The White House had even bigger plans than one-off documentaries to try to influence the agenda of the national news media. It was developing a blueprint for its own television news service which would produce administration propaganda packaged as independent journalism. Ailes championed the project, titled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News.” In the summer of 1970, a highly detailed fourteen-page memo circulated around the White House outlining the plan, which Haldeman later named “The Capitol News Service.” “For 200 years, the newspaper front page dominated public thinking,” the memo began. “In the last 20 years that picture has changed. Today television news is watched more often—than people read newspapers—than people listen to the radio—than people read or gather any form of communication.” The memo explained why: “People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you.”
The plan’s stated purpose was to “provide pro-Administration videotape, hard news actualities to the major cities of the United States.” To pull it off, the White House would produce favorable political stories in Washington and rush the videotapes by airplane to local markets, thereby avoiding “the censorship, the priorities and the prejudices of network news selectors and disseminators.” The top forty markets would have three same-day departures from Washington. A fleet of trucks traveling a total of 1,195 miles per week would pick up the footage from airports and deliver it to local broadcast stations. To illustrate the plan’s effectiveness, the memo sketched out how it could work for four specific GOP senators, including Bob Dole. “Senator records statement between 8-9AM,” which would result in a “Sample Arrival Time Home Market [of] 4PM … Makes the TV News Program At 6PM.”
Ailes sent Haldeman a marked-up copy of the memo with his enthusiastic feedback. “Basically a very good idea,” he wrote in the margin. What was striking was that, just a few months earlier, in his interview with The Boston Globe, he cast himself as an idealist, warning of the hidden dangers of propaganda. He had told the Globe that he wanted to work on a concept he called “Truth television … where people can distinguish between fact and fiction on television, where entertainment and life and opinion are separate.” He noted that “twenty-nine percent of the nation relies on television as the only source of news. This is extremely dangerous, when the major news story of the day is done in 2½ minutes. Right after the printing press was invented, people believed everything they read. Television does the same thing. It can be lies and bull.”
But in private, with the prospect of a lucrative assignment on the table, he was an eager propagandist, encouraging the White House to think even bigger. “It should be expanded to include other members of the administration such as Cabinet involved in activity with regional or local interest.—Also could involve GOP governors when in D.C.,” Ailes wrote. He seemed unconcerned about the ethics. “Will get some flap about news management,” he wrote. Though the plan struck some in the White House as too audacious and expensive to pull off, Ailes possessed none of these inhibitions. “If you decide to go ahead we would as a production company like to bid on packaging the entire project,” he wrote Haldeman.
The Nixon White House never moved forward on the Capitol News Service plan. Instead, they studied long-term strategies to harness technology that would help build a counter–media establishment. One of the most promising was the one Ailes would later master: cable television. White House memos asserted that cable, with its capacity to carry an array of diverse channels, would be “the most effective and most lasting approach” to strip the broadcast news divisions of their power. A prescient 1973 document prepared for Haldeman noted that cable news was a development that was “ten years or so” away “for significant impact.”
By November 1970, Bill Safire was advocating dumping Ailes for Bill Carruthers, an in-demand television producer who had recently opened his own production company. Even though Carruthers was “liberal compared to us,” Safire encouraged hiring him. “He has much less emotion than Ailes does; he has more control,” Dwight Chapin wrote, recounting Safire’s thoughts. “He is probably a better producer than Ailes but he does not have as much flair as Roger.… You’ve got to consider the question of Flair versus ability and Safire buys ability.”
Ailes would have one more chance to save his relationships. On November 19, he met with Haldeman at 10:45 in the morning to discuss his future. Ailes lobbied to be appointed television adviser. He said he would open an office in Washington and make the head of the office available to the White House full-time. He also stressed that he liked the Capitol News Service idea and thought the White House should move ahead on launching it. Haldeman asked Ailes to write another proposal outlining how Nixon should use television in the run-up to the ’72 election.
The day before Thanksgiving, Ailes sent Haldeman a twelve-page proposal titled “White House Television—1971.” It was written in his now characteristically blunt, dramatic tone and revealed the breadth of Ailes’s understanding of how television could transmit a political message. “In my opinion,” Ailes began, “Richard Nixon is in danger of becoming a one-term President. Further, he is in danger of leaving office, even if he is re-elected, with a stigma of leadership failure much as President Johnson did: not because of what he has done—his accomplishments are many—but because of what the people ‘think’ he has done, and because of the way he sounds and looks to them.” Since Selling of the President had been published, Ailes had attacked McGinniss’s thesis repeatedly in interviews, saying television couldn’t artificially mold an image. Now he was arguing to do just that. “To follow a leader,” he wrote, “people must feel that he is better than they are and not subject to anger or hatred quickly.” Ailes said he knew what he was talking about because of his background. “It is important for you to know that I am not just echoing the eastern liberals when I express my concern and that I spent twenty five years in Ohio and know something about the silent majority.”
Ailes also offered strategic advice: Wedge issues like busing and the war had banked much of the electorate. Now it was time to tack to the center. “The silent majority will automatically back the President because it has no place else to go,” he wrote. “I think a good issue to drive a wedge between the Democratic leadership and the news commentators is Nixon’s welfare plan. The only ones more frightened by the welfare plan than the conservatives are the liberals. If the President makes no major speeches but quietly visits Capitol Hill to press for this and at the same time calls in a group of ‘liberal’ reporters to discuss the plan, the commentators will be forced to applaud him and point out Democrat obstructionism.” Ailes also demonstrated he was on-board with dirty tricks. “To guard our flank I would like to see us get one of our people inside the Wallace organization immediately,” he wrote, an acknowledgment that George Wallace’s candidacy could siphon off Nixon votes, especially in the South. “I’ll discuss this in more detail in person.”
As in 1968, Ailes recommended using television to soften Nixon’s image and project cool confidence. “America’s position can be compared to a teenager who is experimenting with trouble, tempted to really go bad, but still crying out for a father to step in and lead him home. Mr. Nixon must take on the father’s role,” he wrote. While he did not recommend reviving the Man in the Arena concepts for ’72, a similar warming effect could be achieved through the right interview setting. Ailes suggested that David Frost interview the president “either at Camp David by the fireplace or walking around at the Western White House” because “he is recognized internationally as the best in-depth, humanizing interviewer.” Ailes pitched himself in the role of packager: Westinghouse would fund the production and Frost would follow Ailes’s directions. “I know him well and would approach him directly to set the ground rules and production controls.” Ailes explained that Nixon could outline his intention to do future television broadcasts to communicate his plans to the American people, for which he included suggested scripts for the interview: