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Any of y'all ever read The Wild Blue by Stephen Ambrose? I figured out he was a liberal when I read the foreword to Nothing Like It in the World, when he goes off on how a transcontinental railroad is so important that only the gov't could make it happen. And also when it came out that he was a plagiarizer; I assume people who get caught lying in public are leftists.

Be that as it may, that book made McGovern out to look pretty good, heroically if not politically. And Ambrose took a swipe at the "far-right press" for giving McGovern a hard time during his candidacy. Since I wasn't born for a good ten years after he lost his presidential election, I'm wondering just how bad he really was. Not that I'd have voted for him, but was he JFK half-decent or Clinton miserable?

Not that I'd have voted for him, but was he JFK half-decent or Clinton miserable?

Think of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy (appeasement at all costs), combined with Hubert Humphrey's big-gov't socialism (guaranteed income, etc.). Add a slack jaw that seems to bespeak character weakness, and you can see how McG lost 49 states.

Any of y'all ever read The Wild Blue by Stephen Ambrose? I figured out he was a liberal when I read the foreword to Nothing Like It in the World, when he goes off on how a transcontinental railroad is so important that only the gov't could make it happen. And also when it came out that he was a plagiarizer; I assume people who get caught lying in public are leftists.

Be that as it may, that book made McGovern out to look pretty good, heroically if not politically. And Ambrose took a swipe at the "far-right press" for giving McGovern a hard time during his candidacy. Since I wasn't born for a good ten years after he lost his presidential election, I'm wondering just how bad he really was. Not that I'd have voted for him, but was he JFK half-decent or Clinton miserable?

I am old enough to not only remeber that election, but to have participated in it. McGovern was a decent man. He would have made a horrible president. So the answer to your question quoted above is: Neither.

If he had been president, for instance, in 1962, the Soviet Union, or it's successor, would still have missiles in Cuba, but you wouldn't have been afraid to leave your wife or daughters alone with him.

That was the first election I could vote in. I did not vote for him, but I did believe he was an honorable man (not a Clinton). Unfortunately, what he believed in and what I believed in were exactly opposite.

I will say something for McGovern. He never, never said "I told you so" after Nixon resigned.

He was beaten for many reasons.

He ran in favor of the "negative income tax" which comes from (I believe) Milton Friedman. The US wound up with the Earned Income Tax Credit instead.

McGovern wasn't strictly speaking against US war in Indochina. When Pol Pot took over Kampuchea (among other things, that regime boasted of having destroyed 3,000 years of Cambodian history) he suggested that the US should go back to Cambodia and overthrow him.

Vietnam invaded instead. I think McGovern also suggested a US effort to oust the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia by Vietnam.

When he dumped his first VP candidate he started to look a bit flighty (he'd previously said he was behind him 'One thousand per cent'). I remember a sort of press conference he had, perhaps in his own backyard. He was cleaning an inground pool. A reporter asked him if he shouldn't be out campaigning instead of taking the day off. McGovern said he liked to do something where he could see some progress.