I ran for president once.

I ran for president once. Now I can’t make it past airport security. [OpinionJournal]

bq. When I go to an airport these days I don’t worry about a terrorist bomb. I’ve been flying steadily and unsteadily for 60 years, beginning with my days as a bomber pilot in World War II. I’ve always known that a bomb in somebody’s suitcase could blow up the plane I was on, just as I knew every day in 1943-45 could be my last. No one can ever take all the risk out of flying. On the wrong day you can even be hit by a drunken driver going to or from the airport.

But what terrifies me at the airports now is not the terrorists or drunks. It is the fear that I won’t be able to get through all the checkpoints, or that my car will be seized for parking within a mile of the airport, or that I will have forgotten my identity card, or that I’ll forget one of my shoes while my toes are being examined for explosives, or that my foot odor will offend some examiner and get me arrested as a public nuisance.

I worry that the little nail-clippers in my toilet article bag will be detected by the X-ray machine and get me arrested as a threat to the pilot and flight crew. But most of all I worry about missing the deadline for being checked in, rechecked and checked again before finally reaching my assigned seat flustered, humiliated and exhausted.

The author, George McGovern, was the Democratic candidate for President in 1972. It’s interesting to note that he sounds like a modern Republican.