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As soon as the Republican national convention appears on our screens, we'll hear a lot of oratory. Many of these sleep-inducing speeches will be devoted to this curious exercise in logic:
1. George McGovern led the Democratic party to an overwhelming defeat in 1972.
2. The party rules which allowed McGovern to gain the nomination then are still pretty much the same, and many of the people who were active in McGovern's campaign are still active in Democratic politics.
3. Therefore, any Democratic nominee, and anyone who
might vote for a Democratic candidate, is a
McGovernite,
and,
4. As everyone knows, to be a McGovernite
is the
political equivalent of leprosy.
Now that I seldom get calls from bill collectors, it is
difficult for me to confess to certain flaws in my
otherwise sterling background, but I feel compelled to
admit that I was once a McGovernite.
Granted, it was probably a youthful indiscretion in 1972. I was a mere lad, an impressionable college student. There was a war in Vietnam which I had absolutely no desire to fight in; my classmates were getting killed and injured. McGovern promised to stop that war.
That summer, I began a glamorous career, reporting for a weekly newspaper, although I soon discovered that I could not live on its magnificent $320 a month. So I hired on as a construction laborer. McGovern pointed out that the newspaper owner's three-martini lunch was tax deductible, whereas the bologna sandwich in my lunchbucket was fully taxed. He thought that was unfair, and so did I.
Those may be issues upon which decent people can
disagree. But I still can't understand why Republican
speakers sound like they're spitting when they say
McGovernite.
Did McGovern lead his party to a disaster at the polls? So did Barry Goldwater in 1964. And yet that may have strengthened the Republicans in the future; it was in that campaign that Ronald Reagan first became a national political figure, and he later led the GOP to some impressive triumphs.
Or was it because McGovern advocated some ideas that sounded radical at the time? In politics, though, yesterday's fringe viewpoint can be tomorrow's mainstream wisdom. Consider Reagan, who sounded like a lunatic in 1964 and like a wizard in 1980, without changing his tune to any substantial degree. Or look at the Populists, who lost by an epic landslide in 1892 with only 8.5 percent of the vote. They called for an abandonment of the gold standard, the eight-hour day, a graduated income tax and direct election of U.S. senators -- all of which later became realities.
Maybe it was the Eagleton affair that did McGovern in; his standing in the polls plummeted when it was revealed that his first running mate, Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton, had been treated in a mental institution. At the same time, though, Spiro Agnew, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, was collecting cash kickbacks from Maryland contractors while sitting at his official desk.
Which brings up the main issue -- the only other real
choice in 1972 was to be a Nixonite.
It seems only fair to assume that anyone who still
attacks McGovernites
must be a Nixonite
--
that is, someone who believes in laundering illegal
campaign contributions, spying on American citizens,
conspiring to suspend our constitutional rights, expanding
an undeclared war, betraying one's most fervent supporters,
and lying to the public at every opportunity.
As long as those Republican orators aren't ashamed of
being Nixonites,
I think I can avoid being
embarrassed by that McGovernite facet of my youth folly. In
fact, the more I think about it, the easier it gets.
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