Every November, we have election day. Every four years, we have the really big ones for the presidency. Every two years, and that varies, there are some fairly important state ones. This year, 2023, an off year, a prime number in the last two digits, my state has local elections. Around half a century ago on Election Day, two minutes of my life were etched on my soul. November 7, 2023. Richard M. Nixon vs. George McGovern.

Four years earlier in 1968, I had created a child’s voting booth in our hall closet. I remember going in, shutting myself inside, and faux-voting. My parents had asked poll workers if I could accompany them into voting booths and I ended up being a Social Studies teacher. Well played Mom and Dad.

You don’t have to be a historian to know 1968 was a hell of a year. To say the least. All I remember at seven years old is when someone important was shot and killed I didn’t have to go to school. We lost Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in a span of two months and I was too young to understand how tragic that was. I had seen Kennedy speak in my hometown of Michigan City, Indiana in April of 1968.

In 1972, I was eleven, fifth grade. I was more interested in the average kid in the news as my mom bought me a poster of the presidents when I was in second grade and I memorized them. I have no idea why, I guess it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Now, I have a little bit of skin in this game, having taught for thirty-four years and writing about history now.

Our family voted at Riley Elementary School, now the school district’s administration building. Coincidentally, my wife and I walk past it fairly frequently out for exercise. That day, probably after work, we waited in line and once again I was allowed to accompany my parents inside, always with dad. He lost his father when he was seven, and wanted to have the parental experience with me he never experienced. I treasure that relationship, more than words can ever express.

We entered my rival elementary school into a somewhat darkened gymnasium where voting booths were staggered around the room atop the wooden basketball floor, to make our way to vertical booths with a curtain that could be drawn ensuring a secret ballot.

Why I can still remember my father explaining to me, when he began at the top of the ballot for the presidency, was how sincere he was. He said something to the effect of “Son, I can’t vote for either one of these men.” I can place myself there as accurately as any event of my youth in those years. My dad needed to justify why he wasn’t voting for the President of the United States but did pull levers for the other offices, both state and local. My dad had served on our city (say 35,000 people) council when I was an infant for a year or two. Someone died or whatever, he was appointed and hated it. It was a subtle lesson in civics.

It didn’t matter anyway. Richard Nixon would win the biggest presidential electoral victory in American History until Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Walter Mondale a dozen years later. Nixon won forty-nine of fifty states, even carrying McGovern’s home state of South Dakota. The two men are a contrast of post-war American politics.

Nixon was born almost a decade earlier than his rival in Southern California where his family were Quakers and struggled financially. McGovern was born in South Dakota, where his father was a minister in his fifties when his son was born. Both men served their country admirably in World War II. Nixon served as a logistics officer in the Pacific, and McGovern was a bomber pilot in Europe. Both men were elected to the House of Representatives in their mid-thirties, and Nixon quickly advanced to the vice presidency in 1953 two weeks after he turned forty. McGovern entered the senate when he was forty-one.

Both men were presidential candidates in 1968. Nixon staged arguably the most remarkable political comeback in American History after losing election for the presidency in 1960 and as governor of California in 1962. McGovern was a stand-in for Robert Kennedy’s delegates after his assassination.

McGovern is probably the most liberal presidential nominee ever, so far to the left that Blaine Heinz couldn’t pull the lever for him. My dad was a lifelong Democrat. Richard Nixon governed from the center of the Republican Party of his era, you may find it hard to believe that the Environmental Protection Agency, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act were all born during Nixon’s first term. Believe it or not.

Nixon earned the enduring nickname “Tricky Dick” in his 1950 Senate campaign and it stuck. It was not a compliment. While president he and his staff created an ‘enemies list,’ and his presidency will always be remembered for Watergate and as the only president to resign from office.

Rick Perlstein, chronicler of post 1950’s political America, penned an obituary in The New Republic about McGovern titled “George McGovern, 1922-2012: Is Decency in Politics Always Doomed?” stressing the dignity of the man. A cursory search of the two men is a divergence in their political morality. I feel the need to link Hunter Thompson’s biting epitaph of Nixon.

Nixon’s campaign was ruthless, with forty staffers being indicted or imprisoned for Watergate. McGovern’s campaign was idealistic. He was so adamantly opposed to the Vietnam War that he refused to let his campaign stress his service as a young bomber pilot in World War II. The late, great Stephen Ambrose told his story The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s over Germany. I don’t think Blaine Heinz, a decorated and wounded Korean War veteran knew of McGovern’s heroic service.

Nixon’s 1968 victory was the first of Republicans winning the White House in five of the next six elections. Nixon and fellow Californian Reagan each took a pair, their reelection bids being landslides. McGovern was the second of three losing candidates from the northern prairie of the nation (Hubert Humphrey 1968, McGovern 1972, Walter Mondale 1984). These are interesting trends in American politics to nerds like me.

Dad’s vote wouldn’t have mattered either way, but maybe he missed a chance to vote for a good man, even if in defeat.