Who was President when you first became politically aware?

Who was President when you first became politically aware?

ETA: "Aware" in a non-partisan sense. Just aware of the political realm in general.

For me it was Nixon, though I didn't really start forming my own opinions and studying politics until Carter.

Bush 2.


I used to be the most stereotypical Republican dunce you ever met. Just carried over my parents views completely. Then I entered the working world and had more formal interactions with my far wealthier top 1% family members who I'd grown up with and started to learn the realities of socioeconomic class and hence developed strong Democrat leanings and generally Leftist Esq slants politically with some holdings of rightism here and there.

Basically I grew up and based on my interactions with rich family members realized "Oh wow, the GOP rich really do see you as basically pond scum". That definitely ended my naivety about being a Republican.

radcen said:

Who was President when you first became politically aware?

ETA: "Aware" in a non-partisan sense. Just aware of the political realm in general.

For me it was Nixon, though I didn't really start forming my own opinions and studying politics until Carter.

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I'm going to say early in the Bush II years. There is an argument to be made that the seeds were sewn in the Clinton era, but I simply wasn't old enough to have a legitimate understanding of what politics was, precocious as I may have been.

Once I started understanding the concept of politics properly, I REALLY got into, REALLY quickly. I was extremely active by the time I started high school, which was 2 or 3 years into Bush II's first term.

in 1st grade my school doing a mock election on the presidential election . I thought it was a bit "dumb " as most of us at that time didn't really know who was running and it was silly that we would even mock elect something I didn't really know about so I asked my dad about it and he explained them and the Republican and Democratic party
after he finished his spiel I said something on the lines of them both being terrible isn't there any other option. He answer was a yes but in a odd tone.

In the next year I became aware of the social aspects of government during a long car ride from a drive in my grandparents at the time had owned.

Right about when the 2008 election was starting up, when I was 14.

radcen said:

Who was President when you first became politically aware?

ETA: "Aware" in a non-partisan sense. Just aware of the political realm in general.

For me it was Nixon, though I didn't really start forming my own opinions and studying politics until Carter.

Click to expand...

Reagan. Though I didn't start forming my own opinions until Bill Clinton.

Being in 5th grade on Nov. 22, 1963 on Travis USAF Base in California.
Sent home early from school, my Parents were already home from work--Crying.

Though I understood Dad's vote in 1960 when he was stationed in Morocco, Africa .

Un biased said:

in 1st grade my school doing a mock election on the presidential election . I thought it was a bit "dumb " as most of us at that time didn't really know who was running and it was silly that we would even mock elect something I didn't really know about so I asked my dad about it and he explained them and the Republican and Democratic party
after he finished his spiel I said something on the lines of them both being terrible isn't there any other option. He answer was a yes but in a odd tone.

In the next year I became aware of the social aspects of government during a long car ride from a drive in my grandparents at the time had owned.

Click to expand...

Seriously? You're going to leave off with that? What happened man! :mrgreen:

Kal'Stang said:

Seriously? You're going to leave off with that? What happened man! :mrgreen:

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I went to get some juice I belive

Eisenhower.

radcen said:

Who was President when you first became politically aware?

ETA: "Aware" in a non-partisan sense. Just aware of the political realm in general.

For me it was Nixon, though I didn't really start forming my own opinions and studying politics until Carter.

Click to expand...

For me, it was being seven and coming home from school and seeing the TV coverage of JFK's assassination. I had a similar feeling the morning of 9/11 watching the first tower burning and then seeing the plane fly into the second tower. Times in your life that are forever imbedded in your mind and always fresh as the day they happened.

From that point on, I was interested in politics and government. The Nixon Presidency was when things got more partisan for me. Being in a Canadian highschool and the only person who supported Nixon, I got a quick lesson on defending your side of an argument.

Bush 2. I was 10 when he was elected. I started to become aware politically right after that, and in middle school I started keeping up with things. Though, I didn't really form my own opinions on political matters 'till high school. Before then I just believed whatever my parents believed.

probably GHWB. i knew about politics as a thing before that, but i didn't get excited about it until Ross Perot made his run for the WH. he was my first presidential vote.

Helix, proudly backing lost causes since 1992.












































(go Bernie)

I was aware that Ronald Reagan was President and we didn't like the Russians, but I started to grasp policy in my mid-teens, during George H.W. Bush's term. My first presidential vote was for Clinton in 1996, when I had just turned 20.

JFK
the first televised presidential debate between he and some republican who later became notorious
and then his inaugural address. heard it in school ... it was shown in the next room's television; i strained to hear his challenge to do for your country being said across the hallway while diligently ignoring my own teacher's instruction
the cuban missile crisis, where, after countless nuclear drills at school, i gained a sense of my own mortality, realizing a nuclear war - and the end - was a distinct possibility
but it was the space race, when Kennedy launched the Mercury 7 - my newfound heroes - into head to head competition with a then winning USSR, that was politically and personally definitive for me
we should again hear - and heed - his prescient words:

The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not. And it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this space race. We mean to lead it, for the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace

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JFK. That day in Dallas made us all aware politically.

The first time I was able to vote was on my birthday in 1972. The day I turned 18 was the first time 18 year olds were allowed to vote, so I got to be the youngest person in my little town to ever vote for President.

I'm still waiting for the parade to celebrate such an important occurrence.

I clearly remember good old Gerald Ford. Nice man. Not so Great president.

I remember Truman, Ike, Kennedy, but it was not until Johnson and getting back from Vietnam and relating to past events and current politics that I realized that our politics was mostly lies and schemes. Nothing has changed for the better. It's always about war and business in this Nation. Good, if not great, citizens, but scumbag politicians.

Nixon. For weeks every show I wanted to watch on TV was interrupted by congressional hearings. My awareness of what politicians actually did began during the SALT II talks when the paper ran a graphic comparing SALT I to SALT II. That's when I really started asking questions and recognizing the players.

I turn 44 this year, and Reagan happened to cover my middle school / high school years into the time of Bush 41.

I recall well across my youth being involved in, or at least overhearing, the family speak of politics often enough, and all the usual suspects of the period were mentioned. The political principles of Reagan vs. Carter, Carter vs. Nixon/Ford. The economics of the late 70s headed into the 80s, the lasting impressions of the oil embargo of 73, the lasting impressions of the complete removal of the Gold Standard, the later S&L crisis, etc. My family was mostly from Texas and had both oil and banking interests, so you would expect a good bit of conversation related to those industries. Both those industries went through very pivotal moments over that time frame, and they spoke about it all the time.

I would offer that I became "politically aware" very quickly as just about anytime something would happen with the markets plenty in my family would be talking about the politics of the matter. While we can talk about the rest of the nation speaking about Nuclear Proliferation, AIDs, Communism, and The War on Drugs most of the time my family was talking about Fed actions, economics and the markets, and the growing national debt / growing unfunded liabilities position. As you can guess, the family is mostly Republican and were strong supporters of Texas Governor William ("Bill") Clements, especially around the time of his 1st term.

When I became politically Independent and eventually leaning to Libertarianism, they all thought I had lost my mind given their history of political leans.

It was Kennedy's assassination that made the presidency "real" for me, but I was still too young to know anything about politics - until Nixon. I was in the Navy at the time, Secretariat had won the Triple Crown a few months earlier in an amazing fashion, but Nixon's abdication of the throne shocked us all even more, having a profound impact on me. I wanted to know what a President of the United States must have done to warrant that sort of act.

I was born in 1964 so I did not experience the Kennedy assassination, but it seems that for many of the generation above mine that incident "shocked" people into political awareness. Would that be a fair statement?

Younger people who weren't already aware, I mean.

Politically aware is an odd question. Does that mean the presidents name or does that mean a belief in the effectiveness of the president?. If it's effectiveness I have to go with Kennedy. I liked him, remember where I was when he was shot, remember the grief of the country at his death, remember how feckless Johnson was and how my friends and I opposed the war in Vietnam and it's escalation under Johnson. I was drafted when Nixon was president and now realize how much of a progressive he was. I remember my father was an Eisenhower supporter, my uncle was a union rep and personal friend of Humphrey. My father once told me the best presidents didn't do too much. Maybe that's where my desire for small government comes from.

shrubnose said:

Eisenhower.

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Me too.

Kennedy.

I've voted for every Republican since.