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• I am pretty sure that I actually said out loud: “There is no way in hell that I am casting my first vote for Richard Nixon”, so I voted for Pete McCloskey!

Martin Winfree
November 29, 2018
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How about some unsolicited “Political Analysis”? I have most of this written already, so I will just lay it on y’all every weekday morning for a while.

POLITICAL ANALYSIS, PART I:

First, about Trump. I am one of those people who likes to yell at blowhards on television, so being able to take potshots at Trump on Facebook is right up my alley. Most recently, I have been calling Trump a “pussy” for being all offended by the comedians at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, so now we have to listen to a damned historian next year. (Look it up; great fun there! ). I typically stay away from the heavy-duty discussions though, just not really my thing.

Despite my Southern upbringing, I have never been much of a “yes, sir”, “no, sir”, “yes, ma’am”, “no, ma’am” kind of guy. Might even have hurt my career over the years; I’m sure not nearly so deferential as most appraisers are when they are on the witness stand. My views on politics and many other things have changed over the years, but I have always been a big-time “Question Authority” person even before I knew it was called that. So, the President doesn’t automatically get any respect from me – far from it. People who have known me for a long time probably remember that I normally don’t think much of the President, whoever he is. Obama is the only President I voted for that I liked (and practically the only one who won ), and Carter is the only President that I really liked – he actually grew on me over the years, and I am talking about while he was President, not afterward. Carter is hands down the greatest ex-President in U.S. history – that fact is not even in dispute. (I voted third party that year as best I can remember).

My favorite story along these lines is the first time I voted. I was against the 18-year-old vote, so in protest, I didn’t vote in the 1970 elections. For 1972, Nixon had two token opponents in the Presidential Primary: John Ashbrook from the right, and the anti-war Pete McCloskey from the left. (I sat up all night during the tight 1968 election that Nixon won, but I had turned against him long before I went to college in August 1969. I never would have joined the College Republicans if they were all a bunch of Nixon toadies). Ashbrook wasn’t on the ballot in North Carolina; someone told me that I would be able to write in Ashbrook’s name though, but there was no way to do that anywhere on the mechanical voting machine as far as I could tell. After messing around for 5 or 10 minutes, I am pretty sure that I actually said out loud: “There is no way in hell that I am casting my first vote for Richard Nixon”, so I voted for Pete McCloskey!