John B. Anderson ~ Traveling The Middle Road Or Swimming Against The Current?

It was 1980 and John Anderson did the unthinkable. He was a liberal Republican wanting to run for president, but he was much too liberal to ever get the party's nomination. It was obvious that a lot of folks thought he was presidential material, though. People encouraged him to run as an independant, contibutions flowed in, overflow crowd showed up to hear him speak. He was a brilliant public speaker and a good conversationalist.

The feeling was that just maybe he could drum up enough votes from both liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, plus the people who otherwise wouldn't have voted at all, to actually pull it off. He got lots of press coverage, and to many he seemed like the only candidate with with more than the average compliment of brains. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to impress a lot of people. Just look at who's heading the country now. George Bush Jr. not only got elected, he got RE-elected.

I think that I was using a 50mm Summicron on a Leica M, probably loaded with Tri-X at 400, at nearby Barry University. I was using the existing light back stage in the auditorium before the program started.