On Election Day in 1960, Thomas Mallon, who had just turned 9, proudly wore a Nixon/Lodge button — “Experience Counts!” — and was devastated when the presidency went to John F. Kennedy. During Richard Nixon’s re-bid for the White House in 1968, the 16-year-old Mallon experienced one of the greatest thrills of his life when he shook hands with the future president and first lady as they sat in an open car while campaigning on Long Island. Two years after that, as a freshman at Brown University, Mallon was still a Nixon man, voting against a student strike in response to the administration’s bombing of Cambodia and the Kent State shootings.
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