Fifty years ago today, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered a stump speech at the state Democratic Party convention in Utah. Although not particularly newsworthy, even at the time, reading it half a century later is instructive for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment.

But to offer a teaser, I spotted rhetorical precursors of any number of future presidential candidates -- and future presidents -- in Humphrey’s Salt Lake City speech: language and themes that would later be used by Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Donald Trump. And even by Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate -- himself a former vice president -- who would defeat Humphrey in November of 1968.

* * *

In the summer of 1968, it seemed clear that the popular vote in the general election between Hubert H. Humphrey and Richard Nixon was going to be close, which turned out to be the case, and that third-party candidate George Wallace was a wild card. It was also obvious that the Vietnam War was a drag on the Democratic ticket headed by HHH, and 50 years ago in Salt Lake City Humphrey acknowledged as much, vowing as president to bring about “a stable and lasting peace -- at the earliest possible moment.”

Humphrey also called for a “massive international effort” to close the gap between rich and poor nations, a disparity he termed a greater ultimate threat to U.S. national security than any other except for the nuclear arms race. Many years later, President Obama would draw attention to that issue at Nelson Mandela’s 2013 funeral. At home, Obama would call the growing income gap between rich and poor “the defining challenge of our time.”

Humphrey also spoke optimistically, if vaguely, in the same way President Trump would do five decades later, of “getting to the table as soon as possible” with the Russians, the rationale being each country’s vast nuclear arsenal made the world unsafe.

On the issue of crime, HHH was even more Trumpian. Humphrey claimed to have made the streets of Minneapolis safe while he was mayor “with a simple and effective formula for combating crime.” It was formula he didn’t deign to reveal in a mere speech, other than to say, “We drove the rackets out of Minneapolis. I think that formula will work for all America.”

At his 2016 Republican convention acceptance speech in Cleveland, Donald Trump reprised this rhetorical approach to criminal justice. “I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end,” Trump said. “Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored.

He didn’t say how he’d do it, just that he would.

Hubert prefigured Bernie in that long-ago speech, too. In 1968, the future Sen. Sanders was moving from his native New York to Vermont as part of the “hippie migration” and hadn’t yet found his political calling. But his future call for universal employment was anticipated much earlier by Humphrey, who told Utah’s Democrats, “We must recognize the right of every American to earn a living -- to work and earn.” Humphrey also said the private sector could provide most of the needed jobs, but if not, government should do “whatever is necessary.”

Humphrey also talked of building bridges to a better future, as Bill Clinton would do all over the country in 1996. HHH also decried the existence of “two nations, black and white…North and South…rich and poor,” predating by 10 presidential elections John Edwards’ vow to unite the “two Americas.”

Most striking, Humphrey’s Utah speech also invoked a theme long identified with his opponent.

“There is a vast, silent group of Americans -- a majority of many millions -- that wants this country to work,” Humphrey said. “I think this Silent America, an America still unaroused, can be aroused.”

What does this tell us? Well, a couple of things. First, the old saying that being close only counts in a game of horseshoes is certainly true in political rhetoric. Hubert had the two key words, “silent” and “majority,” but he didn’t combine them in just the right way. Nixon would do that in his famous “Silent Majority” speech a year after defeating Humphrey.

Humphrey’s July 27, 1968 Salt Lake City speech also reminds us that there aren’t that many new ideas, let alone original phrases, in politics. Exactly how they are deployed, and when, make all the difference. Hubert Humphrey demonstrated this principle himself, not that year but 20 summers earlier, at the Democratic National Convention of 1948.

“The time is now arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights,” he thundered in a passionate address to the delegates, “and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”

In response, Southern delegates walked, not-so-forthrightly, out of the convention. It might be said that in that 1948 speech, Humphrey sowed the seeds of his 1968 defeat. If so, it was a noble sacrifice, and I believe this honorable man would have made it all over again, even knowing the outcome.