TIME John Glenn: A Hero's Life by The Editors of TIME

Author:The Editors of TIME
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781683300595
Publisher: Time
Published: 2017-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

Sen. Joe Biden conferred with Glenn at a hearing on Capitol Hill in 1979. At far left, Sen. George McGovern

PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRATIONS

In 1982, in the early stages of Glenn’s campaign for higher office, People magazine took the measure of a promising candidate

By Michael Ryan

On the campaign plane

John Glenn is at the controls of a Rockwell International Corporation shuttle flight simulator in Downey, Calif. In this imaginary landing, the shuttle is 15 miles up, an engineless dead weight hurtling at 5,000 mph toward a tiny ribbon of Earth at Cape Canaveral. Glenn nurses the craft along as dials spin, needles quiver, and computerized video screens flash and blip. But at 2,000 feet and falling, something is clearly wrong: the blips are misaligned, the dials are off, and the simulated “Earth” is rushing up at an obviously eccentric angle. The Rockwell Corporation employee serving as “co-pilot” takes over from the former astronaut. “All right,” he barks into a microphone. “Let’s put this one on hold and try again.”

A score of photographers, Rockwell officials and local politicos are watching the Democratic senator from Ohio—and hovering close by are some of his nervous political aides. “I was afraid he was going to crash the space shuttle,” jokes Glenn’s campaign consultant Gary Caruso. But the 61-year-old senator, who in 1962 became the first American to orbit Earth, is not thinking of politics. He is back at 40,000 feet, bringing the big bird in again. Halfway down, the system that flashes an image of Earth in the window screen fails. Glenn, however, keeps bringing the shuttle in on instruments for a perfect landing. The politicians and the Rockwell people break into applause, and Glenn’s staff appears relieved. “We’re due at the Los Angeles Times in 15 minutes, senator,” a public relations man whispers. But California’s most powerful newspaper, a 35-minute drive away, will have to wait. Flashing his world-renowned grin at the simulator crew, Glenn says, “Let’s try that again.”

John Glenn has come a long way since Project Mercury. The former Marine Corps ace has now set his sights on the highest office in the land. Two fundraising and organizing committees have garnered $60,000, and Glenn has spent much of this year pressing flesh and testing the prospects of a presidential candidacy. On the stump for some 70 Democratic candidates in the midterm elections, 80% of whom won, he has visited 36 of the 50 states. Says Glenn, who has two months to go before a self-imposed deadline for deciding, “I’m leaning toward running.”

Glenn’s appeal seems to be bipartisan. Crowds greet him at each appearance, eager just to look at him; for all their accomplishments, neither Ted Kennedy nor Fritz Mondale, the other Democratic hopefuls for president, can boast that a likeness of himself in a space capsule hangs in the Smithsonian. When Glenn enters a room, nostalgia follows. Onlookers remember him as the symbol of a somehow happier time.

In the stuccoed courtyard of the Mission Inn in Riverside, Calif., last month, the Republican mayor and city

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