taking sides: George McGovern v. Barry Goldwater

Goldwater paused and said, "When Sandra was nominated for the Supreme Court, I heard some speech from Falwell saying all good Americans and all good Christians needed to protest against this, because a woman couldn't be on the Supreme Court. I wanted to get on the air and make a speech saying that all good Americans and all good Christians should come together and kick Falwell in the ass."

For that alone, hero.

Great question. I think many like McCain for the above reasons, although I don't think McCain compares to Goldwater.

But hey, McCain actually criticizes fellow Republicans and has a mind of his own!

he was? That sounds more like Reagan.

(I was noting his trip to China in particular)

he was? That sounds more like Reagan.

Well, I'm guessing Reagan continued the legacy, so to say.

Underrated at what? Being a complete fucking bastard?

Nixon's foreign policy was well demonstrated in Cambodia, Chile, Laos, Greece, Indonesia, and Angola.

http://www.coliseumbooks.com/events/012406event.htm

"In your guts, you know he's nuts."

(xpost)

yeah, but Goldie had better slogans.

Not doing well:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57532911/ex-presidential-nominee-george-mcgovern-in-hospice/

timing of this is rather bitterly ironic.

Sure, Nixon was the arch-enemy of social services, NPR, and art funding, and pretty much triggered that whole school of thinking for the modern age.. on the other hand, he's a bit underrated when it came to foreign policy.

wow..this comment is like through-the-looking-glass level

this one's pretty hard to fathom too:

Nixon, for all his bad qualities, may have been the closest thing to Goldwater we've had for a president.

it's like it was Opposite Day on ILE.

anyway Nixonland makes a hash out of decades of Washington Establishment thought that McGovern was a Scary Lib.

these excerpts from mcgovern's acceptance speech are pretty astonishing, especially compared to the anodyne stuff we got from obama in '08:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/george-mcgovern-13780097

compare the results. nixonland actually lowered my opinion of mcgovern - i'd always imagined (tbh - most knowledge of 72 campaign post-muskie and bremer were came in footnotes to watergate) an honorable man who showed that the type of 'genuine' progressive the internet left dreams of seeing head a ticket would get blown out of the water even when running against a candidate hubert humphrey was nearly capable of beating. instead you could argue that mcgovern 72 didn't show the inherent unelectability of progressive politics, that mcgovern himself was just a horrible candidate that ran an incompetent campaign and had a disastrous convention (really, maybe i'm just immunized to chicago 68 but 72 seemed a comparable fiasco - a real 'holy shit' moment for me reading nixonland) and was running against a lunatic able and willing to commit several felonies not only to win but to run up the score. that said mcgovern >>>>>>>>> goldwater, even w/ mcgovern's ceacescu endorsement. also since nixonland has come up so much: anyone read the perlstein goldwater book?

Yes on the Goldwater book.

You know who mentions McGovern most often now? Concern trolls on the right. Yesterday Mona Charen in The Corner called him an "honorable" decent man with whom she disagreed violently. Yes, he was a terrible politician in every sense. How could he not be -- a candidate called to reckon with social forces beyond his capacity to control against a sociopath who, as Hal Holbrook said in ATPM, was set up by Nixon's people because he was easier to beat than Muskie (a comparative hack, the ultimate Washington insider [e.g. Tower Commission]). But I understand why quixotic love burns brightly for him.

well, mcgovern didn't have the party establishment behind him the way obama did -- mayor daley hated him, 'democrats for nixon,' et al.

humphrey was one of the first to congratulate nixon iirc! plus mcgovern helped kill the old smoke filled room nomination process (one reason i think he might've gotten 72 dem nod even w/o nixon sabotaging muskie). i remember nothing of his 84 campaign but tbh all i vaguely recall of 84 dem primaries is that it was really mondale vs hart, that it was the only time i have taken part in a political poll (i said i supported hart), that jesse jackson made it interesting, and that john glenn played the wes clark/rick perry role of 'looks good on paper/will never come remotely close to the nomination'. then again i was in fourth grade. i do remember that i played reagan (i did a KILLER reagan impersonation), that my debate strategy consisted of interrupting the kid who played mondale and answering his questions before he could (ahead of my time here) and also of vaguely accusing him of being a werewolf (kid who played mondale had no response to that!). i remember being giddy the morning after election night cuz i somehow felt it meant i had 'won' but feeling shocked and outraged in kindergarten when reagan won cuz carter was from ga and i was somehow convinced that america had just elected ronald mcdonald president. which in a way they had.

Let me guess: you were 10, your opponent was 9-1/2, and you promised not to exploit his youth and inexperience for political gain.

Remember the scene in Nixonland that Shakespeare could have scripted: Nixon, after accepting Humphrey's congratulatory phone call, feels generous and praises Humphrey's campaign in '68.

perlstein obit mentions that a year.3 later he made the earliest announcement in history

i meant "country" up there

altho either way

Joan Walsh theorizes that labor taking down McGovern is the source of Dem malaise.

When I asked labor historian Jefferson Cowie in an interview whether he could identify one crucial moment in the Democratic Party’s post-’60s unraveling, I expected him to fudge like a good academic, but he surprised me; he had one: “The 1972 decision by organized labor…to destroy McGovern. Because that solidified a moment. It said, ‘We can’t work with the unions,’ to the left and to the women’s movement and the rest. It said organized labor is just about guys like George Meany, and Mayor Daley, it’s really the same monster, we can’t deal with them. And that creates a natural alliance between the New Left and the New Democrats, who were much more sympathetic to important issues of diversity than to labor.”

McGovern’s campaign manager, Gary Hart, would pioneer the idea of “New Democrats” who owed no allegiance to labor. When he ran for Senate in 1974, Hart titled his stump speech “The End of the New Deal.” That same year he proclaimed that his new generation of Democrats were not just ”a bunch of little Hubert Humphreys,” slandering labor’s longtime champion. A young Bill and Hillary Clinton got their start on the McGovern campaign, and it’s hard not to see the impact of McGovern’s defeat on Clinton’s careful centrism and Democratic Leadership Council politics. The DLC was formed in direct reaction to Walter Mondale’s 1984 loss, which was even more lop-sided than McGovern’s. But it was designed to eradicate McGovernism from the party – to define Democrats as tough on crime and welfare, friendly to business, hawkish on defense – everything McGovern supposedly was not. It also involved the party running away from its proud New Deal legacy, and defining itself more as what it wasn’t than what it was.

don't get me started.

for the nobody's-perfect file: McGovern considered Fidel a "friend."

this 2008 piece by rick perlstein is outstanding:

http://www.democracyjournal.org/7/6572.php?page=all

WSJ re-runs a regulation-skeptical piece by McGovern from 92, about trying to run a hotel. it's paywalled, but Scott quoted most of it:

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=17208

er, Scott Sumner. not in a first name basis with the guy

Kinda too bad McGovern has to spend his now-RIP thread in a perpetual tussle with Barry Goldwater. George may not have been Eugene Debs, but he was one of the less objectionable people to rise to national political prominence in recent times.

NRO's Mona Charen gleefully recalled those anecdotes. I'll quote her so you won't have to: "He once tried his hand at running a bed and breakfast and was appalled by the government regulation that made running a business so difficult. He was honest enough to say that if he had known this before serving in Congress, it would have altered his votes on a number of issues."

aaaand here's an excerpt from the column:

I wish during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made be a better U.S. Senator and a more understanding presidential contender. . . . We intuitively know that to create job opportunities, we need job entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off these opportunities

I think that's mostly good, but he stretches things sometimes:

Losing campaigns–especially thumpingly, head-spinningly losing campaigns–are objects of talismanic power in the minds of politicians. Their response is almost pre-rational. No wonder partisans of the center and right still invoke McGovern whenever they can to scare Democrats who would stray from their preferred ideological course. In 2003, Al From and Bruce Reed wrote, “What activists like [Howard] Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home.” A Democrat was quoted in the New York Times the next year worrying that John Kerry was veering left on Iraq–”[c]oming off like George McGovern.” When Ned Lamont won the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary, Jacob Weisberg recalled in the Financial Times how McGovern lost 49 states because of “his tendency toward isolationism and ambivalence about the use of American power in general.”

history buff types might invoke mcgovern but I think 'the modern political narrative' starts w/ carter and reagan. neither party has anybody they wanna talk about from jfk to reagan. if there's somebody who serves the role of 'warning of not being a centrist' it's dukakis. also ned lamont is...a weird example...cause...you know...

btw per the Joan Walsh piece: fuck Jimmy Carter.

(and Tom Eagleton obv)

"He once tried his hand at running a bed and breakfast and was appalled by the government regulation that made running a business so difficult. He was honest enough to say that if he had known this before serving in Congress, it would have altered his votes on a number of issues."

Gingrich said that almost word-for-word on one of the shows this morning--they even have talking points for spontaneous, heartfelt remembrances.

True about the extraordinary circumstances of McGovern's late entry in '68. I checked Nixon, and he announced in Feb. '68. With Perry's August 2011 announcement pretty much considered last-minute by today's standards, I think it's fair to say there's been a major shift in the timeline of campaigns.

^that penetrating analysis we know from baseball

we should rebuild american politics around hatred for jimmy carter, it's the only thing that unites everybody

why didnt you kick your fucking TV in when you heard Newt Gingrich talking about George McGovern? What I hate worst when a better breed of person dies. Have happily avoided any Bam/Clintons "statements" as yet.

I realize it's obvious. Which is why, when I brought it up, I didn't think it required more than two words and some ellipsis. Geez.

Yes, I kicked in my TV. I was outraged. I live on the edge of outrage.

walsh, of course, can't resist a gratuitous swipe at gene mccarthy, who always gets to be the villain of these 'when did the democrats lose the average joe?' pieces:

Unlike McCarthy: the Minnesota senator and some of his supporters in the party’s liberal anti-war wing arguably helped elect Nixon, by withholding support from Humphrey until Johnson announced he would stop his bombing campaign on the eve of the election, and even then, support was grudging.

gee, what a bastard. you'd think they had some kind of problem with bombing people.

By the way, Morbius--a lot of the penetrating analysis you bring to political threads (again, and again, and again, and 173 more times for good luck), much of it is stuff I'm guessing a lot of us figured out when we were 17. Then we moved on.

it's fair to say that 1648 was way different from 1968.

I saw a Domino's commercial today and shot my refrigerator.

"moved on" by becoming a 100% horserace fan, eh clem?

you should ghostwrite From David Bowie to David Gergen, Morbs

Oh, Jesus. "Horserace fan" translates as "interested in who wins"--yes, I am, and I don't think I'm any more poll-obsessed than a number of people on here. I meant moved on by not thinking that such observations as politicians engage in hypocrisy, politicians sometimes do awful things because of political calculation, and politicians are sometimes not as far apart as they pretend to be are stunning insights that we and we alone have figured out--and therefore need to keep agitating all the stupid people who don't share our wisdom. Again, like a 17-year-old.

i wish i was 17, i could actually get the baseball game with an antenna then.

someone remind me why morbs spending 99% of his posts being a dick and attacking other posters is hunky dory no consequences but another poster crossing a line once in response is obv worth a tempban? not questioning the action on the latter just noting the root. is it just pity? is the working theory 'wait it out, this problem will take care of itself'?

Your definition of "attacking" really covers the waterfront.

Also. FUCK. POLITICS. THREADS. BYE.

o noes

again not remotely defending ham cuz jesus christ was that over the line and god knows i spend a nice plurality of my posts being a dick but this isn't even a 'he has good days and he has bad days' scenario. nearly every fucking thread he posts on derailed for this song and dance.

Most of your jibes I shrug off, Morbius. The one above seemed unwarranted. I had a two-word aside expressing amazement at how late McGovern entered the '68 race; DLH, correctly, gave that some context; I conceded the point, noted Nixon's relative (to today) late entry, and, using Perry as a point of comparison, summed up the obvious, that things have changed. No big deal--without DLH's posts, I never would have expanded on the aside. Why you felt the need to chime in sarcastically, I don't know.

You can watch McGovern's acceptance speech on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orx63ix1y-o

Something I think worth noting on a day when McGovern is, happily and understandably, being deified is that he says nice things about George Wallace in the speech: "Governor, we pray for your full recovery so you can stand up and speak out for all of those who see you as their champion." Much of that, I'm sure, came out of simple decency as Wallace recovered from the shooting. But I'm just as sure that part of it was political; McGovern would need those Wallace supporters in the upcoming election, regardless of the reasons they may have supported Wallace (which he papers over). That's simply a fact of life when it comes to politics.

My vote for our next mod goes to whoever promises to implement a variant of "flag post" where you can click on a post where someone claims to be leaving a thread, and it doesn't let them post to that thread ever again. Or for like two weeks, or whatever.

mcgovern won in 72 in large part due to a much greater awareness and knowledge of nomination process he helped set up. carter's win in 76 and obama in 08 came thru similar greater knowledge and exploitation of process (eg obama getting less votes than hillary in nevada caucus but coming out of it w/ more delegates). there are other parallels between the three obv. old dem establishment was gonna blanch at working w/ new dems no matter what, esp since their guy didn't win, but i think that 72 being first year of modern process, which removed alot of power from the old dems and gave it to 'the ppl', played a huge role in old dems taking their ball and staying at home.

The Karp book that J.D. and I cite often opens with Jimmy and Rosalynn walking the inaugural parade, having defied party satraps...who promptly decided that they'd destroy him (and Carter helped).

Obama ran circles around Hillary in terms of understanding the intricacies of the caucus states, definitely. But if (Alfred's favourite) Halperin's book is to be trusted, some of the Democratic establishment, such as it is, publically backed Hillary while maneuvering behind the scenes for Obama.

well reid practically pushed him into the race. i can remember when kerry lost in 04 a hillary run seemed bold and possibly too far left. by 08, after four more years of bush and dems winning a wave election for once in the interim, she seemed (to many and as it turned out most of us) hopelessly safe and centrist. i'm curious how the party reacts if obama does lose - i can't imagine them immediately renouncing obama the way they did mcgovern and carter.

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/10/22/george-mcgovern-and-the-1972-election

It doesn't seem that likely that he'll lose in a landslide, though?

If Obama loses, the Dem party will retreat still further into timidity, presenting no obstacle whatever to our new Republican overlords. Many dems will actively assist in the dismantling of the ACA and of Medicaid. The biggest clue will come early on, in the leadership fight to see who replaces Pelosi and Reid.

Anybody know where I can find a transcript of the full "this chamber reeks of blood" speech?

Macbeth.

Ha

Seriously, this thing is hard to track down

Nevermind:

http://thestory.org/sidebars/senator-george-mcgovern-speech

There's simply no comparison between George McGovern and Bernie. I love McGovern, but he didn't have the same grassroots support, the same energy, the same movement. McGovern was beholden to Party orthodoxy. Bernie isn't. US history is fascinating when you read it. pic.twitter.com/mxSRCW6R2j

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) February 23, 2020

Also, McGovern consistently ran at least 15+ points behind Nixon, dirty tricks notwithstanding. Nixon was popular!

yes he was

Still is. 53,000 Twitter followers.