Sorrow for South Dakota

American politics should be mourning the loss of George S. McGovern. The former Senator from South Dakota died Sunday at age 90.

You can read retrospectives on McGovern pretty much anywhere. He represented the people of South Dakota diligently & for three terms in the US Senate, suffered one of the worst defeats in presidential electoral history & yet remained a public servant in the very best sense of that term.

(McGovern was the target of Nixon’s Dirty Tricks campaign of Watergate fame.)

The man was gracious, generous, conscientious, considerate. In fact, if ever there was a gentleman in US politics, it was McGovern. He, in fact, was a statesman.

From the time of his first Senate term, beginning in 1962, McGovern was at the forefront of US and global campaigns to wipe out hunger. He felt it was the duty of governments to help those of its citizens who were least able to help themselves.

What a concept!

I can’t think of anyone in either house of Congress who comes within the same Area Code of McGovern’s sense of honor & duty. American politics should be mourning that.

But they’re not.