I wasn’t a Humphrey fan, but just think if Nixon had not pulled off that illegal scuttling of the Paris Peace Talks with North Vietnam (LBJ had a deal) and Humphrey had entered the final stretch with the Vietnam War settled — ‘peace with honor.’ Instead, Kissinger secretly went to the NV and told them that, if elected, Nixon would broker a better deal than the one they were about to sign with LBJ. Of course, Nixon lied, as usual. It was the lie that brought us Watergate and, I’m convinced, Reagan, both Bushes and everything that’s going on now. Most of the people like Cheney and Rove are former Nixonites who believed he should have cracked down rather than resign. If Nixon had lost in ’68, and there was no Watergate, we might never heard of them again, not to mention the thousands of Americans who would not have died or been maimed in Vietnam. It’s a real tragedy.

BTW, minor correction: It’s Hubert ‘Humphrey’ not ‘Humphries.’

Here’s an anecdote re Humphrey that I can’t confirm: Supposedly, during the 1968 Dem Convention, Humphrey wanted to make a statement scolding the cops for the way they were treating the demonstrators and asking for peace on both sides. An aide told Hubert if he did that he’d look weak, and lose Mayor Daley and any slim chance in the South in the general election, so he never made that statement. While he kept Daley onboard, he lost the South anyway to Nixon’s Southern Strategy.