Most people remember George McGovern as the Democratic candidate who lost the presidency to Richard Nixon in 1972 — in an election that became the focal point of Congressional investigations and Nixon's Watergate scandal.
But before and after that election, McGovern spearheaded legislation to fight hunger as a U.S. senator from South Dakota (1963-1981).
Ironically, his partner in much of that legislation was another defeated candidate for President, Bob Dole, a Republican, who lost to Bill Clinton in 1996. "I didn't vote for Dole when he ran, just as he didn't vote for me — but when it comes to feeding the hungry, Bob Dole is as good as there is. He's a very fine man — with a heart.
"There is a verse in the Bible that says, 'Be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.' Martin Luther King once preached that we should be tough-minded and tender-hearted. That's Bob Dole. He's tender-hearted, and I'd like to think I fit that category, too. I have a warm heart for the poor and the hungry, especially for children."
That's why McGovern hopes his new book, "The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time," will be widely read.
Speaking by phone from Jakarta, Indonesia, where he was learning more about the hungry, McGovern said he had already spent several days in China and he was headed to Vietnam. This year, he's already been to the former Soviet Union and Egypt. He expects to go to Ethiopia and Latin America later in the year.
It's all part of his current role as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations' Agencies on Food and Agriculture, headquartered in Rome. President Clinton appointed McGovern to the ambassadorship three years ago, and he was asked by President Bush to continue his service. At 78, McGovern is vigorous and just as articulate as he was as a U. S. senator. "I've never been more enthusiastic about a project in my life than the one I'm working on now. The big passion of my life is to persuade the United Nations to make a commitment to feed every schoolchild in the world every day — about 300 million kids who are not receiving any kind of school lunch or breakfast."
McGovern concedes that in some countries, "there are no roads, no storage facilities, no refrigeration. It's not the easiest thing to operate child-feeding programs in countries like those — but I hope to live to read in the newspaper some morning that we have reached the last hungry schoolchild in the world."
McGovern learned in China that its 10 Western provinces have some of the poorest people in the world. "Unfortunately, that's where most of the people of China live. The average farm family farms only one half-acre. Imagine trying to farm one half-acre of land! The people in my state would scoff at that."
McGovern knows that to accomplish his goal of ending world hunger in 30 years, he needs the cooperation of the president of the United States. Using his presidential authority, President Clinton provided $300 million worth of farm produce for the U.N. program. "Now," said McGovern, "we're trying to get the Congress to put this on a more permanent basis. A bill is pending in Congress that would increase the $300 million to $750 million next year, and upwards of a billion dollars the following year."
According to the ambassador, U.N. tradition would support a call to other countries of the world to raise $3 billion more.
McGovern cites President Bush's identification of himself as "a compassionate conservative" as a good omen. He thinks he will have Bush's support and plans to take Sen. Dole with him for a personal meeting with the president soon.
"Our contribution ought to be primarily in the form of farm surpluses. It would help our farmers, our truckers, our shippers — everybody in the food chain. Countries without food services could contribute cash."
McGovern is convinced of the benefits of scientific farming. "Let me tell you about golden rice. Forty percent of the people on this planet live almost entirely on white rice. They eat it morning, noon and night. But if you live primarily on white rice, you're probably going to go blind. Millions of people in the developing world are blind. Why? Because there is no Vitamin A or iron in white rice."
McGovern notes that "scientists in Switzerland and Germany have been working for 10 years to genetically alter white rice to produce golden rice, which has enough Vitamin A to prevent blindness. This is good news for environmentalists. It consumes less water, less pesticides and less fertilizer than white rice. When people say they are against genetically modified food, that is too sweeping a statement."
McGovern is very unhappy about the Third World attitude toward women and girls. "They're discouraged from going to school. . . . We visited schools in western China last week and found a first-grade class with 15 boys and 12 girls — but in the fifth grade in the same school, there are no girls. One hundred thirty million of the 300 million schoolkids in Asia, Africa and Latin America who are hungry are not in school. Once there is a school lunch program, mothers see that both boys and girls go to school — if for no other reason than it takes the pressure off their meager food budget."
McGovern, who served as President Kennedy's director of the U.S. food program in the '60s, met Pope John 23rd in Rome in 1961. "I'm a Protestant, but I can't recall a more moving experience with any religious leader. As he came out to meet me, his face was shining. He took both my hands, and he said, "Mr. McGovern, when you go to meet your maker, and He says to you, 'Did you feed the hungry?' you can say, 'Yes, I did.' And he squeezed my hand. I'll never forget that for as long as I live. From time to time, I ask myself what AM I doing to feed the hungry?"
When McGovern steps down from this position, he plans to write another book — this one about the U.S. presidential election of 1972. "Nobody in my opinion has yet written a book that really underscores the central issues of that campaign."
Had McGovern won that election instead of Nixon, he hopes that the country would have had "more faith and felt more integrity in the governing process. That doesn't mean I would have always been right. But I would have been faithful to my conscience and the interests of the nation."
Tom Knock, a professor of government at Southern Methodist university in Dallas, is currently writing a biography of McGovern. The author calls George McGovern the most significant distributor of food to the hungry in American history.
That's an accomplishment that will stand up to winning a presidential election any day.
E-MAIL: dennis@desnews.com