Q&A: George McGovern
When you ran for president in 1972 against Nixon, your campaign was really an out-growth of the tremendous upheaval of the 1960s. How do you remember that era?
It was a turbulent time. But the dissent over our policy in Vietnam really began in the Senate during the Kennedy administration. Young people, even at the college level, didn’t start to get upset until 1965. They always thought they were ahead of the dissenters in the Senate, but I don’t think that’s true. The Senate fed their dissent more than the other way around. It wasn’t until the draft started to pinch that young people really got exercised.
A lot of people in the music industry and Hollywood gravitated toward your stance against the Vietnam War.
They helped move youth into the campaign. Warren Beatty organized this great concert with Carole King and James Taylor at the Los Angeles Forum. They had almost 20,000 seats, and we filled every one of them. It was just jammed with people standing in the aisles — the fire marshal was going crazy.
Was it odd for you to be interacting with the whole counterculture, anti-war hippie generation?
Yes. I actually thought it hurt us politically. It didn’t come across well on television at the national convention, and it infuriated labor leaders like George Meany and more traditional Democrats. It helped cause me to lose the endorsement of much of organized labor. Meany objected to my being photographed with these longhaired, bead-wearing, pot-smoking young people. The speaker of the House said that he thought McGovern’s campaign staff looked like the cast from Hair. People told me, “Get away from them they’re not your kind of people. God, you’re killing yourself.”
But you never distanced yourself from your supporters.
I wouldn’t give up their enthusiasm and dedication. These young people that were gathered around me, they were really smart and intelligent and historically grounded. It was quite an impressive generation.
How did Hunter Thompson get to spend so much time with you when Rolling Stone sent him to cover your campaign? Weren’t Meany and the old-line Democrats appalled that you were being embraced by a rock & roll magazine?
It’s hard to hold Hunter off the lead plane — he’s going to be on it one way or the other. But I kind of enjoyed having him on board. He and his sidekick Timothy Crouse, who wrote the great book The Boys on the Bus — those guys, to me, were lovable. Hunter was crazy four out of seven days a week. But he was still very bright, and he knew I was going to win the nomination before I did. We would talk, and he would make me think about everything I was doing. His book Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail may have been the best book about ’72. You can’t walk through a college dorm today without seeing copies of that book.
When you look back on your campaign, what was most important about that period?
We showed that individuals can make a difference in the direction of the country. We showed that in ’68, with the energy of the anti-war movement, and we continued on over into the 1970s. I hope this doesn’t sound too egocentric, but I always thought that after we lost Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, my campaign in 1972 provided a haven for the people who were roused in ’68 and still hadn’t turned against the system. I take a lot of satisfaction in the fact that, ever though we lost, we helped end the war in Vietnam. My campaign made it impossible for that war to continue After 40 percent of the country voted for a candidate who promised to end the war now, Congress passed an amendment to cut off the funding.
Do you have any regrets about the way you ran your campaign?
Yes, I mishandled the Eagleton matter terribly. After we picked Tom as my running mate, we were shocked to learn that he had a history of manic depressive illness and had received electric-shock treatments. I should have just said, “Look, I’m not going to waste my time talking about some ancient illness. Tom’s been a good senator. So what if he had a little illness? I once had hepatitis — would that disqualify me?” Instead, we got all psyched up and I called a press conference and put Tom in front of the national press. That made in into a big event, and we had to ask him to step down. If we had handled it differently, I think we might have won the election.
What did your loss mean for the country in 1972?
Oh, gosh. It changed the course of this country in so many ways. Nixon was forced to resign two years later, and that made us all more skeptical of government that operates in secret, behind closed doors.
Do you still hold any animosity toward him for all the dirty tricks his campaign used against you?
How do you get away from that? I remember one of the key people in the Nixon machine later told me. “Did you ever have any idea how much money we spent against you?” I said, “I have no idea.” And he said, “Well, whatever you think it was, triple it.” Then he indicated it was something over $300 million. That wouldn’t amount to anything today, but 35 years ago, that was one hell of a war chest.
Why did you decide not to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976?
He seemed to be pandering to the conservative elements in the party. He didn’t show much knowledge of the government. It wasn’t that I felt closer to the ideology of Jerry Ford — it’s just that I thought Ford was a more evenhanded and stable guy and had a better knowledge of the workings of Congress. But by the time Carter ran for re-election in 1980, I was all for him. He was a pretty good president, and he would have been even better in his second term.
Q&A: George McGovern, Page 1 of 2