“Come home, America, to the belief that we can seek a newer world” ─ McGovern

Some
Presidential candidates
40 years ago
Front Center
Hon. Shirley Chisholm
Hon. George McGovern

George Stanley McGovern’s life, words worth pondering as we prepare to mark our choices on November 6

Editing, excerpting, re-reporting by 

Carolyn Bennett

Forty years ago U.S. politician, author, foreign affairs and history professor, World War II veteran, anti-Vietnam War activist, U.S. presidential candidate George Stanley McGovern had this to say.

This is the time for truth, not falsehood.

George McGovern 1972 

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 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.

I make these pledges above all others: the doors of government will be opened, and that war will be closed.

T

ruth is a habit of integrity, not a strategy of politics, and if we nurture the habit of truth in this campaign, we will continue to be truthful once we are in the White House.

Let us say to Americans, as Woodrow Wilson said in his first campaign of 1912─

‘Let me inside the government and I will tell you what is going on there.’

Wilson believed, and I believe, that the destiny of America is always safer in the hands of the people than in the conference rooms of any elite.

Stein-Honkala
Green Party
Presidential candidates
2012

Rewarding work rewarded

Whatever it takes, this country is going back to work.

We must make this a time of justice and jobs for all our people. … We have tolerated stagnation and rising joblessness…. Surely, this is the most false and wasteful economics of all.

Our deep need is not for idleness but for new housing and hospitals, for facilities to combat pollution and take us home from work, for better products able to compete on vigorous world markets.

The highest single domestic priority of the next administration will be to ensure that every American able to work has a job. That job guarantee will and must depend on a reinvigorated private economy, freed at last from the uncertainties and burdens of war, but it is our firm commitment that whatever employment the private sector does not provide, the Federal government will either stimulate or provide itself.

Paying fair share

America cannot exist with most of our people working and paying taxes to support too many others mired in a demeaning and hopeless welfare mess.

Therefore, we intend to begin by putting millions back to work and after [doing that], we will assure to those unable to work an income fully adequate to a decent life.

Beyond this, a program to put America back to work demands that work be properly rewarded.

That means the end of a system of economic controls in which labor is depressed, but prices and corporate profit run sky-high.

 

It means a system of national health insurance so that a worker can afford decent health care for [the] family.

It means real enforcement of the laws so that the drug racketeers are put behind bars and our streets are once again safe for our families.

And above all, above all, honest work must be rewarded by a fair and just tax system.

The tax system today does not reward hard work: it penalizes it.

Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself while paying no taxes at all.

But wages on the assembly line or in farming the land, these hard – earned dollars are taxed to the very last penny.

There is a depletion allowance for oil wells, but no depletion for the farmer who feeds us, or the worker who serves as all.

The administration tells us that we should not discuss tax reform in the election year. They would prefer to keep all discussion of the tax laws in closed rooms where the administration, its powerful friends, and their paid lobbyists, can turn every effort at reform into a new loophole for the rich and powerful.

An election year is the people’s year to speak, and this year, the people are going to ensure that the tax system is changed so that work is rewarded and so that those who derive the highest benefits will pay their fair share rather than slipping through the loopholes at the expense of the rest of us.

Let us stand for justice and jobs and against special privilege.

Anderson - Rodriguez
Justice Party
Presidential candidates 2012

This is the time to stand for those things that are close to the American spirit.

We are not content with things as they are.

We reject the view of those who say, ‘America ─ love it or leave it.’

We reply, ‘Let us change it so we may love it the more.’

This is the time.

 

It is the time for this land to [reaffirm its] witness to the world for what is just and noble in human affairs.

It is time to live more with faith and less with fear, with abiding confidence that can sweep away the strongest barriers between us, and teach us that we are truly brothers and sisters.

N

ational security includes schools for our children as well as silos for our missiles.

  

It includes the health of our families as much as the size of our bombs, the safety of our streets, and the condition of our cities, and not just the engines of war.

If we someday choke on the pollution of our own air, there will be little consolation in leaving behind a dying continent ringed with steel.

So while protecting ourselves abroad, let us form a more perfect union here at home. This is the time for that task.

Come home, America

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 hands 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.’ 

Let us … meet the great challenge that beckons us home.

G

eorge Stanley McGovern (b. in Avon, South Dakota, July 19, 1922- ), an American politician, historian, author, university lecturer, and former member, successively, of the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate

As chairman of a Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection prior to the Democratic National Convention in 1972, McGovern helped enact party reforms that gave increased representation to minority groups at the convention.  That year he won the nomination and became the Democratic Party’s candidate for the U.S. presidency and campaigned on a platform advocating liberal social and economic reforms at home and the immediate end to the Vietnam War.

In later years he was a visiting professor in foreign policy at several universities, including Illinois's Northwestern University. In 1984, he again declared his candidacy for the presidency and in the process “reassert[ed] his status as a noted American spokesman for liberal causes.” McGovern had been active in Democratic Party politics since 1948

He served in World War II and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He earned a doctorate in history at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois) and later taught at Dakota Wesleyan University, (Mitchell, South Dakota).

McGovern’s service in House and Senate years and after

Member of Advisory Committee on Political Organization of Democratic National Committee (1954-1956)

Elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-fifth and Eighty-sixth Congresses (January 3, 1957-January 3, 1961)

Special assistant to the President, director of the Food for Peace Program, January 20, 1961, until his resignation July 18, 1962

Elected to the United States Senate in 1962, reelected in 1968 and 1974; served from January 3, 1963, to January 3, 1981

Chairman of the Select Committee on Unmet Basic Needs (Ninetieth Congress) and Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs (Ninety-first through Ninety-fifth Congresses)

Years as lecturer and teacher

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Agencies (post: Rome, Italy, 1998-2001)

Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (August 9, 2000)

United Nations Global Ambassador on World Hunger (2001)

Sources and notes

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH OF SENATOR GEORGE McGOVERN, Democratic National Convention, Miami Beach, Florida, July 14, 1972, http://www.4president.org/speeches/mcgovern1972acceptance.htm

http://findingaids.princeton.edu/?v1=McGovern+papers&f1=kw&b1=AND&v2=&f2=kw&b2=AND&v3=&f3=kw&year=before&ed=&ld=&rpp=10&start=0

McGovern biography

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000452

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_McGovern&printable=yes

APA Style:   McGovern, George S(tanley). (2011). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Democracy October 19, 2012, full program feature on George McGovern: “As Sen. McGovern Nears Death, How the Antiwar Candidate Challenged Vietnam and Inspired Generation,” http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/19/as_sen_george_mcgovern_nears_death

Democracy Now lead-in: “As Sen. George McGovern nears death, we broadcast Steve Vittoria’s award-winning documentary, 'One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern,' narrated by Amy Goodman. 

“McGovern is best known for running against [the later impeached and resigned from the U.S. presidency] Richard Nixon in 1972 on a platform of withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam, reducing defense spending, and providing amnesty to those who evaded the draft.

“Although he ultimately lost his election bid by a landslide, McGovern shattered the consensus in Capitol Hill around the Vietnam War as one of the first senators to speak out against the war. As a decorated World War II pilot who flew B-24 bombers over Nazi Germany, McGovern did not fit the stereotype of antiwar leaders in the 1960s and 1970s. 

“He is also known for transforming how the Democratic Party chooses its presidential nominee, and for his efforts to end world hunger. We play excerpts of 'One Bright Shining Moment' about McGovern’s 1972 grassroots campaign for the presidency, featuring interviews with the candidate himself; supporters and activists like Gore Vidal, Gloria Steinem, Warren Beatty, Howard Zinn; and music from Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Donovan and Elvis Costello.”

George S. McGovern

Bibliography

Hart, Gary. Right from the Start (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973)

McGovern, George. Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern (New York: Random House, 1977)

McGovern, George. The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004)

McGovern, George. Social Security and the Golden Age: An Essay on the New American Demographic (Golden, Colo.: Fulbrum Publishing, 2005

McGovern, George. Abraham Lincoln (New York: Times Books, 2009)

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000452

George S. McGovern

Extended Bibliography

Anson, Robert Sam. McGovern: A Biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972.

Lange, Gerald. “Mundt vs. McGovern: The 1960 Senate Election.” Heritage of the Great Plains 15 (Fall 1982): 33-42.

Lauck, Jon K. “George S. McGovern and the Farmer: South Dakota Politics, 1953-1962. South Dakota History 32:4 (2002): 331-353.

MacLaine, Shirley, ed. McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1972.

Marano, Richard Michael. Vote Your Conscience: The Last Campaign of George McGovern. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003.

McGovern, Eleanor, with Mary Finch Hoyt. Uphill: A Personal Story. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974.

McGovern, George S. Abraham Lincoln. New York: Times Books, 2009.

___. An American Journey: The Presidential Campaign Speeches of George McGovern. New York: Random House, 1974.

___. “The Colorado Coal Strike, 1913-1914.” Doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University, 1953

___. The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

___. Food for Freedom, Washington: U.S. Information Service, 1967.

___. Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern. New York: Random House, 1977.

___. “The Politics of Hunger.” In Congress and Conscience, edited by John B. Anderson, pp. 51-72. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1970.

___. Social Security and the Golden Age: An Essay on the New American Demographic. Golden, Colo.: Fulbrum Publishing, 2005.

___. Terry. New York: Villand, 1996.

___. A Time of War, A Time of Peace. New York: Random House, 1968.

___. War Against Want: America’s Food for Peace Program. New York: Walker, 1964.

___, comp. Agricultural Thought in the Twentieth Century. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1967.

McGovern, George S., et al. Vietnam: Four American Perspectives: Lectures. Edited by Patrick J. Hearden. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1990.

McGovern, George S. and Leonard F. Guttridge, The Great Coalfield War. 1972. Reprint. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1996.

McGovern, George S. and William R. Polk, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Miroff, Bruce. The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.

Pressler, Larry. “George S. McGovern.” In U.S. Senators from the Prairie, pp. 153-63, Vermillion, SD: Dakota Press, 1982

Winsor, Jerry Lee. “A Rhetorical Analysis of George S. McGovern’s Campaign for Reelection in 1974” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1975)

______________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

______________________________