Willing to Lose | Prettay Prettay Good

At George McGovern’s death, lots of people have written to honor his long service to the US. And they should: he was as brave in politics as he was in war, switching from flying bombers in WWII to aggressively calling out those — of both parties — who sponsored the Vietnam War. His was a remarkable career.

It also was a career that points to one of the core contradictions, even hypocrisies, of American political life. For McGovern was exactly what many people today claim they want in a politician: forthright, clear, ideologically consistent. All right winger claims about Barack Obama to the contrary, McGovern was unquestionably the most liberal/progressive person ever to win the presidential nomination of a major political party. If he were on the ballot in 2012, he would have been the progressives’ fantasy candidate even today.

In other words, he was willing to lose for his beliefs. Which, of course, he did: he was utterly wiped out in the 1972 campaign. His loss was, at the time, the greatest electoral college defeat of all time. (It would be surpassed 12 years later by Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection margin of 525-13.)

(As an aside, among the many absurdities of Watergate is that Nixon did it to beat McGovern. Why? Nixon just had to breathe and he would win.)

So what we got was more Nixon. This included, it should be said, a final end to the war in Vietnam as well as detente with Russia and the opening with China. But it also led to the morass of Watergate and the emergence of the hard right wing of the Republican Party.

None of that is McGovern’s fault, of course. But we need to be realistic. Whatever we say about wanting ideologically pure, politically consistent political leaders, the simple truth is: we don’t. We crush them, mock them (think Denis Kucinich) or commit the greatest crime of all — we ignore them (Jill Stein, Gary Johnson). Our media abets this hypocrisy because nothing sells like controversy, and the claim that someone is not living up to his or her values is a sure-fired controversy-getter.

We should honor George McGovern for the life he lived and the service he gave. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves: we didn’t like him. He reminded us of our own flaws and imperfections, and no one likes that.

And besides, America loves a winner. It also loves convincing itself that the winner was no George McGovern. Which is absolutely by damn true.