"On Sept. 24, 1963, George McGovern, the junior senator from South Dakota, addressed a full chamber on America’s growing entanglement in Southeast Asia. His words rang like a fire bell in the night. “The current dilemma in Vietnam is a clear demonstration of the limitations of military power,” the 41-year-old Democrat declared, just before the vote on a record-breaking defense appropriation. “There in the jungles of Asia, our mighty nuclear arsenal, our $50 billion arms budget, and our costly ‘special forces’ have proved powerless to cope with a ragged band of illiterate guerrillas fighting with homemade weapons.”
Even worse, in Saigon, American resources were being used “to suppress the very liberties we went in to defend,” he continued. “The failure in Vietnam will not remain confined to Vietnam. The trap we have fallen into there will haunt us in every corner of this revolutionary world if we do not properly appraise its lessons” and “rely less on armaments and more on the economic, political and moral sources of our strength.”
McGovern’s prophetic warning was among the earliest of such trenchant commentaries in either house of Congress. It was a prelude to his impassioned opposition to Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war, an opposition that would split the Democratic Party in two. Though the rift between liberal hawks and antiwar activists is often depicted as a generational struggle, between New Dealers and cold warriors on one hand and the student activists of the New Left on the other, it was also between men like McGovern — principled, veteran politicians — and a White House that they believed had led their party, and the country, toward disaster.
McGovern was no pacifist. As a B-24 bomber pilot during World War II, he had flown 35 missions over Germany and Austria and won the Distinguished Flying Cross. Those combat experiences, which placed him at the center of world-changing events, motivated him to pursue a doctorate in history and stoked his ambition to run for Congress. His political career was marked by humanitarian efforts and legislative expertise in agricultural and education. In 1961, President Kennedy had appointed him director of the Food for Peace program. Marshaling huge volumes of surplus food and fiber, McGovern engineered a vast expansion of an overseas school-lunch initiative that would soon be feeding tens of millions of hungry children around the world.
In fact, McGovern wasn’t all that different from Johnson, at least on domestic issues. Both embraced civil rights, education and expanded health care; McGovern considered Johnson the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. But a fundamental difference separated them. Johnson believed that to conduct his War on Poverty and build his Great Society he must fight communism in Southeast Asia. McGovern believed that to achieve a truly great society, the United States must curtail military interventionism in the name of anticommunism and pursue a negotiated settlement in Vietnam...
“(28 Oct 1972) Democratic Presidential candidate Senator George McGovern makes speech in LA”
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| Source:The AP Archive- U.S. Senator and 1972 Democratic Party nominee for President George McGovern, campaigning for President in Los Angeles, California. |
There was a Democratic Party crackup in the 1960s and the debate is really when it happened. Pre-JFK assassination (which should be a clue for you) the Democratic Party was made up of Progressive cold warrior anti-Communists and Dixiecrats who today would be not just right-wing Republicans, but Far-Right-wing Republicans. But what the Democratic Party had in common was that they were anti-Communists. President John Kennedy is assassinated in 1963 and there was a leadership void and leadership that kept the Democratic Party together ideologically and politically.
Plus, you have the Baby Boom Generation starting to come of age in the early and mid 1960s who weren't anti-Communists at least when they were young and didn't see communism as some threat to their way of life. Who were anti-war pacifists at least when it came to the American military, who hated America's involvement in the Vietnam War and wanted to create a new America by any means necessary. That was less individualist, less capitalist, and less military.
The New-Left emerges as this movement that was a socialist movement made of both Democratic Socialists and even Communists. Groups like Students For a Democratic Society, The Weather Underground, and other New-Left socialist groups in America. This is the movement that broke the Democratic Party in half in 1968 and a reason why Hubert Humphrey loss the presidential election to Richard Nixon in 1968 and backed George McGovern for President in 1972.
If you look at George McGovern 1972 presidential campaign, he was the Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialist of his era. Someone who believed America was too decentralized when it came to its form of government. Who wanted to create a Scandinavian welfare state for America with the Federal Government being responsible for lot of the basic human services that we consume in life. Who was anti-wealth and believed that Americans were generally undertaxed. But McGovern pre-1968 or so was lot more mainstream with his politics. A World War II veteran who served honorably as a fighter pilot. Born and raised in North Dakota, who was very religious. George McGovern was never a New York City or San Francisco radical Socialist, who was anti-American and saw America as the real evil empire in the world. Even in 1972 he didn't believe that.
But on economic policy George McGovern was the Bernie Sanders of his era and Bernie Sanders was the George McGovern of his era. Not people who believed American capitalism was evil and should be destroyed and replaced with some type of Marxist economic system. But was someone who believed that American capitalism should be used to finance a very generous welfare state and go together as part of a new American economic system. A large private sector and private enterprise system, to go along with a generous welfare state financed through high taxes on everyone. On economic policy at least George and Bernie, were always way to the left of most Americans on economic policy, even if they would be considered mainstream Center-Left Social Democrats in Europe.
There was a Democratic Party crackup in the 1960s and the debate is really when it happened. Pre-JFK assassination (which should be a clue for you) the Democratic Party was made up of Progressive cold warrior anti-Communists and Dixiecrats who today would be not just right-wing Republicans, but Far-Right-wing Republicans. But what the Democratic Party had in common was that they were anti-Communists. President John Kennedy is assassinated in 1963 and there was a leadership void and leadership that kept the Democratic Party together ideologically and politically.
Plus, you have the Baby Boom Generation starting to come of age in the early and mid 1960s who weren't anti-Communists at least when they were young and didn't see communism as some threat to their way of life. Who were anti-war pacifists at least when it came to the American military, who hated America's involvement in the Vietnam War and wanted to create a new America by any means necessary. That was less individualist, less capitalist, and less military.
The New-Left emerges as this movement that was a socialist movement made of both Democratic Socialists and even Communists. Groups like Students For a Democratic Society, The Weather Underground, and other New-Left socialist groups in America. This is the movement that broke the Democratic Party in half in 1968 and a reason why Hubert Humphrey loss the presidential election to Richard Nixon in 1968 and backed George McGovern for President in 1972.
If you look at George McGovern 1972 presidential campaign, he was the Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialist of his era. Someone who believed America was too decentralized when it came to its form of government. Who wanted to create a Scandinavian welfare state for America with the Federal Government being responsible for lot of the basic human services that we consume in life. Who was anti-wealth and believed that Americans were generally undertaxed. But McGovern pre-1968 or so was lot more mainstream with his politics. A World War II veteran who served honorably as a fighter pilot. Born and raised in North Dakota, who was very religious. George McGovern was never a New York City or San Francisco radical Socialist, who was anti-American and saw America as the real evil empire in the world. Even in 1972 he didn't believe that.
But on economic policy George McGovern was the Bernie Sanders of his era and Bernie Sanders was the George McGovern of his era. Not people who believed American capitalism was evil and should be destroyed and replaced with some type of Marxist economic system. But was someone who believed that American capitalism should be used to finance a very generous welfare state and go together as part of a new American economic system. A large private sector and private enterprise system, to go along with a generous welfare state financed through high taxes on everyone. On economic policy at least George and Bernie, were always way to the left of most Americans on economic policy, even if they would be considered mainstream Center-Left Social Democrats in Europe.
