I voted for Mr. Anderson that year -- it was my first-ever vote for president -- and, looking back on it, don't regret it. From his New York Times obit (my emphasis):
Mr. Anderson refused to pander, telling voters in Iowa that he favored President Jimmy Carter’s embargo on grain sales to the Soviet Union after it had invaded Afghanistan. He called for a gasoline tax of 50 cents per gallon — when a gallon cost $1.15 — to save energy.
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Early on, when all six of his rivals for the Republican nomination assured the Gun Owners of New Hampshire that they firmly opposed gun control legislation, Mr. Anderson said, “I don’t understand why.”
“When in this country we license people to drive automobiles,” he added, “what is so wrong about proposing that we license guns to make sure that felons and mental incompetents don’t get ahold of them?”
He was roundly booed.
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...he had harshly criticized President Richard M. Nixon, a fellow Republican, over his handling of the Watergate scandal.
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He was a leader in the passage of open housing legislation in 1968 and in setting campaign contribution limits in 1974, and he worked with his Democratic friend, Morris K. Udall of Arizona, to create 10 national parks in Alaska, protecting 100 million acres.
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But he grew increasingly impatient not only with the House but also with the growing strength of the right wing of his own party.
“Extremist fringe elements,” he complained in 1977, “seek to expel the rest of us from the G.O.P.” He warned, “If the purists stage their ideological coup d’état, our party will be consigned to the historical junk heap.”
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He left Congress so he could seek the presidency in 1980, then considered another presidential run in 1984 but ended up supporting Mr. Reagan’s Democratic challenger, Walter F. Mondale, the former vice president. He backed Ralph Nader’s third-party run in 2000 and disapproved of the Tea Party movement, telling The New Yorker in 2010, “I break out in a cold sweat at the thought that any of those people might prevail.”
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Though Mr. Anderson’s candidacy had little impact on the outcome of the 1980 election, his campaign was memorable for its candor. Appearing in Des Moines with six rivals for the Republican nomination, Mr. Anderson was alone among them in saying something specific when asked if there was anything in his career he would take back if he could.
“It would have been the vote that I cast in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution,” he said, referring to the 1964 congressional measure that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson license to widen the war against North Vietnam.
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He was equally forthright in defending his call for an emergency excise tax on gasoline, unpopular though it might have been.
“I did it as a security measure, to be sure,” he told the September 1980 debate audience, “because I would rather see us reduce the consumption of imported oil than have to send American boys to fight in the Persian Gulf.”
Even though Jimmy Carter is probably the best former president of the United States, he really was a uniquely ineffectual chief executive. (A cautionary tale for true outsiders.) I guess I could have voted for Carter anyway, but it didn't really make a difference -- I lived in Minnesota at the time and the state went solidly for the incumbent. And after reading some of those excerpts from Mr. Anderson's obituary, I don't feel so bad about supporting his quixotic candidacy back then. If anything, maybe it foreshadowed my own -- gradual -- conversion to progressive causes.
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