"Good evening, my fellow Americans. Before going over to the Shoreham Hotel to address the victory celebration. I wanted to take a moment to say a word to all of you in this very personal way, speaking from the Oval office." There was no crowd of supporters, no family or friends. Just the very personable President speaking to His people. It was just like the bombing speeches: the Presidential Seal, the absolute quiet of a television studio. I wondered if the whole thing had been prerecorded, football metaphors and all

"The important thing in our process, however is to play the game," Nixon said. And in the great game of life, and particularly in the great game of politics, what is important is that on either side more Americans voted this year than ever before And the fact that you won or you lost must not keep you from keeping in the great game of politics in the years ahead, because the better competition we have between the two parties, between the two men running ffor office--whatever that office may be--means that we get the better people and the better programs for our country".

I could almost see how he had won so handily he was so controlled, so convincingly true he never came down, not even to recognize the minority parties, one of whose presidential candidates was a woman I tried to conduct myself in this campaign in a way that would not divide our country--not divide it regionally or by parties or in any other ways because I firmly believe that what unites America today is infinitely more important than those things which divide us." "I kept thinking about uniting around a common enemy: Nixon kept talking about "peace with honor," and "a generation of peace." "This is a great goal."

"There are other goals that go with that. The prosperity without war and without inflation that we have all wanted and that we now can have..." Say it and it shall be so. "And the progress for all Americans, the kind of progress so that we can say to any young American, whatever his background, that he or she in this great country has an equal chance to go to the top in whatever field he or she may choose."

America the Peacemaker, America the Land of Progress and Opportunity, the United States. One day later I would witness the beginning of the end--for the "era of permissiveness." Tuesday night Nixon had only one more thing to say: "I would only hope that in these next four years we can so conduct ourselves in this country and so most our responsibilities in the world in building peace in the world, that years from now people will look back to the generation of the 1970s and how we've conducted ourselves and they will say, God Bless America. Thank you very much."

God Bless America. Thank you very much. Sincerely, George McGovern. Lincoln Coca Cola. I'm Harry Reasoner. And I'm Howard K. Smith. That was the national election. I was in Massachusetts. There would be four more years, but I would not watch them on television: the spectre had turned off the set