Former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate George S. McGovern delivered the UW Law School’s annual Kastenmeier Lecture on Monday, November 14, 2005, to a packed crowd in Memorial Union on the UW-Madison campus. His topic was “The Iraq War: Lessons from the Past.”
This year, in a departure from tradition, the Kastenmeier Lecture joined with the Union’s Distinguished Lecture Series to bring McGovern to campus.
McGovern’s talk was introduced by his former Congressional colleague Robert Kastenmeier, for whom the annual Law School lecture is named. Kastenmeier told the audience that McGovern was his “personal hero,” as one of the first congressmen to oppose the War in Vietnam.
McGovern represented his native South Dakota in both the U.S. House of Representatives (1956-1960) and for three terms in the U.S. Senate (1962-1980). He was the Democratic Party presidential nominee in 1972, campaigning on a liberal reform platform that called for an end to United States involvement in the Vietnam War.
As chairman of the Democratic Party's reform commission in 1972, McGovern attempted to make the party more responsive to youth, women, and minorities. McGovern lost the presidential race to incumbent Richard M. Nixon.
McGovern led into his discussion of the Iraq War by comparing it to the American experience in Vietnam, and called for a withdrawal of American troops. “It is no disgrace to say, or at least imply, that you have made a mistake,” he said. “All that you’re really saying is ‘I’m smarter today than I was yesterday,’ and that is what Mr. Bush and his team should recognize.”
The distinguished politician told the large number of students in his audience, “I think that many students ought to get into politics, but you need a good, solid moral underpinning to do so. Politics is one of the great activities in human experience, but it can be a very hazardous experience if it is divorced from old-fashioned morality and ethics. That is the lesson that President Nixon learned.”
An honors graduate of Dakota Wesleyan University, McGovern served as a bomber pilot during World War II (1939-1945), for which he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war, he earned a Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University and returned to Dakota Wesleyan University as a professor before his political career took shape.
Since 1998, McGovern has served as the U.S. Representative to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as Special Ambassador on Hunger.
The Kastenmeier Lecture is supported by the fund established to honor University of Wisconsin Law School graduate Robert W. Kastenmeier ‘52, who served with great distinction in the United States Congress from 1958-1990.
Submitted by on November 15, 2005
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