George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian and South Dakota politician who was a U.S. representative and three-term U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election.
"Senator McGovern" redirects here. For other uses, see Senator McGovern (disambiguation).
George McGovern
Thomas A. Forbord
Committee established
Committee abolished
Position established
October 21, 2012 (aged 90)
Sioux Falls, South Dakota, U.S.
Progressive (1948)
1943–1945
McGovern grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he became a renowned debater. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Forces upon the country's entry into World War II. As a B-24 Liberator pilot, he flew 35 missions over German-occupied Europe from a base in Italy. Among the medals he received was a Distinguished Flying Cross for making a hazardous emergency landing of his damaged plane and saving his crew. After the war he earned degrees from Dakota Wesleyan University and Northwestern University, culminating in a PhD, and served as a history professor. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1956 and re-elected in 1958. After a failed bid for the U.S. Senate in 1960, he was a successful candidate in 1962.
As a senator, McGovern was an example of modern American liberalism. He became most known for his outspoken opposition to the growing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He staged a brief nomination run in the 1968 presidential election as a stand-in for the assassinated Robert F. Kennedy. The subsequent McGovern–Fraser Commission fundamentally altered the presidential nominating process, by increasing the number of caucuses and primaries and reducing the influence of party insiders. The McGovern–Hatfield Amendment sought to end the Vietnam War by legislative means but was defeated in 1970 and 1971. McGovern's long-shot, grassroots-based 1972 presidential campaign found triumph in gaining the Democratic nomination but left the party split ideologically, and the failed vice-presidential pick of Thomas Eagleton undermined McGovern's credibility. In the general election McGovern lost to incumbent Richard Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in U.S. electoral history. Though re-elected to the Senate in 1968 and 1974, McGovern was defeated in his bid for a fourth term in 1980.
Beginning with his experiences in war-torn Italy and continuing throughout his career, McGovern was involved in issues related to agriculture, food, nutrition, and hunger. As the first director of the Food for Peace program in 1961, McGovern oversaw the distribution of U.S. surpluses to the needy abroad and was instrumental in the creation of the United Nations-run World Food Programme. As sole chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs from 1968 to 1977, McGovern publicized the problem of hunger within the United States and issued the "McGovern Report", which led to a new set of nutritional guidelines for Americans. McGovern later served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture from 1998 to 2001 and was appointed the first UN global ambassador on world hunger by the World Food Programme in 2001. The McGovern–Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program has provided school meals for millions of children in dozens of countries since 2000 and resulted in McGovern's being named World Food Prize co‑laureate in 2008.
Military service
Groundschool and trainers
Soon thereafter McGovern was sworn in as a private at Fort Snelling in Minnesota.[30] He spent a month at Jefferson Barracks Military Post in Missouri and then five months at Southern Illinois Normal University in Carbondale, Illinois, for ground school training. McGovern later maintained that both the academic work and physical training were the toughest he ever experienced.[31] He spent two months at a base in San Antonio, Texas, and then went to Hatbox Field in Muskogee, Oklahoma, for basic flying school, training in a single-engined PT‑19.[31] McGovern married Eleanor Stegeberg on October 31, 1943, during a three-day leave (lonely and in love, the couple had decided to not wait any longer).[32] His father presided over the ceremony at the Methodist church in Woonsocket.[33]
After three months in Muskogee, McGovern went to Coffeyville Army Airfield in Kansas for a further three months of training on the BT‑13.[34] Around April 1944, McGovern went on to advanced flying school at Pampa Army Airfield in Texas for twin-engine training on the AT‑17 and AT‑9.[34] Throughout, Air Cadet McGovern showed skill as a pilot, with his exceptionally good depth perception aiding him.[31] Eleanor McGovern followed him to these duty stations, and was present when he received his wings and was commissioned a second lieutenant.[34]
Later education and early career
Upon coming home, McGovern returned to Dakota Wesleyan University, aided by the G.I. Bill, and graduated from there in June 1946 with a B.A. degree magna cum laude.[1][61] For a while he suffered from nightmares about flying through flak barrages or his plane being on fire.[62] He continued with debate, again winning the state Peace Oratory Contest with a speech entitled "From Cave to Cave" that presented a Christian-influenced Wilsonian outlook.[61] The couple's second daughter, Susan, was born in March 1946.[61]
McGovern switched from Wesleyan Methodism to less fundamentalist regular Methodism.[61] Influenced by Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel movement,[8] McGovern began divinity studies at Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, near Chicago.[63] Among Methodist seminaries, Garrett tended towards social involvement paired with a theologically liberal approach, and many of the students there leaned towards pacifism.[64] McGovern was influenced by the weekly sermons of a well-known local minister, Ernest Fremont Tittle, and the ideas of Boston personalism.[65] McGovern preached as a Methodist student supply minister at Diamond Lake Church in Mundelein, Illinois, during 1946 and 1947, but became dissatisfied by the minutiae of his pastoral duties.[8][63] In late 1947 McGovern left the ministry and enrolled in graduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, where he also worked as a teaching assistant.[66] The relatively small history program there was among the best in the country[67] and McGovern took courses given by noted academics Ray Allen Billington, Richard W. Leopold, and L. S. Stavrianos.[68] He received an M.A. in history in 1949.[1][2]
McGovern then returned to his alma mater, Dakota Wesleyan, and became a professor of history and political science.[1] With the assistance of a Hearst fellowship for 1949–50, he continued pursuing graduate studies during summers and other free time.[1] The couple's third daughter, Teresa, was born in June 1949.[69] Eleanor McGovern began to suffer from bouts of depression but continued to assume the large share of household and child-rearing duties.[70] McGovern earned a Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University in 1953.[1][nb 4] His 450-page dissertation, The Colorado Coal Strike, 1913–1914, was a sympathetic account of the miners' revolt against Rockefeller interests in the Colorado Coalfield War.[8][70] His thesis advisor, noted historian Arthur S. Link, later said he had not seen a better student than McGovern in 26 years of teaching.[72] McGovern was influenced not only by Link and the "Consensus School" of American historians but also by the previous generation of "progressive" historians.[67] Most of his future analyses of world events would be informed by his training as a historian, as well as his personal experiences during the Great Depression and World War II.[73] Meanwhile, McGovern had become a popular if politically outspoken teacher at Dakota Wesleyan, with students dedicating the college yearbook to him in 1952.[74]
Nominally a Republican growing up, McGovern began to admire Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II, even though he supported Roosevelt's opponent Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential election.[75][76][nb 5] At Northwestern, his exposure to the work of China scholars John King Fairbank and Owen Lattimore had convinced him that unrest in Southeast Asia was homegrown and that U.S. foreign policy toward Asia was counterproductive.[16] Discouraged by the onset of the Cold War, and never thinking well of incumbent president Harry S. Truman, in the 1948 presidential election McGovern was attracted to the campaign of former vice president and secretary of agriculture Henry A. Wallace.[78][79] He wrote columns supporting Wallace in the Mitchell Daily Republic and attended the Wallace Progressive Party's first national convention as a delegate.[80] There he became disturbed by aspects of the convention atmosphere, decades later referring to "a certain rigidity and fanaticism on the part of a few of the strategists."[81] But he remained a public supporter of Wallace and the Progressive Party afterward.[76] As Wallace was kept off the ballot in Illinois where McGovern was now registered, McGovern did not vote in the general election.[82]
By 1952, McGovern was coming to think of himself as a Democrat.[83] He was captivated by a radio broadcast of Governor Adlai Stevenson's speech accepting the presidential nomination at the 1952 Democratic National Convention.[84] He immediately dedicated himself to Stevenson's campaign, publishing seven articles in the Mitchell Daily Republic newspaper outlining the historical issues that separated the Democratic Party from the Republicans.[84] The McGoverns named their only son, Steven, born immediately after the convention, after his new hero.[70][85][nb 6] Although Stevenson lost the election, McGovern remained active in politics, believing that "the engine of progress in our time in America is the Democratic Party."[75] In early 1953,[85] McGovern left a tenure-track position at the university[74] to become executive secretary of the South Dakota Democratic Party,[87] the state chair having recruited him after reading his articles.[84] Democrats in the state were at a low, holding no statewide offices and only 2 of the 110 seats in the state legislature.[87] Friends and political figures had counseled McGovern against making the move, but despite his mild, unassuming manner, McGovern had an ambitious nature and was intent upon starting a political career of his own.[88][nb 7]
McGovern spent the following years rebuilding and revitalizing the party, building up a large list of voter contacts via frequent travel around the state.[8] Democrats showed improvement in the 1954 elections, winning 25 seats in the state legislature.[90] From 1954 to 1956 he also was on a political organization advisory group for the Democratic National Committee.[87] The McGoverns' fifth and final child, Mary, was born in 1955.[91]
U.S. Senator
1962 election and early years as a senator
In April 1962 McGovern announced he would run for election to South Dakota's other Senate seat, intending to face incumbent Republican Francis H. Case.[87] Case died in June, however, and McGovern instead faced an appointed senator, former lieutenant governor Joseph H. Bottum.[87] Much of the campaign revolved around policies of the Kennedy administration and its New Frontier;[112] Bottum accused the Kennedy family of trying to buy the Senate seat.[101] McGovern appealed to those worried about the outflux of young people from the state, and had the strong support of the Farmers Union.[101] Polls showed Bottum slightly ahead throughout the race, and McGovern was hampered by a recurrence of his hepatitis problem in the final weeks of the campaign.[101] (During this hospitalization, McGovern read Theodore H. White's classic The Making of the President 1960, and for the first time began thinking about running for the office someday.[75]) Eleanor McGovern campaigned for her ailing husband and may have preserved his chance of winning.[113] The November 1962 election result was very close and required a recount, but McGovern's 127,458 votes prevailed by a margin of 597, making him the first Democratic senator from the state in 26 years[112] and only the third since statehood in 1889.[101]
When he joined the Senate in January 1963 for the 88th Congress, McGovern was seated on the Senate Agriculture and Forestry Committee and Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee.[112] On the Agriculture Committee, McGovern supported high farm prices, full parity, and controls on beef importation, as well as the administration's Feed Grains Acreage Diversion Program.[114] McGovern had a fractious relationship with Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, who was less sympathetic to farmers; McGovern's 1966 resolution to informally scold Freeman made the senator popular back in his home state.[114] Fellow new senator Edward M. Kennedy saw McGovern as a serious voice on farm policy and often sought McGovern's guidance on agriculture-related votes.[115] McGovern was largely inactive on the Interior Committee until 1967, when he was given the chairmanship of the subcommittee on Indian affairs.[116] However, Interior Committee chairman Henry M. Jackson, who did not get along with McGovern personally or politically, refused to allow McGovern his own staff, limiting his effectiveness.[116] McGovern regretted not accomplishing more for South Dakota's 30,000 Sioux Indians, although after a McGovern-introduced resolution on Indian self-determination passed in 1969, the Oglala Sioux named McGovern "Great White Eagle."[116]
In his first speech on the Senate floor in March 1963, McGovern praised Kennedy's Alliance for Progress initiative but spoke out against U.S. policy toward Cuba, saying that it suffered from "our Castro fixation".[112] In August 1963 McGovern advocated reducing the $53 billion defense budget by $5 billion; influenced by advisor Seymour Melman, he held a special antipathy toward the doctrine of nuclear "overkill".[117] McGovern would try to reduce defense appropriations or limit military expenditures in almost every year during the 1960s.[118] He also voted against many weapons programs, especially missile and antimissile systems, and also opposed military assistance to foreign nations.[118] In 1964 McGovern published his first book, War Against Want: America's Food for Peace Program.[112] In it he argued for expanding his old program, and a Senate measure he introduced was eventually passed, adding $700 million to the effort's funding.[119]
Preferring to concentrate on broad policy matters and speeches, McGovern was not a master of Senate legislative tactics, and he developed a reputation among some other senators for "not doing his homework".[8][120] Described as "a very private, unchummy guy", he was not a member of the Senate "club" nor did he want to be, turning down in 1969 a chance to join the powerful Senate Rules Committee.[8][120] Relatively few pieces of legislation bore his name, and his legislative accomplishments were generally viewed as modest, although he would try to influence the contents of others' bills.[94][120] In his political beliefs, McGovern fit squarely within modern American liberalism; through 1967 he had voted in accordance with the rated positions of the ADA 92 percent of the time, and when lacking specific knowledge on a particular matter, he would ask his staff, "What are the liberals doing?"[42][94][121]