Too young to vote I helped my father work on McGovern's campaign in 72. had a chance to bump into him at the National Zoo in 1992 and tell him that I had voted for him in the Democratic primary in 84. He was a good man, really the best human being to run for President in my lifetime.
It says more about our country than it does about him that he was "out of step with the average voter and the American people".
As a Vietnam Vet, I am not an admirer of Senator McGovern but I cannot but recognize that he was completely right about Vietnam. It was a stupid war fought as a political, not a military war, and it cost us thousands of lives, wounded tens of thousands of veterans, and expended billions of dollars in revenue that could have gone to more worthwhile projects. That does not even include the devastating bombing we did all over Vietnam and the millions of Vietnamese that we maimed & killed.
And for what? The North Vietnamese politburo was filled with Communists hardliners who defeated the Japanese and the French. They were going to fight us to the death and would sacrifice their entire population if need be. They were never going to surrender and made peace only to get the United States out of the country so that they could easily take it over. And did any dominos fall afterward? No! In fact, Vietnam wants to engage the United States in trade and wants us to be a buffer for them with China.
We need to be much smarter about the use of military force. Iraq was an unnecessary disaster like Vietnam, and now we are staring down North Korea. Have we learned anything from Vietnam?
1
As former US Marine Boot-Camp Instructor, Stanford QB, JFK Peace Corps Volunteer in Venezuela and head of Peace Corps Recruiting -- in 1972 I Volunteer to head the George McGovern/Sargent Shriver national voter registration drive via former Peace Corps and VISTA Volunteers and Staff for McGovern-Shriver. "We suffered a 61%-37% defeat to Nixon. There were divisive platform battles yet the eventual platform was probably the most liberal one ever adopted by a major party in the United States. It advocated an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, amnesty for war resisters, the abolition of the draft, a guaranteed job for all Americans and a guaranteed family income well above the poverty line."
"Recounting McGovern's Defeat While the Body Is Still Warm -- Doris Kearns said McGovern had lost the heart of his appeal. ‘The only real chance the Democrats had of winning was to play on a deep-rooted anti-political sentiment. The sixties had produced a revulsion against politics, and if McGovern had stood against traditional politics, he might have found a close affiliation with people. But 'above politics' would have required courage to think outside the rules of the game’... One strategy--favored by Kearns and many of the younger campaign advisers--would develop class-conscious themes in the campaign. The class appeals would stress that the Democrats were the party of the ordinary man, the Republicans the party of the Nixon/Connolly rich..."
What an eloquent history lesson. Tom Knock should run for office!
1
What was the "solution" to Vietnam.
Absolutely no American involvement
or
only economic aid ?
1
The problem in the 21st Century is that the lessons of Vietnam were forgotten or ignored by the time the US invaded Iraq.
Similarly, two McGovern statements are equally applicable to Afghanistan now:
1. "Conflicts of this kind have historical dimensions that are essentially political, economic and psychological; they do not respond readily to military force from the outside”.
2. Containing terrorism and Islamic extremism (the justification for being in Afghanistan "could not be met 'by forcing an American solution on a people still in search of their own national identity'."
5
After all these year I am still proud of supporting Senator McGovern in 1972. My vote was a protest vote against the war in Vietnam. US Army Vietnam 1970-71.
12
Where is the McGovern of 2017 amid all the insanity of today?
11
The "Great Man Theory of Politics". It's not the social factors and it's not the inherent instability for the Democratic coalition. It's George McGovern's fault.
2
We did not deserve George McGovern -- what a statesman and hero. Now we've elected a man-child. Depressing.
12
The haters and hard hats, who really were voting against the young that were being shanghaied (Greetings) for a lie, should visit the Vietnam memorial Wall.
Yes, visit it, read the names, savoir your victory at the altar of "Nixon's The One"
Gulf of Tonkin anyone? Secret plan to end the war? WMD's anyone?
How about a bone spur? The latest and foulest of the liars is now in the oval office...and we never even elected him.... or Pence.
(Written by an Honorably Discharged US Army Veteran, 1965-67 who received his "Greetings" from the Government that sent so many to die, or be horribly crippled, for.... Nothing ! )
19
I was too young to know you, but where are you today Mr. McGovern?
1
Wars make obscene money for corporations while helping TV viewers feel like they are rooting for their favorite football team. This article reminded me of Barack Obama's principled stance against the Iraq War from day one (unlike HRC and most other Dems). But despite Obama's two presidential victories, the ongoing disastrous consequences of W's Neocon failure, and even Trump's recognition of that folly, still we go marching toward Iran.
8
If only the US would have used its unique standing in the world to push for an international, non-military, solution to Saddam's Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. What an example that would have set for international cooperation! Instead, we of course led the world into yet another military action, which led to the 9/11 attacks, and then to the too costly subsequent follow-up debacle of an invasion and occupation. So much for "the humility and wisdom that may guide us toward a more rational view of our future role in the international community."
7
I was for McGovern back then. But it really was not an important stand in any way, because it was clear Nixon was going to win reelection. However, I'd like to contrast the sentiment back then to the sentiment today, specifically the sentiment of the millennials.
As a group, millennials felt they could not get behind (that woman) Clinton, for a number of sins, the biggest being that she acted like a man and took over the DNC to tilt the scales toward her eventual nomination. Like nobody ever did that before. Well, like no woman ever did that before. In an election that could have gone either way, it went the way it did because millennials either didn't vote, or threw their votes away.
While my generation was faced with McGovern or Nixon, the millennials were faced with government by the Democrats vs. Trumpism, and they chose apathy, or a third party. I can't forgive them.
6
Great, make a blanket generalization about a whole generation, when many in that generation were Clinton's biggest campaigners.
2
Of the groups that made up the coalition that got Obama elected twice, it was the millennials whose turnout dropped enough to tip the election to Trump. From subsequent discussions with many millennials, it's clear that for many, they were sure that Clinton would win, and wanted to able to say afterwards that they were "Bernie or Bust".
4
Blaming millennials for Trump's election is like blaming Comey or Putin or Michigan. Any of them might have changed the result.
It also misses the point: why was it close? Trump was a terrible candidate. Undisciplined, unprepared, and uncouth. Yet he won. We can only conclude he was the second worst candidate.
It's ironic you bring up the election in commenting on an article about McGovern. I often hear what politicians used to say with faint astonishment. Who today talks like McGovern did, or Kennedy did, or Mondale did? Who speaks of reforming society? Who suggests that our incessant belligerence is antithetical to the American promise of peace and prosperity? Who even mentions peace?
Without the benefit of hindsight, McGovern recognized the futility and sheer idiocy of our involvement in Vietnam. Thirty five years later, with that history in living memory, Hillary Clinton could not see the same thing.
I don't know if McGovern split the party. I do know what's left of Democratic leadership is a pale shadow of its former self. Thirty years of deindustrialization, of ever increasing income inequality, of rising costs of healthcare and education: none of these were addressed meaningfully in the campaign. Democrats have nothing on offer, as a party, on the scale of the problem. Medicare for All is the nearest thing, and it has minority support in both houses, despite recent polling that hold a majority of Americans -- and the vast majority of Democrats -- support it.
I was a college student in 1972 and voted for McGovern, even though I was a bit more conservative than many in my generation at the time.
Still, I noticed the way the media treated McGovern. He was always shown with crowds of young people, as if he were the "hippie candidate," and in a country where my parents' generation was still bewildered and angry at the social and cultural changes of the 1960s, that was a liability. McGovern himself was actually a straight arrow type, but he was not portrayed that way in the media. There were always scruffy-looking young people somewhere in the picture.
Nixon, on the other hand, had been vice-president in the 1950s, so to my parents' and grandparents' generation, he represented the "good old days" when everything seemed all Ozzie and Harriet. Voting for Nixon was a way for older people to vent their anger at long hair, rock music, racial tension, the sexual revolution, draft resistance, and everything else that overturned their expectations of how life should be.
But McGovern was right. The great unacknowledged sickness at the heart of America's dysfunction is its jingoistic conviction that it has the knowledge and obligation to fix the rest of the world and needs the military might to do so.
What if we had taken the literal trillions our government has spent on trying to remodel and subdue other countries and used them to improve the quality of life for our own people?
13
The bottom line is the powers that be must defeat socialism wherever it rears its head or they are toast, and they know it.
The war is between an entrenched few and the rest of us. Sure the middle classes don't want to risk their comfort, but they see the immorality of treating human beings like pawns in some upper-class chess game.
So inequality-immorality has become a thing. We see it in the politicians like Bernie and E. Warren and Corbyn gaining converts. Also Merkel holding firm in Germany. Right now Trump and the oligarchs have the upper hand in our country, but looking back to McGovern gives me renewed hope. He was ahead of his time, but he showed us what a moral American looks like.
4
Yup, sir, amen. It's a battle between organized money and organized people. Lately, money has been winning, partly by decrying "class warfare". As if class warfare were a bad thing, or somehow different from Republicans' soak-the-poor policies.
When the people come to understand what the money has been up to, it won't go well for the money.
2
Sounds to me like a specific application of the perpetual guns versus butter debate. How much for which? Butter appears to be losing the battle over the long term. Undeclared wars are charged to borrowing while their costs are used to justify domestic service cuts. This while tax revenues are eliminated and increasing debt is further leveraged to eliminate domestic services even more.
The great irony is the modern Democratic institution would not exist in its present form had not George H.W. Bush promised Reaganomics while providing fiscal responsibility. Bill Clinton would never have been elected President otherwise. History is an infinitely multi-sided die. Be careful when attempting to draw any definitive conclusions.
It is to bad that Trump received all those deferment's and didn't spend some time on the ground serving in Vietnam. He might not have such a clavier attitude toward starting a war with North Korea. The U S government and the military leaders never seem to learn from their mistakes. Old men sending young men and women into harms way.
5
Candidate Trump also split the Democrat party with many blue collar folks voting for him rather than the Democrat candidate. Economics and cultural issues were certainly the drivers for many democrats to vote for Trump there was another issue. Candidate Trump did an excellent job in his rallies pointing out that we fight "stupid "wars now that become politicized while he pointed out it was former Senator Clinton who voted to authorize our "stupid" war in Iraq. I feel that many of the over 20,000,000 veterans in this country, some of whom may have been democrats, agreed with candidate Trump and felt he learned the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq. What happens in Korea, remains to be seen but President Trump seems to have an affinity for those who fight our wars and may not be as cavalier to send them into combat as former Senator Clinton.
I did not serve in the military but lived through this period of upheaval as a youth, teenager and college student. I feel that we did stop a domino effect in Asia, but to what end? To support corrupt regimes and try fight a proxy war against communist China in Viet-Nam? As McGovern stated--we would lose if we lost or if we won.
1
The tragedy of Vietnam is that the only lesson that the government learned that if it didn't draft young people, it could engage in unrestricted military adventurism.
5
I respect the author's expertise as a historian. However the statement that McGovern flew 35 missions over Germany in WWI is misleading. He indeed flew 35 missions, but these were over occupied Europe not only Germany. His air group was based in Italy and bombed North Africa and occupied Europe. A remarkable fact regarding the Italian based US Army Air Corp bombers is that these flew primarily day missions and suffered much higher casualty rates than the crews flying night missions from England. A visit to the Florence (Italy) American Cemetery reveals a vast majority of those buried there are airman. 35 missions is also significant as 30 was the magic number for release from combat flight. McGovern flew 5 more than was required. A man of courage who was disparaged by the arguable majority of the day. Would we had more today. If any of the above statements are incorrect, I apologize as am recalling from reading some years back.
10
I remember his rally in Boston in 1972 which may have been the apex of the anti war movement, an endless sea of young people committed to peace. Although I wasn't a fan of his domestic policies, his integrity and basic goodness was obvious and his position on the war was absolutely correct. But the country didn't listen and we have repeated the same mistake repeatedly. When will they ever learn?
15
This is a wonderful piece about a wonderful man and politician, whom I supported and voted for in 1972. Yet the reason he broke the Democratic Party was not because he energized its left wing against the war in Viet-Nam. It was because of the Commission he headed, which transferred power from the professionals and the politicians who ran the Party and selected the candidates to those energized voters, mostly young people. It led to the decline of both the Democratic and Republican parties as institutions.
The selection of candidates has become more open and chaotic, like a rapid river thrusting up a Trump here and Sanders there.
Maybe this will help to end the sclerosis our political institutions are suffering from or maybe it will lead to further chaos.
This is George S. McGovern's most significant contribution to the history of our time.
3
Well, McGovern was a bit before my time, but I'm familiar with his career and had the chance to meet him and hear him speak. I'm a great admirer of his; he was a man ahead of his time who had a unique perspective on the world arising from extraordinary life experiences and his status as a learned historian. He would have been a fine President, perhaps one of those Presidents whose tenure is transformative.
11
I agree with Sean; the "crack-up" didn't happen with McGovern. It happened with Humphrey. Bobby Kennedy stated flatly that he would end the war in Viet Nam. After his assassination; the Democrats could have picked Gene McCarthy; who promised the same as Bobby. Instead they picked Humphrey; who promised the same thing as Nixon. An end to the war sometime in the vague future; after "negotiations". Nixon lied better; and appealed to those who didn't want our soldiers efforts "going to waste". McGovern may have lost a huge landslide; but I doubt that would happen today. Watergate was in full swing in November 1972; but Nixon blunted it and the press went along, at least at that point for many news outlets. McGovern didn't crack up anything; just another example of Americans voting against their best interests. Muhammed Ali; "You want me to go 10,000 miles from home and kill people living in grass huts? I oughta kill you.:"
22
I walked precincts for McGovern, and I remember that election well. Labor was still a major political force when McGovern ran for president. One of the major factors contributing to his defeat was the refusal of the head of the AFL/CIO, George Meany, to support him. Meany thought McGovern was not anti-communist enough.
25
i worked in mcgovern's campaign, knew the whole time we were going to lose, and never regretted a moment of it. he was an honest man, and he told the truth.
37
Thank you.
2
A timely and extremely insightful recollection about one of our great late 20th century political thinkers/leaders. It would be great if this piece could find its way into the Wall Street Journal, or somehow - how? - on to Fox News. Every voting citizen of this country should be required to have a basic understanding of our country's history and foreign policy successes and failures. Otherwise, well....
12
Wonderful to see other McGovern workers in this forum. This piece had me on verge of tears, his integrity in fight against the Vietnam war machine. We had Bobby, MLK and McGovern but Nixon, Kissinger and J.Edgar were far more powerful at keeping the effort against godless barbarian communists at bay in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos (& against godless barbarian hippies, students & possibly communist thinkers at home). What gov't learned was stop the draft, don't show bodies, and under Trump, start your own army with its own spies---full circle to J.Edgar paranoia in my lifetime.
I'm sure your book is as excellent as this piece, Professor, thank you for reminding the country of a real political hero.
29
George McGovern was brilliant and right. But America rejected him and rejected his message.
This should not surprise one because Americans are generally a violent and militaristic people. American leaders embrace militarism and implicitly embrace American domination of the world through militaristic means if necessary. These leaders are able to do this because ordinary Americans support them in this.
As a Vietnam veteran, I never expected to see another war so unnecessary and truly brutal in my life. Then in 2002 Bush and Cheney took advantage of 9/11 and began pounding the war drums for another stupid and unnecessary war in Iraq. "How can this be?" I asked myself. "Didn't Americans learn their lesson in Vietnam?" But a people that is arrogant and violent can always be lured into a new war by conning politicians.
I have lost any faith in America that I might once have possessed.
39
I think that the majority of people are not violent and militaristic. Unfortunately, we have a disproportionate share of them in power.
Try not to give up all hope.
"Tis not too late to seek a newer world" - Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"
3
You brought me to tears, brother. And, now it looks like we are reviving the Confederacy and about to heat up the Civil War, again.
3
I have the same line of thinking, but I've learned to temper it by giving the majority of this country credit for electing a black man for the first time in history. This is despite the fact I think it was more a credit to voters than to a candidate who would quickly sell out any promises of prosecution of war criminals and business fraud, surrender transparency, and be an effective spokesman for health care reform.
One thing I notice in these reminiscences about the Vietnam War is that although it is now considered a travesty, a war crime against peasant people that destroyed millions of lives resulted in millions of casualties, and shattered the land, there is never any consideration given to providing a minimal degree of justice in the form of assistance. Nothing. Not one single, pitiful offering of recompense.
12
I view the the great one's in American Society as the one's who were "right" about the issues of the day, and who call on America to resist the corruptive nature of its own materialistic power in favor of decency to all human beings.
George McGovern is on my short list of great American's along with Martin Luther King, Franklin Roosevelt, Paul Robeson, Mario Cuomo, Robert Kennedy, Bernie Sanders and perhaps to a lesser extent George Carlin, Phil Donohue, Muhammad Ali, Noam Chomsky, Stevie Wonder, Howard Zinn.....all who expressed love and compassion to us, for us, rather than hate and division that is so ensconsed in American political culture today.
Most American people are decent but America's political culture is ugly and getting uglier by the day.
22
The otherwise excellent Ken Burns' film completely omitted Pres. Eisenhower's Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), a mutual defense plan like NATO. Kennedy might have been able to withdraw from that treaty, although it would have destroyed the treaty, but it would likely have drawn serious opposition from both parties. The Constitution states, "This Constitution...and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land..."
Kennedy approved the military removal, but not the assassination, of President Diem, but was unable to control the South Vietnamese generals. Shortly thereafter Johnson became president. It would have been unconscionable for Johnson to defy the Constitution and withdraw after the removal of the only political leader South Vietnam had known.
I don't know why Johnson is blamed for a war that he did not start, was opposed to, and might have ended if not for treachery by Republican party leaders. In 1989, in the city still called Saigon, in the War Crimes Museum there were photographs of the US presidents during the war. Alone at the top, the largest photograph was of the person Hanoi considered the worst criminal, Dwight Eisenhower.
3
I know the Vietnamese had to fight the Chinese, Then had to fight The French, Then had to fight the USA.
And before all that ? I wonder.
For someone opposed to the war, Johnson had a funny way of showing it. In 1963, hardly any American had heard of Vietnam, because we had just 10,000 soldiers there. By 1968, he had over 500,000 troops there.
Johnson gave us McNamara and Westmoreland. He himself didn't believe the Gulf of Tonkin fairy tale. And yet he waged the war.
Opposed? How? Certainly not by deed.
Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I don't recall McGovern ever "trotting out" his substantial WW II service as a bomber pilot.
5
As I recall, he almost never used his military service to get votes. Many wanted him to compare his participation in the War with that of Nixon; McGovern is the most principled politician in my life experience.
13
Like most veterans, McGovern didn't hang his war record out for view. His supporters certainly did, as they should have.
11
Pretty good article in spite of the lurid headline. What really split the Democratic Party was the Civil Rights legislation following the Kennedy assassination. A degenerate Republican Party saw that racism was being expunged from Democratic Party ideology and the Nixon Southern Strategy was waiting with welcome arms to invite racists into the Republican Party. Many of these newly minted Republicans were white labor union members as well as Southern bigots. The only Democratic leader who could have held the tenuous Roosevelt coalition together was Robert Kennedy.
26
Without taking anything away from our veterans who honorably served in Vietnam because the government sent them there, draftees (aka slave labor) and volunteers, the war was a stain on the US. We had no business over there and the Diem regime was just as despicable as the other side. Had the war taken place today, I suspect LBJ would be dragged to the Hague and tried for war crimes. We talk about political correctness but back then it seemed politically correct to support the war but in time, many Americans including McGovern and those on college campuses saw the light.
4
What you’re calling the “Democratic Crackup” was a good thing: it simply ratified the already-existing split between those in the party who supported an illegal war and those of us who opposed it.
He was an American hero.
14
Substitue the word “jihadist” for “communist” and these truths all appliy today. This is a sick country that just keeps repeating its sickening, murderous past.
15
"More than any other politician, he led the push against Lyndon Johnson’s war — and broke his party in two."
The party that BROKE THE COUNTRY IN TWO with its idiotic war needed to be broken in two.
Of course, the party that took over (Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Trump) as gradually broken the country into smaller and smaller fragments.
4
Thanks for the update on a patriot called George McGovern. An honorable man, misunderstood perhaps but consequent with his principles. How far are our current leaders from courage, and humility, perhaps for not having assimilated the sad history of unilateral foreign misadventures?
10
I feel sad that such decent, ethical giants like McGovern & Mondale did not become president. How our country can elect such pitiful human wrecks as Nixon or George W. Is beyond me. Reagan seemed an incredibly shallow, smiling, "aw shucks", "Howdy Doody" pitchman easily manipulated by the Oligarchy. Does being a successful politician require such ethically and mentally flawed people? Our congress is most recently full of these ethical losers and millions have suffered, even died from these flawed humans. I fear w/o another FDR or Lincoln America's luck may have finally run out.
21
I voted for Sen. McGovern in 1972 because I agreed with his prescience re the Vietnam War, his heroism as a B-24 pilot during World War II, and because, like President Eisenhower, I didn't care for "Tricky Dick" Nixon. As I look back from today's political hacks and oligarchs, Sen. McGovern may have been the most qualified presidential candidate in my lifetime.
22
Itt is dangerous and futile to speculate about history - but I think that if McGovern had won this country would be a very different and much better place than it is today. But then almost any state other than the present one would have been better than what we are in today. This country humbly shouts it Christianity - and its superiority - from the rooftops. But this country does not bless peacemakers as Christ did. It despises them.
18
"As a B-24 bomber pilot during World War II, he had flown 35 missions over Germany and Austria and won the Distinguished Flying Cross."
In the 1972 presidential election, Republican chicken hawks managed to make people think that McGovern was weak and knew nothing about war. Kind of like today when people believe anything the 'strong' man says. Can democracy survive a public so ignorant and susceptible to propaganda?
I wouldn't have thought that in my lifetime we'd have to go through this twice. Three times, really, because you have to include G.W. Bush. Four! Reagan, another non-entity that people worship.
All you have to do is conjure or create an enemy and tell people they deserve to be rich.
18
"All you have to do is conjure or create an enemy and tell people they deserve to be rich."
Sounds like the "prosperity gospel" spoon fed to millions of gullible ones in mega-churches across the nation and on religious radio and TV outlets. The enemies of all that's good and holy are abortion, gays, and feminists so send money to fight the good fight and if you do God Almighty will shower you with a great wealth.
Bah humbug.
1
We learned nothing from Vietnam! Bush/Cheney and the neocons, with total support from Congress and the main stream media, beat the war drums for the invasion of Iraq! All those who opposed were "communists" and non-patriots! From that disastrous invasion we are still 16 years later in a Middle East abyss. Because of Bush/Cheney and the Neocons we have a psychotic, pathological liar, Russian puppet, occupying the WH who could set off a nuclear war with NK at any moment!
13
The red wing of the Democratic party sided with Russian in the war. The Russians were everywhere in the fight. On the ground in North Vietnam and probably in the air, certainly at sea in the Gulf of Tonkin and off Guam monitoring US operations and sending intelligence to the North Vietnamese. After we attacked the anti-aircraft sites at Haiphong just before the mining, the Russians complained that we'd hit some of their ships offloading armaments in the harbor. We replied to our superiors that the docks were out of range of our guns. We couldn't possibly have hit the Russians (but we sure wish we had). The Russian ships were hit by spent rounds from the anti-aircraft guns the Russians had supplied the North Vietnamese (and operated with the assistance of Russian advisers): karma.
1
That the Russian and Chinese were helping their allies, the North Vietnamese does not mean therefore we should have been helping the South Vietnamese. One does not follow the other. The US started its foray in Vietnam by supporting failed French policies, and essentially continued them after the French had been forced out, militarily in Vietnam and through anti-war protest at home. The Americans came to be viewed simply as an extension of the French colonist. In the south the Viet Cong were 'anti-colonial liberators'. The north (in their view) was attempting to unify the homeland after an artificial division that had been imposed by outside powers at the end of the French colonial regime. The south never conducted the vote on reunification because the leadership of the south knew they would loose it. The government in the South was corrupt, was biased towards Catholics, and conducted oppression against Buddhists. The south had many changes in government usually by coup, and was divided against itself. A house divided can not stand.No bombing campaign, counter-insurgency actions, or other military action can fix that. This should have been recognized early on.
2
You talk about "the red wing" of the Democratic Party siding with Russia.
How do you view Trump's relationship with Russia both during the campaign and now? Do you view him as siding with Russia?
2
So what? What if the Russians won? What would be lost?
Oh, wait. We need not guess, because that's how it played out. North Vietnam won the war, and ... nothing. The United States didn't become a People's Republic". All that Cold War geopolitical domino theory froufrou turned out to be utter nonsense.
The second best thing we could have done in Vietnam was nothing. The best thing might have been to work with Ho Chi Minh, and counseled him in a democratic direction. Maybe we would have failed at that, but it's hard too see how democratic liberties suffered less under the course we did pursue.
1
The author does not tell his readers that Senator McGovern voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that gave the president authority to use military power to defend U.S. interests in Southeast Asia, or why. Apparently, McGovern thought it was appropriate in August 1964 to empower President Johnson with a resolution so thorough that Johnson said it was "just like grandma's nightshirt: it covers everything." Only two senators voted against the resolution: Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening. I tell my students that, in my opinion, they were American heroes.
4
Al Greuning, Wayne Morse, Daniel Ellsberg, Eugene McCarthy, Don Luce, and Bernard Fall were the heroes who had the intelligence and courage to defy the war machine and mindless cries for war. They laid the groundwork for piercing the clouds of war early on.
1
In '72 McGovern was crushed, we were crushed, I was crushed. Actually, I was kept from voting--they said my name wasn't on the mailbox--but I think it was my long hair.
The majority in this country didn't know enough to want to end the war, to end poverty. They still don't, or Sanders would be president. But hawks like Clinton are rejected, at least by the electoral college.
We have a long way to go. We must change the constitution--so that the majority rules, guns are no longer a right, and homes, healthcare, food and education--"freedom from want" as FDR put it, is a right.
It may take 100 years. It may take a civil war, and THEY have the guns, but OUR REVOLUTION has begun. There is at least a large minority, maybe a majority, of us who don't want to live under this kakistocracy-kleptocracy.
11
"But hawks like Clinton are rejected, at least by the electoral college." You completely mischaracterize her.
In 1972, Hillary Clinton was in south Texas, helping the McGovern campaign to register Hispanic voters.
In the early 1970s, Sanders was busy running against the Democrat Pat Leahy on a third party line. I am unaware of Sanders ever helping McGovern (correct me if I'm wrong), but Hillary Clinton did work to elect McGovern.
In contrast to sound-bite politicians, McGovern understood issues in depth and saw far ahead. His rallies were not full of slogans; rather, they were informative. I learned something (about how issues are connected and how problems might be solved) every time I heard McGovern talk.
The saddest words: what might have been.....
4
I fail to see what Sanders and Clinton were doing in 1972 matters at all to anyone today, other than political historians.
In 2016, what they thought and represented mattered. Presumably, their positions as candidates were the product of decades of experience, not the intemperance of youth.
On the evidence, Sanders had learned more. Certainly, he offered policies that would begin to address 30 years of deindustrialization, wage suppression, income inequality, and the ever rising costs of healthcare and education. Clinton's grand plan was paid family leave.
One striking similarity between then and now: McGovern was depicted as slightly kooky, supported only by long-haired radicals. Sanders was also depicted as slightly crazy, an "angry old man" despite never evincing anger in any speech or policy. Sanders was a fringe candidate, despite rising from 3% to over 40% in the polls, despite drawing larger crowds than Trump. And not "angry" crowds, either.
The media, including not least this very newspaper, gave Sanders the bum's rush. Somehow, it seems that's always been the fate of politicians who side with the people.
George McGovern, a truly great American and a truly great Democrat.
re the Democratic party split, one could argue Bernie Sanders, an Independent progressive, running as a democrat, split the party when he said Hillary was unfit to be president, thereby putting Ol' Bonespur in the Whitehouse as thousands of Sanders' followers took his cue, opted out and ushered in the least qualified person ever to run. Other than that it was Bobby Kennedy and then Eugene McCarthy who drove the first wedge.
1
Even in the unlikely event that McGovern won, he could not effectively governed because the Congress, Republicans and centrist Democrats, would have thwarted him. Unfortunately he did not carry into the Congress a critical mass of like-minded Democrats. In addition, in the campaign McGovern really had no effective retort to Nixon's "Peace With Honor," and it was easy for Nixon to paint McGovern as a naive dove, who, according to Nixon, would damage American credibility by an imprudent retreat. McGovern's missteps during the campaign, especially over his running mate's health issues, played into Nixon's narrative. It was McGovern's, and the nation's, misfortune to contest against one of the most ruthless, vicious and cynical politicians in the nation's history.
5
Organized labor abandoned the Democratic Party in the 1972 election. How did that work out for you, guys?
9
Organized labor abandoned the Democrats over the war and civil rights. Later, Clinton and the 'new democrats' abandoned labor in favor of the interests of
large international corporations and the cultural wars continuation into abortion rights and gay rights issues. The unions got dismantled under indifferent Democratic and hostile Republican administrations, and we all lost. How bad have things gotten between the Democratic Party and working/middle class whites? Trump. A house divided.
2
As a McGovern myself, and one who - as a child -campaigned for him a completely Republican town (yea - that was fun as a 10-11 year old), I have always been very proud of his strong moral positions and humanity. Although any relationship is distant and the teasing back then was intense, I am still a bit enamored by George McGovern.
7
My vote for Senator McGovern was my first presidential vote ever, and I went door to door for him, too. At one house, the woman who opened the door to us youngsters listened impatiently to what we had to say and then said, "My husband will tell me how to vote", before she closed the door in our faces. But we knew who we were voting for--a decent, well-prepared, thoughtful President. The disappointment of that loss cut deep.
4
I agree that Vietnam was a major ingredient in bringing an end to the "New Deal" era. It is also why so many people learned to distrust what our government says. It was the clash of the trusting WWII generation and the baby boomers who discovered they were being lied to. We hear there was "light at the end of the tunnel" over and over, yet we left there defeated. And through it all the only thing the Vietnamese wanted was freedom from foreign domination.
The interesting thing now is that Donald Trump is to the Conservatives what Lyndon Johnson was to the the liberals. An apparent supporter of their core beliefs, but highly flawed character wise. Also both men have and had vice presidents who twisted themselves into moral pretzels to both support the president and be true to their inner values. What remains to be seen is will Trump bring an end to the conservative era as Johnson brought an end to the liberal New Deal era.
3
In my work as a prosthetist (making artificial limbs) I never met a veteran who needed my services that thought the Vietnam war was worth their sacrifice or that of their friends. In that same nearly forty years I have never known or heard of a general who resigned out of disgust with the reckless abuse of our troops or a need to call attention to the failures and immoral nature of our wars.
13
McGovern didn't split the Democrats in two. Bill Clinton did. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are trying to bring the party back together.
16
Clinton was elected President after 12 years of Reagan/Bush showing that for Democrats to get elected we need to build a "big tent". Clinton worked to unify & build the party. He had only 2 years of a Democratic Congress before Gingrich & Republicans took the House, & Clinton had to agree to Republican stuff tacked on to bills to get anything passed.
I strongly agree with you that McGovern did not split the party in two.
The headline writer went for clicks rather than an accurate description of the article.
In fact, McGovern worked to build the SD Democratic Party, and, after years of hard work and discussion of serious issues, was able to win a Senate in a state where he at first had to talk in hushed tones to business owners interesting in hearing about the Democratic Party if customers were present. (In this, I contrast him with Sanders, who, as far as I know, did not support any Democrats until after he decided to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle for his Presidential campaign--note, I was not "anti-Sanders" as I used to send a few dollars to support his senate campaigns, but it is inaccurate to say that he has been a healing force.)
It was Bill Daley's police cracking the heads of peaceful antiwar demonstrators in 1968, and George Meany (AFL-CIO) & others in the party (including sadly Jimmy Carter when Governor of Georgia) opposing McGovern that failed to unify a party faced with Republican agent provocateurs, lies & Nixon's race-baiting Southern Strategy.
I find it telling that the Democratic Party loves to celebrate its principled losers (Henry Wallace, Adlai Stevenson, McGovern, Humphrey and of course Carter...) whereas to Republicans a loser is a loser (noting that Nixon is the exception who proves the rule).
But what is more telling is how consistently American voters have rejected these principled leaders and how the media, in describing their fall, tells us that as a nation "we weren't ready" or some other nonsense.
So yes, the times have changed, the players, the issues, but only in the specifics; at a certain level of abstraction nothing has changed. In this, the war in Vietnam, its lies, corrupt politics and the cultural chaos it nurtured at home remain, to this day, the template for post WWII America.
4
I am convinced that for any Democrat to first get elected President and then be successful in any meaningful way, he has to make one big Faustian bargain with the Republicans or conservatives in his own party. With FDR, it was Southern racists and anti-Japanese politicians, with Truman it was the anti-communists for the Korean War, with Kennedy and LBJ it was the military-industrial complex for Vietnam, with Clinton welfare reform and financial de-regulation, with Obama the intelligence community in curtailing First Amendment rights and expanding the drone program. Carter didn't compromise with anyone, and McGovern probably would not have, either.
7
Carter was profoundly humane & ethical. He was disliked by the urbane press in NYC & Washington DC. It seems Americans don't want a leader better than them.
5
He was a man of compassion who cared about the poor in our great country. He often quoted Yates: “Count where man’s glory begins and end and say my glory was I had such a friend.” That quote expresses my appreciation and admiration of Senator McGovern-we will never forget you!
13
Compared to now and what's coming, those days were a piece of cake. Even with the war, I never had it so good.
"More than any other politician, he led the push against Lyndon Johnson’s war — and broke his party in two."
This teaser text is completely false. The Vietnam War created a great deal of stress between its supporters and opponents. McGovern was the 1972 Democratic nominee for president, and as we know he lost badly to Nixon.
But McGovern had nothing to do with _causing_ a split in the Democratic party.
21
That was more Eugene McCarthy, if anyone, and thankfully we had him on our side
2
Yet another case of "nice guys finish last." Here's one version of this truism as it pertains to George McGovern:
1. McGovern's ideas caricatured as "radical," "unpatriotic," and "unrealistic." One of his critics, the overall U.S. military commander on the ground in Vietnam, would eventually be recalled (cashiered) for ineffective leadership.
2. McGovern defeated in a landslide by a President who knew at the time the Vietnam war couldn't be "won," who lied to the American people about this while in office, and who ended up resigning the Presidency before he could be impeached and convicted for various Constitutional transgressions.
3. McGovern's "ridiculous" ideas about the Vietnam war and its future foreign policy implications are born out by history, revisionists and crackpots notwithstanding.
4. On both sides of the conflict over a million dead and injured, billions of dollars wasted, lives shattered and nature destroyed, and cultural conflicts arising from the Vietnam war still reverberating. In the U.S., LBJ's "Great Society" dream is deferred if not entirely forgotten.
5. Many Americans lose faith and trust in their government.
6. Cry softly, and let slip the conspiracies of grief.
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George McGovern was a fine man but his analysis of the war was just a little misdirected. The problem was not "interventionism" whatever that actually means, but rather ignorance and incompetence. By making that charge, I am not suggesting that if we had been better informed and more able then we would have won the war. Probably not, but who knows?
Prof Knock cites McGovern as saying; Corrupt regimes like the one in Saigon did not “deserve to be saved by the blood of American boys.” The real truth in our failure is right there, but it gets lost in McGovern's moral sentiment. Just as we repeated in Iraq and still do today in Afghanistan, Americans confuse good intentions with good outcomes. If we just give the poor farmers enough hybrid rice and super-pigs, they will all love us and reject the communists.
Johnson often said that we had to win the hearts and minds of the people. But in order to have a chance to win "we" didn't have to do that, the Saigon government did. We promised them democracy and prosperity, but then gave them rigged national elections, appointed local officials, and corruption from top to bottom.
5
In the political climate in which he ran and though he didn't stand a chance against Nixon, McGovern remains one of the finest men ever to have run for the presidency. Somehow he lacked the "killer instinct" both Kennedys, Nixon,
and Johnson had. I realized this as I watched him, once up close, on the campaign trail.
My main objection to this worthy tribute is that it doesn't strongly enough
spell out that by then the old New Deal Coalition had broken asunder
especially with the help of George Meany, leader of the AFL-CIO. This
remained an underlying factor in subsequent Republican wins, especially
Reagan's, who drove the nail into the coffin built by Kennedy - to whom
the writer is far too kind - LBJ and Nixon.
11
As a trained historian, it's painful and frustrating to see my country repeat the same problems over and over, as we continue to fight endless global wars and pour an inordinate amount of our national treasure into weapons, armies and occupations, thus starving our citizens of investment in education, health care, research and infrastructure. Most American people seemed to have learned nothing from their history, as they continue to vote in politicians who pursue the same disastrous policies that they did during McGovern's time. To paraphrase the famous Peter, Paul and Mary song, when will they ever learn?
17
To give credit where credit is due: it is a Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson song.
George McGovern's moral legacy remains, deservedly, gigantic His political reputation as a landslide loser omits his shrewd understanding of politics that would have led to a very close election with a toss-up outcome had George Wallace, strong third party candidate from 1968 and stronger still among Right wing populists in 1972, not been shot in May. A McGovern presidency truly would have changed history in ways that are hard to imagine. His other legacy, that of allowing all sorts of races, creeds, etc., to flourish as delegates at the convention, also remains underappreciated and was way ahead of its time.
13
In McGovern's defeat "exceptionalism" again Trumped integrity and rationality. All our military budget has become since is a source to fed business and line the pockets of the wealthy.
I did not see a single corporation serving alongside me in 1069-1971.
5
The title of this piece at the time I read it is bizarrely at odds with its contents, as if someone other than the author wanted to discourage us from reading it. Isn't it lovely to reflect on a time when there were still such principled people as George McGovern in national politics, and when the majority of Democrats still cared about social and racial justice? When a significant faction of Democrats regarded pursuing these causes not as "extremism" but as simple American justice? Every thinking person knows what's wrong with Republican ram-rod secretive legislating and with eternal lying; what we need to be reminded about is that the Democratic Party used to stand up for the common people. Election turn-out among people who need a champion will continue to be light until the Democrats resume being that champion in deeds, not just in words.
8
In 1968, I was a graduate student in a Big Ten university. I had begun to make friends with some of the returning young veterans from Vietnam. One friend was a Marine who had seen action in the Northern South Vietnam, and the other was a grunt who had been in the middle of the Tet Offensive. I didn't need to turn on television to know what was actually happening. Later, when the tragedy of Vietnam was more fully documented, I was still astonished with the hubris of the generals and the deceit in Washington and Vietnam. McGovern was spot on in his analysis and predictions. Unfortunately, we have not learned anything from the Vietnam War. Both of my friends described repeated "sweeps" for the same period to "round out the enemy" from the same area. Soldiers died and were wounded repeating the same military exercise time and again. Now, we send soldiers into hostile provinces in Afghanistan to do repeated sweeps of Taliban controlled areas. Our soldiers go in, suffer casualties, and push back the Taliban, only to have them return when we leave. This is an incredibly poor military strategy has proved unsuccessful for over fifty years. Have we learned nothing? Pushing ISIS out of Iraqi was absolutely necessary and done with a minimum amount of American casualties. How long are we going to continue a failed military practices in Afghanistan and how many American soldiers will have to die, or be wounded, until the failed strategy is acknowledged?
9
I worked for Senator McGovern from 1969-1975. He was a down to earth mid-westerner and a terrific political organizer who built the South Dakota Democratic Party from nothing before becoming a congressman then senator. He received his doctorate in history at Princeton and was an expert on Wilson, including Wilson's over-reach to create a world based on American ideals. He did not break the Democratic Party in two: that occurred because of the Civil Rights Revolution that drove the Southern Democrats into the Republican Party and the Baby Boomers refusal to put their bodies on the line to fight in Vietnam. McGovern's campaign was an expression of these two dramatic movements in Democratic politics. The country was not ready then and is not ready now to accept its practical limitations on using its military power to shape the world in its own image. He lost because he was going up against a sitting President in the middle of big war. Nothing could have changed that except a much earlier exposure of the Watergate scandal. On the other hand, McGovern left a historic legislative mark be leading the fight in Congress against Hunger in America and making the Food Stamp program an integral piece of the country's safety net.
24
Although those called "baby boomers" today weren't called by that name until after the Vietnam War had ended, it was, contrary to what you said, those of that generation who did put their "bodies on the line" in Vietnam. Are you trying for a little revisionist history?
2
Professor Knock says that by the end of 1967 napalm and Agent Orange had destroyed half of all South Vietnam's forests. That's a great exaggeration. Even by the end of US combat operations in 1971, much less than half of South Vietnam was affected by bombing and herbicide spraying. His claim that by the end of 1967 most of North Vietnam's infrastructure lay in ruins is also an exaggeration (although harder to quantify, since there is no measure of the total amount of North Vietnam's infrastructure). There was a lot of US bombing of North Vietnam's infrastructure after the end of 1967, which would not have been the case of most it had already been reduced to ruins.
4
I worked as a volunteer for Senator McGovern in 1972. I gave out flyers and leaflets in my neighborhood (Brooklyn, NY.). One of my friend's parents called me a communist. I thought McGovern was an intelligent, principled man, rare among most American politicians. It was shocking to me, years later, to learn McGovern was a decorated World War II veteran. As the article states, he flew 35 bombing missions over Germany and Austria and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He never mentioned this during the presidential campaign. We can only hope that individuals who enter public service in the future have the decency and moral compass of a man like McGovern.
21
He says 1/2 the forest, you may want to compare arable land vs forest for that period prior to rejecting his claim.
3
"From March 1965 to December 1967, B-52s rained down 1.5 million tons of bombs — a half million on the North, a million on the South — exceeding the combined tonnage of bombs dropped by all the belligerents in World War II."
More bombs--in two years--than the combined total of all WW II bombing.
But as you say--it wasn't really that bad.
4
In 1968, I was too young to vote, yet deemed old enough to be drafted into the military. Luckily I avoided that with a student deferment. In 1972, I cast my first vote for President for George McGovern. His defeat marked the overwhelming control of our country by the military-industrial complex. That has increased to this day, as corporations are deemed people, and money considered speech, wholly owning Congress. The USA is a global empire, having some 800 military bases around the world, while all the rest of the countries combined have a mere 30. That force secures access to reasources and control of markets for private profit at public expense. That, not freedom or democracy, is the American way. But it will not stay that way, for all empires are doomed and deserve to die. What survives depends on what we do to radically change our course. McGovern showed us the direction we still need to take, and now, before time runs out.
58
Knocking on doors for George McGovern in Marin County, Ca was my first political action. Reading this article, now with the perspective of some 50+ years of multiple repetitions of the Vietnam errors of judgement, I admire this man so much more.
But what drew me to this piece was the phrase "Democratic Crackup" in the title. But where was the "crackup" discussed? Was the author implying a "crackup" of the Dem Party and, if so, that Mc Govern had a role in the "crackup?"
I read this article looking for insight, maybe even answers, with Bernie Sanders and our current political morass in mind. I see Sanders as today's McGovern. And, as I see the moral bankruptcy of the DNC today, I am hoping for a "crackup" of the DNC. However, I am equally wary of losing that most critical of elections in 2020. It will be miracle enough if our democracy survives Trump; we cannot expect to survive another Republican President.
So what I am looking for is astute analyses on how to bring the goodness and honesty of Mc Govern and Sanders back into our electoral choices and how to make their brand of integrity a winning ticket. Today, this means making the "sell" to the DNC as well as to the populace. Do we (correction will the DNC) run another "corporate" Dem candidate or go for a candidate for the rest of us?
25
I object to Sanders as a Democratic Party solution on several grounds, not the least of which is that he has never really been a member of the party but only used it when it suited his purposes. In doing so he has weakened rather than strengthened it, if you think 2 party rule is key then his actions are unacceptable.
12
1. I am not looking for a "Democratic Party solution." It is an alternative to government for and by corporations that I want. I vote and take action, not to further any one Party but to further ideas and solutions as best I see them.
2. Sanders represents what Dems used to be: an FDR Democrat. FDR, a patrician was called a "traiter to his class." I can't think of a higher praise in these days, given that "his class" was the rich and powerful. With today's huge economic divide, we need a "traiter" to corporate interests more than ever. Huge class divides are inimical to democracy; how do you think we got Trump?
FDR would be called a socialist in these times.
As for me, I left the Dem Party years ago; or rather, the Dem Party left me years ago.
3. I think the 2 party rule is the key? To what? Both parties are beholden to big money contributors for their very jobs. It's a rare candidate who gets enough $27 donations from common folk to challenge the contributions of Wall Street in their campaigns.
I abhor the usual two party choice: either the "lesser of two evils" or vote my conscience and risk the greater of two evils. (Living in PST, I wait the East Coast election results; if the lesser of two evils is ahead, I vote my conscience.) But I continue to hope and work for a choice in 2020 for a strong candidate who can and will work against Big Money; I don't care what party label is used.
5
check your history, Sanders is a FDR-Henry Wallace New Dealer, not a corporate shill. For me that is a democrat.
us army 1969-1971/california jd
1
In his book on McGovern, the historian Stephen Ambrose noted that during the 1972 campaign he encouraged the candidate to highlight his World War II service to counteract the Nixon forces claims that he was anti-American.
McGovern refused to do so feeling it was wrong to employ it in a campaign.
It's amazing that we once had a presidential candidate who had such a high degree of personal ethics.
80
We don't have many politicians who are also scholars like McGovern anymore. If anything, major politicians take glory in anti-intellectualism, even when they are well educated. Depressing.
As for war, the US continues to believe its military might can destroy insurgencies, which has given us many years in Afghanistan.
35
We now have a president and GOP which are antieducationn and the 180 degree opposite of McGovern. I have read Ambrose’s book abbot McGovern and it paints a man who I would love to have in charge, but false flag waving has takken over
4
It is the victors who write the history and shape the future. What happened in the aftermath of WWII can be seen as a benefit to the world. We lost in Vietnam and continued to pretend to be victors. We continue to lose in our ill-advised foreign adventures. A world without victors will usher in the end of history. Is it too much to ask? It is too soon, for now, the kill-em-all mindset will play out until another world war wakes the world from its complacent slumber.
5
Men ahead of their time are often unfairly maligned as senator McGovern was. Besides Vietnam, his views on income Inequality and a guaranteed minimum wage were prescient and still relevant. He was most often derided as hopelessly naive and idealistic, so we were gifted with the realpolotik of Nixon and kissinger.
Thank you for this series and its many viewpoints. Endlessly fascinating.
53
George McGovern a lone voice crying in the wilderness. An honorable man and American Patriot. Sadly, this nation was not ready to accept his message. Donald Trump is exactly 180' opposite from Senator McGovern on every key issue. Despite a crushing defeat in '72 he soldiered on and kept to his message.
33
I believe it’s logically “sequence out of” to say McGovern broke the party in two.
It was Johnson et al who pursued an irrational policy. It was they who relied on their base to provide support no-matter-what [as Trump Republicans are now doing with Roy Moore]. McGovern pointed out the wrong-headed, inconsistent-with-our-values insanity of the war in Vietnam. It was JFK/LBJ and McNamara who led us into the Democratic party’s schism.
14
Rational government. Led by people with a knowledge of history, a willingness to look at the unvarnished facts with a compassion for humankind.
It all seems like a long ago dream. We have lost our way.
52
The take home lessons from this historical essay are that America voters are easily persuaded by liars who tell them what they want to hear. So many Americans were totally fed up with feckless Democrats like the late Hubert Humphrey who failed to speak out at critical times while kowtowing to the crude and mendacious LBJ that they bought Nixon's baloney about a secret plan to end the war (which, in fact, never existed). The Democratic Party needs to learn that being called "weak on (fill in the blank)" by Republicans has worked every time. Therefore, the Democratic candidate must project strength while showing conviction about achieving worthwhile goals that resonate with the American public.
9
The secret plan was Nixon and Kissinger 's.
1
Professor Knock states that between 1965 and 1967, B-52s dropped 1.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam. That was actually the total tonnage for US aircraft of all types in that period; less than a third of it was dropped by B-52s.
His statement that 1.5 million tons was more than "the combined tonnage of bombs dropped by all the belligerents in World War II" is more seriously inaccurate. The United States alone dropped more than 2 million tons in World War II.
4
Sources please.
2
However noble, to encourage people to think critically about their own country is rarely a winning formula. That's why FOX is so successful.
11
What a lovely article.
I was a student at UVA from 69 to 73 and a friend and classmate of George’s daughter Terry.
I met him at UVA and found him to be friendly and self effacing.
At that young age I learned how cynical the American political process can be, with Nixon, Agnew and Kissinger telling bald faced lies about ending the war “with honor” and McGovern’s character.
And with his stunning defeat I learned how a misinformed and intellectually lazy electorate can elect a “crook” in Nixon’s own words.
Things haven’t really changed that much with the electorate buying snake oil from feckless politicians
cycle after election cycle, with Trumpo being the latest and most dangerous iteration.
36
I voted with regret for McGovern. Muskie would have been a better candidate and president. People talk about poor choices in 2016. McGovern/Nixon was a poor choice in 1972. At least we shortly got rid of Nixon. Can history repeat itself?
1
The perplexing and politically charged title of this very well written article has little to do with its content. Who is responsible for the heading--the author or a Times editor?
In any case, I am grateful for this appreciation of George McGovern, a brave and forthright Senator and man.
30
I would like to know who is writing the headlines for these essays in the "Vietnam '67" series. This essay has noting to do with any "Democratic Crack-Up", nor does the writer mention any "crack-up." Instead, Professor Knock lays out Senator McGovern's prescience in understanding that military adventurism abroad would hinder efforts toward a just society and economic development.
The previous essay was accompanied by a headline questioning whether the United States committed "war crimes" in Vietnam. There is no question that American troops did commit war crimes: My Lai was a terrible example of perhaps the worst.
Who is writing these inaccurate and dishonest headlines? This series is supposed to reprise the mistakes, the agony, and the follies of that terrible mistake that was the Vietnam War. Misleading Times readers by pretending that Senator McGovern led a "crack-up" of the Democratic Party, or that we don't know whether war crimes were committed there is outrageous.
Where are Times editors? And why are they turning a blind eye?
42
You seem an intelligent sort. So I suggest that you re-read the article again.
And because you disagree with the author's argument, doesn't mean the Times authors didn't do their job. And i suggest you look up the meaning of the word "dishonest."
Mc Govern's admonition for Americans to think critically about U.S. military and economic interventionism in the Third World ripped a chasm a mile wide through this country. My own father, a highly decorated WWII veteran, and I debated this very issue with both of us agreeing to disagree. My dad never wavered in his position that war making decisions made by our government were outside the boundaries of citizen protest. Sadly, Nixon's gigantic victory over McGovern in 1972 was in no small part a referendum on this issue. Within a few short years, it would prove to be a Pyrrhic victory when the US was forced to hastily abandon its military adventure in Vietnam leaving in its wake that same chasm within this country that remains to this very day.
15
This is a very fine appreciation of an unappreciated man. In 1967 I was 16. McGovern articulated concerns I was already beginning to feel about the wisdom of our intervention in Vietnam but didn't have the sophistication to express. In 1968 he tried to pick up the torch of the fallen Robert Kennedy in what he must of known was a doomed gesture but one that I admired. In 1972 I volunteered at a very low level for his campaign in Arizona. I think he would have made an outstanding President but the times were against him. Even if he'd run a perfect campaign he'd have lost badly.
One aspect of the man worth adding is how collegial he was in the Senate. His work with Senator Bob Dole on food security was a model of bipartisanship .
55
I completely agree. I campaigned for him as well. Never, before or since, has a presidential candidate so fully represented me and my ideals. I went to a rally once where he spoke - quiet words, with such genuine conviction and humanity that the audience couldn't help but leave inspired - with the knowledge that politics didn't have to trample principle, that America's strength came from our ideals, not our military might. That common decency matters.
It pains me to believe that his like may never come again to American politics; not because people like him don't exist any more, they do; but because a majority of Americans no longer value the things that he stood for.
47
Professor Knock offers us a timely retrospective on a man of towering principle who possessed clear insights into the bankruptcy of American foreign policy in SE Asia at a time when few such voices were raised in alarm. McGovern was a true statesman who dared stand for his convictions and offer warnings that went largely unheeded in our national nightmare that was Vietnam. His loss to Nixon in 1972 was, as history conformed, a lost opportunity to redirect the nation's priorities at home and abroad.
48
McGovern - a capable, intelligent, knowledgeable elected official - who wasn't embraced in the end by enough Americans because - just as in our current situation - many hate to be asked think, and worse, think critically about our country -- which is exploited as being unpatriotic by those who calculate their ability to access and hold power by any way necessary. AS did Nixon ( with Kissinger's assist) in 1972. As Trump and the GOP do now.
Imagine if in 1972 The US had gone with Massachusetts: how different our trajectory might have been.
63
On the contrary, McGovern might just have had an inkling that both the war would long continue, and that the US would continue to wage war unilaterally.
As had been warned, famously, by Ike.
Gotta use all that military hardware, otherwise, why produce it?
Thanks for a thoughtful piece.
54