ELECTION #47, 1972. The NASTY-METER is 10++.

QUOTE from the book ANYTHING for a VOTE. "In the Dirty Tricks Hall of Fame, Richard Nixon deserves a seat of honor."

The 1972 campaign will be synonymous with the words "dirty tricks."

The CANDIDATES in 1972.

REPUBLICAN: RICHARD NIXON.

Nixon had great success in foreign affairs in his first term. But he had failed to get out of Vietnam, four students were killed at Kent State College, and over 200,000 had marched on Washington D.C. to protest the war and his policies. Nixon had walled himself inside his presidency, sticking close to the White House and relying on the same group of advisors and rich friends for comfort and advice.

DEMOCRAT: GEORGE MCGOVERN.

McGovern was a former history and political science teacher turned senator from South Dakota. He was affable and low-key but not very exciting. He screwed himself at the convention when he gave his acceptance speech at 2:48 A.M.(nobody was watching) and screwed himself again when he chose Senator Thomas Eagleton Missouri of Missouri for his VP running mate.

The CAMAPIGN in 1972.

The first thing the Republicans did was disclose that Eagleton had been treated for clinical depression from 1960 to 1966, including electroshock therapy. McGovern said he supported Eagleton "one thousand percent." He later backed off and chose Sargent Shriver. The Republicans used this to paint McGovern as indecisive and a man who did not stand by his friends.

Nixon's strategy was to make appearances only in the Rose Garden and at carefully controlled campaign events.

Here is a list of some of the "Dirty Tricks" Nixon and the Republicans used in 1972:

-- When Nixon mined the Haiphong Harbor the N.Y. Times had a full page ad opposing the mining. The next day a full page ad appeared in the paper from 14 concerned "citizens" supporting Nixon's actions. The only trouble with the 14 was they were all relatives of members of Nixon's campaign committee (known as the Committee to Re-Elect the President - also known as CREEP). CREEP also sent thousands of pro-Nixon postcards to a D.C. television station that was taking a public-opinion poll on the mining of Haiphong, resulting in an outcome ot 3-1 in support of the president actions.


-- Nixon also had an enemies list. He ordered a special group of the Internal Revenue Service to do "field audits" on his so-called enemies, (he had over 200 on the list). How did Nixon know who his enemies were? The list was compiled by his aides John Dean and Chuck Colson. One example was Paul Newman because he had been involved in "Radic-Lib" causes. Another was black Congressman John Conyers because he supposedly had a "weakness for white females." A third was an ad man named Maxwell Dane who had helped produce the famous Lyndon Johnson "Daisy" ad in 1964.

-- Nixon had ordered the formation of the most famous group of tricksters in American history. They were called the "Special Investigations Unit, but became better known as the "Plumbers." Nixon put his aide John Erlichman in charge. The Plumbers went a little too far in their sneaky tricks. On June 17, 1972 they were caught by a night watchman inside the offices of the Democratic National Convention in the Watergate apartment and office complex in D.C. They were wearing surgical gloves and carried bugging equipment (tiny microphones hidden in phony ChapSticks), cameras, forty rolls of unexposed film, and $3,500 in brand-new, consecutively numbered hundred-dollar bills. The next day Nixon's Press Secretary dismissed it as "a third-rate burglary." It so, it was the only third-rate burglary to eventually cause the resignation of an American president. (They had actually broken in on Memorial Day - undetected - to install listening devices. Since the bugs weren't working properly, the Plumbers went back.)

-- Nixon referred to McGovern as the candidate of the "three A's: Acid, Amnesty (for draft dodgers), and Abortion."

-- The Plumbers took down Edmund Muskie with a whole range of tricks. With Nixon standing at 48% in the polls in early 1972 and with Muskie appearing to be the most likely Democratic candidate (and a strong one)the Plumbers were ordered to bring down Muskie.
1. One of their first tricks was before the New Hampshire primary when voters there began to get phone calls at all hours of the night. The callers identified themselves being black and said they had been bused in from Harlem to work for Muskie.

William Loeb, the conservative editor of the MANCHESTER UNION LEADER published a letter, purportedly written by an ordinary citizen, accused Muskie of using the word "Canuck" to refer to French Canadians. It turned out the letter was written by Nixon's White House aide Kenneth Clawson.

3. In the Florida primary the Plumbers placed posters on Florida highways that read: "Help Muskie in Busing More Children Now."

4. They placed ads in free shopper's newsletters saying: "Muskie Would you accept a black running mate?

The end result was Muskie placed 4th in Florida and his campaign for the presidency was over. The Plumbers had done their job.

The WINNER was RICHARD NIXON who continued for two more years as our 37th president.

Nixon got 47,169,911 popular and 520 electoral.

McGovern got 29,170,383 popular and 17 electoral.

The victory party would be over in two years as the details of the Watergate break-in became known.
When the American people got to hear the tapes of their president doing business - what they heard was not pleasant. On August 8, 1974, Nixon resigned.