Excerpt on McGovern
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): All right, last couple minutes, and I wanted to save a little time to talk about George McGovern. He's in hospice care. His family has put out a statement that he is no longer responsive. He's at the end stages of his life, was the statement.
Mark, your thoughts.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Well, I should acknowledge that I was an admirer of George McGovern. And I worked in his 1972 campaign. But I think what's misunderstood about George McGovern -- and to define him by that loss is to really be unfair.
He went off to war as a 22-year-old from South Dakota. He flew the B-24, which is a big lumbering four-engine craft. It was vulnerable to German aircraft. He did 35 combat missions.
And Stephen Ambrose, the poet laureate of American military heroes, said George McGovern was as great a patriot as he ever knew, that he had the trust, confidence and love of his crew. And his acts of courage were just enormous.
And I think that we owe him an enormous debt. Stephen Ambrose said, I just want to show you that don't have to be a hawk to be a great patriot. And George McGovern was that. He was a great patriot.
He devoted his energies and time to feeding the hungry and to trying to stop the United States from two wars we shouldn't have gone into, Vietnam and Iraq.
And I just think he should be remembered for that leadership, rather than just the 1972 race.
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: Yes.
And some of the descriptions of the planes he brought back home after they had been shot up were incredible descriptions of things he did. He was an incredibly decent man throughout his Senate and even the presidential runs, just incredibly nice.
If I could make a cheap political point, he wrote a piece in 1992 for The Wall Street Journal. After he retired, he bought a B&B, a bed and breakfast, in Connecticut, Stratford, Conn.
And he wrote a piece saying, you know, if I had been a small businessperson before I was in the Senate, I would understand what a pain all these regulations are.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: And he said, I would have been a better senator if I understand what happens when you are trying to live under all this.
So that is maybe a political point.
JEFFREY BROWN: But is there a political legacy that either pro or against -- reacting against still or that comes down to liberalism today?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I would say a lot of the people he brought into the party in 1972 went on to reshape the Democratic Party to this day. And...
JEFFREY BROWN: Right.
MARK SHIELDS: Bill Clinton among them.
DAVID BROOKS: Exactly, and Gary Hart and other people.
And, so, I think he had a huge legacy within that -- within the party.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.
You would agree?
MARK SHIELDS: Yes.
No, I would agree. I mean, he proved that you could be peaceful and a patriot at the same time, and that the two weren't in any way mutually exclusive.
No comments:
Post a Comment