A NEWLY released audiotape of a phone call between President Lyndon Johnson and Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey provokes thoughts of what might have been had Humphrey done Johnson's bidding.

It was in August 1968, five months before Johnson would leave office, having taken himself out of the running for another term.

To win the presidency against Richard Nixon, Johnson advised Humphrey to choose as his running mate none other than Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye.

Inouye, who fought in World War II, was awarded a silver star and lost an arm in battle, was a relatively new face in Washington, having served in the Senate for just a single term.

Johnson thought Inouye had much to offer the ticket.

“;He answers Vietnam with that empty sleeve,”; Johnson told Humphrey. “;He answers your problems with Nixon with that empty sleeve. He has that brown face.”;

Whether Inouye would have helped Humphrey in a race he narrowly lost is open to question. Though he was a war hero, his Asian ethnicity might have been seen as a negative in a nation deeply divided by the Vietnam War.

Inouye was young, in his mid-40s, and could have been criticized as untested and too inexperienced to stand a heartbeat from the presidency.

Those issues, however, weren't ever debated. Humphrey was unwilling to take a gamble, picking instead Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie.

Four decades later, another “;brown face”; is poised to enter the White House, forever breaking the traditional mold of an American president.

Still, it's interesting to wonder how differently history would have unfolded had Inouye been a first.