TheMillerCircle.org

It has now been 35 years since George McGovern ran against Richard Nixon for the presidency in 1972. Rosemary and I worked for McGovern and strongly resonated with his candidacy, even though it seemed like an uphill struggle. The Democratic party was in shambles from the 1968 convention in Chicago and Nixon seemed to have the upper hand all during the campaign. In many ways, it was a lot like the 2004 campaign between Bush and Kerry. At that point in time, pursuing the war, whether Vietnam or Iraq, seemed like a good safe idea. Nixon was able to hype the anti-communist rhetoric and the “domino theory,” just as Bush could hype the anti-terrorist mission in Iraq and the al-Qaeda connection. McGovern was treated by the press, just as Kerry was, as a kind of bumbling fool, where small mistakes got amplified in an attempt to paint the candidate as a rough outsider, the contrarian who didn’t deserve the presidency. It says something about America, that once a war is declared, even if it is declared unconstitutionally, as every conflict since WW II has been, the anti-war candidate is smeared by the press and treated as an aberation to the country. McGovern was painted by the press as an odd ball and his mistakes, such as dumping Thomas Eagleton as his VP running mate were amplified and made to appear as moves of incompetence, revealing an unreliable candidate. What was good about McGovern, was also true of Kerry. Both had been in significant combat roles, McGovern in WW II and Kerry in Vietnam. You would have thought that their opposition to the war would have special significance given their wartime experience, but that was painted as irrelevant and the candidates without war experience or even, in the case of Bush, with a history of dodging military obligation, were given the edge. Again those that declare the war or continue to pursue its original goal, have a huge advantage with the press and the public until the war crumbles, as the Korean war did for Truman, the Vietnam war for the Nixon administration (Gerald Ford) and now as Iraq has done for Bush II. McGovern, as a highly experienced WW II veteran had seen the ugly side of war, and his main ambition was to win the election, stop the insanity of Vietnam and put a halt to our knee jerk reflexes about communism. But, in the end, by November, McGovern had carried only one state, Massachusetts, in one of the most lopsided political victories in the history of our country. As McGovern stepped away from the presidential spotlight, he vowed to continue to bring the issues to the public that he felt very strongly about. Oddly enough, during the very campaign that McGovern lost so decisively, Nixon was sowing the seeds of his own destruction through his paranoia as exemplified by the Watergate break-in, which took place before the election.

Less than a year after the election Nixon’s vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was forced to resign and admit to criminal charges. The following year Nixon was forced to resign or face certain impeachment in the house and conviction in the senate. The war in Vietnam was eventually lost because it was a bad, misidentified war in the first place, just as our war in Iraq has been misidentified. For America, ideology continues to trump rational behavior. The problem in America is too much power put in the hands of inexperienced people. We give Presidents, who are supposed to be in charge of the world, the authority to begin a new conflict in which thousands if not millions will perish, yet we allow it when they have no experience and no real knowledge of the world. It’s like giving the keys to your powerful Maserati to your ten year old son for a spin around the block. Unlike the need for a driver’s license, where you must pass a test and prove that you have knowledge of the rules, the president doesn’t have to pass a test or display any real knowledge of the world. Given Bush’s success in winning two elections it appears that true knowledge of the world could prove to be a handicap for the presidency. After all, we are the world, or so we are told. and the press helps make it so.

This year McGovern turned 85. One of the biggest losers in American political history has continued to show how much of a winner he always was and continues to be. Recently, at a luncheon to honor McGovern and his life, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward appeared with him to celebrate the event and reminisce about McGovern’s life. The two reporters who were most closely associated in disproving Nixon when he said “I am not a crook,” attended the luncheon and added revealing comments about McGovern vs Nixon. McGovern always thought about what was best for the country and tried to develop a strategy to get there. Nixon always thought about what was best for his own career, and for him, his sense of advancement was always accompanied by a deep need to skewer his self-identified enemies. He had a long list of enemies. He made it into congress by fabricating comments of his opponents to make them sound like communists, even going so far as printing some of their comments, taken out of context, on pink paper to emphasize the point. He could never deal with real issues. He was welcomed in the Republican Party, because that’s the party that opposes things, rather than providing solutions and until the communist threat had run its course, they made it last for half a century. It was good for business and good for the military and good for the nation. Now Bush has given us a brand new mission which will never end as the “war on terror,” an ugly, poorly phrased and confusing description, but it seems to be just the right combination of words for the Republican party to confuse the nation for another fifty years. Most of the country runs around using the words “war on terror” or “war on terrorism” and no one seems to ever question what those words really mean. But for many of us this is proof enough to illustrate that the American Emperor has no clothes.
In the meantime, McGovern moved on and throughout the rest of his life has been silently eloquent. He currently heads an International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. At his luncheon, he made it clear that his experience as a combat veteran of World War II, where he flew numerous, risky missions over Nazi-occupied Europe, would have propelled him to give caution to George Bush before the invasion of Iraq. McGovern teamed with William Polk to write one of the best books I have read on the subject Out of Iraq from experienced observers and knowledgeable authors about how to end the war in Iraq in a satisfactory manner. A short book and an excellent read.
At the luncheon, McGovern pointed out that the war in Iraq costs $ 250 million each day and that just four days of what we spend on that war could fundamentally solve the problem of hunger and malnutrition in the world. We have the technology and distribution system to do it and if the world’s only superpower would simply commit to such a priority, people like McGovern would make sure it got done.

In the meantime, Bill Kristol has helped to make sure that Bush has a new way of casting the critics of the war as those in favor of the dangerous policy of “precipitous withdrawl.” All you need is a single new catchy phrase to make the war go away. What will it take to make Bush go away and take his neocons from palookaville with him.