United States Presidential Candidates 1980

"He's the smartest guy in Congress, but he insists on voting his conscience instead of party."

"Mr. Anderson is seen as one of those rare politicians whose political standards and sense of values seem more important to him than winning the next election. . . looking more and more like the quintessential man of principle."

"I had no great sense of failure. I didn’t come out of the campaign with the sense that I’d thrown my career away or thrown my life away on what was a fruitless, feckless endeavor. I felt that I had made my mark on the pages of history and laid down some markers for others possibly to follow."

"The time has come to stop telling the American people only what they want them to hear, and start talking frankly about the sacrifices we must all make."

"[My position] is not designed to win votes. It is designed to address itself to what I think is a problem of crisis proportions. I believe that when you are facing that kind of emergency, you have to be willing to prescribe some pretty tough action. I think the American people are ready for some straight answers. . . When you are confronted with a genuine emergency, then I think you have to look at the interest of the country first."

"Put me down as a believer. John Anderson is the most impressive candidate in the presidential field. . . Reporters are not used to politicians who look you directly in the eye and tell you exactly what they believe. . . He is giving up a safe congressional seat after twenty years. I admire him for not wanting to spend the rest of his life posturing and pretending to leadership. He decided to try to lead."

"Anderson accomplished one of the rarest deeds in Congress . . . [he] actually persuaded some of his Republican colleagues to switch at the last minute from opposition to support of the bill."

"There is a thread that runs through American presidential politics. It is an urge to find, especially in difficult times, a candidate who is his own man, whose concerns are larger than his party’s, who is a rational moderate in pursuit of what is best for the whole country. In the spring of 1980, John Bayard Anderson of Rockford, Illinois seemed to have seized that thread. He was widely perceived to be good, decent, honest, less partisan, and more intelligent and experienced than the rest of the field."

"A first class congressman, a smart man with interesting ideas, and a figure of some moment in the House."

"After spending an adult life of unfulfilled dreams and promises, a man has to prove something to himself. Maybe I’m trying to sum it all up to convince myself that everything I’ve been doing makes sense. I guess, I just want to get it all off my chest before I close up the books."

"Anderson was the first major mainstream political figure to align himself with the independent movement that still exists today in American politics. While destabilization and fragmentation existed long before Anderson, he was the first candidate to give an established, credible non-party outlet for independent and disenchanted voters. Secondly, he was the first candidate to expose how voters would appreciate a new realism in American politics. In the aftermath of 1980, candidates were expected to speak in a more straight-forward manner to the voter than in past campaigns, rather than basing campaigns upon promises that the candidate often knew he had little chance of keeping. Third, he was the first candidate at the national level to expose the residual interest that exists among voters in candidates who are truly different and run against politics-as-usual. Fourth, he set a new standard of honesty in campaigning, which has forced the media and the public to hold candidates more accountable for their actions in campaigns. And lastly, it was the Anderson campaign that gave hope to voters that politics in the post-Watergate era could be more truthful, pure, and honorable. After the election, Anderson kept his promise to retire from public life. Although he did flirt with the idea of forming a permanent centrist third party in 1984, in the end he opted never to seek office again. He has instead moved onto a career in academia, teaching as a guest professor at a series of colleges across the nation."

"What he did was prove, again, that here is a remarkable candidate of courage and integrity, one who refuses to shape his plans and his principles to conform to this or that pressure group. Instead, he values the welfare of all Americans."

"Within the fraternity of professional public opinion pollsters, Rep. John B. Anderson’s independent presidential campaign is regarded today as a serious challenge that could result in Anderson’s election to the White House next November."

"After losing three consecutive Republican primaries, Anderson admitted that he expected there to be “some reduction in funds” given to his campaign. Usually contributors are less willing to donate to a candidate who has fared poorly at the polls or who might drop out of the race. But there was no significant fall in contributions for him over the first ten days of April. … “The people giving are not affected by these primaries,” aide Tom Mathews explained to a reporter. “They don’t care if he wins or loses as a Republican contestant.” Upon reaching home, Anderson continued to put the pieces in place for an independent candidacy. The decision was made in the face of the overwhelming conventional wisdom that stated there were too many hurdles for a candidate without an established party starting this late to win."

"Anderson, alone in the Republican field, has been waging a campaign focused on the issues that are bedeviling America. And he has been making uncommonly good sense. The remarkable thing about him is that he combines two qualities this country very much needs today: a conservative approach to fiscal, tax, and business matters, and a tough but sane attitude toward foreign affairs."

"We would commend any voter who, from principle, casts a ballot for him. The Illinois congressman has demonstrated that directness wins respect from voters, even when they disagree with what they hear."

"Overnight, Anderson has become a hero, not only to the civil rights forces, but also to Republican liberals and moderates who hanker for an attractive new face and a voice of eloquence to assume the lead in offering new solutions to the nation’s great domestic crises."

"Anderson not only is eloquent, he is forthright to the point of bluntness. He has disdained feeding Pablum to the populace. He has pinpointed the nation’s major problems and offered reasonable, if not always palatable, solutions to them."

"Rep. John Anderson, the Illinois Republican, has so far shown himself to be the candidate most qualified to be president."

"A vote for Anderson holds out the possibility of something better from our politics and tells whoever wins that at least this voter wants something better."

"I have never interviewed a politician so open to argument and so unafraid of being done in by a reporter."

"[Anderson] is not likely to win, but in a race with such doddering bumblers as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, it is best to not rule anything out."

"I don't like to second-guess, but I do believe we've lost something. I can't get my hand on it, but we're just not quite where we should be, as the greatest democracy in the world. And I don't know how you correct it, but I keep hoping that there will be a change in my lifetime."

"I once called Carter a chicken fried McGovern and I take that back because I've come to respect McGovern."

"Even more distressing is how insignificant many of the subjects I wrote about look in retrospect. I spent months covering Senator Bob Dole’s run for president. I traveled on Dole’s plane, jockeyed to interview him, followed him across the country like a teenaged Led Zeppelin groupie. In 1996, Bob Dole was a big deal. It’s hard now to understand why. That’s true for so many people I covered. We thought they were important. Now they’re forgotten. A surprising number of them are dead, though I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. Death and irrelevance are coming for all of us. That’s the one certain thing. Repeat that to yourself every morning, and things fall into perspective. Most of what we think matters really doesn’t."

"Something is wrong with America. I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about or if they're thinking at all."

"If Lincoln had an affair with a slave woman, it would be an outrage, but when Clinton does it with one of his staff, everyone is okay with it."

"If we had known we were going to win control of the Senate, we'd have run better candidates."

"He lost the election, and I regret that he did, but they did. He had Rudy Giuliani running all over the country, claiming fraud. He never had one bit of fraud in all those lawsuits he filed and statements he made."

"I'm a Trumper. ... I'm sort of Trumped out, though."

"At least she's the president of something, which is more than I can say."

"Dole, like many from his generation, presumably did not know how to handle LGBTQ+ issues, and most likely out of unfamiliarity didn’t do much for our community, which was also being left behind while he was in the Senate. However, when he ran for president in 1988, Dole lambasted his competitors for their AIDS-bashing speeches, saying, "There is, you know, such a thing as compassion." At that time and during that tragedy, getting anyone in power to show some compassion was a rarity. In 1995, running for president again (he became the GOP’s nominee in 1996), Dole clumsily flip-flopped with a donation sent to him by the Log Cabin Republicans. He accepted it, then sent it back saying he didn’t agree with the gay group’s agenda, then accepted it again, saying it had something to do with a mail mishap. It was rather embarrassing, to say the least. I think that’s how Dole approached LGBTQ+ issues, out of embarrassment, with hidden compassion. During the late ’80s to mid-’90s, most members of Congress were older white men, and the last thing in the world they wanted to talk about was "homosexual" issues. This is why the government was tragically so late in the game when it came to fighting AIDS."

"I, Robert Joseph Dole, do solemnly swear... Sorry. Wrong speech."

"Now people call Bob Dole a moderate. Bob Dole is not a moderate. Bob Dole is an extremely conservative person."

"We can also commend him for his comity. When he became the GOP leader in the 1980s, he said, “I don’t wait for the consensus. I try to help build it.” He was not only successful in working with the very liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, Democrat from Massachusetts, in getting the historic ADA passed, but also worked with Democrats to help expand food stamp and school lunch programs, and to create nutrition programs for low-income pregnant women, mothers, and young children. He also played a leading role in passing a ramped-up clean air act, public housing laws, and an extension of the Voting Rights Act. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Dole was sitting in McConnell’s seat right now and understood the assault on voting rights that are currently taking place in state legislatures? He would understand the urgency to pass a bill to help strengthen and protect voting rights for all. And wouldn’t it be nice if Dole, who could be equally crusty as the other men in Congress and who had an acerbic wit, could nonetheless have had a leadership role in getting to the bottom of the January 6 insurrection? He fiercely loved democracy, the Senate, and our Constitution perhaps like no other member of Congress in history. And that’s because he almost died from all of that. He would surely want to convict anyone — even the former president — who betrayed all that he revered and stood for. I heard that he wept while the Capitol was under assault."

"Dole gave up his Senate seat after serving for over 30 years when he ran for president, so once Clinton was in office, Dole had little sway over policy, but he was opposed not only to gays in the military but also to same-sex marriage, and that was as late as 2014, before same-sex marriage became legal nationwide. By then, Dole was in his 90s, and most likely still stuck in his ways. We can’t say that Dole was an ally, but I’m not so sure he should inspire our ire. He was from a generation that is disappearing at a very rapid rate. They were raised during a time when things like speaking about sexuality were taboo. Who really knew what was in his heart? I just always thought about the two guys I knew who worked for him, who loved him very much. However, we can — and should — commend him for his tremendous sacrifice during World War II. He nearly died defending our country and lived with his disabilities astonishingly until age 98. He was, and is, a legitimate American hero. Because of him and his generation, we are free — at least for the time being, and hopefully after 2024."

"When I attended the signing of the ADA, I was fortunate enough to sit behind and catty-corner to Dole during the ceremony, and I watched his reaction during the entire event because he was so close to me. When President George H.W. Bush gave him full credit for bringing such sweeping legislation to fruition, I saw Dole quickly wipe away a tear. A man from his generation was loath to cry in public. But when I saw that moment of emotion from him, I remembered his worrying about a dehydrated young man trying to get a job in Congress. Dole might not have been our biggest ally for queer rights, but he might go down in history as being one of American democracy’s most notorious defenders and biggest advocates, and that’s how he should be remembered."

"If something happened along the route and you had to leave your children with Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, I think you would probably leave them with Bob Dole."

"I mean, there's always somebody in somebody's administration who jumps out early, sells a book, and goes after the guy who hired him, … I don't know if that's good. It may be good business; it's not good politics."

"As long as there are only 3 to 4 people on the floor, the country is in good hands. It's only when you have 50 to 60 in the Senate that you want to be concerned."

"In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man's relation to nature without referring to "ecology"...such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices...so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the "Age of Ecology"."

"Clearly, we have compiled a record of serious failures in recent technological encounters with the environment. In each case, the new technology was brought into use before the ultimate hazards were known. We have been quick to reap the benefits and slow to comprehend the costs."

"The peak of the [Presidential] campaign happened in Albuquerque, where a local reporter said to me, "Dr. Commoner, are you a serious candidate or are you just running on the issues?""

"Admit it-the world is mighty wacky. Dan Quayle is a heartbeat away from bravely leading us into the New World Order. Our intelligentsia are running around declaring that we have reached both the End of History and the apex of political evolution-we're the kings of the global jungle. At the same time, sensing new opportunities, the forces of reptilian nationalism-from Pat Robertson to militant mullahs, from David Duke to the ancient reactionary movements of Eastern Europe-are crawling out from under their rocks, getting facelifts, and learning how to use teleprompters and Stinger missiles. Meanwhile, back in the cradle of democracy, the "opposition" response to all this is to offer a choice between Jerry Brown and None of the Above."

"The governor is the worst administrator ever to come down the pike."

"Jerry is perceived by most legislators as very selfish."

"He's very ambitious and will do anything to be in power."

"Oftentimes Jerry will run for an office and not want to do the things that are part of that office."

"Jerry has no political or ideological anchor."

"He's totally into power."