Every time I vote in an election, I try to learn something from the results. I realize I’m not always going to be on the winning side, but there are lessons to be learned. What good is it to get older if you don’t learn stuff (even painful stuff) along the way?
In my first presidential election, not long after the passage of the 26th Amendment allowing 18-year-olds to vote, I was one of a few hundred people who actually voted for George McGovern. Nowadays, you’ll have millions make that claim (along with having been at Woodstock), but the actual numbers paint a distressing picture.
What I learned was that Nixon and his people were really good at lying and distorting stuff. They had turned the election of 1972 into a classic them vs. us contest.
What really bothered me about that election was that Nixon had been touted as The Patriot while McGovern was something else. Just the tiniest bit of research shows that both men served their country in World War II. Nixon was in the Navy. He was in the South Pacific for a time, doing paperwork, but most of his service was in Iowa, Pennsylvania and California. That’s fine; he was a lawyer and the military used him the way they thought best.
But how was he somehow more patriotic than McGovern, who piloted 35 missions over Nazi Germany in a B-24? Back then, the Army Air Corps (there was yet to be an Air Force) crunched some numbers and determined that each flight crew had a 4% chance of not making it back from any one mission. Just as McGovern’s crew was near Mission No. 25, the Army, citing huge losses of aircraft, added 10 more missions to their total.
That unfair nonsense of Nixon being more patriotic has always stuck with me.
1976
Sad to say, I didn’t vote in this election. I was playing beisbol en Mexico and couldn’t figure out the logistics. I had hoped that Mo Udall would win the Democratic nomination, but Jimmy Carter edged him out.
Poor Gerald Ford had no chance, having pardoned Nixon and also having been branded a buffoon by Chevy Chase on “Saturday Night Live.” I remember a news thing where Ford, campaigning in El Paso, was given a plate of tamales and, not knowing any better, just grabbed one and bit into it without removing the husk first. Not wanting to appear rude by removing the thing from his mouth, he soldiered on, gnawing away before finally biting off a piece.
I always imagined that he turned to his wife and said, “Oh look, Betty, this stuff comes with its own built-in floss.”
1980
For a nanosecond, I considered voting for third-party candidate John Anderson. I knew Reagan was going to roll. There were still more of them than of us. Same for 1984.
1988
After this election, I made a mental note. If you ever run for president, don’t have yourself photographed in a tank (like Michael Dukakis did). You just look stupid.
1992
George H.W. Bush was toast. He had backtracked on a no-new-taxes pledge and the euphoria from Operation Desert Storm had lasted about an hour and a half before fading. Mucking things up from the “right” was H. Ross Perot, who appeared to be a viable candidate until he opened his mouth and sounded like Foghorn Leghorn after having sucked some helium from a balloon.
I realized that, like in sports, it’s not always who you are. Sometimes, it’s whom you’re playing against.
1996
I always regret not having had a million dollars lying around so that I could have bet loudmouth Rush Limbaugh, who said that he would bet anybody a million bucks that Bob Dole was going to win this election.
I guess, I mean, it would be nice to have a million dollars just lying around, anyway.
2000
This is the election that still bothers the most people. Only a few hundred votes separated the top two candidates in Florida out of millions of votes cast. A recount was guaranteed, with the presidency hanging in the balance. And then there was the fact that the ballots had been so poorly designed that untold thousands of people had probably voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake, thinking that they were voting for Al Gore.
I felt that there was some serious nastiness going on, but my anger was eased a bit by the fact that all Al Gore had to do to win that night was win either his own home state of Tennessee or that of his former boss, Bill Clinton (Arkansas), but he lost them both.
I do remember the despicable Antonin Scalia just shrugging off the question of how the Supreme Court had determined that election. I hope he’s rotting away in hell and the only opera he gets to listen to is “Tommy,” being performed by a charter school marching band.
2008 and 2012
I should have kept track of how many times I heard people start sentences with “I’m not racist, but…”
2016
Longest night of my life. I kept waiting for late ballots to come in in from Madison or Harrisburg or Lansing, but no…
I’m an eternal optimist, but I have a small nagging fear that Nov. 5 will be an even longer night.
