McGovern lost big, but keeps kicking with liberal spirit

George McGovern believes that only those presidents and presidential candidates who have… George McGovern believes that only those presidents and presidential candidates who have served in the military express caution about sending troops to battle.

“They know what war is, and they do not want to send young American troops into harms way,” McGovern said, clearly thinking of both his own battle with President Richard M. Nixon, and of John Kerry’s challenge to President George W. Bush.

The former presidential candidate, senator, United Nations ambassador and World War II soldier George McGovern visited the William Pitt Union Friday to impart his uniquely experienced opinion on the issues important in November’s election, and to promote his most recent literary offering, “The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition.”

He refuted the claim that he has been unsupportive of American troops in his condemnation of the Iraq war.

“Of course I support the troops,” he said, “and that is exactly why I would not send them to fight an unnecessary war.”

In 1972, incumbent President Richard Milhouse Nixon trounced McGovern’s bid for the presidency by the greatest margin in American history. Nixon countered McGovern’s leftward, anti-war platform in the wake of his own policies during the Vietnam War and successfully carried every state but one in the election that year.

McGovern recited many of the usual facts of anti-war rhetoric, saying that Saddam Hussein “had not laid a finger outside Iraq since the Persian-Gulf war in 1991”; that Iraq had been “crippled since then by cruel sanctions, and was thus unlikely to do so in the future”; and that “there was no link between Al-qaeda and the [Sept. 11, 2001] attacks.”

Questioned about criticisms of Kerry and his ability to be commander in chief, McGovern said Kerry should refute criticism and take on his critics at their own game. McGovern added that negative, 30-second sound bytes on television, when repeated frequently, will stick if they are not dealt with immediately.

McGovern also suggested to the hundred-strong audience that the United States has entangled itself in another Vietnam, in which American troops fought a guerrilla war against people outraged about being occupied.

“They don’t have to win battles,” McGovern said, referring to the Iraqi insurgents. “All they have to do is stay alive, to come back to fight another day.”

McGovern also stressed the importance of forging better relations with the Arab world, warning that the biggest threat to world peace would occur if the United States were to become enemies with Arab nations.

With the release of his ninth book, McGovern, 82, continues to uphold the liberal spirit that fueled his presidential hopes years ago. In the new book, he argues that America’s liberal character is far from dead.