MCGOVERN: EX-SENATOR SAYS THIS ELECTION MAY SIGNAL CYCLE OF LIBERALISM

No one has been more identified with the cause of American liberalism during the past 30 years than former U.S. Sen. George McGovern. Who better, then, to predict that the coming election may signal the ascendancy of liberal ideology in the 1990s and beyond.

Looking much as he did when he was the Democratic nominee for the presidency 20 years ago, McGovern spoke to an audience of about 250 people Monday night at Academic Auditorium at Southeast Missouri State University.

A foreign policy scholar and three-term member of the U.S. Senate and two-term member of the House, McGovern led the Democratic ticket into a meat grinder in 1972, losing all but one state to incumbent President Richard M. Nixon.

He joked about that with the audience, but unsmilingly rebuked conservatives at last summer's Republican National Convention who equated liberalism with evil.

"It would seem Communism has been replaced by liberalism as the new scare word," he said.

All successful American presidents have embraced some elements of liberalism, McGovern told the audience. "The creative tension between liberalism and conservatism has been the genius of the American political system."

The civil rights and environmental movements, equality for women, Medicare and student loans are all examples of liberal innovations that have been embraced by politicians of most every stripe, he said, but most were pushed through by liberals over the objections of conservatives.

McGovern does value conservatism. "I think conservatives should challenge the intrusion of government into our lives," he said. "I think Republicans should be conservative and Democrats should be liberals."

The evening was not without its partisan swipes. Complaining that Republicans like to blame liberals for ruining the country's economy, McGovern pointed out that it took the nation 200 years to amass a debt of $1 trillion, but took the last two Republican administrations only 12 years to quadruple that debt.

He did allow that the Democratic-controlled Congress was also culpable for the debt and the S&L bailout. He called it "a bipartisan failure."

McGovern drew a big laugh when he said the country's economic troubles were not caused by the "convenient targets" of women, African Americans, "welfare queens" or long-haired hippies.

"Not even by Fidel Castro," he said. "It was done by white, middle-aged, middle-class males."

McGovern was a World War II hero whose youth-fueled candidacy in 1972 was based upon his opposition to the Vietnam War. His place in American history is as the leader of that opposition, McGovern said.

"I think I had a lot to do with forcing an end to the war in Vietnam," he told a press conference prior to his talk.

He reasons that the war would have gone on much longer and many more deaths and casualties would have resulted if the Democrats had nominated a hawk instead of a dove in 1972.

McGovern is unafraid to criticize his own party. The Democrats, he told the press conference, "took a walk on a lot of the hard issues" during the 1980s.

As an example, he cited the tax system, which he said has unfairly burdened middle-income families.

He also was critical of the Democrats' failure to slash the military budget after the end of the Cold War.

He said the success of Ross Perot's third-party candidacy is proof that "million of Americans out there are not happy with either of the American parties."

Bill Clinton and Al Gore will win, he said, because for the first time since 1964 Republicans are supporting the Democratic nominee instead of the other way around.

"The Reagan Democrats are moving in droves back into the Clinton campaign," he said.

He views the election more as a referendum on George Bush's presidency than a contest between Bush and Clinton.

But McGovern subscribes to Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger's theory that the country swings between liberalism and conservatism every 20 or 25 years to maintain a balance.

He believes the pendulum is starting to move the other way, and that the 1990s and the early 21st century will be viewed as a period of liberal idealism.

And he told the press conference he'd "probably take a look at it" if a job were offered him in a Clinton administration.