page_title: George McGovern
section_title: Remaining Senate years
hierarchical_section_title: George McGovern / U.S. Senator / Remaining Senate years
caption_attribution_description: English: McGovern is reading into a microphone while the others listen at the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs. The Committee was terminated in 1977, yet date given as 1980, so either it is wrong or the description of the setting is incorrect.
context_page_description: George Stanley McGovern was an American politician, historian, U.S. representative, U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election.
  McGovern grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he was a renowned debater. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Forces upon the country's entry into World War II and as a B-24 Liberator pilot flew 35 missions over German-occupied Europe from a base in Italy. Among the medals bestowed upon him was a Distinguished Flying Cross for making a hazardous emergency landing of his badly damaged plane and saving his crew. After the war he earned degrees from Dakota Wesleyan University and Northwestern University, culminating in a PhD, and was a history professor. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1956 and re-elected in 1958. After a failed bid for the U.S. Senate in 1960, he was a successful candidate in 1962.
  As a senator, McGovern was an example of modern American liberalism. He became most known for his outspoken opposition to the growing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He staged a brief nomination run in the 1968 presidential election as a stand-in for the assassinated Robert F.
context_section_description: After this loss, McGovern remained in the Senate. He was scarred by the enormous defeat, and his wife, Eleanor, took it even worse; during the winter of 1972–73, the couple seriously considered moving to England. His allies were replaced in positions of power within the Democratic Party leadership, and the McGoverns did not get publicly introduced at party affairs they attended. On January 20, 1973, a few hours after Richard Nixon was re-inaugurated, McGovern gave a speech at the Oxford Union that talked about the abuses of Nixon's presidency; it brought criticism, including from some Democrats, for being ill mannered. In order to get past the "bitterness and self-pity" he felt, McGovern forced himself to deal with the defeat humorously before audiences; starting at the March 1973 Gridiron Dinner, he frequently related his campaign misadventures in a self-deprecating fashion, such as saying, "For many years, I wanted to run for the presidency in the worst possible way – and last year I sure did." Nevertheless, emotions surrounding the loss would remain with McGovern for decades, as it did with some other defeated presidential nominees. Nixon resigned in August 1974 because of the Watergate scandal. McGovern said President Gerald R. Ford's subsequent September 1974 pardon of Nixon was difficult to understand, given that Nixon's subordinates were going to prison.
  McGovern displayed the political resiliency he had shown in the past. In the 1974 U.S. Senate elections, McGovern faced possible political peril because of his having neglected the state during his long presidential campaign, and by May 1973, he had already begun campaigning for reelection. An Air Force pilot and Medal of Honor recipient, Leo K. Thorsness, had just been repatriated after six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam; he publicly accused McGovern of having given aid and comfort to the enemy and of having prolonged his time as a POW. McGovern replied that if there had been no war, there would have been no POWs, and that everything he had done had been toward the goal of ending the war sooner. Thorsness became the Republican nominee against McGovern, but despite the two men's different roles in it, the war did not become a significant issue. Instead, the campaign was dominated by farm policy differences and economic concerns over the 1973–75 recession. Thorsness charged McGovern with being a "part-time senator" more concerned with national office and with spending over $2 million on his re‑election bid, while McGovern labeled Thorsness a carpetbagger owing to his having grown up in Minnesota. In a year in which Democrats were advantaged by the aftereffects of the Watergate scandal, McGovern won re-election in November 1974 with 53 percent of the vote.
  Following the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975, McGovern attributed the outcome not to Congressional refusal to fund more military aid to South Vietnam, as President Ford had wanted.  Instead, McGovern said, the regime of Nguyễn Văn Thiệu "fell because the leadership was corrupt and decadent and did not have the support of its own people."  Regarding the Indochina refugee crisis that soon developed, McGovern introduced legislation in early May 1975 to enable Vietnamese refugees who had left the country in panic fearing a post-war bloodbath to return to the country.  He said, "Ninety percent of the refugees would be better off going back to their own land.  And I say that in a humanitarian spirit. ... The [new] Saigon government has already given orders that the people are not to be molested ... that is more respect than Theiu's army frequently demonstrated. ... our program for dealing with these refugees should include as the highest priority steps to facilitate their early return to Vietnam."  McGovern's stance brought immediate criticism from some quarters; syndicated columnist John D. Lofton, Jr. said it proved that McGovern was "the most immoral hypocrite on the American political scene today."  McGovern objected to what he termed distorted interpretations of his proposa
caption: McGovern with Robert Dole and other senators
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