Almost President

by Scott Farris

  McGovern’s complete dedication to extricating America from Vietnam also made voters wary that he could end the war in a way that protected American pride, honor, and interests. Polling showed most Americans believed Nixon was satisfactorily winding down the war and, in a paradox that deeply troubled McGovern, polls showed that, by a better than two-to-one margin, Americans believed Nixon would do a better job of withdrawing the United States from Vietnam than the anti-war candidate. While more than twenty thousand of the roughly fifty thousand U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam occurred during Nixon’s first term, Nixon did finally withdraw most U.S. troops from Vietnam in 1973, a year that saw fewer than two hundred U.S. combat deaths.

  Nixon was so disliked in so many quarters that he received scant praise for his overwhelming victory. Rather than credit Nixon for running a brilliant campaign, which would have triumphed without the dirty tricks, the narrative that came out of 1972 was that McGovern had run a lousy campaign and that he proved that liberalism was no longer ascendant in American politics.

  Yet over time much of McGovern’s domestic program, such as expanded rights for women and gays, became mainstream, and some scholars argue McGovern was well within the tradition of the Democratic Party’s Jacksonian and New Deal past in “its commitment to economic security for the average American.” Nor have subsequent Democratic presidents and presidential candidates abandoned all liberal reform impulses. Carter proposed tax reforms that were very similar to McGovern’s own wealth redistribution programs. Mondale ran as a very conventional liberal—he even pledged to raise taxes to reduce the federal deficit. Clinton tried to reform national health care, and Obama did just that. Even McGovern’s proposal of amnesty for “draft dodgers,” considered extreme in 1972, was not a particularly divisive issue when President Ford granted conditional amnesty in 1974 and President Carter granted unconditional amnesty in 1977.

  Yet, despite all this, the McGovern campaign is not remembered among Democrats as a prophetic venture in the same way that Republicans venerate the equally hapless Goldwater campaign. McGovern and Goldwater were both insurgents attacking the established order. Goldwater inspired a movement that took control of the Republican Party; four decades later, it is still considered “toxic” for a Democrat to be known as the “next McGovern.” Why has McGovern’s campaign been interpreted as the last gasp of a dying liberal movement that had once dominated American politics, while Goldwater’s sounded like the first breath of a newborn?

  The notoriety of McGovern’s campaign is due to his anti-war stance and his legacy as “the ultimate peace candidate” in a society that still esteems martial virtues.25 This is where subsequent Democratic candidates have tried to draw a distinction between themselves and McGovern—not over any alleged radical domestic agenda. They have wanted it understood that they are not “soft” on defense issues.

  In 1984, Mondale and McGovern’s former campaign manager, Gary Hart, each called for modest increases in the U.S. defense budget. In 1988, Michael Dukakis explicitly insisted that he was “not another McGovern” when it came to foreign affairs.

  Clinton had joined in protests against the Vietnam War and was the Texas coordinator for the McGovern campaign, yet he dissembled during his own presidential campaigns on whether he did or did not try to avoid the draft. “I think he winced every time it was mentioned that he was a McGovern worker in ’72,” said a McGovern campaign colleague who also knew Clinton as president. In a bizarre twist, John Kerry had made his national reputation as a Vietnam veteran who ended up opposing the Vietnam War, yet in his 2004 campaign Kerry played down his brave and prescient role as dissenter and instead played up his war record, only to see that record distorted and used against him.

  The message is clear: Candidates cannot hope to be elected president if they talk about war as McGovern talked about war. Indeed, they must seem to be eager for the role of commander-in-chief.

  McGovern had hoped that Obama, with his opposition to the Iraq War, had perhaps demonstrated that an anti-war candidate could win the presidency. But Obama was no peace candidate. He said he only opposed “a dumb war” and labeled himself “a hawk when it comes to defeating terrorism.” He pledged during the campaign to actually increase the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and shocked his liberal supporters when he did just that as president.

  McGovern, of course, as noted, was not a pacifist either, but he opposed the Cold War liberalism that had taken over the Democratic Party after World War II and that emphasized a strong national defense while muting the party’s reform instinct. McGovern, for example, had supported Henry Wallace over Harry Truman in 1948 and never regretted it. “My mission,” McGovern had said, “was to try to show the American people that we didn’t have any mission to police the world.”

  Many Americans agree. Three-fifths of Americans, even in 1972, agreed with McGovern that sending troops into Vietnam in the first place had been a mistake. But McGovern’s language was so harsh and uncompromising that it disturbed the fundamental belief of most Americans that the United States only engages in “good” wars that are fought by humane means for the best of intentions.

  Because McGovern challenged this fundamental American belief, some challenged his masculinity. First Monday, the now-defunct conservative magazine, called McGovern “a sort of benign political Liberace.” Matching McGovern with the flamboyant entertainer who most assumed was gay was hardly subtle. The supposed effeminacy of being a peace candidate was reinforced by McGovern’s outreach to women and his support of gay rights, which further alienated those who want our leaders to possess a machismo that Barry Goldwater flaunted but that McGovern lacked. Like AFL-CIO president George Meany, they expressed disgust that McGovern’s convention had attracted “people who look like Jacks, acted like Jills, and had the odors of Johns about them.”

  The year before McGovern’s presidential campaign, the movie Patton won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was Nixon’s favorite film. He watched it many times and ordered his staff to watch it too. To prepare for Nixon’s visit to China, Premier Chou En-Lai watched Patton to better understand his guest. It was also the fourth-highest grossing film of 1970 at more than sixty-one million dollars.

  Some critics, perhaps because a young Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay, have argued that Patton can also be seen as satire, but it is safe to say that neither Nixon nor the vast majority of other Americans who viewed the film saw it as such. In the iconic opening scene, George C. Scott portrays American World War II general George S. Patton, standing before a massive flag, and offers Patton’s take on the American attitude toward war:

  Americans, traditionally, love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. . . . Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.

  If the screenwriters for Patton accurately captured an essential part of the American character, and the success of the movie suggests they did, then McGovern’s antipathy toward war put him at odds with the feelings of many voters. In a nation where the first president was the former general of our national army and our greatest presidents are those who led us to victory in great wars, it is a routine test for every presidential aspirant to demonstrate that they are “tough enough” to order our troops into war.

  McGovern aspired to a different kind of toughness, a toughness that enables leaders to avoid and to end wars, even when the end means withdrawal without the victory Americans crave. Woodrow Wilson, the fellow moralist whom McGovern aspired to emulate, had said in trying to avoid American entry into World War I, “There is such a thing as a nation being too proud to fight.” Public opinion led Wilson to abandon that noble sentiment and seek a declaration of war.

  Perhaps, as the movie Patton suggests,
Americans do love “the sting of battle.” For while much of McGovern’s critique of the Vietnam War has, in hindsight, been proven correct, as author Bruce Miroff noted, “it has been the heirs of Nixon who have had the upper hand on national security issues in subsequent presidential campaigns, and it has been the heirs of McGovern who have been caught up in an identity crisis of American patriotism.”

  22 McGovern did favor amnesty for Vietnam-era draft dodgers, but he did not favor nationally legalized abortion or legalization of even marijuana, let alone LSD.

  23 The party was so eager to move on after 1972 that perhaps the single most valuable legacy of the McGovern campaign—a list of six hundred thousand donors—was lost. New Democratic National Committee Chair Robert Strauss said he never received the list. McGovernites believe Strauss threw out the list on purpose to diminish the influence of the McGovern supporters in the party going forward. Lost was the basis for a new model of raising money, and instead the Democrats rejoined the Republicans in soliciting large, wealthy donors who have left the party beholden to many of the interests it purports to oppose.

  24 Snyder made Ed Muskie the prohibitive favorite at 2-5 with Humphrey second at 4-1.

  25 “Ultimate peace candidate” was the label applied by mock commentator/comedian Stephen Colbert in a 2008 interview with McGovern, who had written a book on how the United States should also extricate itself from Iraq. Overlooking McGovern’s World War II service, Colbert asked, “Is there any kind of war you would support?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  ROSS PEROT

  1992, 1996

  It’s that simple.

  For a nation so enamored with capitalism and industry, it is striking that so few businessmen have been tapped to be president. No person has moved directly from the business world into the White House. Of those presidents who had a background in business before they entered politics, there were as many business failures (Grant, Truman, George W. Bush) as successes, and those who enjoyed success in business before entering politics—and none could be labeled tycoons—had unsuccessful presidencies (Harding, Hoover, and George H. W. Bush).

  The bulk of our presidents and presidential candidates have been attorneys, generals, or educators. Perhaps, as Harry Truman noted, the reason more business executives don’t enter politics is that “after they’ve had a successful business career . . . they want to start at the top.” Most businessmen scorn the drudgery of practical politics and conclude that the worlds of politics and business, however entwined they may be, have different purposes and require different skills.

  The business titans of America’s past, such as John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan or Henry Ford, thrilled the nation with their exploits, but no one seems to have thought that the skills that created their extraordinary fortunes were transferrable to politics. Even without elective office, these men were politically powerful, of course, and used sympathetic and often indebted politicians to protect their corporate interests. As Vanderbilt once exclaimed, “What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?”

  A few tycoons dabbled in broader issues of public policy; Andrew Carnegie tried to purchase the independence of the Philippines from the U.S. government, and Ford led a much-ridiculed civilian delegation to Europe to try to end World War I. But when someone with a name renowned in business, like Rockefeller or Kennedy, does run for office, it is usually a second- or third-generation family member who did not build up the family fortune themselves but turned to public service relatively early in life.

  The handful of moguls who have entered politics have come from the news media.26 Perhaps William Randolph Hearst, James M. Cox, or Michael Bloomberg simply thought public office was good business since politics and the media often seem one industry. But generally, businessmen find the compromises and general messiness of electoral politics unappealing—and unprofitable. A business executive might accept the occasional Cabinet post, but he shuns too much involvement in partisan politics for fear of offending customers, shareholders, or powerful public officials. As one automobile executive explained to Time magazine in 1956, “We sell cars to both Republicans and Democrats.”

  Not until the 1980s were prominent businessmen pushed to consider national office. Then, admirers touted as possible presidential candidates both Lee Iacocca, who had reversed Chrysler’s sagging fortunes as its CEO, and Peter Ueberroth, the travel industry executive who managed the successful 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The two demurred from running at the time, though each remained an active commentator on current events, and Ueberroth, after serving as commissioner of Major League Baseball, did eventually run for governor of California during the 2003 recall election but finished sixth out of 135 candidates.

  Then came Ross Perot, incongruously described by his admirers as a “down to earth . . . billionaire,” who became the most successful third party candidate for president since Theodore Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party in 1912. While Perot is a unique personality, what truly separates him from the industrialists of yore is the time in which he has lived. Perot arrived on the scene when businessmen and those of great wealth were held in high public esteem, which has not always been the case in our history, and he entered politics when new technologies allowed those who could afford it the opportunity to bypass the traditional political process. Perot also offered himself as a candidate for president when people had lost faith in traditional political institutions and the wisdom of experts, and when the end of the Cold War made foreign policy experience less important in selecting a president.

  The Cold War had established an easily understood framework—“us vs. them”—that defined our politics for a half century. The collapse of the Soviet Union thrust a new set of issues before the nation, which made the world seem a much more complicated place. Many voters yearned for simpler times and for a “man on horseback” who could come in and solve our problems with a minimum of fuss. Perot, as one scholar noted, was more than happy to sell himself as “a political Lone Ranger, a lonely hero able to ride into Washington and single-handedly clean up the mess.”

  Perot’s 1992 campaign for president occurred at a time when businessmen were as exalted in America as they had been at any time in history. Unlike previous business booms, such as the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, there was no accompanying backlash against the rich. The excesses of the Vanderbilts, the DuPonts, and the other so-called robber barons, when contrasted with the misery experienced by much of the working poor, led to the reforms of the Progressive Era. The “Roaring Twenties, when President Calvin Coolidge had said, “The man who builds a factory builds a temple,” was followed by the Great Depression and the reforms of the New Deal. Businessmen blamed for the crash were considered near criminals, and some were criminals, such as Richard C. Whitney, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, who ended up in prison for embezzlement and fraud. President Franklin Roosevelt regularly castigated “blind economic forces and blindly selfish men,” as he did in his second inaugural address, for leaving “one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”

  But by the time Perot became part of the national consciousness, World War II had allowed the corporate world to rehabilitate its reputation by once again demonstrating the United States’ industrial genius, which was crucial to the Allied victory. The following decades witnessed continued economic growth that seemed, except for the occasional hiccup of a mild recession, to have no end. Moreover, social programs first implemented during the New Deal began to ensure that the new wealth was no longer contrasted with widespread poverty, and there had been no severe economic contraction that would, have caused a backlash against business. Business seemed to have mastered the business cycle; great wealth was tolerated because it occurred in a time of general prosperity.

  Meanwhile, new industries were emerging, exciting the public imagination. They we
re led by men who had the cachet of being entrepreneurs and innovators, not bland corporate managers. Perot was an early pioneer in the high-tech business world, and he demonstrated, to great public fascination, that this new industry allowed those who mastered it the opportunity to amass extraordinary fortunes.

  Perot had begun Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1962. As late as 1965 the company’s annual earnings were still less than one million dollars, and even though it was a computer company, it still didn’t own a single computer. But then Perot secured government contracts to manage data for Medicare and Medicaid, and revenues soared. The company made its first public stock offering in 1968, and the share price rose to $23 on the first day, meaning that Perot, who owned ten million shares in the company, became worth $230 million literally overnight. A year-and-a-half later, the share price peaked at $162.50—an extraordinary 50,000 percent of earnings—and Perot was now worth $1.5 billion. Since he had accumulated that wealth primarily by providing data services to the government in support of social programs, one wit noted he was America’s first “welfare billionaire.”

  By the 1970s (and especially by the 1980s), there were some who began to think that such spectacular success in business promised similarly spectacular results in public service. With government becoming ever more complex financially, there were also those who argued that government could and should be operated like a business. Meanwhile, as the attitude toward business was ascendant, the reputation of public service was in decline. A succession of calamities, among them the supposed shortcomings of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program, the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon’s Watergate transgressions, and Jimmy Carter’s warnings of a national malaise had badly discredited government. An indicator of the positive status of business in the public mind has historically been the election of a Republican president, and Carter was followed by Ronald Reagan, who declared government was no longer the solution to the nation’s problems, but in large measure the cause. The answers to America’s increasingly complicated problems (or so it appeared) now seemed to lie in the dynamic private sector as Americans were becoming increasingly disenchanted with the static political system.