RIP - George McGovern

I think I voted for you way back when, but those memories are getting kind of vague...

A couple excerpts from article on George, first, from AP, as the ultra-liberal,  McGovern an unwavering, often unrequited, liberal

He wasn't good at political gamesmanship. He suffered his worst blunders when he strayed from straight talk in his doomed 1972 presidential campaign. It didn't fit the man and it shook the credibility he treasured.

McGovern was a partisan without the poison that increasingly infected American politics. In his career-long quest for programs to feed the hungry, in the U.S. and worldwide, he worked in partnership with Bob Dole, a former Republican leader of the Senate, where they'd both served.

And a second, from a more libertarian perspective by Nick Gillespie at Reason Magazine, demonstrating how even McGovern altered his ultra-liberal perspectives after they collided with reality in his personal life:

Having sunk most of his savings into the venture, it went belly up, he said, partly because of a bad economy but also due to “federal, state and local rules that were all passed with the objective of helping employees, protecting the environment, raising tax dollars for schools, protecting our customers from fire hazards, etc.”

Lamenting his lack of business experience while he was a legislator and presidential contender, McGovern concluded that “ ‘one-size-fits-all’ rules for business ignored the reality of the marketplace.”

As he explained, “setting thresholds for regulatory guidelines at artificial levels -- for example, 50 employees or more, $500,000 in sales -- takes no account of other realities, such as profit margins, labor intensive vs. capital intensive businesses, and local market economics.”