Prologue

Here, basically, is the political trail I have left in my wake.

I was raised as an internationalist Republican: Anti-Taft, pro Dewey-Eisenhower, that sort of thing. Although I couldn't vote in the 50's (too young), I was mesmerized by the Democratic convention of 1956, listening to it in on the radio during summer barbecue. Whoever the keynote speaker was, he raised hell by repeating the phrase, "Nixon, Dixon, and Yates." (Maybe someone will look that up and explain to me what that was all about.) Adlai Stevenson provided me with my first political excitement.

In college I joined Young Republicans which led me to blow my first Presidential election, voting for Nixon. Single issue voter, that was what it was all about: existentially choosing one issue, etc. etc. (That's why I understand when I hear someone from a red state today say "abortion: where does Kerry stand on protecting the unborn?".) For some reason I was caught up on the Cold War issue of Qumoy-Matsu.

Well, I caught religion during JFK's inauguration speech. What a difference between Nixon and Kennedy: before Jack Kennedy assumed office, it was the difference between hearing the Kennedy-Nixon debates on radio and seeing them on TV; after election it was the difference between night and day. The 1960 election taught me that the American political system is totally flawed in its capacity to illuminate significant differences between presidential candidates in time for the casual voter to make an informed decision. (The mature voter relies on the bigger picture which comes into focus only through reading the newspaper everyday, every year.)

The 60's is a blur to me: what an exciting time, politically. In graduate school I flirted with the fantasy of becoming the Lenin of secular pacifism. Joined the peace movement and the civil rights movement (North & South). A.J. Muste, Bayard Rustin, David McReynolds, Martin Luther King, James Forman were giants. Went South to Selma, Alabama and Indianola Mississippi. (In the latter location, where King held no sway, I discovered I wasn't a pacifist except pragmatically; asked to carry my weight by sleeping with a shot gun, I said 'yes' without hesitation.

In the midst of the Vietnam war, I voted for the Peace-and-Freedom presidential candidate at least once, maybe twice. I worked for that party's Congressional candidate, Hesh Kaplan, and in another year for the Democratic Party's Congressional candidate, Fred Warner Neal, both of whom I knew personally.

1968 was a catastrophic year for me after the assassinations of MLK & RFK. The obsequious Hubert Horatio Humphrey epitomized gutless politics that has returned to plague Democrats four decades later. I plummeted into depression.

I turned away from politics then, I am ashamed to say, repeating over, and over, that American Democracy was not worth saving. Becoming a professed hedonist (tennis), I reverted to form as a casual voter, voting Democratic in the decade of the Nixonian demise, Republican in the Reagan years, Democratic after Iran-Contra and ever since.

Clinton? Definitely a huge American asset with a lot of baggage. I voted early & often against George Bush in 2000: I re-registered Republican so I could have my vote for McCain count in the California primary. And I was stunned with disbelief that the election of 2000 was even close. To me then - as now - there really is no comparison between the relative competence of George Bush and either of his Democratic opponents, Gore or Kerry. It goes back to the flaws in the political system: the media, the primary system, and the idiosyncrasies of the casual and inattentive voter.