Countdown

Home > Interviews > George McGovern

George McGovern

George McGovern was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972 and a Democratic candidate for president in 1968 and 1984. He was a U.S. senator from South Dakota from 1963 to 1981 and a U.S. representative from 1957 to 1961. McGovern was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Agencies, based in Rome, from 1998 to 2001. Since 2001, he has been the U.N.’s global ambassador on world hunger.

John W. Mashek interviewed McGovern on June 11, 2007.

Senator, to start off, in 1972 a lot of things went errant in that campaign because of campaign violations, spending violations, and so on. And changes were made. Then, in the ’76 election, [Jimmy] Carter and [Gerald] Ford ran with public financing. And ever since then, things seem to have gone south. What has gone wrong with the campaign-finance system? Is it totally out of kilter?

I think it’s totally out of kilter. There are too many loopholes in terms of restraining the volume of money that goes into campaigns. It doesn’t prevent special-interest money from pouring in. And campaigns have just become ridiculously expensive. They are expensive in various ways, but one of the most notable is that the average United States senator spends two days out of every seven, from the day he is elected until he comes up for election again, raising money.

And that’s true in the small states as well as the large, isn’t it?

Yes. In our state of South Dakota, in the last Senate race involving the incumbent, Senator [Tom] Daschle, and John Thune, the challenger, they spent a total of $25 million between the two of them, about $12 [million] to $13 million a piece. It made it the most expensive Senate race, on a per capita basis, in the history of the country.

You have only 700,000 people out here in South Dakota. You had $25 million for a Senate race.

And refresh my memory, on both sides, was a lot of that money from outside the state?

Oh yes. Most of it was from out of state, in the case of both campaigns. Just by way of contrast, when I first ran for the United States Congress back in 1956, a race that I won in a tough Republican year, I spent $12,000 for everything. And at that time, that first congressional district embraced three-fourths of the voters in South Dakota.

That’s amazing.

It was almost like running for the Senate.

Well, it appears as if the Supreme Court might knock out any limits, mainly because of a First Amendment restriction. Does this mean that — you mentioned loopholes — an independent group like the swift-boat group in the last campaign can smear a candidate and be relatively free of any responsibility?

That’s absolutely right. I don’t agree with the interpretation of the First Amendment that puts campaigning and raising money and special-interest groups on the same basis as giving a speech or writing an article. If it is unconstitutional to do that, we ought to change the Constitution. We are losing our democracy to big money.

The independent expenditures in both parties — but especially, I have to say in a nonpartisan statement, from the Republican side — have grown by leaps and bounds. And not just in the presidential, but in senatorial races where a candidate can say, “Well, I didn’t say this.” Or: “I didn’t do this. It was these other people. And I am not responsible for them.” How is a voter to know?

Well, that’s exactly right. I have been on the receiving end of that kind of attack where massive amounts of money were spent discrediting me by groups that the candidate claimed he had nothing to do with. And how are you going to prove that they do? So my own view of this is that we have to look the facts in the face and then go to public financing of campaigns. I know that’s difficult. It’s going to be hard to get incumbent members of Congress to vote for a system like that. But the best way taxpayers can protect themselves is to insist that only public funds can be spent on federal elections.

Your last statement, to do that, it would seem to me you are going to have to put a little iron in the spines of members of Congress who are worried that they are going to be giving their opponents equal footing. And that never goes down very easily.

Well, I hope the citizens of this country are coming to realize that the use of money, big money, lots of it, in the House and Senate races and in presidential races, these federal races, is really distorting [and] undercutting our democracy. So as you have said, the members of Congress are just going to have to bite the bullet on this and recognize that we need a system of purely public funds. No private money at all. Not a dime. All of that money should come out of the Treasury. As I say, the best way that taxpayers can protect their investment in the government is for them to pay for these congressional and senatorial elections. And that’s the system we need. I know it’s uphill. And I know it’s difficult to bring that about. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Well, let me take the flip side just to get your views on it. When we talk about not the $1 billion 2008 election, but the $2 [billion], $3 [billion], or $4 billion election, people, of course, are swept away by that number. When you consider the amount of money that’s spent on pet food, cosmetics, and by the pharmaceutical companies on advertising, it leads to the question: Do we pay too high a price for democracy when this sort of huge amount of money is spent for advertising?

Well, if you had public funding, then the federal government, Congress, and the executive branch would set the amount of money that an incumbent could spend. And they would provide a similar amount for a bona fide challenger. So you would greatly reduce the cost of campaigns, the expenditures of funds. You would arrive at what sensible people believe is a reasonable figure and provide that amount of money to both the challenger and the incumbent. And it would be a terrific reduction in the power of money and politics.

It looks to me as if any two of the six candidates considered to be in the top tier now win, they are going to shun [public] financing, even in the fall campaign.

I think that’s true. But if private financing were illegal, they couldn’t do that.

Right. And, of course, money isn’t everything. Two Texans, Phil Gramm and John Connally, can certainly attest to this. Is there a point of no return here, that eventually a candidate or candidates just have such immense amounts of sums that an opponent can turn that against them? Or is it just too difficult to do that?

It’s difficult to do that, because they are using those large sums to get professionally produced television. And direct mail is very cleverly printed, so that the access to the public comes from these people with the greatest amount of money. And while there may be some reaction to that, I don’t know of any candidate who can say that they were defeated because their opponent accused them of spending too much money.

Of course, in 1972, the Washington press particularly had [Edmund] Muskie already on the ballot. And it leads me to ask, too, can candidates like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, or Governor [Bill] Richardson do anything to climb into the top tier against [John] Edwards, [Hillary] Clinton and [Barack] Obama, without more money?

Well, I think it depends on the effectiveness of the candidate. I don’t want to say anything critical about these people in this second bracket now. But I don’t think money is the principal thing that’s holding them back at this stage. That may become so in the long run and when we are really moving on the national stage instead of state by state. But I think in this case, especially on the Democratic side, I don’t think money has been the key thing so far. If you look at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards, those are attractive, articulate, appealing candidates. And I think that’s been the thing that has catapulted them to the front rank, although certainly money has been a big factor, too.

Dave Broder [of The Washington Post] wrote a couple of weeks ago — and I happen to agree with this, but I would like your opinion — that it borders on the criminal unless the two parties fix the primary system, where the nation is going to know on February 5 of next year who the nominees are, and leading to 10 or 11 months of a lot of candidate-bashing and negative advertising.

I couldn’t agree more. I think he’s absolutely right.

What can be done? I mean, the states are in this contest, now. Who can be first? And New Hampshire has this unbelievable law that if any state schedules a primary earlier than New Hampshire, they will immediately hold it the day before. And it’s not a joke to say that we are looking at Christmas or Thanksgiving. With this tendency to want to be first, and all of the states jumping ahead, and New Hampshire even having a law that automatically puts its primary a day ahead of any other state, we are bordering on going back even before the end of the year if we are not careful.

Well, that’s true. I don’t know how you can deal with that situation. And we have always let states determine the election procedures for that state. It would take quite a shakeup to change that.

The Democrats have a punishment clause in their rules on taking delegates away. But it doesn’t appear to stop the states. Certainly Florida is in the mix now jumping ahead. But I think the thing that is bothersome to many of us following politics is that we see this primary race ending on February 5. And then, you having experienced this, comes the exercise of so-called defining the opposition. Well, defining the opposition means digging up everything from grade school on down. And I don’t think it’s going to be a very pretty picture.

Yes, I think that’s right. But I am as disturbed as anybody about the frontloading system. I think it’s really unhealthy. I liked the system we had when I was running, where it was strung out over six months’ time.

I am trying to recall, help me on this: How soon was the convention after the primary in California?

About six weeks.

Six weeks. Well, see, now we are going to be really getting off early. And I guess you could say, “Well, there may be a splitting of votes.” But I guarantee you that the old momentum will kick in. And one candidate is certainly going to separate himself or herself from the field.

Yeah, I think that’s probably right.

In ’72, after the election, explain to me the so-called— was it the McGovern Commission, McGovern Committee, to make changes in the primary system?

Yes. Those were ordered by the ’68 convention in Chicago. And Hubert Humphrey, who was the king at that convention, favored instructions because he got hurt by the revolt of the dissident elements in the party. So he, supported by Gene McCarthy and Harold Hughes and others, persuaded the delegates at the Chicago convention of ’68 to mandate changes in the delegate selection procedures that would assure a fair representation to women and minorities and young people and so on, and that the delegates be picked in a timely fashion, which means that they should be picked during the election year. And then, after the convention, Hubert called me. He was titular head of the party, he and Fred Harris, who was the national chair. He asked if I would chair that reform commission. I agreed to do it reluctantly, because I knew whoever touched that . . .

It was going to be controversial.

Yes, it was going to be controversial. But because of Hubert — who had been a longtime friend — and Fred Harris pushing me, and Walter Reuther [the president of the United Automobile Workers] and others called, I agreed to do it. And I think we did a good job. It was those reforms that opened up the delegate selection process to women for the first time and to minorities. And it looked quite different than previous conventions.

Out of the conventions, 1952 was the last time that a celebrity entertainment show would show one hour of the convention.

Yes.

The convention is, to me, important. And the news coverage is growing smaller and smaller every four years.

I know it is. And some of the networks don’t cover it at all.

Just want to ignore it.

Yeah.

When we look at this campaign and the money that’s being spent, is it largely done over the Internet, which of course wasn’t available when you ran, as opposed to direct mail? Or a candidate getting on the telephone, as you mentioned earlier, having to spend several days out of the week, even in the United States Senate, to raise money? I guess the Internet has pretty much taken over.

Well, I think it has. I am not sure that is the primary vehicle for fundraising, because I haven’t been very close to that the last few years. But I know that’s an important element now.

And it’s one that is very lucrative.

Yeah.

I might tell you one further thing, about me personally.

Please do.

In ’72, in winning 11 state primaries and paying for the national convention — since the national committee was broke, our campaign paid for that national convention — and in paying for the losing campaign against [Richard] Nixon, you add that all up, it was a little under $35 million for everything.

Wow. Isn’t that amazing?

And yet we ended up in the black. We didn’t owe a dime to anybody.

And in that ’72 campaign, the Nixon-Agnew [campaign], were their numbers about four or five times yours?

They were more than that. They were around $300 million.

And what about independent expenditures then?

God only knows how much they got there, or how much they got in cash. But Nixon’s top political consultant — I don’t know why I can’t think of his name [Roger Ailes]; I can see his face, pretty well-known guy — he and I we were on a joint TV interview one time. And he asked me at the end, “Senator, what do you think we spent against you in ’72?” And I said, “God, I don’t know.” And he said, “Well, whatever you think, multiply it by three.” And I said: “Well, I don’t know what I think. I just don’t know.” He said: “Well, I can tell you. We spent over $300 million.” And in ’72, that’s 35 years ago, that’s one hell of a lot of money.