E.A. Barrera, Espresso Newspaper | 08.03.2006 14:39

1972 Democratic Party Presidential nominee George McGovern came to Coronado earlier this month and blasted President George W. Bush as a liar on issues of the Iraq War and Social Security. He called Bush "worse than Nixon."

George McGovern and Fans

McGovern Blasts Bush

McGovern Blast Bush as a Liar –
Demands End to Iraq War and Protection for Social Security
By
E.A. Barrera
March 7, 2006


“…And this is the time to stand for those things that are close to the American spirit. We are not content with things as they are. We reject the view of those who say ‘America – love it or leave it!’ We reply: ‘Let us change it so we may love it the more.”
George McGovern
July 14, 1972

He’ll be 84 this year and he still looks like the trim, professorial Senator that defined post-war liberalism for many Americans. On February 10, standing before a large crowd of more than 100 in Coronado – home to many of his fellow veterans - former South Dakota Senator and 1972 Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern spoke with power and intellectual courage about what he saw as the lies the Bush administration has been telling the American people on issues ranging from Social Security to the war in Iraq.

He blasted President Bush on his tactics; defended big government as the only real defender of the working and poor classes in America; and did not shy away from slamming his fellow Democrats for what he saw as cowardice against a conservative Republican machine. To top it all off, he energized the largely older, proudly liberal audience who applauded wildly with every phrase he spoke, by telling them that the catch to speaking the truth was usually defeat.

“This is probably why I was never elected President,” said a smiling, defiant McGovern. “But it is better to lose standing up and honestly saying what you think than get to the White House by lying.”

McGovern, the son of a Methodist minister, won the Distinguished Flying Cross in World War Two for flying more than 35 combat missions in a B-24 Bomber over Germany. He earned his PHD in History from Northwestern University after the war. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1956; served as John F. Kennedy’s director for the Food and Peace Program; was elected to the US Senate in 1962; and quickly emerged as a leading liberal voice and staunch opponent of the Vietnam War.

After the tumultuous 1968 presidential election – that saw Robert F. Kennedy murdered; Lyndon Johnson abandon running for a second full term; rioting in the streets of Chicago outside the halls of the Democratic Convention that nominated former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey; and the election of Richard Nixon that November – McGovern organized the Democratic Party around a series of meetings designed to make the nomination process more democratic. The result was the modern primary process, which he then utilized to win the 1972 Democratic Presidential nomination away from more establishment friendly candidates like Humphrey and former Maine Senator Edmund Muskie.

McGovern chose former Peace Corps Director Sergeant Shriver (father of California First Lady Maria Shriver) as his running mate. They promptly lost the 1972 election to President Nixon in the largest landslide defeat of American history. But in the wake of the Watergate scandal that ended with Nixon’s resignation from the presidency under the threat of certain impeachment and conviction, McGovern has long said he felt vindicated by the campaign he waged that year.

“The country would have been better off and Nixon would personally have been better off if I’d won that election,” joked McGovern to a rousing throng of cheers from the audience.

In that race against Nixon, McGovern established himself as a voice for a vast array of younger, disenfranchised voters who felt left out of the process. This was evident during his speech in Coronado last month. Many in the audience came up to him and told him he was their first vote. He was their first presidential campaign. He was still the best vote they felt they had ever cast.

“I turned 18 that year. I was one of the first 18-year olds who was able to vote (the 25th Amendment lowering the voting age to 18 was passed at the beginning of 1972) and I’ve never once been embarrassed or regretful of my vote for George McGovern,” said Ocean Beach carpenter Stanley Collier. “To this day, I keep my McGovern-Shriver coffee mug on my desk as a reminder that truth can exist – even in politics.”

McGovern’s speech in Coronado largely focused on Social Security and the war in Iraq. On Social Security, McGovern said Social Security was the most dependable and cost-efficient retirement plan ever produced in America.

“Of the three-thousand who were murdered on September 11th, many of their spouses received Social Security checks within a month of losing their loved ones. The single greatest law ever signed by a president which helped the largest number of people was when Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act of 1935. It is a marvelous program with only a one percent administrative cost. You contribute six percent of your annual income and your employer matches that. It won’t let you retire rich, but at least you can live. Show me another program or private pension plan that is so efficient,” said McGovern.

President George W. Bush has called for privatization of Social Security, insisting that the program is on the verge of bankruptcy and can not sustain the advancing age of America’s Baby-Boomer generation (those born during the late 1940s through the mid-1950s that will soon be turning 62, and thus will be eligible to retire and receive full benefits from their Social Security accounts).

“This is a patent falsehood. Social Security has no debt and a $2 trillion trust fund in the form of US Government Bonds. Even if we did nothing at all to the way Social Security is financed, the system would be financially stable until the year 2141. A very small adjustment in the taxes paid by the wealthiest one percent of Americans would keep the system solvent as far as the eye can see,” said McGovern.

Referring to George W. Bush as “Bush-the-lesser”, McGovern repeatedly criticized the Republican administration’s spending excesses and tax cuts for the rich, while attempting to privatize Social Security and deny senior citizens affordable prescription drugs … and the uninsured affordable health care. He said the most cost-efficient idea would be to simply expand Medicare to include every citizen who wanted to enter the program.

“Our national debt makes me shudder. I’m supposed to be some big government, free spending liberal and I’m absolutely petrified by the wasteful spending President Bush and the Republican Congress have undertaken with the American taxpayers’ hard earned dollars,” said McGovern.

McGovern blamed much of this debt on Bush’s decision to go to war and still cut taxes for the wealthy. He said the United States would spend close to one trillion dollars on Iraq by the time our involvement was concluded and that those funds could be better spent insuring our security through international relief programs that fed and clothed the poor, educated poor nations and provided adequate health care to the third world.

“For two weeks worth of the cost of this war, we could feed the world’s hungry and very quickly help our own security by reducing the level of anger expressed towards this country by those in the Middle east and other poor parts of the world,” said McGovern.

He called the Iraq war a lie worse than anything Richard Nixon ever committed against the American people.

“This war in Iraq, in my opinion is worse than anything Nixon did. I think Nixon deserved to be expelled from office in view of the cover-up that he carried on and the laws that he violated,” said McGovern. “But we have an administration in power now that led us to a war that is internationally illegal. It is a war we are fighting with a country that was never a threat to us and had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks,” said McGovern. “Nixon may have been tricky, but Bush – who claims to be a Christian and a follower of the will of God – misled the American people in a completely fraudulent enterprise in Iraq.”

McGovern had some harsh words for the way his own Democrats – and specifically 2004 Democratic standard-bearer John Kerry – had allowed the GOP to manipulate the issues f patriotism.

The Republicans since Nixon have established the battle ground and we have fought on their turf. The GOP claims for itself Patriotism, Family and God, while they tell the American people all we Democrats care about is Abortion, Same-sex marriage and Stem-cell Research,” said McGovern.

He said Kerry should have fought back against Bush when the president and his Republican supporters began questioning Kerry’s patriotism in the infamous “swift-boat” ads.


“I made the same mistake with Nixon. I let a team of right-wing, draft-dodgers and those who’d never come near combat describe me as somehow weaker on defense and less patriotic than they were. Kerry did the same thing. I understand the disbelief something like that can create. You can’t believe people will buy into an idea that an administration made up of people who never served in the military would try to attack a decorated combat veteran. But that’s what they did to John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary. That’s what they did to John Kerry during the last election and that’s what they did to me in 1972. These people will do anything to win and the only way to defeat them is fight back.

McGovern castigated those in his own Democratic Party for supporting the war. The Senator said members of his own party needed to provide a clearer-cut choice between their policies and the policies of President Bush. The Senator said too many Americans had come to the conclusion that it didn’t matter who won in the elections and pointed to the fact that only 22 Democrats and one Independent in the US Senate voted against the resolution granting the President the power to wage this war. McGovern said Kerry’s position on the war was a problem, since he wanted to increase the number of troops sent to Iraq.

“I agree with Congressman and former Marine Colonel John Murtha, who said that sending more troops just provides more targets for the terrorists,” said McGovern. “Either a war is right or it is not. All of us who love this land want our president to succeed. But President Bush has gone off the track of common sense in his obsession to invade Iraq, and there is truth to the proverb ‘whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.’ For half a century, our priorities were dominated by the fear of Communism. But Communism collapsed under the weight of its inherent weakness. When I hear President Bush, I wonder if he isn’t trying to lead us into another half-century of fear – with terrorism replacing communism as the second great hobgoblin of our age.”