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Nixon’s Bigger Mistake…What would the world be like today if Nixon had challenged the unbelievably close and suspect election results of 1960. Wikipedia reports: “Some Republicans alleged that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud especially in Texas and Illinois. There is no certainty that Nixon would have won both Texas and Illinois (which he would have had to do to win the electoral vote). What is certain, however, is that in Illinois, Kennedy won by a bare 9,000 votes, and Mayor Daley, who held back Chicago's vote until late in the evening, provided an extraordinary Cook County margin of victory of 450,000 votes. The Republican Party urged Nixon to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of some of the votes for Kennedy, especially in the pivotal states of Illinois, Missouri and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election. Nixon publicly refused to call for a recount, saying it would cause a constitutional crisis.” No one knows what would have resulted from a recount, but we can conjecture what might have happened if Nixon had been determined the winner and had become president in 1960 instead of in 1968. It is reasonable to think that a president Nixon in 1960 would have been less embittered from his losses in 1960 for president and governor of California in 1962. It is plausible to think he would not have felt impelled to resort to dirty tricks and the Watergate affair which led to his downfall and so damaged the country. He would likely have had less of a paranoid attitude to real and perceived enemies. It might well have happened that he would have ended the Vietnam War during his probable 8 years as president. It would probably have not occurred to Khrushchev to send missiles to Cuba because he knew Nixon to be a tough customer. China was bound to be opened someday anyway. Whatever motivated the assassination of JFK would not have likely motivated such an effort against Nixon because he would not have stirred up so much antagonism from the right and criminal element. He would have finished his two terms an apparently honorable man and Lyndon Johnson would likely have been the next president without the intolerable burden of Vietnam and could have vigorously pursued his liberal policies to bring some health to our ailing state. And those dead Kennedys would still be alive. Then, who knows who would be our president today?
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Jack Wilson is an artist and writer in Tempe, AZ
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