The Last Best Liberal: George McGovern's Second Wind
By AAN Staff
february 26, 2003 08:02 pm
The thickest plank of McGovern’s 1972
platform, the one that carried the weight,
was anti-war. George McGovern was the
first member of the U.S. Senate to
explicitly denounce U.S. policy in
Indochina, and it’s safe to assume that
were he still in the Senate, he would have
been the first to denounce the Bush
administration’s plans in Iraq. But as it
stands, McGovern is no longer an elected
official, and his opposition, and whatever
influence it may have, comes now from
the mouth of an elder statesman, a
World War II hero, the collective
imagination’s anti-Nixon transported into
this anxious echo of belligerent Nixonian
daydreams. George McGovern isn’t
running for anything. He can say anything
he wants. And here he is, riding a second
wind in Stevensville, Mont., saying to Brad Tyer, editor of Missoula Independent, pretty much
the same things he said 30 years ago:
Stop hitting. Feed the hungry.