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A. No. I don't think so, but I think we might have come very close to carrying the convention on the issue of the war, and we'd have been in a better position to try to force Humphrey to make some concessions.
Q. There must be some sense of considerable disappointment, to look back at '68 and realize what you did, the risk you took and what happened, to be a kind of prophet without honor.
A. That's really it, I guess. It didn't work. You take some consolation that we had to do it. Somebody had to do it. Then say, well, we gave the people a chance to have their say in the middle of the war.
But the fact is that the war went on and that the full force of the party was pretty well wiped out. But I think the party would have been fragmented and split anyway, even if we hadn't done it. If it had responded, I think the party would have had new vitality, as it did after '48, and civil rights. It would be a different party.
Q. I think there's a lingering sense -- you can see it in this campaign -- that the Democrats are a party of weakness, and there is almost a continual shooting of the messenger.
A. When people talk about the Viet Nam War being lost because of critics, I say, we didn't win -- I lost. The party endorsed the war. And Nixon won and George McGovern lost.
Q. Do you think this country has digested the war experience?
A. I don't think so, no. It's curious that the Viet Nam Memorial is the most popular one in Washington. I wrote a thing about it. In the paper a soldier said, "This is a funny monument. It doesn't have any beginning or any ending." Just like the war.
Q. It keeps recurring, in art, in politics.
A. The whole thing was so corrupting. It corrupted the military. It made them dishonest. It made them do things that wouldn't otherwise be done. It corrupted the press. It corrupted the Administration, certainly. I'm sure they knew they were lying to us. And corrupted the Democratic Party. And actually, it started the country's fiscal disorder.
Q. You say you're offended by this year's campaign, and you certainly didn't care for the last Democratic President. Over the years, you've talked about politics as a vocation and a profession, yet you seem to have taken a turn away from politics.
A. You get kind of thrown out of the party and rejected. I've given the electorate a chance to vote for me in many conditions against all sorts of opponents. So you can't be hanging around the gate too much. I haven't started saying I told you so yet -- that's the last step, and I'm holding off on that.