After two weeks on that peaceful human schedule, the last thing I wanted to think about was the grim, inescapable spectre of two more frenzied months on the campaign trail. Especially when it meant coming back here to Washington, to start laying the groundwork for a long and painful autopsy job on the McGovern campaign. What went wrong? Why had it failed? Who was to blame? And, finally, what next?

That was on project. The other was to somehow pass through the fine eye of the White House security camel and go out on the campaign trail with Richard Nixon, to watch him waltz in -- if only to get the drift of his thinking, to watch the moves, his eyes. It is a nervous thing to consider: Not just four more years of Nixon, but Nixon's last four years in politics -- completely unshackled, for the first time in his life, from any need to worry about who might or might not vote for him the next time around.

If he wins in November, he will finally be free to do whatever he wants. . . or maybe “wants” is too strong a word for right now. It conjures up images of Papa Doc, Batista, Somoza; jails full of bewildered “political prisoners” and the constant cold-sweat fear of jackboots suddenly kicking your door off its hinges at four A.M.

There is no point in kidding ourselves about what Richard Nixon really wants for America. When he stands at his White House window and looks out on an anti-war demonstration, he doesn't see “dissenters,” he sees criminals. Dangerous parasites, preparing to strike at the heart of the Great American System that put him where he is today.

There may not be much difference between Democrats and Republicans; I have made that argument myself -- with considerable venom, as I recall -- over the past ten months. . . But only a blind geek or a waterhead could miss the difference between McGovern and Richard Nixon. Granted, they are both white men, and both are politicians -- but the similarity ends right there, and from that point on the difference is so vast that anybody who can't see it deserves whatever happens to them if Nixon gets re-elected due to apathy, stupidity, and laziness on the part of potential McGovern voters.

The tragedy of this campaign is that McGovern and his staff wizards have not been able to dramatize what is really at stake on November 7th. We are not looking at just another dim rerun of the '68 Nixon/Humphrey trip, or the LBJ/Goldwater fiasco in '64. Those were both useless drills. I voted for Dick Gregory in '68, and for “No” in '64. . . but this one is different, and since McGovern is so goddamn maddeningly inept with the kind of words he needs to make people understand what he's up to, it will save a lot of time here -- and strain on my own weary head -- to remember Bobby Kennedy's ultimate characterization of Richard Nixon, in a speech at Vanderbilt University in the spring of 1968, not long before he was murdered.