McGovern Redux

Almost one year and $1,000,000 ago, George McGovern launched what looked like a quixotic run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Since then he has traveled some 250,000 miles on the campaign circuit--mostly sideways. For all his efforts, Senator McGovern has climbed a minuscule 1%, from 3% to 4%, in the polls of Democratic and independent voters. He remains unfalteringly optimistic. "If autumn and early winter polls meant anything," he said recently, "then George Romney would now be in his third year in the White House." However engaging, the point is not particularly persuasive. With the primary sweepstakes but three months away, McGovern appears more a Rosinante than a viable dark horse.

Tall and ruggedly handsome, McGovern, as a campaigner, is still the low-key prairie politician who won office in South Dakota by hopping out of his car to talk to farmers in the fields. Though charming and often witty in conversation, he can be downright dull on the hustings. In deference to the youth vote, McGovern's hair has crept down over his collar and he has taken to wearing flashy mod clothes, but his failure to create any sense of drama about himself and his convictions is the despair of his staff.

More Left Than Lindsay. McGovern first came to national prominence as an opponent of the Viet Nam War, and he continues to promise that if elected he will stop the bombing, announce a date for total withdrawal, and negotiate for the release of all prisoners. These are important and legitimate points. But with most voters, President Nixon has probably succeeded in outflanking McGovern through his own withdrawal policies, and McGovern certainly is no longer isolated on the war from the other serious Democratic contenders for the nomination. With the exception of Washington's Henry Jackson, they have all adopted McGovern's original position, with only minor variations.

It is no longer fair to call McGovern a one-issue candidate. His stance on nonwar issues still places him to the left of all the available Democrats, including New York City Mayor John Lindsay. McGovern supports a dividend freeze as well as a wage-price freeze, and a "guaranteed job" for every adult who wants one through government contracting with private industry for housing, transport and environmental projects. He advocates an "excess-war-profits tax" on corporations while the Viet Nam fighting lasts, a minimum income tax for the wealthy, a negative income tax for the poor, and reduced oil and gas depletion allowances. In foreign policy he takes the usual liberal positions: he is for selling planes to Israel, against aid to Rhodesia, sympathetic to Bengali independence.

Despite being in step with the party's left, McGovern has failed to excite it. "Right on" or not, he is unimpressive on many of the issues he addresses. He argues that he is qualified to see and solve urban problems because, as a country boy, he grew up "where the water is pure and the air is clean." That makes little dent on big city audiences of minority groups and impoverished whites. His view of the economy is largely that of a group of academic advisors, including Harvard's John Kenneth Galbraith, who are helping to bolster his grasp of the subject.

McGovern, at one point, also counted heavily on the young to back him because of the war. The results have been somewhat disappointing. To be sure, his plan to grant general amnesty to all draft dodgers after the war ends gets cheers from college audiences; he went over so well at Illinois State University near Bloomington recently that the student band played Hail to the Chief twice. Yet in an October sampling of newly eligible voters from 17 to 23 only 5% named him as their first choice; he ranked behind Kennedy, Muskie, Humphrey and Lindsay.

Gut Feeling. To broaden his base, McGovern has lately begun seeking allies among labor and reaching for the increasingly important farm vote. Until late last summer, he was on AFL-CIO Chief George Meany's blacklist. It was partly a matter of hawk against dove, but equally at issue was a little-noticed attack by McGovern, long remembered by Meany, on labor's opposition to the 1963 U.S. wheat sales to Russia. "That really stuck in his craw," McGovern says, "and I went over to see him and apologize." Last month, McGovern was the only Democratic presidential possibility to address the full AFL-CIO convention in Miami Beach; others were invited but did not attend.

The farm states are up for grabs, and McGovern has begun hammering away at low corn prices and high interest rates for farmers. Recently he interrupted a week-long tour through the Midwest to jet back to Washington to vote against Nixon's nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, who has little support among farmers. But whether he can count on any substantial backing from either group remains to be seen. He has also made some new allies among blacks after campaigning actively among them. On a four-day swing through California last week, he picked up commitments from three black state legislators to run on his slate in the California primary next June.

At the moment, McGovern's greatest plus is his organization. His Washington staff numbers about 80 and includes many former Kennedy and McCarthy volunteers. Leading the list of his political operatives are onetime Bobby Kennedy Aides Frank Mankiewicz and Gary Hart. Having so many veterans at work has made for a fairly well-synchronized campaign. The scheduling and the advance work are tight, and there are always enough campaign buttons and literature on hand. Money, in the preprimary period, has not been a problem. A well-orchestrated drive for $10 and $20 subscriptions has kept the campaign in the black and accounted for the bulk of what he has spent thus far.

McGovern's gut feeling is that he will do respectably in New Hampshire, and that the big money will start flowing in. Then he will move on to Florida and Wisconsin, where the strategy will be to appeal to youth, blacks, farmers and the urban poor--the kind of populist alliance that he needs to win the nomination. But it is a formula that has not worked well for him thus far, and it is hard to imagine McGovern forging in three months a coalition that has eluded him for the past year.

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