McGovern's Patriotism -- And How the 2012 Campaign Dishonors It by Will Bunch.

[Douglas Carpenter]

The real George McGovern was nothing like the cartoon character of his conservative critics. Although McGovern wasn't the only man to seek the Oval Office with an exemplary military career, his record of war bravery was remarkable. In World War II, he flew dozens of missions over Austria, Germany and Italy and won the Distinguished Flying Cross after his plane was shot down over Czechoslovakia. His experiences in war inspired him to become a man of peace -- just as his experience growing up among dirt-poor farmers in the Great Depression inspired him to fight poverty and hunger.

It's hard to believe that 40 years ago, there was a candidate for president who supported a guaranteed national income for all Americans, national health care and legislation for clean air and clear water, but what's even more remarkable was that he was McGovern's opponent, the "conservative" incumbent Republican Richard Nixon. Which goes to show just how far to the extreme right the playing field has tilted. To be sure, McGovern supported all those things too, and, yes, his platform was certainly the most progressive of any major presidential candidate in my lifetime. He was also remarkably naive during his 1972 campaign of the extent that social unrest and programs ike school busing for racial integration were driving blue-collar whites out of the Democratic Party.

So with McGovern in mind, let's be as honest as possible: The 2012 campaign is a disgrace to his legacy and to all the things he believed in. McGovern's era was a time when fighting poverty was seen as an American crisis, an essential mission not just of "the government" but of a society that aspired to world leadership. It's shocking that in just four decades we've gone from that fundamental sense of decency and fairness to see the poor as a greedy entitled class with its hand out --to the extent that we talk about poverty at all.

But frankly, neither candidate in 2012 meets the McGovern standard for candor when it comes to Afghanistan -- both President Obama and Mitt Romney would rather run out the clock than explain why we're still there after 11 years. In 1972, McGovern called for a fair tax code that didn't reward millionaires, and yet that situation has gotten progressively (no pun intended) worse.

Forty years ago this summer, George McGovern urged America: "From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick -- come home, America. Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward." It is for that refrain that his speech is still remembered: "Come home, America."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-bunch/george-mcgovern_b_1998655.html

[regnaD kciN]

1. Let's be even more honest...

So with McGovern in mind, let's be as honest as possible: The 2012 campaign is a disgrace to his legacy and to all the things he believed in.

Pretty much everything in American politics for the past forty years has been a disgrace to McGovern's legacy and all the things he believed in.

[defacto7]

2. hear, hear!

But here we are... it's now. Where are we going?

[JI7]

3. stupid shit, why try to hang the shame on to Obama, we know how tough things are

just look at how that piece of shit Akin will still get 40 something percent of the vote.

Obama is trying to do things in a tough environment. we got a shitty media, far worse than in McGovern's time.

Mcgovern supported Obama.

[struggle4progress]

4. +