Ronald Reagan: A man for all seasons
Author: M. David Stirling
I was a college sophomore in the fall of 1960. An election year, my Government professor assigned the class the task of getting involved in the election campaign of any candidate of our choice, local, state, or federal. Although I was still too young to vote (the voting age then was 21), like so many other young people at the time, I had become infatuated with the charming personality and style of the young Democrat presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy. At the time, his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, left me cold. (Ironically, 12 years later I would serve as Chair of the Campaign to Re-elect the President in Nixon’s hometown of Whittier.) So I signed up for the Kennedy campaign in a town near the campus. After graduation, I enrolled in law school. The November 22, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and the demise of Camelot hit me and so many of my generation hard. The sadness over the end of my youth took some time to subside.