The Last Great Senate

by Ira Shapiro

  With the possible exception of Ted Kennedy, George McGovern was the best-known representative of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. McGovern had always doubted Carter’s liberalism and was appalled at how long Carter had supported the Vietnam War. Wanting a Democrat in the White House, he encouraged the party to unify behind Carter, offering an unusual endorsement at the 1976 Democratic Convention: “If any of us have disagreements with Governor Carter, let us save them for President Carter.”

  He did not hold back long. After Carter was in office less than one hundred days, in April 1977 McGovern “suggested that the Carter administration was trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the jobless; that our great cities were deteriorating while the Administration held back on public investment and the reform of our tax, welfare, health and railway systems.” Carter responded, perhaps reasonably, that it was too early for that type of judgment, but McGovern’s experiences during the Johnson and Nixon presidencies had convinced him that it was preferable to speak out strongly, early, rather than wait until it was too late.

  Of the extraordinary group of Democratic senators elected in 1962, George McGovern’s trajectory had been the most remarkable. Ten years before coming to the Senate, McGovern, the son of a Methodist minister from Mitchell, South Dakota, and a World War II bomber pilot, had been a thirty-year-old professor of political science and history at Dakota Wesleyan, just completing his Ph.D. at Northwestern University. With an earnest demeanor, ordinary looks, and reedy voice, McGovern seemed more naturally suited to the pulpit or the campus than the political world. But politics was his chosen realm. He was a liberal and an idealist inspired not only by the eloquence of Adlai Stevenson but by the activism and policy entrepreneurialism of Hubert Humphrey from the neighboring state of Minnesota.

  After the 1952 election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republicans held every major office in South Dakota. In the state Senate of thirty-five members, no Democrats had been elected. The seventy-five-member state House was slightly better; there were two Democrats. McGovern saw the chance to build the Democratic Party in South Dakota, and he did not have much competition for the dubious honor of trying to do so.

  McGovern began driving across South Dakota. He met with Democrats in all sixty-seven counties and found men and women whose liberalism, in his words, “had been refined in the fires of opposition, ridicule, and in some cases, the penalty of social and professional discrimination.” Within a few years, McGovern built the state Democratic Party from nothing to a competitive position. His intellect, energy, and unmistakable decency helped him get elected to the House of Representatives in 1956. After his reelection in 1958, he immediately started planning a Senate race against Republican Senator Karl Mundt, an affable and adroit campaigner, who played effectively on the fears of communism in his state. McGovern proved to be a strong candidate and came within a point of upsetting Mundt.

  Ironically, his defeat could be traced to the fact that South Dakota went overwhelmingly for Nixon over Kennedy in 1960. South Dakota wasn’t ready for a liberal, New England, Catholic president. John F. Kennedy understood as much. After a campaign appearance with McGovern in South Dakota, Kennedy said to his brother, Robert: “I think we just cost that nice guy a Senate seat.”

  Perhaps partially out of guilt, President Kennedy tapped McGovern to be White House director of the Food for Peace effort—a great match for his energy and idealism. But when the other South Dakota Senate seat came up for election in 1962, McGovern plunged into the race against the respected Senator Francis Case. In the midst of the race, Case died suddenly and was replaced by Lt. Governor Joe Bottum. This should have guaranteed McGovern’s victory, but weakened by hepatitis, he had difficulty campaigning in his own right. McGovern seemed destined for a second, heartbreakingly narrow defeat. But President Kennedy was far more popular in South Dakota in 1962 than he had been two years earlier, and his surge of popularity after the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis helped all Democratic candidates. On Election Day, George McGovern won the South Dakota Senate seat by 200 votes; a recount increased his margin to 597. On these few hundred votes, McGovern’s career—and American political history—would turn.

  In the Senate, McGovern demonstrated a passionate commitment to feeding the hungry, in the United States and around the world. He focused a spotlight on hunger in America, which led to enormous media attention and a great increase in understanding about the shocking scope of the problem. McGovern’s tireless efforts also led to the creation of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, of which he became the first chairman. The new committee spearheaded the dramatic expansion of the Food Stamp Program and the School Lunch Program. The number of Americans receiving food stamps increased from three million in 1968 to twelve million in 1972 to nineteen million in 1975, as unemployment increased. The children receiving free or reduced-cost school lunches more than doubled between 1969 and 1972.

  His singular accomplishments in the area of food and nutrition reflected his compassion, idealism, and political ability. When Robert Dole came to the Senate in 1969, McGovern was not immediately drawn to him. He regarded the acerbic Dole as a “cheap shot” artist; once, when invited to go on Meet the Press with Dole, McGovern declined, offering to appear with anyone else. But within a short time, having joined the Agriculture Committee, Dole saw the advantage to Kansas farmers of the food stamp program, because it increased the demand for the full range of agricultural products. He was also genuinely moved by the plight of those suffering from hunger and malnutrition. McGovern and Dole were both World War II veterans. McGovern admired Dole’s great courage and fortitude in dealing with the crippling injuries that he had sustained in the closing days of the war. Dole admired the courage McGovern had shown in flying more than thirty-five bombing missions over Europe, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross. Despite their differences, McGovern and Dole forged a bipartisan alliance that made a series of great legislative accomplishments possible.

  In the Senate, McGovern was best known for his opposition to the Vietnam War. He expressed his opposition to war in September 1963, earlier than anyone else. He became one of the Senate’s leading doves, and when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, McGovern made himself a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, so that the followers of Robert Kennedy would have someone to rally behind, although he had no chance to seize the nomination from Hubert Humphrey.

  After Richard Nixon’s election, McGovern escalated his opposition to the Vietnam War, teaming with Republican Mark Hatfield of Oregon in one of the leading efforts to cut off funding for the war. In September 1970, with a bitter off-year election campaign under way and opposition to the war cresting, McGovern made one of the most memorable speeches in the Senate’s history. “Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave,” McGovern intoned, to a somber Senate and packed gallery. “This chamber reeks with blood.” He also chaired the Democratic Party’s commission to change the party nominating rules to ensure that no one would ever again secure the nomination the way Humphrey had—without running in primaries and caucuses, essentially selected by the party bosses.

  Moved by the continuing war in Vietnam and the failure to deal with the problems of America’s cities and poor, McGovern sought the Democratic nomination for president a second time in 1972. Muskie was the frontrunner; Humphrey, seeking a rematch with Nixon, was also in the race. Nevertheless, Humphrey was not going to be nominated by the Democratic Party in 1972 because of his association with Johnson and the war. Muskie chose to run a campaign based principally on seeking endorsements of party officials and Washington power brokers. McGovern understood the intensity of the new Democrats around the country, fueled primarily by their opposition to the Vietnam War. He also understood the new party rules that his commission had designed and the need to win delegates from primaries and caucuses all around the country, from the grass roots.

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p; McGovern ran a brilliant insurgent campaign, sounding the theme of “Come home, America.” Like Adlai Stevenson twenty years earlier, McGovern brought a new generation of activists into the party, including recent Yale Law School graduates William Clinton and Hillary Rodham, and the Denver lawyer who ran his campaign, Gary Hart. McGovern won the Democratic nomination at a tumultuous convention in Miami, where the new Democrats took great pride in ejecting Mayor Richard Daley from the convention and distancing themselves from other traditional powers like AFL-CIO President George Meany.

  Yet seizing the nomination in 1972 proved to be McGovern’s peak. The general election campaign proved to be an unmitigated disaster, starting with the revelation that Senator Thomas Eagleton, McGovern’s choice for vice president, had been given electric shock therapy for depression. McGovern reacted indecisively, first endorsing Eagleton “1000%” and then, flip-flopping, asked him to leave the ticket. It was only downhill from there.

  The Republicans effectively used the words of Democrats to paint the straitlaced McGovern as the candidate of “acid, amnesty and abortion,” and weak on national defense, despite his heroic service in World War II. Meanwhile, Nixon skillfully wound down the war and pumped up the economy. Blockbuster Washington Post articles by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein linking the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex to the Nixon reelection campaign came too late to affect the election. In November, George McGovern suffered the worst loss in the history of presidential elections, winning only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

  American politics is a tough and unforgiving business. Many people of South Dakota, who had been proud that a native son had been nominated for president, were now criticizing McGovern for having “gone national.” McGovern focused his energies on rebuilding his ties in the state, which he described as “bending over and letting everyone kick me in the ass.” He did so with sufficient grace that he was reelected to the Senate in 1974 and rekindled his enthusiasm for the Senate when he got a coveted seat on the Foreign Relations Committee. As the full scope of Watergate emerged, many of his supporters saw McGovern as vindicated. He received a rousing reception at the Democratic mid-term convention in 1974, which buoyed his spirits.

  George McGovern recognized the brilliance of Jimmy Carter’s campaign early on, because Carter had taken McGovern’s playbook, both in terms of grassroots effort and in terms of his message. Imitation is a high form of flattery, but McGovern remained hostile to Carter. After his early criticisms of Carter he decided to spell out his concerns with a “memo to the White House,” and it came in the form of an article in Harper’s in October 1977.

  McGovern’s article was a blistering assault on Carter’s first eight months in office, but it went even further, claiming that Carter had “already set the priorities that will determine policies for the next four years.” The overriding priority to Carter, McGovern charged, was balancing the federal budget by 1981. McGovern was not against a balanced budget “if that be accomplished on a foundation of full employment, a prosperous urban and rural economy, and substantially reduced military spending.” But because Carter had committed to an increased military budget, his balanced budget “would weigh most heavily on the 10 million unemployed and underemployed Americans, on the minorities trapped in decaying central cities, and on the majority of Americans who need health insurance, decent housing, and efficient transportation.” McGovern criticized Carter for using “obsolete economics, or a misreading of present economic conditions, or both.” To drive the point home, the article harkened back to Herbert Hoover’s pursuit of a balanced budget in 1931.

  McGovern several times suggested that Carter could learn about economic policy from President John Kennedy and called for an attack on concentrated economic power, especially in the oligarchies that controlled the steel and energy industries. He offered one word of praise for Carter—the decision to cancel the B-1 bomber—but then condemned him for using the savings to fund other weapons programs, rather than needed domestic investments. McGovern wrote his bottom line on Carter’s balanced budget idea: “thus the tight circle around needed public investment closes: a balanced budget, increased military spending, and tax cuts leave only a trickle of dollars for the programs that the President promised the Urban League.” Having already invoked the specter of Hoover, McGovern also compared Carter to the disgraced Nixon and his “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. “It is not ‘too early’ to decide that there is no secret plan for social justice.”

  McGovern focused his fire mainly on Carter’s budget proposals and what he regarded as misallocated funds and mistaken priorities. But he also criticized Carter’s emphasis on human rights as selective, and likely to be seen in the Soviet Union as a “reincarnation of John Foster Dulles’ attempt to bring Communism down by encouraging dissent and revolt in Eastern Europe.” He charged that SALT II “has been delayed at best, and the Carter rhetoric has revived a Cold War psychology among Americans.”

  It was a powerful critique, particularly on the domestic issues. Coming from one of the most prominent Democrats, who had been the party’s standard bearer just five years earlier, it was potentially far more damaging than any criticism that the Republicans could mount. For many years, liberal Senate Democrats had worked closely with the labor unions, the consumer groups, the environmental movement, civil rights organizations, antiwar activists, and those battling poverty. McGovern’s speech reflected the concerns of those groups, reinforced them, and legitimized them.

  There was no longer any doubt: Jimmy Carter would have his hands full, dealing with a wily and increasingly effective Republican opposition; Scoop Jackson, a power unto himself; and the Democratic liberals.

  chapter 5

  THE APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY

  STARTING WITH HIS WALK DOWN PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE ON INAUGURATION day, Jimmy Carter had surprised the Senate repeatedly in the early weeks of his presidency. The content of the economic package, the retreat on the rebate, the attack on the water projects, the new approach to arms control, and above all, the overriding emphasis on breaking America’s energy dependency—all had been unexpected. No one, however, could claim to be surprised by his emphasis on ethics in government.

  Carter had presented himself as the antidote to the corruption of Richard Nixon and scandal of Watergate. In this role, he had been convincing enough to be elected president. He pledged that his administration would observe an unprecedented level of ethical behavior—a “government as good as the American people.” Reasonable people could disagree about how good a government that standard might require, but no one doubted that Carter took his commitment seriously.

  When Carter’s administration put together its legislative package of ethics proposals, it was able to borrow liberally from Democratic ideas labeled “Watergate reforms” dating back to the previous Congress. The centerpiece was legislation to establish a mechanism by which a temporary special prosecutor would be appointed to investigate high-ranking executive branch officials, when necessary. The package also included a requirement of public financial disclosure by high-level executive branch officials, as well as prohibitions against executive branch officials accepting gifts.

  Carter was successfully tapping into a widespread feeling that corruption was rampant in America. The 1970’s marked a period in which Americans had lost confidence, not only in their political leaders, but in their institutions in general. Watergate was the most visible manifestation, but the public was bombarded with seemingly endless news of corruption in state and local governments, in the police departments, and even a cheating scandal at West Point. In 1976, polls suggested that just two out of ten Americans trusted the government.

  Many in Congress felt that both the Senate and the House had performed with distinction in responding to the abuses of Watergate. They had already legislated significant reforms in its aftermath. But there had been highly visible scandals on the House side of the Capitol, with the sexu
al peccadillos of powerful chairmen Wilbur Mills, who had been involved in a drunken incident with Fanne Foxe, an Argentine stripper, and Wayne Hays, who had hired Elizabeth Ray on his staff even though she had no noticeable clerical skills. Moreover, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott had completed his distinguished career under a cloud, having accepted an illegal contribution from Gulf Oil Corporation. With Carter putting so much emphasis on ethics, the new congressional leaders really had no choice. Consequently, Tip O’Neill and Robert Byrd determined to beat Carter to the punch.

  IN MID-MARCH, THE WORD spread rapidly that two of the Senate’s most respected members, Gaylord Nelson and Ed Muskie, the two leading environmentalists in Senate history, were going to square off in a debate. Unfortunately, the highly anticipated debate would have nothing to do with the environment. Nelson and Muskie would clash on “honoraria,” the question of how much outside income senators could earn from making speeches.

  Gaylord Nelson was known for his wry wit and ability to find the humor in any almost any situation. But on that day, as he took the subway that connected the Russell Senate Office Building to the Senate chamber in the Capitol, he saw little to laugh about. Nelson was about to defend the central provision of the proposed Senate ethics code—a sharp limitation on the outside earned income of senators—against some of his best friends, who were infuriated. They could not understand why Nelson advocated taking away the income they needed to put their children through college.

  Nelson was beginning his fifteenth year in the Senate, having been elected with the great class of 1962. He came to the Senate after serving two terms as governor of Wisconsin, and few, if any, of the governors-turned-senators had a record of accomplishment equaling Nelson’s. Raised in Clear Lake, Wisconsin, Nelson was deeply touched by the natural beauty of Wisconsin’s forests and lakes. He forged his identity as the “conservation governor” several years before the release of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the consequent launch of the environmental movement in the United States.