George McGovern: He deserved better by Joan Walsh

[DonViejo]

In 1972 the populist war hero was destroyed by Richard Nixon's dirty tricks and Democrats' self-destructive fear

BY JOAN WALSH

More than 30 years before Karl Rove and friends Swift-boated Vietnam War hero John Kerry, Republicans managed to turn a decorated World War II combat veteran, a devout Christian and a son of the Depression-era Plains heartland into the elite, effete counterculture candidate of “amnesty, abortion and acid.” But when Republicans destroyed the 1972 presidential candidacy of George McGovern, who died early this morning at the age of 90, they had more than a little help from Democrats.

Years after Robert Novak tarred the South Dakota senator and Democratic nominee with favoring “amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot” (over time “pot” got replaced with the alliterative “acid”) in a column attributing the quote to an unnamed Democratic senator, the right-wing columnist revealed that his source had been Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton – who briefly served as McGovern’s running mate in 1972. Ironically, Eagleton himself probably sealed McGovern’s losing fate when it was revealed that he’d undergone electroshock therapy for depression and hadn’t told the campaign (he then stepped aside for Sargent Shriver). Eagleton’s double shot at McGovern took its toll, and the Democratic nominee lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia that year.

McGovern’s loss is a case study in how low Republicans would go, and how much Democrats would do to help them, in those turbulent post-60s years of despair and liberal self-destruction.

The son of a Methodist minister, McGovern grew up in Depression-era Mitchell, South Dakota and never forgot the raw Dustbowl desperation he witnessed there. He volunteered for the Air Force at the start of World War II and won the Distinguished Flying Cross; just as influential in his career was the hunger he saw in Italy as the war came to a close, which led to his lifelong work on hunger relief. He returned home and went to divinity school on the G.I. Bill but switched to history, doing his doctoral dissertation on the 1913 Colorado coal strike, which shaped his lifelong advocacy for labor. He supported Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party presidential bid in 1948, but moved away due to the predominance of what he derided as “fanatics,” Communists and extremists.

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