I almost met George McGovern when I was the location sound engineer for a PBS (Emmy Award winning) documentary “Korean War Stories”. Add to that 8 Democratic National Conventions as a top staffer or consultant, 4 stints as a Democratic staffer on the Hill, 4 Democratic presidential campaigns, general and primaries, and more.Īll of that, ONLY because George McGovern’s outspoken opposition to the war particularly resonated with me, as an Air Force & Vietnam veteran myself. That unforeseen, unexpected, unplanned career in Democratic politics included traveling with the the ’76 Mondale campaign as the “radio reporter” sending audio news reports daily from the campaign plane. Did not happen-and that worked out just fine. The opportunity to work on a presidential campaign seemed like a once in a lifetime experience, so I took it, thinking I would resume school after the election. Three weeks later I was offered the job of assistant director. That got me an immediate invitation to volunteer at the Radio-TV office mainly to fix things. I was a final semester electrical engineering student at the University of Maryland, but most importantly, I could fix tape recorders. Then, a few weeks later-at the suggestion of McGovern Radio’s Joe White-I volunteered in the DNC Radio-TV office at the Watergate. Volunteering in the ’72 McGovern Campaign around June of ’72 (at “1972” K Street NW in DC), launched my unforeseen, life changing, and incredibly fulfilling career in Democratic politics. If I had, I certainly would have maximized that time. I wish I had known then, how soon we would lose George.
Unfortunately, Bassar, the son of Hafez, has been even more brutal than his father. George had a way of being persuasive, especially in areas of his passion such as human rights and rule-of-law. Behaving with brutality toward his political enemies was a sure-fire pathway to pariah status on the world-stage.
George described to me, as we sat in the what we now call “Tiger Cafe,” how he tried to convince Hafez al-Assad that to truly find the respect he desired on the world stage, he had to display to the world a genuine commitment to human rights and the rule of law.
Of course, George knew Hafez well having met with him on several occasions. The civil war in Syria was just heating up and we had a conversation about Hafez al-Assad, the father of the present Syrian president. McGovern, a former Methodist minister and seminary student, expressed real interest in getting to know me. In the fall of 2011, I was the new religion and philosophy professor and Sen.
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