Discussion: WI Chennault affair exposed?

Let's say that Humphrey decides to throw caution to the winds and leaks Nixon's involvement in the Chennault affair to the media. This is less than a week before the election. Does it blow up in Humphrey's face, ensuring Nixon's victory, or allow the greatest comeback since 1948?
 
Haven't you already done a thread about this?

Anyway, the White House in 1968 certainly had suspicions about the Nixon campaign going against the US national interest. If Claire Chennault was being used by them to influence the RVN then laws were being broken.

Yet I don't believe any presidential nominee could expose and run against their opponent on charges like this, not in the modern era. America in the twentieth century had moved beyond the Bloody Shirt. It'd become both more politically sophisticated and less, how shall we say, robust. Which is why a hardass politician like Johnson was willing to call a halt to the bombing to help Humphrey, but unwilling to pull the trigger on Nixon's alleged crime. One was doable, the other unseemly.

Calling out the Republican campaign would have been too much like the stuff of Depression era conspiratorialists (Long, Butler, Nye) or Charles Lindbergh's attack on foreign influences at the beginning of the war.
 
How about letting Chennault and others know indirectly that the White House knows what's going on? After all, LBJ did bug Nixon's plane, the SVN Embassy and have Chennault's phone tapped IOTL.

P.S.: I didn't want to necromance, and this is partially for a future HHH '68 TL. ;)
 
How about letting Chennault and others know indirectly that the White House knows what's going on? After all, LBJ did bug Nixon's plane, the SVN Embassy and have Chennault's phone tapped IOTL.

Well, she was onboard with the (alleged) conspiracy in an era when any elite Washingtonian could tell her of the risk of being detected by Hoover or Helms/Angleton, and of the administration then being informed. I think she was comfortable with this risk, as she seems to have been committed to her beliefs.

I also can't help but feel that there was an element of IOKIYAR at work here. That seems to have been something the Nixonians and all the other conservatives assumed when they charged people with disloyalty. McCarthy in the fifties was the only one who went far enough to suffer the consequences. But this is a subject for Chat.
 
Haven't you already done a thread about this?

Anyway, the White House in 1968 certainly had suspicions about the Nixon campaign going against the US national interest. If Claire Chennault was being used by them to influence the RVN then laws were being broken.

Yet I don't believe any presidential nominee could expose and run against their opponent on charges like this, not in the modern era. America in the twentieth century had moved beyond the Bloody Shirt. It'd become both more politically sophisticated and less, how shall we say, robust. Which is why a hardass politician like Johnson was willing to call a halt to the bombing to help Humphrey, but unwilling to pull the trigger on Nixon's alleged crime. One was doable, the other unseemly.

Calling out the Republican campaign would have been too much like the stuff of Depression era conspiratorialists (Long, Butler, Nye) or Charles Lindbergh's attack on foreign influences at the beginning of the war.

Who says Humphrey needs to do it openly? Form a front group and pump some money into it, leak it to the New York Times or the Washington Post, etc.

Then all that Humphrey has to do is to hit Nixon's secret plan for ending the war and be willing to buck LBJ on negotiations and bombing.
 
I agree with Steven. Humphrey did buck LBJ with the Salt Lake City speech but got the "forces of hell" unleashed upon him for doing so. Negotiations are a no-go: otherwise the Democratic hawk vote immediately migrates to Nixon and Wallace, ensuring an even larger Nixon victory than OTL. This can be done easily with the 1960s version of a 501 (c) organization. Another problem: the Democrats are broke. Why do you think no HHH ads ran during September? No money, no credit available. Nor do I believe that Hubert has the balls to do this. RFK: he'd do it in an instant and enjoy doing so. Hubert is nowhere near that ruthless, tough or ballsy.
 
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