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know what happened with Watergate?”
    I shook my head. I sort of knew, but not exactly.
    “Watergate,” said Pop, “was the reason President Nixon had to resign. You see, the Nixon White House wasn’t very honest from the beginning. First, the vice president had to quit because he did something sneaky with his taxes. Then President Nixon had to resign because he was caught orderingpeople to spy on the Democratic Party at the Watergate Hotel.”
    “Wow,” I said. I thought spying was pretty cool, but Pop shook his head.
    “Spying is never a good thing,” he said, “but it’s especially bad when the president does it. He was going to use that information to hurt the Democratic campaign, and if he did that, how would people make good decisions about voting? Elections are supposed to be fair, and if they’re not, then we’re no different from any other country. The president is supposed to understand that.”
    Pop paused. “You know what’s worse?” he asked. “After everyone found out what he’d done, President Nixon still lied about the whole thing, only they caught him on tape.”
    “Really?” I asked. “Did he get in trouble?”
    I figured he went to jail, but Pop shook his head. “No,” he said.
    “What happened to him?”
    “Well, the guy who took over as president—he promised everyone he wasn’t going to do
anything
sneaky, only right away he let Mr. Nixon off the hook for everything. That’s called a pardon.” Pop leaned in. “You know who that man was?”
    “Nope.”
    “That man was Gerald Ford.”
    My eyes about bugged out of my head. “The same Gerald Ford who’s running against Jimmy Carter?”
    “Yup,” said Pop. He raised one eyebrow. “Still think things should stay the same?”
    Sure was a lot more complicated than I’d thought.
    “Besides,” Pop told me, settling back on the couch, “even if Watergate hadn’t happened, I’d still be voting for Carter. He’s one of us. Used to be a peanut farmer. Did you know that?”
    I sure didn’t. “You mean a peanut farmer can run for president?”
    Pop nodded, then he looked at me real steady. “You want to hear a story about Jimmy Carter?” he asked. I always wanted to hear a story when Pop was telling it, so I leaned in close and breathed in the smell of peanuts.
    “Well,” said Pop, “when Jimmy Carter was living in Plains, which is a town just about like Hollowell, he ran a peanut warehouse. This was before you were born and lots of stuff was changing between black folks and white folks. Some people weren’t too happy about that. They wanted everything to stay the same.”
    Pop poked me in the stomach. “Some of the men in the South started a group called a White Citizens Council. The whole purpose of that group was to keep up the laws that kept black and white people separate.”
    “Segregation?” I asked. That was a word I’d heard Frita use plenty of times.
    “That’s right,” said Pop. “They wanted to keep up segregation. So you know what they did? They tried to get everywhite man in Plains to join that council. They were bullies—like that kid at school…”
    “Like Duke?” I said, sitting up.
    “That’s right,” said Pop. “They wanted to bully Jimmy Carter into signing up for their group. They said if he didn’t, they wouldn’t buy from his warehouse anymore and his store would go out of business.”
    “What’d he do?” I asked, leaning forward. “Did he have to join up? Did he move to another state?”
    Pop shook his head.
    “No sir,” he said. “He was the only white man in Plains not to join.”
    I sat back against the couch.
Huh.
I bet that took some courage.
    “You know why he stood his ground?” Pop asked.
    I shook my head.
    “Because he had something he didn’t want them to take from him. Integrity.” Pop stood up and ruffled my hair. “Maybe you’ll run for president someday,” he said with a wink. “If you make it through the fifth grade.”
    Pop went into the kitchen