And Now, a Word from Jackie Gleason...

During the first season of Mad Men, the boys spent much of the year toiling away on the ad campaign for that young dashing ex-Navy war hero presidential candidate — Richard Nixon(!) — only to be crushed at the end of the season when the other young dashing ex-Navy war hero presidential candidate narrowly (very narrowly) won the election.

If and when the show makes it to ’68, presumably things will come full circle, and, unless the grinding impact of the mid-1960s transforms the entire gang at Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce into complete squishes, perhaps they’ll be working once again on the Nixon campaign. It would certainly be fun to see them produce this ad, one of the last salvos of the near-exhausted primary culture of the 1960s, before it’s swallowed whole by the counter-culture:

[youtube 1_C9vGEJXTU]

Needless to say, as president, Nixon would have more than a little impact on the culture of the following decade as well.