THE DEVIL AND GEORGE McGOVERN WHY THE SENATOR HAS BEEN A DISASTROUS CANDIDATE

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33067, 7 November 1972, Page 18

THE DEVIL AND GEORGE McGOVERN WHY THE SENATOR HAS BEEN A DISASTROUS CANDIDATE

(By

STEWART ALSOP.

in "Newsweek )

(Reprinted by arrangement) WASHINGTON.—As his initial reaction to the prospect of a settlement in Vietnam clearly suggests. Senator George McGovern is not i tinning against President Richard M. Nixon. He is running, instead, against Satan, the Prince of Darkness, the Devil himself.

The fact that McGovern is running against the Devil, rather than Mr Nixon, may help to explain the central mystery of this campaign. This is why the candidate of the majority party, running against an unloved and vulnerable incumbent. made more vulnerable by the smelly Watergate business, is so far behind. The mystery, in other words, is why Senator McGovern has been such a disastrously bad candidate.

The mystery may be explained in pari by the fact that Senator McGovern belongs to a special subspecies of the genus, “politicos Americanus.” Like William Jennings Bryan or the hero of his youth, Henry A. Wal- | lace, he is a preacher-politi-cian — and more preacher I than politician. This is natural enough. McGovern’s father was a hellfire, come-to-Jesus preacher, and McGovern himself took briefly to the pulpit before he switched to politics. Nowadays, he wears broad lapels and with-it shirts and says an occasional “hell’’ and “bulls—,” but the early 'bending of the twig shows through, inexorably.

Sunday mornings It is only necessary to hear McGovern make a set speech, for example, to recall long Sunday mornings on hard-seated pews. It shows through in other small ways too, for example, in the theme McGovern chose for his campaign — “Come Home, America.” This traces its origins to a popular turn-of-the-century hymn, “Softly and Tenderly,” by Will Lamartine Thompson. Its refrain goes as follows: Come home, come home. Ye who are weary, come home, Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling, oh, sinner, come home.

Senator McGovern’s natural mind-set, in short, is that of a preacher. In the nature of things, a preacher identifies his opposition as evil in general, and the Devil in particular, and it is natural to carry this mind-set over from the pulpit to the stump. This is clearly what Senator McGovern has done.

He has repeatedly said that he regards the contest between himself and President Nixon as a contest “between good and evil.” A few days ago, according to the “Washington Post’s” George Lardner Jr., he elaborated this modest assessment, saying that he regards the race as a struggle “between our better impulses and our more selfish, baser instincts” — with McGovern, of course, embodying the former. Embodiment of evil

This is obviously meant quite sincerely, and since Mr Nixon is the embodiment of “evil” and “our baser instincts,” it is really impossible, by George McGovern’s lights, to say anything bad enough about him. “I think it’s almost impossible for the people to encompass the enormity of what Mr Nixon has done these last four years,” says Senator McGovern, in his usual pulpit tone, more of sorrow than of anger. But of course it is possible for the senator to encompass the enormity, because the senator knows Satan when he sees him. McGovern has repeatedly compared the President to Hitler, the closest approximation to the Devil in modern history, and the Vietnam bombing (which was originated by Lyndon Johnson, whom McGovern has tried so hard to appease) to the burning of the Jews in the crematoria. More recently, he has gone even further. He has charged (to quote the “Post’s” Lardner again) that “Mr Nixon has kept the war going for four years and ground up 20,000 American

lives purely to avoid criticism from the Right-wing war hawks’." And he has repeated a columnist’s stomachturning accusation that "all those people died for the Committee to Re-elect the President.” Back to McCarthy No Presidential candidate in modern history has imputed to his rival such foul and evil motives. Compared to the charge that the President ground up 20,000 American lives for purely selfish political motives, the rhetorical snideries of the "old Nixon" seem tame stuff indeed. Obviously. it is possible for sensible men to differ sensibly about whether the President and Henry Kissinger should have made the best deal they could get and pulled out of Vietnam long ago. But that is not what McGovern has been saying, you have to go back to Joseph R. McCarthy’s charge that Gen. George Marshall had been the leader of a vast conspiracy to weaken America. Senator McGovern is not the first politician to run for President against Mr Nixon. Neither John Kennedy nor Hubert Humphrey loved Richard Nixon, but they said nothing remotely comparable to what McGovern has said. And it would not have occutred to either of them to describe his campaign as a contest “between good and evil.” Kennedy had. and Humphrey has, a saving sense of humour, and the notion of this stark moral distinction would have seemed ridiculous to them. Back to the mystery Here we come back to that unystery — why Senator Mc--1 Govern has been such a disastrous candidate. Obviously, President Nixon would not have been an easy man to beat this year, by any Demo-

crat. When he oraies about the war. McGovern often talks as though he were run ning against Lyndon Johnson. when Johnson had more than half a million men in Vietnam, and draft calls and casualties were high. In fact, the central political tact about the war today is that no more young men are being drafted and sent to Vietnam This is what most voters—obedient, no doubt, to then "baser instincts" — care about the most. By the same token. Mr Govern often talks as though we were in the middle of a Hoover-style depression In fact, we are in the middle of a boom, and most of the voters have never had it so good. In such circumstances, an incumbent President is not easily beatable. Watergate or no Watergate. But this does not explain why McGovern has done so very badly Voters* view Perhaps the chief reason is simply that most voters do not see things through the eyes of preacher-politician McGovern. They do not see him as he sees himselt —as the embodiment of "good" and "our better impulses." To cite one example, to judge by the polls, most voters do not see McGovern's proposal to deny the South Vietnamese the means to defend themselves against the Communists as the highly moral proposition McGovern genuinely believes it to be. Perhaps above all. most of the voters simply do not recognise in the Devil McGovern has chosen to run against the unlovable, highly political, occasionally duplicitous but generally competent and effective President they know as Richard M. Nixon. And thus what seems to McGovern self-evident truth, seems to a lot of voters colossal self-righteousness.