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Politics and Memories
When I was a little kid, my family spent the summer on an endlessly vast farm in Vermont. I have tons of little-kid memories from that summer — the enormous beds, running across a lawn that seemed to go on forever, being stung by a bee, my grandmother trying to comfort me, my mother picking tomatoes in a big, floppy hat, my father explaining why moths were attracted to the light.
I hadn’t been allowed to watch grown-up television until then. Like all kids, I was more attracted to the television than a moth to the light. But I was only allowed to watch shows like Sesame Street, and grudgingly, if I wheedled and whined, Mr. Rogers — although my father made it clear that he loathed Mr. Rogers. (In retrospect, I reckon he suspected Mr. Rogers was a left-wing pederast.) Once in a while, when my parents were exhausted and their guard was down, I’d get to watch the Electric Company. They told me more television would “rot my brain,” and I suppose they were probably right. But this of course only made me more desperately curious about it.
So something was unusual that summer when my family insisted we stay inside every evening to watch television. We had to get back for it, even if it meant driving right past the ice-cream store. We couldn’t be late for this program called “Watergate.”
I found the show confusing and boring (and I suspect my mom did, too, to be honest). But the other adults were gripped by it. I remember head-smacking, hooting, a sense of incredulity.
It’s hard to tell what’s a real memory and what’s superimposed in retrospect. I think I’d fully understood already that we lived in a democracy, that we had a president and not a king, that the people chose the president by voting, and that this system was fair, just, and the best in the world. I knew the President lived in Washington D.C. I’d been there, because my grandparents lived there, so I could envision that.
When I examine that memory, I’m not sure what to make of it. I know that’s when I learned that it was possible for a president to do something disgraceful. I hadn’t known that before. I know it’s popularly conveyed that way, too — as a loss of postwar innocence.
But was it really a turning-point in American politics, or was it just the first thing I was personally old enough to understand?
How do people slightly older than me, much older than me, remember that summer? What are your first memories of politics? Any thoughts about how those memories compare to what you later learned and understood about the same events? How they shape your attitudes today?
Published in General, Politics
I’m slightly older and learned about Watergate through reading Mad Magazine. (I understand your father’s trepidation about Mr. Rogers, but he was a truly good man.)
Yes, a few years after that, I began learning about the world from Mad Magazine.
At about the same age, I remember watching both Democrat and Republican national conventions with my parents and their friends.
Real conventions, smoke-filled rooms, Huntley and Brinkley calling the play-by-play, grown-ups arguing the merits and predicting outcomes. Maybe I was a weird child but I was engrossed. It was easy to pick the “good guys” and “bad guys” with the drama unfolding through endless roll-calls.
Quiet! Daley has asked for the floor! Illinois is going to change its vote!
I graduated from college the year Nixon resigned. I don’t remember paying much attention.
Really? What are your earliest political memories, and what events got your attention?
I spent my childhood oblivious to politics, and my teens largely so, except suspecting that the government couldn’t possibly be as bad as my mother’s rants would have it. I had the rosy view that these important people must know what they were doing.
But then the wheels fell off by means of an actual constitutional crisis — this is in Australia — leading to the government being dismissed by the Governor General — the Queen’s representative — and the opposition leader installed in his place as caretaker until a new election was hastily arranged. I had turned eighteen three days earlier.
Perhaps, after all, they didn’t know what they were doing.
I remember being in the backseat of the Ford, listening to Nixon resign over the radio while my parents were very quiet.
Being only 40, I have no memory of Watergate.
I saw the Buckley/Vidal show during the 68 election. I remember thinking that Buckley made more sense.
My year was the first year of the draft lottery. I certainly remember paying attention to that.
I remember the kids getting shot at Kent State, but that was in Ohio, and I was at a small liberal arts college in North Carolina.
I guess I didn’t really start paying attention to politics until Carter, and that may have been because of the Panama Canal. The misery index might have had something to do with it, though I was still in school during the first part of Carter’s presidency, and the index didn’t mean much to me.
I spent the spring of my junior year at Hollins College, 26 guys and 11oo women. Watergate was far from my mind. I saw my all time favorite graffiti while I was there, which I’ve posted before, but is worth repeating: Why switch Dicks in the middle of a screw? Vote for Nixon in ’72.
My dad’s family was all politics, all the time, and I have very early memories of large, loud, groups of people surrounding the enormous dining room table at Farquhar Road at family gathering time, shouting in a reasonably good-humored way, about them. No-one listened to anyone else, and everyone had a jolly good time.
For the first ten years of my life, as the oldest child of a senior colonial administrator in a strange land, I sometimes heard things I shouldn’t have, and didn’t fully understand, as the adults around me did their best to push a young nation towards democracy.
We moved to the States three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated, and we lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, where I attended JFK’s old elementary school. Dad was a Harvard Fellow, working for Henry Kissinger. Some years later, during Watergate and the subsequent fallout, Dad sent Kissinger a friendly, handwritten note, expressing support, and also gratitude for his kindness to a family of aliens all the way back in 1963-1964. Dad received a charming, handwritten note in reply, on official stationery, but with a purchased stamp stuck on it, and a grubby fingerprint on the envelope. Dad always said this must mean that Henry mailed it himself because he was afraid his mail was being monitored and read.
After he retired from teaching, the rest of the family went back to England. Dad, who would probably have been an MP if my mother had evinced any of the social graces necessary for a politicians wife (she would probably have approved of Donald Trump; more so, if he were blunter and more direct), ran for county council, and was elected on a platform calling out “the squalid antics of the socialist party.” Dad, like the rest of the family, was never stuck for words, and always had an eye for a fine phrase.
He was re-elected with thumping great majorities for years, especially after he abandoned the Conservative Party and ran as an Independent. He finally retired from politics (formally, at least) at the age of about 80.
My mother’s family wasn’t political at all. Their idea of a fun evening was Grandpa playing the piano (he was a fine musician), while Granny sang Believe Me if All These Endearing Young Charms, to the delight of all.
That would explain indifference to politics, or almost anything else.
My first political memory was Reagan vs Carter, and watching my parents argue about Reagan with my paternal grandfather. I enjoyed that very much.
My first memory of politics is 1964 and Goldwater. We lived in Chicago, and my parents were closet Republicans, and I think the only people on the block who voted for him. As owners of a building if it became common knowledge you were a “dissident ” you would not get your garbage picked up, and building inspectors would appear ( Chicago has the strictest building codes in the country. It’s almost impossible to be up to code) and your property would probably get a new assessment. The local precinct captain( Komissar), ” Johnny” would come by before every primary and general election to direct exactly how my parents were to vote. They would smile, agree, and then do the opposite once in the polling place. ( Johnny’s official city job was ” Bridge Tender” on the Western Ave Bridge. The motors had been removed in 1942 to a shipyard on the Pacific, so he had a lot of free time…)
Come to think of it Nixon was a piker when it came to political corruption.
One of the amazing discoveries of my middle age has been that there are families who have generations of service to country and/or empire. Not Presidents or Prime Ministers, but colonels and district officers, brigadiers and governors of unfashionable colonies, generation after generation (with the odd VC or Medal of Honour or knighthood thrown in), none of the trappings of power (but some privilige), just an ethic of service I deeply admire.
How deeply rooted must such an ethic be to survive the individualistic 20th century and beyond? I pray.
My earliest political memory is a discussion club at school about the 1980 Presidential election. It was clear we were supposed to think Carter was the sensible choice, and Reagan was a dangerous cowboy.
Next is a montage of my parents having ‘Free to Choose’ and some book with ‘Neo[conservative? liberal?]’ in the name on their night stand. Suddenly family friends were standing for office and I was supposed to go door-knocking. (I found it excrutiatingly embarrassing.) Then there was the election-night gathering at the sports club and congratulations all around.
(Although, now that I think about it, in the sense of politics-as-it-is-experienced as opposed to politics-as-it-is-practiced, my parents’ small business suffering at the hands of excessive regulation is an early memory.)
It’s a shame about Mr. Rogers. He was something of a saint and a genius. Deeply religious family man. The world needs more Mr. Rogers.
Meanwhile those other shows:
I had just gotten married at that time – I remember just about every day picking up the morning paper and seeing another bombshell – the Saturday night Massacre, Agnew’s resignation and so on.
The difference between the seriousness of those various hearings and hearings these days is very depressing. I may be wrong, but I don’t remember the disjointed 5 minutes of one side followed by five minutes of the other side. I think more of the questioning was handled by professional staff – such as Fred Thompson – and some key Senators such as Howard Baker.
I remember Senator Sam Ervin as seeming like a brilliant mind in a body which was rapidly failing him.
The whole thing angered me so much, I never forgave Ford for pardoning Nixon. That was probably a big mistake, since it let to Carter and Malaise.
My boyhood best friend came from a family of John Birch Society members. I had to read “None Dare Call It Treason” and participate in discussions about it with his mother in order to play with my friend. I was too young to understand it, only recalling a bunch of stuff about General Tito. In my Junior year of high school, the family “gunned up” as survivalists and bought a ranch outside of Lander, Wyoming, but abandoned my friend to stay put in what is now Silicon Valley. He became a “Bath House” homosexual in San Francisco, still very conservative and still a best friend, and died of Aids in 1993. His hobby was politics, and he volunteered for every San Francisco politicians’ campaign, expecting to be rewarded through graft. (which he was!) We talked politics from elementary school age until his death. (to be continued)
I went to UC Berkeley in 1969 which was caught up in the “Youth Movement” and anti-war movement (Vietnam). I recall observing that the Socialists were the nicest people. Being liberal conferred great advantages in obtaining sexual favors from the girls. I was liberal, except where Unions were concerned. I lived in student housing which also illegally housed “street people”. I walked to school under a giant graffiti exclaiming, “Acid and Arson”, and knew to avoid trees and shrubbery because tear gas lingered in them for at least a day after the riots were over. I did not like any of this and transferred to another UC. I was painting a house for money and listening to the radio when Nixon resigned. I was already jaded and afraid for the country’s future. I flipped over to conservative in the run up to the 1991 Gulf War, realizing finally and completely that liberals have no clue about how the world works.
For or Against?
If there were any Justice in American Politics – we would have that same show, right now, only it would be called Fast&FuriousBenghaziEmailServer-Gate.
I don’t think my parents were wrong to fear that television would rot our brains.
Childhood memories of politics: My parents seemed enthralled with JFK and the early 60s civil rights movement. Then the several assassinations, frustration with Vietnam, domestic race riots and the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. I picked up on the sense of dismay and disappointment. By the time Watergate came around I was already a pretty cynical 16 year old.
I did work at the polls as a youngster. My Dad was a precinct chair (or something like that) and I would run some sort of paperwork between polling places. It made me feel important and the grownups always seemed sort of upbeat and friendlier on election day.
Almost 60, my earliest political memory is being in a dark hallway of the Wakefield Forest School I Fairfax VA and hearing of the Kennedy assassination. That night at dinner I did not understand why my parents were morose, didn’t my Dad refer to the President as “that son of a b1tch”? Looking back on this last summer I was struck by two things, how awful was JFK’s injury, Jackie bravely grabbing his cranium from the back of the limousine; and that JFK, if alive today, would be the farthest-right candidate for president. How ashamed he would have been of my late senator Teddie.
I was in grade school when Kennedy was assassinated – my teacher was handed a note and she read it and fell back against the chalkboard clutching it to her chest – she said bow your heads and pray (we weren’t told), then get ready to go home. I had to quietly play inside I was told, but wanted to go to my friend Kitty’s house, so I was told to play quietly there. I never paid attention to politics. We were average working class Democrats and my family worked on railroad cars and my uncle was an engineer, another uncle a cop.
I paid attention when Reagan was shot, remember Nixon resigning, but still no real interest – living life as a self-absorbed kid just newly out on my own. I always voted Democrat because my parents did. I lived in MA during Clinton years – voted for him twice. Then things changed – gradually… because I changed. I could not relate to the party of my parents any longer – replaced by union bullying, my paycheck kept getting smaller due to taxes, I guess I was a closet conservative and didn’t know it. I jumped ship in 2000.
I loved your story Claire – had no idea you spent time as a child on East Coast. You have such a gift for story telling – even non-fiction! Sounds like you were a fun loving kid with good, caring parents – it’s still beautiful here as you describe!
Is anybody else whistling Jim Croce right now?
I’m 65, by some miracle. Had no interest in anything political until it affected me. That occurred in 1978 when the Carter administration reallocated and cut defense spending to the point where we couldn’t fly much, lacking parts and fuel. Started marching around, instead. Pitiful. Left the military after about 8 years, forgoing the career I had envisioned, and was then successful in.
Ronnie saved the military, although too late for me, and I was impressed by the difference he made in our entire society. Been paying attention since. Sorrowfully, our nation has been in decline ever since he left the helm. Leadership matters.
The Republican presidents since Reagan have been beltway banditos in general. The Democrat ones have been either ludicrous, Clinton, or treasonous and ludicrous, Satan.
When I was drafted in 1969, there was no internal debate about my choice. One simply did his duty, no matter the current soggy and deadly environment is southeast Asia. If I were faced today with that choice, I’d think hard before putting my life out there for my country, since the military now has irrational, feckless, ignorant, and treasonous leadership. Our commander in chief is not one of us.
So, my political journey has colored my view on dire current events in a personal way, I suppose. I know what patriotism is, and I’m mad as hell that it is being disparaged now, and even worse, is painted as a retrograde, foolish emotion. I love the USA.
I was also oblivious to politics until I was a full-fledged–much older adult. Like many people, the closest I got in my teens was when Kennedy was shot, when Oswald was shot, and the Kennedy funeral. I didn’t really take an interest in politics until the Reagan years.
My first concrete political memory was Carter’s inauguration. My mom had gotten press passes for my brother and I. He was in his early 20’s and I would have been about 8. It started off badly when I left my winter coat on the plane. Things got worse when the security guard told me children weren’t allowed in the press box. Unfortunately, my brother didn’t hear this and he kept moving in line.
So that is how the Carter years began for me. As a child lost and alone in the cold.
Thank you on Dad’s behalf (his reward from Queen and country was an OBE). It’s very rare to hear appreciation of the extraordinary goodness, sense of honor, and ethic that propelled men (and some women) like my father, rather than excoriation of what would have been called their ‘white male privilege,’ if the phrase had been in common use at the time.
I think the ethic of which you speak begins with a belief that your way of life (your ‘civilization,’ if you will) is worth fighting for and dying for. Along the way, if you can spread it around a bit, even better.
And if that ethic isn’t around today, I think it’s because those beliefs, having been mocked, attacked, belittled and thrown onto the ash heap of history by an ascendant Left, aren’t in evidence much, either.