“Billy, You Stay Out of Politics”
In late November 1970, Nixon told Haldeman, “On the political front, it is important to start an early liaison with BG and his people. He was enormously helpful to us in the Border South in ’68 and will continue to be in ’72.” Early in 1971, following a conversation with the President, H. R. Haldeman wrote himself the following note: “Graham wants to be helpful next year. . . . Point him in areas where do most good. He thinks there are real stirrings in religious directions, especially re young people. . . . I call him and set up date. No other level—can’t have leak.” Two days later, he scribbled a follow-up reminder: “Must mobilize him and his crowd.” If the archival records are to be trusted, what followed was a close collaboration between Billy Graham and the White House that not only helped reelect Richard Nixon, but contributed importantly to the emergence, eight years later and under different leadership, of the New Religious Right. On the same day he penned the “must mobilize” memo, Haldeman prepared a “talking paper” for a conversation he expected to have with Graham. In that conversation, according to Haldeman’s notes, Graham mentioned the crucial importance of the 1972 election and discussed what he regarded as a significant move to the right among religious people. Haldeman apparently felt it was possible to “mobilize him and his troops,” but not if the administration began making too many concessions to liberal critics. “He’s willing to do it,” Haldeman wrote, “if we take firm line. Feels we’re not getting firm enough line to the right.”
A busy crusade schedule limited what Graham could do during 1971, though he did apparently make some effort to persuade the administration’s leading Republican critic, Mark Hatfield, not to challenge Nixon for their party’s nomination in 1972, with the understanding that the White House would provide full support for his campaign for reelection to the Senate. The White House staff, however, clearly regarded the evangelist as a front line heavyweight; in an August 1971 memo, Haldeman recommended setting up a group of eight to ten loyal “Conservatives for the President,” who would “support the President down the line from a conservative viewpoint,” to counterbalance criticism Nixon was receiving from “some of the conservative publications.” Such a group should include, he thought, “Hobie Lewis, [National Review editor] Jeff Hart, Clare Luce, Billy Graham, etc.” The staff also saw to it that Graham continued to receive rewards commensurate with the value the President placed on his friendship and support. When his old friend and admirer, William R. Tolbert, was elected president of Liberia, Kissinger recommended that Billy attend the inauguration as the President’s personal representative. The other dignitaries representing America were the U.S. ambassador to Liberia, New York Stock Exchange chairman Bernard Lasker, and Mrs. Nixon. In deference to Graham’s stature and tight schedule, Alexander Haig assured him that an aircraft would be provided to return him to the United States immediately after the required appearances in Liberia and that “he would have complete service with respect to accommodations, appropriate briefings, and the complete satisfaction of all his personal and official requirements.”
In February 1972 Graham and Nixon met for more than an hour to discuss how and where he could be of greatest use to the campaign. In his summary of this meeting, Haldeman recorded that “it was agreed that Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New York were most important, since California and Texas are already covered.” Graham assured the President he would try to be helpful “in every possible way” and was promised solid briefings on domestic and foreign political matters so that he would always know where the administration stood on crucial questions. This would include another meeting at which Kissinger would brief key Evangelical editors, broadcasters, and denominational leaders about ongoing developments in the new policy toward communist China, apparently to gain support for the shift in policy. Haldeman’s report also shows that Graham used the meeting to ask at least two specific favors of the President. Despite meeting what seems to have been resistance, he wrested a promise from Nixon to include a religion writer in the press corps for his momentous trip to China. He informed the President that the religious community would be deeply offended if no religion writer made the trip and assured him that the consensus choice of the religious press was David E. Kucharsky of Christianity Today. On a second matter that affected both CT and Decision, Graham complained that a recent change in postal rates had raised the cost of mailing religious publications by 400 percent, while pornographic literature suffered a hike of only 25 percent. “Needless to say,” Haldeman told John Ehrlichman, “the President was horrified to learn of this state of affairs and wants to know what we are doing about it.”
Haldeman was assigned primary responsibility for maintaining regular contact with Graham. Nixon directed him to call Graham “about once every 2 weeks to discuss the political situation,” explaining that “I would prefer not to get into these matters as directly with him but I do want a continuing contact kept with him so that he doesn’t feel that we are not interested in the support of his group in those key states where they can be helpful.” In yet another February memo, Nixon aide Lawrence Higby noted, “Two that we can’t let drop—Bob [Haldeman] needs to call the Secretary of Treasury John Connally and Billy Graham about once a week and just fill them in on what’s happening and maybe raise a point or two with them. Let’s make sure we put some sort of reminder in here on a weekly basis.” Gordon Strachan, and perhaps others, fed Haldeman a steady stream of talking papers at least biweekly from mid-February until the election in November. These recommended that Graham be given advance notice of such matters as John Mitchell’s leaving the attorney general’s office to head the President’s reelection campaign, details of Nixon’s forthcoming trip to Moscow and Poland, the administration’s strategy for dealing with busing on a regional basis, and the appointment of Patrick Gray as FBI chief. In exchange for this kind of insider information, the White House sought his reaction to Kissinger’s secret diplomatic forays, his sense of whether George McGovern could actually capture the Democratic nomination, his assessment of the effectiveness of the administration’s “recent attacks on certain members of the media” (including “Pat Buchanan—type comments”), and any suggestions he might have for the role Pat Nixon should play during the President’s trip to Russia.
It may not be possible to establish with certainty how many of these “talkers” were acted upon until all the tapes made by the Nixon’s infamous recording system are finally released for public inspection, but telephone logs and other archival records referring to conversations with Graham on the same date or shortly following the date of the talking papers strongly suggest that a substantial proportion of the recommended calls were indeed made. Haldeman confirmed that “I definitely made a good number of calls. I’m not sure just how frequently; ordinarily, it was not weekly, but it was probably more than monthly. Some weeks, it was more than once a week. That was probably true of the President as well.” Sometimes the calls came from Nixon himself. Charles Colson recalled that “Nixon would call different people whose judgment he respected to get their opinions and also to see how the public was reacting to different issues. He was probably looking for affirmation, but also, I think, he was sounding out people whose judgment and insights he respected. He and Billy had a close personal relationship. Nixon would call Billy because he felt like talking to him. He’d use Billy as a kind of sounding board to find out what was happening on campus or across the country.” Haldeman and Ehrlichman agreed with this assessment. “Billy was definitely in [Nixon’s] inner circle,” Haldeman said. “The President had enormous admiration and affection for him and relied on his counsel. Billy’s political acumen is very high, and he had a talent for seeing the best of everything that is happening—not choosing to see the bad.” Ehrlichman saw part of Nixon’s interest as purely pragmatic: “Nixon felt Dr. Graham represented and spoke for a substantial segment of religious America. He was interested in his views on various subjects. It would be very important for the President to know how Dr. Graham and the people he talked to felt about, for example, abortion. This is purely hypothetical, but Dr. Graham might say, ‘I was at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, and eight out of ten people I talked to raised the issue of abortion.’ That kind of thing.” Like Haldeman, however, Ehrlichman agreed that Nixon’s respect for Graham was unfeigned. “I think the President saw Dr. Graham as an icon of sorts. He had unqualified admiration for him. If anything, he overestimated his influence on the American people.” With a wry chuckle, he added, “He certainly didn’t underestimate it.”
The seductive personal attention Graham received from the President doubtless helped raise his esteem for Nixon, and he did not hesitate to voice it. In an interview with the Saturday Evening Post, he observed that the presidency was “just really beyond a man to deal with” but reckoned that “Mr. Nixon is coming as close to it as anybody. Contrary to what people think about him, he is a true intellectual. We haven’t had an intellectual in the White House in a long time. Kennedy was no intellectual—I mean, he was written up by the Eastern press as an intellectual because he agreed with the Eastern Establishment. But Nixon is a true intellectual, and he is a student, particularly a student of history. In that respect, he’s a De Gaulle type.”
Nixon’s staff and friends not only valued Billy Graham’s affirmation of the President but felt the President would do well to emulate some of Graham’s more impressive skills, particularly those related to public speaking. Charlotte television executive Charles Crutchfield recommended that Nixon make greater use of teleprompters in his public speeches, noting that Billy Graham used them in all his filmed presentations. Haldeman suggested to Nixon that he cultivate the ability “to tell a story like Billy Graham.” And Graham himself, while lauding Nixon for his ability to speak extemporaneously, thought he might be more effective if he restricted himself to only one major point in each speech and threw in a few quotes from the Bible.
Graham’s suggestion that Nixon quote the Bible more often was part of a larger effort to enhance the President’s appeal to the conservative religious folk he believed were poised to make their voices heard in the political arena, and his willingness to help strengthen that appeal involved more than cosmetic touches. In mid-1971, he urged the White House to cultivate Bill Bright, whose widespread and aggressive Campus Crusade organization might prove helpful among Evangelical young people in particular. At his meeting with Nixon at the time of the prayer breakfast, he had expressed his desire to have the President address Explo ’72, a mammoth youth festival he and Bright were planning for Dallas in June. Haldeman indicated that “the President definitely wants to try to attend that” but noted that Graham and Bright had had a “stormy session re whether to invite President,” and that Bright felt it would not be appropriate, particularly if Nixon gave a “major address that was not religious in nature.” Whether because Graham could not change Bright’s mind or because the President could not arrange a visit, Nixon did not attend Explo ’72, but while the weeklong event was in progress, Billy called the White House and urged him to send a telegram of greeting to the 85,000 young people gathered for what he called “a religious Woodstock.”
When it became clear that McGovern was indeed going to capture the Democratic nomination, the President’s religious posture became a more critical issue. Graham pointed out to Lawrence Hibgy that because McGovern was an ordained minister who would likely receive strong support from clergymen associated with both the National Council and World Council of Churches, he might be able to woo the religious vote, particularly that of moderate and conservative people who might not agree fully with his antiwar and other liberal views but would favor having a pastor as President. A few days later, Charles Colson discussed these same matters, apparently with the President. His handwritten notes on their conversation contain the instruction, “Use Graham’s organization.” In a subsequent note, Haldeman outlined the strategy to be used: Graham and Bright would “stay in the shadows” themselves but would put “top operatives” in the Nixon camp in touch with “top guys in religious wing.” Graham had apparently indicated that he and Bright could provide entree to fifty major conservative religious youth organizations with massive mailing lists. He felt sure that some people in these organizations—“seasoned, trusted people”—would take leaves of absence to work full time in an effort to counteract McGovern’s campaign to capture the religious vote. In late June Haldeman noted, “Wait till Billy Graham pulls it together. Will work on this more.” In a talking paper for a conversation scheduled two weeks later, Haldeman planned to ask Graham, “What is our best approach to McGovern? Should he be hit now or after the Democratic Convention? Is it now appropriate for [campaign worker] Ron Walker to work with T. W. Wilson to bring some staff of the Committee for the Reelection of the President together with Bright of the Campus Crusade?”
Bill Bright was not the only conservative religious leader Graham felt Nixon should cultivate. When Nelson Bell was elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, Graham drafted a congratulatory telegram he thought would be appropriate for the President to send—a gesture that would be appreciated not only by his father-in-law but by the sizable group of clergymen and influential laymen in the denomination he now led. Graham also recommended that Nixon establish a tie to Oral Roberts. After a conversation with Graham, Harry Dent told Nixon that “both from the national and Oklahoma perspectives, it has become quite important that we get some visibility with Roberts. Millions of conservative voters soak up his TV performances, and he is quite a substantial figure in his home state of Oklahoma.” Dent further noted that, through his university, its basketball team, and the World Action Singers, Roberts “has close identification with clean-cut youth, as well as conservative folk in general Roberts prayed at the Democratic Convention, but has indicated to me he wants to help your reelection.” Nixon proved to be more interested in these suggestions than did Haldeman. In a note to Dwight Chapin, the protective chief of staff reported that “the President wants to consider the possibility of his going to the dedication of a new building at Oral Roberts’ college in Oklahoma. This would be for the purpose of the effect it would have on Oral Roberts’ following, not for the chance to go to Oklahoma, but it would also be an appearance at a college where there are 2,000 kids. I think it’s a terrible idea, but he wanted it considered.”
Graham sought to avoid controversy by declining invitations either to speak or to pray at both the Democratic and Republican conventions, but he did try to have an impact on the latter. In a memo to the President just before the convention in late August, Haldeman told his boss that Graham had stressed that it would be “a serious mistake if you do not include a spiritual note in your [acceptance] speech. Many of our hard-core supporters have a strong belief in God and will be looking for a spiritual note.” Graham also recommended some specific biblical passages Nixon might draw upon: Psalm 33:12 (“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord”); Proverbs 14:34 (“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people”); Psalm 20:7 (“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God”); and Joshua 24:15 (“Choose you this day whom ye will serve . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”). He felt this last verse might be the most appropriate, since it would appeal to both Christians and Jews. In a final message, Graham had asked Haldeman to inform the President that “he played golf yesterday at San Clemente and had a wonderful time. He shot a 32 for nine holes.”
After the campaign got under way in earnest following the conventions, Graham’s communications with the White House seem mainly to deal with how to keep McGovern from capturing the mantle of “the religion candidate.” Haldeman’s talking papers posed such questions as “What do you think of the new ‘Religious Leaders for McGovern’ group?” “Should our surrogates lash out at McGovern now?” and a striking example of the struggle between pragmatism and principle, “Should the President attack McGovern or should he carry on the theme of ‘Bring Us Together’?” Graham was particularly concerned about the Religious Leaders for McGovern group. Organized by Methodist bishop James Armstrong and consisting of over two hundred liberal religious leaders, the group had set about to correct what its members believed to be Republican misstatements about McGovern and was pushing McGovern’s candidacy in advertisements, letters to newspapers, and according to Graham, even in church services. Graham both liked and admired Armstrong and feared the movement might have considerable impact. If it seemed necessary, he might be willing to help establish a counterorganization, but Armstrong’s actions had caught him by surprise, and he needed time to think about what role he might play. In the meantime, the evangelist recommended that the President attend church regularly and arrange to address a ministerial group whose ministers were not critical of his policy in Vietnam. Finally, Graham noted that he had been making quite complimentary statements about the President and that the campaign should feel free to use them, “once they have been put into public print.”
Interestingly, the Committee to Re-elect the President felt Graham should not mount a countermovement to Armstrong’s group. Speaking for the committee, journalist (and Jesuit priest) John McLaughlin judged that it would not be “in the interest of the public good to organize clergy, by reason of their clerical profession, to participate in partisan political activity.” The Republicans were delighted, however, by Graham’s glowing quasi-endorsements of Nixon. Graham announced to the Associated Press that he expected Nixon to carry every state in the union, with the possible exception of South Dakota, McGovern’s home state. He told the Charlotte Observer that Nixon would “go down in history as the greatest President because he studied, prepared himself, disciplined himself for the Presidency, and the effects now show.” More important, in what amounted to an official endorsement, Graham once again voted absentee, enabling him to announce five days before the election that to no one’s surprise, he had indeed cast his vote for Richard Nixon. He had known Nixon since 1950, he said, and knew him to be a man of “deep religious commitment” and great “personal honesty.” He had voted for him “because I know what he is made of. He was just born to be President.”
Graham’s prediction about the outcome of the election was remarkably accurate, except that the one state McGovern carried was not South Dakota but Massachusetts. And when the magnitude of the triumph became apparent on election night, Graham was among the first people the President called to share a moment of rejoicing—other members of the inner circle included John Connally, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, John Mitchell, Maurice Stans, Clark McGregor, Robert Dole, and several key labor leaders who had cast their lot with the Republicans. Obviously, Richard Nixon regarded Billy Graham not just as a close friend but also as a political ally.
It appears that nothing Graham did during the 1972 election was contrary to his rights as a private citizen or even as the most public of ministers. Clergymen have a right to hold and voice partisan opinions and to use their personal influence to persuade others to espouse those opinions. Most Americans agree that the pulpit is not the proper forum for announcing those opinions, but Graham seldom violated that convention, and then not blatantly. Neither did he abuse the privileges of his tax-exempt organization; in fact, Charles Colson recalled that “the only thing he did that was political—and he didn’t know it was political—was [helping us] pull together Evangelical leaders to tell them what was going on in military and foreign policy issues. He would give us the names of people. He didn’t see it as political, but we did. We were scheming to win their support. We were looking at the conservative Evangelical vote as the political [movement] that actually did emerge in the eighties.” Graham would not cooperate in other ways, however. “We tried to get his mailing list,” Colson noted, “but he refused. At the time, I was disappointed because I thought he ought to help his friend, but now I respect him for it.” One may quibble, as many of his fellow clergymen did, with his judgment of and loyalty to Richard Nixon, but a landslide majority of Americans agreed with him, in effect if not in intensity. It is therefore puzzling that he has repeatedly insisted that his relationship to Nixon was almost entirely one of friendship and pastoral concern. In perhaps his most explicit statement of that position, he told David Frost in 1972 that Nixon had told him repeatedly, “Billy, at all costs, you stay out of politics,” insisting that “your ministry is more important to me than my election.” Though he naturally assumed that his friend appreciated the few random remarks he had made on his behalf, he was certain he did not require or expect them, and insisted that “he would never, never try to use me politically.”
When faced with extensive evidence that he had been viewed in the White House as an ally with a good deal more to offer than pastoral counsel and had, in fact, taken an active and independent role in abetting Nixon’s reelection, Graham seemed genuinely baffled. He admitted that “I wanted to be used in ’68, I suppose, behind the scenes, with the public not knowing much about it, because I thought he was the best-prepared man to be President of any man I had ever known. But I didn’t want to be used in ’72. I was still his friend, but I was not as close to him during that period. He didn’t have time to be close to anybody. He was too busy and I was going all over the world preaching and planning conferences. Besides, I thought it was a shoo-in and so I wasn’t involved. I didn’t think McGovern would be a strong candidate. I wouldn’t have taken any position anyway.” He revealed that he had been aware that Lyndon Johnson “was not a McGovern man” but did not exploit that information. “I think I told Larry Higby a little about it, but I never even told Bob Haldeman and I never told Nixon. I didn’t think that was something I ought to say. Johnson was pretty strong in some of the things he said. I figured it was one of those private things and he was just blowing off steam to me. Why me, I didn’t know. But I thought the world of Shriver. He and I were very good friends. I’ve been a guest in their home.” As for having played any role in mobilizing an embryonic religious right in 1972, he recalled the three-hour meeting between Nixon and the black ministers and a briefing on foreign affairs when “Oral Roberts came and brought his photographer. That was probably the one on China.” Other than that, he insisted, “I don’t recall anything. I certainly didn’t try to organize Evangelicals in any way, shape, or form. I couldn’t have. I didn’t have that kind of influence.”
Graham admitted that some members of the White House staff may have tried to use him at times. “I could sense that. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes they were unsuccessful. Sometimes I knew it, and sometimes, in hindsight, I see that I didn’t know it. I wasn’t used most times, I think. I’m sure there were a few times when I was.” He dismissed most of the talking papers as little more than White House busywork: “Everybody writes memos in the White House—just shuffling papers. Chuck Colson told me there were thousands of memos that never meant anything. Some fellow would write it, and that was the end of it.”
Graham’s insistence that most of the talking papers were never converted into actual telephone calls seems clearly contradicted both by Haldeman’s acknowledgment that he made the calls and by the unlikelihood that aides would continue to produce the papers if they were not acted upon. Similarly, his assertion that he took little interest or role in overtly political aspects of the campaign does not square with the documentary evidence. He freely admitted to a faulty memory, and during the two-day conversation of which these matters were a part occasionally had difficulty recalling the name of close and longtime associates, a problem that vexed him noticeably. Just two weeks before this conversation, his physicians had increased the dosage of his blood-pressure medicine, which can affect recall, though he did not cite this as an excuse. More important, Graham seemed eager not to appear to dissemble. In response to an advance list of questions, sent not at his request but in an effort to enable him to gather specific materials, he noted with some surprise that he had no memory whatsoever of a particular action in question—in this case, his efforts to persuade Mark Hatfield not to seek the Presidency—but that his secretary had produced letters clearly indicating he had indeed taken such action. “If you have anything like that,” he said, “that shows I’m wrong about something I say, please tell me. It’s important to get this right, and my memory is not all that good.” But when the evidence did not come from his own hand, no matter how compelling it might appear, he consistently met it with some statement such as “That’s the first I ever heard of it,” brushed it off as an example of bureaucratic busywork unrelated to related events, or explained in a manner he seemed to find convincing that it simply could not be accurate because it ran counter to his deeply felt views about restricting his role in the political arena to matters spiritual. He did not believe a minister should do such things, and therefore, he could not believe he had done them.*