From Nadine Cohodas’s interview on Booknotes:

“… by that time the senator was nearly 68 years old and Nancy Moore was about 22 and a half, a 44-year age difference. We may have come a long way but, you know, for a politician who was hoping to survive, there was good reason to believe you might alienate a lot of people and just look kind of odd doing this. Do I dare say wacky? And that it just was not a very smart political thing to do.

But, as history has shown, it has not turned out to be that at all, and, indeed, in 1978 having a young, attractive wife and four very cute children who ran around or drove around the state in the Strom truck with t-shirts that said ‘Vote for my daddy’ was a wonderful thing to blunt Pug Ravenel's appeal -- young, handsome, 40 years old. And there was another picture in there during that campaign of Senator Thurmond sliding down a fire station pole at his son Strom Jr.'s sixth birthday, again to show he was plenty vigorous and could, if you will, keep up with the times.”