Like Unto Cincinnatus

I don't know what Wiki says about it, I'm working from memory here. Reagan ran unsuccessfully twice before he finally got the nomination in 1980 and won the presidency, so that must have been '72 and '76, unless is was '68 and '76. I know that I voted for Wallace in '68 when he ran on the American Independent Party. Third parties don't have primaries in Michigan, so I may have voted for Reagan that same year in the Republican primary. I also voted for Wallace in the Democratic primary in '72, and than voted for McGovern in the general election because I didn't like Nixon. Come to think of it, I couldn't have voted for Reagan in the Republican primary if I voted for Wallace in the Democratic primary, so maybe it was '68 when Reagan first ran for the nomination. I always liked Reagan because he had a reputation of being strongly anti-Communist. I never liked Nixon even before he proved himself to be a pro-Communist by selling Taiwan down the river and kissing up to the Red Chinese. I didn't even like him when he was Eisenhower's vice, I don't know why, he just gave me the creeps every time I saw him on TV. I liked Eisenhower, probably because my parents did, but also because he looked like somebody's kindly grandpa.

I found it a little confusing trying to remember all the political stuff from the '70s because it seems like more stuff happened than there were election years in those days. That can be explained by my involvement with the American Independent Party. Like I said, we didn't have primaries, so I could have voted in the Republican primary and still did something with the AIP in the same year, and probably did. I know that I ran for County Commissioner three times. The first time was in '72 when I ran against a popular incumbent in the Republican primary. I didn't have anything against the guy, I just thought that nobody should run unopposed for 20 years, so I put my name in just for the principle of the thing. After the election, I attended a Commissioner's meeting just to see what I had missed out on. After sitting through a long boring meeting, I decided that I didn't really want to be a county commissioner when I grew up, and resolved to not run for that office again.

I did end up running again on the AIP ticket just to help them establish their name with the public, and that must have been in '72 because it wasn't in '76 when I ran again as a Republican. Wallace had founded the AIP as his own personal party because some states won't let you on the ballot as an independent. After Wallace was shot out of the saddle, some people were trying to establish the party as a force to be reckoned with in it's own right, and I was trying to help them. I had met a few of these people through the John Birch Society, but that's a whole nother story.

I didn't plan on running for County Commissioner  in '76, but our popular incumbent retired or died or something, leaving us with the prospect of a Democrat running unopposed for the job. This was an abomination before the Lord because our district always voted Republican, so I filed on the Republican side with no opposition in the primary. I didn't campaign or anything, but I only lost in the general election by twenty-some votes, which brought me to my senses. I realized that, if I kept fooling around with politics, I might actually win someday, and then I would have to attend all those boring meetings, so I never filed for anything again. I did end up getting elected union steward at work, where I attended enough boring meetings to last a lifetime.

I never wanted to be a career politician anyway, I wanted to be like unto Cincinnatus, the retired Roman war hero turned farmer. Three times Cincinnatus was called out of retirement to lead the Roman Republic through a rough patch. Three times did Cincinnatus answer duty's call and save the republic from certain ruin. Three times was he offered a permanent crown after the crisis was over. Three times did Cincinnatus refuse the crown, preferring to return to his humble farm. When Ronald Reagan was finally elected president, I believed that he was more qualified to save the country than I was, so I graciously stepped aside. I didn't have a humble farm to return to, but maybe I would someday, or at least a humble swamp.