Notion that it couldnt happen, that they could not elect a catholic president of the United States. If you know our political history for the decades preceding that with al smith and others there was evidence that , you cannot elect a catholic, and that was all transcended and exploded one night in november 1960. And so the world we were looking at in 1968 when i could really finally Pay Attention was a world coming apart in the United States. The vietnam war is raging, we had an incumbent president Lyndon Johnson who had been elected four years ago in a landslide who was on the way to an easy reelection again. He was very likely to be facing some of very good at losing president ial elections. Richard nixon, who had the distinction in history at the beginning of 1968, of being the very first Vice President in history to lose a president ial campaign. He then made Hubert Humphrey the second 1968. As the year began, it was back in that ancient america where if someone said, i democrat o