Betty’s post points out one of the ironies of George McGovern’s life–a war hero whose patriotism was attacked for opposing the Vietnam War. Another of the great ironies is that someone as skilled in politics as McGovern lost as badly as he did in 1972. Before McGovern, there was no Democratic Party in South Dakota. When he became Executive Secretary of the party in the early 50s, no Democrat had been elected to Congress or the Senate since well before World War II. McGovern traveled the state for years building up a grassroots organization, maintaining a card index of the Democrats he met and encouraged in every little town in the state. The organization he built paved the way for years of Democratic success in a state that, by the numbers, should never have elected a Democrat to federal office.
People looking at McGovern for a legacy see his pacifism, and his work in the fight against hunger around the world. But I wish people would look at the way he won elections. The formula is fairly simple to lay out, but difficult to execute. It begins with keeping track of every individual who ever marked “Democrat” when they registered to vote, and by energizing local party organizations by paying attention to the hard workers there, and giving them encouragement that elections won’t, since there are a lot of places in states like South Dakota where no Democrat will ever get elected to the state legislature.
The McGovern formula for policy is that you have to cut loose what local residents just won’t accept–for example, even the liberal George McGovern never advocated gun control as an elected official. You become the number one advocate for policies that benefit your region (in his case, farm subsidies). You find new places where the interests of your region and the policies you advocate can work together: McGovern’s lifelong devotion to feeding the world is a great example of that. It opened a new market for South Dakota corn and wheat, while advancing the cause of peace, and avoiding the isolationism that was the default position of a lot of politicians of the era prior to McGovern’s. And then you vote as a liberal on everything that isn’t a dealbreaker.
The difference between McGovern and the Blue Dogs is that Blue Dogs spend their time telling you how much they aren’t liberals, while the McGovern pitch is “I’m a liberal but I’m also a better advocate for the things we both value.” Perhaps the word “liberal” is so devauled that this approach no longer works, but I don’t see a lot of Blue Dogs left, so maybe some kind of modified McGovern approach is worth a shot.
Also, too: the Sioux Falls Argus Leader has a great McGovern package this morning.
Cacti
Nice idea in theory, but a bunch of rot in practice.
Cutting loose “what local residents just won’t accept” is how we end up with laws like DOMA.
SiubhanDuinne
Thank you for this. I guess McGovern’s undoubted political gifts and skills get lost in the memory of the 1972 loss to Nixon (and the unfortunate Eagleton decision) as well as his anti-war views, commitment to ending world hunger, and advocacy for mental health issues. What you describe is basic contact management — it’s easy to describe and to understand why it’s important, but it requires regular maintenance to make it work.
WereBear
Sounds like McGovern’s way isn’t just a good way. It’s the ONLY way.
mistermix
@Cacti: Then you must be very satisfied that John Thune now holds McGovern’s seat in the Senate.
Ben Franklin
Normally, politics is like metal refining; the shit rises to the top. Every once in a while you find someone like George. It’s not often enough, but the system does allow someone with smarts AND integrity to rise above the crap.
WereBear
I disagree. A Democrat in the legislature is a Democrat who gets on committees, votes our way when it is important, and can possibly persuade others.
If the local folk won’t elect you if you support a local issue, we have to bend the curve; second.
Losing accomplishes NOTHING.
Southern Beale
Oh my god. Ted Haggard has come out in favor of gay marriage.
max
Adios, old warrior.
Given that Obama’s foreign policy is ‘collapsing’ (or so I am informed this morning), I am guessing George is due to get kicked in the face a bunch shortly and/or would have endorsed Romney.
(As in just seen: McGovern really libertarian hero by… Nick Gillespie.)
max
[‘I suppose we should be grateful that they waited under he was dead to post it.’]
ThresherK
Wondering on the flipside if the last respectable Republican (to fail politically) has already passed on.
Isn’t there a graphic somewhere, akin to egg/larva/pupa/adult, which shows us the lifecycle of thinktanks rehabilitating a disgraced Republican’s reputation?
Elizabelle
From NYTimes item, “The Lost World of George McGovern”
You can see how they had some stuff loaded to run, but not edited fully:
Elizabelle
mistermix: thank you for the link to the Argus Leader. I’ll read it tonight; looks like a great package.
Now, it’s a beautiful fall Sunday in Virginia. Off to find some more Democratic voters.
Hungry Joe
@Cacti: Every now and then you have to bring out an old saw, dust it off, and use it again:
“Politics is the art of the possible.”
Which isn’t to say that you can’t also think long-term, and work on creating a gradual arc of change bending in the direction you’d like on currently toxic issues — gun control, say. But to come right out and stand for handgun registration, for limits on or prohibition of certain kinds of ammunition, etc., is to lose the election every time, just about everywhere. Dodging the subject isn’t selling out — it’s politics.
And it’s not all that complicated; it’s more like the craft of the possible.
WereBear
@Southern Beale: I am stunned, but not surprised.
It took me a while to realize it, but it is just like abortion. It’s not a moral issue.
It’s a button to press that pours out hate and fundraising.
Ben Franklin
@Elizabelle:
Yeah. McGovern lost 49 states to Nixon in ’72. Who was involved in the campaign?
Bad luck Bob Shrum, who was working with ‘Ibogaine’ Muskie before his campaign imploded.
Add a disingenous Veep who fails to disclose his psychiatric treatment with electro-shock, and voila
McGovern trusted his people too much. That is all.
gelfling545
@Southern Beale: And strongly in in support of separation of Church & State. What a concept!
Stand by for the hate to be flood down on him.
mistermix
@Ben Franklin: Gary Hart was McGovern’s campaign manager in 1972. He ran a brilliant primary campaign. Eagleton sunk the ship, no matter who else was involved.
Ben Franklin
@mistermix:
And who was responsible for vetting Eagleton? Betcha’ money it was Shrum.
Violet
The word “liberal” is ripe for reclaiming by the left. Everything goes around and it’s about time for it to be a point of pride to be a liberal, just as Republicans have made it a point of pride to be conservative.
Liberals and progressives and other folks on the left would do well to turn “conservative” into a dirty word–to everyone. “Conservatives are people who only look backward.” That kind of thing. Then “liberal” can become people who are forward-looking.
Ben Franklin
@Ben Franklin:
Guess I’ll have to take that back. Pre-’72 there was no vetting process. Ugh.
gbear
@Southern Beale: I hope somebody hook him up with conservative talk radio in MN before the election. We’ve got a constitutional ammendment on the ballot this fall that needs to go down.
Violet
@gelfling545: No “true Christians” care what Ted Haggard has to say. They wrote him off the minute he got caught with the massage boy or whatever it was.
mistermix
@Ben Franklin: You’re using 2012 glasses to look at a set of 1972 facts. Eagleton is the reason vetting was invented. Back then, it was a few “no skeletons in your closet” questions. Eagleton gave his word that there weren’t and McGovern named him as the running mate, after a few others backed out. You can’t blame Shrum for what happened, even if he was involved.
Ben Franklin
@Violet:
folks on the left would do well to turn “conservative” into a dirty word
See Libertarian, and Classical Liberal, both dodges away from the term for many like Jeff Goldstein and Glenuendo.
Ben Franklin
@mistermix:
See my 11:55
Baud
@Violet:
I thought so in 2008, but then the fight started about whether the Democratic Party was liberal enough to support. Until that fight ends, we’re not reclaiming any words.
Violet
@Ben Franklin: Yeah, but it needs to be a “dirty word” in public. Talk radio turned “liberal” into a dirty word for the average person. Even people who voted Democrat wouldn’t want to be known to be (gasp!) liberal.
That’s what needs to happen to “conservative.” It needs to be come something no one wants to admit being in polite society. I think it’s a harder job because many people acts conservatively in their lives and separating that from politically conservative is a challenge. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
The word “conservative” can be equated with “old, stuck in the past, refusing to change, mean, cruel, uncaring, racist, misogynist.” Those are things the Republicans already are. Make “conservative” mean those things and no one will want to be known as a “conservative.”
Kathy in St. Louis
If there is a life after this one, this is one of the men I’d like to have a chance to talk with. I worked for his election in 72, even sent him money…$100 bucks, which was a lot of money for a mother of three who didn’t work.
My 7 year old daughter and I cried the night he lost…and we’re not big criers. He was such an honorable man, and he lost so badly. He did it with real dignity, and was treated as a pariah by the Democratic Party, which always made me sad.
Violet
@Baud: Yeah, I know. Stupid Democrats. Always doing the circular firing squad thing when opportunity presents itself on a silver platter for them to win.
PanurgeATL
@Violet:
There’s a problem with this, though, and it’s that liberals themselves seem preoccupied with the past, too. For them, it’s the JFK or FDR past as opposed to the DFHs of the late ’60s and ’70s. In the wake of the conservative turn of the late ’70s and ’80s, liberals decided, essentially, to keep their heads down until Things Changed; their own preoccupation with the past (again, defined as “before 1967”), even in the name of “re-invention”, strikes me as an expression of that, and once they took that stance they got so wrapped up in it that it became their default cultural mode. The problem with this is that (1) it validates hippie-bashing and (2) “waiting for the world to change” supposes that people will somehow just get tired of conservatism and come around on their own. Not only is that not that good a bet, but for it to work in the first place liberals can’t be keeping their head down, bashing hippies, or joining in the project of re-inventing the past. They have to keep the flag flying, the way conservatives did between 1964 and 1980.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Cacti:
It may be encroaching middle age making me forgetful, but IIRC DOMA was passed when both houses of Congress were controlled by the Republicans. You can argue that Clinton shouldn’t have signed it, but I don’t think it was a Dem initiative.
cokane
It’s weird, you can’t find anyone who voted for Nixon in ’72. Seems like none of the survivors from that age group voted for Nixon that year, and yet he won in a landslide. I always found this fact strange.
joel hanes
@Ben Franklin:
McGovern trusted his people too much
He was also the candidate only of half the Democratic party. Organized labor was not on board with the anti-war agenda — to the point where anti-Viet Nam protestors sometimes got roughed up by “hardhats” (in the argot of the day). The McGovern wing’s opposition to the war and support for anti-discrimination laws alienated working-class cultural conservatives, who later became Reagan Democrats, and then just Republicans.
So McGovern got no love or support from his nominal allies in the unions.
grandpa john
@Kathy in St. Louis:
Ben Franklin
@joel hanes:
Hard hats; gag ! Reagan Dems; gawd
It culminated in Jackie Presser’s endorsement of RWR in ’84.
karen marie
@Southern Beale:
This cannot be said often enough.
dmbeaster
McGovern is just another example of how veterans who are not warmongers are demonized by the war-loving element of our culture. These are the truly sick people who deserve condemnation for their profoundly un-American worship of war (or else all too American, depending on your view of our culture). And yet they have been largely successful by demonizing those who do not worship the war gods, even though they served with highest distinction. It is the greatest form of slander that people such as McGovern were treated this way since they knew better than anyone the true meaning of war.
It is why people like Cheney and Bush deserve the most vicious scorn as they were proponents of this vision of war (while not serving themselves). The treatment of Iraq war dissenters was not all that different from what McGovern got, and the demonization was similarly successful.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Clinton was following the Mistermix plan of finger-in-the-wind politics of the moment.
Cacti
@WereBear:
A Democrat who follows the Mistermix plan is a conservadem who votes like Heath Shuler.
jefft452
@joel hanes: “Organized labor was not on board with the anti-war agenda”
Popular myth,
but the main factor in lack of Union support for McGovern was the lack of McGovern support for Unions
Cacti
@mistermix:
And you must lament that we don’t have more Nelsons and Liebermans.
Baud
@jefft452:
Can you elaborate? I don’t know much about that era. Thanks.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Cacti: So sorry to offend your purity. Rot like yours is how you end up a permanent minority party.
jefft452
@Baud:
McGovern opposed the repeal of Taft-Hartley
(or at least scuttled advancing repeal in committies)
Cacti
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Sorry to offend your sensible centrism. Trying to make nice with Pubs has worked so well for the past 30+ years.
Just look at PPACA for a recent example of Republican comity.
dslak
There are practical considerations for Dem reps to make, relative to their region. There are different constituencies to be please in different places.
Unlike the GOP, the Dems can’t really use cultural anxieties to mitigate disagreements among those groups, because those very groups being used to generate that anxiety are part of the Democratic coalition.
The problem with Blue Dogs isn’t that they sometimes vote against the party, but when they make a big show of it. Given the nationalization of politics however, it’s inevitable that representatives in divided districts will be forced to take stands on issues irrelevant to overall policy yet motivating to moderate or conservative voters these Dems need to win.
The main point being, the “purity troll” vs. “Blue Dog” spat fails to address the larger issue, which is how to get more and better Democrats into office. You need both groups for that.
Lurking Canadian
@mistermix: The writeup in Nixonland makes it seem like being McGovern’s running mate was about as appealing as an angry rattlesnake to most of the high ranking Denocrats of the time. Eagleton was just the one left holding the rattlesnake when the music stopped.
Baud
@jefft452:
Thanks. Did the unions support Nixon or just sit it out? If they supported Nixon, what did he offer that McGovern didn’t?
ppcli
People looking at McGovern for a legacy see his pacifism,
McGovern wasn’t a pacifist. He viewed some wars as necessary, for example WWII, which as you note he fought bravely in. He felt that people were to quick to go into needless and therefore immoral wars for bad reasons, but that isn’t pacifism.
jefft452
@Baud: AFL-CIO did not endorse anybody
Most Locals either held their nose and endorsed McGovern or endorsed no one
Few endorsed Tricky Dick
As for membership?, well Nixon won 60/40 – a lot of those 60% were Union men.
My own dad couldn’t vote Republican, and wouldn’t vote for McGovern. He was anti-war, pro integration, pro women’s movement – but labor rights came first*
You have to remember that Nixon was not Scott Walker. The Taft wing of the R’s may have been rabid anti labor, but Nixon wasn’t the standard bearer of that wing like AuH20
*(he ended up intentionally throwing away his vote on a 3rd party – Curtis LeMay of all people
I told him “Dad! if WW3 breaks out It’s going to be all your fault”, he replied “It’s not like there is any chance he could win”)
opie_jeanne
@cokane:
I did. I freely admit that I voted for Nixon in 1972.
I was 22, it was the first National election where I was qualified to vote, and I voted for Nixon for several reasons, one of them being that I hadn’t yet broken away from the way I was raised but another big one was the Eagleton issue, and I wasn’t very sophisticated when it came to politics back then. We weren’t for the Vietnam War, we wanted it to end and believed that Nixon would end it.
After the election I ran across a thoughtful article about McGovern (possibly in a “women’s magazine” of all places) that made me wish I had seen it and more like it before the election; I felt a real twang of guilt about how I had voted when I read it.
Growing up, my parents always thought I was a rebellious teenager, based on absolutely no rebellious behavior at al other than a stubborn streak of cynicism; my real rebellion began when I was an adult, a productive member of society, and started looking seriously at all of the other candidates, the ones without an R behind their names.
joel hanes
@Baud: 4
anent McGovern’s support for unions:
FYWP won’t let me post a link to the Lawyers Guns and Money thread with some facts, nor to the excellent Joan Walsh analysis on Salon.
jefft452 is correct that McGovern did not support repeal of Taft-Hartley, and that Labor resented that.
Some unions did pull for Nixon; the AFL/CIO didn’t formally back anyone, but privately they pressured the locals not to turn out for McGovern.
But I think McGovern’s campaign ultimately foundered on the rocks of race politics and militarism:
The Archie Bunkers of the early ’70s were not about to suport any anti-war candidate, ever, and the George Wallace supporters were leaving the Democratic Party en masse over forced integration of public schools (not just in the former Confederate states, but e.g. in Boston).
IMHO, Meany made a huge error in not supporting McGovern: Nixon led to Reagan, and all those union laborers ultimately lost their secure well-paying jobs because the Republicans successfully convinced working people to vote their fears and hatreds on culture-war divisions, and so got them to vote for the union-destroying Republican brand for going on two generations now.
oldswede
In the early 1980s, George McGovern bought and operated a hotel in Stratford, Connecticut, called the Stratford Inn (do not confuse it with Bob Newhart’s).
Interestingly, it was directly across the street from the main gate of Sikorsky Aircraft. Sikorsky is a major military contractor and we here in Stratford are treated to frequent overflights of helicopters being tested.
Anyway, Senator McGovern was often at his hotel and he initiated a series of public forums on issues of the day. One that I was able to attend featured Sergei Sikorsky, son of the inventor of the helicopter, Igor Sikorsky. He spoke at length about civilian, peacetime uses of helicopters and the company’s role in a peacetime economy.
George McGovern truly liked being able to contribute to the life of the community. I had the opportunity to meet him several times and found him to be genuinely genial and outgoing.
oldswede
Marc
@Elizabelle: “Now, it’s a beautiful fall Sunday in Virginia. Off to find some more Democratic voters.”
Us too! Hope you had a good canvass.
jefft452
@oldswede: “we here in Stratford…”
Hi neighbor!,
I lived in the lordship section until 2 years ago
“In the early 1980s, George McGovern bought and operated a hotel in Stratford, Connecticut,”… where he promptly broke the union that was there under the previous owners, I remember it well
Don K
@Cacti:
Huh?! There’s a hell of a difference between George McGovern and Heath Shuler.
Shuler surrendered on everything. McGovern picked his battles, and won three terms in the Senate (along with two in the House, IIRC).
BillCinSD
@mistermix: Daschle did NOT lose because of that, but nice try to justify your own loss of principles.
BillCinSD
@joel hanes: Also McGovern was the first chair of the committee that redefined how the primary election process. This moved power away from the party elite like Meaney and gave a much bigger voice to women and minorities, which the mainly white mainly guy union people hated.
Don K
@Baud:
IIRC, the national AFL-CIO sat it out (along with many of the member unions). They concentrated their efforts on the Senate and House. The Teamsters supported Nixon. The UAW supported McGovern, but that didn’t do a lot of good in the year when the issue in the Detroit suburbs was school busing.
Don K
My opinion is that McG (or any Dem, really) was doomed in 1972. Nixon appeared to be winding down Vietnam successfully. The economy was is okay shape, thanks to Arthur Burns’ goosing of the money supply (we didn’t pay the price in inflation and then recession until ’73-’74). McGovern’s missteps (Eagleton, the $1,000/person guaranteed income proposal, the fact he could be successfully caricatured as a pacifist), just added to the scale of the loss and sent it into the epic range.
Dream On
Nobody in US Presidential politics talks like this anymore, as “naive” as it might seem. And to think – he was a senator from South Dakota.
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1972/young-vets
mistermix
@BillCinSD: George McGovern was always willing to compromise some of his principles to stay in office. So what?
PanurgeATL
@dmbeaster:
The “worship of war” is a matter worth discussing on its own. I have an idea that it has to do with the fact that the U.S.A. was born in war, and beyond that it’s only still one country because of a war–a war which it seems might’ve been at least smaller if we’d had it in 1820 instead of 1861. Add Munich on top of that and you’ve got an outlook which is based on two precepts:
1. Any given war is inevitable
2. Any given war will be worse if put off
People can say they hate war all they want, but if they just accept it as something you, um, can’t fight, it doesn’t matter.