Fifty years ago........................

Margaret Chase Smith, the Republican Senator from Maine, became, on January 27, 1964, a candidate for the President of the United States.  The full text of her speech before the National Women's Press Club in which she announces her very interesting and different candidacy can be found here.

After months of denying rumors that she would seek the top of the Republican ticket or the vice presidential nomination, Senator Margaret Chase Smith announced her run for President in January 1964. "I have few illusions and no money, but I'm staying for the finish," she noted, "When people keep telling you, you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try."²⁴ Smith embarked on her typical grass–roots campaign—losing every primary but picking up a surprising high of 25 percent of the vote in Illinois.²⁵ At the 1964 Republican Convention, she became the first woman to have her name put in for nomination for the presidency by a major political party. Receiving the support of just 27 delegates and losing the nomination to Senate colleague Barry Goldwater, it was a symbolic achievement.
-as excerpted from here

“The argument contends that I would be pioneering the way for woman in the future - to make her more acceptable - to make the way easier - for her to be elected President of the United States.  Perhaps the point that has impressed me the most on this argument is that women before me pioneered and smoothed the way for me to be the first woman to be elected to both the House and the Senate - and that I should give back in the return that which had been given to me.” 
-Margaret Chase Smith, in her speech announcing her candidacy for the U.S. Presidency, 1964

"There is nothing more effective than a handshake and a little conversation."