Index of University Press Releases

May 17, 2007

McGovern flashes quiet, yet keen, sense of humor
Korrie Wenzel - The Daily Republic

George McGovern, 84 years of well-traveled Democrat that he is, still is making the rounds.

Los Angeles Times? He was in that paper with an opinion piece just a few weeks ago.

Television? Last year, I stumbled across a late-night McGovern appearance on CSPAN or some cable channel when his most recent book about the war in Iraq first was released.

Even Rolling Stone, the perceived hip and cutting edge magazine geared for the 20-something crowd, recently featured McGovern in its prestigious 40th anniversary edition. Among the others with feature articles in that edition were Paul McCartney and Steven Spielberg.

Pretty good company.

It’s odd when someone who lives quietly and peacefully just down the street appears on the national stage so often. He’s enjoying a resurgence, perhaps thanks to the opening of his namesake library at Dakota Wesleyan but also as the country again finds itself immersed in an unpopular war, not terribly unlike the saga that played out in Vietnam in the early 1970s.

So considering his popularity of late, I hope the students who caught McGovern’s short lecture during a class recently at DWU realize the significance of his appearance. McGovern was invited to discuss political humor, and his wit was evident throughout.

“There was an old senator whose son is now famous as a television evangelist — Pat Robertson,” McGovern told the students. “Has anyone here seen Pat Robertson on television? Not very many? I take that as a favorable reaction.”

The point of McGovern’s discussion was that despite what many people may assume, Congress actually is quite a humorous place. In fact, “sometimes you were laughing so hard you forgot what the question was, which was the intent.”

Bob Dole learned the hard way.

The dry senator from Kansas “was just so deadly serious about everything,” said McGovern, speaking about Dole’s personality when McGovern ran for president against Richard Nixon.

“He was a very partisan rival and tough opponent. When I ran for president in 1972, he was the Republican national chairman,” McGovern said. “He used to take a bite out of me every morning before breakfast and another one before he went to bed at night. He was one of the meanest creatures in American politics.”

In 1996, Dole himself ran for president, losing to incumbent Bill Clinton. Clinton, McGovern said, “had some political baggage of his own,” but still won that race easily.

Why?

“One of the reasons was that Bob Dole was just so deathly serious about everything. Clinton had a way of walking into a room … and talking to people informally and cracking a couple of jokes. When he left, everybody would say ‘Gee, he’s not a bad guy after all,’ ” McGovern said. “Bob lacked that skill. … Both in his critiques of Clinton and in the general mannerisms he would display on television, he looked like he was mad at half of the television audience.”

Dole eventually hired an adviser to help him with his image, McGovern said. The Bob Dole that emerged is the one that now can be seen on the late-night talk shows or hawking Pepsi on commercials during the Super Bowl.

“He began to look at humor as one of the resources that he could use,” said McGovern, who now is good friends with Dole. “The point of this is that humor has done wonders for the life of this one senator. It made him a more feeling figure and made him take himself less seriously.”

And what about Dole’s relationship with Nixon, of whom McGovern has few kind words?

Dole, who lost use of his right arm when wounded in World War II, preferred to shake hands with his left hand. Nixon always remembered this, McGovern said.

“(Dole) told me that one of the things he liked about Nixon was that Nixon knew about his arm. Nixon always would put out his left arm (to shake hands),” McGovern said.

“That is the first reason I knew of for liking Nixon.”

The room broke into laughter.

No big surprise. I don’t know what the old McGovern was like, but this new McGovern — the guy who I keep seeing on TV and in my Rolling Stone — is a hoot. I wish I had a tape of his “Saturday Night Live” guest appearance in 1984.

Even when he’s not outwardly trying to be funny, his sense of humor is evident.

Asked by a Daily Republic reporter last year what he remembers most about Bill Clinton back when Clinton worked on his 1972 campaign, McGovern was quick with this response:

“Every time I’d go to Texas, he’d meet me at the plane and come bounding up the steps,” McGovern said. “He had a huge head of hair.”

Here in the newsroom, we still chuckle over that one.

Printed words do not do justice to his delivery. It’s deliberate, succinct and in a calming Dakota drawl that makes one wonder if he realizes his comedic potential.

McGovern closed his lecture to the DWU students with a short story told by a politician seeking further appropriations for a project. Another senator noted that the project already had received funding, and asked where that money had gone.

“That reminds me of a story about Clyde, from my hometown,” McGovern recalled the man telling the Senate committee. “He won the local lottery, $10,000, and moved to Miami Beach, Fla. Three months later, he was back home, broke, and the boys asked, ‘Clyde, what did you do with that $10,000?’

“Clyde said ‘I spent about half of it on booze and women. The rest, I just wasted.’ ”