The McGovern Mystery

Goodbye, Mr. Christian. [1]

Last week the talk of our progressive blogosphere, and with good reason, was the Wall Street Journal [2] editorial by 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern, the Pope of Principled Liberalism, arguing the right-wing line on the Employee Free Choice Act, liberals' most promising strategy in a generation to make joining a union easier and more fair.

It was creepy. It was embarrassing. It opened all crocodile tears:

As a congressman, senator and one-time Democratic nominee for the presidency, I've participated in my share of vigorous public debates over issues of great consequence. And the public has been free to accept or reject the decisions I made when they walked into a ballot booth, drew the curtain and cast their vote. I didn't always win, but I always respected the process.

Voting is an immense privilege.

That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans. As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.... Under EFCA, workers could lose the freedom to express their will in private, the right to make a decision without anyone peering over their shoulder, free from fear of reprisal.

It included—check it out!—this howling damn-with-faint-praise: "There's no question that unions have done much good for this country. Their tenacious efforts have benefited millions of workers and helped build a strong middle class. They gave workers a new voice and pushed for laws that protect individuals from unfair treatment. They have been a friend to the Democratic Party."

It argued:

To my friends supporting EFCA I say this: We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.

And it was all bullshit.

As Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Budget Priorities, explained to me in an email, "If anyone is really that hung up on the 'secret ballot' crap then they should be asked why they aren't upset by the fact that current law allows unions to be decertified by card check. The only change with the Employee Free Choice Act is whether card check recognition is at the discretion of the employer of the worker. In other words, it changes absolutely ZERO about whether the right of workers to organize is determined by secret ballot or not. The only thing it changes is who gets to decide the manner of certification, workers or employers."

So what is George McGovern up to? Not capitulation. Let us not doubt his bone-deep courage. This is the man, after all, during debate over his bill to end the Vietnam War, thundered—as his colleagues trembled with rage at the outrage against Senate decorum: "Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reek of blood. Every senator here is partly responsible for the human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land—young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces, or hopes."

And so, make no mistake. This man is nobody's fool. He says what he thinks and thinks what he says. Which means he knows exactly what he is doing.

And what is he doing? He is deploying pulling out the biggest gun he has: that very reputation for integrity and independence. "While it is never pleasant to stand against one's party or one' friends," he piously intones, "there are times when such actions are necessary—as with my early and lonely opposition to the Vietnam War." He is, in that same phrase, heaping imprecations on the integrity and independence of today's Democratic legislators—he even names some, liberals like Marcy Kaptur, George Miller, Pete Stark, and Barney Frank, and says he thinks their support is cravenly "based on a desire to give our friends among union leaders what they want." He's going all in—hard, with everything he has—against the labor movement's number one strategic objective and obsession for 2008 and 2009. He is almost coming out against the labor movement as such—despite his protestations to the contrary.

It is, indeed, an unmistakable pattern. Two years ago, in the Los Angeles Time [3], he was even more brazen. First came the same sort of sanctimonious overture:

I have never wavered in my support for policies that relieve poverty and improve the standard of living of American workers. As a lifelong liberal, I supported Medicare and Medicaid, civil rights, Social Security, and workplace safety requirements. Today, I strongly support universal healthcare.

And I have always been a supporter of the labor movement. Unions have a proud legacy of improving the lives of millions of workers over the last century.

Then he went on to argue that though it once made sense for unions to, well, negotiate for the best possible wages for their workers, now "we are seeing some unfortunate and unintended consequences" of that philosophy—American companies dropping like flies—and winds up with a defense of Wal-Mart:

The current frenzy over Wal-Mart is instructive. Its size is unprecedented. Yet for all its billions in profit, it still amounts to less than four cents on the dollar. Raise the cost of employing people, and the company will eliminate jobs. Its business model only works on low prices, which require low labor costs. Whether that is fair or not is a debate for another time. It is instructive, however, that consumers continue to enjoy these low prices and that thousands of applicants continue to apply for those jobs.

Maryland recently passed a law aimed at requiring Wal-Mart to spend more on health insurance. This is an extremely flawed path to healthcare reform. We need universal coverage, not piecemeal legislation designed to punish companies because they operate differently than their competitors.

Maybe his next editorial will be about how, though of course he once proudly supported workplace safety requirements and universal healthcare, nowadays, "our friends among union leaders" are just going gaga about this stuff, and putting companies out of business left and right, and simply have to be stopped, for the sake of the welfare of workers. And when that happens, as it likely will, George McGovern will be little different from Barry Goldwater, who always insisted he was fourssquare for workers' welfare, too.

Ian Welsh at Firedoglake [4] unearthed a secret to this strange betrayal of his progressive brothers and sisters: strange bedfellows. [4]

It's safe to say George McGovern is a patsy for anti-union lobbyist Rick Berman, the leader of a $30 million front group interfering in key Senate and House races this cycle.

McGovern sits on the board of FirstJobs, another pro-business Berman front group, alongside the likes of Bush Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, the editorial page director of the Washington Times, and the head of Sam's Club.

Actually, I find the most telling of McGovern's fellow board members [5] to be Al From. I wonder if From regales McGovern at board meetings with his conviction that McGovern turned the Democratic parter into a monstrous aggregation "defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home." [6] One of the FDL commenters asked, "How old is he now? Seriously...is age-related stuff a factor here?" That's not quite it. The fact is, George McGovern is one of those Democrats who, along with Al From, has never had much use for the AFL-CIO.

It's one of the subplots of NIXONLAND: the bright-eyed anti-war reform Demorats who formed the core of McGovern's movement became locked in a civil war with the old-line union leaders who were as uncomfortable with reform as they were comfortable with the Vietnam War. It got ugly. Long story short: AFL-CIO president George Meany, who chose to remain neutral in the 1972 presidential election but who obviously favored Richard Nixon, got the last word. At a Steelworkers convention in September, he explained that the "Democratic Party has been taken over by people named Jack who look like Jills and smell like Johns."

To understand is not to forgive. But I thought I might help explain where this insane betrayal might be coming from. And there's a Big Con lesson: our enemies are insidious, cunning, and resourceful. They took an old man seething with bitterness from thirty-six year old slights, and made of him an instrument of their will. They fight for keeps. We have to as well.