Finding direction in a 1968 primary (03/12/08)

Some years always pull you back.

Every anniversary of 1941 is marked in some way or another when Dec. 7 approaches. Every Nov. 22 that falls in round-numbered anniversaries of 1963 prompts where-were-you-when-you-learned-JFK-was-shot stories. Every tenth anniversary of the blizzard of 1978 cues dozens of reminiscences. And Sept. 11, 2001 is one of those that will always be a touchstone.

1968 was one of those years.

Watching this year's presidential campaign, particularly the youth movement of Barrack Obama, inevitably brought the spring of 1968 to mind, those days when - as a young college student volunteer - I made my first foray into presidential politics.

The war in Vietnam was the overriding issue, of course, and well-meaning people of every political stripe had competing arguments on what was the best course of action for America, for its troops, and for the Vietnamese people.

No one had cornered the market on wisdom, and there was no shortage of passion for debate.

That was the climate when I got "clean for Gene." Essentially, that meant getting a haircut, trading blue jeans for something better, and wearing something other than a T-shirt while volunteering to go door-to-door for Eugene McCarthy, the Minnesota senator who had had the courage to challenge LBJ for the Democratic nomination for president.

It was a balmy day in the waning days of March when a couple dozen of us boarded a bus in Richmond and traveled from Earlham College to Racine, Wisconsin, to help with the McCarthy campaign in that state's primary.

I remember absolutely nothing about the trip. I couldn't tell you where we slept or what we ate. My guess is it was on the floor and every meal was pizza.

But a few lasting images are burned in my memory.

I remember standing in a union hall, listening to a pep talk from campaign organizers. Rep. Allard Lowenstein was there and was eloquent beyond my imagining. He was shot to death several years later. Paul Newman, the actor, was there. He stood on a chair, holding a Budweiser in his hand, as he urged us on.

I remember using every argument possible to get voters to support our candidate.

Wisconsin's primary is open, so Republicans can vote in the Democratic primary and vice versa. I clearly recall urging a woman who was a staunch Nixon supporter to vote in the Democratic primary for McCarthy because she hated Johnson.

I remember three of us being dropped in the middle of nowhere on a rural road. They pointed in one direction and told us to stop at every house. The car disappeared and they left us in rural Wisconsin with nothing more than a vague promise they'd find us and pick us up later.

I remember the ornery gleam in the eye of a woman who invited us in to talk to her farmer husband at dinnertime, knowing full well that he hated McCarthy, the anti-war movement, and all the college kids who were swarming over the state. His reaction was pretty much what you'd expect, and we flew out the door.

And I remember that on the ride back to Indiana at the end of our weekend, someone had a little transistor radio and it picked up the news that because of McCarthy's strong showing in New Hampshire and the divisions within the country that Lyndon Baines Johnson had decided not to seek re-election but to seek an honorable end to the mess that we had stumbled into in Vietnam.

For 40 years, those are pretty good memories.

And today, I'd urge any young person - whether supporter of John McCain or Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton or the man in the moon - to follow that path.

Get involved. Support your candidate. Knock on doors.

You won't regret it. And 40 years from now, you might have a few stories of your own to tell.[[In-content Ad]]