What did George McGovern represent in the '72 campaign? (user search)
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
May 28, 2024, 12:37:55 PM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Discussion
  History (Moderator: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee)
  What did George McGovern represent in the '72 campaign? (search mode)
Pages: [1]
Author Topic: What did George McGovern represent in the '72 campaign?  (Read 4160 times)
Liberté
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 707
« on: May 23, 2011, 09:24:28 AM »

I was reading the transcript of the 1976 vice-presidential debate between Bob Dole and Walter Mondale when a quote by Dole popped out at me. It was on the subject of an embargo on American grain exports imposed by Gerald Ford and opposed by Dole himself. Dole suggested that George Meany was responsible for the embargo:

Quote
You must be logged in to read this quote.

Now this is extremely interesting to me. Of all the Democratic Presidential candidates of the past half-century or so, the consensus opinion on McGovern is that he was by far the most left-winged out of all of them. Yet is seems that McGovern alone of any of them was willing to completely break with organized labor and directly oppose one of their key issues.

This isn't the only way in which a public figure generally considered to be on the Right of the American political spectrum has praised McGovern. The American Conservative magazine ran a glittering profile of McGovern's career in 2006. The choicest quote:

Quote
You must be logged in to read this quote.

Richard Nixon has long been the subject of historical revisionism by his partisans: that he instituted mass desegregation of the school system and established the EPA is held up as proof-positive that he should never have been hated as much as he was by the 'Left'. Why, then, can't a narrative be constructed from the opposite perspective? That, in the 1972 campaign, George McGovern was the traditionally conservative candidate?

It doesn't fit perfectly, of course. McGovern wanted to institute a Minimum Guaranteed Income. But then, Nixon had made some overtures towards this in his campaign as well. On economic issues it seems to me a draw, though McGovern still looks better than the man whose foreign policy led to the oil crisis in 1973.
Logged
Liberté
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 707
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2011, 02:00:55 PM »

From what I've read, later documents suggested that he was internally very conflicted on the issue of abortion.

Hunter S. Thompson laments McGovern being smeared as the "triple-A" candidate in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. As I understand it from that book, McG was legitimately opposed to it on moral grounds, but did not think government had the authority to ban it. I myself think that McGovern would probably have made some moves to limit access to it on the Federal level, and though I'd have opposed that, it ironically would have been more than the pro-life position has ever gotten out of the Republican Party.
Logged
Liberté
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 707
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2011, 10:04:24 PM »


I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Logged
Liberté
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 707
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2011, 10:17:18 PM »

Regardless of who I 'am', I wonder whether or not someone can answer the question I've posed here: does McGovern's typical depiction as the candidate of the New Left, and only the New Left, hold true?
Logged
Liberté
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 707
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2011, 10:36:38 PM »

Well, the modern Libertarian movement (and the Libertarian Party in particular) had much of its roots in the New Left, although the New Left had moved in a more socialist and less libertarian direction (hence the establishment of the Libertarian Party) - reflected in the shift from McCarthy to McGovern.  McGovern personally was certainly more open to free market principles (especially with regards to labor and regulations) than the modern Democratic Party, although that was somewhat true of the Democratic Party as a whole in the 70s (since the traditionalist 'liberal' LBJ-HHH wing was stagnant).  But yes, if you asked his supporters if they considered themselves left or right, I would guess >90% would say they were of the left and <10% would claim to be of the right (and most of those would be very stubborn Dixiecrats).

Asked and answered. And if you ever want to know what I'm doing when I post, I'm putting out feelers to try to re-build what existed at that time in some form or fashion.
Logged
Pages: [1]  
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.021 seconds with 14 queries.