president nixon couldn't go so he sent mrs. nixon. >> bill, if i could, before we get to that story, i want to stay on one more thing on the vice presidential years. we have some great pictures that are going to go with that and i don't want to spoil it. i want to just ask don briefly to talk to us about the trip to south america and specifically in ka iraq das where the nixon mothered cade was attacked. >> that's the centerpiece of the whole vice presidential years. it was a trip that the vice president really didn't want to do. he felt that it was needed and so forth, but the state department and president eisenhower asked him to do it so he did. we, again, got the airplane from the joint chiefs and we started down to visit the fron deasy inauguration which was the first general inauguration, first free election since the group. that was the purpose of the trip. but, of course, the president and pat were thinking of other things they could do in the other countries, which we did. the initial trips, argentina. uruguay and parag

president nixon couldn't go. so he sent his best. >> i want to stay on one more thing from the vice presidential years. we have great pictures to go with that. can you talk to us about where the nixon motorcade was attacked. >> that's the centerpiece of the whole vice presidential years. it was a trip that the vice president really didn't want to do. but the state department and president eisenhower asked him to do it. so he did. we got the airplane from the joint chiefs. and we started out the inauguration in arkansas general teen, which was the first free election since group. that was the purpose of the trip. but, of course, the president and pat were thinking of other thing thas could do in the other countries, which we did. the initial trips, argentina. uruguay and paraguay were very benign. bolivia wasn't bad but you couldn't breathe for 13,000 feet. then we went down to peru where we had been warned that we might be picking up some communist reaction. some heckling and things of that nature, but nothing real

president nixon couldn't go. so he sent his best. >> i want to stay on one more thing from the vice presidential years. we have great pictures to go with that. can you talk to us about where the nixon motorcade was attacked. >> that's the centerpiece of the whole vice presidential years. it was a trip that the vice president really didn't want to do. but the state department and president eisenhower asked him to do it. so he did.

so nixon, in a sense, was just a holder of that institution. but he felt what he was being asked to do and what the house was being asked to do, what congress was being asked to do was to be a holder of this institution. he felt the institution, above all, had to be protected. and he didn't have any -- he didn't have the visceral feelings about nixon. i think as i said earlier, there was some disappointment when you hear the tapes. but those are personal disappointments about his language. but he didn't have that partisan anger that was so prevalent amongst the democratic party. he never voiced that kind of view. this would be before or after. but there was great disappointment that he felt this individual would abuse the office. but it was more of just appointment in president nixon than anyone else. >> how important is it that he was an immigrant? >> extremely important. i think it formed his whole view. here was an opportunity for a young man to come to this country. it's all in cliches. he embodied all of the cliches. he could be anything.

nixon to the house where we stayed at, in the so-called mansion. and the protocol officer said to me at a certain time we want mrs. nixon to come and knock on the door and then see president tolbert and then we'll go into the inauguration. well, what happened was quite funny. the time came, and mr. mcfarland, who was on the detail at that time, and then we went to mrs. nixon's suite and escorted her to the president's suite and knocked on the door, waited a few minutes. nothing happened. knocked again, and the door opened, and president tolbert looked like this, not at us, but he looked at that. he closed the door on us. which was very unusual. then he realized that it was mrs. nixon there. rather embarrassing, but it was quite interesting. >> now, in getting ready to go on the trips, before you would go on that, such as that or other trips, how was plsz nixon in planning what the itinerary would be? >> well, of course, they invited president nixon, and he couldn't make it, so he sent his best representative. and the way they planned it, what's impo

the president was in meetings, they didn't want to sit outside so they would go around with mrs. nixon. of course that's what's being projected back to the united states. so these heroes in the media wanted to be with mrs. nixon. barbara walters was especially egregious, always wanted to stand next to mrs. nixon. mrs. nixon would smile and i'd grab her arm. and mrs. nixon would politely chastise me later. >> i don't think we'd let you loose in the press office. >> in the end, i just took barbara walters by the arm and said, this is it not "the barbara walters show." >> that's why you weren't on ten most interesting people with barbara walters that year. [ laughter ] what else did you see when you were over there? >> well, of course, with the president, we took him along on a couple of the trips. we went to the great wall and the ming tombs. and the dinners. listen to this -- well, she was nice about this. we were so tired -- i was so tired, mrs. nixon wasn't usually. one night we had on a schedule, thursday night, free night. couldn't wait. all of us couldn't wait to sleep that night i

nixon, traveled with her on so much of her travels. later he was director of the office of international visitors for the united states information agency, bill codus. jack brennan was the marine aide to president nixon from 1969 through '74. later when the president went to san clementi after the presidency, he was his chief of is it a fact. he accompanied the president and mrs. nixon twice, including the original trip. hughes was the military assistant to president nixon. he was also his military assistant as vice president. he was commander in chief of the pacific fleet, knew the nixons very, very well, and we're proud and delighted to have him here. and of course -- and of course julie, who's author of the biography of her mother, entitled "pat nixon: the untold story", and also worked with her husband david eisenhower in writing "going home to glory: a memoir of dwight d. eisenhower 1961 to 1969." ladies and gentlemen, your panel. [ applause ] >> well, i hope we can get that video working before we're done because it's really good.

and the war dominated all of the nixon years. so she was totally reenergized to do more for diplomacy because she knew it would make a difference. and i father used to talk about, i'm trying to build a generation of peace for the american people. and that's what they did. i think she's trips were incredibly important and we did have a generation of peace. and it was the foundations laid in the '50s and late '60s and '70s, thanks to an incredible team who believed in them, supported them, advised. i thank all of you -- there's so many here today from the vice presidential years all the way to the end. you're all part of the story. it's a great american story and i'm just so proud of what was about accomplishinged in those years. >> thank you. i want to thank everyone for coming tonight. thank our extraordinary panel who could not only -- they've lived history. and they're very generous to come tonight and share with us some of their stories and their memories of some very momentous times in the life of our country and very consequent

so nixon was the last one and they pitched one joke at him, no response. second joke, no sponls. finally, the third joke, there was a pause an then nixon laughed. and at the cocktail party afterward, nixon came up to my father and said you know, pat, i didn't really need to laugh, but i thought i'd look better if i did. and, you know, it's -- >> that's a great impression, by the way. >> well, i don't know. but i've never forgotten that story. my father, who was a republican, call nixon "tricky dicky" every single time he referred to him. >> was your father quietly smug when he came crashing down? >> i think he was heartbroken for the country. he didn't want to see a republican be that stupid. especially nixon. >> it would be great to say america learned its lesson, politics cleaned up its act. et cetera, et cetera. but you see the emergence of what, to me, as joan mccain told me, it is surely a recipe for scandalous disaster. the super pact, to go out under freedom of speech and basically try to buy elections. this could only end in tears. >> it doesn't make sense to me because it

she was threatening suicide if he didn't get out of politics, and so richard nixon, who felt he owed his presidency to mitchell, who was his campaign guy in 1968, could not blame mitchell for this, and so, therefore, the cover-up happens, and it's very much related to this whole issue of personal relationships, and so i think what the rules are trying to do is to say you as lawyers, you need to step back and understand that you can't let these relationships decide how you advise your client. the organization is the client, and that's 1.13. and that's the big difference, i think, today from the rules back then. >> and jim has made a very good point, but let me ask a question of arnie where liddy had no relationship with mardian, liddy was not his client technically, but liddy did try to become his client. liddy actually said he wouldn't talk unless mardian would take a dollar so they would have attorney/client privilege, and liddy was a lawyer so he knew about the privilege. did that have any impact on how things were handled? >> i think mardian actually handled it properly. when liddy

so much. but what i think is interesting -- try to step back a little bit. richard nixon did not understand what the presidency was, that there is this goodwill that flows to any president. and it is something he could not use, because he was driven by -- oh, so-and-so is an enemy. let's get the irs on him. we don't like the brookings institute. let's break into the office there and get something out of the files. and he never -- again, bud krogh was talking about serenity. he never really found it. you listen to those tapes and it is not only the illegality and abuse of power but the smallness of richard nixon. he didn't realize that as president he could really do big things. and -- >> some would argue that he did big things but had this character failure and this insecurity and all these other qualities that led him to do the bad things. >> i would say he did big things. and yet they were all done in this tent that he could never get himself out of. that was this tent of anger and revenge and illegality. and it defined his presidency and what -- the way he conducted th

so that happened monday. >> and were you surprised that president nixon had a taping system? >> yes. to say the least. up to that point, it looked like it was going to play out like so many cases we're all familiar with is played out. it's a he said/she said. and john's testimony was very effective, but haldeman and ehrli ehrlichman, they had a quandary position, and you had mitchell and you had everything in between. and so the american people are not willing -- i don't care who the president s they're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and they're very suspicious of his detractors. i think president clinton, for example, got the benefit of his enemies when he got in trouble. >> different trouble, though? >> a different kind of trouble. so when we found out about the taping system, you know, 100 things went through our mind at the same time. you know, is the old fox setting us up? was butterfield planted and sent over there? obviously not, because he didn't know he was going to be called as a witness or to be interviewed, i should say, to begin with. would they exo

horrifying. >> you come back in a piece saying was nixon the central factor in all of this, in all of the wars, in all of the execution. >> that's what's so astonishing about the tapes. always, it's nixon saying bring me the dead mouse. and he is the one that says break in, break in, break in. i want those files. he comes back to it time and time again. and it's he that is insistent about getting ted kennedy's tax returns, about saying let's get my old secret service agent from when i was vice president, put him in ted kennedy's secret service detail, get him to report back and maybe we'll catch the son of a bitch in a compromising position and ruin him so he can't run in '76. that's what this was about. that's what's so brazen and horrifying. >> how important was deep throat? >> deep throat helped us a lot. he was confirming -- >> confirming is the word? >> basically. like the october story, it started out as carl had found three people who were recruited to do this sabotage and spying and none of them had done it. i went to meet with mark feld and it's one of the times where he said, no, this is much bigger. and that's when he said ther

roosevelt tapes were unknown to the national archives until alexander butterfield revealed the nixon tapes, so that in that sense, tapes didn't belong to the american people. but all of that changed. >> the fact of the matter was there was a lot to cover up. it wasn't just who authorized this break-in. they had broken in before. they had made recordings and photographed documents. that material was within the white house, people knew about it, but the fact was that there were all these different things that john mitchell himself, president nixon's closest ally and attorney general, characterized them as the white house horrors. so most significantly, the break-in to daniel ellsburg's psychiatry office, which was conducted by the same team that broke into the watergate building that we're sitting in this evening, so many things that had been done, any single one of which today would have been cause for screaming headlines. one goes back and looks over the kind of things that were done, the idea of firebombing the brookings institution to steal material from their safe, the idea of paying folks

so he would start going along with president nixon. he would try to direct him in a way, and what i found when i was talking to dean, the same 1-2-3 inni inning -- thing was happening again. i was in a position of power, i represented the house of representatives. so he was like going along with me, just like he was going along with president nixon. somewhat anti-climatic. james sin claire, the president's trial lawyer, who was a good lawyer, who i got to know during the hearings, cross-examined, but really the truth is, the witness is not a great impact. john dean's testimony didn't secure president nixon's impeachment and i remember john mitchell, he was a tough guy, he wouldn't talk. he was a tough guy. mitchell, he wouldn't give an inch. i guess he testified before the committee too, dean testified, it's similar to the way he testified before the senate watergate committee. everybody was saying, we got to have witnesses, we got to have witnesses. it turned out it was the right instinct. we had witnesses, we had to satisfy the commi

so -- >> doesn't get any better than that. >> elvis is wearing purple velvet pants and a cape. >> yeah. >> what was the conversation like with richard nixon? >> well, my gosh, being able to host him there, i was his biggest fan in the 1950s. i never went on a date without elvis presley. and he was really helpful, so i owed him a rot. >> did nixon say he had a favorite song, like blue suede shoes? >> no, he never broke out into song, though elvis was dressed for it. i gave an answer to the president that was beyond what was correct. he was hesitant. i moved him over to the president's desk. he started talking about things he had been studying like communist brainwashing. keep it up. we need more communist brainwashing studies and elvis said the beatles came over here and made a lot of money. president, beatles? you know, very popular rock group, sir. >> is that true? you're making this up. >> no, not really, completely. the closest he got to rock 'n' roll was -- i had to explain it. elvis said to the president, mr. president, can you get me a badge from the bureau of narcotics and dangerous drugs? >> and that's what he wanted? >> that's wh

just as ike had said to him. >> so we have these partnerships, as with reagan and nixon. presidents are the same time often have a better chance of getting together and getting along regardless of political voyager. their relationship got off to a rocky start. 2008 campaign, which was bound to be a little hard on them. when obama was invoking a model of presidential greatness in position, it was not the last democrat to manage to win two terms in the white house. it was the last republican. that's it was ronald reagan who was the example -- it wasn't the vision that obama agrees with. when he honored was the fact that reagan knew where he wanted to take the country and was able to do take the country with him. this drove him nuts. he would compare the presidency as a small, poultry missed opportunity. i guarantee that this is not a relationship that would get off to a great start. naturally, after obama wins and appoints hillary clinton as the secretary of state come he basically makes bill clinton signed a prenup. [laughter] all of them what money he is allowed to raise

nixon debate. first time actually a presidential debate was televised and its so proved the power of the media. kennedy won among those who watched it on tv and nixon won among radio listeners. this year's debates were coming up. yesterday the commission on presidential debates announced the schedule and the format, so with the ads flooding the air waves, how much impact will the debates actually have? the kennedy-nixon debate is thought to have influenced the outcome of the election. let's take a look. kennedy, before the debate, you can see was down by one and ended up winning by 4. so there was a big swing there. you can see overall the swings in these debates. i mean, clinton went from up 18 to down 12 in 92, but look at this he really kicked it off 1996. bush went from down eight to up four. and in 2004, went from up 11, dropped to just up three. so the debates obviously have a huge impact. in the last election, though, the debates really didn't make that much of a difference. before the debates the numbers were 50-42. after the debates with mccain and obama, it was 51-41. so how big an imp

and even dick nixon is rewriting history books, and so even nixon can come back and there is life after the reason this is so much fun and important ultimately is that remember the way that the founders describeded i think it was washington who described the senate as the saucer in which -- >> or the tea cooler. >> and that is what history is. it takes our friend michael beschloss who says you cannot write about a president in full until after they leave office 25 years. and that is true. >> and nicky, you talk about a time that richard nixon came over to your house, and you were a young woman -- >> this happened with me and joe all of the time. >> and ex-presidents would always come over, but he came over to talk to your dad, and you talked about how broken and how sad -- >> might have just been the timing, but he was on a seat on our porch, and it was sunset, and it is just a chair in the middle of the porch, and he was just sitting there. >> slumped over, beaten. >> yes, waiting for my parents to come out. he had a lot of physical challenges as well. but i just -- i could not take my

so they met during the nixon administration, when rather covered the white house and they've just remained friends very close friends every since. >> you want facts? >> yes, sir. >> the facts are these. i didn't know dan rather. we were not close friends. our children went to school together in washington, d.c., and our wives were close friends, and dan and i became friends. i had -- i was -- it was not -- he was covering the white house. i was in government but i didn't deal with him, from a press standpoint at all. it was more of a neighborhood type thing. and at a certain point it was not taos, new mexico, it was -- i can remember the name of the town. it's over east of santa fe. and we owned a ranch there, there were five of us, i think, who owned the ranch. just different people, different relationships, and it was kind of a -- we never used it much. it was a -- an investment. and i -- i have known dan over the years. and i haven't seen him in ages. joyce, my wife joyce sees jean from time to time. >> do you still have an honorship at all? >> no, that was in the '70s and '80s. it's be

it was so memorable, it entered our political lexicon. a nixon to china moment. fordable care act. so you have to give president nixon credit. he didn't make this move because it was popular. he did it because it s the right thing to do. great moments are not when one can master and in many ways duplicate or mimic things that have already been done. great moments which make great people is when you do things that have not been done. but you do them because it's the right thing to do. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now. >>> back in the saddle. let's play "hardball." >>> i'm chris matthews in san francisco. let me start with why the republicans might just blow this election. this guy romney's and he's got in real answers to the charge he's killed american jobs, got no answer to the demand to release tax returns. if he's not yelling it ain't my job or wasn't my job, he's out there exposed to his enemies. tonight, back from vacation, i want to know why. what is this guy hiding? he wanted to be president, why do you think he did something

richard nixon was running for vice president democrats pointed out that he'd taken eight hundred thousand dollars or one hundred fifty grand in today's money from some fat cat donors americans were so shocked by that allegation that nixon had to go on national television to address them it was a second most famous speech of all time right behind his i am not a crook speech as he tried to reassure americans that he would never ever cast a vote in a particular way or and rich him self because of his position as a senator i'm sure that you have read the charge and you've heard but i senator and it took eighteen thousand dollars from a group of my supporters let me point out and i want to make this particularly put that no contributor to the no contributor to any of my. has ever received any consideration that he would not have. as an ordinary constituent i just don't believe in and i we also like to candidates who are average people or at least could understand average people harry truman for example drove to missouri after his presidency lived in a modest home until his death jimmy carter walked to his inaugural as the washington post noted right afterwards but what undoubtedly will

nixon... (laughter). with one! they throw around the term "watergate" so much at fox you think the guy running fox had been a nixonrative in the... oh, my god! oh, my god! it's watergate-gate. gate-gate. it's a lot of gates! see, the problem here is you've become the fox who cries wolf. your outrage repertoire has been so overused as to render justified outrage meaningless. "this is watergate!" right. and what was it when second graders sang a song about obama in their classroom? ♪ barack haous sane obama. >> jon: they say it's in *r indoctrine nation. >> i thought this is indoctrine nation straight up. >> doesn't it remind you of any dictator with w the indoctrine nation of kids? this is pure khmer rouge stuff. (audience reacts). >> jon: khmer rouge stuff. yes, who can forget the khmer rouge and the dreaded singing feeds of cambodia. (laughter) they forced children to sing! (laughter) i mean, khmer rouge is worse than watergate so if those kids singing is the khmer rouge, fast and furious has got to be the death star taking out alderaan just to maintain your outrage exchange rate. not to mention the breathlessnes

nixon learned about three weeks before the election that felt was the leak. and i couldn't understand for the life of me why he didn't fire the son of a gun right away. soi called up william ruckles' house. he's the young man, he was in his mid 40s, being sworn in there. mark felt is on the right. and i asked him, what does d richard nixon ask you about mark felt when he asked you to become on an emergency basis the fbi director in the spring of 1973? he said, nixon told me watch out, mark felt is a leaker, don't trust him. in effect, i forced his resignation for leaking. now, i had never heard this. i had never read it in woodward's book, and i was fascinated. i asked him to explain the story to me. it's a long story which i won't get into. but what he told me after that troubled me because he said he had told the same story to woodward, and woodward's response had been this is very important and interesting, and i'm going make sure it gets out. but in fact, woodward had done nothing to get it out. and i wondered why would woodward suppress the fact that felt left the fbi under a cloud of suspicion. and it turns out if you start pulling on that string,

nixon have the most talented criminal lawyer that was available. that didn't happen to be the case. so we proceed from there trying to gather the information as to what's going on. as i say, the die is cast that week. one of the more interesting bits that happened is that nixon calls john mitchell when he gets back to washington from the residence. not a recorded call, but the call has been recorded not on the eob phone where he later reports to haldeman what happened, but rather the room phone. it's a fascinating conversation where mitchell is told by the president that he thinks that the matter can be controlled, and he comes up with a plan to have a cuban committee in miami raise money and protect -- and support these people who have been arrested. richard, i don't think, from the prosecutors i've talked to, that a committee that had been made public, and that was his plan was to public publicize it and it for political reasons. >> we didn't do that. litty said commitments had been made with him when they undertook the task, and he immediately starts extracting those commitments fro

reaman hiy,i pped ua th vigesis aneywaheention of varying degrees or anoher, but no one more so than richard nixon he's practically sitting outside the white housejumping up-dowfai t li t s indlind inintok m hria f t -eoueatmif clip presiden. there's no words. then he writes a somewha tor d ri s a si. er tm as r thcolus btt tor . >>s coe hth idof ud sates. >> finally quit and call us and realizes that some of his predecessors t aeth is icrlyew oue d. anetrct s chasoft goon torsvet n china, that clinton after they become late-night phone buddies isn't just to talk abouforeign policy. he wano ta abo ht orze d htose istm. in ngp emriind doing. of course the president's time is the most scarce and precious than he has. he wanted to ow if he was using up well. and th first month of the esidcy hwas o. hwa cngon s doo hhke t nyse being back in the game but he says 20 odd years later this is still an impossible challenge. >> when we interviewed clion abouthishe sd onof moriposiofig prens leteo n hant a fo n imrh9. xohad just gone to russia. russia was undergoing huge change. he had gone n eaa etsi ths ofm

a year later, ford became president when nixon resigned. sos never elected to the white house. do you have a political trivia question? e-mail us. we'll be right back. this song was written about david beauy's wife that mik jager wanted. the romney campaign just released a statement about "the boston globe" article about when did mitt romney leave bain? "the article is not accurate as governor romney has said and has been confirmed by fact checkers. governor romney left in february of 1999 to run the olympics and had no input on management of the companies after that point." going head to head with the hometown newspaper. real quickly, let's talk about the tax cut issue. president obama this monday wanted to go with the $250,000 threshold. chris, a lot of democrats wanted that $1 million number for saying let's lower $1 million or below. why is that number better you feel? >> i don't know if it's better, but it just -- in their perspective, it's a higher threshold. it covers more small businesses. politically, i think there's a couple ways to

kennedy, nixon, johnson, and so very, very different.o very, very different ambitiouses in terms of dynamics or personal, and something which i think res nate with folks who are reading books today. 1948, the great cliff hanger, and we love to get the weather report, and they're always wrong, and the polls are always wrong, and the experts are always wrong, and by god, we love it when we're smarter than they are, and it turns out we can look back in hindsight and see how wrong they were in 1948. they saw that election night. and with the supreme court, we see that people are reminded of that dewey defeats truman thing with the supreme court health care nomination, and not only the chicago tribune, fox news, but the new york times, cnn got he headline wrong real quick. >> host: to go back to 1920. herbert hoover won two democratic primaries? >> guest: yes. new hampshire and michigan. he had some trouble deciding what he was. he had been raised as a republican. there weren't a lot of democrats in his home town of west branch, iowa. he said

and the republican vision that like richard nixon would turn the clock back on so much of the social justice and economic progress that we've made. when i was inspired by barack obama four years ago, and looking back at that, i still am. i'm a woman, a mother, a lawyer, and an educator and i really believe that barack obama is fighting for the america that i believe in and the values of swr justice, fairness, opportunity, and innovation that really make this country great. four years ago, we all knew that we were going to change history and we did. and president obama didn't just change the way that the world looks at america. i think he's really shown the kind of leadership and chacter th my father wrote about and profiles in courage, the courage to keep fighting for all americans no matter what personal interest or attacks are used against him. we know the change isn't easy. it takes time, but change is what we've seen. the first bill the president signed was the lilly ledbetter law so that women -- [ applause ] so that women could fight back when they weren't paid the same as men.

the one nine hundred fifty nine cadillac is symbolic nine hundred seventy one when when nixon closed the gold window so on a day like today when g.d.p. numbers come out and people are evaluating where the u.s. is in terms of an economic recovery where do you see it and when do you see a pivotal moment in the u.s. economy looking at kind of these markers that you've laid out. well there are a lot of places where you can start. but. the average standard of living. after taxes after inflation in real terms of the average american worker has actually been going down flat to going down since the early one nine hundred seventy s. insofar as it appears to have been getting better it's because he's been taking on huge amounts of debt but. bringing in more up to current time i believe that a real depression started in two thousand and some two thousand and eight and as we speak right now we're just in the hurricane we've gone through the leading edge of the hurricane and two thousand and eight two thousand and nine and we're in the eye of the storm right now and we're going to come up the other room and it's go

it was so memorable, it entered our political lexicon. a nixon to china moment. fordable care act. so you have to give presint