Lexington's notebook | George McGovern

Remembering George McGovern, decorated war hero, gentleman and disastrous campaigner

He knew he was a patriot, so realised too late that others doubted this

By Lexington

GEORGE MCGOVERN, the former Democratic presidential candidate who has died aged 90, is remembered as a man disastrously attached to principle. Popular recollection paints him as a figure from the anti-war fringe whose opposition to the Vietnam war and support for leftish causes led him to a 49-to-one state drubbing at the hands of Richard Nixon in 1972.

As a reporter for a British daily newspaper covering the 2004 presidential elections, I interviewed Senator McGovern at his winter home in Florida—a modern villa filled with books near the water on Marco Island. I found him genial, gentle and surprisingly pragmatic.

The meeting was in January, on the eve of the New Hampshire Democratic primary. The war in Iraq was also at its height. Mr McGovern had just endorsed Wesley Clark, a retired four-star general who only became a Democrat the previous year, and who had fought with pride in Vietnam. He had almost as warm words for Senator John Kerry, the decorated Vietnam veteran who—to the dismay of the Bush-hating Democratic grassroots—had voted to support the Iraq war.

Mr McGovern's reasoning was straightforward. "I would warn Democrats, get ready, the Republicans are going to have the Star Spangled Banner flying from morning until night. Bush is going to run on the national security issue," he told me.

He was, in his retirement, still guilty of a certain naivety about the campaign process. Predicting a bright future for either General Clark or Senator Kerry as candidates, he declared: "For 50 years, the Republicans have been accusing the Democrats of being soft on national security. It's going to be pretty hard to level that charge against a four-star general who's a war hero, or against John Kerry, a heroic veteran of Vietnam."

But if the former candidate failed to foresee the swift-boating that Mr Kerry would eventually suffer at the hands of conservative campaign groups, his discussion of his own 1972 race and the charges that he faced at that time, accusing him of a lack of patriotism, was moving. Mr McGovern, as it happens, had fought with great distinction in the second world war. This has not shielded him from charges of pacifism and even cowardice.

Mr McGovern told me that in hindsight he saw that when he criticised the Vietnam war as immoral, voters thought he was attacking the country, and, worse still, the troops in the field. At the time he had not dreamed that he needed to state his own love of country. As my 2004 report put it, he said:

"I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it. But I never attacked our soldiers, or even our senior officers. I always felt this was a war that civilians cooked up, and then imposed on the military. On the other hand, that's a hard point to get across with the flags flying and drums beating. There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops, no matter how mistaken the war."

After 32 years Sen McGovern is at peace with his historic defeat, but his reputation as a hater of America still appears to rankle. "I can't think of anything I said in '72 that I would now retract. I would add a few things about my devotion to this country." He paused for a moment. "I guess I thought everybody took that for granted."

Sen McGovern is a veteran himself. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross as a B24 bomber pilot over Germany. He wishes now he had stressed his life story more, as some advisers urged back in 1972.

"Maybe, every time I mentioned Vietnam, I should have said: one of the reasons I oppose this unnecessary war is that I love America so deeply, I fought for this country as a bomber pilot, I am still proud of every mission I flew against Hitler."

But among veterans of his generation, such bragging was frowned on. "We thought that people who never came back were the real heroes."

Today's more media-savvy candidates would not make such a careless mistake. I am not sure, remembering my brief meeting with the gentlemanly Mr McGovern, that his lack of worldliness was to his discredit.

(Photo credit: AFP)

Discover more

Service announcement

Lexington's notebook is moving to Democracy in America

The grey-haired safety net

Grandparents step up as the nuclear family frays


Why Superman matters

Cape of good hope