Showing posts with label George McGovern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George McGovern. Show all posts

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Recommended Reading


George McGovern died last week while I was either in the midst of writing a recent post on politics, or responding to comments on it. It was 40 years ago that McGovern first ran for president, bucking the odds and party establishment to secure the Democratic nomination, only to lose by a landslide in the general election. If you'd like a better understanding of that period of history, don't bother with The Making of the President: 1972 or anything "respectable" like that. Instead, put your trust in the good gonzo doctor:




"If the current polls are reliable... Nixon will be re-elected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and more trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam. The polls also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states... This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose... Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"

To be fair to Tricky Dick, the U. S. involvement in the Vietnam War did end on his watch--but only after he first expanded the war to Cambodia, essentially destroying that country in the process--KJ