POLICY appreciation Remembering George McGovern Jeremy Kinsman OPTIONS George McGovern, who died last month at age 90, is best remembered for having POLITIQUES been trounced by Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. But McGovern, a South Dakotan who ran on an antiwar platform that also emphasized social causes, devoted his public life to trying to ease hunger among the poor, both in the United States and abroad. Here, former Canadian diplomat Jeremy Kinsman, who knew McGovern when the American was ambassador to United Nations food and agricultural organizations, offers his personal recollections of the man he calls the “most thoroughly decent person” he has ever known.

Disparu le mois dernier à l’âge de 90 ans, George McGovern est surtout connu pour sa rude défaite face à Richard Nixon aux élections américaines de 1972. Mais ce natif du Dakota du Sud, qui avait fait une campagne antiguerre tout en insistant sur les questions sociales, a ensuite consacré sa vie publique à combattre la faim et la pauvreté aux États-Unis et à l’étranger. L’ancien diplomate canadien Jeremy Kinsman, qui a connu McGovern quand celui-ci était ambassadeur auprès d’organisations des Nations unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture, évoque le souvenir de « l’homme le plus honnête » qu’il ait jamais connu.

t was the first sunny day at the back end of a New York divisions were deeper than today’s — recall not only the City winter in 1977. The Swedish ambassador to the UN daily body count of Vietnam but also racial conflict and a Ihad given a lunch for delegates working on world food social and cultural revolution almost without precedent issues and the group included a star: George McGovern, the — McGovern’s straight talk was used by his opponents to 1972 Democratic nominee for US president. McGovern had portray him as an unpatriotic radical. That he could mus- not been invited as a political celebrity but because of his ter only 39 percent of the vote in trying to keep Richard long-time commitment to global food security. Back down Nixon from a second term stung him badly, and it was at street level after the lunch, he asked me if I’d care to walk made worse when Nixon resigned in disgrace after quitting the 40 blocks back to the UN building, and I said “Sure.” the Vietnam conflict, 25,000 American and many more That walk provided the first of many affecting conversations Vietnamese lives later. with the most thoroughly decent person I have ever known. McGovern worried that his experience showed the im- “You see,” he said from behind sunglasses as he lowered the possibility of getting Americans to face any kind of truth brim of his trilby hat, “walking in public in New York City is about their country that isn’t rosy. Jimmy Carter also tried something I haven’t done since the election.” to level with Americans, telling them that their priorities As we paced off the Park Avenue blocks, McGovern and choices were becoming selfish and dysfunctional. He dropped jokes about the failed national campaign. “Too got thrown out of the White House by a sunny actor who bad the election wasn’t in 1974” was one I’d come to hear promised a “morning in America.” again. He had developed these one-liners to mask his trau- McGovern told me he assumed that I, as a Canadian, matic experience of running for the presidency. His can- would get his meaning more easily. He cherished his own didacy was built around stopping a ghastly and foolish Canadian side, from his mom, who was born in Ontario and war. But at a time when his country’s social, if not party, moved as a young woman from Calgary to South Dakota, where she met George’s dad. When George was three, the family moved back to Calgary to look after his maternal Jeremy Kinsman is resident international scholar, Institute of grandmother and stayed for three years. Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley, and project director, Council for Twenty years after our first meeting in New York, George a Community of Democracies. He was Canadian ambassador to the and I were ambassadors in Rome at the same time. Bill Clin- Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States. ton had appointed George as ambassador to the UN’s Food

POLICY OPTIONS 47 NOVEMBER 2012 Jeremy Kinsman

e then told how in March 1945, fly- Hing back over rural Austria after a bombing raid in southern Germany, the flight deck heard from the bombardier that the crew couldn’t dislodge a very big bomb stuck in the bomb bay door. “We sure can’t land with that damned thing hanging out,” McGov- ern agreed. He told his crew to hang on as he began to agitate his clunky big Liberator as wildly as its specs would allow. When, in a whoosh, the plane lifted, George looked down as the heavy bomb sped to earth, head- ed directly for a farmhouse below. He knew it was noon. He worried that a farm family was probably at lunch on that sunny day, out of the war’s way, and that they were going to be blown to pieces. “Yeah, I’ve always regretted that,” George told the TV crew. When he got back to San Giovanni air base he was given a telegram, telling him that Eleanor, his wife, had given birth to their first child. “So,” he thought, “life is given, other lives blown away.” After the documentary aired, McGovern campaigning: his life was devoted to helping George received a call from the Austri- the hungry poor an TV producer. She had been reached Photo: CP Photo by an elderly man who had seen the in- and Agriculture Organization and the no pacifist. When he saw the photos in terview. He called to say it had been his World Food Program (which he had 1999 of Kosovar Muslims being herded farm the bomb had hit. The family had been instrumental in setting up as the in huddled lines to waiting trains by come in for lunch but heard the aircraft first director of the US Food for Peace guys with guns, he called for interna- going through its crazy paces as it tried program in the Kennedy administra- tional intervention against Serbia. to dump the bomb, so they ran to a tion). Together, we constituted a North It was the principled reaction of gully to take cover. The farmer wanted American “group” of two. He insisted the man who volunteered for military McGovern to know they had been un- we alternate as group chairman for the service the week of Pearl Harbor and harmed. He agreed that getting rid of nice duties, such as calling on Pope piloted 35 dangerous B-24 runs over Hitler was what really mattered. “Now John Paul II, who was obsessed with southern Germany in 1944-45, flying that’s redemption,” George told me. food security issues, and the more te- out of Puglia in southern Italy. At about In later life, McGovern went back dious late-night wrangles with semi- the time that NATO bombing of Serbia to the United States, receiving the hostile negotiators from the UN’s “au- over Kosovo began, he told me he had kinds of honours that come to elder thoritarian internationale.” given an interview for a documentary statesmen when the view through the But to me, our “group’s” priceless film for Austrian TV. The interviewer rear-view mirror turns nostalgic. It value was personal, the benefit of an asked him how he could reconcile was premature. The invasion of Iraq ongoing tutorial about war and peace, his antiwar position on Vietnam with aroused McGovern’s ire again, and he poverty and wealth. George’s quest his own Second World War duty as a became a resolute adversary of George for world peace made him empathize bomber of civilians. He said he had no Bush’s invasion. His truest redemp- with Canada’s traditional vocation for hesitation over the moral imperative tion came with the election of Barrack peacekeeping (perhaps more than we to defeat Hitler with whatever it took. Obama, whose candidacy was built on deserved) and our more recent champi- This was a collision of right and wrong opposition to another stupid and arro- oning of human security issues. His was at its starkest and most profound. gantly launched US war, proof 36 years not a quixotic quest. He was a robust Was there no regret? “Well, maybe,” after McGovern failed that an antiwar peacemaker when needed, but he was George softly allowed after reflection. candidate could become President. n

48 OPTIONS POLITIQUES NOVEMBRE 2012