Senator George S. McGovern February 12, 2009 On February 12, 2009, political figure, veteran, and historian Senator George S. McGovern spoke about his book, Abraham Lincoln. Sean Wilentz, editor of the Times Books American Presidents series, engaged Sen. McGovern in a lively conversation. ADRIENNE THOMAS: Our moderator for tonight's event, Sean Wilentz, is the Sydney and Ruth Lapidus professor of the American Revolution era at Princeton University. He is general editor of tonight's book, and the author of "The Rise of American Democracy," which received the Bancroft prize in 2006. Author/Senator George McGovern, a Midwesterner, former U.S. Senator, presidential candidate, veteran, historian by training. Earned his Ph.D. in American History and Government at Northwestern University. He served as ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Would you please welcome again Senator George McGovern and Professor Sean Wilentz. [Applause] SEAN WILENTZ: Thank you. Well, Senator, here we are again. Um--First, I have to say, it's a great pleasure to be here with all of you, and especially with a hero of mine like George McGovern. It's also an honor for me to be here because I'm a successor as a general editor of this series to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who died last year, and who was another hero of mine and a close, close friend. And it is he who managed to convince--I'll let Senator McGovern tell the story--Senator McGovern to actually writing this very, very wonderful book about Abraham Lincoln--which would be a great book even if it wasn't the bicentennial. But the fact that it is the bicentennial today makes it all the more special. So we're going to talk for a little while about things Lincolnian and things about this book. And then we'll open it up to some questions from the audience. And then they get time for some book signing after that. And, Senator, I--well, just to start off--I mean, since leaving office, you've written several books about many different topics, ranging from George W. Bush's foreign policy to your--your daughter Terry's tragic struggle with depression and alcoholism. Now you've written a biography of Abraham Lincoln. What led you to write this book? GEORGE S. McGOVERN: Well, of course, I've always been a strong admirer of Abraham Lincoln, like most Americans. 16,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. So I don't expect to turn the storm with my contribution. But the fact that that many books have been written indicates the interest this man not only generated in his own time, but for all the decades since then. These books have been spilling out in increasing numbers. The reason I got into this--Arthur Schlesinger, as Dr. Wilentz has said, was the editor in chief of this series in which every president, beginning with George Washington, would have a book written about them, primarily about their years in the White House. These are not definitive biographies. They're an analysis of what kind of a president, what kind of a person occupied the presidency during the appropriate years. And so Arthur wanted to know if I would do one of the books. Take my choice, I thought, from the way he spoke. And I told him, I just had enough on my plate right now that I really didn't need to write another book at this time. I was on the lecture circuit and sometimes teaching at the same university for a period of time. And I just didn't feel up to writing another book right then. My wife was ill, and I was doing what I could to make life better for her. He said, "Look, you've got a doctorate from Northwestern University, and you've been telling me for years how much better Northwestern was than Harvard." [Laughter] "And so now I want to see you put your pen where your mouth is." I said, "Well, I'll tell you. I would do it if I could write on Abraham Lincoln. He's my political hero." He said, "Too bad. Bill Clinton has already spoken for Lincoln." He said, "This may surprise you, George. But a guy who actually was elected President--"[Laughter] "rates above somebody that was just nominated to the presidency." I said, "Well, if he changes his mind, let me know." A year and a half later, he calls me early one morning. Said, "Bill Clinton has said he just can't do this book," and "Would you like to do it?" So, that's how I got into writing a book on Lincoln. I'm really glad that Arthur prevailed. And I was glad when Professor Wilentz replaced Arthur after Arthur's untimely death. I say "untimely" because he was only 88. [Laughter] And I now think that that's not very old. And I used to say when the subject of aging came up, "Well, it doesn't matter so much how long you live, it's what you do with the years you have." I don't say that anymore. I wanted to live a long time, not only because I'm enjoying life, but because there's so many things I still want to do. And I'll quit on this next wrap-up sentence. I have teamed up with Bob Dole. I used to think he was the meanest partisan in the United States Senate. But I discovered that we had some things in common. We were both combat veterans in World War II. He was working his way up on the western side of Italy with the mountain division, and I was 25,000 feet up in the air flying in a bomber with people shooting at us every day. Um--and so we had Veterans Affairs in common. Then I discovered that he had the same concern that I have about hungry people, especially hungry kids. And so we have teamed up on an effort to extend something like the American Federal School Lunch Program through the United Nations, with other countries helping to pay for it, until we've reached every hungry kid on the face of the earth. And that's one problem that's soluble. I came to the Senate thinking my major mission should be to work for peace in the world. I've now come to the conclusion that's insoluble, that people have been killing each other in increasing numbers every century since Cain and Abel and that it'll probably go on, although I'm still—still put myself in the peace camp. But I do think we can reach every hungry kid in the world every day with a good nutritious lunch. And if we achieve that, which Bob and I are determined we're going to do, it's going to transform life on this planet for the better. Now, that's something Lincoln, I think, would have supported. WILENTZ: That's true. McGOVERN: That's a long answer to why I wrote this book. WILENTZ: Well, it's a very good answer. [Applause] McGOVERN: I promise, the next answer won't be so long. WILENTZ: And it's an amazing program. And we'll get back to it, actually. But you mentioned that you're a--you are a trained historian, one of the very few trained historians ever to run for the presidency. In fact, another plug for another book--"The Great Coalfield War" is, to date, the definitive study of the Ludlow, or the Colorado mine battles that led up to the Ludlow massacre in 1914. The author sits to my right, stage left. McGOVERN: Thank you. [Applause] But what I wanted to ask you is, how important do you think it is for political leaders and office holders to have a strong working knowledge of history? Not just the rhetorical window-dressing of, you know, using the words and having speech writers put them in, but a true understanding of history. That's the--it's a two part question, so you can go on for a while. The second part is, have you ever seen historical awareness at work either in your own career, working through your own, you know, office-holding, or in the career of others doing the people's business? Well, I think knowledge and a sense of history is crucial to the kind of leadership that all of us would like to see in the White House or in the Senate or in the Congress. I remember in 1960, in the first presidential debate in that campaign between then Vice-President Nixon and Senator John Kennedy, there were--the format, as I remember it, Sean, was that they had 3 prominent reporters who asked each of the candidates a series of questions for which they had one minute to answer. And one of the first questions came, as my memory tells me, from Sander Vanocur, who was then with NBC. And he said that, "Gentlemen, each of you have one minute to answer this question. What do you regard as your most valuable asset in the presidency if you were elected?" And Nixon gave a pretty good answer, rather persuasive, about his experience--Service in the House of Representatives, service in the United States Senate. Vice-President for 8 years, under President Eisenhower. Traveled to countries all over the world. It sounded pretty convincing to me. And I looked on the television screen at John Kennedy. He looked so young. Looked like a Harvard college student up there. And I wondered how he was going to handle Nixon. And he said, "I think if I have any one qualification for the presidency, it is my sense of history." He said, "By that, I mean the capacity to know what the great historical forces and movements and actions have brought the United States to a position of power and respect and influence in the world. And secondly, the capacity to discern what are the historical forces that are moving in our own day, and in the future years, the ones that we ought to oppose and the ones that we ought to support." He had me after that answer. As a history student, a history teacher, I think it is important. In my own life, I think where history has informed some of my actions in the Senate and as a presidential contender was the Vietnam War. I had read several studies of Southeast Asia while I was a graduate student at Northwestern, including a book by Owen Lattimore, Professor at Johns Hopkins University, called, "The Situation in Asia." And that book opens with Dr. Lattimore saying, in effect, that Asia is out of control. In one country after another, the old forms of colonialism and imperialism were being challenged by grass roots efforts that cannot be stopped. The more sophisticated the weapons used against these revolutionary forces, the more humiliating the eventual defeat because these are forces that cannot be stopped that are demanding the right to control their own country. So you had India pulling out of the British Empire--in a non-violent way, incidentally. You had the Dutch being forced out of Indonesia. You had other countries that had to give up their colonies. And in Southeast Asia, you had the beginning of Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionary followers who were called "guerrillas" by us. But they were a group of young men who were trying to get the French out of Indochina. They eventually had an army that they recruited largely from the villages and the countryside of 10,000 men. And when the French were finally forced out of Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, the Japanese were the ones that did it, and they took their place. And they were in control of that area. So when we found ourselves at war with the Japanese, the Ho Chi Minh forces were our allies. Some of my fellow combat pilots who were shot down over the jungles of Southeast Asia were discovered by Ho Chi Minh and his forces. And once they were identified, they were brought back to American lines. And so, I began to keep an eye on this movement out there--Ho Chi Minh. And I decided this was a no-win proposition. I thought we made a mistake in backing the French out there for 8 years. We ended up financing 80% of the cost of the French war to reassert their power to crush Ho Chi Minh and his forces. And I think that was a mistake. And so, my opposition to the war in Vietnam began with what knowledge I had of the historical forces, as John Kennedy called them, that were moving out there in that part of the world. Bill Fulbright knew some of these same things about history--Frank Church. Senator Greening, Senator Morris, and others. And we were the nucleus that began the anti-war movement that, after 58,000 young Americans were needlessly killed and sacrificed by people who were making bad judgments about how to handle the revolutionary forces out there. So that--that changed my life. And I also think it may have had something to do with my becoming a respected figure in the country, but also one that was widely assailed for being soft on communism. WILENTZ: Let's go to a--let's go back to Lincoln—another hero of mine, who was also assailed, actually, in his time. You conclude your book, Senator, with the following words, which I think are very powerful. "We wish our leaders could be more like him. We wish we all could be." What, in your opinion, are the 2 or 3 things about Abraham Lincoln--or maybe the 2 or 3 things that he did--that make him so admirable in your mind? McGOVERN: Number one, he was literally a self-educated man. He had one year of formal schooling. But in that one year, he learned to read. He learned to write. And he pursued those two talents--and they were more than talents. They were hard-earned achievements on his part. He read everything he could get his hands on. He read and read and thought and thought about what he was reading. He learned to phrase his writings better than any other occupant of the White House. Possibly Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson were somewhere close to Lincoln in writing. But he was the best writer, I think, bar none, that ever served in the White House. I greatly admire a person that can do that coming out of the humble origins. And he did. He didn't have a Ph.D at Northwestern. He wasn't a professor at Princeton. He was a farm boy from Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois--the various places where he lived. But I admire that, I think, above almost anything else. I also admire Lincoln—I had always admired him as a statesmen, a man with vision for the country, a man who understood the great enduring values of the nation. But what I discovered as I did some reading myself about him, and some investigation—I discovered that he was also a very adroit politician. It's one of the reasons he had the capacity, even though he hated slavery--from the time he was a young man, he loathed the idea of people being enslaved. But he also knew that half the country didn't share that view. And that's why he never joined the abolitionists. He didn't think you could do--in one fell swoop, end slavery in the United States. And he also thought the union had to stay together. So with those things in his mind, he approached the slavery issue in a compromising fashion. He told the South before the Civil War really got under way that he wouldn't touch slavery in the South. But he wanted them to understand, neither would he permit it to be introduced to any new state that came into the union. No slavery in the great public domain belonging to the American people—the federal domain. You can continue in the South, but you're not going to see slavery anywhere else in the country. Now, Lincoln probably believed that--not probably, did believe that if slavery could be contained in the South, it would gradually lose its effectiveness, that it would be--the need to constantly replenish the land and so on, and it might die out of its own accord. But the point I'm making is that he made every reasonable effort, as a good politician would, not to carry the day on everything that he thought, but to push it as far as he thought he could go. And unfortunately, that didn't work. The South still began to secede. As soon as Lincoln was elected, he made clear, no slavery in the territories. They wouldn't accept that restriction on it, so--but I think the combination of statesmanship, the vision of where he thought the country ought to go, and then the ability to say it's going take time to do this. By the way, I see some of that in Barack Obama, some capacity to compromise. Compromise is not a bad word if it's used constructively to get something done that otherwise you wouldn't get done. But I think you should have that vision that sees a better goal for the nation, as well as the capacity to move us there in steps, rather than to fail entirely. WILENTZ: Yeah. I mean, "compromise" is a--is not always a--it's sort of a dirty word. And so is "politician," for that matter. I mean, I've seen on a website, the question, "Lincoln: Idealist or Politician?" As if he couldn't be both. McGOVERN: He was both. WILENTZ: But the fact--This was even true in Lincoln's day. I have a quotation here. I just want to read it for comic relief, if nothing else. Towards the beginning of his long career, actually--he was a politician for a very long time. Back in 1837, he was in the state legislature in Illinois more than 20 years before he was elected President. He rose in the legislature to oppose a movement that was to object to a resolution calling for an investigation of the Illinois State Bank. And he said as follows. This is perfect Lincoln. "Mr. Chairman, this movement is exclusively the work of politicians, a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men." [Laughter] "I say this with greater freedom, because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal." [Laughter] Well, Senator, but Lincoln is also known--I mean, this is--on this day, of all days-- as the great emancipator. And you talked about his compromise. But still, he is the known--certainly to schoolchildren--as the man who freed the slaves. Yet, as you discuss in this book, while he always hated slavery, his anti-slavery politics did evolve over the years. Can you talk a little bit about that evolution? McGOVERN: Yes. He had no intention of an emancipation proclamation when the Civil War began. But about halfway through the war, he realized things were not going well. It was also brought to his attention that the--the negro slaves were, in effect, assisting the Southern side of the war effort. They were performing a lot of the labor that enabled other people who weren't slaves to sign up for service in the Confederate forces. He also thought that somehow, the very institution of slavery added real strength to the Southern cause. And he had felt before that that he didn't have the constitutional power to strike down slavery in the South, where people regarded the slaves as property. And he--at least early in the war--I'd say the first couple of years of the war--he told just about everybody who approached him on this subject that he didn't have the power to put an end to slavery as President. But he finally decided as commander in chief of the armed forces, he could do things that ordinarily might be beyond the President's authority and that to save the union, almost anything was worth doing. And so, it was on the basis of his assumed war powers that he ordered emancipation of the slaves--not in the North or any other part of the country, only in the South, in the 11 states of the Confederacy. So his--he did evolve in his views towards the war. The 13th Amendment finally put an end to slavery everywhere in the United States. WILENTZ: Well, you touched on the issue of war powers. And that's a--it's still an issue that we're thinking about, right? Um--And you do. I mean, you're very candid in the book. One of the reasons the book is so wonderful, actually, is that- -there are many admiring books about Lincoln, and there are very many debunking books about Lincoln. This is a candid book about Lincoln that is also admiring. It was one of the reasons it was such a pleasure to edit. But you do criticize Lincoln for a number of things--suspension of habeas corpus, on the closing down of presses. Why don't you share some of your criticisms of his presidency? McGOVERN: Well, I know why Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. I know why he shut down some of the newspapers. He was aware that all across the country were saboteurs, spies, people that were trying to disrupt the Northern war effort. Um--and I think that's why he thought he could lift some of the liberties that Americans had become accustomed to. My own view is that that was a mistake, to lift the writ of habeas corpus. That, after all, is a very precious part of the American liberty tree. It is the part that says if you're arrested some night, you're entitled to know why you're arrested. You're entitled to a judge, a justice of the peace, or somebody in the judicial world to hold a preliminary hearing and decide whether there is legitimate grounds for arresting you. I don't think that should be lifted in time of war. You can go ahead and arrest somebody that you expect is subversive or a danger to the State, but that person's entitled to know why they're arrested, and if it's a frivolous reason, you're free. You know, you can't be aware of what's been going on the last 8 years without realizing that there were some of our constitutional liberties that were lifted. The Geneva Accords were ignored on the treatment of prisoners. This country shouldn't practice torture against any human being. The first place, the testimony's no good if somebody's tortured. Under the right amount of torture, you're going to tell them anything that comes in your head. But it's not very--it's not very dependable. And so, with that mindset as I was writing this book, I suppose I was tough on Lincoln, but I don't think it was right for Abraham Lincoln to challenge important constitutional protections, even though it's in war. Maybe we need that protection more in wartime than we do in other times. There's a certain amount of hysteria that goes with every war, a certain amount of desperation and win at any cost, and those are the times when we need the Constitution in full force. I always remind audiences that when a man is sworn in, or a woman is sworn in to the United States Senate or to the Presidency, they hold up that right hand, they put the other one on the Bible, and they swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not just in peace. Uphold the Constitution of the United States. If that's wrong for George Bush Jr. to violate, it's wrong for Abraham Lincoln to violate. And so that's my one criticism of the greatest man that ever sat in the White House. WILENTZ: OK. One thing that he might have in common with other presidents, but-- [McGovern chuckles] WILENTZ: I just mentioned Lincoln's humor. Um--and, you know, he's famous for all of the stories that he told and the rest. But, you know, the paradoxical side and you bring this out in the book, as well, about Lincoln's temperament--is that he was also subject to really black moods. I mean, he called them "the hypos." And you have written movingly about depression and difficulties with depression in your own family, with your daughter Terry, and I was wondering how, as an author, that aspect of Lincoln's character—that side of Lincoln's life--touched you, as well, and how you handled that as an author. McGOVERN: Well, there's no doubt about the depression. Sometimes, Lincoln and his associates referred to it as melancholy. Now, real depression is not just a bad day. It's--you know, when I'm kind of down today, or something like that. Clinical depression is a desperate affliction. It can just lay you low. It can paralyze you in terms of your relations with other people. You lose your appetite. In some cases, you lose interest in people of the opposite sex. You're just down and out, and it's a miserable thing to happen to anybody. If you have a more complicated form of it--manic-depressive, where you have the highs and then the lows--Lincoln was not a manic-depressive. He was sad, sad, sad--despondent when he went into one of these spells. And there was no Lithium, there was no Paxil, there was no Prozac, no electric shock therapy--nothing like that, that we have available today. So he would go into these spells through most of his adult life. And they'd last varying lengths of time. He had one severe depression set in when Ann Rutledge, his fiancée, was--had an untimely death. He had the same thing happen to him when he and Mary Todd broke up and then eventually got back together. The war was on his back. There was a group of women that went to see him once during the Civil War. And while they were waiting to be ushered into the Oval Office, they heard Lincoln and a couple of men who were visiting with him laughing. And when they got in, the leader of the group said "Mr. President, we're honored to be received by you today, but we're disturbed that with so many of our young men dying out on the battlefields, both North and South, to hear you laughing at a time like this." And he said, "Well, ma'am, if I could not have an occasional laugh, my heart would break, and all the work of this office would cease." So he was a person that bore a lot of emotional difficulty, and the fact that he was able to continue without medical help, without any relief, I think, is one side of his great strength. There are very few human beings who could have taken what he was up against and still direct this country as intelligently as he did. So his humor was obviously an effort to show another side of his nature. He worked at those humorous stories. My favorite one was when an opponent accused him of being two-faced. And Lincoln said, "Does the gentleman really think that if God Almighty had given me two faces, I'd be wearing this ugly one that I have on tonight?" [Laughter] I like that kind of humor. WILENTZ: Very good. Well, I think we're at the time where we can take very, very brief questions and answers. There are microphones at either end of the-- the staircases there. So please do. You're welcome to come and ask questions of Senator McGovern. But I just ask you to please keep them very brief, because we don't have much time and keep them in the form of a question--as on "Jeopardy." McGOVERN: Am I going too long? WILENTZ: No, you're doing fine. I want to make sure they don't. Shall we start at that end? Ma'am? WOMAN: Thank you. Senator, I'd like to ask you to comment, if you would, on Lincoln's opposition to the Mexican-American War when he was in Congress. There seems to be very little attention given to that, as opposed to—rather naturally, I suppose--his role in the Civil War as President.