Jay Rockefeller: “a long time ago, I was a Republican, and I was brought up in a Republican family. It was not the kind of Republican…”

“a long time ago, I was a Republican, and I was brought up in a Republican family. It was not the kind of Republican family which is very much respected these days because it was referred to as ``Rockefeller Republicanism,'' and that is about the worst thing you can say about a Republican because this primarily came from my Uncle Nelson, who liked to get things done for the people of New York State and also for the country. He was also Vice President. He was very active. He was constantly worried about housing, and he wanted to get things done. I grew up, and I was not very political, was not very interested in politics. I was interested mostly in Japanese language and Chinese history and all kinds of things which were not very germane to politics. But I got into politics the way people really should get into politics, and that is because they started a program. I remember President Eisenhower used to call it ``the Kiddy Corps,'' and I was still in Japan at the time. It was actually the Peace Corps they were talking about starting, and I was in Japan when President Kennedy was elected. He was my first vote. I came back in time to vote for him and not for Nixon, but that did not make me a Democrat. It was just that Kennedy was obviously going to be a better President than Nixon. I did not care that much about politics. Then I got into the Peace Corps, and I saw what was going on in the rest of the world.…”