We took a poll of the department on McGovern versus Nixon [in 1972] as to who was going to win and he was just, along with everyone else, just a big McGovern fan. To me they were all off their rocker. And one of the people in the department who was not a regular political scientist, an environmentalist, got a hold of me and he began to say, “What’s wrong with all these people? Don’t they realize what’s going on in the world?” And I said, “No they don’t.” So Bob was just like the rest of them in that regard. Well they were sort of hoping. They may have thought McGovern would win. I don’t want to push this on everybody. They were all for McGovern over Muskie [in the Democratic primaries] and they were all for McGovern over Nixon and they were pretty sure this would work out.

Fred Greene,
Former Political Science Department Chairman