Scandal! Continued.
President Humphrey would enact several landmark reforms during the "Fair Society" of his second term, before it was cut short by his resignation in 1974 (the assassination attempt by Bremer in 1972 had crippled him, and it was clear that he would have died in office had he not resigned). President Muskie continued in his footsteps, but by 1976, 16 years of Democratic dominance were starting to wear thin, especially with Fair Deal jobs programs greatly increasing inflation. The bicentennial of 1776, positive coverage over Humphrey's death on July 4th, and the legislative record of the past two years bolstered Muskie's position in the polls despite the high inflation and an American population weary of Democrats in the Oval Office.
Aside from Nelson Rockefeller, who was serving as Secretary of State and did not seriously contest the nomination, Washington Governor Daniel J. Evans was the only credible national figure in the Republican Party. Evans had gained applause across the political spectrum when he resigned from the Agnew ticket in 1972 after the Maryland Governor's corruption came to light. Initially, it seemed that he would win in a landslide. Alas, the Watergate-Bundy scandal ended any hopes of that.
The break-in at the Democratic National Committee's Watergate HQ was eventually tied back to the Evans campaign. It is not clear to this day whether the break-in was authorized by Evans himself, but it most certainly was authorized by his campaign manager, Theodore Bundy. After weeks of denial, Evans decided to use Bundy as a fall guy, not knowing about the bodies the police would discover in his home. It turned out that Bundy was not only a psychomurderer of people, but was also guilty of campaign manslaughter. This occurred before the first, and only, debate of the campaign.
The media had pronounced the careers of George Wallace and Ronald Reagan dead and buried after their defeats in the 1970 gubernatorial elections. While this would be true for Reagan (he would challenge Governor Feynman in 1974 and lose in a landslide), George Wallace threw his energy into building the American Independent Party as a national force following it's surprisingly good showing in the 1972 presidential election. In 1974, he returned to Montgomery in triumph, and with mild black support as well. In 1976, he gained popularity running against "one-party rule," picking reformist Democratic Governor Daniel Walker of Illinois as his running mate. The New Wallace, the Moderate Wallace, the Wallace of Change, ran a decidedly more triumphant and sunnier campaign than the Wallace of 1968. It was more professional, more appealing to former middle-class Republicans. And it would be this New Wallace who decisively trounced in the first debate, which was widely regarded as the most influential debate in Presidential history...
