George McGovern died this weekend.
I’ll leave the assessments to others, and we posted this obituary.
A weird thing I’ve noted through the years is how many Jewish stories circulate around the campaign for the presidency of a Methodist preacher’s son from the plains. I was 12 in 1972, and so many of my contemporaries remember the campaign — as I do — as the one in which we first fully awoke to a political consciousness. And so many of my Jewish contemporaries — again, myself included — remember the passions that their parents and elder siblings invested in that election.
Recalling my own interactions, and those of my friends, defines "anecdotal," it’s true — but in so many Jewish homes, McGovern v. Nixon led to heated and extended dinner table arguments, not just about the Middle East, but about the role of women and other minorities in the polity, the nature of leadership, the ethics of governance.
I’ll let others tell their own stories.
But we can’t let pass this lovely New Yorker piece, which references its own 1972 item on the then-candidate:
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After the Garment District rally, McGovern met with community leaders at a nearby Dubrow’s cafeteria. He ordered a chopped-liver sandwich and sat at a table surrounded by onlookers, including a Talk reporter from The New Yorker. “As the candidate was finishing his sandwich,” the reporter wrote, “someone called out, ‘Hey, McGovern, you’re a mensch!’ ”
The candidate turned to one of his table companions. “Abrams,” he said, “what is a mensch?”
“It’s good, Senator,” Mr. Abrams said. “It means you’re a substantial human being.”
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