I told him I had been watching the documentary film on his life, One Bright Shining Moment. I found it inspiring. McGovern thought it was a good film, but he felt it makes him look "too radical."
Perhaps it does, but it also reminded me of the summer of 1972, when, in spite of all, the future looked both bright and shining.
I told McGovern I have been reading his latest book, Abraham Lincoln, which reveals that the initial campaign speech Lincoln gives from the front porch of his store in Salem, Illinois, was the same speech he used throughout a losing campaign for the legislature.
The speech is included, word for word, in John Ford's film, Young Mr. Lincoln. I had always assumed it was the work of a script writer. McGovern's research discovered the speech belongs to Lincoln.
I have also been reading McGovern's superb defense of American liberalism, The Essential America, in which he describes his lifelong focus on bringing America's policies closer to those of our founding ideals; ending the hunger of our world's poor; and bringing peace to the troubled Middle Eastern region.
We talked on the phone about these three areas. McGovern is not slowing down. He still writes books and newspaper columns, and he still travels the country to give speeches, primarily on world hunger. He is also in demand on these trips for his political opinions.
After we concluded our telephone conversation, I went back to view the video of McGovern's 1972 convention acceptance speech, which ends with a ringing three-minute challenge for the convention delegates, and the nation, to "come home America. "
I stood on the crowded convention floor with the Illinois delegation, when I heard him give that speech on an early July, 1972 morning in Miami.
Read these closing lines from that speech, and let them break you out of darkness. We need to be alert and ready. There is work to be done.
"Together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning.
"From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America.
"From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.
"From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick; come home, America.
"Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream.
"Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward.
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