HomeNixon FoundationNixon Center

George McGovern Speaks At The Nixon Library

August 28, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Yorba Linda 

On Wednesday night, a crowd of over 700 gathered in Yorba Linda to see former Senator George McGovern talk about his new book, a short biography of Abraham Lincoln. The event, co-sponsored by the Richard Nixon Library and Museum and the Richard Nixon Foundation (and held in the Library’s replica of the White House’s East Room) would have been remarkable enough for the appearance of President Nixon’s Democratic opponent in the 1972 election – but, in a surprise appearance, the Senator was introduced by none other than 83-year-old Gore Vidal, almost the last major American writer of the “Greatest Generation” still living, who has written about RN on many occasions (including the 1972 play An Evening With Richard Nixon). Both men received standing ovations.

Though Vidal has sometimes expressed a degree of admiration for the thirty-seventh President’s resilience and achievements in the field of foreign affairs, in recent years his remarks about Nixon have been much more negative, and he seems to blame RN for instigating the careers of former Vice President Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom worked in the Nixon Administration and have been the targets of Vidal’s angriest barbs in articles and interviews since 2000. The late Senator Edward Kennedy has also been the object of Vidal’s bile from time to time, unsurprisingly given the writer’s mercurial relationship with the Kennedy clan, and his preference for Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s brand of populist radicalism. But in his introduction in Yorba Linda, Vidal spoke instead of Lincoln, the subject of one of his best-known and most acclaimed novels.

Sen. McGovern then took the podium and discussed his biography. He stressed that Lincoln’s greatest achievement was preserving the Union, and spoke at length about the difficulties the sixteenth President had to overcome – his limited formal education, and his struggle with depression (which McGovern knows from experience, as he movingly describes in Terry, his book about his late daughter’s tragic battle with alcoholism and bipolar illness).

Though Ted Kennedy went unmentioned in the main part of McGovern’s talk, one of the questions asked after it referred to him, and the reply was:

“Ted was a great senator,” McGovern said. “He hardly missed a day [of work] . . . I admired him and, on a personal basis, if any senator suffered a loss like a child or a spouse, he was the first person who called. When our daughter Terry died, he came to see Eleanor and me. He was there at 9 a.m. the next morning with his wife. He was a person who respected tragedy because of his family. He was very thoughtful. I thought a lot of him.”

McGovern also spoke at Chapman University earlier in the day.



Comments

5 Responses to “George McGovern Speaks At The Nixon Library”

  1. MK on August 28th, 2009 4:43 pm

    Thank you for posting this, very interesting. It reflects well on the federal Library and the Foundation that George McGovern was invited to speak.

    McGovern’s comments about EMK bring to mind an article from the July 2008 issue of Washingtonian magazine. The title and subtitle are, “Senators Don’t Lead Such Charmed Lives — A surprising number of senators have suffered personal losses. In an era of partisanship, sorrows are often the ties that bind.” I first read this last summer in the print edition. The web version is at
    http://www.washingtonian.com/print/articles/6/174/8420.html

    The article mentions EMK, of course, and many other Senators who have suffered personal losses. Some gather together in bipartisan prayer meetings. The Senate Chaplain offers some interesting observations in the article: “Black isn’t sure if the Senate has a disproportionate number of losses or whether, as a pastor, he hears more about human suffering. But he’s convinced that the nature of high-stakes decision-making leaves lawmakers far more thoughtful and that their stressful jobs, with choices about war and peace—or life and death—leaves them more ’spiritually vulnerable’ than the public would imagine.”

    McGovern’s comments at the Library and articles such as the one in Washingtonian remind us of something that often is missing in heated political arguments on some web message boards: recognition of the basic humanity of people in Washington. Washingtonian is a local magazine and only has a small readership. What effect would it have on ordinary citizens, if what is described in such articles had wider circulation? I thought of that because I wonder at times what drives some people to see some of their fellow Americans, of various ranks and stations in life, as unworthy, evil or alien, simply because they hold political views different from their own. Would more such article make a difference in web discourse or does something else drive such perceptions? Some day, I’ll have to study that in depth.

    Yet there is an interesting quote in Washingtonian from former Republican Representative Mike DeWine: “There are only 100 of us. You find that you share the same problems; you share, you know, the same emotions,’ DeWine said before leaving the Senate. ‘And you find that nobody is worthy of being demonized.’”

    Much to consider, indeed.

  2. MK on August 28th, 2009 4:45 pm

    Sorry, that should be former Senator, not former Representative, DeWine.

  3. MK on August 30th, 2009 1:48 pm

    A very nice account by Peggy Noonan in the WSJ of remarks Ronald Reagan gave about JFK and EMK’s reaction.
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574376951136648912.html

  4. MK on August 30th, 2009 1:56 pm

    Sorry for the duplication, I see now that Jonathan already picked this up in his featured articles on Friday, very good!

  5. David Frisk on August 30th, 2009 8:02 pm

    Having Gore Vidal at the Nixon Library is disgusting.

Got something to say?