Howard Dean vs. George McGovern
I’m aware that I’m a fickle linker. Someone catches my fancy, and suddenly everything they write is God’s Own Truth, Brought Down From On High. Or at least I link to them a lot.
Lately I’ve been linking to Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Kevin Drum of CalPundit. But now both of them are saying the same thing, and I disagree with them. Both of them are saying they basically think Howard Dean is unelectable in the general election. (Marshall: Okay, have to say it. Drum: Electing Dean.)
Marshall goes on to post an email from John B. Judis of The New Republic, in which Judis writes:
The only thing I’m semi-certain about is Dean’s lack of electability in November. I think it is because I lived through the McGovern campaign, as did some of those ex-Clinton people who have tried to pump up Clark. The similarities grow with every day. Not just the insurgent voter enthusiasm, the new ways of fundraising, and the bevy of flummoxed opponents, but also the economy (artificially stimulated by Nixon through the Fed and by Bush through the dollar just in time for election year) and the war (raging, but bound to quiet some by election time, and to raise prospects of peace).
Now, both Drum and Marshall offer some other (fairly vague) reasons besides the McGovern parallel for Dean’s supposed non-electability, but when you come right down to it, each of them says it’s basically just a gut feeling. And given that it’s more their guts than their heads that are talking, I wonder if it might be mostly the subconscious memory of the McGovern defeat that’s pushing them in that direction.
I was only 10 years old in 1972; the Nixon/McGovern race is the first presidential election I have any memory of at all, and it’s a pretty vague memory. But as I read the history of that campaign, I think those who see another McGovern in Dean are missing the forest for the trees.
Yes, McGovern was an antiwar candidate who swooped in from outside to upset the Democratic machine and take the nomination away from candidates with stronger support within the party, and in that sense he does look a lot like Dean. But there’s a crucial difference between the two.
In 1972, McGovern was perceived as a radical, an ideologue, at least by mainstream voters. In the aftermath of the turbulent 1960s, he scared people in the middle. Sure, they didn’t like the insane bodycount of the Vietnam war and were looking for a way out, but they weren’t willing to put the country in the hands of a moral crusader, the candidate of those campus radicals and drug fiend hippies, in order to get it.
Nixon, on the other hand, was a realist. Though short on details about his exit strategy, he was saying the right things about the war, and winding down US involvement. It wasn’t his war, after all, but his predecessor Lyndon Johnson’s. Nixon had been a moderate steward of the economy. In an era when people were still very thoroughly scared about superpower confrontation, he had opened a dialog with China. And so on.
I believe this was the dominant factor in Nixon’s landslide victory over McGovern. Nixon was the safe choice, the conservative choice (in the general sense, rather than the narrowly political sense). He was the grown-up choice.
But in the looming matchup between Dean and Bush, those roles are going to be precisely reversed. It is Bush who is the scary ideologue, with his go-it-alone pre-emptive wars, overturning of domestic civil liberties, radical re-tooling of the tax code, and exploding budget deficits. Dean is the grown-up, the voice of reason, the candidate of mainstream policies.
Throw away the partisans who will always vote red or blue, regardless of the candidate, and what you have left is a chunk of the country that really doesn’t care about all this ideological crap. They just want someone who seems sensible, and responsible, and who will do a good job. In 1972 they looked at the available choices and chose Nixon. In 2004, using exactly the same criteria, I believe those voters will look at the available choices and choose Dean.
So, it’s my guts versus Marshall’s and Drum’s. Whose guts will turn out to be right?
November 11th, 2003 at 9:34 pm
The meme that died
When Howard Dean became a player in the Democratic nomination process it was popular to call him the second coming of George McGovern. Right wing yahoos like Sean Hannity still occasionally make that reference but it has essentially disappeared from
November 12th, 2003 at 6:17 am
Whose guts are right?
IMHO as long as Bush is run out of office it really doesn’t matter.
November 12th, 2003 at 6:30 am
Admittedly, I’m not old enough to have been around for the McGovern campaign, but as a Dean supporter reading your post, one thing does come to mind regarding his electibility:
I’m thinking of the argument laid out by (among others) Eric Alterman. He argues that the center of political journalism within the mainstream media has shifted substantially toward the right in recent years, and that therefore, Bush is not presented to the majority of Americans as a right-wing idealogue. Rather, he’s the non-nonsense, straight-shooter. Dean, I think, tends to be presented as a left-wing underdog who’s campaign depends largely on youth (read: radical) support and internet fund-raising.
When it comes to their actual positions on policy, I totally agree with your assessment. But do you think that those policy positions are being accurately transmitted to the voting public?
That’s what makes me worry about Dean’s electibility.
November 12th, 2003 at 8:55 am
This is why I wish the primary season were over much sooner. We need time when the Dems aren’t battling each other to really go after Bush. We need time to get the real message out to people. I just hope they’ll listen.
November 12th, 2003 at 9:32 am
I’ve been reading around the Internet since this summer that the McGovern comparisons are the incorrect comparisons, and it’s comparisons to REGAN that should be taking place:
A politician dismissed as too far to one side of the political spectrum, his party was horrified at the idea of him being nominated….
http://thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=871
As long as the Washingtonian Democrats remain Howard’s opponents, he is the best that the Democrats have to offer
November 13th, 2003 at 9:27 am
I still have my McGovern button (I was all of 14). There’s something else to keep in mind here, I think: Bush is vulnerable in a way that Nixon, loathesome though he was, simply was not. Watergate was still dismissable in ’72; it took another two years to bring him down on that one. The war was unpopular at home, but (a) not as unpopular as this one already is, and (b) the divisions among the supporters and opposers were different, I’d bet. Bush has cut taxes for the rich; he has trashed the environment; he continues to stonewall the 9/11 commission (and I think he’s VERY vulnerable on that point); binLaden & Hussein are still at large; and his friends have gotten billions in government handouts (in the form of no-bid contracts, as well as the ability to trash the environment for their profit). Bush has even managed to alienate much of the military. Nixon didn’t have nearly that many liabilities.
Also, interestingly enough, McGovern didn’t mention that he was himself a veteran and, if I remember correctly, decorated. If either Kerry or Clark is on the ticket, it will be a stark contrast to the monkey in a flightsuit, and people will care about that, I suspect.
Finally, Alterman is completely right about the rightward turn to the media; let’s not forget that the same paper that broke the Watergate story, and hounded Nixon out of office, is, with a few exceptions, basically a lapdog of the current administration.
November 13th, 2003 at 7:45 pm
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There are only three things that will make a difference to the general voting public when it comes to the election. Bush will ONLY be defeated if by next fall there is (1)still no dramatic improvement in the stability and resolution of the Iraq issue, (2)a continuing jobless economic recovery, and (3)a distinct Democratic candidate (one that hasn’t been too discredited by the current show of stumbling uninspiring players searching for some traction)who can hammer a repetitive believable message of exiting America from Iraq quickly yet gracefully and of bringing jobs back into the economy.
The liberals who cast their hopes on a general public to be outraged at a lack of full disclosure regarding 9/11, or due to viewing Bush as a fascist, or by him not signing environmental treaties, or by him giving some “insider” organizations first crack at rebuilding Iraq, are quite simply setting themselves up for another misguided fall next November.
December 9th, 2003 at 11:23 am
I agree with Craig
January 7th, 2004 at 1:02 pm
I agree with the differentiation between Nixon-McGovern and Bush-Dean: McGovern was the radical ideologue before, Bush is the radical ideologue now. But Dean will have to hammer on these differences and the radical, far right actions of the Bush administration. He will have to paint him as pro-rich, pro-big business and fiscally irresponsible. He’ll have to clarify and emphasize the Hussein, Bin Laden bait and switch. And he’ll have to debunk the “economic recovery” whereby big business make billions, and average people still face a jobless recovery. But while emphasizing all the negative consequences of Bush policies present and future, he’ll also have to give the world a real national security and foreign policy vision that seems practical in the post 9/11 world. That’s a big task. But if Dean loses to Bush, it won’t be because he’s unelectable; it’ll be because he can’t wake America up to the reality of Bush or because he can’t show himself to be the practical, moderate, competent leader that he needs to be.
January 7th, 2004 at 2:00 pm
Another thing to consider in the comparison is the changes in American politics. While Dean and McGovern do seem similar in many ways, the country has shifted significantly to the left on a lot of issues in the last 30 years. On racial issues, abortion, gay rights etc. America has evolved. If McGovern was a radical and Dean is similar that would make him today’s moderate.
January 10th, 2004 at 2:08 am
Dean has as much chance of winning as an asshole has producing a baby.
March 26th, 2004 at 1:11 pm
thanks tony, your depiction of both sides of the issue i am sure will help young people understand the candidate’s positions.