George McGovern

George McGovern is one of the greatest humanitarians of our time, and the world will benefit from his legacy for generations to come. He still imparts to us the power... and the courage of his convictions.
- President BILL CLINTON
in presenting McGovern with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (8/9/00)
War hero, Senator, and diplomat -- George McGovern embodies the best of national service.
- Senator BOB DOLE (11/21/02)
In his eighty-five years, George McGovern has epitomized extraordinary patriotism, courage, leadership and devotion to his country. He is a true giant in American politics and history. I am deeply proud to call him my mentor and friend.
- Senator TOM DASCHLE
George McGovern is the most decent man in the Senate... He is so highly admired by all his colleagues, not just for his ability, but because of the kind of man he is.
- Senator ROBERT KENNEDY
George McGovern is a great man. He got that way because of his character, his personality, his honesty, his desire to serve, his willingness to undertake tasks that others wouldn't, his leadership abilities, his commitment to team-work...
- STEPHEN AMBROSE, Historian
Author, The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany (An account of McGovern's war heroism)
George and Eleanor McGovern are public servants in the best sense for South Dakota and the nation. The USA and the world would have been better off if they had been elected to the White House.
- AL NEUHARTH
Founder, USA Today
Founder, The Freedom Forum
The country is fortunate to have had [this] leader of compassion, intellect and unquestioned moral values. George McGovern's courage triumphed at a time when the American conscience began to reflect on its direction...
- GERALD CASSIDY
Founder, Cassidy & Associates
Chairman & CEO, Shandwick Washington
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #10:
"BILLIONS FOR IRAQ WAR SEEN SQUEEZING FOOD AID" (3/26/08)
by Missy Ryan (Reuters)
WASHINGTON - The cost of the Iraq war is squeezing funding for U.S. global food aid programs and threatens to exacerbate hunger just as soaring prices are hitting the world's poor, former U.S. presidential contender George McGovern said on Tuesday.
McGovern, a special envoy for the U.N. food aid agency, is pressing U.S. lawmakers to guarantee funds for child nutrition programs that are part of an agriculture bill making its way through Congress.
The former Democratic senator from South Dakota said mandatory funding for the McGovern-Dole program -- which sends U.S. crops to poor schoolchildren overseas -- would sail through Congress were it not for the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into Iraq.
"If we didn't have this war going in Iraq, this thing would be a piece of cake. They could drop that much money through the cracks every lunch hour at the Pentagon," McGovern told Reuters.
With the price tag of the Iraq war, five years on, around $500 billion, economists say the conflict is compounding a national debt that already tops $9 trillion. Some see Iraq costing up to $3 trillion in the long run.
Food aid from the United States, the world's top donor, is a prominent issue as governments and aid groups strive to ensure that aid is not decimated by skyrocketing prices for grains, oilseeds and fuel.
After global food prices jumped by nearly 40 percent last year, the World Food Program has been forced to canvass donors for $500 million in last-minute donations.
CUTTING BACK ON MEALS
U.S. aid officials are in a similar quandary, bracing for cuts just as the world's poor find it more difficult to afford food, even when it is available.
Josette Sheeran, WFP's executive director, warned this week that most of the poor are now cutting back on meals.
Last year, the House of Representatives voted to make funding for the McGovern-Dole program, which has been $100 million in recent years, mandatory as part of the 2008 farm bill, the giant agriculture package that is now months behind schedule.
The House bill would ramp up funding to $140 million in fiscal 2009 and increase it to $300 million by 2012. That is just a small part of the farm bill's five-year tally of close to $290 billion.
But the Senate chose not to guarantee funding for the program, leaving it up to Congress each year to set a funding level. That situation "throws program planners and administrators into a tizzy," McGovern said.
"If we could get the Senate to accept this, and the House to stand firm ... that would be one of the most constructive single acts Congress could take," he added.
McGovern, 85, who lost the presidential race to Richard Nixon in 1972, said he is hopeful the Senate will change course when it hammers out a compromise bill with the House.
The program, also named for former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, the Republican presidential candidate in 1996, claims success in bolstering school enrollment and attendance in countries from Afghanistan to Laos.
(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Russell Blinch and Xavier Briand)
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #9:
"FREEDOM MEANS RESPONSIBILITY" (3/7/08)
by George McGovern (Op-ed, Wall Street Journal)
Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition, their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There's no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.
The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.
Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.
Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.
Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as "payday lending."
With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee -- usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.
Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn't perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who's familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.
Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #8:
"WHY I BELIEVE BUSH MUST GO" (1/6/08)
by George McGovern (Op-ed, Washington Post)
As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.
After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.
Today I have made a different choice.
Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.
But what are the facts?
Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.
From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.
In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.
All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?
How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?
It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world -- more than a billion people.
Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.
Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.
Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies -- especially the war in Iraq -- have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.
Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.
As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."
I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.
There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #7:
2007 McGOVERN CONFERENCE:
THE '72 CAMPAIGN - A LIVING LEGACY
November 6, 2007
McGovern Center for Leadership and Public Service
Dakota Wesleyan University
1201 McGovern Avenue
Mitchell, South Dakota 57301
Speakers...
DONALD T. CRITCHLOW
Professor of History, St. Louis University
Editor, Journal of Policy History
The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History
BRUCE MIROFF
Professor of Political Science, State University of New York - Albany
The Liberals' Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party
CURTIS AUSTIN
Associate Professor of History, University of Southern Mississippi
Founding Director, Center for Black Studies
Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party
JAMES ARMSTRONG
Adjunct Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Rollins College
Bishop, United Methodist Church, Dakotas Area (1968-1980)
Defining Moments and the Promises for the Future
McGOVERN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN STAFFERS & VOLUNTEERS
"What a Difference It Made in My Life"
GEORGE McGOVERN
1972 Democratic Party Nominee for President of the United States
(Past conference themes included the issues of world hunger, HIV/AIDS, leadership and public service, and the work and legacies of Eleanor and George McGovern)
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #6:
SENATE COMMITTEE DENIES MANDATORY FUNDING
FOR McGOVERN-DOLE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM
Friends of the U.N. World Food Program
On October 25, 2007 the U.S. Senate's Agriculture Committee reauthorized the McGovern-Dole Program but did not match the House Agriculture Committee’s language in making funding mandatory. Funding will go through the Senate Appropriations Committee, which means the program will be funded on a year-to-year basis, preventing us from making the necessary long-term commitments to these countries in order to build capacity toward self-sufficiency.
The next step is the debate on the Senate floor which is supposed to take place on or around November 5.
The Food Program is currently in conversations with some members of the Senate who strongly support the program, to determine an appropriate course of action, both on Capitol Hill and among advocates around the country.
Please call your two U.S. Senators via 1-866-569-FOOD to urge them to provide mandatory funding to give school lunch programs consistency.
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #5:
McGOVERN ENDORSES CLINTON
McGovern endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for president on October 7, 2007 in Iowa City.
Appearing with her before an estimated 1,800 people at the Johnson County Democratic Picnic, McGovern credited Clinton with having "a greater feel for the problems of the country. She gets stronger all the time... I think that if we can elect her president, she'll be a greater president even than her brilliant husband." McGovern's wife Eleanor, who passed away last January, reportedly also favored Clinton.
Referring to the challenges Clinton and her then-boyfriend Bill faced when they helped run his organization in Texas during his 1972 presidential campaign, McGovern joked that he should have an easier time selling her in Iowa than she did selling him in Texas. While speaking well of some of her Democratic opponents, he quipped, "We have an old rule of courtesy in the United States: Ladies first."
Clinton said that McGovern would have a place in her administration, as he did in the administrations of Bill Clinton and, briefly, George W. Bush.
The endorsement by McGovern -- who is well-regarded among liberals in Iowa and other states of the upper Midwest -- was seen as bolstering the centrist Clinton's antiwar credentials and political support among progressive Democrats who have questioned her initial stance on the invasion of Iraq. McGovern argued that there are few "mistake-free" candidates and that Clinton has moved towards what he considers a good position on the war. His endorsement could help to solidify Clinton's recent lead in Iowa polls in anticipation of that state's influential presidential caucuses next January, where progressive voters have historically had impact.
McGovern's popularity in Iowa dates back to his strong showing in its 1972 caucuses, which gave him an important early boost in his race for the Democratic presidential nomination he eventually won that year. When he made another long-shot bid for the nomination in 1984, he shocked national pundits by securing a solid finish in the caucuses, ahead of Ohio Senator John Glenn and others who were considered more serious contenders.
McGovern holds the distinction of having been supported for president in 1972 by the frontrunners of both major parties in the 2008 presidential campaign -- Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani.
For an interview with McGovern on the 2008 race and how he helped transform the Democratic nominating process, click here .
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #4:
Hear Dick Cheney "agree" with McGovern about Iraq...
This C-SPAN footage was recovered on August 11-12, 2007 and has been circulated by MoveOn.org and others. Ironically, Cheney makes some of the same observations and arguments as McGovern in opposing an invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Cheney's previous boss and McGovern's friend, President George H.W. Bush, opposed the 2003 invasion. So did Bush Sr.'s secretary of state, James Baker, and national security advisor, General Brent Scowcroft. As McGovern has said, all three had extensive knowledge and experience in foreign and military affairs but their advice was nevertheless rejected by President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and even Vice President Cheney himself -- none of whom ever served in the military.
I've often thought that if President Bush had taken a vote among...all the senior officers in the army, the navy, the air force, as to whether it would be a good idea to put the American army into Iraq that he might have gotten a different message than he got from some of his top civilian advisors. Military men sometimes have an appreciation for what the battlefield is...
- GEORGE McGOVERN
(Recipient of Distinguished Flying Cross for combat during 35 missions as B-24 Bomber Pilot)
____________________________________________________________ __
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic process.
- President DWIGHT EISENHOWER
Farewell speech to nation (1/17/61)
Now a five-star general can say that without being accused of being soft...but I suppose a liberal Democrat - which I am - is not allowed to say that.
- GEORGE McGOVERN
____________________________________________________________ __
GEORGE McGOVERN: SON OF WESLEYAN - CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
(From the George & Eleanor McGovern Center for Leadership & Public Service at Dakota Wesleyan University )
One of the most significant figures in America today, George McGovern has earned the respect of countless individuals from all political viewpoints and all walks of life.
From his days as a student at Dakota Wesleyan University throughout his long and distinguished career in public service, George McGovern has never forgotten his roots. He was born in Avon, South Dakota, on July 19, 1922, the son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister. The family moved to Mitchell, South Dakota, in 1928, and George graduated from Mitchell High School in 1940. He was an outstanding student, and his proficiency in debate won him a scholarship at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, where he enrolled in the fall of 1940. There he met fellow student Eleanor Stegeberg of Woonsocket, South Dakota. George and Eleanor were married on October 31, 1943, and their five children were all born in Mitchell.
As a college student, McGovern was twice elected class president and won the state oratorical contest with the topic "My Brother's Keeper," an avowal of his belief in one's responsibility to humankind.
World War II interrupted McGovern's education in 1943. He flew 35 combat missions as a B-24 bomber pilot in Europe, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he returned to Dakota Wesleyan University, graduating in 1946. McGovern then attended Garrett Seminary for one year before enrolling at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in American history and government.
McGovern returned to Dakota Wesleyan University in 1950 as a professor of history and political science, where he became a beloved and respected faculty member. He left the university in 1955 to reorganize and revitalize the South Dakota Democratic Party, from which his illustrious political career was launched. He was elected to Congress in 1956 and reelected in 1958. As a congressman, he was an advocate for the American farmer and represented the nation's heartland with distinction.
After McGovern lost his first bid for the U.S. Senate in 1960, President John F. Kennedy named him the first director of the Food for Peace Program and Special Assistant to the President. In this position he oversaw the donation of millions of tons of food to developing nations. McGovern was then elected to the Senate in 1962 and reelected in 1968 and 1974. As a member of the Senate committees on agriculture, nutrition, forestry and foreign relations, and the Joint Economic Committee, he led the way in expanding key nutrition programs.
In 1972, Senator McGovern was selected as the Democratic Party nominee for president, the only South Dakotan so honored by any major political party.
In 1976, President Gerald Ford named McGovern a United Nations delegate to the General Assembly, and, in 1978, President Jimmy Carter named him a United Nations delegate for the Special Session on Disarmament. After leaving the Senate in 1980, McGovern was a visiting professor at numerous institutions, including Columbia University, Northwestern University, Cornell University, American University and the University of Berlin. He served as the president of the Middle East Policy Council from 1991 to 1998, when President Clinton appointed him ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. In 2001 he was appointed the first United Nations global ambassador on hunger. In this position, McGovern continues his leadership in the battle against world hunger.
A prolific author, McGovern has lectured at more than 1,000 colleges and universities around the world. He has also received many honorary degrees and distinguished awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, which was bestowed upon him by President Bill Clinton on August 9, 2000.
A war hero, 22-year U.S. Congressman and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern will long be remembered for his courage in speaking out against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, his friendship and respect for the common man, and his work on behalf of American farmers and hungry children throughout the world.
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #3:
On July 13-14, 2007, some of us attended a "World Hunger Symposium" in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the George & Eleanor McGovern Center for Leadership & Public Service and Friends of the (U.N.) World Food Program -- along with celebrations of Senator McGovern's 85th birthday and the 35th anniversary of his nomination for President. Hundreds of former staff, volunteers, supporters and friends attended.
As the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.'s Food & Agriculture Organization, McGovern co-sponsored the George McGovern-Robert Dole Global Food for Education & Child Nutrition Act of 2001. He is currently the U.N.'s Global Ambassador on Hunger.
McGovern addressed the crowds at all three events. Other speakers included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gary Hart ('72 campaign manager), and journalists Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and David Broder. Over $100,000 was raised for the McGovern Legacy Fund, which supports the U.N.'s McGovern-Dole Food Program and Dakota Wesleyan University's McGovern Center .
(The timing of these events was also serendipitous as McGovern was already in the news that week, responding to journalists about a newly released White House tape disclosing Nixon's controversial remarks about him on election night '72!)
The birthday celebration and its speeches will be broadcast on C-SPAN(1) on August 4 at 9:40 pm EDT, and C-SPAN(2) on August 6 at 10:15 pm EDT. Videos/DVDs of the event will be available from C-SPAN at cspan.org .
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #2:
"CHENEY IS WRONG ABOUT ME, WRONG ABOUT WAR" (4/24/07)
by George McGovern (Op-Ed, Los Angeles Times)
Vice President Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed "the Windy City." Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.
Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.
He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.
In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat — a record matched by President Bush.
Cheney charged that today's Democrats don't appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.
They then foolishly sent U.S. forces into Iraq against the advice and experience of such knowledgeable men as former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of State, James A. Baker III, and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft.
Just as the Bush administration mistakenly asserted Iraq's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, it also falsely contended that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exploded the myth that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear materials from Niger, Cheney's top aide and other Bush officials leaked to the media that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent (knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is illegal).
In attacking my positions in 1972 as representative of "that old party of the early 1970s," Cheney seems oblivious to the realities of that time. Does he remember that the Democratic Party, with me in the lead, reformed the presidential nomination process to ensure that women, young people and minorities would be represented fairly? The so-called McGovern reform rules are still in effect and, indeed, have been largely copied by the Republicans.
The Democrats' 1972 platform was also in the forefront in pushing for affordable healthcare, full employment with better wages, a stronger environmental and energy effort, support for education at every level and a foreign policy with less confrontation and belligerence and more cooperation and conciliation.
Cheney also still has his eyes closed to the folly of the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 young Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese died. Vietnam was no threat to the United States.
On one point I do agree with Cheney: Today's Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good.
The war in Iraq has greatly increased the terrorist danger. There was little or no terrorism, insurgency or civil war in Iraq before Bush and Cheney took us into war there five years ago. Now Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism, a bloody insurgency against our troops and a civil war.
Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.
The Democrats are right. Let's bring our troops home from this hopeless war.
There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney's consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.
Who was the real loser of '72?
The vice president spoke with contempt of my '72 campaign, but he might do well to recall that I began that effort with these words: "I make one pledge above all others — to seek and speak the truth." We made some costly tactical errors after winning the nomination, but I never broke my pledge to speak the truth. That is why I have never felt like a loser since 1972. In contrast, Cheney and Bush have repeatedly lied to the American people.
It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.
Aside from a growing list of impeachable offenses, the vice president has demonstrated his ignorance of foreign policy by attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. Apparently he thinks it is wrong to visit important Middle East states that sometimes disagree with us. Isn't it generally agreed that Nixon's greatest achievement was talking to the Chinese Communist leaders, which opened the door to that nation? And wasn't President Reagan's greatest achievement talking with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the two men worked out an end to the Cold War? Does Cheney believe that it's better to go to war rather than talk with countries with which we have differences?
We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it's wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield — he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.
On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."
* * *
For people who have never been near a battlefield to accuse critics of being soft on national security and soft on Communism and soft on terrorism, I think is preposterous.
- GEORGE McGOVERN
(Recipient of Distinguished Flying Cross for combat during 35 missions as B-24 Bomber Pilot)
____________________________________________________________ __
McGOVERN UPDATE #1:
"STILL CAMPAIGNS FOR PEACE" (10/28/06)
by Adam Geller (AP National Writer)
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. | Back in the stacks - bracketed by shelves filled with copies of "Where The Wild Things Are" and "My Friend Rabbit" and beneath an oversized cutout of Babar, the elephant king - the elder statesman has again found an audience.
Or maybe it's the audience that has again found him.
The air outside the book emporium tonight is cut by the first October chill. Inside, George McGovern must compete with the din unleashed by a gaggle of preschoolers ignoring the grandfatherly figure for the store's wooden train set. But as customers fill the metal folding chairs set before a microphone, the man one longtime friend calls "Should've-been-President McGovern" sticks with his quietly fervent sermon, drawing knowing laughter and grim nods of approval.
And now, a generation after he was ridiculed and rejected for a similarly resolute call to abandon another unpopular war, McGovern is one unshakable stride ahead of naysayers - certain that time and a nation's reflection have proven he was right before.
"We were told that even though it had been a mistake to go to war in this little tiny jungle strip 10,000 miles away, it would be a mistake to leave," the long-ago senator and Democratic presidential nominee tells all who will listen. His voice, more professorial than pastoral, quavers slightly as he recalls the morality trap set by Vietnam. "Now I see the same thing happening in Iraq."
It is a most unlikely setting to deliver a message about the evils of war. And at 84, nearly half a lifetime after his Quixotic quest to replace Richard Nixon in the White House was buried under what one ..ary labels "the mother of all presidential landslides," McGovern might seem an unlikely man to still be delivering it.
At least that might be the conclusion of someone who doesn't know McGovern, friends and observers say. In fact, he has never been a man to slink away or to fester. It's just that, for much of the time he's been speaking his mind, not enough people have been listening, they say.
Now, as a new generation of politicians wrestle with the painful choices forced by the war in Iraq, McGovern is again interjecting his view, projecting himself as one who knows better.
But the politician who years ago railed against "old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in," is an old man himself now. And, he is arguably a left-wing relic. Does a society that uses the word "liberal" as an insult and reveres youth above all, have any place for such an elder statesman?
McGovern - who can appreciate better than most the hazards of being defined by others - isn't waiting for someone else to answer.
---
The McGovernites have come home.
Many were just kids during that 1972 campaign. But they're still here for the prairie orator, scattered through the crowd of a few thousand who have flocked to the main quad at Dakota Wesleyan University in McGovern's hometown of Mitchell, to pay tribute under an azure sky.
They include a pair of middle-aged women sporting matching "I Voted for George" T-shirts. And people like Mark Evans, long ago the chairman of Buffalo State Students for McGovern, who has flown out from upstate Avon, N.Y., to see his icon and peddle buttons touting "McGovern for President 2008."
"I just think he's been vindicated by time," says Evans, a 54-year-old retired librarian.
"We were all there and we still are," a formerly obscure Texas campaign worker, one William Jefferson Clinton, tells the crowd gathered on the newly seeded lawn bordering McGovern Avenue. "I believe no other presidential candidate ever had such an enduring impact in defeat. Senator, the fires you lit still burn."
McGovern smiles broadly, shaking every hand offered, autographing innumerable copies of his many books and posing for picture after picture. These are his people.
But they were not enough then and they are not enough now. McGovern still yearns to reach the many others - the ones who voted against him, their sons and daughters, the ones he is often blamed for driving from the Democratic Party fold. Now, though, it's a campaign of one.
The Monday morning after dedicating the library Dakota Wesleyan has built in his and wife Eleanor's name, the crowd's adoration is a memory.
McGovern pulls the door of his modest gray-brown ranch house behind him and crosses the street alone. He fishes for his office key in his suit jacket pocket and lets himself in. When the dentist's office calls to confirm an appointment, he's the one who answers. Asked to parse the past, there are no aides or handlers to deflect the question, just a thoughtful man alone with rumination.
"Don't believe McGovern or you'll lose 49 states," he says, summing up the prevailing thinking of his party for the past three decades. "The Democrats have been running away from it ever since. But even Jesus Christ had some of his disciples run away from him."
Much about the past still troubles McGovern.
Each time he walks past the polished black granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., he finds a place to weep among nearby trees, he says, in part because he failed to persuade the nation to leave the war sooner. It irritates him that he was marginalized, and still is, by those who misunderstood or mischaracterized his views.
Even now, McGovern's name is invoked - as it has been in a closely watched Senate battle in Connecticut - as a symbol of Democratic extremism.
But McGovern, admired as a gentle soul in a profession that often seems to find civility irrelevant, has never been an angry man, and he is far from bitter now.
"I've been assailed for as long as I've been in politics," he says. "But you have to find a way to steel yourself."
His solution has been to craft a different kind of political life, finding common ground with unlikely allies. In the 1980s, he met for quiet talks with Nixon, attended his funeral. He tours college campuses with former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, who led the Republican National Committee during the 1972 campaign, and counts him as one of his closest friends. Recently, he invited a one-time foe, Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, to join a council of elders he is forming.
"I just don't want to see these older heads consigned to the scrap heap," he says. Not least, his own.
He is on the road a few days every week, delivering talks. Just finished with one book - he plans to learn how to use a computer soon, but for now does all his writing on a yellow legal pad - he has already signed up to write another.
"Now I don't have to worry about pacing myself," he says. He straightens his body from the sofa it has been draped across, undoing the top button of his shirt and pulling back the collar to display the bulge of a pacemaker implanted in his chest. "Because that does it for me."
As he takes on the war in Iraq, he is certain plenty of others agree with him - even if they don't acknowledge it. For McGovern, used to being considered on the fringe, the notion that those who agree with him might not want to do so openly, is hardly troubling. What bothers him, he says, is that they seem reluctant to speak for themselves.
"For people who have never been near a battlefield ... to accuse critics of being soft on national security and soft on Communism and soft on terrorism, I think is preposterous," he says, recalling a favorite speech by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warning the nation of letting militarism go unchecked.
"Now a five-star general can say that without being accused of being soft...but I suppose a liberal Democrat - which I am - is not allowed to say that."
It's clear that McGovern didn't believe that 34 years ago, clearer still he can't abide it now.
---
Joe and Frances McGovern taught their children many things. But politics was never one of them.
Their son, George, was born in tiny Avon, S.D., population 600, in a home defined by prayer. Joe was a Methodist minister who built the churches where he preached. He and his much younger wife, stern, thrifty and conservative folk, raised their children to follow suit. It wasn't until George was 12 or 13 that he learned his father had once played baseball for a St. Louis Cardinals farm team - an experience recounted as a parable for vices and temptations to be avoided.
The McGoverns moved to Mitchell when he was 5 and he later attended Dakota Wesleyan, the Methodist school not far from home. He met and married Eleanor - they are still together 63 years later, but he despairs that she is ailing - shortly before shipping off to Italy as the pilot of a B-24 bomber in the final year of World War II. McGovern guided the Dakota Queen through 35 combat missions over Europe, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He returned home, briefly trying seminary school and life as a minister before becoming a history professor at his alma mater. He ran for Congress in 1956 and won, climbing to the Senate six years later.
McGovern's early politics were mostly about supporting farmers, and his grass roots style was well-suited to a state where voters still expect to look each of their would-be representatives in the eye.
"If he saw you once and saw you three weeks later, he'd remember you," says David Kranz, longtime political columnist for Sioux Falls' Argus-Leader. "That's magic for a politician."
McGovern saw his popular support at home plummet when he became an early opponent of the war in Vietnam, and he was passed over for his party's presidential nomination in 1968. But he surprised most observers by claiming the nomination in 1972, pledging to pull the U.S. out of a war in which it had lost its moral compass.
His campaign, though, quickly lost its way. And in November, McGovern won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, a 520-to-17 electoral vote thrashing that prompted many in his own party to reject him.
McGovern became "a symbol of a kind of Democratic failure ... crystallizing the Democratic Party's alliance with, or tolerance of, a leftism that most Americans couldn't abide," says David Greenberg, a professor at Rutgers University who has written about the Nixon presidency.
McGovern embraces the reality but disdains the description.
"How the hell do you get elected in South Dakota for 20 years if you're a wild-eyed radical?" he asks.
After losing to Nixon, McGovern returned to the Senate and ran again for president in 1984, falling in the early primaries.
In the years afterward, he stepped away from politics to teach, try running an inn in Connecticut and a bookstore in Montana. The loss of daughter Terry - an alcoholic who froze to death on a Wisconsin street after a night of drinking - haunted McGovern, who found release by writing about her battle with addiction.
He returned to public life in 1998 when Clinton named him ambassador on hunger.
And McGovern has continued writing. The Bush administration's conduct in Iraq unleashes a frustration in McGovern - outlined in articles and a new book co-authored with Middle East expert William R. Polk calling for the U.S. to begin withdrawing troops by the end of this year - that is bound to draw detractors. They'll say McGovern wants to cut and run again, he acknowledges.
He's probably right. But what critics may miss is that, rather than being stuck in a time warp, McGovern's observations are crisp with vitality, built on an urgency that needs an outlet.
Hanging on the wall just outside his office in the new library is a carefully framed and beautifully scripted copy of a familiar prayer. As he enters, he pauses to extol the artwork, then rejects the sentiment.
"God," the prayer begins, "grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..."
"No," says McGovern, when asked if the prayer represents a personal credo. "I keep trying to change them."
--
He is a man at peace, McGovern says. But that does not mean he has to make peace with all he sees around him.
Conversation with McGovern is served in measured portions, gravelly reflections rather than barbed soundbites. But there are moments when he bristles, nearly always at politics in the present tense: That the Bush administration conspired to hide the truth from Americans in its determination to invade Iraq, that demagogues have been allowed to depict God as a neoconservative ideologue...
"What I resent, you know, is that the Bible warns us against false prophets," he says, "I don't believe in the manipulation of religious faith for these narrow, extremist, partisan positions."
The difference, according to this man who says he tries, with mixed results, to live up to the words of the Sermon on the Mount, is that he does not pretend to be speaking for anyone but McGovern. But there are those who see it differently.
Inside the bookstore, they line up in front of the wooden table where McGovern is seated, bringing him copies of books to sign, to seek hugs and handshakes, to tell him how their stories have intertwined with his own.
"You're the first person I ever voted for," Victoria Watson of Sioux Falls confides. "My son is in Iraq now. Thank you for continuing to speak out."
McGovern smiles gently and takes Watson's hand, an offer of comfort and of thanks.
The elder statesman is glad to be of service.
___________________________________________________