As we gear up to elect a U.S. president next year, I'm thinking about the first presidential contest in which I took part. I had a small part. I voted. It was 1972, George McGovern  vs. Richard Nixon. The fate -- and as it turned out, the weight -- of the nation hung in the balance. Nixon won in an epic landslide. He was the incumbent, and viewed as a pragmatic centrist, if oily. McGovern was viewed as a left-wing pacifist weenie -- seldom a winning image in American national … [Read more...]