McGovern was a truly kind man who held high standards. He was a World War II hero and later went into politics. He was one of the brave few who opposed the Vietnam War before it became "fashionable" to oppose it. McGovern ran for the presidency in 1968, but he didn't get very far. He would make that attempt four years later. However, that run was complicated thanks to dirty tricks by Nixon's henchmen in their desire to have an easy opponent for Nixon to beat.
We know now what the Watergate scandal was truly about. It was about rigging an election to help President Richard Nixon in his re-election bid. He was having problems during his first term, especially regarding his Vietnam War policies, and a number of Democratic candidates rose up to challenge him. These challengers included George McGovern, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, and Ed Muskie. Of these five main Democratic candidates (there were about a dozen originally), the most difficult challenger for Nixon's people was Ed Muskie, regarded at the time as more a "centrist" Democrat (he would be a card-carrying "socialist" these days). In fact, Nixon was in serious trouble politically and it was not at all certain early in 1971 and going into 1972 he would get another term. Nixon, in his paranoid state, felt he had to do something. He and his associates hired some people to do dirty tricks on the Democratic candidates, especially focusing on Muskie, and those tricks (memorably called "ratfucking" by dirty trickster Donald Segretti) succeeded beyond the henchmens' wildest dreams. The goal was to get the more competitive candidates out of the way to make way for the easiest candidate for Nixon to beat, McGovern. McGovern, for all of his virtues, was basically a one-issue candidate (Vietnam). Nixon's boys also committed a variety of other dirty tricks and outright crimes, including the Watergate break-in, to solidify Nixon's re-election chances, but the primary rigging was critical. Thanks to the dirty tricks campaign (and the attempted assassination of George Wallace), George McGovern would be the last candidate standing.
It was smooth sailing for Nixon, or so his people thought, but the Watergate scandal gradually unfolded until it consumed the United States government during the years 1973-1974, culminating in Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency.
McGovern, buried in a 49-state defeat in the 1972 elections, continued his work in the Senate until he was defeated for re-election in 1980. I would say the surprise wasn't his defeat but that he managed to be a liberal senator in a conservative state for so long. He remained in the public eye, giving his opinions on various subjects and being an elder statesman of the Democratic Party until shortly before his death.
From the obit:
Mr. McGovern left teaching to become executive secretary of the South Dakota Democratic Party, and almost single-handedly revived a moribund party in a heavily Republican state.
Month after month, he drove across South Dakota in a beat-up sedan, making friends and setting up county organizations. In 1956, gaining the support of farmers who had become New Deal Democrats during the Depression, he was elected to Congress himself, defeating an overconfident incumbent Republican. He became the first Democratic congressman from his state in more than 20 years.
After two terms he left the House to run for the Senate in 1960 and was soundly beaten by the sitting Republican, Karl E. Mundt. He then became a special assistant to the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, and director of Kennedy’s Food for Peace program, an effort to provide food for the hungry in poor countries.
In 1962, Mr. McGovern ran for the Senate again, and this time he won, by 597 votes, defeating Joseph H. Bottum, a Republican filling the term of Senator Francis H. Case, who had died in office.
The acceptance speech, given in the wee hours of the morning:
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