What Might Have Been

What Might Have Been

Odd enough on the day of Hunter Thompson's death, a long profile of the principlal subject of one of his greatest books:

McGovern is walking at this moment to his alma mater, Dakota Wesleyan University, directly across the street from where he and his wife, Eleanor, are living in his home town of Mitchell, S.D., population 14,500. Dakota Wesleyan, he believes, changed his life, transforming him from a shy, gawky kid to a self-assured, ambitious man. He strolls onto the small campus of about 700 students, a few of whom mutter hello to him on their way to classes. If he had become president, McGovern knows, it would be different. Students would crowd around him, and the Secret Service, talking into wrist radios, would be ready to pry off any huggers who wouldn't let go. There would be university officials to greet and maybe a political candidate hoping to squeeze into a photo op. "It would be hectic," McGovern says, not relishing the thought, "and it would be harder just to pick up a phone and walk over to somebody's office."

McGovern, who has been helping university officials with the fundraising for a library to be built in his and Eleanor's names on the Wesleyan grounds, wants to establish a speech and debate program here. "What I'd like to talk to you about, Bob," McGovern says, "is a possible forensics program here at the university -- a speech class, a well-guided debate team . . ."

On one of the occasions I met George McGovern, the person in front of me, with slightly embarrassed determination, presented McGovern a book to autograph - not one of McGovern's own books, but a well-read copy of Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail. McGovern smiled and said "I've signed hundreds of these."

And he would have been a GREAT President.

Politics