I was born in 1986; I remember being four or so, at some old relative’s house, and someone telling me the President was named George Bush.
I didn’t give a whit about politics until Clinton was up for reelection; my entire fifth grade class was campaigning for him (I went to a very liberal private school), and I couldn’t tell you what Republicans stood for, but I knew they were icky. 
I vaguely remember seeing the candidates’ pictures in the paper in 1980. I was 5, and think I was pro Reagan, but I don’t know why.
Well this happened pretty late in my life. Before that, I was only vaguely aware that politics existed at all. I remember Regan constantly interupting my TV shows and Perot too, but only really vaguely. I remember the following much more clearly.
One day, I stayed home from school because I was sick and I ended up watching The Today Show. They said that First Lady Hillary Clinton would be on discussing the allegations agaisnt her husband. I had no idea what these allegations were, but I sensed that something Very Important was about to happen. She talked about Monica Lewinsky and the vast right-wing conspiracy and denied that anything had happened.
Good enough for me.
I don’t know which of these was the earliest, but the three oldest political memories for me are:
The Oil Embargo and the gas shortages.
Various airline hijackings and kidnappings.
People climbing into helicopters from rooftops in Saigon. And helicopters being dumped overboard from ships.
Nov 22, 1963. Standing in the house my father built, watching my mother cry.
1975- Watching helo’s evacuate the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam.
I see it was a powerful image for some others in this thread…
Sometimes I still dream of that image.
menu on the left has links to photos.
OUT
In 1984, listening to my mother cry in the kitchen because Reagan had been re-elected.
/liberal since conception
Kindergarten, 1956. Straw poll. Eisenhower won.
Damn! I’m old.
Nixon announced he would leave the Presidency. I listened to his speech in the car, on the radio (I was 10 at the time) because we didn’t have a TV in our house due to religious beliefs. I remember it vividly because my mother made a big deal of wanting to listen to it…I now understand that she didn’t have any other media to watch, and had specifically planned to turn the car radio on.
What malden said (same age, too. Cool!)
I don’t remember anything for the bicentennial, but I remember noticing that everything had “Spirit of '76” written on it, and wondering why new things didn’t have “Spirit of '77” written on them as well.
My parents always had the TV news on during dinner, so it didn’t take long for me to start noticing the constant “DAY 178”, “DAY 179”, etc. of the Iran hostage crisis, along with news about the Shah. In first grade, I sang the Oscar Meyer/Jimmy Carter song with my friends.
In third grade, the Weekly Reader magazine they gave us in school had a presidential ballot on it. I remember I marked “other” and wrote in “Kenedy” (I learned later how to spell it correctly). Mom said she couldn’t stand any of the candidates and voted for Anderson simply because he had no chance of winning.
Not many Brits pitching in, so:
Like qts, I think I can remember the disruptions under Heath. Except in my case, the memories are so vague that I’m really not sure. I think I can remember a power cut and I’ve also got a very distinct image of a deserted street from a TV news report that I associate with this period. But, to be honest, I’m rather uncertain.
The first definitely datable political memory is seeing a newspaper in 1976 when Callaghan took over from Wilson.
Otherwise, it’s lots of events from roughly 1979, no doubt because that’s because when the family got a TV. The Scottish devolution debate, the Thorpe trial (which I understood nothing about) and Thatcher’s election. After that, the narrative in my head becomes pretty continuous.
Iran-Contra. I think I was seven or eight at the time. At one point, I made some joke about Reaganomics, which got a chuckle from the older members of my family, so I kept repeating it for the next month or so. That was how I learned that jokes get a little less funny each time you tell them.
I remember seeing one of Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign commercials on TV. It was basically an exterior dusk/evening shot of the White House, with most of its interior lights out - except for the Oval Office. As the shot pulled away, the voiceover announced, “Jimmy Carter - Still working hard for you.” I didn’t know a thing about politics then (and still hold true to that course now), but I remember being put off by the commercial’s desperate / manipulative atmosphere. (Nice to know that other things, too, have held true to their courses.)
(sorry, Aussie in-joke)
My dad was working in Melbourne when Kennedy was shot. The headlines of “KENNEDY ASSASSINATED” absolutely stunned the city until people realised it was only the US President and not cheesy Aussie TV host Graham Kennedy.
Second grade, inauguration of Bush the first. My class went across the hall and watched it with the other second grade class.
I don’t know why I don’t remember the fall of The Soviet Union… Seemed like something I would’ve taken note of.
He got 1,186,968 votes to Carter’s 1,014,714. Indiana (my adopted state of residence) has voted Republican in every election since 1952, with the exception of 1864 (Lyndon Johnson’s landslide over Barry Goldwater).
I lived most of my life in the Cleveland (Ohio) metropolitan area. My first political memory is of the 1967 Cleveland mayoral election. The afternoon newspaper, the Cleveland Press, featured profiles of the candidates on facing pages. On the left (appropriately enough) was Carl Stokes, the Democratic candidate and eventual winner. The headline over his article was Great-Grandson of Slave. Meanwhile, Republican Seth Taft was Grandson of a President (William Howard Taft, who served from 1909-13). My grandmother (whose house I was staying at when I saw that newspaper) was a Democrat, but also not the most racially liberal person ever to walk the face of Earth, so she favored Taft because she feared Stokes would “let the coloreds run everything”. :rolleyes:
Of course, that should be 1964. I wasn’t planning to “pay to post”, but my resistance is wavering, and will almost certainly be broken if I’m granted the ability to edit my posts to correct such embarrassing typos…
JFK’s Assassination
My first political memory was my second memory, period (the first was seeing my newborn brother for the first time a year and a half earlier).
I was four years old. My loud, opinionated parents were strangely quiet – I knew something was up. I was sitting between mom and dad on the couch, looking out the living room window, watching the TV across the room (mom knew that ‘radiation’ would ruin your eyesight if you watched TV up close).
I remember the flag-draped coffin coming off the airplane. At some point I asked mom what was going on. She replied “President Kennedy is dead. We have a new president, President Johnson.” I didn’t know what this meant, but I knew damn well it was something I should care about.
My parents were straight-ticket Republicans, who had both voted Nixon-Lodge three years earlier (and for Goldwater-Miller the following year). Make what you will of the fact that years later, one of my few ironclad political convictions is that whoever the eff you voted for, you don’t wish for his fall – he’s our president, dammit).
Apologies for the hijack – this is an unexpectedly emotional thread for me.
I grew up in China, so I’d say the first political exposure I’ve had was learning to sing the “Communism’s Great” song in kindergarten. I still tell my friends I was brainwashed by the Communists. 
My first memory of US-related politics was seeing news about the Gulf War on TV, which would have to be when I was 6. My mom showed me the countries involved on a map and I decided that Iraq was a big bully for attacking Kuwait because it was so much larger (area-wise). But then Mom told me that America was going to help Kuwait, and I was like “Cool, America is HUGE! It’ll kick Iraq’s butt with no sweat!”
Nowadays I see it’s not quite that easy… 
My earliest memory was when I was in elementary school and right in the middle of the day, the teachers told us we’ll be returning home. They said our parents would be coming anytime to pick us up… I was very happy but confused.
I later learned that Indira Gandhi was assassinated that day.