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Observes a White House staffer: "Everything is funneled through these two guys. Haldeman is not at all interested in policy, and Ehrlichman is. This explains how they manage to get along. Ehrlichman views himself as a broker, a sifter of ideas, rather than an advocate." But he has taken substantive positions: in favor of Presidential Counsellor Daniel Patrick Moynihan's plan for a minimum annual welfare income, in favor of the conservationists who successfully blocked a Miami jetport in the Florida Everglades. He is as critical of the liberal press as Spiro Agnew, and once told a reporter who said that a Nixon decision would not go down well in the East: "It'll play in Peoria." His staff meetings are less bang-bang-bang than Haldeman's: he moves briskly, but everyone has his say. One joke has it that Ehrlichman eats breakfast the night before.
Ludicrous Blurts
One cause for the impression of White House isolation noted by some observers has been a "them and us" feeling in Nixon's men, an air that many beyond the castle moat are a threat to the monarch within. Haldeman mocked the critics last week by announcing that the "new password" among the Eastern media was "isolation of the President" (see PRESS). Richard Nixon's unease in public has contributed to that appearance of insulation.
The comfortable cushioning of the President has a special justification in Nixon's case. He tires easily, and is worried enough about his low threshold of exhaustion to have seen his doctor. So his aides ration his time and husband his energy. "We've got to watch out for the President," Haldeman explains. Nixon's rhythms of work are carefully plotted, and an elaborate machinery processes communications into the White House. Into the offices of deputies and assistants on the West Wing main floor, in the White House basement and in the nearby gray stone Executive Office Building pour reports from every branch of Government, information from around the nation and world, requests from Government officials and private citizens to see the President or his highest advisers. Even omitting secretaries and stenographers, the White House staff numbers more than 150. the largest of any President. The pipelines to the Oval Office are intricately patterned (see chart, page 19), and the flow can be stopped at any point —much to the frustration of anyone trying to get an idea through.
Those outside complain of having to go through White House aides under 30 in order to get to anyone of consequence, and that grinds especially hard on Cabinet members who were major figures in their own right before coming to Washington. Few visitors see Nixon, if they do at all, without either Haldeman or Ehrlichman on hand. So blocked and desperate are some Senators that they find themselves ludicrously blurting ideas to Nixon during 15-second encounters in a White House reception line. Nine black Representatives, all Democrats, tried in vain for three months to see Nixon. John Ehrlichman explains: "We try not to permit opportunists to use the presidency as a grandstand.