A preacher's son and from South Dakota populist, he is remembered today, if at all, as an ineffectual candidate buried in an electoral landslide of epic proportions. He deserves far more than that.
Excoriated by Nixon as being weak on defense, he was a WWII combat pilot who flew 35 combat missions over Germany and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for landing his crippled plane and crew safely. He didn't wear his military service as a badge of courage or a qualification for elective office. Like many other true battle veterans, we never heard much about it from him. It was just something that he was called upon to do - so he did it - and then he went home.
He was a historian and author with a Ph.D in history and served in the House for 4 years and the Senate for 18 more. During his years of public service and the ensuing decades thereafter, he worked to better the lives of farmers, reduce childhood hunger here and abroad, expand school lunch programs and increase literacy. He was a crucial figure in moving the political party nominating processes from out of the smoke filled deal brokering back rooms to open conventions. And when he was done, he went home.
His Presidential campaign was as grass roots as he was and doomed from the start, but he pulled no punches and battled to the end. And for those relatively few who voted for him, it is a ballot cast of which we can always be proud.
For his contributions, he was honored in 2000 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Now, as the time of his passing nears, the finest way to honor him is with his own words:
This is from his 1972 Democratic nomination acceptance speech:
"We are entering a new period
of important and hopeful change in America, a period comparable to those eras
that unleashed such remarkable ferment in the period of Jefferson and Jackson
and Roosevelt. Let the opposition collect their $10 million in secret money
from the privileged few and let us find one million ordinary Americans who will
contribute $25 each to this campaign, a Million Member Club with members who
will not expect special favors for themselves but a better land for us all. In
the literature and music of our children we are told, to everything there is a
season and a time to every purpose under heaven. And for America, the time has come at last.
This is the time for truth, not falsehood. In a Democratic nation, no one likes
to say that his inspiration came from secret arrangements by closed doors, but
in the sense that is how my candidacy began. I am here as your candidate tonight
in large part because during four administrations of both parties, a terrible
war has been chartered behind closed doors. I want those doors opened and I
want that war closed. And I make these pledges above all others: the doors of
government will be opened, and that war will be closed.
So let us give our — let us
give your country the chance to elect a Government that will seek and speak the
truth, for this is the time for the truth in the life of this country. And this
is also a time, not for death, but for life. In 1968 many Americans thought
they were voting to bring our sons home from Vietnam in peace, and since then
20,000 of our sons have come home in coffins. I have no secret plan for
peace. I have a public plan. And as one
whose heart has ached for the past ten years over the agony of Vietnam, I will
halt a senseless bombing of Indochina on Inaugural Day. There will be no more
Asian children running ablaze from bombed-out schools. There will be no more
talk of bombing the dikes or the cities of the North. And within 90 days of my
inauguration, every American soldier and every American prisoner will be out of
the jungle and out of their cells and then home in America where they belong.
And then let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood
of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship
abroad.
We have had our fury and our
frustrations in these past months and at this Convention, but frankly, I
welcome the contrast with the smug and dull and empty event which will
doubtless take place here in Miami next month. We chose this struggle, we
reformed our Party, and we let the people in. So we stand today not as a
collection of backroom strategies, not as a tool of ITT or any other special interest.
So let our opponents stand on the status quo while we seek to refresh the
American spirit. I believe that the greatest contribution America can now make
to our fellow mortals is to heal our own great but very deeply troubled land.
We must respond — we must respond to that ancient command: "Physician,
heal thyself."
From secrecy and deception in
high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it
weakens our nation; come home, America. From the entrenchment of special
privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful
labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the
aging poor and the despair of the
neglected sick — come home, America. Come home to the affirmation that we have
a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward. Come
home to the belief that we can seek a newer world, and let us be joyful in that
homecoming, for this "is your land, this land is my land — from California
to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters — this
land was made for you and me." So let us close on this note: May God grant
each one of us the wisdom to cherish this good land and to meet the great
challenge that beckons us home."
This is a trailer from a documentary about Senator McGovern entitled, "For One Brief Shining Moment"
George McGovern in 1972,with a young campaign worker, Bill Clinton.
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