His father was a Methodist minister and a conservative Republican.
But he accepted the liberal views of his son, George McGovern, who became a U.S. senator from South Dakota and the 1972 Democratic nominee for president.
McGovern was 50 when he lost in a landslide to the incumbent, Richard Nixon, who later resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Now McGovern is an energetic 87 and looking forward to participating in Saturday events at the Kentucky Book Fair in the Frankfort Convention Center and the Grand Theatre.
By telephone last week from his home in Mitchell, S.D., McGovern told The State Journal he’s visited Frankfort “a couple of times. I was so very impressed with the beautiful Capitol and residence for the governor, I just about moved there to live in that town.”
He says he’s lectured at the University of Kentucky two or three times over the years, “and went to the Kentucky Derby for the first time in my life in 2008 when Big Brown won. I love the Derby.”
He also loves history.
An affinity
for history
As a young man, McGovern studied at a seminary for nine months before changing his major and going on to earn a Ph.D. in American history and government from Northwestern University.
“I just decided I wasn’t cut out for the same profession as my father,” McGovern says. “He wasn’t disturbed about it at all. He knew I was following my own convictions, just as he had.
“He had no problem with me being a little more on the liberal side than he was. Like most people in South Dakota he was Republican.”
McGovern said his dad’s early influence helped him later in his political career.
“He encouraged me to get into debate when I was in high school rather than going out for football or basketball. That was important.
“I probably would not have been as successful as I was in the field of politics without the oratorical training and other activities of that kind that my father was responsible for getting me into.”
McGovern said his political views were shaped mostly by his own reading and observations.
“Growing up in South Dakota in the depression I saw what the federal government could do when it was dedicated to helping people.
“A number of programs during the Franklin Roosevelt days greatly impressed me - rural electrification which brought electricity to the farm homes, Social Security and guaranteed bank deposits.
“Franklin Roosevelt convinced me the Democratic Party was more on the side of ordinary people.”
McGovern says he’s a “straight out liberal, no question about that. But I also have some conservative qualities. I don’t believe in wasteful government spending, unnecessary wars, dishonesty or double dealing.”
A B-24 bomber pilot in World War II who earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, McGovern says half of the crews he flew with didn’t survive.
Choosing battles
“That taught me it’s very important to be careful about where we commit young Americans to battle,” he says. “You better be sure it’s a war essential to the interests of the U.S. and the peace of the world.”
McGovern memorably declared on the Senate floor once, “I’m tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to fight.”
He says he believes World War II was necessary.
“I thought Hitler was an inhumane monster and his war machine, which was gobbling up one country after another, had to be stopped.
“So I had no hesitance about volunteering for participation in that war. But I didn’t think the war in Vietnam or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were necessary as far as American participation was concerned.”
He says he “couldn’t in good conscience permit those military commitments to go unchecked, and that’s why I speak out.”
In an opinion piece for The Washington Post in January 2008, McGovern called for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Last week McGovern said, “The way we were led into that Iraq War, I don’t know that I would call it a fraud but we certainly were given mistaken information.”
He says he would rank Bush as the worst president, “at least in my lifetime.”
The ‘greatest president’
On the other hand, McGovern calls Lincoln, a Republican, the greatest president in American history.
Working in his spare time, McGovern says he spent a year-and-a-half writing the Lincoln book in longhand as he has all 14 books he’s authored.
“I know how to type but my mind is more matched to writing than it is to typing,” he says. “I write everything out on yellow legal pads and then get some willing person to type it.
“I had less trouble with this book in terms of the flow than any other I’ve done, and this is the one I enjoyed the most.”
McGovern recalls how the presidential series editor, the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr., invited him to write about one of the presidents.
“He said, ‘You can make a choice unless somebody beats you to it.’ I chose Lincoln only to be told that President Clinton had already selected Lincoln.
“I said if he changes his mind let me know, otherwise I think I’ll take a pass because I’m just so busy right now. He called me a year later and said President Clinton had called and said he was not able to do it. So that’s how I inherited Lincoln.
“And I’ve found the Lincoln-McGovern ticket sells pretty well. I’ve been told it’s about to become a bestseller.”
McGovern says his only other bestseller was about a daughter, who died of alcoholism. Published in 1997, it’s titled “Terry: My Daughter’s Life and Death Struggle with Alcoholism.”
Just before Christmas 1994, McGovern was told that Terry, 45, had been found dead in a parking lot near her Madison, Wis., home. In an alcoholic stupor, Terry had stumbled out of a bar and into a snow bank, where she fell asleep and froze to death.
Before writing the book, McGovern read her diaries, interviewed her friends and doctors and sifted through medical records.
In addition to Terry, McGovern has three daughters and a son, 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Only a grandson has gone into politics, McGovern says.
His wife, Eleanor, died in January 2007, at age 85. They met at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell and married on Oct. 31, 1943.
McGovern divides his time between homes in Mitchell and St. Augustine, Fla., and spends most of his time writing, lecturing around the nation, “and taking it easy and enjoying life.”
He’s lectured at more than 1,000 colleges.
After serving in the Senate, McGovern did a series of one-year teaching appointments at a dozen universities including Northwestern, Columbia, Cornell, Duke and the University of New Orleans.
McGovern says he’s always been an optimist.
Changes in politics
“I get disappointed from time to time in public policy but I’ve never quit believing in the United States. You have to be an optimist to live your life in a happy way. I’m a happy person. There are things going on these days that I don’t agree with but I don’t let it get me down.”
Even after being trounced by Nixon in 1972 - McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia - he’s say he didn’t feel down and out.
“I didn’t feel I needed to be picked up,” McGovern says. “I thought I was right on what I was advocating in the campaign.
“A few months after the election the Watergate scandals began to unravel and Nixon was the first president in American history to be expelled from the office in disgrace. He was the one who needed to be picked up.”
The biggest change in political campaigns over the decades has been money, he says, “big, big money. The first race I had for Congress (in 1956) when I was elected cost $12,000. To run for that same seat today would cost over $1 million.”
In his U.S. Senate years, 1963 to 1981, opposing politicians cooperated more, he says. He sees more meanness today than at any time in his life, and the radio and TV talk shows bring on a lot of it.
“These people like Rush Limbaugh, (Sean) Hannity and this crazy woman, Ann Coulter, they’re a disgrace to objective reporting,” he says.
He admires President Obama but admits if he had been on the Nobel Peace Prize committee he probably would have said, “Let’s wait and see how he does at least in his first term before we grant him the Nobel.
“But I think it’s OK, and in the long run he’s probably going to deserve it and he might just as well start enjoying it now as four years from now.”
McGovern thinks “it’s inevitable” in his lifetime that every American will have health insurance, an issue intensely debated in Congress.
To stay healthy himself, McGovern says he walks about a mile a day and sometimes does calisthenics to tone up his muscles.
“I think that helps me to stay in good physical condition. I watch my diet. I’m not a diet freak but I do eat properly. I don’t overeat. I suppose most importantly I inherited good genes.
“My mother and father always had a lot of energy and I’ve always been able to work hard without getting fatigued.”
Living to 100
One of his goals now is to live to be a healthy 100, “but it’s not simply just to live that long.
“Republican Bob Dole and I are working on a bipartisan program through the United Nations to provide a good nutritious lunch every day for every hungry school age child around the world not now being fed.
“That’s my passion now. I really think we can reach every kid in 13 years of hard work.”
Earlier this year in San Diego he accepted a Peacemaker’s Award from the nonprofit National Conflict Resolution Center for the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program.
In the 1960s President John Kennedy named McGovern the first director of the “Peace for Food” program and special assistant to the president in overseeing donations of food to developing nations.
In 2000, President Clinton presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to McGovern, and in 2001 McGovern was appointed as a U.N. Global Ambassador on Hunger.
Meet McGovern
The Kentucky Book Fair runs from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday. George McGovern will sign his new book, “Abraham Lincoln, The American Presidents Series: The 16th President, 1861-1865,” from 9 to 10:30 a.m. and 2 to 4:30 p.m., and will speak at 10:45. His speech at the Book Fair is free and open to the public.
Saturday evening at the Grand, McGovern will do another 20-minute book signing around 7:30 p.m. Then at 8, John David Dyche, a Harvard Law School graduate and political columnist who has done political commentary for Kentucky Educational TV, will interview him.
After the interview, McGovern will answer questions from the audience with Save the Grand Theatre President Bill Cull moderating.
Following the Q&A a documentary film, “One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern,” will be shown. It focuses on his 1972 presidential campaign and McGovern’s passionate efforts to end the Vietnam War and world hunger.
Tickets for the Grand Theatre event are still available at $10, $15 and $20.