ehrlichman? a friend of bob halderman, ucla, not exactly a policy wonk, a seattle attorney, not that well connected. why john ehrlichman? he's not that well connected. >> from a mental perspective he was a lawyer in seattle, he was a land use attorney so he had sort of a visceral interest in grounding in environmental issues that nixon just didn't have, so he bought a certain expertise he was able to apply, cared about the stuff far more than nixon did. >> i think the other part of that is a version of he was there at the time and nixon trusted him. at the beginning of the nixon administration, there were the two ideologically contentious advisers of arthur burns who was about to go off to another appointment and daniel patrick moynihan to handle the urban affairs council. and nixon after a time got quite ex hawesed, if you will, by the continual disputes among those two people. that wasn't the way he wanted to have a white house run. he also didn't care that much personally about domestic policy

to a certain extent, ehrlichman benefited from that. if ehrlichman had any identity, it would be that of being a moderate. i think that appealed to a very important part of nixon's character. >> moynahan was brought in to get ahold of what nixon saw as a terrible welfare program. the family assistance plan fails which is what both richard nixon and daniel patrick moynahan really wanted to get put through in some form in congress. when that fames, arthur byrnes goes off to the fed, is that where he was -- >> mm-hmm. >> goes off to the federal reserve opinion he was in the white house as a placeholder. daniel patrick moynahan goes back to his tenured position at harvard so there was a vacuum then in the white house and the tactician that the president was very comfortable with, john ehrlichman was there to fill that vacuum in part. >> i think is the first the president trusted ehrlichman implicitly. the second is that ehrlicmman had refined organizational intelligence. that was a quality which wasn't -- that was a quality which was valuab

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 sa