WI: Johnson asks J. Edgar Hoover to arrest Nixon late Oct. '68?

And Johnson does it right. He respectfully talks to Hoover in late afternoon, Yes, I'm very much leaning in that direction. Are you going to be able to back me up. I'll let you know my final decision in the morning.

Yes, this is in regards to the Nixon campaign attempting to sabotage the peace talks.

Nixon is arrested in the morning, and early that evening LBJ talks to the nation.
 
Prior to a few weeks ago, I would have said this scenario was ASB. Now, I'm not so sure.

But I'm still gonna say that, having the head of the FBI arrest the Republican candidate a few weeks before the election is only going to seriously delegitimize any victorious Democrat. The people who were already inclined to believe that Humphrey was Satan and Nixon the saviour are gonna regard it as an outright coup d'etat, and respond accordingly. The Hardhat Riots get going two years earlier than in OTL, and are about ten times as bad.
 
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. . . already inclined to believe that Humphrey was Satan and Nixon the saviour are gonna regard it as an outright coup d'etat, . . .
And it's going to feel like a coup. That's why Johnson is going to need to give a hell of a speech that night. Maybe something like

" . . . We are a two-party system and that is our strength. More than that, we are a democracy, and that is our fundamental strength as Americans. All the same, I'm not going to have someone attempting to sabotage peace talks when so many have sacrifice so much. In fact, some have made the ultimate sacrifice to bring us to where we are. No, not secret efforts to sabotage by political candidates. I will be meeting with Republican Senators and members of the House to see what we can do. . . "
 
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Can you imagine watching THIS ad on TV, and then immediately after it ends, a news flash comes on saying that Johnson has just had Nixon arrested?
Wow, absolutely amazing. Presumably a Nixon commercial which portrays Humphrey as a flip-flopper and a phoney and a falsely optimistic person who's very out of touch with what's going on. As if ol' Hubert is very much a lightweight.

It starts out like it's going to be a pro-Humphrey commercial, and then this discordant jump in music and his face rapidly moves back and forth as if he's a two-faced person, or at the very least overwhelmed with no idea what he's doing. I guess as an early example of the hyperspeed Internet generation, wow, like a super-spliced music video. Like scratching and dance music. As in, Is a turntable a musical instrument? It is if you think it is!

Yes, in the popular imagination the Democrats were blamed for the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, even though it was more of a police riot with the police attacking protestors. But somehow Democrats got painted as weak even at this early stage.

Of course, the part at the end where they show presumably Appalachian poverty works against the Republicans. This was poor politicking on part of Nixon's campaign.
 
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Of course, the part at the end where they show presumably Appalachian poverty works against the Republicans. This was poor politicking on part of Nixon's campaign.

I wonder if there was supposed to be some subtext of "The Democrats sure seem to care a lot about inner-city("coughcoughblackcoughcough") poverty, but what about all you folk up in the hills who are still washing your dishes in the outhouse?"

Of course, Johnson addressed Appalachian poverty as well, but if you're someone living up there, and you still see some poverty around you and don't have much contact with the cities, you might buy into the myths about everyone in the urban slums eating cake and ice-cream for dinner every night while the rural folk still starve.

And I actually really like that ad, aesthetically speaking. The dark psychedelia might be an early example of conservatives appropriating countercultural trappings for their own ends, which is something we hear a lot about now.
 
I wonder if there was supposed to be some subtext of "The Democrats sure seem to care a lot about inner-city("coughcoughblackcoughcough") poverty, but what about all you folk up in the hills who are still washing your dishes in the outhouse?"
Maybe it dovetailed in with some stuff Nixon was saying from the stump and in other commercials. I think it fails. The first part was so powerful on very familiar, well-tred ground. 'The Democrats are encouraging civil disorder, the Democrats are weak on Vietnam and not supporting the troops . . . '

Did you notice the close-up on the angry woman at the beginning right before Humphrey's face goes back and forth. Trying to play off resentment against feminism, against anyone not in their "proper place"? That other people are taking over from white males?

And the woman is a little bit darker, like she might have some ethnic stock.

I was surprised they didn't include a black face in the scenes of rioting. I guess they didn't want to be that obvious. Argue by implication, like you're saying.

And I like the aesthetics of the ad, too! Maybe the Republicans feel that since they have very conventional policy advocacy, they can be more cutting edge on presentation. And the Democrats feel they can't.
 
The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'

BBC Magazine, David Taylor, March 22, 2103.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668

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It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.

He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.

At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.
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So, Johnson asks for and then states he agreed with Hoover on arresting Nixon in the morning. And during the day, Johnson surrogates make the case, saying such things as:

'The problem is not Mrs. Chennault. The problem is Richard Nixon.'

'Trying to disrupt active peace talks is well, well beyond the line for politics. Yes, it's a very difficult situation. The president will be addressing the nation this evening.'

'And which would be worse, if Richard Nixon knew, or if he didn't know?'
 
Johnson listens to his better advisors that he wants to be right down the middle.

1) Nixon thought he was cheating back. He viewed Johnson as trying to rush the talks by a proposed halt in bombing in late October for crying out, as Johnson trying to cheat on Humphrey's behalf.

2) South Vietnam President Thieu was never all that enthusiastic about the peace talks, in large part because it would probably mean giving up his job in the not very far future, and

3) plenty of Americans thought the peace talks were a bum deal, and we should simply fight harder in the war.

So, let's say President Lyndon Johnson succeeds in giving a very middle-of-the-road speech to the nation that evening.
 
Johnson listens to his better advisors that he wants to be right down the middle.

Thing is, it took a couple of years and a whole swack of media coverage, police investigations, and congressional hearings to unravel Watergate, and even then, you still had apologists saying "Aw, come on, it wasn't THAT bad, what Nixon did." And that was in repsonse to the mere THREAT of an impeachment.

In your scenario, the public finds out about the allegations at the same time they find out that Nixon's been arrested. So, not a lot of time for sober analysis and debate, with weeks or even just days to go before the election.

I'm tempted to stick with my original assertion that existing sentiments harden, with Nixon supporters convinced it's all a frame-up, and going ballistic, and Democrats thinking Nixon is Benedict Arnold II(loose analogy), and howling for his head. So, not much electoral movement either way.

However, that WAS a pretty close election...

NIXON: 43.4%

HUMPH: 42.7%

WALLACE: 13.5%

You might not need THAT many swing voters to go into a panic about GOP perfidy to push the advantage over to the Democrats. But would there be enough swingers on the Democrat side, now freaked-out about the tyranny of LBJ, going over to the GOP to counteract the movement in the other direction?

And what happens to Wallace? If some of his tribe are suitably gobsmacked by all this, they might decide they don't wanna be spoilers against whichever party they think is now the bulwark against national disaster, and move their vote over there. But I could also see some Repiblicans going over to Wallace, if they believe the allegations about Nixon but can't bring themselves to vote for Johsnon.
 
. . . In your scenario, the public finds out about the allegations at the same time they find out that Nixon's been arrested. So, not a lot of time for sober analysis and debate, with weeks or even just days to go before the election. . .
Yes, it's quite a challenge.

If people already know about the race, they seem to be highly resistant to new information. I'm thinking of the FBI clearing Hillary Clinton the weekend before the election. Think that hurt her more than it helped her. Whereas if it's an unknown race and someone goes negative the weekend before, that does seem to be effective.

In late October, with Johnson's full support, Congress passes a law that presidential elections will henceforth be in 1970, 1974, 1978, etc. And I think a simple law will be enough, with no need for a Constitutional amendment in merely changing the date. And Johnson does this because he doesn't want to be royally unfair to Republicans, or at least be perceived as such.
 
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This is Senator Dick Russell from Georgia, one of LBJ's closest friends. And after Lyndon tells J. Edgar Hoover that late afternoon that he's probably going to go forward tomorrow morning, Senator Russell is probably someone Lyndon is going to spend some time talking with and strategizing with that evening.

And Dick Russell had significant doubts about the whole Vietnam War.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/reviews/001231.31isaacst.html

In that haunting conversation between President Johnson and Senator Russell, Langguth notes, Johnson worried at one point that getting out of Vietnam might ''make us look mighty bad.'' ''We don't look too good right now,'' Russell replied -- this when the American presence in Vietnam was still relatively small and fewer than 150 American soldiers had died in battle.
 
I'm not at all sure how the nation reacts to an arrest of a strong rival of the established party, the leadership blamed for many messes besides Vietnam (many of which I would not think were messes, but some people would) so very close to the election. The suggestion to change the year, essentially Johnson helping himself to cutting Humphrey's term in half, might mitigate things a bit, but it is more radical change to irritate the "Silent Majority."

Remember LBJ himself cannot be reelected. He is not on the ballot, Humphrey is. OTOH he gets to manage the transition to whoever is elected.

If Johnson could ram through a conviction before election day, then Nixon's status as a valid candidate is in doubt. But if an arrest and publication of charges looks self-serving and dictatorial, imagine what such an apparently kangaroo court ruling would look like! As long as Nixon is not actually convicted, which with usual US trial procedures would take months, he is a legal and valid candidate for the office of the Presidency. People might therefore vote for him to defy Johnson. They might convince themselves (wrongly, but easily) that the treaty Johnson is negotiating is bad, and should be torpedoed, and calling Nixon and Anna Chenault heroes, and endorsing the stand of Thieu and the other South Vietnamese leaders.

It is my personal belief that if Nixon had not muddied the waters, although the Saigon government did strongly dislike the process and feared the outcome of a peace treaty, they also understood that they were dependent on US good will to survive at all, and knowing there was a good chance they'd have to deal with Humphrey after next January (and of a certainty they had to deal with LBJ until then, barring his resignation, impeachment or assassination--then they'd be dealing with Humphrey early) they would sullenly and grudgingly follow the US lead. Thus the significance of Nixon's action was not to put the idea into Southern heads that they didn't like the treaty--it was rather to send them a message that if they only took a bold stand for what they wanted to do anyway, they would be rewarded. The Democrats would be embarrassed and gotten rid of, from Presidential power, and the new President being a famous anti-Communist would surely have their backs. This was the message--and it was clearly treasonous, in the sense that he was working to frustrate current Administrative policy in foreign affairs.

If I am right then Johnson would have been able, if not before the election then before leaving office, to hand the nation "Peace in Our Time" in Vietnam--and ironically, as I have argued elsewhere, the USA under whatever Presidential leadership would be both more able and more willing to guarantee the South against an overt military invasion of the kind that actually caused the Saigon regime to fall OTL. In short Thieu, or whoever might succeed him in what passed for due process in the South, would keep his job after all, because the North would not invade knowing the Americans could and would intervene to stop it. Elsewhere I've enumerated what LBJ's motives and wishes were at this point; they went beyond swinging the election his party's way.

So--what happens if Nixon is thrown into jail, accused of violating the laws that forbid private citizens to work against the intent of US foreign policy for private gain (or any reason at all, no matter how lofty), Nixon then wins the election (perhaps more closely than OTL), then when the prosecution lays out the evidence, it is damning? Might the Republicans ask Nixon and Agnew to both resign before taking office, or make it clear to them that if they are allowed to be sworn in it will only be on the condition they then resign immediately?

Then again, why pick on poor Spiro Agnew? The idea that Agnew was a candidate was played up as a joke, as an instance of Republican irresponsibility much as the choices of Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle were treated in their respective years--but Constitutionally speaking, he is Nixon's legitimate successor, and if he could not be shown to have anything to do with the Vietnam scandal, the deal might well be--Nixon bows out, before or after the Inauguration, in favor of Agnew, who would then pick someone else to be his VP.

Thus Nixon, as a private citizen with no Presidential immunities, faces a trial for his interference. A trial he could conceivably win. In fact, the Republican deal with Johnson could be made entirely contingent on Nixon's trial outcome--say they agree to let Johnson continue to serve as President, under close Republican supervision, until Nixon's trial is settled, and if Nixon is not found guilty he then takes office; if he is, Agnew then takes office.

Or the matter could be settled as a plea bargain--in return for charges being dropped, Nixon bows out, no harm, no foul, maybe he has to also agree never to run for public office again.

But meanwhile, what about the Treaty? I think if Johnson arrests Nixon and the charges are made public, then the South Vietnamese leadership will not cooperate with the treaty process. They want to see Nixon vindicated; perhaps their words and actions might make his legal case worse, but they are interested in the political case anyway. They will screech and scream that Johnson, the nogoodnik pinko liberal, wants to sell Vietnam into Communist slavery to get rid of a problem, and Nixon is their brave hero standing for freedom-loving South Vietnamese. The treaty is dead and Johnson's choices are to give these ungrateful Saigon mandarins whatever they want on their terms, to capitulate to them, or to cut off aid and let Hanoi take over for real, thus appearing to make their case for them. Or of course he could do as he, and Kennedy, and Eisenhower had done before and topple the current leadership and look for new puppets who could better be hoped to toe the US line, and go on sending more money and more men into the Vietnam rathole, which would be Agnew's mess to clean up as he sees fit after January.

Johnson's dilemma is that getting the treaty is his goal for reasons far more important than who wins the election, but by taking the action he did OTL Nixon guarantees LBJ will fail, and cannot vindicate himself.

Even from a jail cell, Nixon wins. He wins even if the election goes the other way, and Humphrey gets the electoral votes, or the election goes to the House.

And no matter how solid the evidence and how exemplary a trial Nixon gets, if he is convicted there will always be those who disbelieved the charges.
 
Well, admitting the White House bugged an ambassador's home isn't going to endear the Democrats to anyone......and is going to have all other allies and enemies searching their places for bugs and starting all sorts of problems the Dems won't need in an election year. Since Johnson learned of the "treason" via an illegal act....none of the evidence would be admissible in court and Nixon is still going to win the election.
 
Well, admitting the White House bugged an ambassador's home isn't going to endear the Democrats to anyone......and is going to have all other allies and enemies searching their places for bugs and starting all sorts of problems the Dems won't need in an election year. Since Johnson learned of the "treason" via an illegal act....none of the evidence would be admissible in court and Nixon is still going to win the election.
This. Johnson knew he'd get himself into trouble if he were to reveal that Nixon did this. With that said, if Nixon were to still win in this scenario, he'd be a lame duck from the start.
 

raharris1973

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Maybe the outcome of this would be a big swing of mainly Republicans and some socially conservative independents to George Wallace, and Wallace winning the EV, with him being the choice of those wanting to pox the Democratic and Republican houses. Wallace after all, is not involved in the dispute and is after most of the same backlash constituencies as Nixon.

By the way, anybody notice the irony of Anna Chennault (a Chinese immigrant with Nationalist sympathies marries to Claire Chennault, one of America's biggest fans of Nationalist China) helping Nixon. If only she had a crystal ball (and had read Nixon's paper trail more carefully) she would have foreseen Nixon's opening to China, supported Humphrey, who would not have the same political space to open to China, and even support "peace now" in Vietnam to avert further damage to America's anti-communist stand in Asia.

I would submit that while the conflict and losses of the Korean War greatly reinforced the USA's anti-PRC stance for the 50s and 60s, the conflict and losses of the Vietnam War drained support for that policy, by promising endless inconclusive war in Asia unless differences with the PRC were settled. If you cut the Vietnam War nearly in half, maybe its politically harder than OTL to abandon Taiwan.
 
Well, admitting the White House bugged an ambassador's home isn't going to endear the Democrats to anyone......and is going to have all other allies and enemies searching their places for bugs and starting all sorts of problems the Dems won't need in an election year. Since Johnson learned of the "treason" via an illegal act....none of the evidence would be admissible in court and Nixon is still going to win the election.
To use a very earthy example, the dynamic might be similar to the social politeness that when someone farts, you usually pretend like you didn't hear it.

So, President Johnson merely uses the word "intelligence" and perhaps adds, of course we keep track of which U.S. citizens are in contact with the embassy of South Vietnam, and leaves it at that.
 
@Shevek23

. . . if Nixon had not muddied the waters, although the Saigon government did strongly dislike the process and feared the outcome of a peace treaty, they also understood that they were dependent on US good will . . .
I respectfully disagree with you here. I think if Nixon had done nothing, South Vietnam's Thieu still would not have gone along. (most likely possibility)

But, similar to good poker play following an unfortunate occurrence, with Nixon exposed and discredited and Humphrey almost certainly winning, South Vietnam now chastened, most likely does come to the negotiating table and participates sincerely.
 
and if he's smart, that evening before Nixon is arrested in the morning, President Johnson will talk with some of the Republicans he has known the longest.

People put so much weight on being included in the loop and asked ahead of time, even if the decision has already largely been made. I think disproportional weight, and weight greater than the actual content of the decision. Although in honestly, there are still a number of questions on the How side, such as how to address the nation the following evening and how to make up for this big a disadvantage to Republicans, even though it's something they brought on themselves.

And if Nixon catches wind of these discussions, it really doesn't matter. Or, if he tries to do something strategic and defensive, it's probably just going to make him look guilty.
 
This. Johnson knew he'd get himself into trouble if he were to reveal that Nixon did this. With that said, if Nixon were to still win in this scenario, he'd be a lame duck from the start.

Why a lame duck? LBJ has just shot the dems in the, uh, foot. He's revealed he's had embassies bugged, offended allies, frenemies and enemies alike by the revelation (and if LBJ says ANYTHING about 'intelligence' and what-not, by that time the ambassador's bug has been found and revealed, and then everything hits the fan). The republicans are now the party of the people and the dems are now power-grabbing cheats. Hopefully, Nixon learns enough to avoid Watergate (not that I'd bet anything I liked on that one).
 
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