[Today’s run: rest day]<\/p>\n
In 1980 I was a high school senior at a small school in Des Moines.\u00a0\u00a0 It was an election year and the Republican presidential nomination was in play.\u00a0 Jimmy Carter was the incumbent.<\/p>\n
Our civics teacher somehow got a ticket to the debate.\u00a0 She made an assignment out of it.\u00a0 We were to write a question to be submitted at the debate.\u00a0 The question she liked best would be submitted and the student who wrote it went to the debate.<\/p>\n
I remember my question was along the lines of:\u00a0 In a tight spot will you do what we want you to do, or will you do what you think is best?<\/p>\n
Anyway,\u00a0 she selected my question as the best (!) and I went to the debate at the Des Moines Civic Center.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t actually remember much about the debate.\u00a0 It seems to me it was a lot about small issues that had arisen:\u00a0 how will you handle the increase in potash tariffs (or something).<\/p>\n
The funny thing about the debate is that Ronald Reagan refused to participate.\u00a0 So I did not see him there.\u00a0 And he’s the one who eventually got the nomination and became president.\u00a0 George Bush the elder was there.\u00a0 He became\u00a0 Vice President and later President.\u00a0\u00a0 So, I have been in the same room with a whole bunch of people and a some-day-to-be President.<\/p>\n
I thought the debate was pretty dry and I don’t remember much else about it.\u00a0 Seems to me maybe Jack Kemp was there, I think they had something like 6-7 guys up there answering questions.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (I’ll go look it up and give you the list.\u00a0 I’m sure you are dying to know.\u00a0 Here’s a quote from the Des Moines Register website:<\/p>\n
The six GOP candidates were Phil Crane, Howard Baker, John Connally, Robert Dole, George Bush and John Anderson. A seventh candidate, Ronald Reagan, turned down the offer to debate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Phil Crane?\u00a0 I don’t even remember that name. )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run: rest day] In 1980 I was a high school senior at a small school in Des Moines.\u00a0\u00a0 It was an election year and the Republican presidential nomination was in play.\u00a0 Jimmy Carter was the incumbent. Our civics teacher somehow got a ticket to the debate.\u00a0 She made an assignment out of it.\u00a0 We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3044"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3047,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044\/revisions\/3047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}