Share Your Memories: Senator George McGovern Dies at 90

Ken Stone October 21, 2012 at 02:37 pm

I met George twice -- once at age 18 when he spoke at a high school near my home in Omaha in 1972 (where I shook his hand) and again in La Mesa in 2009, when he spoke at local Democratic Club and he autographed a little sign I brought: Don't blame me. I voted for ------->. (See photo with my profile). I was among the first wave of 18-year-olds eligible to vote after a constitutional amendment lowered voting age. I'll wear that vote as a badge of honor forever. He would have ended a war and saved the lives of tens of thousands.

Doug Curlee October 21, 2012 at 03:23 pm

i interviewed him three times, i think, over the years..
he was a man who believed in what he thought and said..but he may have simply been TOO liberal for his times.. even when a liberal voice was badly needed in the national discourse.. he was a good man in the wrong place at the wrong time.. doug

Craig Maxwell October 21, 2012 at 04:45 pm

Remember when McGovern compared Ho Chi Minh favorably to George Washington, took trips to Cuba and called Castro his "good old friend"?

Scott H. Kidwell October 21, 2012 at 11:50 pm

"Saved tens of thousands of lives had he been elected in 1972"? According to the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial there were 640 deaths in 1972, 168 in 1973, 178 in 1974, 160 in 1975 the year the war officially ended and another 768 through 1979. the largest single year of deaths was 16,589 in 1968.
http://thewall-usa.com/summary.asp

Helen Ofield October 22, 2012 at 12:40 am

Sen. McGovern was a great man. As a young organizer in the mid-Hudson Valley effort to elect him president, I was stricken by the mishandling of the mental illness attack on Sen. McGovern's chosen running mate, Sen. Thomas Eagleton and by the attacks on Vietnam soldiers. We were shooting "Different Sons" in 1970, the first documentary about returned Vietnam combat veterans. Desperately troubling to face screaming war protesters, American Legion protestors spitting on paraplegic Vietnam vets, and then the awful sight of weeping families bereft of their sons and daughters. We and the world have changed since Vietnam, which was our longest war since the American Revolution (8.5 years). McGovern had integrity. You may castigate or praise, but he never wavered in his beliefs. Remember that, as a young man, he was a decorated WW II bomber pilot and a true patriot.

Libi Uremovic October 22, 2012 at 10:45 am

no craig i don't remember that ...but i would have been about 10 years old so 'playboy' articles were not something i 'remembered'
what i remember about that era was that every night the news would list the names of the dead from the nam war... the list would scroll for about 2 or 3 minutes... the commie scare was 40 years old craig..... now we're a 3rd world country that has to beg money from the commie and muslim countries every day... ...every day we beg money from commies and muslims.....so it's time you get on your knees and show them the respect deserved because of the financial power and control they have over us... 'commies are bad'.... yet you insist that they own and control our country... pick a side craig..

Libi Uremovic October 22, 2012 at 10:48 am

"...American Legion protestors spitting on paraplegic Vietnam vets,...'
now the freaks protest at their funerals....i don't think we're making progress...

Dennis Lepak October 22, 2012 at 10:48 am

I still have the little gold FMBC lapel pin his campaign sent me. For McGovern Before Chicago.

Ted October 22, 2012 at 01:22 pm

In a supreme irony, it was the Democrats who got us into the Vietnam War and then, with a bit of political jujitsu, attempted to use the war issue against Nixon, who had inherited the mess. They were unsuccessful in 1972 but got their revenge in 1974 with the fall of the Nixon presidency. They promptly used their large congressional majority to strangle the supply line to the South Vietnamese army just ahead of a massive North Vietnamese invasion.

PwmCwzy October 22, 2012 at 01:48 pm

Scott - Did you add all the Viet Nam vets whose lives were LOST to drugs and horrible treatment once they returned home? There are many LOST still out here among the homeless and those still unable to cope with what they went thru. I believe the treatment of our vets would have been much different under Sen McGovern if he had been elected president.

Helen Ofield October 22, 2012 at 02:02 pm

Among the many interesting books on the Vietnam War is "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement" by Gerald Nicosia. You can also visit https://www.newpacificproductions.com for a Vimeo clip from "Different Sons," which tracked the famous Operation RAW march to Valley Forge 42 years on the Labor Day weekend, 1970. We miss the wisdom of leaders like Pres. Eisenhower, who warned against getting into a war in Asia. Vietnam became our unresolved nightmare.

Scott H. Kidwell October 22, 2012 at 02:04 pm

PwmCwzy,
Just commented on Ken's assertion of lives saved and not on any guess of how things might have turned out differently for those you mention had Senator McGovern won the election.

Jimmy Sanders October 22, 2012 at 02:09 pm

Years after the good Senator left office he tried his hand in private business. His views caught a does of reality.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/10/19/george-mcgovern-an-appreciation

Things I Learned October 22, 2012 at 02:16 pm

Nixon was President in 1968 John Kerry said it was seared seared in his memory.

Helen Ofield October 22, 2012 at 02:16 pm

Dear Jimmy,
Thank you for sending this insightful perspective, which I hadn't read until now. Sen. McGovern is quoted in the piece with that same honesty and candor that made him such an unusual figure in D.C. Perhaps you and other readers might be familiar with the books of the late Chalmers Johnson ("Blowback," "The Sorrows of Empire", etc.) about the U.S. military-industrial complex. They, too, are an eye opener about cost, size, intransigence.

Things I Learned October 22, 2012 at 02:18 pm

Yes I remember all the American Legion protesters spitting on Vietnam vets that is exactly the way it happened.

Scott H. Kidwell October 22, 2012 at 02:37 pm

President Johnson must have been channeling his inner Tricky Dicky until January 20, 1969 when Nixon took office.

Jake Mahamood October 22, 2012 at 02:48 pm

He was just another "soft commie" like the fraud we have in White House now. It is a dream of weak people to have less than a strong leader.

Dennis Lepak October 22, 2012 at 02:58 pm

Actually FMBM
Not gold but silver. Not Chicago but Miami.

Dave Patterson October 22, 2012 at 03:54 pm

George W. Bush was a "strong" leader. Too bad he didn't have brain, and his handlers were sociopaths like Cheney and Rove. That's what strong leaders get us, lots of wars and rich people getting richer. How's the war economy going for you so far?

Things I Learned October 22, 2012 at 04:04 pm

It's not helping Barack Obama as much as he hoped he better hurry up that tail won't wag the dog all by itself.
www.obamaclock.org

John Galt October 22, 2012 at 04:12 pm

I was too young to vote in 72 (close), and have nothing to really say about him, however he was not the best person for the job at the time. Even my very liberal parents voted for Nixon in 72.
For the record; Vietnam was a war that Johnson put the US in.

Things I Learned October 22, 2012 at 04:39 pm

Talk about a war on women hey remember when McGovern campaign manager and future Democratic candidate Gary Hart said the reason the campaign didn't have more women in top positions was:
“Women don’t have the experience or ability to organize. . . Do you lower your standards in the midst of a campaign like in the midst of brain surgery and try to equalize social ills?”

Craig Maxwell October 22, 2012 at 07:45 pm

Libi,
NON SEQUITUR: 1) An inference that does not follow from the premises; specifically : a fallacy resulting from a simple conversion of a universal affirmative proposition or from the transposition of a condition and its consequent 2) A statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said

Things I Learned October 22, 2012 at 08:09 pm

you sound like a rethuglikkkan

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