Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education
  • Home
  • About
    • Latest News
    • Statement on Systemic Racism
    • Leadership
    • Our Partners
    • Parking and Directions
  • Education
    • People Powered 2023 Program
    • Educational Resources
    • Teacher Institute
    • Internship Program
  • Research
    • Congressional Collections >
      • Robert C. Byrd Congressional Papers
      • Harley O. Staggers, Sr. Congressional Papers
      • Harley O. Staggers, Jr. Congressional Papers
      • Scot Falkner CAO Papers
    • Blog
    • Digital Collections
    • Oral History Project
    • Plan a Visit to the Archives
    • Collecting Policy
  • Events
    • Voices of the Community series
    • Summer Fundraiser 2023
    • Forum on Pollution
    • Formidable - author event
    • Voices of the Community
    • Constitution Day
    • Past Events
  • Support Us
    • Friends of the Byrd Center
    • Name a Seat
    • Annual Report
  • Reservations
  • Login

Hawks and Doves: Thoughts on the Passing of Senator George McGovern

10/23/2012

 
by Ray Smock

George McGovern died on October 21 at the age of 90. Those of us who remember the presidential election of 1972, forty years ago, recall that McGovern lost that election in the worst defeat in presidential history. He lost the popular vote by 18 million votes and lost to Richard Nixon in the Electoral Vote by 520 to 17.  I voted for him and was in that minority of 29 million of Americans who hoped his election would hasten the end of the long war in Vietnam.

The last time I saw Senator McGovern was in May 2009. He was the featured speaker at a conference on President Harry Truman, held at Truman’s “Little White House,” in Key West, Florida. He had just written a very nice short, interpretive biography of Abraham Lincoln and he spoke to the conference on Lincoln.
​
In Key West, the dress is casual, and McGovern showed up in Bermuda shorts, but wore a purple dress shirt, open at the collar, and dress shoes and socks. It was about as formal looking as you could get while wearing shorts. Ken Hechler, former Congressman from West Virginia, was at the conference too. Hechler, at age 95, was one of the last living members of President Truman’s staff.  McGovern and Hechler had a grand time reminiscing.
PictureMcGovern autographs his biography of Lincoln for Ray Smock.
When I went up to the table to get McGovern’s autograph on his book, I said “Senator McGovern, I was proud to vote for you in 1972 and have never regretted that vote.” He laughed and said “You know, if everyone over the years who told me they voted for me actually did vote for me I would have won in a landslide rather than losing in a landslide.” Then he got serious and actually thanked me for my vote.

Senator McGovern and Senator Byrd started out in support of the Vietnam War, both voting for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964. But McGovern would be among the first national figures to break with President Lyndon Johnson, saying on the floor of the Senate, “I’m tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to fight.”  Senator Byrd supported the war longer and more vociferously, calling war protesters like me “hypocritical, self-centered, selfish, long hair, know-it-all students and pseudo-intellectuals.” I was a long-haired graduate student in American history at the time. Byrd’s words seemed to describe me pretty well. Not that I totally agreed with his assessment!
​
After the Tet Offensive in 1968, Senator Byrd became more critical of the conduct of the war and eventually concluded that we had entered the war under false pretenses and that despite military reports of battlefield successes and body counts of enemy dead, that the United States military and its commander-in-chief were misleading the Senate and the nation regarding the realities in Vietnam. The Viet Cong were much stronger and more resilient than the president and his generals were willing to admit.

In 1971, when President Nixon considered nominating Senator Byrd for a seat on the Supreme Court, presidential candidate George McGovern echoed the sentiment, saying he agreed that Byrd was a “man of enormous industry and personal pride” and that if Byrd got the nomination he would “bend every effort to become a great justice.”  Days later McGovern changed his mind and said that Byrd’s nomination to the high court would be “highly divisive.”

Among Senator Byrd’s prized possessions, which he framed and hung on the wall of his Senate office, was a letter he received from George McGovern in 1994. It is a one-page, handwritten letter that McGovern wrote on Best Western hotel stationery while he was visiting his daughter in Wisconsin. McGovern praised Senator Byrd for his fight against the line-item veto and his “statesmanlike speech against the Clarence Thomas nomination” to the Supreme Court. The final paragraph of the letter, dated March 6, 1994, reads:

I once suggested on national television in 1972 that you would be one of the people I would be thinking about, if I were elected President, as a nominee for the Supreme Court. Some of my liberal friends jumped all over me at the time, but with the passage of time, I’m all the more certain that was a perceptive idea. You are a man of strong character and a wise student of constitutional government. It was my good fortune to have served with you for 18 years in the U.S. Senate.

I remember another time, in 1997, when, by mere coincidence, I was standing in line at a White House security check-point next to George McGovern and former Senator Charles “Mac” Mathias.  We were all headed to the Indian Treaty Room, where there was a reception for former Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, who President Clinton had just named as Ambassador to the Vatican. The two former senators were in animated conversation about the politics of the day, and they graciously included me and my wife Phyllis in their conversation.
​
When it came time for George McGovern to have his name checked off the guest list and pass through the magnetometer, a young woman on the White House staff looked up at him, asked him his name so she could check it off the list, and then asked, “how do you spell that?”  Senator McGovern was very polite and in a clear voice said, McGovern, M-c-G-O-V-E-R-N.”
I was aghast. Here was a former U.S. Senator, a candidate for President of the United States seeking entrance to a White House reception, and the White House protocol people did not have anyone on duty that could screen these two senators through security. I looked around at the uniformed guards and at the woman checking the guest list. They were so young that they were probably not even born, or were in diapers, when George McGovern ran for president. They did not know who he was.
​
While I was appalled by the White House staff’s lack of protocol and etiquette in the handling of both senators, the lesson I came away with was how graciously McGovern and Mathias took this. The guards and the social staff at the White House did not know enough history to act differently—and the senators did not expect them to act differently.  Nobody in the line that evening knew this better than former World War II bomber pilot, U.S. Senator, presidential candidate, and just plain good citizen, George McGovern.
Picture
McGovern and Ken Hechler (right) pose with cut-out of Harry Truman.

Comments are closed.
    Welcome to the Byrd Center Blog! We share content here including research from our archival collections, articles from our director, and information on upcoming events. 

    Categories

    All
    Director's Posts
    Intern Blogs
    Posts From The Archives

    Archives

    January 2023
    November 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    November 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    December 2011

    RSS Feed

Picture
213 North King Street
PO Box 5000
Shepherd University
Shepherdstown, WV 25443
(304) 876 - 5702

Our Mission:

The Byrd Center advances representative democracy by promoting a better understanding of the United States Congress and the Constitution through programs and research that engage citizens.
© 2021 Robert C. Byrd Center for
​Congressional History and Education
  • Home
  • About
    • Latest News
    • Statement on Systemic Racism
    • Leadership
    • Our Partners
    • Parking and Directions
  • Education
    • People Powered 2023 Program
    • Educational Resources
    • Teacher Institute
    • Internship Program
  • Research
    • Congressional Collections >
      • Robert C. Byrd Congressional Papers
      • Harley O. Staggers, Sr. Congressional Papers
      • Harley O. Staggers, Jr. Congressional Papers
      • Scot Falkner CAO Papers
    • Blog
    • Digital Collections
    • Oral History Project
    • Plan a Visit to the Archives
    • Collecting Policy
  • Events
    • Voices of the Community series
    • Summer Fundraiser 2023
    • Forum on Pollution
    • Formidable - author event
    • Voices of the Community
    • Constitution Day
    • Past Events
  • Support Us
    • Friends of the Byrd Center
    • Name a Seat
    • Annual Report
  • Reservations
  • Login