Historian and former senator George McGovern signs his book on Abraham Lincoln.

McGovern: Everyone should have Medicare

By Jamie Loo, First Amendment reporter

October 27, 2009

EVANSTON—Former Sen. George McGovern said health care reform can be achieved in a one sentence bill.

“Congress hereby extends Medicare to all American citizens,” he said. “Everybody, from birth until death. That would’ve been my formula.”

The former senator and presidential candidate spoke at Northwestern University on Thursday. McGovern sat down with the Post-Exchange for an interview where he shared his thoughts on the war on terrorism, health care reform, and ending world hunger.

McGovern, who ran for president in 1972 on an anti-war platform, said he is against sending any more troops to Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been referred to as a “graveyard of imperialism,” he said, because many world powers have invaded the country with little success. McGovern said some experts say that the Russian invasion led to the collapse of the Soviet Union because the war contributed to the country’s bankruptcy.

McGovern said he is glad the U.S. is finally starting to withdraw troops from Iraq.

“There’s absolutely nothing to be gained for staying in there any longer,” McGovern said. “We never should’ve invaded that country in the first place. They were no threat to us, they had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attack so I think now the quicker we can get our troops out of there and return them to their families the better off we’ll all be.”

Ending world hunger is one of McGovern’s lifelong causes that started when he served in World War II. McGovern said he is working with former senator Bob Dole on a worldwide school lunch program proposal that he would like to see the United Nations adopt with the United States in a leadership role. The program would provide a school lunch for every hungry child in the world at a modest cost, which McGovern estimates would reach 300 million children. McGovern said people should talk to members of Congress about the importance of reducing hunger in the world.

“These wars that we’ve gotten into in Iraq and Afghanistan, they cost about $12 million a piece every month. If we could get just one fraction of that we could end hunger among the children of the world,” he said.

The McGovern-Fraser Commission report, which changed the way parties select delegates for presidential nominating conventions and reformed the primary system, regained attention during the last presidential election. Some states scrambled to move their primaries up earlier in the year in an attempt to increase their state’s importance in the process.

When asked about his opinion of how the primary system and nominating process functions today, McGovern said he feels it works fine and that he is “delighted with it.” McGovern said without the reforms neither Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would’ve had a chance at the presidency. He said the McGovern-Fraser reforms ensured that state delegations would have a diverse representation that is reflective of their population. The reforms were considered “radical” at the time, McGovern said, but more than three decades later all of them are still on the books. He said more should be done to help women and minorities get elected to public office.

“I’ve always thought that we live in the greatest country on earth. It will be even greater when we have full representation for minorities and for women, who are not a minority but a majority. I think that will strengthen the country and that’s the direction we ought to continue pushing,” he said.

The senator’s visit was sponsored by the Medill School of Journalism and the McCormick Freedom Project. The Post-Exchange is a news Web site owned by the 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.