Sen. George McGovern’s death on Sunday morning could be seen as a final revenge had the 1972 presidential candidate been a vengeful man. It came, after all, on the eve of the foreign policy debate between President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney. Even in death, the ever-faithful McGovern rendered another public service to his country. To consider how right McGovern’s anti-war policy was regarding the disasters in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and to reflect on his heroic role as a bomber pilot in World War II and to then accept that someone like George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office as President is to understand how colossally important elections are.
So upon McGovern’s death with a national election days away, there is no quarrel about President Obama’s success in foreign policy and why he should remain in the White House. Successfully prosecuting Al Qaeda, Bin Laden and the war on terror just as McGovern pursued Axis bombing targets in Germany and Italy, Obama has extracted us from Iraq and is doing so from Afghanistan. McGovern would have done the same in Vietnam, which should have been the last of this country’s interventionist imbroglios had Bush not taken us down a similar path. If Mitt Romney is elected and another set of bumblers take office with him, no lesson will have been learned.