{"id":17849,"date":"2016-11-07T15:36:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T15:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17849"},"modified":"2017-11-07T03:26:26","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T03:26:26","slug":"recalling-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17849","title":{"rendered":"Recalling the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"politics-word-cloud\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I am in a reminiscing kind of mood today.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking of the first vote I cast for president of the United States. It was 44 years ago; that’s 11 presidential elections ago! I was 22 years of age. Newly married. My wife was pregnant with our first son. I was full of exuberant idealism.<\/p>\n

The Vietnam War was still raging. My candidate for the presidency wanted to end the war quickly. I had returned from service in the Army as confused about the war as I was when I reported for duty at a place called Marble Mountain in the spring of 1969.<\/p>\n

He got my vote on Nov. 7, 1972. Sen. George McGovern needed a whole lot more votes than he got that day. He lost the election huge<\/em> to President Nixon.<\/p>\n

I was proud of that vote.<\/p>\n

Eleven elections later, I am decidedly less proud of the vote I am about to cast. To be certain, my enthusiasm for presidential candidates has had its ups and downs. Some campaigns got me far more excited than others.<\/p>\n

This one, though, feels different — and it’s not in a good way.<\/p>\n

You might ask: Is this a difficult choice? No. Not at all. My preference is clear. Both major-party candidates are deeply flawed. One of them, though, is far more flawed than the other.<\/p>\n

When it’s over — and I expect we’ll have a new president chosen by the end of the night Tuesday — I am going to cling to another hope.<\/p>\n

It will be that the loser will accept the result, deliver a concession speech that at least contains a semblance of grace and agrees to support the next president.<\/p>\n

Do I expect all of that to happen? Will the person who should<\/em> lose this contest — Donald J. Trump — toss aside the stuff about “rigged elections” and do the right thing? I am not holding my breath.<\/p>\n

However, as they say: Hope springs eternal.<\/p>\n

Having declared my general unhappiness with the choices we face, I remain proud of the fact that I have the right to make that decision.\u00a0I will go to our polling place Tuesday morning excited that I\u00a0will have my voice heard.<\/p>\n

I just wish I could be as proud of the vote I am about to cast as I was the first time.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am in a reminiscing kind of mood today. I’m thinking of the first vote I cast for president of the United States. It was 44 years ago; that’s 11 presidential elections ago! I was 22 years of age. Newly married. My wife was pregnant with our first son. I was full of exuberant idealism. … Continue reading Recalling the first time<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[1424,1546,1893,2139,5116],"class_list":["post-17849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-election-2016","tag-george-mcgovern","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17849"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25962,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17849\/revisions\/25962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}