The book was a boon for Ailes’s consulting business. Republican politicians all over the country clamored for Ailes to do for them what McGinniss had shown him doing for Nixon. “His career was started not by Richard Nixon but by Joe McGinniss,” Ailes’s brother observed. And the upcoming midterm elections in 1970 would offer many opportunities. The week before McGinniss’s book hit the stores, Ailes quit The Dennis Wholey Show. Ailes claimed that Taft Broadcasting had “breached” a deal to give him “creative control of the show and final decisions with regard to staff assignments.”
And ultimately, even the White House was somewhat swayed by McGinniss’s portrayal. Television was a strategic priority, and Ailes was a master of the medium. By the end of 1969, the administration finally turned its attention to developing a comprehensive TV plan at a time when Nixon was increasingly insecure about the public’s perception of his leadership. The massing antiwar movement had heightened Nixon’s paranoia that his adversaries were fomenting violent insurrection. Even the upsurge in support generated by his November 3 “Silent Majority” speech failed to erase his unshakable feeling that he lacked “mystique.”
The renewed focus on television provided Ailes with another chance to secure an official place in the administration. A few days before Christmas, Haldeman wrote Ailes requesting a pitch for how Nixon could use television. Ailes worked through the holidays crafting a confidential seven-page proposal, which he sent to Haldeman on December 30. Ailes wanted to retain flexibility to build his business, so he proposed having the White House hire an assistant to work inside the administration, while Ailes remained on the outside, managing the staff person remotely. “I am proposing that you use me in this capacity because you know my work, I know your problems, I’m dedicated to the President on a personal and political basis, and I realize that in this type of work there is no margin for error,” he wrote.
Access was important. Ailes explained to Haldeman that he wanted to report directly to him, “so television doesn’t again slip to a secondary position of importance, given the President’s feelings about it.” He proposed that Nixon host a series of “fireside chats” and “person-to-person programs.” He wanted Nixon’s speechwriters to use language best suited to the medium. “Having spent a great deal of time studying audiences and writing introductions and interviews for TV, I know quite a bit about the ‘effect’ of words and phrases on people,” he wrote. “My feeling is in keeping with the President’s sincere style, sometimes more emotional words could be used to our advantage. ‘Kickers’ and memorable phrases need to be used more.” The proposal reflected Ailes’s earnest side, too. Under an idea he called the “Challenge of the 70s,” Ailes advised Nixon to “make a major address on this and state publicly that poverty, air and water pollution will be eliminated in America totally by 1980.” It was a strategy designed to burnish Nixon’s legacy. “This is similar to Kennedy’s challenge for the moon. It isn’t met in his administration but when it’s reached he gets the credit,” Ailes wrote. “If done well it will markedly counterbalance his pragmatic image with that of an idealist and dreamer.”
On January 7, Haldeman forwarded Ailes’s memo to Nixon. “I think Ailes is probably the best man for this job, at least for the present time,” he wrote. Nixon signed his initials in the box marked “Approve” and Ailes was hired at the consultant’s rate of $100 per day, the equivalent of $600 in 2013.
Not everyone in the West Wing was on-board with the decision. “If he is hired,” Dwight Chapin, who handled TV matters at the White House, wrote in a memo, “I think that the message should be made extremely clear that there is nothing permanent about the job.” Ailes recognized that he faced bureaucratic rivals in the press office. Ailes told Chapin he wanted Haldeman to have a meeting with communications director Herb Klein and press secretary Ron Ziegler to “make sure everyone understands the setup.”
A Nixon insider, Ziegler had known Chapin from their days together at the University of Southern California, and had been with Nixon since ’62. After the failed gubernatorial campaign, he worked alongside Haldeman at J. Walter Thompson. At thirty, he was the youngest presidential press secretary in history and he wasn’t going to cede ground easily to an outsider like Ailes.
On February 4, Ailes wrote an urgent memo to Haldeman raising concerns about the design of the new press briefing room that was being built in the space of the White House swimming pool. Ailes had spoken with a lighting designer who had told him that “the present plans seem to [be] lacking for TV.” The comments must have embarrassed Ziegler, whom Ailes copied on the letter. That same day, Ziegler fired off a two-page memo defending the press room’s design. “We have not looked at, nor do I think we should look at this facility as a television studio with highly sophisticated lighting capabilities,” he wrote. Haldeman backed Ziegler and the press room blueprints remained unchanged. A few weeks later, when the press room was completed, Ziegler wrote a sarcastic memo to Chapin about Ailes. “I would like to test the lighting on the President in the new Press Room sometime in the very near future.… If you can give me an idea as to when we can do this, I will work it out with Roger Ailes. Of course, we would want to have our T.V. consultant Roger on the scene.”
In late February, Ailes was subverted by Ziegler again. Haldeman had asked Ailes to recommend producers for the position of White House TV assistant. Ailes submitted three candidates, with Bob LaPorta, his former Mike Douglas colleague, at the top of his list. “Roger wanted me to be his eyes down there,” LaPorta recalled. The White House brought LaPorta in for an interview, but he was passed over for the position.
After another candidate, a thirty-five-year-old news director named Bob Knott, was also resisted, Ailes vented about being frozen out. “I would very much like to get things arranged according to my original memo of some months ago since I cannot afford to drop everything for four days and lose large sums of money very frequently,” Ailes wrote to Haldeman.
It may not have been the right message to convey. Nor did Nixon’s advisers appreciate Ailes’s bold self-promotion, even as he used interviews to spin the damage done by the McGinniss book. In mid-March, Ziegler wrote a terse memo to Haldeman titled “Roger Ailes appearance in CBS morning news show.” Ziegler complained to Haldeman that Ailes was talking too much about his behind-the-scenes work for Nixon. “I have no objection to Ailes discussing from time to time the President’s preparation for TV appearances. However, I think we should approach this extremely cautiously,” he wrote.
Ailes’s political work on behalf of Republican candidates caused problems, too. In Florida, drugstore magnate Jack Eckerd had hired Ailes to help him mount a challenge to incumbent governor Claude Kirk. Eckerd’s move immediately prompted speculation that the Nixon administration was punishing Kirk for having supported Nelson Rockefeller at the 1968 GOP convention. “Ailes is involving himself professionally in Republican primary contests and too close of a public association between Ailes and the President could lead to problems,” Ziegler wrote Haldeman.
Ziegler’s concerns were well founded. In the spring of 1970, Ailes was in the middle of another contentious GOP primary race for an open Senate seat in Ohio, one that would have spillover effects for Nixon’s presidency, and the country. Ailes was advising the Ohio congressman Robert Taft Jr. against the “law and order” candidate, Governor James Rhodes, who had been considered as a possible Nixon running mate in ’68. The race was pushing Rhodes even further to the right.