This interview is from a continuing series of transcript excerpts from the collection of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.
UF Dean and historian Michael Gannon [G] interviewed George McGovern [M] on April l7, 1983. McGovern is a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, and was his party’s nominee for president in 1972. In the wave of conservatism in the 1980 elections, McGovern was defeated in his bid for a fourth term in the United States Senate. At the time of this interview, he was the chairman of Americans for Common Sense, a public interest group headquartered in Washington, D.C. He has served as a visiting professor at numerous universities and is the author of six books. Transcript edited by Beth Grobman; a full transcript of this interview is available at tinyurl.com/iguana2488.
G: It is a special delight to talk with a fellow historian, if I might identify you that way. I am very interested [in] your perceptions of the historical process and your understanding of the history of the American people. In view of your own considerable practical experience in politics, does it make a difference to have had the kind of experiences you have enjoyed with eighteen years in the Senate, four years in Congress [the House], and race for the highest office in the land [1972]?
M: I remember there was a format in the 1960 presidential campaign in which the reporters went on television with John Kennedy and Richard Nixon during their [four] debates. After the opening statements by the two candidates, the reporters would then ask each candidate to respond to the same question. The first question was, what one quality do you think commends you to the president of the United States more than anything else? Mr. Nixon answered first, and he said he thought it was his experience. He gave what I thought was a rather convincing answer about his years as vice president, in the Senate, in the House, and world travel.
I was wondering what Kennedy would say when it became his turn, because he had much less experience than Nixon. He startled me by saying that he thought his most important asset as a politician was his sense of history. He said, by that I mean the capacity to understand the great underlying values and forces that have shaped American history and also to be able to discern in our own day the forces that are worth supporting and the ones that we ought to oppose. I thought it was a pretty nifty answer.
I have never forgotten about my historical background. I agree with [George] Santayana [Spanish-American philosopher, 1863-1952] that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I think history has a lot to teach us, and we need people in the public life of this country who can bring some long-term historical perspective on the problems of our own time.
G: I should have mentioned that you also had wartime experience. During World War II, you flew a B-24 bomber out of Italy. [You flew] thirty-five or so missions, which won for you the Distinguished Flying Cross. After that, it was your original intention, I believe, to enter the ministry, which had been the profession and calling of your father. Did you go to Northwestern University originally with that in mind?
M: I did. I came out of World War II thinking that whatever time I had left in life I would devote to the cause of world peace. I still think that is the number one challenge before the human race — to find some way to achieve our salvation from nuclear annihilation. I worry about these conventional weapons, too. We are undergoing a revolution where we are becoming vastly more destructive than we were in any previous war.
The experience that I had thirty-five or forty years ago dealing with the destruction in World War II has convinced me that we have to do everything in our power to find some arrangement to break free from the war system.
It is war itself that is the evil. It is not nuclear power that is the evil; it is the war system that is the evil in the international community. Countries have achieved the capacity to utterly destroy each other and maybe to end all life on this planet. We have got to find some better way of settling our differences than killing each other, which could mean the end of the race.
G: I am interested to hear you say that it is not nuclear weapons, as such, that have altered the dimensions of warfare. I would venture to say that man has always been prepared to destroy his enemies by whatever means happen to be at hand. Indeed, many people tend to forget that in the closing years of World War II, the United States was routinely destroying many more lives than were lost in Hiroshima [August 6, 1945] with the A-bomb — with the incendiary fire-bombing of Tokyo [beginning March 1945] and other cities in Japan. In just one night’s raid before August 1945 when the A-bomb was dropped, the United States destroyed more lives than were lost with the dropping of the A-bomb.
M: We have already dropped nuclear weapons on great cities. We did that in Japan in 1945 [Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945]. That argument is about whether or not mankind might have the recklessness to use nuclear weapons. We have used them once. That is why I think it is so important that we invest more time and energy than we have in the past trying to strengthen the international organizations like the United Nations, the peace-keeping capacity that we have to see that war is contained and prevented.
We have, incidentally, about forty wars going on right now around the world. Some of them [are] very bloody conflicts, so the danger and violence is never very far away.
G: You are very much concerned about what is happening in Central America and the United States’s involvement in not only El Salvador, but now, most recently, the Honduran-originated excursion into Nicaragua.
M: Dean Gannon, I cannot prove this, but I am convinced in my own mind that the United States is arming, equipping, and training those Honduran forces who are coming across the line into Nicaragua. I think the administration has made a calculated decision to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. They are using elements that once comprised General Somoza’s national guard — some of them very brutal, hard-boiled killers — to regroup on the Honduran side, come across the line into Nicaragua and to attempt a military overthrow of the Sandinistan government.
I would not argue that the Sandinista government is perfect, but I would say that it replaced one of the most depressive governments in Central America when it overturned General Somoza [Sandinista Revolution in 1979].
I think it is not in the interest of the United States, either in terms of our fundamental national interest or the values that we cherish in this country, for us to get mixed up in a clandestine effort to overturn that existing government in Nicaragua.
G: I know that you are concerned about the military posture of the United States, vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. You have expressed yourself on numerous occasions as gravely worried about the direction the arms race is taking. Do you think that a critical mass has been built up in the arms race which would encourage the theory that the arms race is almost out of human control — that we have almost lost our grip upon weapons that are of such magnitude [that] they seem to have blunted our rational capacity to deal with it?
M: I do think that. When I listen to these scenarios of how a nuclear war could be fought and limited and won, I have the feeling that I am listening to almost insane ravings, because there is no defense against a nuclear war.
[In the] last speech that the president [Reagan] made, he raised the possibility that maybe through laser beams we could shoot down incoming Soviet missiles and thus remove the danger of nuclear war.
I found that almost beyond comprehension. The reason being this: Let us suppose those laser beams are 99 percent effective — I do not think they could be 99 percent effective. Let us say we could devise a system where if the Russians let fly their 10,000 volley of warheads, that we could knock down 9,000 of them or 9,900 of them. Still, if 100 warheads hit the cities of this country from the Soviet Union, whole cities would just simply disappear. We would have tens of millions of people killed instantly. That is assuming that the system that you build for defense is 99 percent effective.
Nobody, in all the history of the world, has ever devised a defensive system of any kind that was 99 percent effective. I do not care what time in history you are talking about. We have anti-aircraft guns now to knock down planes, but they are not 100 percent effective.
To try to hit a missile traveling at several times the speed of light coming across the horizon seems, to me, preposterous. Back in World War II, if we sent 100 airplanes against the city and we lost ten of them to air defenses, we thought it was a catastrophe. What it meant is that in ten missions, all 100 bombers would be gone, and the amount of damage you could do with 100 bombers was not all that catastrophic.
Today, if you sent 100 warheads against Miami, and you shot down ninety of them and one of them hits Miami, the city of Miami disappears. That raid is an enormous success from a military standpoint, even though the defense was 99 percent perfect. That is the dimension of warfare that I think has changed.
There is no reliable defense if nuclear war comes. I think we are all going to go if nuclear war comes.
G: Is there anyone high in the Reagan Administration who has spoken favorably about a freeze or very strongly about arms control as the number one priority of the administration?
M: If there is, he must have been put under wraps. I have not heard any sentiment of that kind coming out of the administration.
G: The grassroots movement to develop a freeze initiative in our society is fairly unique in our recent experience, is it not? The town meetings are developing these very complex resolutions.
M: I think it is almost unprecedented. I suppose the closest thing we have had to it was the Anti-Vietnam War Movement back in the 1960s and early 1970s. [There was also the] Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
This movement is different from those [others] in the sense that it is so broadly based. It is, essentially, a middle-class, nonpartisan American movement. I can use that old phrase — it is as American as apple pie. It comes out of the churches, out of the discussion groups, out of women’s organizations. A lot of lawyers, bankers, farmers, plumbers, and clergymen —and people of all kinds were involved in that movement.
I have spoken to some of the nuclear freeze groups, and it is like talking to any community group that might be there interested in a new gymnasium or interested in a safety campaign. They are just concerned citizens who want to be heard on what they regard as an issue of great importance.
G: Senator McGovern, I thank you very much for coming back to the University of Florida. After your surprise showing in the New Hampshire primary in 1972, you came to this campus to give an address which turned into a very excited rally on your behalf. That was eleven years ago, and we are glad to welcome you back to the campus.
M: Thank you. It is good to be with you. We had a lot of people out. We did not get very many votes, but we did meet a lot of very wonderful people.
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