George McGovern: The last true liberal

George McGovern, the last true liberal to run for president of the United States, died very early yesterday (Sunday October 22) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He was 90 years old.

McGovern was the last true liberal because he unabashedly admitted and reveled in being a liberal. It’s a title few politicians use these days. It helped define McGovern’s legacy.

One of the many reasons I liked McGovern was because in these times when political balls are lacking, he never shied away from the word even as Democrats became fearful of it and Republicans used it as an epithet. In 2001, McGovern proudly stated, “I am a liberal and always have been. Just not the wild-eyed character the Republicans made me out to be.”

There are politicians today who might learn a thing or two from this friendly and gentle man.

And when I call him friendly and gentle, don’t misunderstand. He was courageous and also a highly decorated war hero who flew 35 missions in his B-24 Liberator christened “Dakota Queen” during World War II. But you never heard him boast of the Distinguished Flying Cross or the Air Medal awarded to him.

To write about McGovern is to write about someone who inspired many and influenced American politics for years to come.

As Bill Clinton, who worked in McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, said in 2006 when dedicating McGovern’s library in Mitchell, S.D.: “I believe no other presidential candidate ever has had such an enduring impact in defeat.”

I remember meeting a then retired Sen. McGovern in Washington, D.C. during a conference on Cuba not several years back; I can’t remember the exact year, but it was not too long ago. To this day there are many of us who still wonder what the U.S.-Cuba relationship would be like if McGovern had been elected president. Definitely different – and better.

But McGovern’s most memorable moment may have come in 1971 when he co-sponsored a Senate amendment that would have cut off funding for the Vietnam War and demanded that our soldiers be returned home. It failed, but McGovern went before the members and declared:

“Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval [hospitals] and all across our land – young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces, or hopes.

“There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure. Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor, or courage.

 “It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes.

 “And if we do not end this damnable war, those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the Executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us.

 “So before we vote, let us ponder the admonition of Edmund Burke, the great parliamentarian of an earlier day: ‘A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.’”

You could hear a pin drop in that venerable chamber.

Alvaro F. Fernandez