They Ran For President. What Did They Learn?
First of all, in case you missed it: I have a new novel for grown-ups coming out in August 2025! Lessons in Magic and Disaster is about a young trans woman who teaches her mother, Serena, how to become a witch, to help Serena get over the death of her wife. Plus we discover the secrets of a mysterious novel from 1747! You can pre-order it from Bookshop.org, or if you want a signed/personalized/doodled copy, you can pre-order from Green Apple Books.
I just got back from being guest of honor at MileHiCon in Denver and don’t have time to write a fresh newsletter, so here’s something from the archive that feels kind of timely.
The Most Surprising Thing They Learned From Running for President
Back in 2004, I wrote a piece for a tiny indie magazine called other, in which I interviewed a bunch of failed presidential candidates. I was honestly surprised at how willing they were to talk to me (mostly via email, except for George McGovern, who phoned me.)
I asked them what was the most surprising they had learned from running for president, and here’s what they told me:
George McGovern (Democratic nominee, 1972):
[It was] the great difficulty of helping the public understand who I really was and what I stood for. It was so tough to get that across. Of course, it has drastically changed. It’s all about money and media now, those are the two dominant factors in national campaigns. I don’t think that was true in 1972. Maybe we would have been well advised to use more media and create a more accurate picture in the public mind.
Larry Flynt (Republican candidate, 1984):
[My biggest surprise was learning] what a void existed in American society, and the desire to have a candidate other than one from the two-party system. I just announced [my candidacy] sort of as a joke, and I got $60,000 in my office that first week in change, dollars, five and ten-dollar bills from people saying, “Go get ‘em.”
I never dreamed that would be the case. There were so many disenfranchised people out there that I thought, if somebody came along who was really a major contender, he could really upset the system. I was not surprised when Ross Perot had the effect on the election that he had. Bill Clinton would have never gotten elected had it not been for Ross Perot. And of course, in 2000, Al Gore would have been elected had it not been for Ralph Nader.
Carol Moseley Braun (Democratic candidate, 2004):
I was inspired by the people's interest in what I had to say, with neither race nor gender standing in the way of warm receptions all over America.
John Anderson (Independent candidate, 1980):
The one outstanding thing that came out of my experience in 1980 was the knowledge that fealty to the two party system was a generational thing and a new generation of voters [were rejecting party politics]. This is reflected in the fact that increasingly a larger segment of younger voters are registering independent rather than signing up for the Democrat or Republican party.
I think in time a third party can flourish as a new generation begins to identify itself. By and large, the most enthusiastic and 24/7 type volunteers we had were young people. They were sometimes astonishingly young, but the largest cohort would be in the immediate post-college age, I would say 21-25. That was the most enthusiastic single age group supporting my candidacy, although obviously there were seniors like myself.
The second lesson was that that the reason young people were or will be attracted to a third party candidate was that they were much more malleable and open to new ideas. My 50-50 plan [involving] a 50 cent tax on gasoline was unthinkable. Young people were excited by the ideas I offered.
[The influence of big money] tends to overwhelm that youthful enthusiasm, that is true. The drowning out of big money and the monopolistic appropriation of big money of the channels of communication will be so deafening, so blinding that even enthusiastic young people, as they become a larger and larger share of our population, will not be effective. We have much work to do to reform the current system to make sure that young people’s voices will be heard. Campaign finance reform is very much an unfinished agenda item for action, as well as the tendency for oligopolistic control over the media by the Rupert Murdochs of this world.
I was not a young person myself when I ran. This was in 1980, I was born in 1922. It was an eye opener, I think, that there really was that residue of support [among the young].
They were tireless, they could go ten hours for every one hour that some older volunteer might be able to spare, so they magnified their effect. Unfortunately, not sufficiently in the votes that they brought.
I got almost 7 percent, more than the total that all the third party and independent candidates got in the 2000 election.
Michael Dukakis (Democratic party nominee, 1988):
I guess the thing that surprised me the most was the walling off that takes place, once you accept Secret Service protection. I had refused to have security as governor, and we don't have a governor's mansion in [Massachusetts], so I was able to be my state's chief executive and still live a relatively normal life. All that ends, once you get security. And while the Secret Service people are first-rate and highly professional, I found the inability to interact easily and normally with people to be very difficult. It must be a lot worse since 9/ll.