McGovern, George S. 1922–

(George Stanley McGovern)

PERSONAL:

Born July 22, 1922, in Avon, SD; son of Joseph C. (a Methodist minister) and Frances McGovern; married Eleanor Faye Stegeberg, October 31, 1943; children: Ann McGovern Mead, Susan McGovern Rowen, Teresa, Steven, Mary. Education: Dakota Wesleyan University, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1945; Northwestern University, M.A., 1949, Ph.D., 1953. Religion: Methodist.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Americans for Common Sense, 1825 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20009; McGovern Family Foundation, P.O. Box 33393, Washington, DC 20033.

CAREER:

Writer, politician, educator. Dakota Wesleyan University, Mitchell, SD, assistant professor of history and political science, 1949-53; South Dakota Democratic Party, Pierre, SD, executive secretary, 1953-55; U.S. Congress, Washington, DC, representative from South Dakota, 1956-60; director of Food for Peace Program and special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, 1961-62; U.S. Congress, Washington, DC, senator from South Dakota, 1963-80, served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate Joint Economic Committee, and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Democratic Party presidential candidate, 1972; Americans for Common Sense, Washington, DC, chair, 1980—. U.S. delegate to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Parliamentarians Conference, 1958 and 1959; U.S. delegate to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Conference, 1961; U.S. ambassador to United Nations Agencies on Food and Agriculture, 1990s—; member of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 1997—; United States Ambassador to United Nations Food and Agricultural Agencies, Rome, Italy, 1998-2001; Global Ambassador on World Hunger, United Nations, 2001. Military service: U.S. Army Air Forces, 1943-45; bomber pilot; flew thirty-five combat missions in European Theatre; became first lieutenant; received Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with Oak Leaf Clusters.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Masons, Elks, Kiwanis.

AWARDS, HONORS:

William Randolph Hearst fellowship, 1949-50; LL.D., Wilmington College, 1962; Four Freedoms Award, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, 1999; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2000; Food for Life award, World Food Program, 2000.

WRITINGS:

War against Want: America's "Food for Peace Program," Walker & Co. (New York, NY), 1964.

(Editor) Agricultural Thought in the Twentieth Century, Bobbs-Merrill (New York, NY), 1967.

A Time of War, a Time of Peace, Random House (New York, NY), 1968.

(Author of introduction) Joseph L. Sax, Defending the Environment: A Strategy for Citizen Action, Knopf (New York, NY), 1971.

(With Leonard Guttridge) The Great Coalfield War, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1972.

McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs, edited by Shirley Maclaine, Norton (New York, NY), 1972.

An American Journey: The Presidential Campaign Speeches of George McGovern, Random House (New York, NY), 1974.

(With Richard Stilwell) Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Korea?, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (Washington, DC), 1977.

Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern, Random House (New York, NY), 1977.

(With others) Vietnam: Four American Perspectives, Purdue University Press (West Lafayette, IN), 1990.

Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism, Random House (New York, NY), 1996.

The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Bob Dole and Donald E. Messer) Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge to Persons of Faith, introduction by Bill Clinton, Fortress Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2005.

Social Security and the Golden Age: An Essay on the New American Demographic, Fulcrum Pub. (Golden, CO), 2005.

(With William R. Polk) Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Atlantic, Saturday Review, Look, Commentary, and New Republic.

SIDELIGHTS:

George S. McGovern served as a U.S. senator from South Dakota for eighteen years, building a reputation as a prominent liberal spokesperson and a skilled political organizer. His support of important social legislation, his building of the South Dakota Democratic Party, and his winning of the presidential nomination in 1972 made McGovern one of the leading figures in the Democratic Party in the twentieth century. Aside from his political work, McGovern has also forged a career as a writer and polemicist on topics from world hunger to alcohol abuse.

McGovern first entered the political arena in 1952, when, impressed by Adlai Stevenson's acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, he wrote a letter to a local newspaper praising Stevenson. The letter caught the attention of the South Dakota Democratic Party chair, who suggested that McGovern, then an assistant professor of history at Dakota Wesleyan University, become the party's executive secretary. McGovern took the job. Although his previous political involvement had only extended to serving as a delegate to Henry Wallace's Progressive Party in 1948, McGovern took on his new position with enthusiasm and skill, spending the next three years traveling throughout South Dakota building the almost-nonexistent Democratic Party, a party that held no major state office and had only two members in the 110-member state legislature.

During this period of intense political organizing, Bernard A. Weisberger in the Washington Post Book World wrote, McGovern was "living on doughnuts and coffee furnished at receptions; painstakingly building [his] files of past and potential local workers, even peddling campaign buttons on the street to raise the price of a tankful of gas or a hotel room." In 1956, the organizing work paid off when McGovern ran for U.S. representative and won with fifty-two percent of the vote, becoming the first Democratic representative from South Dakota in twenty-two years. In 1958, he won reelection, this time garnering fifty-three percent of the vote. In his years as a representative, McGovern pushed hard for price supports for food products (a popular position in rural South Dakota), federal aid to public schools and small business, and medical aid for the aged.

After John F. Kennedy's election as president in 1960, McGovern was appointed director of the Food for Peace Program, designed to feed America's poorer allies by providing them with credit to buy surplus U.S. crops. The idea for the program came from McGovern, who felt it would help the American farmer as well as strengthen the nation's allies. In his two years as director of Food for Peace, McGovern became an expert on the problem of world hunger. His book War against Want: America's "Food for Peace Program" describes the program and his work as its director.

In 1962, McGovern left the Food for Peace Program to run for the U.S. Senate representing South Dakota. Strongly supporting the liberal reforms of President Kennedy, McGovern fought a hard campaign against Republican Joseph H. Bottum, who held that Kennedy's administration was spending too much money. Slowed by a bout with hepatitis brought on by a dirty needle used for a vaccination, McGovern campaigned only minimally, relying on his wife Eleanor to make public appearances for him. Despite the handicap, McGovern won the election by 597 votes and became the first Democratic senator from South Dakota in twenty-six years. Running for reelection in 1968 against Archie M. Gubbard, McGovern won handily, with fifty-six percent of the vote.

As a U.S. senator, McGovern worked for a number of legislative measures of liberal interest. He supported the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, the nuclear test ban treaty, anti-poverty legislation, and the Housing and Urban Development Act. He also strongly supported a number of bills relating to the nation's agriculture and proposed increases in the export of agricultural products. In his position on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, McGovern became one of the Senate's strongest and most consistent voices for the nation's farmers. In an evaluation of McGovern's work as senator, Charles Raasch noted in the New Republic, he was "stubbornly concerned for the poor, the hungry, the jobless [and wanted] a substantially bigger investment in social services…. [His] record shows a scrupulous respect for civil liberties … and civil rights, a devotion to raising economic and educational opportunities, and a partiality for liberalized foreign trade and foreign aid."

In matters of foreign policy, McGovern showed a consistent interest in the easing of world tensions and the establishment of peaceful relations between East and West. He criticized America's obsession with anticommunism and proposed that the nation concentrate its attention on building an example of a better life as a counterweight to the communist appeal. He urged recognition of Cuba and mainland China, expansion of trade between communist and noncommunist nations, and the ending of the Cold War. He joined Senator Hubert Humphrey in proposing a special commission to convert the nation's war industries to peacetime production.

An early opponent of the Vietnam War, McGovern emerged in the 1960s as a major spokesperson for antiwar members of Congress. He delivered his first speech against the war—the first antiwar speech to be delivered by any senator—in September of 1963. At that time, he defined the war as a "moral debacle and political defeat" and called upon President Kennedy to withdraw U.S. advisors from Vietnam. McGovern was concerned that the war was diverting attention and resources from important programs at home while needlessly killing many young Americans. He also saw it as an extension of the nation's "obsessive" anticommunism. "Vietnam," McGovern once said, "is just the most grievous manifestation of a world view that is based on what we're afraid of rather than what we stand for." He criticized the dictatorial nature of our South Vietnamese allies and questioned the morality of American support for such a regime. He urged the settlement of the war by negotiation and stressed that the Vietnamese should play the primary role in such a settlement. With Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, McGovern sponsored the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, a Senate bill that set a date for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Although presented to the Senate on several occasions, the amendment was never passed.

Out of his concern over America's involvement in the Vietnam War and the resultant problems the war had caused at home, McGovern announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in January of 1971. He was, however, little known, and insiders gave him little chance of success. Oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek gave McGovern 200-to-one odds of winning the nomination. A reviewer in Nation editorialized that "McGovern is one of the rare good men in national politics…. His decency as a human being, let it be confessed, is a distinct liability. But times are changing; perhaps today a good man—particularly if he runs against a candidate who has the opposite image—has a better chance of winning than in the past."

By announcing his candidacy a year before the primaries began, McGovern hoped to overcome the odds by making his name better known to the public. During 1971, McGovern traveled some 100,000 miles and delivered over 1,500 speeches. Although he made all the traditional stops expected of a Democratic presidential hopeful—courting ethnic voters, labor union members, and farmers, for example—McGovern was best received on the nation's college campuses where his stand against the Vietnam War was popular. It was from this base of young people, along with peace activists and the liberal wing of the party, that McGovern pieced together a powerful grassroots organization. By primary day in Wisconsin, for example, McGovern's people had thirty-five storefront offices, a chapter in each of the seventy-two counties, and 10,000 volunteers to canvass every precinct in the state.

Although he emphasized his opposition to the Vietnam War and sought to make the war the major issue of the campaign, McGovern spoke out on a number of other issues, too, taking positions to the left of most of his opponents. He called for drastic reductions in military spending and the cancellation of military projects he felt to be wasteful or unneeded. He proposed changes in the nation's tax laws to benefit those with low incomes and sought to close a number of tax loopholes used by the wealthy. Instead of a welfare system, McGovern suggested a minimum income grant of 1,000 dollars per person, an idea, sometimes called a "negative income tax," that had been discussed by such politicians as Barry Goldwater since the early 1960s. McGovern tied all these issues to the central issue of the Vietnam War. "When we talk about the war," he told a press conference on September 24, 1971, "when we talk about a defense budget which goes up four billion dollars while [President Nixon] preaches economy, we are talking about all of the other issues."

McGovern had the popularity of his ideas tested in the first primary of 1972, held in New Hampshire on March 7. It was an important primary for McGovern because he needed an early show of strength to be considered a serious contender for the nomination. It was a difficult contest. McGovern had only a six-percent standing in the opinion polls. Most New Hampshire Democratic Party officials had endorsed Senator Edmund Muskie of neighboring Maine, and media observers expected the favored Muskie to win an easy victory with at least fifty percent of the vote. McGovern campaigned hard against Muskie, attacking his cautious positions on most issues and publicly asking him why he had only recently come out against the war. These tactics, combined with McGovern's organization of the state, did much to bring him into the spotlight. When the votes were counted, McGovern came in a close second to Muskie, forty-six percent to thirty-seven percent, and established himself as a surprisingly viable contender for the nomination.

It was in the Wisconsin and Massachusetts primaries that McGovern first took a substantial lead over his opponents. In Wisconsin, Muskie enjoyed the endorsements of most of the local Democratic Party, while former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a perennially popular Democratic politician, was favored in the black and working-class districts of the state. Alabama Governor George Wallace and New York Mayor John Lindsay were also in the race. McGovern's major advantage was, again, his organization. While Muskie and Humphrey had contented themselves with the endorsements of established politicians and groups, McGovern's campaign had gone to the people, gathering volunteers, passing out literature, and setting up local offices throughout the state.

The major issue of the Wisconsin primary was the state property tax, which, having risen to the highest levels Wisconsin had ever known, was now becoming a source of widespread resentment among the voters. Accordingly, all the candidates spoke out against the property tax and railed against tax loopholes and giveaways. With complete agreement on the major issue, all the candidates sounded the same, so McGovern's extensive organization, able to reach and motivate more voters than were the organizations of his rivals, tipped the scales in his favor. McGovern won the Wisconsin primary, garnering thirty percent of the vote and carrying seven of the state's nine congressional districts. Wallace and Humphrey were virtually tied for second place, Wallace with twenty-two percent and Humphrey with twenty-one percent, while Muskie trailed far behind with ten percent.

With his Wisconsin victory and his strong showing in New Hampshire, McGovern was now seen as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. This position was extremely important to the outcome of the Massachusetts primary three weeks later. A liberal Democratic state with a large student population, Massachusetts was solidly behind McGovern. The goal of McGovern's campaign staff was not to win the Massachusetts primary—they were assured of victory—but to win a landslide victory that would put McGovern far ahead of the pack.

The Massachusetts primary was indeed a landslide victory for McGovern, who won fifty-two percent of the vote in a field of four candidates. McGovern's new momentum enabled him to confront Humphrey in the Ohio primary a week later and come within two percentage points of winning it from him, despite the fact that media observers had long conceded the state to Humphrey. With the other presidential contenders lagging far behind, McGovern went on to win primaries in Nebraska, Oregon, Rhode Island, California, New Jersey, South Dakota, New Mexico, and New York, gathering enough delegates in these contests to virtually ensure a first ballot nomination at the Democratic Party convention in July. "Within the Democratic Party," Theodore H. White maintained in The Making of the President, 1972, "no political strategy had been more astonishingly successful than [McGovern's] in recent times."

Though McGovern won the Democratic nomination on the first ballot, there were two major mistakes made at the convention that hurt his chances to win the general election against Richard Nixon in November. One of these was the unrestrained nature of the convention itself. Some of McGovern's supporters used the opportunity to avenge themselves on the conservative, old-line wing of the party—refusing to seat Chicago mayor Daley's delegation, for example—and caused irreparable damage to much-needed party unity. The delegates also engaged in so much frivolity on the night of McGovern's nomination—nominating a host of make-believe characters for vice president, for instance—that McGovern's acceptance speech was delayed until three o'clock in the morning, long after most of the convention's television-viewing audience had gone to bed. The image of a disorganized and frivolous Democratic Party did not help McGovern's image. Nor did the popular impression that McGovern's supporters included many radicals who had somehow "captured" the party, this idea being fostered by the African Americans, women, and young people who made up the McGovern delegation. Also serious was McGovern's choice of Thomas Eagleton, a Missouri senator, as his running mate. Shortly after the convention, it was learned that Eagleton had suffered a nervous breakdown some years before and had undergone shock therapy treatments. Speculation about Eagleton's suitability for the job of vice president was widespread. At first promising to stand by Eagleton "1,000 percent," McGovern was forced to reverse his decision, remove Eagleton from the ticket, and replace him with R. Sargent Shriver. This reversal hurt McGovern's image, making him appear to be indecisive.

In contrast to McGovern, Republican Richard Nixon had several important advantages. He was an incumbent president, his peacemaking overtures to China and the Soviet Union were well publicized and served to enhance his image as a statesman, and his standing in the public opinion polls was consistently higher than McGovern's. But Nixon had certain weak points too, and McGovern sought every opportunity to bring them to public attention. There was the matter of ten million dollars in unaccounted-for Nixon campaign funds, the unpopular U.S.-Soviet grain deal, the embarrassing ITT scandal, and, of course, the Watergate affair, which eventually caused Nixon's resignation from office some two years later. Add to this a high unemployment rate, inflation, Nixon's controversial appointments to the Supreme Court, and the unpopular Vietnam War, and McGovern had plenty of issues to use to his advantage.

But McGovern's public mistakes kept media attention focused on his own affairs, and he too often found himself defending his own actions instead of discussing the shortcomings of his opponent. Nixon refused to debate McGovern or to publicly acknowledge the charges McGovern made against him. "McGovern's image," Paul R. Wieck in New Republic commented, "was so bad in so many segments of society that Nixon was never required to come forward and explain himself." McGovern's campaign floundered when he was unable to find a way to successfully debate the issues.

As the campaign drew to an end, McGovern turned to making the election a mandate on good and evil. McGovern began to personally attack Nixon over the war. "Why, Mr. Nixon," McGovern asked in the last week of the campaign, "was it necessary to kill another 20,000 young Americans [in Vietnam]? What did you gain by killing or wounding or driving out of their homes six million [Vietnamese] by this incredible bombing that's gone on the last four years?" McGovern's strident approach proved unpopular with the voters.

The results of the November election were overwhelmingly against McGovern. Nixon won sixty-one percent of the vote and carried forty-nine states in an unprecedented landslide. McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. "I want every single one of you to remember," McGovern told his supporters in his concession speech, "that if we pushed the day of peace just one day closer, then every minute and every hour and every bone-crushing effort in this campaign was worth the entire sacrifice." McGovern pledged to support Nixon in his work toward "peace abroad and justice at home."

After the 1972 election, McGovern returned to his seat in the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1980. In that year, "targeted" by right-wing political action groups and caught in the conservative landslide of Republican Ronald Reagan, he lost his Senate seat. Angered that during the 1980 campaign the right wing labeled him everything from "a pawn of Castro," for his support of normalized relations with Cuba, to a "baby killer," for his support of abortion rights, McGovern founded Americans for Common Sense, a public-interest organization opposing the tactics and ideas of the resurgent right wing and issuing position papers on issues of the day.

In 1993 McGovern's daughter Terry died tragically after collapsing and subsequently freezing to death in the snow near Madison, Wisconsin. At the time of the incident, her blood-alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit. Terry had a history of alcohol abuse beginning when she was thirteen years old. In her adult life, she had many ups and downs as she alternated between sobriety and relapse. At the time of her death, she was close to being committed to an institution for her out-of-control drinking binges.

Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism is "a father's painful, cathartic reminiscence," observed Meryl Gordon in the New York Times Book Review. "The former South Dakota Senator's distinguished career and accomplishments seem eclipsed by his daughter's horrifying death. After decades of … watching [Terry] self-destruct, Mr. McGovern and his wife, Eleanor, took the advice of a counselor and distanced themselves from their daughter for what turned out to be the final six months of her life. This decision now torments them. In preaching compassion and trying belatedly to understand Terry's demons, the Senator hopes to make amends."

"Mr. McGovern … writes about his daughter's self-destruction as an exercise in grief," explained Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the New York Times. "Terry's story is painfully frustrating to read." Michael Walker, an editor of Los Angeles Times Book Review, wrote about Terry, stating that it "feels uncomfortably like an invitation for unvarnished voyeurism; that, without a whiff of celebrity, the story of Teresa McGovern's life-and-death struggle with alcoholism would not have been published." Other reviewers found the McGovern story emotionally gripping, including Gordon. She wrote that "while Mr. McGovern is a straightforward, no-frills writer, his story is riveting as he investigates his daughter's life."

McGovern was appointed by President Bill Clinton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. He submitted his resignation before President George W. Bush took office, but Secretary of State Colin Powell asked him to remain in the Rome-based post. With a 300-million-dollar allocation from Clinton, McGovern had begun a project to provide lunches for 300 million children globally. In his book The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time, McGovern studies the problem of hunger and presents his plan to end it by the year 2030. The title is a reference to the freedom from want, one of the four freedoms referred to by President Franklin Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union address. Christian Century reviewers Aimee Moiso and Kimberly Burge wrote that "though the governmental and private organizations that would take up the charge may find some specifics of McGovern's plan debatable, his core message is both morally compelling and hard to dispute: hunger is a solvable problem, and it is time the governments of the world commit to solving it."

Progressive contributor Amitabh Pal wrote that "McGovern does criticize U.S. policy on occasion. He disapproves of the Clinton Administration's decision to dismantle welfare and blames that, along with the Reagan Administration's curtailment of food stamps, for widespread hunger in this country." McGovern brings up the issue of the income gap between the rich and poor in the United States, "the largest in any Western industrialized nation … comparable to that of many Third World countries…. We are also the only industrial nation that permits millions of its poor to go without adequate food." McGovern feels that the minimum wage, the food stamp program, and price supports for farmers should be increased, and that we should take the lead in extending the same type of support for nursing mothers, infants, and children in developing countries. He also proposes that those countries must be assisted in improving production, processing, and distribution of food. His estimate of the cost to the United States is five billion dollars.

McGovern also encourages the export of higher-yielding crops developed through genetic engineering. Booklist reviewer Mary Carroll noted that this point "will be controversial," but added that McGovern "knows his subject well and deserves credit for bringing this critical issue back into the national debate." McGovern feels existing charities, particularly those aligned with churches, are the most efficient avenues through which such a program can be funneled. William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote in National Review that "the quiddity of it all is the challenge to marketplace mechanisms…. The overarching irony is the priority regularly given to arms production. If, to take only Latin America into account, one tenth of the money spent on arms were spent on corn, hunger there would cease to exist. Indispensable to any political breakthrough is a philosophical breakthrough. McGovern's The Third Freedom is a vibrant contribution to that mobilization of charitable concern."

In discussing McGovern's proposed universal school lunch program in the Washington Post, Mary McGrory stated that "besides being the right thing to do, it promotes education, and a literate citizenry works better and creates a more stable community. One hundred and thirty million children are not in school. Girls in the Third World who mostly find the schoolhouse door closed in their faces would be brought into the program; international agencies would be on the scene to see that girls' attendance numbers were maintained. Of the estimated 300 million children who are chronically hungry, the majority are girls."

Christian Science Monitor contributor George Moffett noted that "many of the underlying conditions that contribute to food shortages, ranging from civil conflicts to weak governments to water shortages, remain largely beyond the reach of UN agencies, Western money, and international goodwill to solve. All of which underscores McGovern's main contention, that the key element in eliminating world hunger—political will—may be harder to come by than money, technology, and expertise." A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that McGovern "makes an impassioned plea for a cause he has worked on long and hard."

Working with former Senator Bob Dole and with Donald E. Messer, McGovern continued his plea to end hunger with his 2005 title Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge to Persons of Faith. With an introduction by former President Clinton, this collection of essays is "designed to foster discussion and action within congregations," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The book delimits the problem: the fact that 800 million are hungry in the modern world. The solution is, according to McGovern, a nonpartisan effort by people of all faiths. McGovern and Dole relate their efforts to alleviate hunger in 300 million schoolchildren with their proposed school lunch program. Writing with Messer, McGovern also implores the wealthiest nations of the world to band together to end hunger. According to the Publishers Weekly reviewer, Ending Hunger Now "offers mind-bending facts and illustrations that will motivate congregants of all persuasions to engage this heartbreaking problem."

McGovern turns to the tradition of liberalism in the United States in The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition. In this work he argues that "the nation has gone astray [from liberal principles] with a domestic policy that favors the wealthy and an international policy that relies on military might," according to Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush. Among other contemporary political realities, McGovern reviles against the tax breaks that President George W. Bush engineered for the wealthy and against the war in Iraq. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called The Essential America "winning," as well as "well-reasoned (if rarely startling)." For this reviewer, the "real historical hero" of the work was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who early on warned the nation against what he termed the military-industrial complex.

McGovern, once a staunch critic of the Vietnam War, also is an outspoken critic of the Iraq War. He proposes a resolution to the confrontation in his 2006 title, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now, written with William R. Polk. Speaking in 2007 at the National Press Club, as Margeret Hall reported in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, McGovern asked: "What is compassionate about consigning America's youth to a needless and seemingly endless war that has now lasted longer than World War II?" He went on to query: "Mr. President, how can a true conservative be indifferent to the steadily rising cost of a war that claims over seven billion dollars a month, 237 million dollars every day?" Such questions are at the heart of his book, a "well-crafted tract for our times," according to L. Carl Brown, writing in Foreign Affairs. McGovern argues that the country was misled into war and that to remain any longer in Iraq is a waste of both lives and money. He calls for a phased withdrawal as well as an end to the building of more U.S. military bases. Marc Lynch, writing in Middle East Policy, called the book "an impassioned appeal for a rapid American withdrawal from that tortured country." Lynch further felt the book is "a political document, aimed clearly at inspiring a Democratic party that the authors lambaste for failing to offer a clear alternative." However, Lynch was also concerned, saying that the authors' "greatest blind spot about Iraq is the reality of spiraling sectarian violence," which could lead to a region-wide conflict if the United States withdrew too precipitously. McGovern partially answered such critics, speaking with CEO Wire contributor Neil Cavuto: "What we have tried to do is lay out a plan that we think is practical for getting American troops out of there with minimum damage to Iraq and minimum damage to the American interest."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Anson, Robert Sam, McGovern: A Biography, Holt (New York, NY), 1972.

Dougherty, Richard, Goodbye, Mr. Christian: A Personal Account of McGovern's Rise and Fall, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1973.

Hart, Gary Warren, Right from the Start: A Chronicle of the McGovern Campaign, Quadrangle (New York, NY), 1973.

Maclaine, Shirley, editor, McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs, Norton (New York, NY), 1972.

Mailer, Norman, St. George and the Godfather, Arbor House (New York, NY), 1972.

May, Ernest R., and Janet Fraser, editors, Campaign '72, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1973.

McGovern, Eleanor, and Mary Finch Hoyt, Uphill: A Personal Story, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1974.

McGovern, George, An American Journey: The Presidential Campaign Speeches of George McGovern, Random House (New York, NY), 1974.

McGovern, George, Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern, Random House (New York, NY), 1977.

McGovern, George, Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism, Random House (New York, NY), 1996.

Weil, Gordon L., Long Shot: George McGovern Runs for President, Norton (New York, NY), 1973.

White, Theodore H., The Making of the President, 1972, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1973.

Witker, Kristi, How to Lose Everything in Politics except Massachusetts, Mason & Lipscomb (New York, NY), 1974.

PERIODICALS

American News, March 12, 2006, "Daschle ‘Not Done Yet’: Former Senate Democratic Leader Admits No Set Plans."

Behavioral Health Treatment, July, 1997, "Former Senator Makes Public Crusade out of Private Sorrow," p. 1.

Booklist, April 1, 1996, review of Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism, p. 1322; November 15, 2000, Mary Carroll, review of The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time, p. 586; August, 2004, Vanessa Bush, review of The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition, p. 1893.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1, 2005, "Echoes of Vietnam: As the Costs of the Iraq War—in Lives and Money—Continue to Rise, Public and Political Support Continue to Drop. Now Is the Time to Find a Way Out," p. 24.

Canadian Dimension, January 1, 2004, "The Preemptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom," p. 41.

CEO Wire, November 2, 2004, "Interview with George McGovern"; October 3, 2006, Neil Cavuto, "Interview with George McGovern."

Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1996, review of Terry, section 2C, p. 3.

Christian Century, November 6, 1996, review of Terry, p. 1083; May 16, 2001, Aimee Moiso, Kimberly Burge, review of The Third Freedom, p. 24; February 8, 2003, "Liberal Is Not a Four-letter Word," p. 6.

Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2001, George Moffett, "Finding the Political Will to End Hunger," p. 30.

Commonweal, October 13, 1978, review of Grassroots.

Currents in Theology and Mission, April, 2006, Craig L. Nessan, review of Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge to Persons of Faith, p. 174.

Financial Times, October 16, 2004, "Life with the L-word: The Man's a Liberal—and Damn Proud of It. You Won't Catch George McGovern Calling Himself a Progressive Pragmatist," p. 8.

Food Service Director, January 15, 2006, "Senators Dole, McGovern Ask: ‘Got Breakfast?’," p. 27.

Foreign Affairs, January 1, 2007, L. Carl Brown, review of Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now, p. 173.

Houston Chronicle, October 8, 2006, "McGovern Honored as Inspiration," p. 7.

International Wire, January 17, 2005, "Interview with George McGovern."

Internet Wire, July 18, 2006, "Foundation Launched to Facilitate International School Feeding Efforts."

Interview, May, 1996, review of Terry, p. 72.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1996, review of Terry, p. 510.

Kliatt, January, 1998, review of Terry, p. 24.

La Crosse Tribune (La Crosse, WI), June 20, 2006, "McGovern: La Crosse Right Place for Ordeal."

Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1996, review of Terry, p. E1.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 9, 1996, Michael Walker, review of Terry, p. 6.

Middle East Policy, summer, 2007, Marc Lynch, review of Out of Iraq.

Nation, January 25, 1971, "Editorial"; February 19, 2001, "McGovern Republicans?," p. 7.

National Catholic Reporter, March 9, 2001, Robert F. Drinan, "McGovern Book Feeds Hope for End to Hunger," p. 19.

National Review, December 23, 1977, review of Grassroots; September 2, 1996, review of Terry, p. 94; September 13, 1999, Norman Podhoretz, "Life of His Party," p. 49; February 19, 2001, William F. Buckley, Jr., "On the Right—McGovern's Third Freedom."

Nation's Restaurant News, October 2, 2000, George McGovern, "To Conquer World Hunger, Colonel, Competitors Must Do More than Just Invade Foreign Lands," p. 34.

Nation's Restaurant News Daily NewsFax, December 22, 2005, "Washington—Two Former Presidential Candidates Banded Together in Support of a New Program Ensuring Breakfast to Children in Need," p. 1.

New Republic, May 6, 1972, Paul R. Wieck, "Fears of the New Democratic Coalition: Southern Strategy," pp. 19-20; October 25, 1980, Charles Raasch, "South Dakota," pp. 22-23; December 29, 1997, Martin Peretz, "I'm Not Pomerantz," p. 46; December 4, 2000, John B. Judis, "For Richer and Poorer—How George McGovern Won Election 2000 for the Dems," p. 18.

Newsweek, May 20, 1996, review of Terry, p. 72.

Newsweek International, May 8, 2000, "Leaving No Belly Unfilled," interview, p. 72.

New York, June 10, 1996, review of Terry, p. 49.

New Yorker, February 20, 1978, review of Grassroots.

New York Times, June 13, 1996, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Terry, p. C18; July 23, 2001, "A McGovern Liberal Who's Content to Stick to the Label," p. 10; May 22, 2004, "McGovern, Once Again, Is Getting Respect at Home," p. 12.

New York Times Book Review, June 2, 1996, Meryl Gordon, review of Terry, p. 34; January 25, 1998, review of Terry, p. 24.

PR Newswire, May 7, 2001, "Ambassador George McGovern Visits Twin Cities Today; Presentation and Book Signing to Focus on World Hunger," p. 3495.

Progressive, April, 1978, review of Grassroots; April, 2001, Amitabh Pal, review of The Third Freedom, p. 41.

Publishers Weekly, March 25, 1996, review of Terry, p. 69; December 18, 2000, review of The Third Freedom, p. 69; August 9, 2004, review of The Essential America, p. 246; July 11, 2005, review of Ending Hunger Now, p. 85; May 8, 2006, "Smoke Jumping on the Western Fire Line: Conscientious Objectors during World War II," p. 53.

Pueblo Chieftain (Pueblo CO), April 13, 2004, "Colorado Coal War ‘Most Violent’ in U.S. History, Says Noted Author McGovern."

Sarasota Herald Tribune (Sarasota, FL), August 24, 2004, "McGovern Embraces Liberalism," p. 3; August 27, 2004, "McGovern Actually Seems Pretty Conservative, until He Discusses Bush," p. 1; January 28, 2005, "One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern," p. 13; January 30, 2005, "No Surrender; the Democratic Presidential Candidate of 1972, an Unapologetic Liberal, Is the Subject of the Film ‘One Bright Shining Moment’," p. 1.

USA Today, November 12, 2004, "Is McGovern Again ahead of the Times?," p. 15; October 6, 2006, "Three Prairie Kids with Presidential Stuff," p. 23.

U.S. News & World Report, July 16, 2007, "George McGovern's Loser Legacy Serves Him Ill."

Village Voice, January 23, 1978, review of Grassroots.

Washington Post, May 21, 1996, review of Terry, p. 6; June 7, 1996, review of Terry, p. D1; February 27, 2000, George McGovern, "Too Many Children Are Hungry. Time for Lunch," p. B2; July 30, 2000, Mary McGrory, "Who Could Be against This?," p. B1; February 5, 2001, Linton Weeks, "George McGovern's Favorite Recipe (Serves 300 Million)," p. C1.

Washington Post Book World, January 8, 1978, Bernard A. Weisberger, review of Grassroots.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April, 2007, Margeret Hall, "McGovern, Polk Offer Way out of Iraq," p. 71.

Wisconsin Law Journal, May 21, 2007, "McGovern Shares Daughter's Struggle with Alcohol."

OTHER

Vittoria, Stephen, One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern (documentary film), 2005.