Entering the Electoral College of hard knocks
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- September 28, 2024
- 412
Fourteen quadrennial presidential election cycles ago, at the age of 17, I realized no matter how hard I’d tried, there was no hope.
Of course back in fall 1972, I was still too young to cast a ballot, an unfortunate fact of my birth occurring when it did.
Not that it would have mattered much.
Giving 18-year-olds the privilege to participate in electoral democracy did absolutely nothing to prevent the hideous reality that Richard Nixon, as slimy a political hack that had ever slithered into the Oval Office, was on a rendezvous with infamy. It would take another couple of years for his litany of illegal, sleazy acts to catch up with him, but no one knew that on the dismal November night when he won all but one state in America, a 49-1 debacle.
“Don’t blame me,” read a bumper sticker of the time. “I’m from Massachusetts.”
I don’t remember the exact moment when I decided to volunteer for the George McGovern campaign, but it was definitely in summer ’72, probably after buying a copy of Rolling Stone magazine, one whose cover promised more writing by Hunter Thompson, the Gonzo journalist who had become a hero of mine.
As a senior who had been given the opportunity to contribute not one, but two columns for the high school newspaper on a biweekly basis, I was firmly of the belief I could make a difference. It was my first shot at taking center stage, of discovering my voice, and I did my best to write in an entertaining and informed manner.
If you stir into that potent mixture of publicity and politics the additional ingredient of having my first real girlfriend, a pretty, funny and bright young woman who, for some strange reason, liked me and my company, the question was, “What’s next?”
And that’s when I decided to work for McGovern and his quest.
I was operating under no illusions. I understood the quixotic nature of the entire venture, especially in the small town I called home, a place so conservative, so Republican, so locked in its ways that school administrators would routinely whip out rulers to measure the distance between a girl’s miniskirt hem and her knees, working from some Neanderthal playbook that required a minimum length.
Tempted as I was to blow the cover off such silliness, I stuck to writing about the Rolling Stones, “Easy Rider,” the Oakland A’s and the perfect season the Miami Dolphins were constructing.
Besides, we had other staff writers who could do it much better.
So autumn 1972 proceeded apace with me balancing schoolwork, newspaper responsibilities, a suddenly more active social life and serving as a reader/commentator at church, all the while shoehorning in jobs like mowing lawns and raking leaves, earning enough to keep me in vinyl and the occasional paperback.
But Saturday mornings were reserved for the senator from South Dakota and his increasingly doomed candidacy for the highest office in the land. Things had been rocky for a while, starting with the stupidity of delaying his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention until 3 a.m., followed soon thereafter by the revelation that his running mate had been given shock treatments to combat crippling depression over the years.
You talk about being dealt a bad hand … all that could make it worse was talk of a bogus peace settlement in Vietnam — oh, wait, that happened too. Still, those few of us who continued to show up to make cold calls every Saturday morning stayed committed, even as the remote chance of winning died on the vine.
The “war room” was located in the cellar of a women’s clothing store downtown, though no campaign signs were allowed in the Main Street windows, due to fears of vandalism and other mayhem.
It had all the charm of a fallout shelter: cinderblock walls, cracked linoleum flooring, fluorescent ceiling tubes that cast unflattering shadows, a few card tables scattered randomly with a dozen phones hooked up and waiting for us to reach out to “undecided voters.” I remember a couple of playpens in a corner, where young mothers could stash their infants while working for the cause, but it really wasn’t a proper place for toddlers. Someone had left a small pile of McGovern-Shriver buttons in case anyone should stop in, wanting a pin, but no one ever did. It all reeked of gloomy failure.
The GOP headquarters, conversely, was located in a proper office with “Four More Years” placards everywhere and posters with Nixon and his kickback-addicted vice president grinning and waving, virtually inviting folks to stop in for free coffee and doughnuts.
Prominently affixed to the plate-glass front door was an unflattering photo of the opponent, who Bobby Kennedy once called “the most decent man in the Senate.” Against a black background, printed in scarlet letters, were the words, “Acid … Amnesty … Abortion,” which was red meat for Republicans.
We McGovernites, on the other hand, subsisted mainly on youthful adrenaline and blind faith, both of which were in short supply as the weeks wore on and the inevitable outcome became more clear.
“Good morning, sir,” I’d say when someone actually picked up the phone. “I’m calling on behalf of the McGovern for President campaign. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
You can guess the rest. Suffice it to say they were short calls.
I was taking a walk downtown the other day and made a point of stopping across the street from the building that used to house the basement room where I spent Saturday mornings in fall 1972. The ladies clothing store has long since been reduced to the ashcan of Main Street history, but the structure itself still stands.
After having moved back home in January after 24 years on the North Carolina coast, I’ve been experiencing what can only be described as “layers of reality,” a cognitive condition that manifests itself in remembering (with alarming clarity) moments in which I did something that I can see and hear and taste and smell, laid over what’s happening in the actual moment. It’s hallucinatory.
I almost jaywalked and asked if I could go down those stairs again, but I was kind of afraid of running into Spiro Agnew … or worse.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where thoughts on the ’24 campaign are encouraged.