McGovern v. Nixon on the War

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McGovern turns off some would-be supporters because he sometimes seems to want not only an end to the war but an act of national moral self-flagellation. "We tell him to go easy on the blood and bomb stuff," says a McGovern adviser, "but it does no good. He just feels too deeply to change." During a flight to Minneapolis one day last week, campaign aides played a tape recording of a young veteran's horror and guilt over his participation in the devastation of Viet Nam. Deeply moved, McGovern played it for his audience that night (see box, preceding page).

The polls suggest that McGovern's sense of moral outrage is not shared by most Americans, who tend to go along with Nixon's gut conviction that a U.S. President cannot simply get out of Viet Nam without an "honorable" settlement. As Gelb, now with the Brookings Institution, says, it is true "both that the American people want out and that they don't want the place handed over to the Communists."

As it has done to so many other things, the interminable, infinitely complex war in Viet Nam has turned meanings inside out. McGovern, with his angry moralism and his too-eager willingness to ratify the worthlessness of the long U.S. effort, offends a deep sensibility in the American people. This allows Nixon, who has not ended the war as he promised and continues to destroy a small corner of the earth with all of the firepower the U.S. can muster, to campaign as the peace candidate.