Why I Voted for Richard Nixon

I’m OLDER and WISER but this is still relevant!

As we approach the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation this week, I vividly remember voting for him. Not because I was a Republican. I never believed in party labels and still don’t, but because I didn’t respect the values of his challenger, Sen. George McGovern.

McGovern belittled and threatened others — and I was one—for his own benefit. This in some ways foreshadows a candidate we have today. No, I didn’t decide to be “Black” and wasn’t disabled but I knew too much about his family, information that he feared could damage his election chances should it be released. This was pre-internet and pre-social media and unlike today, presidential affairs and family matters were kept under wraps for the most part.

I was an English major in college and panicked in my senior year in the late 60’s because not many jobs were available to women with liberal arts degrees at the time. I was “supposed” to be married as were most of my classmates, so in those days did not “need” a career except mother and homemaker.  My lifestyle even then was never traditional. Since I had broken an arranged engagement, I needed to find a job post-graduation.

 I elected to student teach high school English during my senior year of college so I could get a teaching job after graduation. I was assigned to an upscale public high school in Montgomery County, MD, a DC suburb, and at the time one of the wealthiest and highest rated public-school systems in the country. When my supervising teacher fell ill mid-semester, I was designated to fill his shoes and take charge of his 11th and 12th grade students most of whom towered over me and tested my disciplinary skills on a daily basis. After all, I was only a few years their senior and looked younger than most. One student, named Steve, rarely turned in homework and in fact, seldom showed up for class. On the few occasions that he did, he disrupted the classroom dynamic and was out of control. He’d throw chalk at me (in retrospect it could have been worse) and yell out lewd comments if I bent over in my trendy mini skirt. This was the late 60’s. After he failed to show up for final exams, I flunked him. I had never even graded a student, much less flunked one, but I didn’t think he deserved a pass.

The next day I got a phone call at school from his father’s secretary requesting a parent-teacher conference, but the student’s dad was too busy to come to the school to meet and demanded that I go to his office. We set a time, and she gave me the parent’s office address. It never occurred to me who his father was. I just knew that he thought he was so important that he didn’t have to follow public school protocol.

At the appointed time, I went to his office which happened to be in the U.S. Senate office building. Of course, in those days, there was not much security, so I just drove up to the Capitol, smiled at the police officer, parked on the plaza and walked into the historic building, took the subway to the Senate office building where I was greeted by the secretary who had phoned me and escorted me into Sen. George McGovern’s private office. He did his best to intimidate me and threatened me by telling me that he wanted to run for president in 1972,  and if I ever told anyone that not only his son, Steve, but his daughter as well, had serious substance abuse problems, he would not be electable and could not get the nomination. He seemed to think that information excused his son’s behavior and grades which he never discussed. The conversation had little to do with his son, nor his political or anti-war beliefs, it was solely about the Senator’s political ambition. I was 20 years old and have to admit, intimidated with a capital “I.” I never told anyone at the time but when the school offered me a teaching job for the fall, I declined. I realized that I didn’t want to spend my life confined in a classroom with kids who didn’t want to learn (although Steve may have been the exception) and dealing with their rude, disrespectful and self-centered fathers.   

I wanted to be a reporter.  I wandered into Roll Call, the Capitol Hill community newspaper office. That’s where I met Sid Yudain, the founding editor and publisher. He hired me not only as a reporter and later as a columnist, but I accompanied him to the printer each week to help with layouts and supervise off set type setting and then editing the copy since it was all done by hand. And then the following day I would deliver the papers filling the machines in the Senate and House office buildings and tobacco stands around the Capitol. I would also empty the coins (at the time the weekly paper cost 10 cents) and then trade the dimes to Ann at her legendary newsstand by the Senate for tins of cherry tobacco for Sid’s pipe.

When Sen. McGovern decided to run for the presidential nomination a few years later in 1972, he sent a message to me through a mutual friend, a Democrat Congressman who I was dating. Sen. McGovern requested another meeting with me; this time he sheepishly reminded me and begged me not to ever write anything about his kids. They were off limits. I never respected the Senator from So. Dakota, his demeanor nor approach. Although I appeased him at the time, he didn’t get my vote.

In many ways, I now view the late Sen. George McGovern as my “sacred enemy.”  Without his intimidation and bullying, I might never have had the motivation and courage to leave a “safe” teaching career and the drive to pursue the successful and fascinating career in journalism that I’ve created and sustained for more than half a century.

And that’s why I voted for Richard Nixon.