But George McGovern Was Right

[WilliamPitt]

But George McGovern was right
By James Carroll, 1/6/2004

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/06/but_george_mcgovern_was_right/

THE DEMOCRATS see a hobgoblin under the bed, and his name is George McGovern. Low-grade panic is beginning to set in as pundits forecast a repeat of 1972: "As Massachusetts goes, so goes the District of Columbia." The prospect of "another McGovern" whets the appetite of Bush partisans while generating gloom and shame among Democrats. Howard Dean, for one, flees the association, while other candidates tar him with it.

Here's the problem: In 1972, McGovern was right. If there is shame attached to that election, it is America's for having so dramatically elected the wrong man. Apart from the rank dishonesty of Richard Nixon and his administration (a pattern of lies that would be exposed in Watergate), there were two world-historic issues that defined that election, and on both Nixon was wrong. 1972 was a fork in the road, and history shows that the United States made a turn into a moral wilderness from which it has yet to emerge.

Obviously, the first issue was the Vietnam War. Having been elected in 1968 promising "peace with honor," Nixon was well on the way to neither. Ground forces had been "Vietnamized" (the last US combat units would be withdrawn a few months after the election), but a savage air war was underway throughout Vietnam (Nixon had spread it into Cambodia, too, disastrously). After the traumas of 1968, Americans had willfully accepted Nixon's sleight-of-hand on Vietnam, and the news media cooperated. As one NBC television producer recalled, news executives decided that after 1969, the "story" would be "the peace negotiations, not the fighting."

By 1972, Americans did not want to hear about Vietnam. They pretended that Nixon had ended the war. "And he has ended the war," the NBC producer said that year, "because you don't see the war on the tube anymore. So the war has ended, though we are bombing the hell out of those poor people, more than ever." (On that media failure, see Godfrey Hodgson, "America In Our Time.") Five weeks after the election, Nixon would order the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, the most ferocious air attack since the firebombing of Japan. Instead of peace with honor, there would be defeat with disgrace -- after yet two more years of carnage. George McGovern faced the American people with the unwanted truth of what their government was doing. That is a source of shame?

...more...

[giantrobot_2000]

1. ...

But McGovern lost, no, he didn't lose, he was embarrassed.

[helleborient]

3. And when Nixon melted down 2 years later...Democrats took over

Liberal Democrats swept Congress and Jimmy Carter was elected 4 years later.

What was so awful about McGovern's campaign for Democrats?

[DemDogs]

12. Revisionism will not help us

Bush is not Nixon. (Which makes him more dangerous.) Carter was a reaction to Nixon. So what is a reaction to Bush II? Someone who really understands and takes into consideration what is happening in America to our families. Someone who will not divide us further.
I don't believe that would have been McGovern and I know it is not Dean.

[Goldmund]

4. I think that...

...the voters should have been the ones embarassed.

And the voters should be the ones to come away with a lesson.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

5. Well, would you rather lose with your principals intact, having fought

the good fight? Or would you rather win like Nixon did?

[demnan]

2. I was proud to work for George McGovern

although I was only 14 at the time and my parents voted for Nixon. Later they had to say I was right.

This gracious and able legislator, a war hero, has been demonized too much.

Isn't it like we Democrats to eat our own young and kick our own elders in the ass!

[adadem]

8. Am not bashing anyone but

your statement "This gracious and able legislator, a war hero, has been demonized too much." made me think you were speaking of John Kerry. Again not an insult or bash to any other candidate...but the names he has been called on DU...murderer, war monger, etc. should not be attributed to a man who, in the vast majority of situations, stood for everything a Dem should stand for.

[MysticMind]

9. McGovern wasn't that progressive

LBJ was more liberal.

[reachout]

6. Absoultely!

That is the sound of the truth being spoken.

The Democratic Party might have won the presidency with a pro-war candidate, but would it have made any difference to the dead Vietnamese and the dead American soldiers whether it was a Republican or a Democrat sending them to meet their maker?

Stand for what's right. Win or lose, it is a victory in itself.

[MysticMind]

7. Dean is like McGovern...

McGovern was alot more conservative than LBJ but realized that he could get the party's nomination by appeasing the anti-war activists.

Like McGovern Dean isn't getting most of his support from Democratic party activists but from non-Democratic anti-war protestors who also think the Democratic party is too pro-establishment.

Too bad they're going to get us a candidate who actually CHOSE to impliment policies the Democratic party opposes in Vermont. Even in liberal Vermont Dean supported a Republican-lite agenda.

[mzmolly]

10. Thankfully we have history to reflect upon.

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2003/12/29/tomo/index.html

[WI_DEM]

11. McGovern was right

About the war, about civil rights, about the corruption in the White House (some forget that he was actually campaigning in the fall of '72 against corruption) but the people didn't listen--much to their shame.

[PATRICK]

13. And Mondale was right by the numbers

And so it came to pass. And so was Wilson. And so was Truman. And what they warned about, what voters failed to hear because of the nature of election politics....As puzzling as it is, Americans don't want to be right but to choose the most assuring figurehead. Where does outrage and survival instinct come in? Only for sure when it is too late to have a choice. Only when it is academic and fodder for historians.

I should have fixed that ball joint, but I had places to go, money to spend on other things.

The best way we can help people is through effective leadership and an education to match, not sackcloth prophets who forget they need to win the contest not the argument. Mondale won the argument. He lost the election. Fault. Blame. Justification?

Yo, we are all going to die like fools. I think we can put up a better effort than turning into a voice in the wilderness.

[VelmaD]

14. That was wonderful

Just what I needed. Thank you for sharing it.

I think the part about the "we/they" mentality was dead on. It's scary to know that the current administration believes in a world of "us" and "them" and that they are actively working to recreate the fear and divisiveness of the Cold War.

We were past this. At least I sure thought we were. And I had some hope that we were gonna leave this world safer and saner for my niece and nephew. I didn't like it when people tried to scare me as a child with the boogey-man of Soviet nuclear weapons and it infuriates me that these same old bastards want to frigten my little ones with the notion that there are "terrorists" hiding under their bed.

When I'm having a bad day I almost think that if the American public hasn't learned a goddamn thing from history, if we haven't learned ti turn away from fear and hate and a neo-con agenda that would hold us hostage to corporate greed and perpetual war, then maybe we deserve what we get.

The author of that editorial hit the nail on the head - McGovern was too fucking right. And judging by the way he's still vilified, even by Democrats, he's still too fucking right. *huge sigh*

[edzontar]

24. Vilification of McGovern comes from the Dem-Lite DINO crowd

Not from tried and true loyalists and progressives.

[kentuck]

15. I am proud to say that I was right about Nixon...

in 1972. I wear my support for George McGovern as a badge of honor. When they say a candidate "looks like McGovern", are they saying the opposing candidate looks like Nixon? It's a very inapt analogy. Even to suggest a candidate may lose as many states as McGovern is to suggest that there was some ideological failing in the McGovern campaign. But the real failing was with Nixon and his supporters.

16. Hodgson

I see this article quotes Godfrey Hodgson's "America in Our Time."
Kudos. That is one of the best books I've read on that era & it has some very cogent arguments about the left (or lack of it) in America as seen from a European's perspective.

Also the thesis about McGovern being right should be repeated. Although there was no smoking gun until later, when the Watergate burglary broke, it had Nixon's fingerprints all over it. But the voters chose to ignore this. If they had paid attention, we never would have gone through the debacle of Nixon's resignation.
This is just as relevant these days. It would not surprise me at all to see Bush re-elected and then brought down afterwards because of malfeasance.

Maybe we can avoid repeating this type of opera by the simple expedient of not allowing him to continue in office.

[Crunchy Frog]

20. Unfortunately, I fear that

this country no longer has the system of checks and balances, and the independent media that would be able to bring down Bush the way that Nixon was brought down.

I fear that if we lose this one big, it won't matter that we were right, it will simply solidify the Republican hold on power, and lead us down the path of a permanent single party state.

So far, the Bush admin has done things that make Nixon look like Mother Theresa in comparison, from brazenly lying the nation into a major war, to outing a CIA operative out of vengeance, to covering up the facts about 911, and things that we probably don't even have an inkling about. All we have is a complicit media that does nothing but cover for him, and representatives on both sides of the aisle who are too comfortable, or too scared of losing their seats to call him on it.

I don't believe that any scandal will ever come up that will get the kind of traction to get Bush out of office, because the mechanisms are simply gone.

This is my extremely pessimistic assesment.

[edzontar]

17. I voted for McGovern in 1972

It was my first election, and is the proudest vote of my life.

[maxanne]

18. the first campaign I worked on

was the McGovern campaign - even though I was only 16. I was living in Oklahoma City - and we worked so hard out there. I attended Spiro Agnew rallies, Reagan rallies - it was all so strange and exciting.

Then I moved back home to my parent's house in Massachusetts, and watched my drunken mother cackle with glee on election night in 1972.

It was the first loss of my political life. I've never worked for a winning candidate.

[Armstead]

19. He was also right about Iraq more recently

McGivern wrotre a brilliant -- and angry -- piece about the Iraq War in The Nation earlier this year.

I'm too lazy to go and dig it up, but if you go to The Nation website you can find it.

McGovern is also still a staunch defender of what we like to think of as the best of demicratic Party liberal values.

Despite his mild manner he is a fighter in the good sense. I hate seeing him being besmirched by otehr Democrats today.

[worldgonekrazy]

21. So what is your point?

We should vote for Dean even though he will lose bigtime (a premise I do not agree with) because he is right?

Or that we should not vote for Dean just because he is right because he will lose big time?

Either one is stupid, IMO.

[chelaque liberal]

22. We should answer "McGovern was right"

every time someone makes makes the comparison and remind them of what we got instead.

[chelaque liberal]

23. Kick. Must read and forward

to all of our disheartened friends. McGovern was right and WE WERE RIGHT back then when we were young and passionate. How different things could have been.

[AP]

25. Just because you're right doesn't me you do not have an obligation to

use the smartest strategy to win an election.

I think Kennedy was right too (eg, when he didn't invade Cuba, and when he wouldn't full support Bay of Pigs with air cover, and when he made plans to pull out of Vietnam), but, to prevent the Democrats from being labled communists during an era when many people thought of the party as soft on communism, and when communism was a major hobgobblin for the right, Kennedy campaigned as being very anti-communist.

So, he could have campaigned as the president he became. But, he would have lost.