Since there is a presidential election coming up, I thought a tale of Blacker Hovse presidential politics from the early '70s might be of interest.

Up until my junior year, the election for president had been pretty quiet. People were elected with token opposition, or none at all. That was certainly true of Jim Bonomo before me, and I think it was true for Gary Spivak before him.

In late 1973, the house was divided into factions. Very roughly speaking, you had the Conservatives and the Liberals, although what it really boiled down to was the Jeff Harrow people and the anti-Jeff Harrow people. Now Jeff was probably the most intelligent Mole in my class ('74). Simply brilliant. He was also the biggest slob in the house. This both in terms of the entropy of his room and personal hygiene habits. In fact, I believe he cultivated this image. Just for fun. To gross people out. It was pretty effective.

Well, it was known that Jeff was going to run for president. He was very popular in his faction, but also very disliked. Some felt he lacked sensitivity, a charge he happily agreed to. His slobbish nature (or act) offended some. He had been Pope for two terms, I think. He had carried out the office with great gusto, again offending some. So many were apprehensive about him becoming president.

I sort of fit in with both factions. I had friends in both, and was a card-carrying member of neither. Since I had this cross-cultural appeal (or wishy-washiness, take your pick), I was persuaded to run for president against Jeff as kind of a compromise candidate.

Unfortunately, later on, a card-carrying member of the anti-Jeff side, Ellen Garber, decided to run. (She was, by the way, the first woman nominee for house president.) Uh, gee, this left me with NO supporters at all. I may have been many people's second choice, but nobody's first. I almost dropped out, but decided to see it through and go down to defeat stoically. It also looked as if the Jeff faction was large enough to carry the election anyway, even if Ellen and I didn't divide the anti-Jeff vote.

Then the miracle occurred.

At the pre-election dinner we candidates were supposed to speak. Jeff went first. I don't know if he was nervous that night, or what. I've often speculated that he had fortified himself with a bit of Scotch courage beforehand, but I've never asked him. At any rate, for whatever reason, his speech was a debacle. He began accusing both Ellen and me of very questionable acts, especially in terms of getting certain frosh into Blacker. The house members were aghast. Personal character assassination was not proper in these kinds of speeches. Especially when you are wrong. During the course of his speech, people got up a number of times to say things like "No, Jeff, Doug wasn't even at that meeting" or "No, Jeff, Ellen didn't want her in the house; I did." Sensing the house members were stunned, and that he had been shown wrong in all of his accusations, he mumbled a conclusion, and sat down to silence. Ellen and I then spoke. I don't remember what either of us said. We were both in shock to see Jeff self-destruct like that. Dinner was very subdued after that.

Despite the speech, Jeff had his die-hard adherents. Or one might say his anti-Ellen core group. And in the first round of voting, Ellen had a plurality, then me, then Jeff in a fairly distant third. Since Ellen didn't have a majority, we needed a runoff. To win, I had to pick up all of Jeff's votes. Well, as I said, it was really an anti-Ellen core group, and I did pick up all of those votes. I won by some kind of huge margin, like 32 to 28.

My presidential term was about as successful as Grant's or Harding's. Although I think I picked some pretty good frosh into the house, later on it was rocked by scandal, cronyism, and Scurves throwing dope on our barbecue. Fortunately, the house by-laws did not include an impeachment mechanism, so I served out my term. But that's another story.

- Doug McElroy / dmcelroy@dcs04.jpl.nasa.gov