Of all the endorsements I have seen this year, the New Yorker seems the most thoughtful (and, as is usual for the New Yorker, the longest). They both make the case for Obama and against Romney. If you can, I suggest you check it out.

The money shot for the case for Obama is: But the reëlection of a President who has been progressive, competent, rational, decent, and, at times, visionary is a serious matter. The President has achieved a run of ambitious legislative, social, and foreign-policy successes that relieved a large measure of the human suffering and national shame inflicted by the Bush Administration. Obama has renewed the honor of the office he holds.

And the case against Romney: these words from Roosevelt’s second Inaugural Address, etched in stone: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.” Romney and the leaders of the contemporary G.O.P. would consider this a call to class warfare. Their effort to disenfranchise poor, black, Hispanic, and student voters in many states deepens the impression that Romney’s remarks about the “forty-seven per cent” were a matter not of “inelegant” expression, as he later protested, but of genuine conviction.

Re my post on McGovern, Mike Moore points out that McGovern …didn’t actually fade away; he kept working and working; against world hunger, for the Dems, etc…we saw him speak at the Ludlow Memorial in June of 2008, same day we got Aggie, and, down among the rednecks and the cowboys and the miners of Las Animas County, he was brilliant on behalf of Obama.  I’ll never forget it. Mike goes to say We wish for more like him…

I do too, and reading this reminded me of the time I saw Thomas Eagleton speak at a backyard gathering in Piedmont, California in – about – 1974. That was almost forty years ago and, like Mike, I still remember it clearly.  He was actually standing on a tree stump – a real stump, which, because it was cut at a slight angle, was not that easy to stand on – and gave, probably, the best political speech I have ever heard. Eagleton had been McGovern’s running mate for 18 days until it was revealed that he had had shock treatment for depression and was forced to  withdraw from the campaign.

What struck me at the time with Eagleton was his ability – willingness – to get back up after a huge, public, humiliation and keep fighting the good fight. And, as Mike points out, it was even more so for George McGovern. He took the biggest electoral dubbing in our history and got back up, dusted himself off, and reentered the fray.

Starting in 1998, McGovern served a three-year stint as United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. Later, he worked with Bob Dole to  expand school lunch, food stamps, and nutritional help for pregnant women and poor children and continued to work in this area both nationally and internationally. He may not have ever been on the center stage again, but he continued to fight for what he believed. As Mike says…We wish for more like him.

m

Senator George McGovern died yesterday. He was a mensch and I would like to say that the world will miss him, but, in reality, he has been gone a long time and the world has pretty much gotten over missing him. I would also like to say that McGovern was the first politician, that I can remember, who was Swiftboated, but he really Swiftboated himself.

In World War II,  he was a B-24 pilot which is probably the shittiest job that an Air Force pilot could have during the war. The planes were very hard to fly because of their thin wing – designed to give them good gas milage –  which enabled very long flights. Those long flights – with no fighter cover – were dangerous and B-24s suffered very heavy losses. Typically, 10 to 20% of the planes didn’t come back. And the crews had to do 35 missions before they were relieved.  McGovern refused to run on this record and was disparaged as a Peacenik over Vietnam.

Nixon won and the rest was history pretty much with McGovern. Too bad.

George McGovern was that rare politician, a principled man. Our country need more people like him and, even if he isn’t, he should be missed.