What is your earliest memory of politics?

[Jaymann]

I think it's time to lighten things up at bit, I will go first.

I remember when Kennedy ran against Nixon in 1960. Even as a young lad I could tell Nixon was a creep. So I made what I thought was a humorous poster: NIXON FOR OFFICE BOY.

[LordMortis]

Thinking Jimmy Carter was going to be in "Welcome back Cotter" and confusing him with Gabe Kaplan.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

I remember as a 5 year old watching a Reagan/Mondale presidential debate and telling my parents that I liked Reagan. They were appalled.

[Smoove_B]

I remember being in 1st grade and there was some type of Scholastic pamphlet regarding the upcoming 1980 Presidential election. We were asked to pick between Reagan and Carter, turn it in and the teacher tallied the votes. I can still see their portraits in my mind on the pamphlet she passed around and as I recall the class was overwhelmingly for Reagan. I don't remember what we were told - how to pick one or why you'd ask a 6 year old their preference, but I do remember picking Carter and being mad he didn't win.

I have a fuzzy memory of the Iran hostage crisis - mainly remembering it happening but not really understanding anything other than people were being held.

[Archinerd]

I was in 2nd grade during the Bush / Dukakis election. I remember drawing people holding "vote for Bush" signs, because Dukakis is a dumb name.

[ImLawBoy]

My president has a first name
It's J-I-M-M-Y
My president has a second name
It's C-A-R-T-E-R.

I love to hate him every day
And if you ask me why I'll say
'cause Jimmy Carter has a way
Of screwing up the U-S-A

That's not really my earliest memory of politics, but it's what popped to mind.

My true earliest is probably when I wrote a letter to Jimmy Carter on a Very Important Matter. (Must have been before I soured on him.) I wanted to know the record for how many tattoos one could get out of a single Cracker Jack tattoo prize. I had gotten a lot out of one, and it seemed like something the president should know. In response, I got a nice letter from the prez (although no mention of my question - that must be why I turned on him) along with, for some reason, a picture of his daughter, Amy.

[LordMortis]

My president has a first name
It's J-I-M-M-Y
My president has a second name
It's C-A-R-T-E-R.

I love to hate him every day
And if you ask me why I'll say
'cause Jimmy Carter has a way
Of screwing up the U-S-A

Nope. But I do remember the Ray Charles "Georgia" song to a cartoon of peanuts with a Jimmy Carter smile. All of my clear memories are of cartoons (Claymation).

Hey Internet!!!

[Jaymon]

My Saturday morning cartoons were interrupted when Reagen was shot.

[ImLawBoy]

My Saturday morning cartoons were interrupted when Reagen was shot.

Did you record them? Because he was shot on a Monday afternoon.

[Jaymon]

I was young, so perhaps my memory is fuzzy.

[El Guapo]

My Saturday morning cartoons were interrupted when Reagen was shot.

Did you record them? Because he was shot on a Monday afternoon.

Well well Jaymon, looks like your story is falling apart. Do you want to come clean with us now?

[El Guapo]

I have vague memories of the '92 presidential race. Most specifically I remember a headline late in the race where Bush had closed in Clinton in the polls and he gloated that Clinton had "thrown the race away" or something like that.

[Jaymann]

My Saturday morning cartoons were interrupted when Reagen was shot.

Did you record them? Because he was shot on a Monday afternoon.

Fox News was constantly running breaking news on how Mondale tried to steal the election.

[NickAragua]

As a 10 year old kid, my parents had just completed their move to the US, so I got to read about the putsch in Russia in Time magazine. I also remember really getting a kick out of their in-depth explanation of a bunch of the individual tank battles in Desert Storm.

The year after, I was asked to represent Bill Clinton at a 6th grade debate (1992 I guess?). After my "amazing" performance at the debate (I had no idea what the hell I was talking about), everyone except for one kid voted Bush and/or Perot (I forget the split). The other kid that voted Clinton had written "Dow Jones Industrial Average" all over his page in the yearbook, so I assume he voted based on the actual news as opposed to everyone else, to whom I imagine it was a popularity contest (as it turns out first year immigrant kids with accents aren't very popular in elementary school, go figure).

[LordMortis]

I was young, so perhaps my memory is fuzzy.

Though I don't remember an interruption, I'm sure I would be watching Monday afternoon cartoons in 1981 if I was able to do so. Though elementary school didn't let out until 16:15 and the bus ride home was long so I was never home until after 17:30 to watch after school cartoons. (After school cartoons were at 17:30? That's crazy to think back and realize now. Play time started at 17:30. It seemed a lot earlier.)

[Dramatist]

I remember Gerald Ford being president and I heard the term Watergate a lot, but had no idea what it was.

I remember liking Ford but only because I liked Chevy Chase’s depiction of him on SNL.


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[Brian]

I was babysitting the neighbor kids when Reagen was shot. They had cable (I don’t think we got it until later) so CNN stayed on that day.

As for my earliest...aside from some vague Nixon related stuff I would have to go with Chevy Chase spoofing Gerald Ford on SNL.

Not sure if that counts or not.

[Z-Corn]

My Saturday morning cartoons were interrupted when Reagen was shot.

Did you record them? Because he was shot on a Monday afternoon.

That's what I was gonna say...I watched it live, I was home sick that day. I remember being amazed that all the sudden that Secret Service agent produced an Uzi.

I've mentioned this before, I remember hating Watergate because it preempted cartoons.

And I remember getting scared because my Dad go so mad when Ford pardoned Nixon. He felt really betrayed because he was a Ford supporter since Ford was a home-town hero.

[Daehawk]

[Daehawk]

I remember when Kennedy ran against Nixon in 1960. Even as a young lad I could tell Nixon was a creep.

Nixon was a sweaty little chipmunk.

[YellowKing]

I give all the credit for my engagement in politics to my granddad.

One of my earliest memories is going to the polls with him and him letting me pull the lever in the voting booth.

While my parents rarely ever talked politics, my granddad was a proud Democrat and very active in local elections. He had friends he'd help run for City Council, and he'd volunteer for poll work on election days.

He was a huge supporter of the first African-American sheriff in New Hanover Country, Joe McQueen. I have a fond memory of when I was 8 years old attending a fish fry fundraiser for Mr. McQueen and my granddad proudly introducing us to him. Sheriff McQueen remained good friends with my granddad over the years, and growing up I recall many occasions where he'd stop by my granddad's insurance business just to talk.

I didn't realize it at the time how much he included my little brother and I in his political activities. I remember attending local town hall meetings with him when I was in elementary school. He never treated us like what we were doing was "grown up stuff" or above our heads. If an elected official stopped by to discuss something with him and my brother and I were in the room, we were never asked to leave. He carried on his business without a care in the world that there were a couple of little kids running around. And yet he did all of this without ever pushing a political agenda on to us. I never once recall him telling us we should some day vote this way or that. He involved us in the process, not the partisanship.

Because of all that, I never remember a time in my life where I wasn't aware of politics, even if I wasn't actively engaged. I still paid attention, I knew who was on the city council growing up and who the mayor was. As soon as I turned 18 I registered to vote and I voted in every presidential election and most mid-terms. There wasn't even a conscious thought behind it, it was just something I did without thinking.

I loved my granddad, but sometimes you don't realize what gifts your loved ones really left you until years after they're gone.

[Kraken]

I can dimly remember JFK's assassination. My teacher put her head on her desk and cried, so that was upsetting, but then we got to go home early, so that was good. But that wasn't politics so much as history -- I was oblivious to politics until Humphrey ran for president in 1968, when I was 11. A girl that I was sweet on liked him, so I did, too. I started to realize that politics matters when I was 13 and my friend's older brother was drafted and killed in Vietnam.

[Isgrimnur]

One of my earliest memories is going to the polls with him and him letting me pull the lever in the voting booth.

What's the statute of limitations on voter fraud?

[Blackhawk]

Other than vague recollections of Big Names on the news, my first big memory is also Reagan getting shot. I would have been 7. I remember that I was at home, and I remember calling my mother at work to tell her, then putting the phone up to the TV speaker for like five minutes to make sure she knew what was going on (remember, while she was at work.)

[Defiant]

Clearest, distinct early memory (that I can place a date on) would have been seeing the Berlin Wall falling on the news, in part because I was told to remember that moment because I was watching history in the making.

[Holman]

I remember Carter v Ford political ads on TV, and I have memories of my Dad (a Buckley conservative) being disappointed when Carter won, but probably the first political event I intentionally attended to was the Iranians storming the US embassy in 1979. (I was ten years old.)

Oh, and I remember coverage of the Camp David Accords delaying the premiere of Battlestar Galactica.

[Skinypupy]

Like others, mine was probably Regan getting shot. I was 7 and while I didn't really know anything about Regan, I do remember wondering why anyone would want to shoot a President who seemed like a nice man on TV.

Politics was never discussed at all in my house growing up. I don't think I ever had a conversation about politics with my parents until I was well out of college. I think the first time I voted was Bush v Gore, but it honestly may have been Bush v Kerry. Politics just wasn't something I payed attention to at all.

Oh how times have changed.

[LordMortis]

Oh, and I remember coverage of the Camp David Accords delaying the premiere of Battlestar Galactica.

I don't remember what it was but I do remember the delay.

[Holman]

From about 1980 on, I started reading my Dad's subscription to National Review, including older issues going back to Watergate. In retrospect, even 1970s Conservatism looks pretty appalling: dismissal of Civil Rights concerns, the rise of the Moral Majority, full-throated defense of Apartheid South Africa, and a strange and total hatred of Walter Cronkite that really shows you where Fox News came from.

I was also collecting Mad Magazine all that time, including back issues as far as I could find them. My cultural and current-events education was pretty broad-based (if schizophrenic).

[Alefroth]

Walking to school and chanting,

Nixon Nixon, he's our man
McGovern belongs in the garbage can

I was 7 or 8.
I have no idea where I heard it or why I would have chanted it.

[Freyland]

Being 49, I experienced many of the things described above, but none of them actually made me pay attention to politics, per se. What made me actually stop and say "wtf?" was the tan suit furor. I was still a Republican in name (not paying attention, remember?), and I absolutely had to understand why this was important. After that, was Obamacare, since I'm a physician in a major hospital system. And it's been a progressive roll towards Democracy ever since.

[The Meal]

I was young, so perhaps my memory is fuzzy.

Though I don't remember an interruption, I'm sure I would be watching Monday afternoon cartoons in 1981 if I was able to do so. Though elementary school didn't let out until 16:15 and the bus ride home was long so I was never home until after 17:30 to watch after school cartoons. (After school cartoons were at 17:30? That's crazy to think back and realize now. Play time started at 17:30. It seemed a lot earlier.)

He got shot during spring break (at least for us -- we were vacationing down in Florida, one of two family vacations I ever remember taking), so probably no bus ride home. We were in a gift shop at the time (I forget for what attraction, something near Sarasota, after the Sunshine Skyway Bridge got shut down).

My earliest memory is some sort of irrational dislike of Jimmy Carter.

[malchior]

I'm too young for Reagan getting shot - but not by much. Oddly my strong first memory is *Soviet* politics. Specifically when Chernenko died. I can remember an episode of HBO's 'Not Necessarily the News' where they played a clip of a Soviet funeral march with the Wizard of Oz tune of 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' but instead it was 'Ding dong Chernenko's dead'. I got very interested in their politics and taught myself the Cyrillic alphabet from a Russian language textbook. Years later this was very handy when I blew away an entire section of an academic decathalon that was unexpectably focused on US/Soviet relations and nuclear arms treaties. Totally worth it.

[Blackhawk]

He got shot during spring break (at least for us -- we were vacationing down in Florida, one of two family vacations I ever remember taking), so probably no bus ride home.

That makes a lot of sense. I remembered being home that day, but I figured I was just misremembering it (it'll be 40 years ago six weeks from today, holy crap.)

[Holman]

My earliest memory is some sort of irrational dislike of Jimmy Carter.

I've just started reading Rick Perlstein's Reaganland, which is part of his series that began with Before the Storm (on Goldwater), Nixonland, and The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan.

Tellingly, the volume called Reaganland (subtitled "America's Right Turn") actually covers the Carter administration. America was changing, and Great Society liberals like Carter were on the way out.

[ImLawBoy]

For a kid my age (born in 1971) the end of Carter's term in particular was quite bad. I don't remember how much I was impacted by malaise and the energy crisis, but I sure remember the Iranian hostage situation. That was enough for an eight-year old to form a not completely irrational (if somewhat naive) dislike of Carter.

Plus, he didn't answer my question about the tattoos.

[Madmarcus]

The Carter presidency was a gradual intro to politics. I was old enough to start paying attention to some of the economic issues and remember my dad feeling that Carter was a good man but not the right person to help the economy.

[dbt1949]

Caesar was made dictator.

Also I can remember Eisenhower running for his second term. My mom voted for Adlai Stevenson.
Eisenhower was the last good republican president.

[Kurth]

Reagan assassination attempt and the aftermath of that. I was 7 at the time.

[Kraken]

Eisenhower was the last good republican president.

I like Ike. I can very dimly remember him being prez when I was a toddler. He was on the same plane as Jesus and Santa.