One of the good guys has died. RIP George, tell Hunter I said hello.
First vote I ever cast, and the one I’m proudest of to this day.
That’s pretty cool. I don’t get why he is still perceived by some as the poster boy for what a failed election campaign is supposed to look like, especially in the hindsight of history that Nixon was a criminal.
McGovern always struck me as a very principled man, which in the current US political climate is dangerously absent.
“We kicked your ass, boy, upside and sideways and ever which way, and we broke EVERY law on the books to do it, which what yuh gotta do if you’re going to play with the big kids, plain and simple. We reached inside your face mask to stick our fingers in your eyes, and we kneed yuh in the groin when the ref wasn’t lookin’ and goddamn we are PROUD that we served time when we got busted. Haw, haw, haw” is why.
he did seem courageous and principled.
criminals and liars can put up a good and forceful front and seem more believable than the more honest guy, it happens often in politics.
You’re a couple years older than me, then. I remember following the race and being shocked/dumbfounded when I watched the returns.
We are unlikely to see someone as decent and principled in politics any time soon. I always found him able to articulate what being a liberal means better than just about anyone else.
-George McGovern, October 11, 1972, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois
RIP.
McGovern was my first vote for President as well.
It wasn’t so much the fact that Nixon won, but that he won by a landslide even though it was already apparent that he was a lying, vicious scumbag that inspired my enduring cynicism about US elections.
The term didn’t exist then, of course, but McGovern got swiftboated bigtime. This man was a war hero (he flew bomber missions over Europe during WWII, as I remember) yet had to listen to his courage and his principles derided by supporters of Nixon, whose biggest accomplishment during the war was, I believe, winning money in poker games is some supply-depots safely behind the lines.
Nixon may have been a scumbag as a politician but this isn’t really a fair depiction of his military record. He was working in a government job in 1942 and was 29 years old - he probably could have avoided military service. But he volunteered to join the Navy. He was assigned to a stateside post but requested reassignment to sea duty. He wasn’t assigned to a ship but he was reassigned to a transport unit in the South Pacific (and he was later reassigned back to stateside duties).
Nixon was a lawyer with no pre-war military experience and was ten years older than most people joining the navy. The reality was there was no reason to assign him to a combat unit.
Correct–as I said, he didn’t serve in combat, yet his campaign constantly harped on the unpatriotic, timid, weak foriegn policies advocated by McGovern, who did serve in combat during the war. I would have had some respect for Republicans at that time, if they’d at least acknowledged McGovern’s service during WWII.
I liked Muskie better than McGovern in the primaries, and, IIRC, so did the party. But the party was still torn to shreds from Vietnam & Civil Rights, and anyway it was long past due to be reformed from the old Machine-era thing it had been for so long. All in all, I don’t think it was an organization capable of getting any candidate elected in 1972.
As for McGovern, I do think Eagleton should have informed him of his psych therapy from the beginning. But that didn’t excuse him being thrown under the bus, and it only hurt McGovern worse.
Yes, I remember McGovern being portrayed as lacking in courage and weak on foreign policy. :mad:
On the other hand, Nixon and Agnew were thought of as great American “heroes”. :mad:
RIP George
I recently read Nixonland, after seeing it mentioned here as well as other places for ages. It pretty much makes me want to reach into the pages and grab the Democrats and talk some goddam sense into them. Make them appreciate all that they stood to lose by not actually trying to win in 1972. Really, George Meaney? Has anyone nominated by either party since then been as strong for labor as McGovern was? You threw that chance away in favor of Nixon and a forty year steady decline of union power over Vietnam. Great work.
The election was a good while before I was born, but I’ve always been proud to be from the one state that got it right. It’s a shame we don’t have politicians like that anymore.
You all might want to read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trial 72. Thompson covered a lot of the 72 Dem campaign. There were a lot more problems with Eagleton than psych therapy. Great read, but remember, unreliable narrator.
McGovern was my second vote for president. My first was for Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
I worked the phones for both, knocked on doors, handed out flyers. You had a sense that you could make a difference then.
Hard to keep the passion going as you get older. Of course, I still vote lefty, but I can’t get inspired to do the grunt work.
For a tribute, it might be nice if some TV station ran the All in the Family episodes featuring Mike supporting McGovern over Archie’s loud protests.
Just a thought.
I hope McGovern voted early.
And often. 
Rest In Peace. Bob Dole wrote a very nice tribute to George McGovern, about the electoral losses they shared, and about the cause of taking on hunger that they also shared.
McGovern is an example of my thoery that combat veterans do not generally make the most successful candidates, because in their minds they do not have to prove anything else.