Howard Dean has gotten some publicity and campaign mileage out of a Dec. 7 speech where he touted his civil rights beliefs by contrasting himself with Richard Nixon.

In Columbia, South Carolina, where polls show he has been in a neck-and-neck race with Rev. Al Sharpton, Dean said the following:

In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way-by dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing out the worst in people.

They called it the “Southern Strategy,” and the Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using phrases like “racial quotas” and “welfare queens” to convince white Americans that minorities were to blame for all of America's problems.

Dean never mentioned to his audience what Nixon actually said. In a year that saw the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King Jr., violent anti-war protests, race riots from coast to coast, and white communities still fighting court-ordered integration of schools, Nixon did what Nixon did: he campaigned on a "law and order" platform.

In his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president in '68, for example, Nixon said:

And to those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, here is a reply: Our goal is justice - justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress.

Now, here's what Dean said in South Carolina:

We're going to talk about justice again in this country, and what an America based on justice should look like-an America with justice in our tax code, justice in our health care system, and justice in our hearts as well as our laws.

The rhetoric does sound somewhat similar.

Dean also forgot to mention that there was a bona-fide racist candidate against Nixon in 1968, who actually won a chunk of the vote: Alabama Gov. George Wallace. Wallace didn't bother with Confederate Flag decals. He paid homage to the real thing.

Nixon won a squeaker of an election against Hubert Humphrey that was made closer by Wallace, who won 46 electoral votes from below the Mason-Dixon line. (So much for that "Southern Strategy.")

Make no mistake: Nixon wasn't leading marches in Selma or sitting in at lunch counters. As his secretly recorded tapes have shown, he spoke in bigoted terms even the Oval Office. But as president, he was a far cry from those who fought integration, including senators like Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd.

Here's what he said during a press conference shortly after taking office in 1969:

As far as school segregation is concerned, I support the law of the land. And I believe that funds should be denied to those districts that continue to perpetuate segregation. I think that what we have here is a very difficult problem, however, in implementing it.

One is our desire...to keep our schools open, because education must receive the highest priority. The other is our desire to see to it that schools are not segregated. That is why I have...urged that before we use the ultimate weapon of denying funds and closing a school, let's exhaust every other possibility to see that local school districts do comply with the law.

In other words, Nixon wanted to use diplomacy before he went to war with school districts that refused to integrate. (Sound like anyone you've heard recently on another topic?)

Nixon's position, generally, was not to lead the fight on civil rights but, rather, to respect the decision of the courts and legislators and enforce the Constitution.

Substitute "civil rights" with "civil unions," and Nixon might have actually made a successful governor of Vermont.

All in all, Nixon had to grapple with the wreckage of assassinations, race riots and the shadow of the Jim Crow south - all begun on someone else's watch. If Dean is elected in November, he won't have to.

It was fairly easy for Dean to take his shots at Nixon. After all, Nixon's dead. He can't defend himself. But Dean's track record includes running a state with fewer African Americans than some neighborhoods in New York, Chicago or L.A.

Fellow Democrat and Wesley Dean supporter, Congressman Charles Rangel, reacted with sarcasm when Al Gore announced his endorsement of Dean at an event in Harlem. "Dean and Gore told the cabbie to 'Take us to Harvard,' and he dropped them off in Harlem instead," Rangel said.

Democrats like Rangel don't need Nixon to kick around anymore. Perhaps they've found someone new.