Interview of Stanley Plog

Before we go into your actual involvement with [Ronald] Reagan, could you give me some background of your education, your teaching career, where you got your degree, and what field you were in?

My undergraduate degree is from Occidental College; I was in psychology, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude. My doctorate is from Harvard University, in clinical psychology, though you have to take qualifying exams in social psychology, cultural anthropology, and sociology. My heavy background there was not only in clinical but in survey research methodology, and I had some scholarships there also. I took my clinical internship for psychology at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA; so I worked as a medical psychologist there for about a year, then directed the academic portions of a Training Program in Social Psychiatry that just started up, for two years, I think. I went north on campus and helped start up a thing (that I don't think is there any more) called the Urban Observatory, which was an urban social problems study center in the Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

Approximately what years are we talking about now, when you first came to UCLA?

I came to UCLA in 1960 as part of my internship and became a medical psychologist I guess, in '61--it's on my resume someplace. The thing that we did in the Institute of Government and Public Affairs was the Watts riot study. We did the Watts riot study that was used and was finished; it was the only one that really was completed that I know about, with governmental funds, OEO funds, Office of Economic Opportunity.

Was this related to the McCone Commission in any way?

No, they did a separate thing; they didn't really finish their work. No, this was separately funded through the Office of Economic Opportunity, and I was co-project director of that. About that same time was when I was doing some work with Reagan.

You did Reagan out of a company called BASICO that you started at that time, is that correct?

No, the Behavior Science Corporation was started a couple years earlier..

Okay, and who started that?

I did, along with a fellow named Ken [Kenneth] Holden.

And this was taking place along with your other work at UCLA?

With my academic involvement, right. We were doing a small amount of work; we were doing some work to school districts, outlying school districts, operating kind of as a broker who would provide toplevel psychologists for them because they couldn't afford to get them themselves. So we'd provide them a psychologist one day a week, and they would pay for the service.

And how did you become involved with the Reagan project to begin with?

I started a Republican club on campus because I am a Republican and ran into such terrible resistance, simply because everything was so liberal on the campuses. I got a lot of static from people; and the people who were Republicans, even those who were tenured professors, just amazed me. They were afraid to identify themselves. I was not tenured, and I didn't care who knew [I was a Republican]. And I finally said, "Oh, to hell with it. We need some academic involvement in the Republican party; I will look for some good brains outside of academia. One of the people I came in contact with was a fellow named Bob Krueger, who headed up a company called Planning Research Corporation. Bob joined some of our meetings. He also had trouble finding academic Republicans. He had contact somehow to the Reagan campaign, and they were looking for the kind of help that I could give. Bob gave my name to them and we got together. What really kicked that off was that Reagan in January of 1966, I guess it was, when he made his announcement--for the 1966 campaign it was, I guess--and said, "Would you believe that 15.1 percent of the population of California is on welfare?" Well, the fact is, it was 5.1 at that time, not 15.1. So the guys who really got Reagan going, like Holmes Tuttle and Henry Salvatori, said no more of this. "If he's going after it he's going to have a professional campaign. We're going to get some good research background for him. Go out and find it." They didn't want any more goofs like that. They contacted me and we put together a program for them that included several elements. Our primary task was not surveying-­ we did some of that, too. Rather it was putting together all the data, the background information, position papers, and issue papers for Reagan about California.

Before we get into the content of those types of things, who made the contact with you directly from the Reagan staff? You mentioned Holmes Tuttle. What role did [Stu] Spencer and [Bill] Roberts play? Were they the intermediaries?

I think it was probably Bill Roberts who called me, and we went down, I guess, and talked with him--and probably Salvatori and Tuttle at the time. I don't know if we met the Cabinet--I cannot remember the first meeting, I really cannot; we met with some kind of a group, I think.

Were they the Friends of Ronald Reagan at the time, so-called?

Well, the Friends of Ronald Reagan was a broad group; this is the so-called Kitchen Cabinet. I mean, it was a small group of people. They liked us, and we thought it was a challenge. But if we were going to work we made two conditions. One was that we have immediate and direct access to the candidate; and the second one was that we have an opportunity to spend some time with him before he got into the heavy campaign, so that we would know what his philosophy was. If we had to provide position state,... ments and supportive materials about California, we had to know the framework of Reagan's beliefs. So they agreed, and they cut his campaign schedule and gave us three days with him down at Malibu. They put him up at a beach cottage and we met with him all day for three days--just questioning him, challenging him on his beliefs, and everything, and also learning how he takes in information so that we knew how to give him the information back so he could use it.

And what were your findings at that meeting about how he takes in information, and what the nature of your preparation would have to be?

Two things. Number one, I have worked in a variety of political campaigns, and Reagan, unquestionably, has the most integrated political philosophy that I've seen in anyone. There's no question of that although he's a pragmatist, as you've seen in his actions. What he believes has a logical framework and a consistency to it that most candidates don't have. Most candidates-have leanings one direction or the other, liberal or conservative. But, if you ever take the various things that they have voted for and line them up, there are terrible, terrible inconsistencies. If you take Reagan's position on most things, you'll find a great amount of consistency, because he has fundamental beliefs. These are based on many Revolutionary times and early constitutional writers, about the nature and concept of democracy. Everything, for him, flows from the constitution and he considers it important. It made it easier to write for him. The second thing is that he needed a cross-referencing and indexing system which allowed us to provide information on cards. We used five-by-eight cards which we put in black notebooks {three-ring binder notebooks). He was able to pull out cards to work on a speech and insert them back in the notebook afterwards. We developed a cross-referenced index system that allowed him to work quickly and efficiently. So he ended up at the end with, I think, with thirteen of these black research books, which actually became an issue in the campaign. Pat Brown brought it up.

Stepping back just one second, when you met with Reagan, how did you come to the conclusion that the best format would be these three-by-five cards and the information crystallized in a shorthand form?

Did I say three-by-five? It's five-by-eight. Five-by-eight, I'm sorry. Actually, strangely enough, in the two or three books that I've read, there are differences of opinion about the size of the cards. Some had four-by­ five, another had three-by-five, and now you are correcting me with five-by-eight; so we'll get the record straight.

We simply questioned him. He writes beautiful speeches himself--when he writes those speeches we asked how he went about getting the imformation together. By the time you question him enough, you see that he gets little bits of information from here and there, and pulls them together. And he likes a lot of quick references to things. When you get into a fact and reference system like that, you cannot have discursive statements. You use subject headlines and add in only related informa­ tion. Cross-referencing allowed him to pull material together quickly from different places. We had everything filed out and cross-referenced--it was a nice little system, almost like a small library, but an easy-to-use one. He wrote a lot of his speeches in the car, going to places where he'd give a speech; it went that quickly for him.

On the format of the card, in addition to the organizational framework, were there, besides facts, opinions as well, as to how you think he ought to react to an issue?

No, these were facts only. The position papers were handled totally separately. We wrote position papers, and these were reviewed by Lyn Nofziger. When he accepted them, they were released. We also wrote basic position statements for him, just for his eyes. Plus, we spent an awful lot of time with him. We were with him every waking moment during the entire campaign, one of the three of us.

The third being?

Jim Gibson.

Jim Gibson.

We traveled with him; we were at every speech. In any campaign that's that big, that important, obviously there are so-called spies in the enemy's camp. They'd find out some of the things that might happen, some of the speeches, the questions that might come up, and someone would be planted in the audience to try and ask an embarrassing question; and so we'd get him prepared for those problems in advance. Plus, we worked a lot with him on strategy, how he should handle himself in a campaign. It was not just providing information; we worked on the whole concept of the man. Even though he's a so-called media man's delight, there were things to work with him on, very def­ initely, because he was not accustomed to politics!

Did you then have to present to him even what the basic issues were, that you found of interest to the voting public at the time?

Definitely. The primary thing was to educate him on the politics and issues of California because, all along, that guy has been focused on national politics. He has always wanted to be president, not governor.

Did you sense that from the very beginning?

He knew zero about California when we came in. I mean zero. The first time we heard him, he was still giving "The Speech," as it was called, which is a speech that he gave in support of Barry Goldwater to convince people to vote for Goldwater. That was during the campaign itself. That was the speech we heard at--I don't know where it was--the Beverly Hilton where we heard him for the first time.

Sixty-four, I believe it was.

No, it must have been '65 or early '66. I don't think we touched him in '64, maybe we did. Those dates I'm not quite certain about.

How would you go about pinpointing the issues that were of concern to the voting public?

Well, we simply sat down with our staff and listed all the important issues of California. We divided them into eleven broad categories. Within that there were a number of subcategories. The broad categories would be transportation and agriculture and water and the economy. The total number of subcategories I really don't know at this time, but there probably was eighty, ninety, something like that. We just wanted to make sure that he had information in all of those areas; it's not tough to say what are the important areas that you have to get him informed on first. But that was just one side of our efforts--the part that gets picked up by writers in the books that have been written; but the other side was working with him as a man and turning him into a better candidate.

Did you see that being transformed in front of you, in terms of his response?

Oh yes. It happened very quickly. Jim Gibson picked this up--no,we could all see it, but Jim Gibson I think made it clearer--he [Reagan] was overanswering every question. And he would answer every question that someone brought up, regardless of how embarrassing it was, or whether it was a planted question, or anything. So you'd have to indicate that "Look, your answers have to be short and snappy. Answer the question and get on to the next one. That's what keeps up attention. And, also, the more that you say about something, some reporter is going to sit there and look for one odd little half-phrase in it to pull out and use against you," because they didn't like him. "And, if someone asks a very embarrassing question, turn it around to something that you like." That's not tough to do. Someone asks a question, and you just answer, "Well, if I understand that what you mean is such and such, then this is what I believe on the issue."

Did you also help him with the language itself, the kinds of words he was to use, or at least to stay away from terminology that might perhaps be seen as negative?

A little bit, not much. I think probably right at first, but he's very good on that. He has enough sense of what goes over and does not go over. And the speeches were all his, we didn't touch that; the guy's magnificent at that. The speeches he gives now are more likely to be written by a speechwriter, and they're not as good as what he does himself. His short little one-liners all came from him. His ability to ad-lib in a spot was just fabulous; he could handle any situation. We also worked a fair amount with him on a couple of important issues in the campaign, which was as obvious to us. He had blown up (before we got with him), gotten angry, and the press really picked up on that; so he was presented as an emotional, unstable character. I don't even remember the issue.

There's one instance--in the literature, anyway--where he was at a debate with [George] Christopher, and Christopher made some nasty remark, and he [Reagan] walked out of the meeting. When Ken Holden was with him, apparently Ken tried to persuade Bill Roberts to bring him back, and he came back. Perhaps it was out of that that the idea came.

That's part of, that's right. Was that debate in front of a black group?

I don't think it was in particular, no.

Wasn't it?

No.

I think there are two instances altogether. Yes, Ken was in on it; I'd forgotten that thing. Where'd you pick that up from?

[Bill] Boyarsky, probably.

Yes, I remember that. That was Santa Monica, I think. Was it?

I believe it was; it was in the L.A. area, I believe.

Yes, it was Santa Monica.

I also wanted to get to that later, because I wanted to find out how much influence you and Holden actually had on him. In other words, Holden could actually persuade him to come back after he was angry.

Oh yes, a lot. It was a beautiful, fun campaign because, once that happened [the walkout incident], there were two strategies that the Brown campaign employed; they employed them consistently. And they were terrible strategies. One is,"He's only an actor." And [Edmund G. (Pat)] Brown made that terrible mistake of saying in an ad that "He's only an actor and, remember, an actor killed Lincoln." The other side of it was, playing up that he's an emotional, unstable kind of guy. And every campaign he [Reagan] has been in, people have brought that up. They've tried to use that against him, and that is so easy to handle. Both of those things are so easy to handle. Reagan has a sense of righteousness about things, and that translates into a belief that there is an American sense of justice about things. If things are wrong, you should get angry about it, because that is very Western, very American, and very right to do. The voters will always understand that, he believed. What he didn't quite catch is that the voters would understand that if it were presented straightforwardly in full context. But the press did not present it that way. It's a beautiful issue to write up and play out of proportion. We had to convince him--and we kept working on it for some time--"Whatever happens, regardless of what happens, remember, this is a chess game. And if your opponent is making these kinds of moves, remember, we've got him trapped. You absolutely are not going to be checkmated. Here's how it's going to happen, and they're going to try this all the time." The more we could intellectualize with him, so that he could see it was a strategy on their part and that we had counter moves planned, the more he could handle it. Now the issue becomes intellectualized; it's not an emotional thing. When something unplanned happened, he was less emotionally involved. We had to work on that quite a bit for a while, because he wanted to get angry in return--when a sense of fair play or justice was called for. It was a long campaign,and the opposition, Pat Brown's campaign, tried to set up all kinds of situations for him to get angry about-­ they planted questions and did a number of things to embarrass him. But he never did get angry in public again. He always kept his cool in all kinds of situations in which they tried to trap him. Obviously, the opposite happened. The voting public began to say, "Hey, this guy's pretty cool, isn't he, man?" That's the image he has right now, because a variety of other circumstances have happened, you know, the shooting and other situa­ tions. But that was a very simple, straightforward campaign (the gubernatorial race) in terms of what was going on. The other side was dumb; they really were.

So when you say in that context that you worked with him, you were then continually reminding him of instances in which he became a little bit huffy, or did he feel...

No, he didn't get that huffy after that. But we would reinforce what he was doing. After a Q and A session, we might say, "That was handled beautifully," or, "You did a great job," or whatever. There's a problem in any campaign, big and small. There tends to be a star com­ plex focused on the candidate. It's very easy for a man like Reagan to fall into that, in that the candidate is the star, and others gather around him all the time and say, "Great job, well done"--it didn't matter what happened--"You did it, you handled it well." So there's a tendency for straight information not to get through. It gets changed into a constant rosy picture. You can't be negative in a situation like that; you have to work with him and tell him, here's what it is, here's what went well, here's what could be changed the next time. And he was quite capable of that.

Did he feel that you were giving him positive information in his best interests, or was there any time when he felt you might be inhibiting him from doing what he wanted?

No, we had a very good relationship.

He trusted you basically and implicitly in what you were doing.

Oh, yes. See, we were with him all the time. For example, I rode all the way back from Sacramento with him and Nancy in the car and the chauffeur, and we were talking all the time. You'd fly up on the plane with him to Sacramento. You'd follow him into the restroom before he goes onstage, giving him a last-minute bit of advice. We were over at his home a lot, talking over issues with him, feeding things, telling him, "Look, here's three alternate pro­ grams that could grow out of your belief about this. Now which one do you like? You choose the one you like, and then we'll develop information and support it. We'll come back in two days, and we'll have all of that put together, and we'll talk about it again," all these kinds of things. It was a lot of campaign development, candidate development, in addition to just straight pulling out information; it was helping to develop the whole man, everything. You can see a lot of that. That image has carried through, the way he operates has carried through.

So you in fact seemed to have more contact with him than perhaps Roberts or Spencer during that initial period.

Well, Stu Spencer was not around the campaign, but Bill Roberts was. Stu Spencer would show up occasionally, but Bill Roberts was around a lot. Yes, we were with him more, because we had three people that were with him every dogged minute that he was out We were with him more than anyone else. It was divided one-third, one-third, one­third between the three of us; we just took our turns. But we went on every trip with him; if it was five days out, seven days out, we were with him. It'd be just one guy. We had also phones set up in the cars, so that when something looked like it was coming up or had just happened, then one of us would phone back to the office, and we'd jump on it right away and phone back into the car and get the information back to him.

During this [time], while you were with him, how was his general emotional attitude? Was he cool in general and only got fired up when the issues arose, or was he a bubbling person with a lot of energy and enthusiasm? How would you characterize his personality during that period?

I don't think I'd use any of those words you have there. He was a guy who was like a veteran campaigner in that a lot of that stuff is not all that interesting. He'd call it the "mashed-potatoes circuit,"or the "chicken a la king circuit", because that's the kind of stuff you get fed. You end up in these small towns, and they don't understand they have a major candidate visiting them. They don't treat him like that. All kinds of things go wrong, and he would take that. The two things that tended to rile him most were simply if the opposition was attacking him in a way he thought was unjust, or if the scheduling or coordinating of events was not handled well, seemed bad, or the event went badly, wasn't handled right. But he generally wouldn't tell people directly that he was upset with it; he would tend to get in one place and explode to people around him, not at them, but about how he didn't like what was going on.

Another issue besides the two I think you mentioned was the charge by some that he was too friendly with extremist elements, like the John Birch Society, and that kind of thing. Did you work with him to try to change that aspect of the image at all?

We talked through those things, but we never attempted to change his basic political beliefs. Reagan did not operate ever--at that time nor now, I think,in the last campaign--for expediency. We tried to point out what the problems were with it and to downplay it, basically. But he is not a Bircher; what he believed was basically,"These people are not as they are portrayed, and I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon to also knock them." But the Birch thing was a big thing that had just come out. [Robert] Welch, the head of the John Birch Society, was an important issue at that time. They [the Brown campaign] were trying to portray him as an extremist, unstable, unreliable, someone you can't trust, et cetera.

So you perhaps suggested to him ways in which he might answer questions that were involved with that?

Yes, some of that, but he is also quick on the draw himself. He did a beautiful thing, for example, at my alma mater, Occidental College. He went out for a speech one night, and they had some students of the sixties type-­ you know, long hair and sandals, and looking kind of scraggly--parading around with signs and everything, "Down with Reagan, Down with Nancy," etcetera, and "Who Wants Boraxo in Sacramento." And they got up in the balcony of the auditorium we were in and paraded around a while, and he just waited till they kind of stopped and settled down a bit. Most of the signs had something to do with Boraxo, which was the sponsor of "Death Valley Days." He looked at the group of demonstrators and quietly said, "That may be only soap to you, but it was bread and butter to me." That just wowed the audience, and that group could not do anything any more--they couldn't demonstrate, they couldn't parade, they couldn't do anything, because they'd been chopped, just beautifully, with a little quick retort. Now everyone settled down to listen to his speech.

While we're on the general discussion of Reagan's image­creating, did you have any input into the use of the terms Creative Society or Citizen Politician that he was known for?

Citizen Politician carne from the Spencer-Roberts group; the Creative Society carne from us.

Did you feel that those terms were apt or useful for the campaign?

Yes, because from the Spencer-Roberts side, they needed some way of taking him out of just being an actor, which was the charge and, more importantly, not having been in politics. You had to have the idea conveyed that it was not necessary to be in politics previously to be in politics now. And that was an effective answer to that charge. The Creative Society and the reason for that was that the sixties, if you remember, was a heavy time of labels corning out of government. You had to be for things, and everything we worked on for him was focused on developing a positive program, with conservative underpinnings. You can't just stand up on the political platform and say that you will do things for people without putting some kind of an umbrella term together, a handle that you can grab onto and say, "That's what he's doing." That's the reason for the Creative Society.

When you mentioned that Pat Brown would help set up people in the. . .

Not he personally.

Not he personally but his staff, right, to heckle him. Were there discussions about the kind of campaign that Reagan ought to run? In other words, ought he to get back at Pat Brown's staff, or at Pat Brown himself, in a way in which Pat Brown was criticizing Reagan, or how should he handle himself via Pat Brown's type of campaign?

I am not quite sure of your question; let me answer something and see if this is what you meant. In terms of the strategy of handling Brown and handling what goes on in the audience, those are really two separate things. OK, the audience things we tried to prepare for and answer them positively, because each one of them was an ad hoc situation. Answer questions from the audience positively, answer them in the spirit of which your philosophy is, and don't let your answers get out of hand. In terms of who Pat Brown is: the focus there had to be that he was governor for these two terms and hadn't accomplished much. Here are all the problems that Cali­ fornia is left with--and without attacking the man, creating the feeling, you know, that he doesn't have the capacity to do the job. And that was not tough, because Brown, as Reagan said in one little speech introduction, "This man has the capacity to use a microphone as a shoehorn to get his foot in his mouth," meaning that he'd speak out publicly on so many things ahd come out very often wrong. There were so many Brownisms that they were just beautiful; we had a collection of them at the time so we could use them. I wish I could remember some of them; they were just beautiful. I can just remember we had the floods at that time, these huge California floods. He flew up and surveyed Northern California--there were twelve-foot high watermarks, towns wiped out--he flies in in a helicopter and he looks over this devastation and says, "This is the worst disaster to hit the state of California since I was elected governor." You know what he meant to say, but what came out was a Brownism.

Did Reagan correspondingly make mistakes as well, even while you were with him?

Those kind of fumbles? Not many.

Right. Or in terms of statistics and that kind of thing?

No. He made one other mistake on a statistic, and it was a statistic that someone gave to him in the campaign, unknown to us, just before he went onstage someplace in Berkeley. There were two mistakes he made. One was a statistic, and I don't know what it was, but it was wrong. So he learned from that little incident, don't use anything except what we gave him. He never got in trouble on anything we ever did. Everything was correct; it's not tough to document facts. The second thing he did, and his statement is correct, came from answering a question about the problem of pollution. He also introduced it during last year's presidential campaign. He made a statement that trees pollute more than man. Well, the fact is, trees and plants and all those kinds of things throw out much more pollen and--I don't know the term right now, but he's calling them pollutants--than man does. But these are not noxious. They tend to be sedimentary, so they settle on the ground. They're out of the way. Man's pollution stays in streams and stays in the air, et cetera. So he made that kind of thing. We sat down with him, and he still believed it, and we had to say, "Look, whatever you believe, that ain't the way people believe. So stay off it. It's not a campaign issue; don't make it into an issue." Funny little things like that, but basically he didn't goof much, no.

Some people have criticized Reagan for being very simplistic., perhaps not the person, but in the way in which he comes across to the public, in using stock phrases repeatedly, or these type of terms that get him into trouble. How would you react to that?

I would have to say that I lean towards his way of thinking simply because it is not difficult to complex an issue, to make it much more complex; it's very tough to get to the heart of an issue and articulate its elemental simplicity. Now the question is, is he getting to the heart or is he being simplistic? OK, if you remember that this guy has a very integrated political philosophy, like I said earlier, then a lot of things flow out of that philosophy and come as easy statements. These may seem like simplistic answers but they are not necessarily. In a business, like I run, my biggest task is to get beneath all the underlying crap you see all the time, down to what the real issue is that you're dealing with. You must deal with that issue, and not all of these other things that don't matter, because they'll be solved once you handle the central problem. His view of government is that it has made things far too complex, and that if you get back to the basics and the simplicity of things and run from that, work from that, then you now can solve all of these other problems that people are dealing with seemingly at a higher level, but which really have a solution that is much deeper. At that level I think I would strongly agree with him.

A continuing part of that criticism is that in addition to phrasing things in a simple way, that he doesn't have the interest to go into depth into an issue. From what you knew of him then, what did you feel about that?

You sound like you're picking up a presidential complaint, not a California complaint, because I never heard that raised in California.

For example I mean, of course you can't use Brown's statements as anything to rely on, but Brown in his various books would indicate that when information was provided for Reagan, he never asked for more information about that particular issue. When you presented something to Reagan on a particular issue, did he request more information about something? Were there points where he felt that he didn't quite understand something and requested further information?

We would get more information when he needed it. I would say that was probably not the rule, not the norm. But I don't know if that should be a criticism or not. I'm just trying to think that through. I may sound like I'm totally partial to Reagan. I think he's very strong as a person. I would have to say, in general, he did not request additional information. I don't know if that's a criticism or not. He was taking in so much information at the time that the information overload would be very heavy on someone else; it was not on him.

He wasn't running the government, he was campaigning. It's not the same thing.

That's right.

Were there certain issues that arose in the middle of the campaign, towards the end of the campaign, that you recognized were important, that might not have been there in the beginning of the campaign?

Oh, man, 1966 is fifteen years ago?

Right. For example, they say the university issue wasn't really realized at the beginning, and that perhaps you and your staff found that there was a lot of resentment in the voting public against the university, and Reagan picked up more on that as the campaign went along.

Oh, no, that came out very directly from the people them­ selves; that grew out of being out there every day with him, wherever he was, and the people brought those questions up. And boy, that was easy to spot.

But were there things, for example, that you spotted that he did not spot, or that you brought to his attention that he did not pick up on himself?

I think it was how to present that issue, how to handle it, don't end up on the wrong side of it. It would be very easy to end up on the wrong side of it. You don't want to be against academic freedom, you want to be for that. But you do want to be on the side of responsibility, too. Academic freedom or any kind of freedom carries responsibility with it; you can't have one without the other. And that's an easy issue to present to the public, anyone.

Were there any specific types of methods that you used to get at what the voters were interested in?

As I said, we did not do the majority of the surveying. We did some telephone survey work to follow certain trends and issues; but the big thing was simply being out there, following him around on the podium and seeing what the people were concerned about, because those are average common people who come out to the campaign rallies. It's a good way to get a feel for what the people are like.

So the two of you, in a sense, or your company and he sort of both felt what these basic issues were from the people, and then it was just a matter of how to present his stand.

Yes, and we would sit down, not just with him, but Bill Roberts would be involved in it, too. The Kitchen Cabinet basically was not. They let the campaign be run by others. We would work out what we wanted to do on that, and I think the only disagreements were not over the final resolution of things, but rather over style of campaign. Bill Roberts is conservative in his approach to campaigns; we are more aggressive. Bill wants to make sure you don't make any mistakes, so you had that side represented in the campaign. We indicated that, especially with a candidate like this, you've got to be for something, and so you've got to go out there and make statements. Now just make sure they're the right statements. So we had that kind of difference of viewpoint. But that's healthy in a campaign; you don't want to be all of the same mark, the same belief.

I want to get into that a little bit, because I know there were some differences of opinion between you and Roberts.

The Kitchen Cabinet, by the way, I think is an amazing group of people. I doubt that they have been given enough credit, and this is in spite of the fact that we had a couple run-ins with Henry Salvatori, disagreements on things. He would work through us, not through the candidate, to get things done. What is amazing about them is that they selected Reagan to be their man, to go for governor, and then to go beyond that, but at no point have I ever seen them, ever, ask for anything for themselves, or try to get through an idea. All they have done is they said, "Look, as long as, number one, you believe the way we do, and number two, you stick with those beliefs, we'll support you." The only third thing that they had at that time, before he really got into it, was making sure there was nothing in his past that could ever be used against him, or come out in a campaign. But I thought they were tremendous people. Holmes Tuttle, I think, has a strength that people don't recognize, because he's a very quiet kind of man. I say this because I haven't seen Holmes Tuttle since the time of that campaign, but I have never seen in any campaign people who simply said, "We'll do everything we can to support you." They worked hard, and they donated a lot. They did a lot of things but demanded nothing in return, other than, "Be true to your cause. We think America's a great country. Do something for it." That was their basic message.

While you bring them up, how were you yourself funded for doing your types of things? Did you have sort of a carte blanche?

No, no, we had a contract, and on that contract we hired a number of people. If they wanted anything extra, they paid for that; but basically we've always tried to stick within budgets and everything.

Who did you discuss the budget with?

We simply presented our budget. I guess it was to Salvatori and Tuttle. I think it was a bigger committee than that, but I don't remember.

They just approved it in general, and you had everything built into that time period.

They didn't argue us down or anything like that. We simply put together what we thought was a fair and reasonable budget.

Did you have a particular contract then for a particular time period, and do you recall what that time period was?

Yes, we probably worked with Reagan about eight months.

I have some information that says that the original contract was from January to June, and that you extended it later on. Was that true?

Yes, yes, because it was just through the primary, and so then they picked it up after that, too.

So you continued with him after the period of the contract.

Yes, through his election as governor.

Now, I'd like to get a little bit into what might have been some of the problems with Roberts, because in an interview with Roberts he seems to say that there were some differences of opinion that at the end ended your participation--I don't know, abruptly or not, at least ended it--on perhaps not as good a note as it might have been. He doesn't recall, himself, in the interview what the specific issues were, but his words are something like "We hired BASICO strictly to do the research on issues, not to do what they claimed later that they did for him." Is there anything that you might have claimed you did that created some differences with Roberts?

I think he's wrong on that because you can show all the things we said. The thing that ended up at the end was-­ I wouldn't attribute any of the real problems with Roberts or anything like that--we had a disagreement with Henry Salvatori. I don't even remember what it was.

Neither did Roberts, apparently.

Well, because it was not my issue; it was Ken Holden that really got emotionally involved in it. I can remember the session in Salvatori's office, off on La Brea there, and Salvatori said, "You will do this," because Salvatori was looking at it that we were contracted for this; and Ken Holden says, "We will not." It ended up that way, you know, and so it grew out of that. The other side of it would be any disagreements and campaign strategy we had with Bill Roberts, which I don't think were fundamental in this. I think it was really that session with Henry Salvatori.

There is a quote, again I don't know whether it comes out of Boyarsky or another book, but Holden, for example, flew to San Diego to tell Reagan of his idea to get [John A.] McCone to head a commission to investigate the University [of California], and Roberts objected. Holden went anyway to present it to Reagan, and Reagan bought the idea. Were there any of this type of thing where you went against the advice?

I don't remember that; that's in?

Probably Boyarsky.

Now which book of Boyarsky?

The Rise of Ronald Reagan.

Oh. I don't remember that.

Well, while we're on the subject of Holden, then, were there differences between, let's say you, the way in which you, Holden, or [Jim] Gibson performed your tasks:

No. In what sense, now?

In the sense that, when you brought out that Holden was more enthusiastic or might have had a different approach to Reagan, or might have had a different type of emphasis than you did.

No, we were in agreement on what Reagan should do, all three of us. That was not a problem. I think the difference is that Ken's a very intense individual, and when we got in that meeting with Salvatori, it kicked him off. I think that was the prime thing.

Because the instances in literature seem to point to Holden when they mention, for example, that it was Holden who called Reagan back after he had the debate with Christopher and got angry. It was Holden who went to San Diego to try to convince Reagan of the idea for the university.

No, the difference is you're talking about situations that happened to be his turn in the saddle. He happened to be with Reagan at San Diego, that was his turn; and he actually called me at the time, and we discussed it. He said, "Do you agree?" And I said, "Yes, there's no other way"--because he [Reagan] had done something before, and this would be the second time, you know. So, no, we were in agreement on that. There was not a disagreement on our side of it; it was just that he was in the saddle at that time. And I don't think he 11 flew to San Diego11 ; he was with Reagan on the San Diego trip.

The quote is he flew, although I don't know if it's accurate or not.

No, I don't remember. I think I would have remembered if it was that big a thing. But he probably was with Reagan on the trip at that time. See, our guarantee when we carne in is that we would have access to the candidate and present our story directly as we see it, and not go through anyone. So if we had a belief on something, we would present it; and the other part of it was, second, that we were equals in all the discussion about strategy and everything. It didn't have to go our way on strategy--Bill Roberts was still the campaign manager--but that we would be in on those meetings and also have an opportunity to present things.

What kind of relationship did you have with Roberts during this time? Was it amicable, or were there periods of stress?

Yes, there were periods of stress; there's stress in any campaign.

Was that because of the close interaction of the people?

Yes.

Do you recall any instances in which this might have been important, towards making you rethink your participation?

No, because we were very loyal to the candidate. Reagan has the capacity to develop a lot of loyalty in people, and that's why we felt a loyalty and everything.

Did he ever have to mediate between differences of opinion between staff?

No, he would not do that; he's not that type of person. He is not an executive in thasense, of stepping in be­ tween his staff and saying, "You do this and you do that... That has more traditionally been oovered by other people, when they needed to. Salvatori and Tuttle would do things when they needed to, and then later on, you know, you'd have [Edwin] Meese doing things, et cetera. Others have traditionally done that for him. The personal relation­ ships that are sticky like that are very disquieting for Reagan, very uncomfortable.

Looking at the whole campaign, how much influence do you feel that BASICO,or the people that were working with you, really had on him in terms of the ultimate outcome?

A lot.

Had you not been hired, for example?

He probably would not have made it. That may sound like a self-congratulatory statement; it is not.

No, I know.

In fact Herb [Herbert M ] Baus in his book, Politics Battle Plan, says that. Herb called us up afterwards, because he said, "Something happened here that's different in this campaign. I never fully understood it. I want to see you at lunch." So we had a long lunch with him. We became pretty good friends after that. He said, "Now I understand what went on. This was not a Bill Roberts campaign."

Did you feel that.

Don't forget, this was a positive candidate speaking out positively on conservative issues, and that's not an easy thing. And this was a candidate who now very quickly learned how to handle himself in difficult situations where a lot of the questioners are hostile, trying to make him blow up, trying to make a lot of things happen that were detrimental to his interests. We put together the whole budget plan for him. When he criticized Brown for his overly large budget, the question now became, where are you going to cut? We put together the whole budget plan that he presented. And that's the one place that we could have been attacked because we did not have information to everything and had to make some guesstimates about some things. We did not even get attacked on that. When he came out with it, he made an offhand statement--in fact you speak about things, this really could have trapped him--that the budget could be cut, I don't know what it was, $2 billion or something like that, $1 billion, I don't know what he said. ##

We were talking about the budget.

He made some statement that he got called on in the press that he would cut the budget by x amount of dollars, and I really don't remember the figure. The press jumped on him because so much of the budget is tied into mandatory increases or commitments, and therefore what would you do. So we, in very, very quick fashion because he promised that in three days or something like that he'd answer the charges, had to come up with a budget answer. And we did. There were a few errors in it, because you just can't work with secondary documents. But, basically, in spite of that, no one was sharp enough to catch that, I mean we were ahead of them even at that level.

How did you go about doing the research on those particular things?

We picked up copies of the old budget, the proposed budget, everything we could get our hands on, talked to some old pros in Sacramento, asked about which things were committed by law, which things were not, just went through that, and really worked some very, very long hours. We got ready for that speech, and the speech had big headlines; and so we sat there nervously for a few days waiting for the reaction. It killed the whole issue. No one came back on it.

Did Reagan every compliment you on the work you were doing?

On that, I don't know.

I don't mean on that particular issue, but I mean on your role in helping him out. Did he feel that you were doing him a real service? Did you get a sense that you were being appreciated?

Yes, as a matter of fact there's a couple letters--these are probably in answer to other letters. I have a letter at home that says, "Thanks for all the great work." Here. There's one letter here.

In fact, if you could read it then we'll have it on tape.

OK. "December 1, 1966 From: Ronald Reagan, Governor-elect, State of California To: Dr. Stanley c. Plog (and it says Dr. Kenneth Holden, President of BASICO, 8155 Van Nuys Boulevard, etc. Panorama City, California, 91402 Dear Stan and Ken, I'm later than I should be with this, but I want you to know how very much I enjoyed our relationship, and how grateful I am to both of you for all that you did. I know that my homework on all of your good findings was a major factor in what finally happened. I would have been lost without the sound facts and material which you provided. I hope our paths will cross many times in the future, and again I want you to know how deeply grateful I am. Nancy joins me in best regards to both of you, and we both say thanks again. Sincerely, Ron" He's a very gracious kind of guy.

So that when you were involved in the campaign you felt a particular desire to help him as a candidate, not just to make money and earn a living in that way--is that correct?

Oh, a lot came together: in the sense that we're both conservative, and there are very few conservative candidates around. This guy was a great candidate and a very gracious person; so, yes, a lot came together.

Did anything good happen for you after that event happened? Did it help your business in that you had been on the campaign with Reagan? Did you get any other kinds of political requests?

No. We did some, but basically it hurt. It hurt in a couple of different ways, because the energy you put into running that campaign made you not marketing other clients when you should be. We purposely stayed in the background very quietly--that's the way we wanted to be--and as a result we got no publicity and so very little identity with the campaign. And the other side of it is that I had a fracas at UCLA because of it. I think that shows not only the sensitivity of an academic environment, but the fact that it's not what it appears to be on the surface all the time. I was at UCLA at the time as director of a study center and we were doing the Watts study at the time. It came out in some way in the press that we (BASICO) were working on the campaign, you know. I was asked to either give up the campaign, or to give up my UCLA assignment. I don't even need to mention the person (he's still there), because some of the people didn't like it that I was identified with a conservative Republican. We should all be good liberals on campus, they believed, and they didn't know how this would go over in the Watts community--that kind of thing. So I went in to see him, and I said, "This kind of preju?ging a character is something that's not supposed to go on here. A question of academic freedom is unquestionably involved here. If I wanted to, that is what I would raise, and there is no doubt in my mind that you would lose, simply because the university can­ not publicly deny rights to political beliefs, rights to things that you do on the outside, there's no way. But, I'm so disgusted with this whole thing and the handling of it that you've got no problems, I'm just leaving. But you at least know what I feel about it, and how poor I think this whole thing is." So I just left then and went totally into business.

Do you know whether Ken had problems as welL because it seems that he left the San Fernando State College at the time?

It didn't come up as an issue there, because he was not on research projects or anything like that. State colleges are not quite as liberal, even CSUN [California State University, Northridge] is not quite as liberal as UCLA, but I think he just got tired of things then, too. I think I left first, and he came a little bit after that to go full time.

So you were putting all your energy into the campaign, then.

Yes, because it happened at that time, and so we just spent all that time going on the campaign and not as much time as we'd have liked, to build a business. That's why we rotated people, why we took one-third assignments.

If you were ever asked to do this again for a candidate that you believed in, would you consider doing it?

Yes, it's a lot of fun; it really is. I have not sought political work simply because I'm building a business here; and political work is so periodic--some years on political work you can be just overly swamped, and other years it's going to be dry. And in between, you just can't support the staff that you want to have when the next job comes up; you just can't keep people on a dead payroll.

The people that you had working for you for the Reagan campaign, in addition to the three of you, did you hire them just for that campaign, or were they part of your business anyway?

A little bit of both. We'd hired some people just for it, and we had some people that were part of the company anyway. Some I don't know what happened afterwards; some stayed on, some didn't.

I don't have any other specific questions; if you recall any particular anecdotes or incidences that aren't in the record that might be of interest, between you and Reagan, now would be the time to say it.

I don't know. There's story after story, but I don't know if it's what you're looking for. But it was a fun campaign and enjoyable. I don't know what to say beyond that, but, yeah, give me the right situation, I'd do it again. It's just that it's tough when you're running a business to do it because of the commitments that you have here.

Thank you very much for your time. [tape recorder turned off]

Well, you talk about stories or instances, there are a lot of them, a lot of funny things, because when you're with people that much, and you go through that many situations and you get that tired, a lot of funny things happen. There was one girl reporter--I don't remember her name--but Reagan had a campaign phrase that he was going to start a prairie fire of reform. So she bought a water pistol to show that she could put it out with this little water pistol, that's all it would take. It kind of exemplified the feelings of most of the press about Reagan; they didn't like him that much. But someone on the Reagan staff got a water pistol to answer her back, and they had water fights on the bus for a while. I think we were going on the bus-­ I was on the last campaign trip--up to San Francisco, and there were some water fights now and then on the bus. The last appearance was Chinatown, and then we went out to the airport. By then it seemed that everyone had water pistols. So on this PSA flight coming back (or United, I don't remember which) anyhow, about one-third of the plane was taken up with Reaganites, Reagan staff people, and reporters. And they were running up and down the aisles, squirting at each other, getting passengers wet, throwing pillows. Some of the stewardesses got water guns, too, and started shooting at the people. It was just wild all the way back. Some guy on board, a passenger, had a trumpet, and he played the Angels' charge song, "Da da da da, da da! Charge!" I guess that's USC.

They use it all over.

Yeah. And oh, other things. I remember a night too in some interior valley California town. We got in late because of what can happen, driving in cars, and there was absolutely no food left for Reagan. None of us had eaten, no food left; he had a little bit of salad. So these people don't think or don't plan at all. Here this big guy is coming to talk to them--big event, he is the speaker--they don't even save any food for him and Nancy to eat. So after the presentation, I, along with someone else, went out looking for food. And man, in a small, rural California town, as you know, it's locked up at eight o'clock. I forget how many miles we drove until we finally got some food and brought it back for Nancy and Ron. There are lots of stories like that. I don't know if I can think of anything else right now, but just funny things that happened all the way through it.

You can't think of any other reactions from the press, or anything else like that?

No, the only thing is you would read the report from the press the next day in the paper, and you'd wonder if they were at the same meeting you were at--did they hear the same speech, because that's not what he said. You get to feeling that, number one, the press is lazy. They're looking for an easy story, and they want handouts for every speech. They want to have the story almost written for them. Second, you get the complete feeling that everyone is looking for a way to make his own name. He does that not by reporting what happene but by getting something written that makes a name for himself--something controversial. If the issue gets picked up in the media, that reporter is now a media event. Dan Rather got his name by asking Nixon the question, and insisting on it. But these other people all have that image, I think, and that's how they're going to make it; so they push on that.

Was there any opportunity to redress what was contained in the press?

Oh, no.

You didn't work on press releases.

Oh, sure, but they don't get the play that the feature writer gets; and second, if the press is fairly liberal-­ typically the ownership would be conservative, but the reporting would be very liberal--you don't get the opportunity. Very often it's easy to make fun of a lot of conservatives because there are a lot of crazy characters running around. They are typified then as being an average conservative, so that is just more fodder for what you're trying to prove here.

Do you have any insight as to why the press was so antagonistic towards Reagan?

It's not with the man. It's with the fact that the press is liberal anyway, and this guy to them was a throwback, he's an anachronism to what is going on today.

Did his acting career have anything to do with their attitude towards him?

That was a way of characterizing him, but if he happened to be a very thoughtful, energetic, good-looking, exceptional public speaker--which Reagan is--who spoke liberal things, they'd love him. I'm oversimplifying everything, liberal and conservative, but those are shorthand ways of at least saying basically what you're talking about.