One of America’s finest progressives was South Dakota Senator George McGovern. In 1972, he won the Democratic nomination for president. Unfortunately,  he was trounced by Richard Nixon in the general election.

In many ways, George McGovern is best known as an anti-war candidate; someone who had the courage and fortitude to stand up against the folly of the Vietnam War. He was an early opponent of the war. In a speech on the Senate floor in September 1963, McGovern became the first member to challenge the growing U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. This was two months before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As time went on, opponents called him “McGivern” because they thought that was a pacifist and he wanted to give victory to Vietnamese communists.

McGovern was far from being a pacifist. He opposed the war in Vietnam because, to quote a future president, he thought it was a “dumb war.” Twenty years prior to his warning about Vietnam delivered on the floor of the Senate,  he was in the U.S. Army,  training to fly the B-24 bomber. Like most of his generation, “the greatest generation,” he was eager to fight for his country and its allies against the totalitarian regimes in Germany and Japan.

The B-24 was the biggest American bomber at the time and a difficult plane to handle, because its initial versions did not have any hydraulic controls. It required an enormous amount of physical strength and mental alertness to get the plane off the ground, to keep it on target while in the air, and to land upon return. McGovern became an outstanding B-24 flyer. He was a co-pilot of the B-24 for his first five missions; for the final thirty, he piloted  one that he named the “Dakota Queen.”

In contrast to McGovern,  the biggest initiators and instigators of the discretionary wars following World War II had passive or no military records. Lyndon Johnson and Nixon escalated the Vietnam War to a point where the U.S. had over 550,000 troops involved at its peak. Both Johnson and Nixon had been in the Navy in World War II, but neither of them saw significant combat, as McGovern had.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush, who had a distinguished military record, committed the United States to forming a coalition of nations to force Iraq under Saddam Hussein back within its borders, after it had invaded Kuwait, to provide greater access to the Persian Gulf. But a dozen years later and after the 9-11 attack, George W. Bush (the son) took America into a specious war against Iraq, presumably because of the presence of weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda in Iraq. Neither were there.

Bush’s military record was questionable at best. He was in the Texas Air National Guard for two years during the peak of the Vietnam War. He never left stateside, and there are indications, reported most actively by Dan Rather of CBS News, that he was AWOL during much of the time that he was supposed to be on duty. What is clear is that, prior leading America into several senseless wars as president, he had never personally been close to combat.

Bush had a cadre of associates who encouraged him to invade Iraq. Among them were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, Richard Pearle, and Condoleeza Rice. Cheney may have been the most hawkish of all of them, but he avoided Vietnam by receiving five deferments that prevented him from being drafted.

The neo-cons had a way of making it like Alice in Wonderland. In 2004, when Bush was running for reelection against John Kerry, who had fought heroically while piloting swift boats on dangerous rivers in the Vietnamese jungles. He saw considerable combat and received two Purple Hearts for his bravery. Yet the neo-cons fabricated a story that Kerry had embellished his military record. Numerous credible witnesses vouched for the veracity of Kerry’s account. The neo-cons were essentially accusing Kerry of cowardice, while most of them either did not serve in the military or had non-combat roles.

With the benefit of hindsight and history, we can see that George McGovern had an accurate view of the Vietnam War, even if his positions were unpopular. While there is no way to prove it, it is possible that his combat experience in World War II gave him a clear view of what lay ahead in Vietnam.

Bush and the other neo-cons did not know the reality of war. It seems that they almost saw Iraq and Afghanistan as video games, and with modern technology, they almost look that way.

If there is any saving grace from American military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is that there are literally millions who have served in the war zones. Perhaps in the future, one or several of them will run for President of the United States. It might serve voters well to remember that since World War II, it has generally been those who served in the military who kept us out of major wars, while it was those who did not serve who launched the fruitless adventures.

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During the fall of 2011, C-SPAN ran a series called “The Contenders.” The Contenders were candidates who ran for president and lost. Some came from the two major parties, examples being Barry Goldwater, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and John McCain. Others came from third parties, such as Ross Perot and George Wallace.

In 1972, the Democrats nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern to run against Richard Nixon, who was seeking his second term. Nixon was popular; he had successfully wrapped the flag around himself as he carried on the Vietnam War. His domestic policies were nowhere as harsh and insensitive as those of today’s GOP leaders.

McGovern won the nomination by filling a void that existed because there was no charismatic popular Democrat who was ready to assume the mantle of the nomination. McGovern had two other factors that made him a logical candidate. Both emanated from the tragedy, confusion, and chaos which had characterized the Democratic campaign of 1968.

It was in 1968 when Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged and nearly defeated Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Primary. Shortly thereafter Senator Robert Kennedy entered the race, much to the cheers of those who felt that the Kennedy brand of leadership had been stolen from America in Dallas on November 22, 2011. However, the McCarthy’s supporters saw Kennedy as an opportunist who entered the race only after McCarthy demonstrated that it was safe to do so. President Johnson was retreating and on March 31 he announced that he would not seek re-election.

Robert Kennedy became the prohibitive favorite after winning the California primary, but the tragedy of 1968 continued when he was shot and killed that very night of the victory. It was impossible for the Democrats to find definition and purpose by the time of the convention in Chicago. An amorphous group of anti-war activists was pitted against Vice-President Hubert Humphrey who was essentially President Johnson’s stand-in. The convention was as chaotic as could be as the delegates fought inside the convention hall and outside there was violence between anti-war activists and the Chicago police.

Humphrey eventually won the nomination, which may or may have been a prize or a curse. To illustrate how undemocratic the process had been, Humphrey did not win a single primary on the way to the nomination. In fact he didn’t enter a single primary.

McGovern became a contender for 1972 after the Democrat Humphrey lost in 1968, albeit by a much smaller margin that was predicted. McGovern was intent on reforming the Democratic Party, particularly with regard to how delegates were selected for conventions. By 1968, a number of civil rights bills had been passed Congress and been signed into law. However, the percentage of African-Americans at the Democratic convention was only 6% compared to the national percentage of 11%. And while half of Americans were women, only 13% of the delegates at the 1968 convention were females.

In return for minimally acquiescing to Humphrey’s nomination in 1968, McGovern was empowered to chair a committee to reform the procedures of the party in selecting delegates. The goal was to have a much more democratic system in place for the 1972 convention. McGovern was thoroughly committed to making the Democratic Party more representative of the American people as a whole. The commission changed the nominating process so that no candidate could become the nominee without gaining the credibility of entering and winning a number of primaries. He felt that democratizing the process was the right thing to do and that it would create a significant separation between the Democratic and Republican Parties. In his mind and that of many other progressives, this would only help the Democratic Party.

When McGovern agreed to chair the committee, he professed to not be interested in the party’s nomination in 1972. That may have been initially true, but the progressives who had now gained control of the party saw him as a true representative of their interests. McGovern had flirted with the idea of running for president in both 1968 and now 1972. With his primary constituency of progressives behind him, he tossed away his doubts and formally entered the race.

Indicative of the residue of chaos that still existed in the party, the 1972 convention was so disorganized that that McGovern did not get the requisite majority of delegates until engaging in wheeling and dealing both before and during the convention. This was neither his preference nor his style. The cost of the confusion was that he was not able to give his acceptance speech until 2:30 AM when the audience was only seven million people, about one-fourth of what it would have been had it the speech been in prime time.

The period immediately following the convention was also fraught with confusion. Because McGovern did not have the nomination locked prior the assembly, he had put very little thought into his choice for vice-president.

Once he focused on the vice-presidency, he had two misfortunes. First many of his top choices were not interested because they saw certain defeat. They simply did not want to be associated with the 1972 presidential race. When McGovern finally selected Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton, McGovern’s lack of full vetting resulted in further difficulties. Eagleton had been hospitalized several times for depression and twice had received shock treatment. Because Eagleton was a very sympathetic and bright figure, the American people may well have accepted the complications in his mental health history. But the fact that he did not share the information about his mental health with McGovern prior to being selected as the vice-presidential nominee created a credibility gap which heightened suspicions.

George McGovern had one of the worst showings of a candidate in presidential history. He carried just one state, the so-called liberal bastion of Massachusetts. He received only 37% of the popular vote nation-wide.

What he had not accomplished in content (e.g. victory), he achieved by changing the process. To a certain extent, Jimmy Carter, and to a greater extent, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama owe him an enormous debt of gratitude for changing the party rules so that a candidate who did not enter the race as the front-runner could convince voters of his desirability and viability and secure the nomination.

In many ways, George McGovern is best known as an anti-war candidate; someone who had the courage and fortitude to stand up against the folly of the Vietnam War. It helped him win the nomination; it essentially ensured that he would do poorly among independents and Republicans.

What few people know about McGovern is that he was not a pacifist. He opposed the war in Vietnam because, to quote a future president, he thought it was a “dumb war.” But when the United States was compelled to enter World War II, McGovern quickly enlisted and became a very successful B-24 pilot, flying 35 missions over Europe.

An irony, which we will explore at a later time, is how this man who bravely fought for his country as part of “the greatest generation,” opposed a war which may have been a mistake from the beginning and certainly was an unwise venture after several years of engagement. In contrast were the neo-cons who got the United States into Iraq. Individuals such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, Richard Pearle, and Condoleezza Rice were anxious to go to war, even though they had never experienced it. President George Bush initiated the war with the bravado of a cowboy, but his military record was checkered at best.

If you’d like to learn more about a brave anti-war politician, you can view the C-SPAN report on this contender by clicking here.

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