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April 7, 2009

George McGovern's Lincoln moment

By Robert L. Pincus • San Diego Union-Tribune

George McGovern has written a biography of Lincoln and was in La Jolla to talk about his book and sign copies. (Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune)

Every year is an Abraham Lincoln year for new books. No president has been the subject of more volumes. But since this year marks the bicentennial of his birth, the number has increased exponentially.

Yet among the distinguished writers and historians who have added their accounts to the epic list, only one can claim to have been a presidential nominee from a major political party: former Senator George S. McGovern.

His recently published “Abraham Lincoln” is part of “The American President Series” of short biographies from Times Books and he's in distinguished company. Garry Wills, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, wrote an account of James Madison's life.

Another distinguished historian, John Patrick Diggins, weighed in on John Adams, and the incisive political journalist Elizabeth Drew chronicled Richard Nixon. Only George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are missing from the lineup.

Lincoln was the only choice for McGovern, he said, sitting in a downtown San Diego hotel room. At 86, he may look a bit older than when he ran against Nixon in 1972 and lost in a landslide, but his speaking style – deliberate, eloquent and laden with wry humor – hasn't changed. His physical condition would be the envy of many in their 70s. And his engagement with public issues and policy is undiminished.

“I think I'll retire after I get old,” he quipped.

One big reason for his visit to San Diego earlier this month: to accept a Peacemaker's Award from the nonprofit National Conflict Resolution Center, for the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. The two Senate leaders had worked together on a global initiative while in office; then, in 2002, though they were no longer serving, it was signed into law.

McGovern recalled how when he first got the call from the series editor, the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (Sean Wilentz is co-editor), he was disappointed to hear that Lincoln was taken – by no less than his onetime campaign worker and longtime friend, former President Bill Clinton.

But a year or so later, Clinton decided to bow out – and McGovern was still eager to tackle the project.

“I think it's the book I've enjoyed writing the most,” he said.

“Abraham Lincoln,” more than McGovern's previous 12 books, is a return to his academic roots. McGovern earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in American history and government.

He makes only modest claims for his life of Lincoln. But there is one area in which he believes it stands out:

“I commented, probably more than most biographers, on Lincoln's legislative achievements. There was the passage of the Homestead Act during his presidency, creating the pattern of family and farming life in the West. There was the Morrill Land Grant College Act, which led the way toward state university systems and then there was the creation of the Department of Agriculture. Also, he signed into law railway acts that helped complete the transcontinental railroad system.”

Beginning in 1956, McGovern served his native state of South Dakota both as congressman and senator. He was first elected senator in 1962, and after the lopsided loss to Nixon in his presidential run, he served in the Senate until 1980.

He talked candidly about his feelings and thoughts regarding that run for the White House.

“You never really get over it,” he said. “I regret that I didn't win, because I really believe that I could have set a hopeful direction for the country. I don't think people got to see who the real McGovern was and who the real Nixon was.

“Later, after everything that happened,” he added, “I think even Nixon might have felt it would have been better if I won.”

In spite of these regrets, McGovern displays no bitterness. He attended Nixon's funeral, to the surprise of some associates. And discussing worthy American presidents, McGovern mentions Dwight Eisenhower – even if he was a great supporter of his opponent, Adlai Stevenson.

“The longer I've lived, the more I admire Eisenhower for the steady, calm hand he had in foreign policy. And for his great farewell address, warning us about the military-industrial complex.”

McGovern himself was a pilot of heroic dimensions during World War II, flying B-24 bombing missions over Germany and elsewhere – a portion of his career chronicled in Stephen Ambrose's book “The Wild Blue.” But he became adamantly opposed to the Vietnam war and it was this stance that helped catapult him to the Democratic Party nomination in 1972.

More recently, he was an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War as well. But his driving passion, these days, is the fight against hunger.

“My dream is to provide a good, nutritious lunch for every kid in the world. Three-hundred-million children have nothing to eat during the school day.”

They have been working to get other countries to contribute funds. And with Obama in office, McGovern said, funding for the McGovern-Dole initiative will increase.

The creation of the George and Eleanor McGovern Library and Center for Leadership and Public Service was a major personal milestone. It was dedicated at Dakota Wesleyan University, his undergraduate alma mater, in October 2006. Mitchell is also his hometown.

Eleanor, his wife of 64 years, lived long enough to see the dedication of the center named for them. She died in 2007.

McGovern divides much of his time between homes in Mitchell and St. Augustine, Fla. He still lectures often and has a long list of honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the World Food Prize.

He's thinking about his next book and mulling over an unusual idea that Bill Clinton suggested to him at the dedication of the McGovern Center: a book on John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.

Clinton thought that McGovern, the son of a minister and briefly a Methodist minister himself, would be just the man to dispel the idea that believers are inevitably and predominantly political conservatives.

Still, for all of his sincere religious feelings, McGovern isn't above joking about his faith.

“Have you heard the old saying about Methodists?” he asked. And he offered up the punch line with a deadpan expression: “They won't save you from sin but they will take the fun out of it.”

It doesn't seem coincidental that McGovern's book praises Lincoln for his wit and humor. In a talk at the La Jolla Library, McGovern highlighted an wartime episode in the White House, when a delegation of women waiting to see Lincoln overhead him laughing.

“The leader of the delegation told Lincoln they were dismayed to hear the president laughing while American boys were dying on the battlefield,“ McGovern writes. “Lincoln is reported to have replied that if were not for occasional laughter to break his sadness over the war his heart would break.”