George McGovern

At 90 years old, George McGovern has this physical status:

George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian, author, U.S. senator, and the Democratic presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election. McGovern grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he was known as a debater.

On the country's entry into World War II and as a B-24 Liberator pilot flew 35 missions across German-controlled Europe from a base in Italy, he volunteered for the US Army Air Forces.

He was lauded with a Distinguished Flying Cross for executing a hazardous emergency landing of his badly damaged plane and saving his crew, according to him.

He earned degrees from Dakota Wesleyan University and Northwestern University, culminating in a PhD, and he was a history professor.

He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1956 and re-elected in 1958.

He was a popular candidate in 1962 after losing his bid for the U.S. Senate in 1960. McGovern, as a senator, was a symbol of American liberalism in its time.

Early years and education

McGovern was born in Avon, South Dakota, where the 600-person farming community was thriving. The Rev. Paul St. Bernard remarked on his father's death. Joseph C. McGovern, who was born in 1868, was the pastor of the local Wesleyan Methodist Church. Joseph – the son of an alcoholic who had immigrated from Ireland – had grown up in several states, including working in coal mines from the age of nine and parentless from the age of thirteen. He had been playing baseball in the minor leagues but decided against it due to his teammates' heavy drinking, gaming, and womanizing, and entered the seminary instead. George's mother, Frances McLean, was born in Ontario, Canada, and then moved to Calgary, Alberta, and then moved to South Dakota to seek a job as a secretary. George was the second of four children. Joseph McGovern's salary never exceeded $100 per month, and he often received compensation in the form of potatoes, cabbage, or other food items. Both Joseph and Frances McGovern were conservative, but not politically active or doctrinaire.

The family travelled to Calgary for a time to be near France's dying mother, and George had fond memories of events such as the Calgary Stampede when he was a child. When George was six, the family returned to the United States and moved to Mitchell, South Dakota, a city of 12,000. McGovern went to public schools as a student and was a typical student. He was painfully shy as a youth and was reluctant to speak in class during the first grade. His only reproachable behaviour was going to see films, which were one of the world's only amusements that were not restricted to good Wesleyan Methodists. Otherwise, he had a regular childhood marked by visits to Mitchell Corn Palace, which he later described as "a sense of belonging to a particular place and knowing your presence in it." He will, however, recall the Dust Bowl storms and grasshopper plagues that swept the prairie states during the Great Depression. For a large part of the 1920s and 1930s, the McGovern family lived on the edge of poverty. Young George, who was so close to privation, had a lifetime of sympathy for underpaid employees and struggling farmers. He was influenced by the recents of populism and agrarian unrest, as well as cleric John Wesley's "practical divinity" teachings that attempted to combat hunger, injustice, and ignorance.

McGovern attended Mitchell High School, where he excelled but unspectacular member of the track team. When his tenth-grade English teacher suggested him to the debate team, he became very involved. McGovern, a history teacher who capitalized on McGovern's interest in the subject, had a major influence on his life, and McGovern spent many hours honing his precise, if colorless, forensic style. McGovern and his debating buddy won events in his region and gained renown in a state where debating was ardently followed by the general population. The debate changed McGovern's life, giving him a chance to explore ideas until they come to an end, broadening his outlook, and instilling a sense of personal and social pride. He graduated in 1940 in the top ten percent of his class.

McGovern became a popular student at small Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell. He complemented a forensic scholarship by working in a variety of odd jobs. McGovern took flying lessons in an Aeronca plane and obtained a pilot's license through the government's Civilian Pilot Training Program, despite World War II being underway overseas and feeling uncertain about his own courage. "I was afraid of death on that first solo flight," McGovern remembered. However, when I walked away from it, I had a strong feeling of pride that I had cleared the object off the ground and landed it without breaking the wings off." McGovern, who had pre-marital sex with an acquaintance that resulted in her birth to a daughter in 1941, but this did not become common knowledge during his lifetime. Eleanor Stegeberg, a student who had grown up in Woonsocket, South Dakota, was the subject of McGovern's dating program in April 1941. Eleanor and her twin sister Ila defeated McGovern and his partner in a high school debate in which they first met each other.

When he heard the news of the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, McGovern was listening to a radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for a sophomore-year music appreciation class. He travelled with nine other students to Omaha, Nebraska, and volunteered to serve in the United States Army Air Forces in January 1942. The military accepted him, but the volunteers didn't have enough airfields, aircraft, or instructors to begin instructing all the volunteers, so McGovern stayed at Dakota Wesleyan. George and Eleanor got engaged, but we didn't marry until the war was over. McGovern's sophomore year as one of the nation's best orations of 1942 was "My Brother's Keeper" in the South Dakota intercollegiate South Dakota Peace Oratory Contest. During his junior year, McGovern, a smart, handsome, and well-known, was elected president of his sophomore class and voted "Glamour Boy" in his honor. He and a partner won a regional debate tournament at North Dakota State University in February 1943, attracting students from thirty-two colleges in a dozen states; on his return to campus, the Army had finally called him up.

The life and 1984 presidential campaign of Senate Senator Paul O'Neill and 1984.

McGovern did not mourn his resignation from the Senate. Despite being rejected by his own state, intellectually, he could admit that South Dakotans needed a more conservative representative; nevertheless, he and Eleanor felt out of touch with the country and in some ways liberated by the loss. Despite this, he refused to believe that American liberalism had died in the period of Reagan; despite being active in politics, in January 1981, he founded the political group Americans for Common Sense. The organization sought to mobilize liberals, stimulate liberal thinking, and combat the Moral Majority and other emerging Christian right forces. In 1982, he converted the group into a political action committee, which raised $1.2 million for liberal candidates in the 1982 U.S. congressional elections. When McGovern decided to run for president again, he ended the committee.

McGovern has also started teaching and lecturing at a number of universities in the United States and Europe, with some universities in the United States and Europe that are open to one-year contracts or less. McGovern recruited historian Stephen Ambrose as a professor at the University of New Orleans from 1981 to 1982. McGovern also began giving regular speeches, earning several hundred thousand dollars per year.

In the 1984 Democratic primaries, McGovern attempted a second presidential bid. Initially, friends and political supporters of McGovern's initially feared that the effort would be an embarrassment, and McGovern knew that his chances of winning were slim, but he nevertheless felt pressured to change the intraparty debate in a liberal direction. McGovern laid out a ten-point agenda of dramatic domestic and foreign policy reforms; because he wasn't seen as a threat, colleagues did not challenge his positions, and media commentators lauded him as the Democratic Party's "conscience."

Despite good name recognition, McGovern did not have no budget or employees, though he did receive critical assistance from various celebrities and statesmen. He earned a surprise third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses amid a packed field of candidates, but he came in fifth, but he came in fifth in the New Hampshire primary. He said he would not leave the Massachusetts primary unless he came in third or second, and he kept his word when he came in third behind former campaign manager Gary Hart and former vice president Walter Mondale. He later supported Mondale, the eventual Democratic nominee. On April 14, 1984, McGovern hosted Saturday Night Live.

McGovern spoke to the party's platform committee and was nominated for the 1984 Democratic National Convention, where he criticized President Reagan and praised Democratic unity in a speech that vehemently condemned Democratic unity. He received the votes of four delegates. He backed the Mondale–Geraldine Ferraro ticket, with its eventual landslide defeat resembling his own in 1972.

McGovern, a Washington, D.C., think tank, in the 1980s, was a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank. McGovern delivered the inaugural Waldo Family Lecture on International Relations at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, in September 1987. McGovern said in January 1988 that he was considering entering the 1988 Democratic primaries if a front-runner did not appear in the nomination. (In the end, he did not enter.)

McGovern had made numerous real estate investments in the Washington, D.C. area and became interested in hotel operations. The McGoverns bought, renovated, and began operating a 150-room hotel in Stratford, Connecticut, with the intention of providing a hotel, restaurant, and public conference facility in 1988, using the funds he earned from his speeches. In 1990, the company went into bankruptcy and shut down the following year. McGovern's reflections on his experiences in the Wall Street Journal and the Nation's Restaurant News were published in 1992. He attributed a part of the failure to the early 1990s, but also to the cost of dealing with federal, state, and local laws that were passed with positive intentions but made life difficult for small businesses and costly for small businesses dealing with frivolous lawsuits. "I wish that during the years I was in public office that I had this firsthand knowledge of the difficulties that businesspeople face every day." That knowledge may have made me a more effective senator and a more thoughtful presidential candidate." Two decades later, his message would still resonate with American conservatives.

McGovern, although he briefly considered running for president in 1992, became president of the Middle East Policy Council (a non-profit group that seeks to inform American citizens and policymakers about the political, economic, and security issues affecting Middle Eastern national interests) in the Middle East; he had previously served on the board since 1986. He remained in this position until 1997, when Charles W. Freeman Jr. was fired.

Teresa of McGovern's daughter Teresa became heavily intoxicated and died of hypothermia on the night of December 12 to 13, 1994. Following a lengthy period of sobriety, McGovern revealed that his daughter had battled her alcoholism for years and had been in and out of several treatment facilities. Terry: My Daughter's Life and Death Struggle with Alcoholism, a harrowing, tragic account of her mother's struggle to help her, the shame that she and the majority of her family's struggled to help her, as well as her continuing concerns and shame about whether the demands of his political career and the time he had spent away from the family had made it all bad for her. The book was a modest best-seller, and with the proceeds, he established the Teresa McGovern Center in Madison to assist others suffering from the combination of alcoholism and mental disorders. Terry's death was by far the most difficult event in his life, he would later say: "You never get over it." You get to live with it, that's all."

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Later education and early career

McGovern returned to Dakota Wesleyan University, aided by the G.I. Bill started training in June 1946 with a B.A. Degree magna cum lauded. For a while, he was afraid of flying through flak barrages or his plane being on fire. He continued with debate, winning the state Peace Oratory Contest with a speech entitled "From Cave to Cave" that featured a Christian-influenced Wilsonian perspective. Susan, the couple's second daughter, was born in March 1946.

McGovern converted from Wesleyan Methodism to a less fundamentalist regular Methodism. McGovern began divinity studies at Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, near Chicago, after being influenced by Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel Movement. Garrett tended to social involvement coupled with a theologically liberal stance, and many of the students there leaded toward pacifism. Ernest Fremont Tittle's weekly sermons and Boston personalism inspired McGovern's belief in Boston personalism. During 1946 and 1947, McGovern preached at Diamond Lake Church in Mundelein, Illinois, but was dissatisfied with the minutiae of his pastoral duties. McGovern left the ministry and enrolled in graduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, where he also served as a teaching assistant in late 1947. The relatively small history department in the country was one of the best in the country, and McGovernor McGovern took courses taught by noted academics Ray Allen Billington, Richard W. Leopold, and L. S. Stavrianos. He obtained his M.A. In 1949, the first time in history was recorded.

McGovern then returned to his alma mater, Dakota Wesleyan, and became a historian of history and political science. He continued to pursue graduate studies during summers and other free time with the support of a Hearst fellowship from 1949-50. Teresa, the couple's third daughter, was born in June 1949. Eleanor McGovern began to suffer from bouts of depression, but she continued to assume a large share of household and child-rearing roles. In 1953, McGovern earned a Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University. The Colorado Coal Strike, 1913-1914, was a sympathetic account of the miners' resistance against Rockefeller forces in the Colorado Coalfield War. Arthur S. Link, his thesis advisor, later said he had not seen a better student than McGovern in 26 years of teaching. McGovern was not only influenced by Link and the "Consensus School" of American historians, but also by the previous generation of "prosensive" historians. The bulk of his future assessments of world events would be influenced by his experience as a scholar as well as his personal experiences during the Great Depression and World War II. However, McGovern had established himself as a popular but outspoken tutor at Dakota Wesleyan High School, with students naming the college yearbook to him in 1952.

Despite supporting Roosevelt's rival Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential election, a Republican rising rise, McGovern began to honor Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II. At Northwestern, his exposure to the work of China scholars John King Fairbank and Owen Lattimore had persuaded him that unrest in Southeast Asia was homegrown and that US foreign policy toward Asia was counterproductive. Discouraged by the outbreak of the Cold War and never fond of incumbent President Harry S. Truman's campaign, McGovern was attracted to Henry A. Wallace's campaign in 1948's presidential election. He wrote columns supporting Wallace in the Mitchell Daily Republic and attended the Wallace Progressive Party's first national convention as a delegate. "A particular rigidity and mistrust on the part of a few of the strategists" were among the convention atmosphere's decades later, he became concerned with "a certain rigidity and skepticism on the part of a few of the strategists." However, he remained a vocal promoter of Wallace and the Progressive Party afterward. McGovern, who was not present in the general election, refused Wallace as Wallace was held off the ballot in Illinois, where McGovern was now registered.

McGovern was beginning to see himself as a Democrat by 1952. Governor Adlai Stevenson's speech at the 1952 Democratic National Convention as captured him by a radio broadcast. He devoted himself to Stevenson's campaign immediately, writing seven articles in the Mitchell Daily Republic newspaper highlighting the historical differences that divided the Democratic Party from the Republicans. After his new hero, the McGoverns named Steven their only son, Steven, who was born shortly after the convention. Despite losing the election, McGovern maintained his political involvement, believing that "the Democratic Party is the political engine of change in our time in America." McGovern left a tenure-track job at the university to become South Dakota Democratic Party executive secretary, after reading his papers. Democrats in the state legislature were at a low point, with no statewide offices and only 2 of the 110 seats open. McGovern had been advised by colleagues and politicians not to make the change, but McGovern, despite his modest, unassuming demeanor, was determined on starting a political career of his own.

McGovern spent the next two years rebuilding and resurrecting the party, amassing a long list of voter lists by frequent travel around the state. Democrats voted for 25 seats in the state legislature in 1954, a step forward in the 1954 election. He served as a member of a political group research group for the Democratic National Committee from 1954 to 1956. Mary, the McGovernors' fifth and final child, was born in 1955.

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