Steven P. BarrettGEORGE McGOVERN, A LOOK BACK ON A MUCH MALIGNED AND MISUNDERSTOOD MAN (LINK)
August 17th 2008 23:40
By Steven Barrett
While trying to nurse a cold and kill some boredom, I came across an interesting discussion on CSPAN the other day. It was headed up by Washington Post columnist David Broder, and included Haynes Johnson and former Democratic nominee Senator George S.McGovern, (D-SD).
Having met McGovern several times before,* I was still amazed at how well he looked and sounded after so many years in public service, beginning with his service as a then 22 year-old 35-successfully completed mission B-24 pilot to his forced retirement as a result of the 1980 election sweep of the Democrats by the GOP.
Many people might think his lowest points occured during his loss to Richard Nixon in 1972 and losing his Senate seat in 1980. Not so. First, there was the loss of one of his daughters, Terry, 45, to alcohol poisoning in Madison, WI, just two weeks before Christmas, 1994. I remember reading that book and later being able to get him to come to Mount Holyoke College for a book signing and reception in the library I was working for at the time. I told him what hit me as a fellow father of daughters was the eery similarity between Terry's childhood photo he used for the dust jacket and my oldest. Secondly, the loss of his wife Eleanor, to whom he was married since 1942. Lest anyone have any misconceptions, it's far tougher for a man to lose his wife, especially if they've been married for many decades. I saw what my mother's far too early departure from cancer did to my dad. Thankfully for Sen. McGovern, he'll have plenty of speaking engagements and political get togethers to help him. Longtime memories will always be inescapable, but so will the company and that's the key.
Unfortunately I was unable to talk longer with the Senator, but I'll never forget what a classy, and gracious man he was -- and remains.
My daughters, however, weren't even teenagers, but when you have a history of aloholism, you're always on edge for your children's well-being. Thankfully we never got "that call" every parent dreads late at night like the McGoverns. Honesly, I was no saint myself as a young man and my parents spent many nights with Rosaries in hands hoping the car lights in the driveway were mine only.
Take away all the trappings of power, the well-deserved accolades of a superb wartime record and the nomination of your party for president (no matter how badly your campaign went) -- everything still comes back to how things are working at home. When the crowds go home, so do you and I, and that's where we build our foundations for true happiness,or sadly enough, tragedy. In fairness to Sen. McGovern, it wasn't that he Eleanor didn't pay attention to the home front. They did indeed.
Let's face it, 1972 just wasn't going to be George McGovern's year or for that matter any Democrat's given the amount of change the party undertook to destroy itself in the name of "reform." McGovern admitted he should've used more of his clout as the presumptive nominee to get the discussions killed on the night of the roll-call, which would've allowed him to give his speech at a more normal time. "My acceptance speech was the best speech I ever gave," he said, "and it went on at 3 a.m. Eastern time, so nobody saw it."
It simply wasn't in the cards. One thing I remember clearly him complaining about was the Nixon campaign's false tag of McGovern and the Democrats being the party of "abortion, acid and amnesty." It was rubbish. Abortion wasn't an issue since it was still being decided by the Burger Court, and no way would any candidate, much less a party nominee support heavy drug use. He did call for lesser penalties for first time arrests for marijuana use and possession, which makes sense when you figure out how many people have been incarcerated along with much more dangerous criminals. And as for amnesty, that, too he said was a false claim since he said he didn't support amnesty while the war was going on and we had men fighting in Vietnam.
Here was a man who couldn't be "Swiftboated" because his service record was well documented (even long before Stephen Ambrose wrote the Wild Blue Yonder about McGovern's service as a B-24 pilot.) Kerry's problem resulted because he kept giving different stories and leaving him wide open for people to suspect his credibility. Not so with McGovern. I thought then, and I still believe now, what Nixon's men did to McGovern by trying to paint him as some Neville Chamberlain-like character was disgraceful, and even worse than the Watergate Coverup itself. That was pure stupidity. This was plain meanness against a real war hero.
What a lot of people have long forgotten is that an overwhelming portion of the burden of blame for setting South Vietnam up for its fall rests upon the shoulders of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who negotiated a deal allowing the Viet Cong to remain in place and the North Vietnamese to keep some of its troops in the South after we left. Surely, the Democrats foolishly cut off funding and this gave Hanoi a green light, but had Jerry Ford shown any backbone and risked impeachment by releasing the funds through an executive order, 58,000 lives would not have died in vain.
Ford was so concerned about putting the country through another nightmare that he'd forgotten the nightmare that so many others have already LIVED through, with some not surviving, that he sat back, smoked his pipe and played a genial elderstatesman -- one who did eventually give amnesty to the draft dodgers and deserters. And if that wasn't enough, he almost gave away half our nuclear edge to the Soviets at Vladivostok and while listening to Dr. Henry "Doom n' Gloom" Kissinger, he damn near bought into the notion that our best days were behind us and we'd better learn to cave in. Hence Helsinki, one of the biggest sell-outs in history, bar none. Thank God and Ronald Reagan, the damage wasn't permanent.
McGovern's had a long, tough and interesting life behind him. While I don't agree with him on everything, he deserves a lot more credit than he's received. A lot more.
(* The first time I met Sen. McGovern was in UMass/Amherst's Student Union when the late Ken Mosakowski, longtime western MA Democratic politico and good friend, was working on his final MA presidential primary campaign called me over to meet him. Another footnote to Mosakowski is that he was the only one to broadcast the full speech given by McGovern's longtime friend, and occasional rival, Hubert Humphrey at the Lord Jeffery Amherst immediately after HHH was prevented from finishing his speech at the old Curry Hicks "Cage" thanks to a hall full of verbal thugs. This occured back in the early 70's.)
While trying to nurse a cold and kill some boredom, I came across an interesting discussion on CSPAN the other day. It was headed up by Washington Post columnist David Broder, and included Haynes Johnson and former Democratic nominee Senator George S.McGovern, (D-SD).
Sen. McGovern
Having met McGovern several times before,* I was still amazed at how well he looked and sounded after so many years in public service, beginning with his service as a then 22 year-old 35-successfully completed mission B-24 pilot to his forced retirement as a result of the 1980 election sweep of the Democrats by the GOP.
Many people might think his lowest points occured during his loss to Richard Nixon in 1972 and losing his Senate seat in 1980. Not so. First, there was the loss of one of his daughters, Terry, 45, to alcohol poisoning in Madison, WI, just two weeks before Christmas, 1994. I remember reading that book and later being able to get him to come to Mount Holyoke College for a book signing and reception in the library I was working for at the time. I told him what hit me as a fellow father of daughters was the eery similarity between Terry's childhood photo he used for the dust jacket and my oldest. Secondly, the loss of his wife Eleanor, to whom he was married since 1942. Lest anyone have any misconceptions, it's far tougher for a man to lose his wife, especially if they've been married for many decades. I saw what my mother's far too early departure from cancer did to my dad. Thankfully for Sen. McGovern, he'll have plenty of speaking engagements and political get togethers to help him. Longtime memories will always be inescapable, but so will the company and that's the key.
Unfortunately I was unable to talk longer with the Senator, but I'll never forget what a classy, and gracious man he was -- and remains.
"Terry"
My daughters, however, weren't even teenagers, but when you have a history of aloholism, you're always on edge for your children's well-being. Thankfully we never got "that call" every parent dreads late at night like the McGoverns. Honesly, I was no saint myself as a young man and my parents spent many nights with Rosaries in hands hoping the car lights in the driveway were mine only.
Take away all the trappings of power, the well-deserved accolades of a superb wartime record and the nomination of your party for president (no matter how badly your campaign went) -- everything still comes back to how things are working at home. When the crowds go home, so do you and I, and that's where we build our foundations for true happiness,or sadly enough, tragedy. In fairness to Sen. McGovern, it wasn't that he Eleanor didn't pay attention to the home front. They did indeed.
Let's face it, 1972 just wasn't going to be George McGovern's year or for that matter any Democrat's given the amount of change the party undertook to destroy itself in the name of "reform." McGovern admitted he should've used more of his clout as the presumptive nominee to get the discussions killed on the night of the roll-call, which would've allowed him to give his speech at a more normal time. "My acceptance speech was the best speech I ever gave," he said, "and it went on at 3 a.m. Eastern time, so nobody saw it."
It simply wasn't in the cards. One thing I remember clearly him complaining about was the Nixon campaign's false tag of McGovern and the Democrats being the party of "abortion, acid and amnesty." It was rubbish. Abortion wasn't an issue since it was still being decided by the Burger Court, and no way would any candidate, much less a party nominee support heavy drug use. He did call for lesser penalties for first time arrests for marijuana use and possession, which makes sense when you figure out how many people have been incarcerated along with much more dangerous criminals. And as for amnesty, that, too he said was a false claim since he said he didn't support amnesty while the war was going on and we had men fighting in Vietnam.
Here was a man who couldn't be "Swiftboated" because his service record was well documented (even long before Stephen Ambrose wrote the Wild Blue Yonder about McGovern's service as a B-24 pilot.) Kerry's problem resulted because he kept giving different stories and leaving him wide open for people to suspect his credibility. Not so with McGovern. I thought then, and I still believe now, what Nixon's men did to McGovern by trying to paint him as some Neville Chamberlain-like character was disgraceful, and even worse than the Watergate Coverup itself. That was pure stupidity. This was plain meanness against a real war hero.
What a lot of people have long forgotten is that an overwhelming portion of the burden of blame for setting South Vietnam up for its fall rests upon the shoulders of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who negotiated a deal allowing the Viet Cong to remain in place and the North Vietnamese to keep some of its troops in the South after we left. Surely, the Democrats foolishly cut off funding and this gave Hanoi a green light, but had Jerry Ford shown any backbone and risked impeachment by releasing the funds through an executive order, 58,000 lives would not have died in vain.
Ford was so concerned about putting the country through another nightmare that he'd forgotten the nightmare that so many others have already LIVED through, with some not surviving, that he sat back, smoked his pipe and played a genial elderstatesman -- one who did eventually give amnesty to the draft dodgers and deserters. And if that wasn't enough, he almost gave away half our nuclear edge to the Soviets at Vladivostok and while listening to Dr. Henry "Doom n' Gloom" Kissinger, he damn near bought into the notion that our best days were behind us and we'd better learn to cave in. Hence Helsinki, one of the biggest sell-outs in history, bar none. Thank God and Ronald Reagan, the damage wasn't permanent.
McGovern's had a long, tough and interesting life behind him. While I don't agree with him on everything, he deserves a lot more credit than he's received. A lot more.
Hubert H. Humphrey and George S. McGovern
(* The first time I met Sen. McGovern was in UMass/Amherst's Student Union when the late Ken Mosakowski, longtime western MA Democratic politico and good friend, was working on his final MA presidential primary campaign called me over to meet him. Another footnote to Mosakowski is that he was the only one to broadcast the full speech given by McGovern's longtime friend, and occasional rival, Hubert Humphrey at the Lord Jeffery Amherst immediately after HHH was prevented from finishing his speech at the old Curry Hicks "Cage" thanks to a hall full of verbal thugs. This occured back in the early 70's.)
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
It's a little creepy, don't you think, that "abortion, acid and amnesty" have since become planks in the Democrat platform?
Comment by Steven Barrett's OpEd Blog
But they sure are the THE PARTY OF ABORTION.
Perhaps, however, we could substitute "acid" with whatever they've put in their Kool Aid in the past 40 years! It hasn't helped their judgment at all!
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
And who but Democrats call illegal aliens "undocumented Americans" and want to give them the vote?