21-10-2012, 05:12 PM
George McGovern, former US presidential candidate, dies at 90
South Dakota senator suffered one of the most crushing defeats in presidential election history against Richard Nixon in 1972
Associated Press in Sioux Falls
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 October 2012 14.02 BST
George McGovern in January 2011. Photograph: Getty Images
George McGovern, who argued fervently against the Vietnam war as a senator and suffered one of the most crushing defeats in presidential election history against Richard Nixon in 1972, has died aged 90.
A family spokesman said McGovern died at 5.15am on Sunday at a hospice in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, surrounded by friends and relatives.
"We are blessed to know that our father lived a long, successful and productive life advocating for the hungry, being a progressive voice for millions and fighting for peace," a family statement said. "He continued giving speeches, writing and advising all the way up to and past his 90th birthday, which he celebrated this summer."
A decorated bomber pilot in the second world war, McGovern said he learned to hate war by waging it. In his disastrous race against Nixon, he promised to end the conflict in Vietnam and cut defence spending by billions of dollars. He helped create the Food for Peace programme and spent much of his career believing the United States should be more accommodating to the former Soviet Union.
Never a showman, he made his case with a style as plain as the prairies where he grew up, often sounding more like the Methodist minister he had once studied to be than a longtime US senator and three-time candidate for president.
McGovern never shied from the word "liberal", even as other Democrats blanched at the label and Republicans used it as an insult. "I am a liberal and always have been," McGovern said in 2001. "Just not the wild-eyed character the Republicans made me out to be."
Americans voting for president in 1972 were aware of the Watergate break-in, but the most damaging details of Nixon's involvement would not emerge until after election day. McGovern tried to make a campaign issue out of the bungled attempt to wiretap the offices of the Democratic national committee, and he called Nixon the most corrupt president in history, but the issue could not eclipse the embarrassing mistakes of his own campaign.
McGovern chose Thomas Eagleton as vice-presidential nominee but 18 days later, after the disclosure that Eagleton had undergone electroshock therapy for depression, decided to drop him from the ticket despite having pledged to back him "1,000%". It was the most memorable and the most damaging line of his campaign, and was said by one political writer to have been "possibly the most single damaging faux pas ever made by a presidential candidate".
McGovern and Thomas Eagleton in 1972. Photograph: AP
He went on to carry only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, winning 38% of the popular vote. "Tom and I ran into a little snag back in 1972 that in the light of my much advanced wisdom today, I think was vastly exaggerated," McGovern said at an event with Eagleton in 2005. Noting that Nixon and his running mate, Spiro Agnew, would both ultimately resign, he joked: "If we had run in '74 instead of '72, it would have been a piece of cake."
McGovern's campaign left a lasting imprint on US politics. Determined not to make the same mistake, presidential nominees have since interviewed and intensely investigated their choices for vice-president.
Defeated by Nixon, McGovern returned to the Senate and pressed to end the Vietnam war while championing agriculture, anti-hunger and food stamp programmes in the US and food programmes abroad. He won re-election as South Dakota senator in 1974 but was defeated in his bid for a fourth term in the 1980 Republican landslide that made Ronald Reagan president.
McGovern went on to teach and lecture at universities, and founded a liberal political action committee. He made a long-shot bid in the 1984 presidential race with calls to end US military involvement in Lebanon and Central America and to open arms talks with the Soviets. The former vice-president Walter Mondale won the Democratic nomination and went on to lose to Reagan by an even bigger margin in electoral votes than had McGovern to Nixon.
After his career in office ended, McGovern served as US ambassador to the Rome-based United Nations food agencies from 1998 to 2001 and spent his later years working to feed needy children around the world. He and the former Republican senator Bob Dole collaborated to create an international food for education and child nutrition program, for which they shared the 2008 world food prize.
"I want to live long enough to see all of the 300 million school-age kids around the world who are not being fed be given a good nutritional lunch every day," McGovern said in 2006.
McGovern's wife, Eleanor, died in 2007 aged 85; they had been married 64 years, and had four daughters and a son. "I don't know what kind of president I would have been, but Eleanor would have been a great first lady," he said after his wife's death.
One of their daughters, Teresa, was found dead in a snowdrift in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1994 after battling alcoholism for years. He recounted her struggle in his 1996 book Terry, and described the writing of it as "the most painful undertaking in my life". It was briefly a bestseller and he used the proceeds to help set up a treatment centre for victims of alcoholism and mental illness in Madison.
South Dakota senator suffered one of the most crushing defeats in presidential election history against Richard Nixon in 1972
Associated Press in Sioux Falls
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 October 2012 14.02 BST
George McGovern in January 2011. Photograph: Getty Images
George McGovern, who argued fervently against the Vietnam war as a senator and suffered one of the most crushing defeats in presidential election history against Richard Nixon in 1972, has died aged 90.
A family spokesman said McGovern died at 5.15am on Sunday at a hospice in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, surrounded by friends and relatives.
"We are blessed to know that our father lived a long, successful and productive life advocating for the hungry, being a progressive voice for millions and fighting for peace," a family statement said. "He continued giving speeches, writing and advising all the way up to and past his 90th birthday, which he celebrated this summer."
A decorated bomber pilot in the second world war, McGovern said he learned to hate war by waging it. In his disastrous race against Nixon, he promised to end the conflict in Vietnam and cut defence spending by billions of dollars. He helped create the Food for Peace programme and spent much of his career believing the United States should be more accommodating to the former Soviet Union.
Never a showman, he made his case with a style as plain as the prairies where he grew up, often sounding more like the Methodist minister he had once studied to be than a longtime US senator and three-time candidate for president.
McGovern never shied from the word "liberal", even as other Democrats blanched at the label and Republicans used it as an insult. "I am a liberal and always have been," McGovern said in 2001. "Just not the wild-eyed character the Republicans made me out to be."
Americans voting for president in 1972 were aware of the Watergate break-in, but the most damaging details of Nixon's involvement would not emerge until after election day. McGovern tried to make a campaign issue out of the bungled attempt to wiretap the offices of the Democratic national committee, and he called Nixon the most corrupt president in history, but the issue could not eclipse the embarrassing mistakes of his own campaign.
McGovern chose Thomas Eagleton as vice-presidential nominee but 18 days later, after the disclosure that Eagleton had undergone electroshock therapy for depression, decided to drop him from the ticket despite having pledged to back him "1,000%". It was the most memorable and the most damaging line of his campaign, and was said by one political writer to have been "possibly the most single damaging faux pas ever made by a presidential candidate".
McGovern and Thomas Eagleton in 1972. Photograph: AP
He went on to carry only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, winning 38% of the popular vote. "Tom and I ran into a little snag back in 1972 that in the light of my much advanced wisdom today, I think was vastly exaggerated," McGovern said at an event with Eagleton in 2005. Noting that Nixon and his running mate, Spiro Agnew, would both ultimately resign, he joked: "If we had run in '74 instead of '72, it would have been a piece of cake."
McGovern's campaign left a lasting imprint on US politics. Determined not to make the same mistake, presidential nominees have since interviewed and intensely investigated their choices for vice-president.
Defeated by Nixon, McGovern returned to the Senate and pressed to end the Vietnam war while championing agriculture, anti-hunger and food stamp programmes in the US and food programmes abroad. He won re-election as South Dakota senator in 1974 but was defeated in his bid for a fourth term in the 1980 Republican landslide that made Ronald Reagan president.
McGovern went on to teach and lecture at universities, and founded a liberal political action committee. He made a long-shot bid in the 1984 presidential race with calls to end US military involvement in Lebanon and Central America and to open arms talks with the Soviets. The former vice-president Walter Mondale won the Democratic nomination and went on to lose to Reagan by an even bigger margin in electoral votes than had McGovern to Nixon.
After his career in office ended, McGovern served as US ambassador to the Rome-based United Nations food agencies from 1998 to 2001 and spent his later years working to feed needy children around the world. He and the former Republican senator Bob Dole collaborated to create an international food for education and child nutrition program, for which they shared the 2008 world food prize.
"I want to live long enough to see all of the 300 million school-age kids around the world who are not being fed be given a good nutritional lunch every day," McGovern said in 2006.
McGovern's wife, Eleanor, died in 2007 aged 85; they had been married 64 years, and had four daughters and a son. "I don't know what kind of president I would have been, but Eleanor would have been a great first lady," he said after his wife's death.
One of their daughters, Teresa, was found dead in a snowdrift in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1994 after battling alcoholism for years. He recounted her struggle in his 1996 book Terry, and described the writing of it as "the most painful undertaking in my life". It was briefly a bestseller and he used the proceeds to help set up a treatment centre for victims of alcoholism and mental illness in Madison.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass