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The Weekly Blague

The Night Nixon Won

The front page of OP in the run-up to the 1972 Nixon-McGovern presidential election.

 

The events of November 5 reminded me of another election 52 years ago. The Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, running for a second term, was arguably more distasteful than the current president-elect. And the Democratic candidate, George McGovern, running to end the war in Vietnam, was doomed to lose, according to every poll. A scene in the book I'm working on, about a radical, antiwar student newspaper, OP, at the the City College of New York, takes place Election Day, 1972.

 

The reference to Geraldo Rivera needs some explanation. In 1972, Rivera was a superstar, quasi-hippie TV reporter who came to City College to give a speech in support of McGovern. He assured the crowd that McGovern was going to win.

 

Watergate by this time had already begun to consume Nixon. Yet the wise people of America voted for him anyway, in overwhelming numbers. But 18 months later the scandal would drive Nixon from the White House.

 

The scene below is a reminder of how quickly things can change. It's from Chapter 14, tentatively titled either "Rebuild Your Heads Like a Bombed-Out City" or "Hope Is the Only Illusion," both titles based on quotes from a speech Reverend Daniel Berrigan gave at City College just before the election.

***

 

I'm thrilled to pull the lever for George McGovern, voting for the first time in an election that matters—even though I understand like everyone (with the possible exception of Geraldo Rivera) that his chances are nil or close to it. Yet part of me continues to cling to the illusion of hope.

 

Naomi and I watch the election returns dribble in, and as the inevitable creeps closer I go home around midnight to witness the bitter end with my stoic mother, a nominal Democrat who voted for McGovern, and my law-and-order-Republican father.

 

"Who'd you vote for?" I ask him.

 

"That's my business," he says.

 

The outcome's worse than anyone predicted. Only Massachusetts and the District of Colombia go for McGovern. In the other 49 states it's a Nixon massacre. He finishes with 520 electoral votes and 60.7 percent of the popular vote, more than any Republican presidential candidate in history. The final score: Nixon, 47 million; McGovern, 29 million.

 

I sit in front of the TV imagining the despair of Steve and my other OP colleagues who'd fought so hard for so long for anything but this. Peace is not at hand or around the corner or anyplace else nearby. The "light at the end of the tunnel" is an oncoming train. The war might indeed go on for the rest of my life, and I know that even with my golden draft-lottery number I better find a way to stay in college, forever if possible, because if the war's still ongoing in, say, 1984 (to pick a year at random), the government could just end the lottery and draft everybody who's upright and breathing.

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