So I’ve gotten a couple of emails asking me to say something about the death of McGovern.
There has been a lot of conservative commentary about his basic decency and class. He was a gentleman and eventually even a fine businessman. The man is not to be confused with the general looniness of 1972. I notice that the AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES have embraced his “come home” message as one for our time. McGovern’s point that–whatever the strategic imperatives–the Vietnam War was screwing up our country at home too much they apply to Iraq etc. McGovern, though, wasn’t a pacifist, served his country in the armed forces, and was inclined to leave abortion (as a difficult issue on which both sides had powerful cases) to the states. Taking acid was the furthest thing from his inquiring mind.
In discussing the feckless failure that was McGovern’s general election campaign in 1972, experts have forgotten the astuteness that got him the nomination.
My first vote for president was actually for McGovern. Nixon was up 67-30 in the polls, and anyone could see that guy couldn’t be trusted with that kind of mandate. I never thought McGovern was actually right for president. And I laughed at my idealistic professors who thought that his victory would give us some kind of fundamental transformation.
I have to admit that my memories of Gene McCarthy, a charming passive-agressive intellectual who spoke and wrote with elegance, are also good. Conservatives might remember with a cringe that Russell Kirk actually endorsed his bizarre third-party candidacy, because he felt attuned to Gene’s “bohemian Tory” inclinations.
There’s something to the thought that McGovern did a lot to ruin the Democratic Party, but that wasn’t his intention. He wanted, in his Midwestern progressive way, to take power away from the bosses and give it to the people (led by the professors).
It is, in retrospect, amazing that the party was decadent enough to be ruined by such a nice guy.
October 22nd, 2012 | 8:29 am
[...] News West River friends remember McGovern as gentleman, statesman, war hero Rapid City Journal First Things (blog) -ABC News -Boston Herald all 2,932 news articles » Tags: English, Top [...]
October 22nd, 2012 | 10:26 am
“He wanted, in his Midwestern progressive way, to take power away from the bosses and give it to the people (led by the professors)”
It’s amazing how little “progressives” understand why the Founders minimized democracy. Jefferson, Madison, et al, wouldn’t have been surprised for a moment how all the idiotic “reforms” of recent times have done nothing but strengthen the bosses and the rich and powerful. For being so smart, the “elites” of recent times sure are stupid.
October 22nd, 2012 | 10:51 am
Brain, You’re basically quite right.
October 22nd, 2012 | 11:12 am
McGovern was also my first vote and I worked for his campaign. My politics were radical Left and I hoped he would transform America. In retrospect, the Democratic Party must have been in a bad way to have nominated McGovern. I don’t mean because of him as person, but because of the platform he was running on. What seemed radical then reads an awful lot like GWB’s compassionate conservatism now. Just giving money to the poor outright seems almost conservative today.
October 22nd, 2012 | 11:45 am
He’s the patron saint of the FPR cabal.
October 22nd, 2012 | 12:21 pm
Brian, your comment reminds me of a great quote from the ever quotable Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: “I can’t tell just how many of these movements I’ve seen started in New York during my forty years in politics, but I can tell you how many have lasted more than a few years- none… they were mornin’ glories.”
In my opinion the Democratic party had already changed to being less boss-run and more ideological well before McGovern’s run. Tammany decisively lost control of New York by 1961. James Q. Wilson captured these changes in an excellent book, “The Amateur Democrat,” in 1962. Really the only big city left in the country that has a Democratic party machine is Chicago. My view that this has actually had a very bad effect on the country. The reformers runnning the democratic party still want to use the government a public charity, except instead of a boss down the street giving you a job or a contract you’re getting welfare from a top-down national program. Those national programs involve MUCH more “information assymetries” as Hayek would say, and a neglect of the principle of subsidiarity I might add
October 22nd, 2012 | 6:41 pm
George McGovern was the type of elder statesman that every party loves to have among the ranks; fondly remembered by many but never actually elected to have caused any real havoc. Was George McGovern the President the world missed out on, or a dangerous liberal trounced by that stalwart of the Republican movement Richard Nixon? Either way – his death marks the end of the ‘Liberal Left’ within the Democrats: http://goo.gl/iIZtX
October 23rd, 2012 | 7:27 am
Bill Kaufman is not the sum total of the FPR (Front Porch Republic) folks, Robert. I don’t see anyone else over there lauding McGovern. I know that Deneen’s teacher McWilliams was no fan of how McGovern helped change the Democrats.
October 23rd, 2012 | 9:17 am
Carl, you might ask Arben what he thinks. And, while the iconic Mr. Kauffman is not, of course, the ‘sum total’ of FPR’s philosophical premise they all seem to rally on some construct of a statist central gummint in much the same manner as the recently departed senator.
October 23rd, 2012 | 3:01 pm
“iconic Mr. Kauffman”–I like that.
Robert, I agree that most Porchers, because of various errors, including a deeper aversion to the Republican Party than to the Democratic one, tend to help de facto statist central gummint, but they’re all officially and sincerely against such.
October 23rd, 2012 | 3:30 pm
McGovern got fairly libertarian toward the end of his life, and his understanding of the welfare state was always fairly minimalist.
October 23rd, 2012 | 4:23 pm
I heard an NPR interview with McGovern some years back. He spoke about how owning a business had transformed his attitude toward government. Maybe it was along the “mugged by reality” line of thought. The decent man didn’t understand why his government neither treated him decently nor believed that he was decent.
October 23rd, 2012 | 9:58 pm
Kate, I believe I heard the same thing about Mcgovern.
Carl, I’m not sure how ‘officially’ they’re protesting Leviathan. Their economic presmise, at least the primary one, is some form or another of distributism and I was always curious about who these academics thought was going to do the distributin’?
My bone of contention with the FPR crew is their abandonment of the republican virtues and their embrace of the idea of a ‘hepful’ central gummint. Sounds a whole lot like commie-Dems to me.
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