THE OTHER GEORGE … NO, THE OTHER OTHER GEORGE

George McGovern ran for president over thirty years ago. I’m very pleased to learn he’s not only still alive, he’s still thinking and still has something to say.

I remember the 1972 presidential election, Richard Nixon vs. George McGovern. I was eleven that year, in the sixth grade, and we had a mock election in school. I was for McGovern; I had a button and everything. I wonder what happened to it, and my Impeach Nixon button too.

I’ve read that mock elections in schools often presage the real ones to a degree that’s uncanny. Maybe that’s because the kids know who their parents are going to vote for, and simply vote the same. I don’t know, but it wasn’t that way at Canalino School in 1972. McGovern won by a landslide.

I guess the west coast counterculture was beginning to seep through the cracks at our school. Maybe through those high louvered windows that the teacher had to open with a long pole. Maybe the strange fears of the distant but disturbing war were seeping in too. For whatever reason, that Fall progressives dominated in the classrooms farthest from the sandbox and the swings.

I’ve often wondered how America might be different if Nixon hadn’t won. I like to think that we’d have a kinder society, a more vigilant focus and a firmer grip on individual rights, maybe fewer jobs gone overseas. A man can dream. And as Simone Weil said, “A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough…Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.”

In any case, it’s great that Mr. McGovern has contributed this column to The Nation. The wise voice of a man in his 80s, who took his best shot.

e-mail