gldstwmn
07-30-2005, 01:48 PM
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2005/07/30/news/local/news05.txt
Conservative politics may be ascendant in America, but the world needs liberal leadership to move ahead, former Sen. George McGovern told a packed lunch crowd in Missoula on Friday.
Missoula World Affairs Council president Mark Johnson introduced McGovern to about 160 people at the City Club, noting that the retired senator and 1972 Democratic nominee for president was still working on anti-hunger campaigns worldwide.
"He's constantly giving back to the community," Johnson said. "His comments today may comfort the afflicted, but he may also afflict the comfortable."
McGovern was the last City Club speaker of the summer. The nonpartisan community organization is taking a break before resuming regular meetings in September.
"I'm a Democrat and a liberal," McGovern said, adding, "I'm sure I wasn't just revealing a secret. And I'm the worst kind of liberal - a bleeding-heart liberal."
That said, he went on to claim there was no government program now embraced by both political parties that wasn't started on the liberal side of the aisle. He ticked off Medicare, rural electrification, environmental safeguards and civil rights among the accomplishments. He acknowledged that President Eisenhower, a Republican, started the interstate highway system, but noted that all the liberals voted for it.
The nation needs a strong conservative movement to balance the liberal force, he said. What it doesn't need, he said, is people claiming to be either neo-conservative or neo-liberal. Such people are masking their true intentions, particularly with regards to U.S. involvement in the Iraq war.
McGovern recalled a long list of conservative administration officials, starting with the first President Bush, who thought it unwise to invade Iraq even after the provocation of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1991.
"I don't say the people who put us into Iraq are wicked," McGovern said. "But they're not very perceptive. They're not very wise."
He also recounted the interview the current President Bush gave reporter Bob Woodward, in which the president said he'd not consulted his father but had prayed to God for guidance on the decision to invade Iraq.
"I'm not casting doubt on the value of prayer," McGovern said, "although I've never been sure I was getting through. But if God told President Bush to send American troops to Iraq, he sent an entirely different message to the pope (who publicly opposed the war)."
If liberals were running the country, McGovern had a to-do list for them. His first task was to get out of Iraq - now.
He discounted warnings that the country would collapse and bring others down with it upon U.S. withdrawal, noting that Vietnam did not descend into a bloodbath but instead stabilized after American troops left.
The military ought to have its budget reduced by 5 percent a year for the next 10 years, McGovern advised. As the strongest nation on Earth with no threatening contenders, the United States is spending far too much on defense, he said.
McGovern would extend Medicare to all Americans. But rather than draft a 1,500-page revision to the country's health care system, he proposed a one-sentence bit of legislation: Extend Medicare eligibility to children ages 0 to 6.
In two years, after the medical community had a chance to absorb the change, extend it again to age 10. Keep doing so every few years until the entire population is covered.
An audience member questioned how, if hospitals now lose money on every current Medicare patient, full coverage wouldn't be a financial disaster. McGovern replied that the military spends an equal amount of money on disposable equipment, and that every other industrialized nation in the world has found universal health care to be an advantage.
The World War II-era G.I. Bill of Rights college subsidy should be extended to all Americans as well, he said. While it cost a lot at the time to send nearly 14 million U.S. veterans to college after the war, the nation earned back its investment many times over in the higher incomes and productivity that the better-educated populace produced.
McGovern also called for the construction of a world-class railroad transportation system and the abandonment of the nation's go-it-alone international attitude. He said Montana's recent Democratic sweep of the governor's office and state Senate bode well for national Democrats, because it put more people with strong convictions in positions of leadership.
And he challenged the Bush administration's claim that Social Security is in crisis. Rather, McGovern said, it's the only government program still paying its own way and loaning money to others. And although the nation's population is tilting more and more into Social Security-qualifying age brackets, the 83-year-old McGovern said that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
"It may be," he said, "that the wealth of nations centers on the fact that people are living longer and growing wiser."
Conservative politics may be ascendant in America, but the world needs liberal leadership to move ahead, former Sen. George McGovern told a packed lunch crowd in Missoula on Friday.
Missoula World Affairs Council president Mark Johnson introduced McGovern to about 160 people at the City Club, noting that the retired senator and 1972 Democratic nominee for president was still working on anti-hunger campaigns worldwide.
"He's constantly giving back to the community," Johnson said. "His comments today may comfort the afflicted, but he may also afflict the comfortable."
McGovern was the last City Club speaker of the summer. The nonpartisan community organization is taking a break before resuming regular meetings in September.
"I'm a Democrat and a liberal," McGovern said, adding, "I'm sure I wasn't just revealing a secret. And I'm the worst kind of liberal - a bleeding-heart liberal."
That said, he went on to claim there was no government program now embraced by both political parties that wasn't started on the liberal side of the aisle. He ticked off Medicare, rural electrification, environmental safeguards and civil rights among the accomplishments. He acknowledged that President Eisenhower, a Republican, started the interstate highway system, but noted that all the liberals voted for it.
The nation needs a strong conservative movement to balance the liberal force, he said. What it doesn't need, he said, is people claiming to be either neo-conservative or neo-liberal. Such people are masking their true intentions, particularly with regards to U.S. involvement in the Iraq war.
McGovern recalled a long list of conservative administration officials, starting with the first President Bush, who thought it unwise to invade Iraq even after the provocation of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1991.
"I don't say the people who put us into Iraq are wicked," McGovern said. "But they're not very perceptive. They're not very wise."
He also recounted the interview the current President Bush gave reporter Bob Woodward, in which the president said he'd not consulted his father but had prayed to God for guidance on the decision to invade Iraq.
"I'm not casting doubt on the value of prayer," McGovern said, "although I've never been sure I was getting through. But if God told President Bush to send American troops to Iraq, he sent an entirely different message to the pope (who publicly opposed the war)."
If liberals were running the country, McGovern had a to-do list for them. His first task was to get out of Iraq - now.
He discounted warnings that the country would collapse and bring others down with it upon U.S. withdrawal, noting that Vietnam did not descend into a bloodbath but instead stabilized after American troops left.
The military ought to have its budget reduced by 5 percent a year for the next 10 years, McGovern advised. As the strongest nation on Earth with no threatening contenders, the United States is spending far too much on defense, he said.
McGovern would extend Medicare to all Americans. But rather than draft a 1,500-page revision to the country's health care system, he proposed a one-sentence bit of legislation: Extend Medicare eligibility to children ages 0 to 6.
In two years, after the medical community had a chance to absorb the change, extend it again to age 10. Keep doing so every few years until the entire population is covered.
An audience member questioned how, if hospitals now lose money on every current Medicare patient, full coverage wouldn't be a financial disaster. McGovern replied that the military spends an equal amount of money on disposable equipment, and that every other industrialized nation in the world has found universal health care to be an advantage.
The World War II-era G.I. Bill of Rights college subsidy should be extended to all Americans as well, he said. While it cost a lot at the time to send nearly 14 million U.S. veterans to college after the war, the nation earned back its investment many times over in the higher incomes and productivity that the better-educated populace produced.
McGovern also called for the construction of a world-class railroad transportation system and the abandonment of the nation's go-it-alone international attitude. He said Montana's recent Democratic sweep of the governor's office and state Senate bode well for national Democrats, because it put more people with strong convictions in positions of leadership.
And he challenged the Bush administration's claim that Social Security is in crisis. Rather, McGovern said, it's the only government program still paying its own way and loaning money to others. And although the nation's population is tilting more and more into Social Security-qualifying age brackets, the 83-year-old McGovern said that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
"It may be," he said, "that the wealth of nations centers on the fact that people are living longer and growing wiser."