"On election day, Nixon was elected president with 43.4 percent of the vote to Humphrey's 42.7 percent, a margin of just seven-tenths of 1 percent. Clandestine maneuvering may have helped him win that narrow victory--"Nixon probably would not be president if it were not for [President] Thieu," his speechwriter William Safire once admitted--but Nixon's fear that the maneuvering might someday be exposed would eventually help bring about his undoing."