George McGovern RIP

For John, BLUF:  A true WWII hero, George McGvern, has passed away.  May he rest in peace.

Senator George McGovern has passed away, at the age of 90.  He had lived a full life—combat bomber pilot, PhD college professor, legislator and Presdental Candidate.

In her blog post on his passing, Law Professor Ann Athouse notes that Senator McGovern was her first vote for president.  That presidential election was my third, and my only vote for Richard Nixon (being a California voter I had several opportunities).  Today I am not sure how a McGovern election would have made a difference, except maybe for the outcome of the 73 War.  Would a President McGovern have stood with Israel?  We still would have had the Khmer Rouge and still would have had 20,000 Cambodia-Americans in Lowell, and a like number in Long Beach, California, where I voted for Dick Nixon over George McGovern.

Professor Althouse noted this from the New York Times Obit:

The Republicans portrayed Mr. McGovern as a cowardly left-winger, a threat to the military and the free-market economy and outside the mainstream of American thought.  Fair or not, he never lived down the image of a liberal loser, and many Democrats long accused him of leading the party astray.

Mr. McGovern resented that characterization mightily.  “I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie,” he said in an interview for this obituary in 2005 in his home in Mitchell.  “My dad was a Methodist minister.  I went off to war. I have been married to the same woman forever. I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.

“But we probably didn’t work enough on cultivating that image,” he added, referring to his campaign organization.  “We were more interested in ending the war in Vietnam and getting people out of poverty and being fair to women and minorities and saving the environment.  It was an issue-oriented campaign, and we should have paid more attention to image.”

Here are some comments from the Althouse blog post.

Sometimes misguided, but always a mensch.

Regards  —  Cliff