(Written October 21, 2012)
SACRAMENTO
Not long ago, browsing the Sacramento city library, I happened across “The Making of the
President 1972,” and made my first venture into Theodore White’s fabled series of books
about presidential elections that occurred in my formative years. Of those
quadrennial rites in American life, 1972 still resonates. I was 20 that year, for a campaign season that bridged my sophomore and junior years of college. It was my first
vote for a president, and an election that taught me the heartbreaking, cruel political
truth of being fully engaged, fully committed on the losing side. The candidate, George McGovern, died this morning at age 90.
White
writes beautifully of American presidential politics in that year. The McGovern
steamroller crushed his Democratic opposition one by one through the primaries and the
convention. White captures the youthful energy I recall so vividly, passing out
leaflets for the Ohio primary at the Whirpool factory parking lots near my
hometown during the late spring becoming summer. The lunchbucket guys grabbed
them one by one and voted for Nixon.
Looking
back from the vantage point of 60, I understand. It was too much for them.
It was a disheveled time and they had had enough. Coming years would bring the turmoil of Watergate,
and a rough vindication for those of us with hearts broken by 1972. I moved on with the rest of my crowd. I got a
job in the newspaper business in Fort Wayne, Indiana, spent a couple years
banging around West Africa in the Peace Corps and moved to California. George
McGovern continued being the lovely old saint that he was, feeding
the world, lecturing and representing a beacon of decency as the decades poured
on.
In
California, Nixon wrote books, advised his successors and died. In that spring of 1994, I drove from Fresno to Orange County,
to walk with the throngs past his casket one last time. I thought to myself, “Goodbye to all that.” I still have my small lovely beige card from the Nixon family, presented to us while standing in line, thanking us for coming and showing our respects.
We are much older voters now, choosing between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The race
is close and Obama has coined a wonderful term, "Romnesia," to describe candidate Romney’s
slippery movement on the issues. Once again I am prepared for
disappointment if it comes. I learned early how to lose. I know from
experience that history consists of cycles, of stunning advances and retreats, of
reforms and counter-reactions. In early
2012, as CNN broadcast the survival of a heavily-funded Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker against a recall attempt, I watched a 20-something voter address the
camera. He despaired with great drama in a time of the Occupy Movement, that people should know "that Democracy died tonight.” I smiled
at the TV screen, recalling 1972. “Welcome, kid,” I said to myself, "to Democracy."
Democracy, of
course, lives on. I am soon to open my absentee ballot and vote an 11th time for a president of the United States.
I am batting four for 10 in picking American presidents. This morning, the first, and still one of my
fondest bets, George McGovern, died in his native South Dakota. I
know several million of us feel nostalgic today.
We got clobbered supporting the old small-town bomber pilot. I would do it again. Goodbye, yes, to
all that.
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