Anyone here old enough to remember the 1984 presidential election?

[gorkay]

Why did you have to put it that way? Yes, there are a few survivors of the 1984 election still alive... although, like World War I veterans, we are few and far between.

Reubin Askew waited too long to run for president. Probably he should have run in '72 or '76, when he was kind of a hot item in Democratic circles. Back then he was considered charismatic and a good public speaker, and one of the "new" Southern Democrats. But Jimmy Carter beat him to the punch. By '84 he was old hat, and too much like too many of the other candidates who initially ran in what was at first a crowded and pretty mediocre field of Democratic hopefuls. Essentially they were all vying for the anti-Mondale vote (except Jackson, who had his own niche), and when Gary Hart finished second in the Iowa caucuses, all the stop-Mondale Dems flocked to him, leaving the others with only marginal support.

I never thought he was all that good-looking. He had a big nose. Of course, that didn't stop Nixon.

[gorkay]

Mondale actually wasn't a bad candidate. He certainly wasn't a flaming liberal, as he was portrayed. But he ran in the wrong year. If he had run another time, he may have done much better.