TN: Hi, I'm Tim Naftali. I'm the Director of
the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. It's
August 26, 2009 and I have the honor and privilege to be interviewing Senator
George McGovern for the Nixon Oral History Program. Senator McGovern, thank
you so much for being here and for doing this. GM: It's my pleasure. TN: Uh, for the sake of our viewers and visitors upstairs, tell us what you did in the 1960 campaign. GM: Well, I campaigned for Senator John Kennedy, who was running for President that year against Richard Nixon. It was a very tight race. I had no idea how tight it was going to be until the votes were counted. Um, Jack Kennedy won that race by a
hundred and twenty thousand votes. Out of probably 75 million. It was less than
one-fifth of a percentage point in each precinct that made the difference in
that race. I was always interested that, uh, President Nixon, later on President Nixon,
never called for a recount. You know - race that close. But he
took the view that, while it had been close, he was defeated and he accepted his loss. I was also running for the United States
Senate for the first time. Running against Karl Mundt, an entrenched Senator, who had been in office longer than anybody else in the history of
South Dakota. He was a tough opponent and I lost by
one percentage point. Jack Kennedy lost South Dakota... overwhelmingly. But, uh, it was my first experience in a dual situation running for the United States Senate on
my own and then trying to help a presidential candidate, namely Jack
Kennedy, in the race against, uh, Mr. Nixon. TN: I wanted to ask you about the... you, you attended the 1948 Progressive Convention, did you? GM: Yes. I was for Henry Wallace in 1948.
He had been a very successful Secretary of Agriculture. Maybe the best one in
American history. Uh, Franklin Roosevelt named him as his
Secretary of Agriculture. South Dakota is one of the most, um, agricultural-oriented states in the Union. We depend heavily on farm income. And I saw Wallace as a man who understood what could be called the family-size farmer in America. So he was
kind of a political hero of mine coming, as I did, from an agricultural state.
Secondly, Wallace was the first prominent figure, that I can recall, who took
exception to some of the excesses of the Cold War. He thought that greater efforts should be made to deal with our problems with
the Soviet Union and that a wide-open arms race was not the best way. The
United States and the, uh, Soviet Union were piling up nuclear weapons on a scale
that, if ever used, they would have destroyed every life on this planet.
There had been nothing left but a smoking chasm. That worried me.
I was an old bomber pilot in World War II. We didn't have any nuclear weapons
in the European theater but we had heavy demolition bombs and, uh, dropping those
bombs, year after year, not.. year... day after day uh, convinced me that aerial bombardment was one mighty, destructive enterprise. I was proud of my service in World War II
because I thought we had no alternative except to stand up militarily against
Adolf Hitler and his miserable crowd of tyrants, racists, and all the rest. But
after the war was over and the Soviet Union, our major ally in World War II, and
the United States began to drift apart. I thought more efforts should be made to
keep that alliance together that worked so well in the Second World War and I
thought that Henry Wallace was the man who had the formula to do that. So, yes, in
'48, I supported the third party candidate, Henry Wallace. TN: What did... [speaking off camera] That's okay. TN: What did your experience as a bomber... what kind of perspective did it give you on the dropping of the two bombs on Japan? GM: Well, I have to sit be honest about that. I know it was a horrendous thing, that August 6th bombing of Hiroshima, but I favored it. When I heard about it I said, "Thank
God that we've got that bomb instead of the Japanese." Keep in mind that we hadn't yet defeated Japan. We'd been moving island to island to
island and we were beginning to close in on the Japanese mainland but our
military people said it would probably take another million American soldiers. That, possibly that many casualties in in order to conquer Japan and here was a bomb that in one fell swoop took Japan out of the
war. Actually, two bombs were dropped - one at Hiroshima and one at Nagasaki. Uh, so... while it was a terrible thing to see the
Earth almost open up with that enormous striking power, those nuclear
weapons, I was glad that we had that weapon and could avoid sacrifice a
million young American soldiers trying to overrun Japan. Keep in mind, we didn't
start World War II. The Japanese jumped on us at Pearl Harbor and killed 3,500 American soldiers out there at Pearl Harbor. So, um, as a bomber pilot, uh, I was not opposed to what President Truman did. Now, in retrospect, I think that second bomb should have been delayed. Um, the bomb that hit Hiroshima was so terrifying that I
think the Japanese should have been given more than three days to decide
whether they wanted to risk another explosion of that kind. Each one of those
bombs killed approximately a hundred thousand people and I wish now, in
retrospect, I didn't think that at the time, but in hindsight I think we could
have delayed the second bomb for a week or so while the Japanese bureaucracy
decide whether they wanted to continue the war or not. TN: As someone who was concerned
about the, um, the tensions of the Cold War, what role did you hope the Food for Peace program would play in reducing those tensions? GM: The Food for Peace program came
into play, of course, after World War II. Uh, I was the First Food for Peace Director
and John Kennedy, as President, appointed me to that right at the offset of his
administration. He issued two executive orders the first day he was in office. One of those
created a new Food for Peace office in the White House and I was asked to head
that office. I thought that program was well-named, Food for Peace, because I
don't think we're going to have peace in this world so long as you have hundreds
of millions of people desperately hungry. Desperate to the point where they're
almost willing to follow, in some cases, any demagogue in order to bring about
change. Um, I... I don't say that food is the only instrument of peace but I think it is a
powerful instrument of peace and helping to allay some of the anger and
frustration and desperation that grips much of the third world. TN: Did.. did you play a role at all in the 1963 wheat deal with the Soviets? GM: I did. I supported that vigorously. This was one of President Kennedy's initiatives that stepped
outside of the Cold War and said, "Look, the Russians are human beings. They're
suffering from food shortages." We've got food surpluses that we don't know what
to do with. It was costing us a billion dollars a year just to store those food
surpluses. And so, I strongly supported the sale of wheat to the Russians. The
Russians were ready to pay gold on the... on the, on... the barrelhead. This was not a loan. This was a hard cash transaction and I was all for it. That's where I got into
trouble with George Meany, the President of the AFL-CIO. His longshoremen and some of the other maritime unions were against loading wheat for these
awful Communists in, uh, Russia. They saw the people of Russia as angry, dangerous
Communists. I saw them as little kids and old people and unemployed people that
had been our allies in World War II and, uh, it's always bothered me to see hungry
people in the world. I like to eat. I really enjoy going to a first-class
restaurant and eating a good meal but I've always thought I'd enjoy it more if
I didn't know there were people out there that will never in their lives
have a meal like that. Never know what it is to have plenty of food for their
children. So, this matter of hunger has always weighed in pretty heavily on my
mind, uh, on my conscience and on my public career. I'd like to live long enough to see every hungry kid in the world getting at least one good meal a day. And
you want to know something? I think that might do more to discourage terrorism than sending our army to occupy poor countries in various parts of the world.
I'm not against inadequate national defense but I don't think we're going to
resolve the problem of terrorism with battleships or aircraft carriers or
tanks or other weapons of war. I think, um, feeding hungry kids might do
more to lessen the anger of these young Muslims around the world than sending in
the Marine Corps. TN: Let me ask you about, um, a place where we sent in the Marine Corps, uh, in this early period. Um, when did you start to have doubts about the U.S. policy in Vietnam? GM: I had doubts about it even as far back
as the 1950s, when we were helping the French restore their colonial grip on
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia - what was then called French Indochina. I knew from my studies in graduate school at Northwestern University that the French
had an imperial grip on Vietnam and the other little colonies out there for a
hundred years before we went into, uh, Vietnam. I knew that they were hated by the Vietnamese. I'd read about Ho Chi Minh, a revolutionary leader in the tradition of George Washington, and his guerrilla
forces that were so effective against the French occupation of America [Indochina] and, even as a graduate student at Northwestern University in the 1950s, it
bothered me to learn that we were paying the principal bill of the French in that
war to reestablish their colonial hold in Southeast Asia. So, I came to the
Senate with a strong bias against our taking over after the French were
defeated out there. Keep in mind, the French fought a bloody war for eight
years - 1946 to 1954 - to crush Ho Chi Minh and his, his, guerrilla forces, um, and... they
failed. The French failed but we paid about 80% of the cost of their war to smash
this resistance movement in South Vietnam. I thought that was a mistake
when I was at Northwestern University reading about it. I thought it was a
mistake, uh, when, uh, we went in there in the Kennedy Administration and later... other administrations. So I'd been against
Vietnam for a long time. Not against Vietnam but against the war in their country. TN: When you entered the Senate, uh, did you focus on foreign policy? GM: I did because of my, uh, I was so disturbed about what we were doing in Southeast Asia. I
hadn't intended to do that. I had intended to give my first energies to
domestic policy, uh, but I was so distressed at what we were doing not only in
Southeast Asia but in Central America and other place. And then this foolish
policy that we've clung to the boycotting little Cuba our neighbor off
the coast of Florida. I thought those policies were wrong. I thought the huge nuclear buildup that just kept going on year after year, while
these nuclear weapons piled up year after year, with the Soviets doing the
same thing on their side. I thought that was a dreadful mistake. I still do, these
many years later. So that's what led me to become a voice on foreign policy, even
though I came from a little agricultural state, where ordinarily they expect us to
be somewhat isolationist. TN: When you came to the Senate, who else was speaking out on these issues? GM: Um, Wayne Morris of Oregon. Ernest Gruening of Alaska. Two
elderly men who knew a lot about international affairs. Later on, a few
years later, Senator Fulbright of Arkansas, the Chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, came into the race. But I have to tell you, as a
freshman Senator, Senator Fulbright stopped me out in the Senate cloak room one day and he said, "I hear you're around here trying to arouse some
opposition to what we're doing in Vietnam." I said, "That's right, Senator." I was in awe of Fulbright and I said, "Senator, I'm concerned about it.
Aren't you?" He said, "Well, I don't even know where it is." Now, he was putting me on. He knew where Vietnam was but he was trying to say, in effect, "What are you
getting so worked up about, a little dinky country out there in Asia?" And then
he used his technique of drawing you out. He said, "What do you think we ought to be
doing? How come you..." First of all, he says, "How did you get interested in a little faraway place like that?" I said, "Well, Senator, I just got out of
graduate school a few years ago and I had professors out there at Northwestern
that knew where Vietnam was and they knew what we were doing." I said, I read a
book by Owen Lattimore, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, called "The
Situation in Asia." I said you ought to read that book, it came
out in 1949 and it opens with a... Lattimore saying - "Asia is out of control"
from the Suez...Canal to Singapore. Asia is out of control and what is
happening is that the old colonial powers out there - the British in India,
the Dutch in Indonesia, the Germans in Africa - those, those... old imperial holds
are beginning to loosen as the people across Asia are yearning to get control
of their own countries. And Lattimore went on to say, the more sophisticated the weapons that Western powers bring into Asia to hang
on to their colonies, the greater the defeat they will suffer in the end. And I
said, "You ought to read that book and maybe you can get some of your friends in the State Department to read it because this is a thoughtful scholar, a
highly respected professor, and I think he's on the right track." I don't know
whether he ever read that book or not but I do know he came out against the
war in Vietnam a short time later and other senators began to speak out. Um, we had 12 to 15 senators finally speaking out against the war in Vietnam. TN: This is during the Johnson period...? GM: This was during the Johnson
period. There wasn't much said during the Kennedy period. Although Jack Kennedy,
President Kennedy, was the one that got us involved and I made my first speech
against our policy in Vietnam during the Kennedy Administration. It was in
September of 1963. I'd only been in the Senate eight months and I just finished
working for President Kennedy for two years. I loved the guy. I admired him and,
but, I thought he was wrong in Vietnam so I took the Senate floor one day and said
if we don't learn what's going on in Vietnam... soon, the tragic mistakes we're making out there are going to haunt us in every
corner of this revolutionary world. Um... I can tell you that my legs and my knees were shaking more than on any bombing mission I ever flew because I was standing up on
the floor of the Senate, a junior senator, that won by a whisker in my first race for the Senate, speaking out against the policies of
somebody I greatly liked and greatly admired - John Kennedy. But I have never
regretted it. I just wish I had done it more often and with greater force and
even earlier. TN: Did President Kennedy or the White House respond to you? GM: They didn't respond directly but I learned indirectly that they were unhappy that, um, a senator who had been working at the White House up until the day I decided
to run for the Senate would criticize my own administration. Later on, I think by
the time President Kennedy was killed, he was beginning to have some questions
about, um, Vietnam. We can't be sure of that because he didn't say much to indicate
any lack of confidence about, uh, the role of the U.S. military in crushing the rebellion of Ho Chi Minh. I think the average American, just take a typical young person in this country, man or woman, if they had been living in Vietnam,
I think they'd have signed up with Ho Chi Minh because he was doing what our forefathers did 200 years earlier. He was throwing off the yoke of imperialism, in Ho Chi Minh's case, the yoke of French imperialism. The French had a terrible record out there. They abused and exploited the people of Vietnam. They
exploited their resources. Uh, and I think if Americans had really known what was
going on out there, I think they'd have been more sympathetic to Ho Chi Minh and
his little band of guerrillas than they were towards the French, who were the
exploiters of the people. TN: Senator, can... can you recall some moments where you tried to make this case to President Johnson? GM: Yes, um, I called to see President Johnson in early 19... uh, early 1965. He became President, as you know, in November of '63 after President Kennedy had been killed and I had already, as I said, spoken out against our policy in Vietnam but I thought that
with the killing of President Kennedy and a new president all of a sudden
being called to take over the government, I thought those of us who were in
dissent should be quiet for a while and see what Johnson would do. Give him a
chance to look at the policy and decide whether he wanted to continue it. So, I
remained quiet during the balance of '63 and early '64, through the presidential
campaign of that period. In '64, Barry Goldwater ran for president against Lyndon Johnson and his argument was that Johnson was too weak in standing up
against the Communists in Southeast Asia. We should be bombing them. We should use our weapons more vigorously to smash this Communist movement out there. So, I
remained quiet about Johnson's policy of continuing the war. As a matter of fact, I
voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August of '64 because I believed the
Johnson Administration when they said that two of our destroyers had been
attacked, unprovoked, by PT boats of the Japan.... of the Vietnamese fleet. We now
know there was no such attack. We know that that story was concocted by the Johnson Administration but I went along with it, believing that the administration was giving us an honest picture, and I
supported the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which, in effect, upheld Johnson's hand
in replying to that alleged attack and I realized belatedly that was probably a
mistake. Just two senators saw through what was going on and voted against the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Gruening of Alaska and Morris of Oregon. Morris had a
former staff member who had become an executive in the Pentagon and he was
feeding the Senator information on what was really going on in Vietnam. I didn't
know that at the time and it wasn't until sometime later that I learned
about it. But Morris and Gruening were right. The rest of us were wrong in supporting that Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Every single member of the House voted for it. All but two of the senators. So, it was a great political
victory for Johnson and it buttressed his hand against Goldwater because here
you had a resolution that Republicans, 100% of them, and 98% of the Democrats were for it and it greatly strengthened Johnson's hand in that
Presidential race of '98 ['68] and that didn't bother me because I thought we'd be
better off with Johnson at the helm than Goldwater, than Barry Goldwater. TN: How many of your colleagues do you think voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution because they wanted to bolster Johnson in the campaign? GM: I think most of the Democrats voted for it, for that reason. They felt that, um, Johnson was preferable to Goldwater, that he had a less aggressive position on Vietnam, that the chances of
maybe coming to negotiations might be greater with Johnson. I can't speak for
all my colleagues, I'm just telling you what I think not what I know as to why
they lined up and voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Incidentally, let me
add, I don't think the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution changed anything. It was more
of a political tool to try to get the whole Congress to gather behind Johnson
but I don't think it had much impact on what took place out there Vietnam. TN: You told me earlier that that you were surprised to hear Johnson express
doubts about his Vietnam policy on the Johnson tapes. You didn't see evidence of
that? GM: I didn't. I, I was just flabbergasted when those Johnson tapes came out and
that was just a few years ago. Um, Johnson had a taping system, the same as
President Nixon, and I didn't know that, uh, any more than I knew about the Nixon
tapes until it was revealed in the Senate hearings. But what surprised me
about those Johnson tapes was to learn that he had as many doubts about that
war as I did. He used to meet with the Chairman of the Senate Armed Service
Committee, Richard Russell of Georgia, who I also thought was 100% behind the war. It turns out, when you read those tapes and they're now all in print, Michael
Beschloss, the historian, has edited a book with all those tapes in there.
And you'd hear these two men talking and Johnson says, "Dick, what the hell are we
gonna do with that mess out there in Vietnam? I just think it's the damnedest
thing we ever gotten ourselves into but I don't know how the hell to get out
of there now." And Russell would say, "Well, I don't know, Lyndon. I agree it's just
the worst mess I've ever seen in all the years I've been in
public life." And, yeah, he said, "I warned the Eisenhower crowd about not going in
there." And I think I had something to do with keeping them out but they did put
in 200 mechanics, aircraft mechanics, to keep the helicopters flying and do other
things. And when they sent an aide to tell me that they had added 200 quasi
combat personnel, they're mostly mechanics, I told them, "Let me tell you
something, you guys. You send 200 men in there today and five years from now
you're gonna have 200,000 American soldiers there." That turned out to be a conservative estimate. We ended up with 550,000 troops there. TN: In 1968, were you surprised when Johnson decided not to run for reelection? GM: Yes, I was. I thought that Johnson was one politician who, um, was determined to stay in high office all of his days and I think that was his plan. But he saw that war
turn sour. He saw every place he went around the country that he was booed.
Young people, particularly. College students, particularly. He had young daughters of his own. I think he was sick at heart that, uh, the liberal part of the
Democratic Party, which was the part that he had to depend upon to get his program through, turned against him because of the war out in Vietnam.
Here's Gene McCarthy, progressive young Senator from Minnesota, running against
him for the Presidential nomination in '68. McCarthy hadn't even been heavily
involved in the anti-war movement but, nonetheless, he announced formally he was going to run for President. And Johnson saw him begin to gather strength. Begin to grow their force. Almost won the New Hampshire primary. Was threatening to win the Wisconsin primary. And I think he just couldn't stand it. He just thought,
"My God, what have I done? You know. I had this whole country with me in '64. I won
that election in a landslide." Which he did. He gave Goldwater a shellacking
about like Richard Nixon did me in '72. And yet, here he is with the whole
country beginning to swing against him. So I think that's what led him to
announce, he was not going to run for re-election. TN: Had you considered running
against President Johnson? GM: Well, I hadn't considered it but the anti-war crowd, these young people, the college leaders and others were after me to run against
him because I was perhaps the most outspoken critic of the war and I was
somewhat of a folk hero on university campuses. So, they were after me to run
but I didn't see how I could do that because I was up for re-election to the
Senate in 1968. I had won the first race in '62 in a recount, where I barely nosed
out my, uh, my opponent and now I'm up for re-election to a second term. Um, and I
thought I just can't give that up. I can't sacrifice my position in the Senate for what is obviously an uphill race. I didn't have any money, I
wasn't a wealthy man, and I didn't have a lot of big financial backers. And so, I
told this crowd that was after me to run, "Why don't you get hold of a senator
who's against the war but who's not up for re-election to the Senate and then,
if he loses the presidential bid, at least he will stay on in the Senate." So,
they wanted to know who I could suggest. I suggested Senator Lee Metcalf of
Montana and Senator McCarthy of Minnesota. Neither one of whom had a...had to face a Senate election that year. They went to... to, uh Metcalf first. He practically threw them out of his office. "What are you talking about? I'm not gonna run against
a Democratic President for the nomination. Furthermore, I have no
interest in being President of the United States. I'm enjoying being a United
States Senator." So, then they go to McCarthy and, to my surprise and to theirs,
he said "Well, I just might do that." He came over on the Senate floor and he
saw me over there and he walked over. He says, "George, your guys came over to see me. I think, I might, I might just do that." I was... I was... uh...Didn't expect it and I
didn't expect him to do as well as he did. I then told Robert Kennedy, I said,
"Did you realize that Gene McCarthy is going to run for President?" His face just
turned white. He said, "Are you sure of that?" And I said, "Well, that's what he says." Well, Bobby had been urged to run against Johnson, as you know, and had turned it down and probably thought it was hopeless. But when he realized Gene was going to do it, he had, uh, he began to think, "Well, maybe I should get into this thing."
Which he did. So, we had two senators campaigning for the nomination, in
addition to, um, Johnson and it was at that point after after Bobby got into the
race that President Johnson announced he would not run for reelection. I kind of
felt sorry for Johnson. Uh, I detested that war in Iraq [Vietnam] but I thought Johnson had done a great job on domestic issues. He got through two landmark civil rights
legislative proposals - the Public Accommodations Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and '65. No other politician in America could have gotten those two
bills through Congress. He practically twisted off the arms of those Southern senators to get.... to get enough support out of them so we could pass that bill. And, when he signed it into law, he turned to some of us who were
standing nearby that had been active in support of the law and he said, "Well,
folks, there goes the South for the next hundred years." And he was right. The solid
South for the Democrats became the solid South for the Republicans and it's been
that way ever since. TN: He said that to you at the signing ceremony? GM: Yeah, yeah. Right after the signing, he says, "Well, gentlemen, there goes the South." For the next, I'd forgotten
whether he said the next 50 years or the next hundred. But Johnson knew the South
better than any of us and what it took to run for office there and, uh, so when I saw him resigning from running for reelection... Again, the guy
that just won four years earlier, a big landslide win, and I knew that his
heart was not in that war as much as we had believed earlier. Then, of course, when
the tapes came out, we... we knew his heart was not in the war. I... I felt sorry for
him. I thought that, uh, he had done a lot of good in the country. This Great Society
program of his was a wonderful program. It was ridiculed by the Republicans but
it was a wonderful program. The neighborhood youth corps, the Domestic Peace Corps for the young guys and girls to work building up our forests and parks and so on. Um, he he did a lot for education. He did a lot for housing. He did a lot for working people and, of course, the great landmark civil rights
cases. In a sense, Johnson deserved a second term but he blew it away with, um, his disaster in Vietnam. TN: Did you campaign for Hubert Humphrey? GM: I did. As a matter of fact, as soon as
Hubert was nominated in '68, I think I was the first person to get up on the podium
at the National Convention and hold up Hubert's hand and say that "I'm.. I'm for him." I never had any trouble doing that because, while Hubert supported the war
in Vietnam, he'd had a great record on everything else and he was running
against, um... um, Richard Nixon. Um, I didn't have any big beef against Nixon either but I felt
that, uh... he and Hubert had about the same same
position on the war in Vietnam but Hubert had led the fight for years on
civil rights, on the Peace Corps, on Food for Peace, on housing for low-income people. He was, uh, he was a genuine liberal on everything except Vietnam. And so, um, I had no trouble campaigning for him, given the alternative of President Nixon. TN: Did he let on to you that he... his heart wasn't completely in the Vietnam...? GM: No, no. What he said to me, he was my next-door neighbor in Washington. I lived
next door, literally next door, to him for 12 years, and he told me one weekend, he
said, "George, I know how you feel about Vietnam and I know that some of the
national press corps are going to try to invent stories that, secretly, I'm against
Johnson's policy in Vietnam. I want you to know that I'm a 100% behind our policy in Vietnam. There's no difference between President Johnson and me, and I want you to know that, as a friend." And I believed him. That was his view. TN: Did, um, in some of the interviews. Actually, Joe Califano told us that Humphrey wasn't LBJ's choice. Did, uh, you have a sense that LBJ wasn't fully behind Humphrey? GM: That surprises me because Hubert was certainly faithful to
Johnson and he was in the Senate when Johnson was Majority Leader of the
Senate. I remember some of the other people that were talked about by Johnson -
Senator Dodd of Connecticut, not the current Dodd, but his father. Um, he was on the list. There were some others but I, um, I don't know on what basis you could say Johnson was not for Humphrey for his Vice President
since he hand-picked him and had the freedom to do so. So, I'm a little puzzled
that one of the President Johnson's top aides would say that the President was
not really for Hubert. TN: Um, let's... I just want to talk briefly about President Nixon's...the domestic side of President Nixon's first term. Um, what role did you play in some of the, um... in some of the legislative achievements that extended the Great Society in the first term of Richard Nixon's... presidency? GM: Well, Nixon was very strong in one area that I was interested in and that was on the
national nutritional situation. He always understood the purposes of food stamps and the school lunch program and the WIC program. And, uh, when Bob Dole and I would send down these bipartisan measures to expand those programs, President Nixon signed them into law without batting an eye. He even convened the National Conference on Food and Nutrition. It was very well attended, had a
big impact on national policy, had a big impact on the House and Senate. So, in that area, I couldn't fault Nixon at all. He was, um, aware of the importance of those programs and he did nothing to, to
restrict them in any way. Now, later on, Reagan did. Reagan cut the food stamp program. He did various other things that weakened our nutritional position.
But in those areas, where I was especially interested, President Nixon
was pretty good. I thought he was good on agricultural policy. Not 100% but, but reasonably good. I thought he was pretty good on civil rights, um, and of course later on, when he opened the door to China, I thought that was a major move that no Democratic President had had the wit or the
imagination to do. So, um... I... I thought in a number of areas Nixon was pretty good.
Especially on domestic policy and then, later, on these visionary foreign
policy moves. TN: Were you at all involved in the, uh, shaping of his policy towards Native Americans? GM: Well, I was, um... I hope so because I tried to do what I could to help the Native Americans, the Indians, especially in my own state. Um... I, I guess I'm a little fuzzy as to just what Nixon did in that area. I don't know whether he was particularly creative in the area of Indian Affairs or not. TN: They ended the policy of termination of tribes... GM: Yes. TN: and, uh, gave Blue Lake back to Native Americans and... GM: Yes. Well, that's...that's good. Those were those are worthwhile measures, if he did that. How we doing on time? TN: Well... Can we let's... let's. We'll move ahead to '72. How did you defeat Edmund Muskie? GM: I outworked him, for one thing. I, um, was back and forth across this country without ceasing for almost two years. I announced, not in January of '72, which up until that time in American history had been the accepted time... to announce.
I knew that coming from a little state like South Dakota with three electoral votes that I had to outwork Ed Muskie, in order to win that
nomination. So I announced, uh, in early 1971. It was regarded as a kind of a freakish
thing to do and the press paid no attention to me for the first eight or
nine months because always, in the past, candidates had announced in the election
year. But it enabled me to organize grassroots organizations all across this
country. Just to do it very quietly, not much press attention. I remember working the state of California from stem to stern, long before any other presidential
candidate had even visited California. I had, I must have had, a thousand coffee
parties in that many different living rooms across this great state of California, long before anybody else was out. And people began to think that I made sense. The crowds began to grow a little larger.
It became a little easier to get people to come out to a coffee reception or a
cocktail party or whatever it was. And so, I think I built, quietly, a grassroots
organization that was superior to anything that Ed Muskie had or Hubert
Humphrey or John Lindsay or any of the other... There were 16 candidates in that race. And then, I began to work the campuses very hard. I recruited a lot of young people
on the campuses across the country and gave them jobs to do. I began to look for
highly talented people to put in to top campaign spots. People like Gary Hart, an
unknown young lawyer from Colorado. Frank Mankiewicz, a willy old, humorous, witty guy, who had been with the Kennedy operations for year, who became my political director. We began to work on potential delegates
before anybody else and I think by the end of 1971, um, I had a much better
organization across the country than any of the other candidates. So, that's maybe
a major way in which I won that nomination. Also, I was very clear on the transcendent issue of the day - the war in Iraq. TN: Uh, Vietnam. GM: Uh... Vietnam. That was the cutting edge of the campaign and I just called for our disengagement, flat-out. I said, "We'll have all of our troops out of there within 60 days after
I become President." No other candidate was that bold and forceful but that's
what got to the housewives and the college students and some of the workers
and some of the business people... even Wall Street began to listen. And so, um, by being blunt and direct and decisive on that issue, I picked up the anti-war vote
almost in its entirety. Now, that wasn't entirely risk-free because a lot of people were for the war in Vietnam and if you're going to make a serious bid
for the Presidency, against a war policy the nation is committed to, you're running
some risk, and they were later to cost me some political damage. TN: Do you think that that's that... so it wasn't enough just to be an anti-war candidate? You... you
needed more for the coalition to be... GM: Yes, I had more for it. I had a strong
position on education. I had a strong position on the environment. I had a strong position on tax reform, welfare reform. Um, I had... I had good bull positions on the whole range of issues before the country But I think... I think... I think that Vietnam
was the issue that was cutting the ice during the bid for the nomination. TN: Was Nixon considered vulnerable? GM: Yes, we thought he was vulnerable. He turned out to be a lot less vulnerable than I thought but I always had the feeling
that Nixon was not loved by the American people in the way that Jack Kennedy was...
or some of the other political figures of our time. Um, and I thought he was
vulnerable. Now, in retrospect, you have to remember, the economy was doing pretty
well. He was cutting down on the number of troops in Vietnam, reducing them
almost every month. He had opened the door to China, which impressed a lot of
people in the middle and middle, politically, and even many liberals. So, I think he was tougher all along than we had thought. But I did think that if I could
win that nomination, that most of the battle for the White House was over, and
I think that was Ed Muskie's view and Hubert Humphrey's and others, that the big battle was to get the nomination. TN: Could... was it believed then that a liberal candidate could win the center in the United States? GM: Well, they used to. Franklin Roosevelt won the center for four terms as President of the United States. Um, Jack
Kennedy won the center, not by a big margin but enough to get to the White House. Lyndon Johnson, I think, carried the
center. Um, it, uh... it became increasingly tough, I think, for various reasons but one was
that liberals were constantly assailed by the right wing in American politics.
We were painted as some kind of extreme ideologues who were way out of touch
with the American people. And that theme was banged away on by the right wing night and day to the point where it made it difficult for liberals to carry moderate votes and what might be called the center of our political spectrum. TN: Did you get a whiff of the dirty tricks in the... in the... GM: Well, yes we saw certain things
done. I remember we had a big rally scheduled in Los Angeles one Sunday to
try to reach concentrated black audiences. Uh, and we, uh, we, uh, worked on all of the black churches in Central Los Angeles. We did it very well. We had handbills that were given to everybody going to church that morning. Uh, we had picnics organized after the church hours, in which people were invited to attend. And we worked it rather systematically. I expected to have maybe 25 or 30,000 people out, coming out after church to attend these various
things and I would go around and speak to three or four different groups. Well,
during the night Saturday, night - early evening, a battery of phone calls was made to all the churches saying that the rallies had been canceled and that George McGovern would not be able to appear, that, until further notice, there would be no such rallies. Well, that was all done by people sabotaging our campaign. Nobody showed up. I turned up at the rallies and... and there was almost no one there. But we had a number of things like that happen. Um, I don't say it
cost us the election but it... they were worrisome and, uh, and harmful. But I
didn't really see the main unfolding of the whole Watergate scenario until after
the election when the investigations took place. TN: I have two questions on that.
One, was you did, though, see evidence that somebody had tried to break into your headquarters? GM: Oh, yes. We knew about that. TN: Could you tell us that story? GM: Well, I was disappointed the way that story was received. It appeared in The Washington Post. Not in other news media but in the Washington Post. It was just a little story, one column wide and maybe that long. And it just said that during the night, apparently, political workers had broken into Democratic headquarters, that
they had been apprehended and were being held. Um, and at that time, Mike Mansfield was the Majority Leader of the Senate. And he had a habit, for about five minutes
before the Senate went into session each day, he would stand down in the well of
the House, of the Senate, and field a few questions from reporters. And one of them said, "Mr. President, um, uh, did you read the story in this morning's Washington Post that burglars had broken into Democratic headquarters? What do you think is the significance of that?" And Mike said, "Well, I saw the story but
that kind of nonsense goes on in every campaign." Just sort of tossed it off. I was, uh, I was really flabbergasted because I thought it was serious and I thought for the Majority Leader of the Democrats to dismiss it as of no consequence was a mistake. I still do. TN: What about there... there was also an
attempt to break into your headquarters? GM: They came to my headquarters a couple of nights earlier. Uh, I was out on the hustings and I wasn't aware of that until sometime later. But even to this day, I had to depend on what the Nixon people said to get the story on that. G. Gordon Liddy, in his book, which he calls "Will" - uh, not meaning the male name Will but meaning willpower - he, um, he tells about how he went out behind my headquarters and hid in an alley. And, um,
shot out the lights around our headquarters so it would be dark for a
raid that he intended to carry out later that night. But what happened was that these McGovern people worked all night and there were still people in there
working up until 4:30 in the morning. And he, finally, after sitting out there in the trees and the shrubbery all night long without any chance to break into
our headquarters, finally decided these McGovern people are hopeless and he gave up on it. And it was a couple of nights later that they decided to hit the Democratic National Headquarters rather than my headquarters. TN: Tell us, you tried to make an issue out of the Democratic National Comm... the Watergate break-in, in the campaign, but you, it didn't take. GM: I tried my best to do it. I would describe these burglars with their rubber gloves on and their burglar kits
stealing into our headquarters in the dead of night. Some of them carrying passes for the White House. And I said, "How can we ignore this? This had to be something that the either the White House or the President was tied in with. How could seven men go in to undertake something like this? Two of them carrying White House entry passes and the President not know anything about it? Who authorized it?" And I kept calling on the press to dig into this. Calling on the Congress to dig in to it. You
couldn't get anybody to move except these two cub reporters for the Washington Post - Woodward and Bernstein. But since it was held, only one paper and
one that was generally regarded as liberal and sympathetic to Democrats, you couldn't get the main press to take it very seriously until after the election, when the Watergate investigation began. TN: Um, in those difficult days, when you had to decide whether to keep, uh, uh, Senator Eagleton on... on the ticket, did you have a sense that the Knight newspapers had been receiving
information from the Nixon campaign about his... his bouts with mental illness? GM: No, I didn't have that feeling. I knew that the Knight newspaper people were the ones that had the story
but I never attributed them getting the story from the White House or from the Nixon campaign. And, as a matter of fact, I think they got their story from a young man at the Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. That's, uh, that's a great hospital. That was where, um, Tom Eagleton was treated for years and, apparently, a son of one of the doctors at the hospital, who was thoroughly conversant with Tom's mental difficulties, leaked that story to the Knight press. It was also leaked at Time magazine but I never attributed that to the Nixon campaign. TN: The Nixon campaign worried that you might talk about your World War II career because they felt that would help you. Um, uh, to what extent did you under play your World War II camp... uh, career in the campaign? GM: You know, I've always felt awkward about talking, you know, what a great hero I am. It's not the kind of thing that comes easily to me but I think we should have talked about it more than we did. Especially since I was viewed in the public mind as an antiwar person, maybe a pacifist, maybe like these radical kids on the campuses. And, um, I should have said that one of the reasons, I'm speaking out against the war
in Vietnam is that I know firsthand what war does. It's a terribly destructive and cruel and barbaric enterprise. I'm proud that in World War II, I participated because I thought that was a war in which we had no honorable alternative. Hitler was gobbling up one country after
another across Europe and even the security of the United States hung in the balance. But the fact that I watched half of my fellow bomber pilots go down in flames in World War II makes me cautious about committing young Americans to wars that aren't necessary. World War II, we had no honorable alternative. Vietnam, the Vietnamese were no threat to us. They didn't want war with us. We were engaged in a dubious enterprise there and that's why I speak out against it. Not because I'm a pacifist, not because I'm unwilling to defend this country. There's never been a time in my adult life that I would not have given that life gladly, if it were in the genuine defense of the United States. I love this country and it's worth defending and I defended it as a young man in my youth. So, I don't want anybody questioning my loyalty or my willingness to defend America. On the other hand, I don't want powerful men in Washington committing my son or your son or your son to a war that's unnecessary. And I think that would have carried more weight if I had done that and I sincerely wish I had now. TN: Um, I interviewed Daniel Ellsberg and he told me that in 1969 and 70, he came to you and tried to involve you in speaking out about the war using the Pentagon Papers. GM: That was against the law and, um, you can't leak classified government documents to the press. I was not about to do that. I was against the war but I wasn't going to leak classified government documents and possibly end up going to prison. And, uh, I told Dan that I thought he was the one, you know, he actually had been one of the architects of the Vietnam War, and I said if you have materials that will refute that war policy, I think it's up to you to make a decision." That you may owe it to the country to risk going to jail in order to reveal that policy but I said, "Don't ask a junior Senator from South Dakota to do that," who's been speaking out against the war and will continue to do so. He told me he'd gone to see Senator Fulbright and I said, "Look, Senator Fulbright is not going to do that. He's not going to release classified documents in violation of Federal statutes," which turned out to be right. Uh... I like Daniel Ellsberg. I think he's a very courageous man and I'm glad that he saw fit to release those papers because it did blow the whistle on the administration. But he almost went to jail because of that and, um, I just wasn't willing to, to do that. TN: What do you remember of the day that President Nixon resigned? GM: Oh, I remember that vividly. I don't say I gloated over it. I didn't. Um, but I felt that justice was done, in that case. I felt that the Senate and the House had
approached the matter in a bipartisan way and the vote was overwhelmingly on the side of the President stepping down. They didn't actually take the step to expel him from office but it was clear that that was ahead if he didn't step down. So I... I felt that was a case where justice was done and I don't draw any particular glee over it, um, but I... but I think it was the right course. TN: President Nixon was very afraid of Edward Kennedy running against him and, since Senator Kennedy just passed away, why didn't Senator Kennedy run against President Nixon? Did he ever tell you why he didn't? GM: Um, I think that, at that time, it was
Robert Kennedy. TN: I meant in '71. GM: Oh, in '71. I see. Um, I think that, um, Ted seriously considered it in that period but... In the...I guess, it would have been in the summer of '69, he had the accident at Chappaquiddick and I think he came to the view that he just couldn't mount a successful presidential campaign after that tragedy. That it had scarred him in ways that would make it difficult for him to carry out a presidential campaign. Um, it's hard to know what was in Ted's mind. When I tried to get him to run as my running mate in '72, he declined to do that after thinking it over very carefully. And I always thought it was because he saw that, um, that he was the only Kennedy brother left. Jack had been killed. Bobby had been killed. And so, Ted, who had young children of his own, was the only member of the Kennedy clan left of the males and that he didn't want to risk being the third one to be shot, to be assassinated, and just decided he couldn't put himself on the line and, in that way, that was my own view of it. TN: Did he say that to you? GM: No. TN: Final question. You decided to come to Pat Nixon and President Nixon's funerals. How did you come to make that decision? GM: Well, um, I... I decided it was the proper thing to do. President Nixon had been President of the United States. He had been my opponent and, um, I thought that it would be a good show of dedication to the enduring ideals of the country for me to recognize the high office that he had held, to recognize that campaigns can't go on forever. There comes a time when you have to work together to advance the country in ways other than campaigning. And so, it was on that basis that I
went first to Pat Nixon's funeral, and then, months later, to President Nixon. I've
never had any regrets about that. TN: To students in the future, what was the
legacy of Watergate? GM: Well, it shows that even a very powerful figure can break the law, can violate the Constitution. It showed also that sometimes you get
caught when you engage in behavior of that kind and that you may pay a very heavy
price for wrongdoing. I can't imagine anything worse that can happen to a President than to be thrown out of office in disgrace and I'm sure President Nixon came to feel that way about it. So the lessons of Watergate is to tell the truth, to obey the law. The only oath the President takes is to uphold the Constitution. Don't, don't ignore that oath. Take it seriously. TN: Senator McGovern, thank you for your time. GM: It was my pleasure. TN: Thank you for your patience. TN: Thank you. Thank you.
