George McGovern, 89, In Hospital After Fall

Wishing this most remarkable man the very best.

Liberal Democratic icon George McGovern was taken to a South Dakota hospital after falling Friday night at a nearby university, a library staff member told CNN.

The library staffer at Dakota Wesleyan University — who asked not to be identified, because he was not authorized to discuss the incident — said McGovern fell on the campus in Mitchell, South Dakota.

McGovern was initially sent to Avera Queen of Peace Hospital in Mitchell after the fall, according to a member of that hospital’s nursing staff who asked not to be named, because she was not authorized to speak on the hospital’s behalf

He then was transferred to Avera McKennan Hospital about 75 miles east in Sioux Falls, because he required a higher level of care, the nursing staff member said.

McGovern is in “guarded condition … not in critical condition, but his injuries bear watching,” added the hospital staffer.

George McGovern Remembers Sargent Shriver

Worth a read.

Sarge was an idealist, a man of boundless heart, and a hard-headed businessman who from the ground up built a government program—and he was never afraid to call it just that because he disdained anti-government stereotypes—that has become an enduring force for American purpose and compassion, vastly popular at home and around the globe. I once encountered him in a corner of Africa, his suit jacket off but his tie in place, working with Peace Corps volunteers as they dug a well.

Sarge’s gift, his magic then and always, was not what he could do, however important, but what he could inspire others to do—which he saw as the most important challenge of all. With President Kennedy, he was the new face of America that made the country once again a shining light to people everywhere yearning for a decent life.

I watched him take up the same cause here at home after I had gone to the Senate when he agreed to command the war on poverty. It’s fashionable now to see the Great Society as over-reaching and underperforming. But millions were lifted out of poverty—and if the job was unfinished, it was because a different war, in Vietnam, drained the resources that could have made the difference from Mississippi to simmering urban ghettos around the nation. Sarge was never given the tools to finish the job, but he never gave up or gave in.

I Agree With George McGovern (Again)

Lets face it, many of us in the past six years have thought about it. 

As we watch a war that the Islamic world feels is aimed directly at them, the idea above has passed through our minds.  As we witness the international community splinter, finding American foreign policy to blame for the world condition, we have thought about the slogan above.  We think those thoughts because we yearn for a President with mature and reasonable foreign policy credentials. 

Tonight two friends gave me the bumper sticker as they know of my fascination with the life and times of Richard Nixon.  Though I do not place stickers on my car the slogan made me think back to the 2005 visit by George McGovern at the UW-Madison campus.  McGovern was the 1972 Democratic Presidential nominee that had heart and principle, but not enough votes. 

I went back into my writings tonight and found what I had penned about his speech to that huge university crowd.  I think it worth mentioning here.

“Perhaps the statement that caught the audience by surprise was when McGovern firmly said, ” I wish he (Nixon) were still in the White House, than what is there today.”  I was amused that there was applause as a result, and then McGovern added with that famous little smile that shows there is a gift of a good story tinged with humor waiting inside the old man, “I can say that honestly since Nixon is safely on the other side of the great divide.”

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