At the risk of spoiling a future HistoryMeme, I think a very important part of this story is that as a candidate in the 1968 election he conspired with then mid-level diplomat Henry Kissinger to undermine peace talks (arc). Literal damn treason that cost literally goddamn hundreds of thousands of lives, all because he didn't want to lose a campaign talking point.
e; Oh, and Kissinger was rewarded by being made Nixon's Secretary of State, where he went on to be the Henry Kissinger we all know and are hopefully completely horrified by.

Yep, and so many of the same people were involved in each of them, and every single one should have been in prison or executed.
I agree with everything else, but I'm not so sure about this. I think if we had said "This is treason" and treated it like what the average American thinks a treason/coup scenario would look like (dramatic and violent, like a tv show where the president is played by Harrison Ford or Kiefer Sutherland) and used whatever force was necessary to put people in jail immediately most Americans would have rallied 'round the flag.
Either way, yeah we definitely should have rolled the dice on it.