Remembering George McGovern

"I'm for a clean environment and economic justice, but those worthy goals do not justify the incredible paperwork, the complicated tax forms, the number of minute regulations, and the seemingly endless reporting requirements that afflict American business." Many small businesses "simply can't pass such costs on to their customers and remain competitive or profitable." These are not the words of Mitt Romney or Ronald Reagan, but were stated by George McGovern in 1993.

McGovern died this week at age 90. I remember well his 1972 campaign. My closest friend  took an unpaid leave of absence from his law practice to work 80 hours a week for this man.  The incumbent President was Richard Nixon, regarded by liberals as more of an enemy than a political adversary. The Watergate story had just been unearthed but had not yet reached the level of a major scandal. 

Virtually all of my friends supported McGovern, and we fully expected him to win against the hated Richard Nixon.  The first indication that I heard that he might lose was at a fundraiser in which the political satirist Tom Lehrer told us  that he only sang for losing candidates.  And indeed Nixon won in a 49 state sweep. As was the case with Barry Goldwater, our nation prefers more centrist candidates, which is probably a good thing in a democratic nation.  Consequently both McGovern on the left and Goldwater on the right suffered landslide losses.

McGovern achieved national prominence in 1968. Following the assassination of Robert Kennedy, his supporters, who disliked Hubert Humphrey and could not warm up to the cerebral Eugene McCarthy, turned to McGovern as a stand in for Kennedy. But it was too late for 1968. Over the next four years, the Democratic Party changed dramatically, moving further left, and gave McGovern the nod in 1972.

As Jeff Jacoby has pointed out George McGovern was the quintessential bleeding-heart liberal, labeled inaccurately by the Republicans as the “the candidate of acid, amnesty, and abortion." To this day, the term “McGovernite” refers to left wing predilections that have gone too far.

Yet McGovern was far more of a moderate than most of his followers. As the historian Steven Hayward has pointed out in “The Age of Reagan; the Fall of the Liberal Order 1964-1980” McGovern allowed himself to become a captive of the left wing interest groups who had propelled him to the nomination. He repeatedly acceded to the demands of the “cause people”, putting him farther and farther from the mainstream.

He unquestionably was a liberal, Yet he was also a man who had moderate, in many ways conservative values. He grew up on the South Dakota prairie; his father was a Methodist minister.  He was a decorated World War 2 bomber pilot, and was married to the same woman his entire life. He owned a Connecticut inn that failed and gave him an appreciation of how small business could be destroyed by government regulation and reporting requirements. And he opposed union-backed card-check legislation, which would deny employees the right to a private vote on whether to unionize.

The Democratic party has suffered from a leftward “McGovernite” lurch. But George McGovern, an honorable and decent man, was not a left wing ideologue. Though his name is associated with the most lopsided election in our history, he will be remembered with admiration and fondness. 

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