So Long, George McGovern

Here’s a good article on the passing of George McGovern.  Like its author, I too was a fan.  I was 17 years old in 1972, too young to vote by a frustratingly narrow margin, but I remember being taken by a talk McGovern gave in which he said, (and I’m paraphrasing based on my memory 40 years later):  “I’m a liberal, which, if it means anything, suggests that government has a role in improving society, including taking care of people who are unable to take care of themselves.  If that strikes a chord with you, I’d appreciate your vote.” 

If anyone can give me an example of candor in our modern presidential campaigns that remotely resembles that, I’d sure love to see it.

Here’s a blurb from the article that I hope will impress you; it certainly does me: 

The history books will tell you Richard Nixon won the 1972 election, that George McGovern went down to the worst defeat of any presidential candidate in history. But those who write history do not take into account the moral or the good, what is right or what is wrong, what endures and what does not. And even the historians have to acknowledge that Nixon’s victory was attained by lies and fraudulent propaganda, by dirty tricks, by state crimes and acts of theft and burglary. Nixon, as Hunter S. Thompson wrote, may have embodied the “successful” politician but he “was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions.”

“George McGovern, for all his mistakes… ,” Thompson went on, “understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose…. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

How low indeed.  I guess we’re in the process of answering Thompson’s question.

So long, Senator.  Rest knowing that you were one of a rare breed of politician who believed in something and stood by it.