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Clearly, the U.S. election has played a powerful role—on both sides. During his two-day session with Le Duc Tho in Paris last August, Kissinger pressed the argument that Hanoi would do well to settle along the lines of Nixon's May 8 plan. That called for a cease-fire in-place throughout Indochina, and a withdrawal of U.S. troops within four months after release of American P.O.W.s, leaving the political issues to be settled by the Vietnamese themselves. If Nixon were to win a second term, Kissinger argued, the Administration offer could well harden. In September, by the reckoning of intelligence analysts in Washington, the polls began to convince the Hanoi Politburo that a victory by McGovern, who has proposed that the U.S. should "break free of Thieu" with a unilateral withdrawal, was a poor gamble.
Nixon too must pay attention to the tricky politics of peace. According to Pollster Daniel Yankelovich, Viet Nam is "the key" to Nixon's commanding lead over McGovern. But the U.S. public's conviction that Nixon is better able to handle the war might change dramatically if the Administration were to run into big trouble in Paris—or, more accurately, in Saigon. As the White House well knows, an obstreperous ally in Saigon refusing to accept the Kissinger-designed settlement might raise new doubts in the minds of the U.S. electorate about the Administration's course in Viet Nam. More likely, though, given the U.S. desire to get out of the war, a rebellious Thieu seen as sabotaging peace might simply rally Americans to the President's side, enabling him to liquidate U.S. involvement without any fear of recrimination at home. Still for Nixon to abandon Saigon would be tantamount to declaring his Viet Nam policy to have been an utter failure.
But what would Thieu do? The silence of the U.S. embassy and the presidential palace only deepened the mystery. Saigonese pored over the abbreviated accounts of the talks that were in the tightly controlled press. Rumors flew of an impending coup, of an imminent shakeup of the South Vietnamese army. A report that the government had placed a rush order for 2,500,000 yards of bunting with a Saigon cloth merchant sparked speculation that the rumored cease-fire might really be at hand.
Even in cynical Saigon, Vietnamese reacted strongly—and somewhat surprisingly—to the image of Thieu at bay. Nguyen Van Huyen, the president of the South Vietnamese Senate and an occasional critic of Thieu, openly declared his hope that "he will remain in power to keep stability." Huyen added: "I don't say the U.S. is deserting us, but something very disquieting is happening." TIME Bureau Chief Stanley Cloud cabled: "For the first time in his political career, Thieu has become a truly sympathetic character. Even his opponents have expressed support for him as he apparently attempts to resist American pressures and plug the holes in the badly leaking boat of his presidency. The Vietnamese have a highly developed sense of pride, and if it seems to them that the Americans are attempting at this late date to abandon them, they could easily unite as never before behind an anti-Americanism far more virulent than any anti-Communism they ever felt."