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Show our man Hoppe The loser By Arthur Hoppe Herewith is another unwritten chapter of history from "The Making of a Loser-1968." Its title: "The Secret of Spiro T. Agnew." At the time, Richard Nixon's selection of Spiro T. Agnew, a Greek-American, as his running mate appeared a master stroke designed to unify the ethnic mincitifi. And unify them president. They sent me Grommet and we made the switch." But did Grommet look like Agnew? Tuck seemed surprised. "Who ever knew what Agnew looked like?" he said. The rest is history. Some felt Agnew-Grommet's joke about "this Wop admiral who bought a glass-bottomed boat to review the fleet" might have drawn a few laughs if he hadn't picked the Agnew die. The campaign was but a week i old when he unified all Polish-Americans by calling them "Polacks." And hardly had the furor died down than on a visit to Hawaii he unified its large Japanese-American population by referring to a reporter as a "fat Jap." Insert Foot At first, political observers charitably ascribed these graffes to one of three theories: Agnew was (1) inexperienced in politics, (2) idiot'0' r (3) 3n inexPerienced Eut such theories failed to hold han ABnew went on, early October, to refer to Jo.Tse.Tung as a chink in the mys armor" and followed this a week later with an address to the national Association for the &Tnt of Colored People idf P 6ntitled "Let's Call a bPde a Spade "Which he did. en?J .n0t Until the campaign Ktfat the truth was revJali: In!, Agnew had been Mpedm Miami and a character GromLuaJmed Hartingford ; urmmet had taken his place! A Democratic Plant ; Jhis political coup was the , or course, of none other i'pyk TUCk' the Dtic ; Justly heaSy" Said TUCk 1 Nixrm l The mment I heard ' Agnew adhm Spiro T. ' and nfH ?Ued Central Casting ' tyerec! a florid, silver-haired : m ho looked like a vice i ltalo-Americans Columbus Day Banquet at which to deliver it. His choice of northern Maine for a lecture on the joys of frog sticking was also questioned. And he chose a B'nai Brith Luncheon to deplore "vicious attacks against me Kike friends." In Minnesota, he confused "Honkies" and "Hunkies." And in El Paso he shook hands with a Mexican-American service station attendant lubricating a car and asked how he like "being a greaser." By election eve, the Nixon campaign was a shambles. In desperation, Agnew-Grommet was given a half hour of prime time to explain his position. He opened by saying he was sorry if he had offended anyone. And he devoted the remaining 28 minutes to a single sentence which began, "Why some of my best friends are Polacks, Japs, Chinks, Spades, Wops, Frogs, Kikes, Hunkies, Greasers, Limeys, Micks, Bohunks, Mackeral Snappers, Squareheads, Spicks..." A few historians stubbornly have refused to accept that Agnew was actually a plant by the Democrats. But they never have come up with any other theory that would adequately explain the odd manner in which he waged his campaign. In any event, all agreed that he was the first candidate in history to unify the nation. "For the wonderful thing about this country," as one historian musingly put it "is that there's nobody here but us Polacks, Japs, Chinks, Spades, Wops..." |