posted by Jeremy Leaming
The nation lost a passionate liberal, proud populist and decorated war hero on Sunday when U.S. Senator and presidential nominee George McGovern died at 90.
As Salon’s Joan Walsh wrote, after McGovern accepted the Democratic presidential nomina
tion in 1972, Richard Nixon and the Republican Party unleashed a notorious smear campaign that not only attempted to besmirch McGovern’s integrity, but led to a landslide victory for Nixon.
Walsh wrote:
It worked. Of course Nixon’s aggressiveness was ultimately his downfall; he resigned over the scandal around his henchmen breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building. A year after the ’72 election, polls showed Americans would choose McGovern if they had it to do over again.
Read more tributes to McGovern’s life:
Ignore McGovern’s Message at Your Peril, Stanley Kutler, Salon
George McGovern Dead at 90, David Browne, Rolling Stone
Remembering George McGovern, Gary Hart, The Huffington Post
A Prairie Liberal, Trounced but Never Silenced, David E. Rosenbaum, The New York Times
George McGovern: Touchstone of Liberalism, John Nichols, The Nation
George McGovern: American Patriot and Truth-Teller, Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
George McGovern, the man who never gave up, former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, The Washington Post
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