What's wrong with this picture?
Posted on 02/06/2004 6:07:35 AM PST by brbethke
I had not expected to be involved in this year's presidential campaign. But almost daily my name is mentioned by some commentator, usually as a warning of what candidates should avoid. One gets the impression that the campaign of 1972 is the only one whose shortcomings are worth noting.
Is the central lesson of '72 that George McGovern lost everywhere except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia? If so, what is the lesson of 1984, when my friend Walter Mondale lost everywhere except Minnesota and the District? Is the lesson of these campaigns that Midwestern liberals can never reach the White House?
I don't think so. Mondale and his Minnesota mentor, Hubert Humphrey, who, like me, was defeated by Richard Nixon, were U.S. patriots of unquestioned integrity and ability. (They might say the same about me.)
I wonder whether even a Jefferson or Washington could have defeated Ronald Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in '72. Any Democrat running against these heavily financed incumbent presidents would probably have lost (though some still think that the Democratic contenders Mondale and I defeated in winning the nomination would have been stronger than we were in the general election).
Isn't the big lesson of 1972 this: Beware a president whose campaign dishonesty got him expelled from office shortly after his landslide win? Is winning an election worth dishonoring the nation? Am I the one who should be ashamed about 1972?
I bested 16 other contenders in winning the nomination, with primary election victories in 11 states, including New York and California. Critics overlook the shooting of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, who otherwise would have run as an independent, taking perhaps 20 million votes from Nixon. The formula for Nixon's landslide victory was the Wallace vote added to the Nixon vote. Critics also overlook my opponent's unprecedented campaign spending. Most of his negative television ads were designed to paint me as an extreme radical uninterested in the defense of the country. This even though I was a decorated combat bomber pilot in World War II, while Nixon was stationed far from battle.
I'm proud of my war service, but today I'm more interested in peace. I certainly don't want any more wars like the one in Iraq — a country that posed no threat to us and had nothing to do with Sept. 11, 2001. There seem to be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But here at home, 100,000 Americans die each year from alcoholism. Multitudes are suffering from clinical depression or obesity or other disorders. And in the world at large a child dies from hunger every five seconds. Those are the weapons of mass destruction that disturb my rest.
I have endorsed retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark for the Democratic nomination. If my opposition to the Vietnam War made some think I was unfit for the presidency, I give you Wes Clark, a four-star general who was a twice-wounded hero of the Vietnam War and supreme commander of the Kosovo intervention, which saved thousands from a genocidal ethnic cleansing.
If you can't go for Clark, I give you John Kerry, also a hero in Vietnam, an excellent senator and a strong leader who would be a good president. Sen. John Edwards also is a bright light in our party. And we all know that Howard Dean has courageously blazed the way for Democrats these past two years.
It has always seemed to me that the leaders who are the quickest to send our young to war are those who have never known war themselves.
I'm a man of peace, worried about the future of my seven grandsons as the war clouds swirl. But guess what: It was my 18-year-old granddaughter, Marian, just graduated from high school in the Florida Keys, who promptly enlisted in the U.S. Air Force.
When I asked her whether she thought that would please her mother — my dear deceased daughter Terry — she said, "Well, Grandpa, that's what you did." How could I refute that?
So I just said what I now say to you: "God bless you and let's hope for the best."
What's wrong with this picture?
Well, that shows that McGovern is just as clueless now as he was in 1972.
Yeah, I see that Mondale is a real winner when it comes to "unquestioned integrity"....
Why does Mr. McGovern remind me of that scene in The Two Towers with Gollum talking to himself...
McGovern-Press readers in Minnesota are my friends!
Press Readers-You don't have any friends! Nobody likes you!
SC Delegate-Senator Mcgovern, you want us to do all they[ the North Vietnamese] demand and then beg them to give back our boys?
Sen. Mcgovern-I'll accept that. Begging is better than bombing.
I think he's preparing to demand a late recount.
It was $1,000. And I remember some entrepreneur (right wing, no doubt) printed up gag $1,000 bills with a a picture of McGovern in the center.
As a side note; In 1972 I was 18 and this my my first opportunity to vote. And I voted for McGovern! Yes, I used to be young and liberal. (My wife says now, I'm just old and cranky)
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