The first reports came out in the seventies, but now it seems that the original October surprise has been finally nailed down 44 years after the news could do any good.
What would have changed if the US and the North had come to terms in 1968? Vietnam would have been unified more quickly and with less overall violence. Hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved. No saturation bombing or ground incursions into Laos and Cambodia, and hence probably no Pol Pot. No Nixon, if the news had been allowed to get out in time, and hence no Watergate. And what would have happened to the whole Republican hegemony thing if its original architect had been revealed to be something close to a traitor?
Two characteristic Tricky Dick-isms here: in the first, Humphrey decides not to attack Nixon with the information because he's surging in the polls andthinks he's going to win anyway. Maybe he also has that centrist idea that he doesn't want to discredit the wider political establishment. So Nixon fends him off by saying that the failure of the talks he sabotaged proved that the Democrats couldn't run the war or bring it to a successful conclusion. He then narrowly wins. And in the second, his liaison to the Vietnamese was through Anna Chennault, an 'unleash Chiang' China Lobby figure. He rewards her by going to see Mao and dumping Taiwan. And of course, that raises the question of whether a Democrat could indeed have gone to China.
Perhaps Irony should be taught at school instead of history or English literature. Definitely in place of PPE. Irony and Paradox. Its a far better grounding in Life.
Posted by: johnf | March 17, 2013 at 08:38 AM
So Nixon never won a national election after 1956 without resorting to serious crime. Maybe someone should take a closer look at 1952/6.
Posted by: chris y | March 17, 2013 at 10:24 AM
At least it's in time for the next volume of Robert Caro's LBJ bio.
Was the stuff about LBJ's plan to re-enter the 68 election widely known? The bit about the Secret Service warning LBJ they couldn't guarantee his safety if he made an appearance to that effect at the Chicago convention has a whiff of the Praetorian about it.
Posted by: Barry Freed | March 17, 2013 at 08:27 PM
has a whiff of the Praetorian about it.
Kind of a shame that when they pulled someone out from behind the draperies they found Tricky Dick instead of Clau-Clau-Claudius.
Posted by: NomadUK | March 17, 2013 at 09:31 PM
The bit about the Secret Service warning LBJ they couldn't guarantee his safety if he made an appearance to that effect at the Chicago convention has a whiff of the Praetorian about it.
Good God.
Posted by: ajay | March 18, 2013 at 10:11 AM