Steven Petrow

Opinion columnist

Back in 1972, when I was a teenager, I campaigned my heart out for Sen. George McGovern, who ran hard to the left of the other Democratic candidates in the presidential primaries. His message of ending the Vietnam War and eradicating income inequality resonated deeply with young people like me. McGovern secured the Democratic nomination only to lose the popular vote by the most lopsided landslide in presidential politics to President Richard (“Tricky Dick”) Nixon.

I’m telling my story because, as philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I know many young people feel as strongly about Sen. Bernie Sanders as I once did about McGovern. All I can say is this: Please do not make the same mistake that my generation did and let a promise for transformational change blind you to the effectiveness of “realpolitik.”

My London-based friend Steven Overman is an entrepreneur who witnessed the Brexit debacle up close. As he told me recently, “Progressive perfectionism is going to destroy us if we don’t keep it in check. It’s great to have ideals, but there’s a far more basic thing at stake: democracy itself.”

I saw Nixon as evil personified

In 1972, I was 15 and outraged with the state of the world, both at home and overseas. I did not believe in the efficacy of incremental change. The Vietnam War continued to rage, taking more and more lives of our own and the Vietnamese. I had to look no further than Nixon to see what I considered evil personified.

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Nixon, presaging Donald Trump’s playbook, had compiled his “enemies list,” which at one point included about 200 political opponents who were the focus of background investigations conducted by White House operatives. Nixon used government agencies like the IRS to conduct audits of organizations opposed to his policies. He also told his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to spy (possibly illegally) on Sen. Edward Kennedy and other prominent Democrats. "Keep after 'em," Nixon told Haldeman. "Maybe we can get a scandal on any, any of the leading Democrats."

I joined anti-war protests, along with my mom, who was a member of a group called Another Mother for Peace. On the first Earth Day in April 1970, I was among tens of thousands in New York City who rallied for a cleaner planet. Back in school I got suspended for advocating free speech; I had been trying to distribute flyers from the ACLU.

For me, then, the world appeared in black and white. There was no gray scale when it came to Nixon or to politics. I understood there to be “right” and “wrong” but not “better.”

McGovern won the nomination in July 1972, beating more centrist Democrats like Sens. Edmund Muskie and Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Celebrities I admired supported him — among them Carole King, Paul Newman, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Beatty and Barbra Streisand.

Like many young people today who are supporting Sanders, I campaigned for McGovern every spare moment I could find. After school and well into the evening, I hustled from apartment to apartment in high rises, dropping off literature, asking for money, desperately trying to convince people my parents’ age of the importance of voting for McGovern if only to end the war. I’d proudly attached a “McGovern ‘72” bumper sticker to my loose-leaf binder and, being from Queens, New York, wore my two campaign buttons, “McGovern for Queens” and “Queens for McGovern,” every single day that fall, taking heat from just about everyone I encountered.

Empty handed after Election Day

McGovern spoke to my aspirations for a wholesale change in U.S. foreign and domestic policies. On election night, I campaigned right up until the New York polls closed. Then, within moments, a radio bulletin announced that Nixon was well on his way to his landslide. By the time the sun rose the next morning, McGovern had lost everywhere but Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. (He even lost his home state, South Dakota.)

My generation went for broke and woke up empty handed.

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Sanders won 51% of voters ages 18-29 in the New Hampshire primary, exit polls showed. He boosted that to 54% in the Nevada caucuses, according to entrance polls, and won 60% of voters under age 45.

I fear that 2020 will be the second coming of 1972.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, a moderate Democrat who won the Democratic nomination after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, lost in a nail biter election to Nixon. Humphrey begat McGovern.

Will Hillary Clinton, the establishment Democrat in 2016, deliver us a similar albatross in Sanders, a near perfect progressive who talks not of pragmatism but of revolution? A man of vision who may win the battle (the Democratic nomination) but lose the war (the presidency)?

I hope not. But whether or not that happens is in large part up to today’s millennials and Gen Zers.

Know our history. Don’t repeat it. Vote like our democracy depends on it. And while my younger self never would have accepted this, a primary vote for McGovern turned out to be a vote for Nixon. Just as a vote for Sanders now is a vote for Trump in November.

Steven Petrow is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and the author of five books on etiquette. Follow him on Twitter: @StevenPetrow; like him on Facebook at facebook.com/stevenpetrow