GEORGE MCGOVERN WORTH LISTENING TO

I've always loved George McGovern. He was my first presidential choice when I turned old enough to vote. By that time I had out grown my misbegotten Nixon days. I was in the Air Force, stationed at Travis AFB in California, and volunteered for the McGovern campaign in the evenings going door-to-door. What I found was a real lesson in power politics - the local Democratic party in the Fairfield-Vacaville area of Northern California did not much like McGovern and made little effort on his behalf and he lost resoundingly to Nixon. This was before the Watergate scandal really surfaced in a big way that ultimately forced Nixon out of office.

McGovern became a Senator from South Dakota (another reason I felt such affinity for him was because I love South Dakota) after serving in WW II and returning home to go to college on the GI Bill. He actually built the Democratic Party in that state travelling from one end of the state to the other, meeting people, doing it the hard way. A real organizer if you will.

I've not necessarily agreed with McGovern on every issue over the years, I've become more "radical" than him - but I've always seen him as a decent man, an honest man, who was not a political hack like so many in politics today.

You will see in this video of McGovern talking about Obama and Afghanistan - he is trying to warn our new president that he is stumbling into a huge historical blunder. Obama would be smart to listen to McGovern though it appears he won't.