John Anderson endorses Obama. . .

[wndycty]

John B. Anderson, former Republican congressman and presidential candidate, tells why he's for Obama

"If I were in New Hampshire, I would very definitely be casting my ballot for (Illinois Democratic Senator Barack) Obama," said John B. Anderson, the Rockford native who ran for president himself in 1980, first as a Republican and then as an independent. "There is a freshness to his appeal that is really unparalleled in the many years that I’ve been following presidential elections."

I reached Anderson, now 85, by phone Sunday afternoon in Fort Lauderdale, where he lives half the year and teaches seminars in constitutional law and electoral process as a visiting professor at the Shepard Broad Law Center at Nova Southeastern University.

He said he had not formally endorsed a presidential candidate since his own ill-fated run for the White House (he won 7 percent of the popular vote in 1980), though he did make several public appearances with Bill Clinton in 1992.

But this year, he said, he believes we are "at a unique moment in history, when we need to reach beyond narrow partisanship....All of the other Democratic candidates for the nomination and the Republican candidates for the nomination as well are still wedded to the old partisan way of judging issues and cannot rise above that to give us the new approaches that we need."
-snip-

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/01/john-b-anderson.html

[wtmusic]

1. Campaigned for Anderson in 1980

Wow. A lot of water under the bridge. :scared:

[wndycty]

3. Believe it or not I remember shaking his hand when I was a kid. . .

. . .he came to Freedom Hall in Park Forest, Illinois. At the time it was the coolest thing I ever did.

[Beausoir]

13. As did I! My very first door-knocker was for Anderson.

Good times. Good times.

Glad to see he is still involved in the process.

[wtmusic]

14. Working for his campaign in Los Angeles

one time I was working late at campaign headquarters and the regional director asked me to give John's daughter a ride home to her apartment in Beverly Hills.

She didn't know me and I could tell she was very uncomfortable about getting into a car with a stranger. So I tried to make small talk and make her feel at ease, which I usually am good at. But she wasn't having any of it. Very tense. She seemed very unaccustomed to being in the national spotlight.

By mistake I missed a turn, and she flipped out. She thought she was being kidnapped -- I thought she was going to jump out of my car while it was moving. Funny how those things stick with you.

[TwilightGardener]

2. That's nice! Cross-partisan endorsements are meaningful--they

show that the candidate is SO good, he's better than what your own party is offering (assuming Anderson went back to being a GOPer).

[hayu_lol]

4. Anderson is a good guy...

I switched to Independent to vote for him in CA. Campaigned for him.

[TheDebbieDee]

6. I remember John Anderson, too...........

He was the first candidate I ever heard talk about the decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs. Listening to him was a mind-opening experience!

[Kucinich4America]

5. Hey, who knew Obama was a YES fan?

Maybe he can use "All Good People" as a campaign song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvPyT-YGUIg

[FredScuttle]

7. LOL

I wonder who's won the coveted Rick Wakeman endorsement

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. Fred Thompson.

He need a "wake man" to wake him up constantly.

[Kucinich4America]

9. Sadly, I heard that Chris Squire endorsed Huckabee

The bass player thing, I guess? :evilfrown:

[Alexander]

16. Where did you hear that? I haven't found anything on Squire's politics.

[Alexander]

15. Rick Wakeman doubtless will endorse a Republican.

He's a born-again Christian and a UK Tory.

Then again, Rick's mainly a celebrity in England, not the US.

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. I thought he was dead. He may actually be dead.

[NancyG]

11. I voted for John Anderson in'80

Only non-Democrat I ever voted for for president.

[SoxFan]

12. Spiffy!

I remember wearing an Anderson button as a politically precocious 13 year old in the fall of 1980. He's a good man.

[Alexander]

17. Anderson was always a liberal Republican.

He ran against Reagan in the presidential primary and lost, so he ran as an Independent.

I think it was because of him that they created the "sore loser" laws preventing candidates from doing that again.

[autorank]

18. John Anderson, the Nader of 1980

Good for Obama. He can't control who endorses him so this is not a comment on Obama.

1980 Presidential Results

Reagan (R) 43,903,230
Carter (D) 35,480,115
Anderson (I) 5,719,850

Carter had little chance with Anderson's candidacy plus the Iran's illegal and vile behavior of
holding US hostages. Iran holding the hostages through election day was an obvious manipulation of
public opinion against Carter. There was no groundswell for Reagan.

Now here's all you need to know about Mr. John Anderson. After he got nearly 6.0 million votes,
independents/liberal Republicans, he needed a job. Guess who hired him:

The Hoover Institution of Stanford University, nice fat contract.

They've been a right wing apologist front for decades. Most recently:

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1479

Hoover became an ideas factory for George W. Bush before he was elected president. In the summer of
1999, Bush, then the governor of Texas and in the early stages of his presidential campaign, paid his
first visit to California as a candidate. At the time, Bush's campaign was at pains to portray him as
a moderate, "compassionate" conservative who would soften the hard edges of Republican economic and
social policy. But a few analysts looked beyond the rhetoric to take a closer look at the advisers who
provided the intellectual foundation of his campaign, and in the process saw signs that Bush was not
the post-ideological moderate he appeared to be. The Christian Science Monitor noted that one of the
biggest tipoffs was Bush's close association with the Hoover Institution, which had already "emerged
as the early core of Mr. Bush's brain trust."

[Alexander]

19. Your own numbers show you to be dead wrong.

Let's examine what would've happened had Carter gotten every single vote from John Anderson's supporters, which would've been highly unlikely.

Reagan (R) 43,903,230
Carter (D) 41,199,965

Reagan still wins. You lose.

[autorank]

21. I don't lose anything, I didn't run. Anderson siphoned off votes and created discord. He failed

to understand that Reagan was an unmitigated disaster, period. He ran, took campaign resources, money,
and news time away from the right versus left campaign, quite a contrast. All of those factors are
intangibles but had an impact. Had Anderson defined the real threat of Reagan - Bush and supported
Carter or, better yet, had Carter and Anderson run together (just thought of that), it might have been
different.

However, there was the first "October Surprise" - no hostage return. They were detained in Iran through
the election and returned on Jan. 16, 1981. There's obviously more to that story but we'll never know
since our press would actually have to leave their desks to get the story. That factor, even if
Anderson had been Carter's VP might have done it for Reagan.

The votes are just the manifestation of all the factors in the campaign and Anderson was a big factor.

I wondered at the time, if the guy is so opposed to Reagan, his supposed reason for the effort, then
why is he getting him elected. An idle thought until the end of the campaign, Anderson took a job
at the very right wing Hoover Institution. A payoff? Probably, there seems to be no other
explanation since Anderson ran for president to oppose just about everything Hoover had to offer, yet
he was offered and he took a job there. He's a RAT FINK, which, as I made clear, has nothing to
do with the Obama endorsement.

[progressoid]

20. He's still alive?