rothermere american institute at oxford.

we're also pleased to have karen hult. karen m. hult. she is professor of political science at virginia polytechnic institute and state university. she's the author of "agency merger and bureaucratic redesign" and is the co-author along with charles e.wolcott of "em bowering the white house: governance under nixon, ford and carter." "governing the white house through hoover and lbj." and "governing public organizations." she has co-authored essays on the white house council and staff secretary as part of the white house transition project in 2000 to 2008. she's the past president of the american political science association's presidency research group and a book review editor for "the presidential studies quarterly." dean kotlowski is here. here's a professor of history at salisbury university in maryland. he's the co-author of "nixon's civil rights, politics,

principle and policy." he's written lots of articles and many journals including "the journal of policy history," he was the visiting professor of history at indiana university. he's currently conducting research for a biography of paul v. mcnaught. paul milazzo is here as well. associate professor at ohio university. author of "unlikely environmentalists: congress and clean water 1945 to 1972." he received his ph.d. from the university of virginia. fittingly, was a fellow at the miller center for a year. one of our co-sponsors here. his current research and teaching interests include 20th century history, u.s. history, politics and policy, the environment, american intellectual history and history with an emphasis of conservative

thought. so it's an excellent panel. we're looking forward to what they all have to say. if you would. >> thank you, mindy. good afternoon, everybody. thank you for coming. my thanks, if i may, to everybody who's made this occasion possible. not least to mel for the volume but also this library and its formidable director and staff and to the miller center. to all of them, we are most grateful. when i met a colleague yesterday for the first time and he asked what i was speaking about, and i explained, he raised his eyebrows. and said -- speculated that it might be that it was one of the more thinly attended of the talks today. i'm glad to see that he was wrong.

as i was making my way to the -- my room in the hotel yesterday, i observed the mug which i had been given upon my arrival. and i did what i usually do with mugs, which is to check its providence. so i turned it upsidedown and sure enough, saw what i expected to see, namely, "made in china." and i reflected, not for the first time, upon the extraordinary political creativity of president richard milhous nixon in having con tributed so mightily to opening up china and to reconfiguring united states foreign policy. and reflecting more broadly upon creativity as a theme in this remarkable president's politics. and it's upon the theme of creativity that i wanted to

speak today, because it seems to me that in his economic policy, he was, in key respects, at least as creative as he was in his foreign policy. what were the contexts of the making of economic policy when he assumed the office on the 22nd? and the 20th of january 1969? they were contexts, i suggest, of quite formidable challenge both at home and abroad. the territory is familiar. i needn't run over them. the most important of them from my point of view is perhaps that vietnam had brought about by fiscal 1967 a deficit, or a current deficit in 1967 prices of $27 billion. which was within $200 million or $300 million exactly, exactly the total federal fiscal deficit for that same fiscal year. so the special southeast asia appropriation in '67 accounted

for the whole of the united states' fiscal deficit in that year. and that gap was closed by fiscal '69 because and only because of the tax surcharge which lyndon johnson belatedly and at considerable political cost to him persuaded congress to pass in 1968. so that by '69 the context -- the fiscal context was a little easier. fiscal '69 was, in fact, one of those rare years in post-war american politics when the united states had ran a fiscal surplus. nevertheless, the fiscal position remained extraordinarily difficult. and it was one of the points of considerable difficulty and challenge which president nixon inherited. there were others. monetary policy was highly contested. highly politicized. relations between the fed and the outgoing johnson administration had, on occasion,

been extraordinarily and publicly difficult as policy preferences diverged. and crucially, although it was of no domestic political importance, it was of most momentous international importance. crucially the bretton woods system which ties gold to the dollar and all other currencies to gold and to the dollar in fixed exchange rates, the bretton woods which had until 1958 provided the liquidity with which the western world were covered after the second world war, the bretton woods systems by the late 1960s was plainly, was plainly in a condition of incipient crisis. it could not last for so long as other countries which had once sought dollars now wished only to exchange those dollars for gold. the system was unsustainable.

so much for the context. now, all choices are technically difficult in economic policy. and these choices were made especially difficult by the intellectual context of economics which was one of the declining credibility of keynesian nostrums in the face of what appeared to be the early emergence of the conjunction of high and rising unemployment and high and rising inflation. all choices are technically difficult, and these were technically difficult because that conjunction was incompletely understood, as it remains today. but all choices, of course, are also politically charged. and all the choices in fiscal monetary and international monetary policy were politically charged because they concerned directly questions of

distribution of goods, distribution of post-tax income, distribution of political power and all of those questions had domestic political and electoral resonance as nixon knew very well indeed. in one respect, as the outset of his presidency, he severed, severed privately within the white house the -- what he took to be the public perception of republican presidents. namely, that they preferred low inflation over low unemployment. he sought to sever that connection in the public mind and made it crystal clear to all his economic advisers in december 1968 and january '69 that as president of the united states, his choice would be different. he would privilege job creation and high employment over inflation. nobody, i think, could have foreseen how dramatically that

trade-off was to shift from 1971 onwards. but nixon's creativity bursts through not, i think, in the first 18 months of his presidency in economic policy, but thereafter in 1971 with a vengeance. firstly and most obviously in his replacing david kennedy as secretary of the treasury with john connolly, a conservative, it is true, but a democrat and a prominent democrat. and someone with whom he had previously not had close and continuing political relations, but of whom he had long been an admirer. and who was politically immensely useful to him. most dramatically, nixon's creativity, his agency, his, as it were, rediscovery of the possibilities of transformative politics in the presidency, is expressed and evident in his doing what everybody thought, everybody knew he would not and could not do.

that is to say accepting the challenge thrown down to him by a democratic congress in 1970 which had granted to the president of the united states the authority in law to impose price and wage controls, a statute which was passed because -- precisely because majority democrats knew that an incumbent republican president could not and would not avail himself of those powers. in august of 1971, he did, and imposed a freeze on prices and wages for 90 days. there is no more dramatic illustration of the capacity of the federal government as of any state to intervene in markets than to seek to control prices and wages in peacetime. nixon, of course, had some considerable personal knowledge of those processes through war. through his work in the office of price administration. but the setting of rubber

tires -- the prices of rubber tires in 1942 is one thing. seeking to control the prices and wages in the united states economy in 1971 was another. it was a dramatic move and it was accompanied by the exit from the bretton woods system. the temporary imposition of import surcharges. and by the continuation of a spectacularly successful campaign which the president led to pressure the federal reserve board and particularly the federal open market committee under the chairmanship from 1970 of his chosen lieutenant arthur burns to pressure the fed to ease monetary policy to the point where unemployment fell or would fall in 1972 and be accompanied because of the imposition of wage and price controls by low and falling inflation. precisely those two things happened. politically, it was, in my view,

a master stroke. indeed, a master clause. the wage and price freeze -- by the wage and price freeze, richard nixon abandoned his former conventional policy tools to control inflation. august 1971, the period between august '71 and november '72 marked his own deliberate and creative policy rupture both of his presidency and in the conduct of the united states' entire peacetime economic policymaking in the post-war world. he thereby comprehensively outmaneuvered his political opponents through the extraordinarily daring appropriation of their purposes, of their constituents as the result of november '72 election showed, and to their chosen policy instruments. domestic presidential politics, i think, give few more dramatic demonstrations of the disruptive capacity of the president's uses of lawful authority.

thank you very much, indeed. [ applause ] >> nor do i have a british accent. nonetheless, i would like to add my own thanks to the others that have expressed theirs to tim naftali, the nixon presidential library staff, as well as to the miller center and certainly to mel small. as a scholar and as a citizen, actually, of the united states, i have gained a great deal from what i have been able to do with the help of all of those sources. so again, sincerely, thank you very much. now, i'm a student of white house staffing. and, on occasion, people say after they say, gee, that's kind of boring, isn't it? they say, but what do we know? are there lessons? i've distilled two lessons.

one is, it all depends. and the second is, everything begins with richard nixon. and i say that quite seriously. in fact, what i'm going to talk about today is nixon and the administrative presidency. and i'm going to suggest that the kinds of strategies and initiatives as well as some of the debate that has come over the administrative presidency, indeed, started with richard nixon. now, as it turns out, all presidents have clear incentives to seek good staff around them in the white house, in executive branch agencies, and in other parts of government. but richard nixon also, again like all presidents, also desired responsiveness to his own political and policy priorities. nigel has already talked to us about the context of the times. those things have to be kept in mind when one thinks about

strategies and one thinks about the kinds of goals that mr. nixon tried to pursue as president. those context -- the contextual elements interacted, of course, with his ideological commitments, his beliefs and his sense of politics. he confronted both the democratic congress and an executive branch populated by those that richard nixon and his aides believed were opposed to his policy objectives. as a result, together, they fashioned what former appointee of richard nixon, richard nathan, first called the plot that failed, but later came to call an administrative presidency approach. and he did that after what he saw as the successes of that approach as it was put into place more systemically by ronald reagan. we have seen it also being put into place by presidents like george w. bush, bill clinton and, to some extent, president obama. it's not a republican set of strategies nor a democratic set of strategies.

it's another way that presidents try to achieve their policy and political objectives. so that's what i want to talk about just a little bit today with the pioneer of some of those strategies. though, of course, as it was suggested this morning, some of the responsibility or the gratitude for that may well go to dwight eisenhower. who really thought that richard nixon needed to have greater experience in understanding some of the constraints and the dynamics of larger organizations. something that mr. nixon really had never had at any point in his career. in terms of a set of strategies, when we talk about the administrative presidency, what we're really talking about are presidents trying to achieve their goals outside of the legislative process, outside of public speaking, outside of communication kinds of devices. instead, they turn to executive branch agencies and executive branch departments as well as to their white house staff and the executive office of the

president. in nixon's case, his tools ranged from firing and repositioning particular individuals to introducing an monitoring evaluation of the entire executive branch. and he did that through the office of management and budget, renamed and redirected under richard nixon as well as the creation of the domestic council. now, some of mr. nixon's strategies were more direct. relying on appointees as carriers of presidential values. others sought to directly stop or refashion bureaucratic activities. it's important to remember, i think, that richard nixon, like all presidents, started with a congressional strategy. and he also started by saying domestic policy can be run by anybody. the reason to have a president is to have someone who can take a look at important national security and foreign policy issues. so he started without very much attention to a range of domestic

policy issues. he turns to these administrative strategies, however, as he found it frustrating and unproductive to try to work with the democratic-controlled congress. democratic-controlled congress and he also quickly grew disenchanted with many of his own initial executive branch appointments. most cabinet members as it turns out actually retained sub cabinet members. the directors of bureaus from the democratic johnson administration. moreover, some of nixon's own appointees, like george romney, pressed for support of great society programs such as model cities that the president found anathema. his speechwriter wrote romney was, quote, thoroughly sold. one could say cruelly brainwashed by the experts and that has certain resonance, especially in that point of time, especially by the experts

at hud on the wisdom of expanding many great society programs. at the same time that nixon entered the white house, he was clearly suspicious of career officials, he's evil bureaucrats that populated the agencies and departments around the mall in washington. what he was suspicious about them for was that he believed that the executive branch departments were populated by civil servants who were liberal, democratic, and mostly opposed to his administration's priorities. now, those kinds of concerns were not entirely baseless. a survey of senior career officials in 1970 found, for example, that 47% of them identified as democrats, 17% as republicans, and 36% as independents. what the president did in response over the remaining part of his administration was to pursue a variety of administrative strategies in order to gain better control of

the executive branch. i want to talk briefly about a few of them and talk briefly again about their seeming impact. critical to these strategies at the core of them, if you will, were strategic appointments. though he began with promises of cabinet government, he soon decided that what he would need to do was to replace people that not only shared his policy commitments and his political party, most presidents do that, but more important according to people like fred malik who came to the white house to work for him and started the first systematic presidential personnel program, what mr. nixon sought was loyalty, loyalty to the person and loyalty to that person's ideological commitments and program commitments. in addition to this personnel strategy that richard nixon started throughout the executive branch, he also saw that it might make sense to not give as much responsibility or as much attention or as many resources to executive branch departments

and agencies, especially those new deal agencies and great society agencies that were at best to be held at arm's length. most times to be distrusted and suspicious about. what he did in response, as we all can remember, is that he began to expand the white house staff and the executive office staff. they not only expanded in size, they also significantly expanded in authority. between 1969 and 1971, for example, the executive office staff, which includes the white house, grew from about 1200 people to just about 1800 people, and that doesn't count all the so-called detailees that were borrowed from other parts of the executive branch. more important, this added staff had a notable increase in its authority. much of the decision making in domestic policy issues increasingly became centralized in the white house.

john ehrlichman grew tasked with domestic policy development. one of the administration's single attempts to strengthen control over the executive branch was the march 1970 creation of a domestic council and a supporting policy staff lodged in the executive office and also a restructured and renaped office of management and budget. now, the domestic council followed the model of the existing national security council, a cabinet council with cabinet members, but also a dedicated policy staff. much like the national security council staff during the nixon years, the ehrlichman domestic council staff wielded real influence over most domestic policy and the scope of the domestic council's responsibilities were not limited to integrating policy ideas. rather, they often became involved in making policy, writing legislation, and making changes and decisions about particular bureaucratic regulations and rules. as you might imagine for a

professor of public administration and policy, i can talk about these techniquesed a infinitum but i won't. you're saved. i do think though the impact of richard nixon's administrative presidenty initiatives is something we ought to continue to think about. many of these efforts never were fully implemented as his second term screeched to an early and unpredicted end. as i said earlier, richard nathan called his book the plot that failed. and yet many of these strategies did yield results. by 1976 senior career officials were more likely to report being republican or independent than in previous years. they also were more apt to express support for more conservative policies like those nixon pursued. more generally, many of nixon's changes in structures and processes have persisted. later presidents have continued

efforts to continue budgets. his early efforts to monitor and curtail agency regulation, and he firmly implanted the idea of domestic policy staff in the expectations and the practices of the modern presidencies. lastly, later presidents also have pursued the systematic appointment of personnel and tried to implant their dna throughout the executive branch. we also when we criticize presidents often look back to richard nixon. some of the discussion of unilateral activities and, indeed, of the president we began to hear more of under a recent president, many people will trace back to some of the efforts and initiatives and rationales of the nixon presidency. what that says to me in conclusion is that boring, less interesting, or important and compelling, attention needs to be paid, i think, to these kinds

of administrative strategies as presidents and the place to begin is, indeed, with richard nixon. [ applause ] >> i, too, would like to thank the miller center and the nixon library and tim and i would especially like to thank melvin small for inviting me to contribute. i am greatly honored to have been invited to do so, and i think what mel has done here is to create a kind of model for these other presidential companions. it seems like our presidents will not be lonely. we have companions for ronald reagan coming out. a companion for harry truman and other presidents.

what i'm going to do here is to talk a little bit about the historiography of the civil rights programs of the nixon administration and start you out with a quotation. this is from nixon in 1973 when the historical record of the first four years is written, i'm confident it will show that thissed a minute vation did far more in the fields of civil rights and equal opportunity than its critics were willing to admit. and there's much evidence to sustain that claim. the nixon administration implemented affirmative action and sanctioned set asides for minority owned businesses, it desegregated southern schools, approved an expanded voting rights act, and reformed federal indian policy. yet the president also courted conservative white southerners and he strongly opposed busing. as a result, the white house's approach to civil rights was, as at liberal nixon adviser recalled, operationally progr s progressive but obscured by clouds of retro aggressive rhetoric.

what i'm here to do today is to review this historiography of the nixon administration. i think we're fortunate because there is a strong body of historical literature where you can see the old dialectic of what nixon did. i'll look at four or five major schools of interpretation. and do so very quickly. this is the first interpretation. it argued about nixon did was retreat from civil rights enforcement in pursuit of conservative white southern votes. the purveyors of this argument cite as their examples the delaying of deadlines for school desegregation in mississippi in 1969, the president's overt o peels to white southerners perhaps best exemplified by his attempts to place two conservative white southerners on the u.s. supreme court. i'm talking