Fifty years ago this month, George McGovern was a highly skilled government official. By 1972, he’d already served as congressman, diplomat – as head of America’s Food for Peace program – and strong, moral voice in the U.S. Senate. That spring, his goal was to utilize his experience to make himself president of the United States.
At the time, I was a senior at Nichols School. My slowly developing intellect was trying to keep pace with my rapidly developing interests. And that May, my goal was to learn everything I could about how America chooses the person who occupies our highest office.
McGovern’s ambition and my precociousness would make our paths cross.
Getting on board
Back then, Nichols permitted seniors to forgo classes in the final trimester and devote themselves to an on-campus academic project. My idea was to take that tradition a step further. I proposed to write a paper on the “presidential primary election system,” under which candidates visit virtually every corner of the nation. To fully understand the process, I felt, required my traveling with a candidate and seeing the system up close.
People are also reading…
But Nichols didn’t allow off-campus projects. So I asked to appear before the board of trustees to make my case. They refused. I pressed on. And when they finally consented, I learned the value of what would become a lifelong habit of persistence.
Obtaining my father’s consent was another matter. He’d devoted his life to government, was familiar with its demands and less-than-stellar reputation, and reticent to see a son involve himself. But after lengthy discussion, we agreed to a compromise: If I could convince a presidential candidate of my plan’s worthiness, I’d have his blessing.
That year, seven Democrats competed for their party’s nomination to oppose incumbent President Richard Nixon. Leading the early polls was Maine Sen. Ed Muskie, with established figures like Hubert Humphrey in hot pursuit. Far behind was South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, favored by only 2% of Democratic voters in early 1972. But as I researched and weighed which candidate to approach, I found an interesting entry in McGovern’s resume.
Responsibility for establishing the process through which a candidate appears on a presidential ballot rests with the two major political parties. Democrats and Republicans choose their own system. From George Washington’s time to the mid-20th century, the parties followed the same rule: a few white men, meeting behind closed doors, in a smoke-filled, whisky-fueled room, selected the candidate. National conventions were held, but their bands and balloons were all for show.
In the aftermath of the violence and chaos that dominated the 1968 presidential election – Robert Kennedy’s murder; police beating students on Chicago streets; and the Democratic nomination given to Humphrey, the political bosses’ candidate – Democrats decided to elevate their existing primary system from an unimportant to a dispositive consideration. The Democratic National Committee formed a “Commission on Delegate Selection,” which for the first time bound convention delegates to candidates who won their state’s primary, considerably reducing the role of the bosses. Reading the commission’s report, I noticed that its co-author was McGovern. I’d found my man.
I sent McGovern a detailed proposal by which I’d work and travel with him for 14 days, and have access to key campaign personnel. In response, bless his soul, McGovern sent a round-trip plane ticket to Omaha, Neb., the name and number of a family with whom I’d live and the address of the campaign headquarters where I should report. It was the first instance of a phenomenon I’d come to regularly avail: People of large purpose and high achievement are the ones most likely to help out a student eager to learn. I’ve spent my adult life emulating that example, involving students in all of my civic projects.
McGovern and his team
I arrived in Omaha two weeks before its May 9 presidential primary, and started at the bottom – but perhaps most important – rung of American politics: visiting voters in their homes. Accompanying two McGovern “canvassers,” I immediately noticed that they were not employing the traditional practice of just placing campaign literature in the door and leaving. Rather, they rang the doorbell and, when a resident appeared, engaged them in conversation.
Afterward, back on the sidewalk, the canvassers wrote the person’s name on a 3-by-5 card (no computers then), characterized their support as yes, no or undecided, and scribbled one or two issues with which the voter was concerned. Street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, they repeated the process. Back at headquarters, I found the person who’d invented this novel system.
Gene Pokorny was a pale, nerdy 25-year-old midwesterner born of the Great Plains progressive tradition. McGovern hired him for his organizational skills. Pokorny’s office was waist-deep in cardboard boxes filled with 3-by-5 cards. Tens of thousands of them, from which Pokorny drew information that no other campaign had: supporters (“yes” on their card), to be called on primary day and encouraged to vote; possible supporters (“undecided”), to whom literature concerning their valued issue was mailed; and non-supporters (“no”), to be ignored.
With this conceit, Pokorny revolutionized American politics, and helped boost McGovern into competitive status.
Next, I traveled with McGovern’s young national campaign chair from Denver, Gary Hart. Another nonverbal midwesterner and Yale-educated attorney, Hart would later run for president himself, in the process revealing his genius and his flaws. He let me sit in on private meetings with local politicians, who were asked to dispatch their political “base” on behalf of McGovern.
Finally, I worked directly with McGovern, volunteering to carry his bags in the hope that the assignment would produce time with him. It did.
McGovern left the Methodist ministry and a South Dakota college professorship to enter politics. Taciturn and serious, his eyes would display, in turn, prairie fatalism, open-sky optimism and the mirth of a self-made man. In conversation, he didn’t immediately respond after you made a point. He’d wait several beats, his head quite still, until finally offering something thoughtful. His animating characteristic – born of his World War II service as a bomber pilot, flying 33 missions – was deep aversion to America’s war in Vietnam.
By plane, train and car, I traveled with McGovern through 18-hour days, throughout Nebraska and on side trips to California, which held its primary the following month. I exhausted him with questions, and showed him early versions of my Nichols paper. He encouraged my writing, and was gracious enough to boost my confidence by asking that I prepare some remarks for him to deliver before a San Francisco civic group. My draft included an anti-war quote from one of my favorite novels, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which seemed to please him.
Updating an arduous path
Along the way, I witnessed firsthand our presidential primary system’s principal strength: the demands it makes on candidates. Leading the free world is perhaps the toughest job on Earth. Compelling candidates to demonstrate a capacity for rigor, discipline, facile mind and compassionate heart is perhaps the best way for us to weigh and consider their abilities.
As well, primaries require candidates to display these traits in close quarters with voters. I saw a man confront McGovern inches from his face, hurling vulgar epithets that would draw ire from lesser people, but from which McGovern simply turned away. And once I heard him swear like a sailor when a taxi drove through a puddle, drenching us as we tried to hail it down. A nearby group of 50 or so voters heard the outburst as well, and laughed at the humanness of it all.
American politics’ recent tumult has given rise to re-examination of governmental institutions and processes. From Supreme Court size and term to Electoral College-decided elections, our nation is evaluating whether present practices foster America’s future success. Presidential primaries should be included in that review.
Calls for presidential primaries to occur on the same day capture the spirit of reform, but miss the present system’s deficiency. In addition, a single primary day would reduce the opportunity candidates have to spend substantial time in small communities throughout America.
The defect in today’s system is its static nature. The primary calendar today is virtually identical to that of the 1970s. Iowa and New Hampshire, two states with predominately white populations, come first, lacking minority voices and exercising disproportionate influence.
Presidential primaries could perhaps be divided into four regions. Each region would include states with varied demographic and minority voter composition; and all states in a region would hold their primary on the same day.
In addition, the region that kicks off the primary season should rotate with every presidential cycle, ensuring a diverse, inclusive start to every season.
Kevin Gaughan is a Buffalo attorney and civic leader. He remained friends with George McGovern until the senator’s death in 2012.