Personal Conscience

Voting for President involves personal conscience, of course, which became a problem for me in 1968.  The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon, a paranoid gutter-rat. After the murder of Robert Kennedy, a growing figure on the left,  the corporate wing of the Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey, a public supporter of the Vietnam War. 

During the Democratic convention, the Chicago police rioted on television, beating anti-war protesters, mostly students, while some key Democrats applauded. Humphrey, an iconic liberal, came to represent many of the things wrong with his party.  

In November some progressives voted for Nixon because he seemed to them more apt to bring our troops home. They were attempting to be practical. I could not vote for Nixon. 

I'm not saying that Humphrey was as bad a man as Nixon. Humphrey was obviously the lesser of two evils. But I could not in good conscience vote for an advocate of a pointless war.

Polls showed that under JFK public trust in government reached 80%.  Since then our major parties have frequently misled the voters. Trust in Washington has stabilized at about 20%.