DBWI: Nixon elected POTUS in 1968

In 1967, former Vice President Richard Nixon suffered a fatal attack of phlebitis. He was expected to announce his candidacy for President in 1968.

Had Nixon lived, would he have been elected President and would he have ended the Vietnam War?
 
He certainly had an excellent chance of taking the GoP nomination and the Presidency. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea of him ending the war, though. Nixon the anti-communist bulldog? There's no way he'd just let the NVA walk over SE Asia. No, I think that under a Nixon presidency you'd see, if anything, an escalation.
 
Well, Humphrey did an excellent job of winding up the war: the bombing campaign on Duck Hook was so intense that NV sued for peace in late '70. Now there's a Korean-style armistice in place.
 
With Richard Nixon in the running, Humphrey's path to election would have certainly been more difficult. I'm not saying that Nixon certainly would have won, but it would have been far more likely. A President Nixon would probably not have ended the Vietnam War, unless things got a lot worse during his term. We also might have seen a less expansive welfare state with a Republican in the White House through the early '70s.
 
Well, Humphrey did an excellent job of winding up the war: the bombing campaign on Duck Hook was so intense that NV sued for peace in late '70. Now there's a Korean-style armistice in place.

Absolutely. Humphrey brought the troops home and bought himself a second term in doing so by uniting the anti-war left and the conservative elements of his party in a 'partial' victory over the North Vietnamese. Of course, Governor Reagan still ran to the right of him on that issue in '72, but by then that was a moot point. :eek:

I'm not exactly sure how Nixon would handle the Vietnam War. Probably along similar lines to HHH? IIRC, HHH lost a lot of credibility on the left for not ending conscription...do you think Nixon would have ended the draft had he been elected in 1968?
 
I don't know about the Vietnam War, but I do know that NASA dodged a bullet with Humphrey's victory. Nixon hated Kennedy, and would have pulled the plug on the Apollo Applications Program just to spite JFK's memory.
 
I don't know about the Vietnam War, but I do know that NASA dodged a bullet with Humphrey's victory. Nixon hated Kennedy, and would have pulled the plug on the Apollo Applications Program just to spite JFK's memory.

The end of the Johnson administration is definitely a big decider in terms of what NASA's going to be able to do in the future, of course. With Nixon in the White House, might we see some of the later Apollo missions and the Mars missions in the eighties canceled?
 
The Mars missions only started in 1985, as you recall. Remember what Kennedy said after his inauguration in 1981: "When we balance the federal budget, start paying down the debt instead of the interest, and can afford the main course, then'll I'll sign appropriations for extra dessert." Remember the Orion launch in February 1986, a quarter-century after Gemini?
 
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