There is sad news tonight. Former Senator George S. McGovern, who ran as an antiwar candidate against Richard Nixon in 1972, is near death. His family reports that he was admitted to hospice a few days ago and is “unresponsive”.
“He’s coming to the end of his life,” his daughter, Ann McGovern, told The Associated Press. She declined to elaborate but noted that her 90-year-old father has suffered several health problems in the last year.
Because the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, lowering the national voting age to eighteen, had been ratified in 1971, McGovern was the first vote that I and many of my contemporaries had the chance to cast. Like millions of others who had spent years demonstrating and organizing to end the Vietnam War, 1972 was our first chance to vote for the political positions we believed in. It was also, for me, the first of many votes for unsuccessful candidates. While the results showed that the election probably could not have been won, even against Richard Nixon, McGovern was an inspirational character.
In a speech on the Senate floor in September 1963, McGovern became the first member to challenge the growing U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.[99][100] Bothered by the Buddhist crisisand other recent developments, and with concerns influenced by Vietnam historian Bernard Fall, McGovern said:
“ The current dilemma in Vietnam is a clear demonstration of the limitations of military power … [Current U.S. involvement] is a policy of moral debacle and political defeat … The trap we have fallen into there will haunt us in every corner of this revolutionary world if we do not properly appraise its lessons.”[74][99]
While McGovern is apparently still alive, let's take a moment to remember him, and to rededicate ourselves to working for progressive change.
McGovern was a man of intelligence, courage, and integrity.
I too cast my first presidential vote for McGovern, although my first vote was in the primary for Shirley Chisolm.
I guess I am a little older than you guys. I cast my first presidential vote in 1968 for Richard Nixon. Four years later, I was on Hubert Humphrey’s presidential primary field staff. When I first came on board the Humphrey team, Ed Muskie was the chief concern, but as Muskie ran into problems, George McGovern became the major rival for HHH.
HHH won the Ohio Primary in 1972, but McGovern came in a very close second. The day after the vote, I attended a news conference held by McGovern’s campaign manager, a handsome guy with great hair: Gary Hart, who would go on to bigger things.
In 1972, my brother and I voted for McGovern, and we assumed my parents both voted for Nixon. One day, my mom and I were watching the Watergate hearings on television, and my mother was complaining bitterly about Nixon. I said, “Ma, if you dislike Nixon so much, why did you vote for him?” Mom replied with a whisper, ” Shhh, don’t tell your father. I voted for McGovern.”
Go, Mom!!!! And, blessings to you, George McGovern.
… at least on my own. I was too young to vote, but when I heard he was speaking in my town, I asked for a ride. Unfortunately, my mother had to be somewhere else at the time – she could pick me up, but not drop me off.
I wanted to see him so badly, I scrounged all the change I could find, even digging under the sofa cushions, and learned how to arrange a cab ride. So it was my first independent foray and my first ever cab ride.
George McGovern is among the best we have.
Yes, he was really the best, and people can learn more about him by watching a documentary that aired on Democracy Now! yesterday which was all about the 1972 McGovern campaign. I was so impressed rehearing McGovern’s speeches and everything he said, about the waste of war spending, and the need to attend to human needs and economic justice at home. It is still all so true.
For me, it was my very first presidential vote, and the second campaign I worked on (the first was on Eugene McCarthy’s campaign, but I was still too young to vote then). I worked on the McGovern campaign in the Spring and Fall of 1972 (in Massachusetts, the only state he won).