Nixon understood better than anyone else the dangers of a public outburst by the president of South Vietnam. A Thieu blowup in 1968 had practically decided the outcome of the presidential election. Nixon had started out with a huge, 16-point lead over Humphrey in the polls. But in October, news reports of a peace initiative in the works narrowed the gap. On October 31, less than a week before the election, President Johnson went on television and announced his decision to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. The North, which had refused to talk to representatives of the Saigon “puppet” regime, agreed to sit down with representatives of the South as well as the United States in Paris. Humphrey, as LBJ’s vice president, profited by association with the peace initiative. Nixon’s lead in the polls evaporated. In Gallup the two were within the margin of error; in Harris, Humphrey pulled ahead. But on November 2, the Saturday before the election, Thieu announced that Saigon would boycott the Paris talks. “This would be another step toward a coalition government with the Communists in South Vietnam,” said Thieu. Coalition was a dirty word in South Vietnamese and American politics, viewed as a synonym for defeat. Thieu’s blowup made the peace initiative look like a slimy political trick designed by LBJ to boost Humphrey. The Democratic campaign’s rise stalled. Nixon won, but it was too close—the second-closest presidential election in the twentieth century. Only Nixon’s loss to JFK had been closer. The president would do a lot to avoid a blowup by Thieu.1