Labor poured unprecedented resources into the Democratic campaign going into the home stretch, registering 4.6 million voters, sending out 115 million pamphlets, establishing 638 phone banks, fielding 72,000 house-to-house canvassers and 94,000 Election Day volunteers. Humphrey nabbed 15 last-minute points from Wallace among unionists. He also ran a lachrymose print ad: “Don’t let him buy the White House” over a picture of a smiling Richard Nixon. “No man has ever paid more trying to be President… “
Well, there’s a fitting epitaph for our own Ragged Dick Nixon.
And in these chapters the rest of the CREEPSTER band of brigands falls into place: Haldeman, Erlichman, Kissinger. Do I actually remember a period crack about “two German Shepherds and a German Jew”, or is that post-Watergate?
Some things never change on the (D) side of the aisle, either:
Reasoned [Humphrey’s] chief political deputy, “Nothing would bring the real peaceniks back to our side unless Hubert urinated on a portrait of Lyndon Johnson in Times Square before television — and then they’d say to him, “Why didn’t you do it before?”
What’s your impression of the Triumph of the Richard?
NIXONLAND, Week 9: “Winning”, “The First 100 Days”Post + Comments (135)