George F. Will: How McGovern Made This
The former bomber pilot's spry walk belies his 85 years, he dresses like a boulevardier—gray slacks, blue blazer, shirt with bright-red stripes and white collar—and tucks into a robust breakfast. Long ago, he began shaping the Democrats' presidential nomination process into the one that has his party's two contenders locked in a long march to Pennsylvania's April primary. He has seen important aspects of American politics move in his direction in the 36 years since he lost 49 states to Richard Nixon.
The belittling of George McGovern, especially by Democrats, only waned as memory of him faded after he lost his bid for a fourth Senate term in the 1980 Reagan landslide. But his story is fascinating, and pertinent to current events.
This minister's son was raised on South Dakota's parched prairies during the Depression. He remembers hiking home to the town of Mitchell by following the railroad tracks in a blinding dust storm. He was only the second major-party nominee with a Ph.D. (Woodrow Wilson was the first), which he earned at Northwestern University under Arthur Link, Wilson's foremost biographer.
Like Wilson, a minister's son, McGovern was a political moralist. He also was a tenacious politician, who, inspired by the untenacious Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign the year before, went to work for the South Dakota Democratic Party in 1953, when it held only two of 110 seats in the state legislature. Just four years later McGovern was in Congress, where his first roll-call vote was in opposition to granting President Eisenhower broad authority for military intervention in the Middle East.
In tumultuous 1968, with the Tet Offensive and two assassinations (of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy) in five months, two insurgent candidates, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, sought the Democratic nomination. It was won by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who competed in no primaries. More than one third of the delegates to the riotous convention in Chicago had been selected in 1967, months before President Lyndon Johnson decided to retire.
McGovern was named chairman of a commission to reform the nomination process, which put the party on a path to the proliferation of caucuses and primaries allocating delegates proportionally rather than winner-take-all—the long, winding path Obama and Clinton are on. In 1972, McGovern became the first winner under the democratized process. Then he was buried by the demos, Nixon vs. McGovern....
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The belittling of George McGovern, especially by Democrats, only waned as memory of him faded after he lost his bid for a fourth Senate term in the 1980 Reagan landslide. But his story is fascinating, and pertinent to current events.
This minister's son was raised on South Dakota's parched prairies during the Depression. He remembers hiking home to the town of Mitchell by following the railroad tracks in a blinding dust storm. He was only the second major-party nominee with a Ph.D. (Woodrow Wilson was the first), which he earned at Northwestern University under Arthur Link, Wilson's foremost biographer.
Like Wilson, a minister's son, McGovern was a political moralist. He also was a tenacious politician, who, inspired by the untenacious Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign the year before, went to work for the South Dakota Democratic Party in 1953, when it held only two of 110 seats in the state legislature. Just four years later McGovern was in Congress, where his first roll-call vote was in opposition to granting President Eisenhower broad authority for military intervention in the Middle East.
In tumultuous 1968, with the Tet Offensive and two assassinations (of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy) in five months, two insurgent candidates, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, sought the Democratic nomination. It was won by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who competed in no primaries. More than one third of the delegates to the riotous convention in Chicago had been selected in 1967, months before President Lyndon Johnson decided to retire.
McGovern was named chairman of a commission to reform the nomination process, which put the party on a path to the proliferation of caucuses and primaries allocating delegates proportionally rather than winner-take-all—the long, winding path Obama and Clinton are on. In 1972, McGovern became the first winner under the democratized process. Then he was buried by the demos, Nixon vs. McGovern....