This is Mike Fritz with the American News Project and I recently had the opportunity to interview former Senator George McGovern while he was in Washington D.C. promoting his new book about Abraham Lincoln.
George McGovern is a man I've wanted to speak with for years. Watergate (and Dustin Hoffman’s performance in All the President’s Men) is the reason I decided to get my bogus degree in Mass Communications. And, like many of you I am sure, I couldn't put down "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" when I read it in college.
McGovern has always been an enigma for the left. He's been idolized and demonized by progressives since his historic defeat in 1972 and continues to frustrate classic liberals today. But he’s extremely gracious and comes across as a classy man who you wish was your grandfather.
He’s still very much with it for an 86 year-old who spends most of the year in Florida and South Dakota. And he’s well aware of his critics who have called him naïve, hopelessly idealistic and a political lackey.
McGovern spoke on a range of issues but focused mainly on the risk President Obama has if he continues to escalate the war in Afghanistan. McGovern, who holds a PhD in history from Norhtwestern, used the example of another Democrat who continues to baffle liberals to make his point.
In 1964, President Johnson said of Vietnam that "I don't think it's worth fighting for, and I don't think that we can get out. It’s just the biggest damn mess I ever saw.'' Yet Johnson escalated the conflict and America became bogged down in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. McGovern told me that Obama could, like Johnson with his Great Society program, hobble his ambitious domestic goals unless he begins to draw down U.S. forces in the Middle East.