McGovern strikes back
I'll always have a warm spot in my heart for former Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic candidate for President in 1972. I was one of the organizers of Students for McGovern at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, in 1972, and you never forget your first, glorious, campaign disaster. Today's Hope College students are more likely to organize Students for Brownback or some other standard-bearer of the so-called Christian right, but it was a far different place back then. McGovern lost overwhelmingly to President Richard Nixon in 1972, but he was right on the issues then and he's right now. Nixon, of course, resigned in disgrace over the Watergate revelations in 1974.
McGovern has an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times today rebutting Vice President Cheney's attack on him in a recent speech in Chicago. Cheney, as usual, distorted the facts, and McGovern sets him straight. George McGovern won the nomination in 1972 because of his steadfast opposition to the Vietnam War. He likewise, and for the same reasons, opposes the Iraq War. But read it for yourself.
I've always wished a Democratic president could have found a place in his administration for McGovern, but that was not to be and now he's quite old, as all the World War II veterans are. But his quiet fire and decency have not died, and we can only look back with nostalgia to a glorious moment and what might have been.