Tim McNulty, left, moderates a discussion with former senator George McGovern.

Ending world hunger a passion for senator

Former senator and presidential candidate George McGovern discusses latest cause and Lincoln.

By Jamie Loo, First Amendment reporter

October 27, 2009

EVANSTON—Former senator and historian, George McGovern, said dealing with global hunger issues are his big passion now.

“I hope I live long enough that we can reach every hungry school kid in the world,” he said.

McGovern shared personal recollections of his 1972 presidential campaign, his fight to end world hunger, and thoughts on President Abraham Lincoln during an event at Northwestern University on Thursday.

The former senator said he developed his lifelong interest in ending world hunger when he was serving as a bomber pilot during World War II. McGovern said he remembers 300 to 400 children running down the docks at Naples, Italy to greet his ship as it pulled into port. The children were yelling for candy bars, he said, and the ship’s captain instructed the service members not to toss anything overboard because the children were near starvation. The captain said the same thing happened the day before and about 25 children drowned struggling with each other for the food, McGovern said.

McGovern is working with former senator Bob Dole on a worldwide school lunch program proposal that they would like the United Nations to adopt. The program would provide a free nutritious school lunch to every hungry child in the world. McGovern said in some cultures boys are favored to receive an education over girls, which means thousands of girls don’t attend school. But when a school lunch program is launched, he said parents will send their girls to school, enrollment goes up and academic performance increases. Part of the ripple effect is that girls grow up to be more educated and empowered, McGovern said, marrying later in life and having an average of three children. Currently international studies show that illiterate girls in many countries marry at the age of 10, 11, or 12 and by age 20 already have six children, he said.

“People who say you can’t get on top of the hunger problem until you cut the birthrate, well, we’re using food to draw these kids into school,” McGovern said. “Then that cuts the birthrate in half for every one of those school girls.”

McGovern, who recently authored a book on Lincoln, said the president had a huge impact on his political career. McGovern said he was the first senator to give a speech opposing the Vietnam War in 1963 and recalled that as a senator Lincoln also spoke out against the Mexican war. McGovern said it was his opposition to the war that drove him to run for president in 1972.Although McGovern didn’t win the presidency, he said he didn’t feel he had really lost because he wanted to get the anti-war message out. As a junior senator from South Dakota running against incumbent president Richard Nixon, he garnered nearly 30 million votes.

“I didn’t think the war could go on after that and neither did Congress,” he said. “And they terminated it right after the ‘72 campaign.”

McGovern said he struggled with the decision to drop Thomas Eagleton as his running mate because it seemed to be an impossible situation. Eagleton didn’t disclose to McGovern that he had been hospitalized for depression and had undergone shock therapy. The information got out in the press. McGovern said he and many others in the country didn’t know much about depression at the time and he sought the advice of famous psychiatrist Karl Menninger. Menninger said he had spent 40 years trying to educate people about mental illness and found that many were still terrified of the disease. Menninger told him if he kept Eagleton on the ticket people would never vote for him. McGovern said Menninger then added that almost every family has one member with mental illness, and that those people wouldn’t vote for him if he asked Eagleton to leave. No matter what McGovern did, the race appeared to be over.

“It was the only time in that long campaign that I just broke down and wept,” he said. “I thought about all those people across the country that had been working for me ringing doorbells, distributing literature, getting out to vote. I thought this whole thing was going to go down the drain before we ever get out of the chute.”

Later in life, McGovern was confronted by depression again with his daughter, Terry. Terry developed clinical depression during her senior year of college, he said, and they sought professional help for her. McGovern said to cope Terry turned to alcohol and became an alcoholic. In December 1994, Terry was found frozen to death in a snow bank in Madison, Wisc., deeply intoxicated. McGovern said he’ll never know if it was a suicide or if she fell in the snow.

“I have great sympathy for anybody suffering from that,” he said. “It’s very important to get the best medical help you can.”

McGovern said he felt he could identify with Lincoln because of these experiences. Depression wasn’t diagnosed during Lincoln’s time, he said, and people at the time described the president as having a “terrible problem of despondency” and a “melancholy” mood. The president frequently considered suicide, McGovern said, and one time Lincoln told a colleague that he stopped carrying a knife because he feared he would harm himself.

“This was a terrible affliction that he had to live with and overcome, and it’s one of the reasons I admire him so highly,” he said.

If Lincoln survived, McGovern said he would’ve been the best president to lead the country through reconstruction because Lincoln had moral character, wisdom and a good historical sense. When asked if Lincoln would have tried to stop Jim Crow laws in the southern states, McGovern said it’s hard to say. McGovern said he would like to think Lincoln would have pushed to end Jim Crow laws, but at the same Lincoln was also known not to push his measures “to the point where he lost control of the situation.”

Although Lincoln is his political hero, McGovern said he disagrees with the president’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and censorship of newspapers during the Civil War. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate that requires a prisoner to be brought before a court to determine whether there are legal grounds for the prisoner’s detention, or if he or she should be released from custody.

Some historians have tried to rationalize Lincoln’s actions, but McGovern said he feels this was outright illegal. Suspending habeas corpus was a “constitutional violation” that didn’t increase national security, he said. Every politician gets the urge to censor the press sometimes, McGovern said, but it’s clearly illegal.

“The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and no president should violate the Constitution,” he said. “It’s the only thing that the president or senator or Congressmen swears to when they’re sworn into office. You hold up that right hand, put the left hand on the Bible, and you swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

McGovern’s event was sponsored by the Medill School of Journalism and the McCormick Freedom Project. The Post-Exchange is owned by the McCormick Freedom Project.

For links to a related story and to see video of this interview go to the Related Information tab on the right hand corner of this page.