Long after politics, George McGovern now fighting world hunger

Dozens of suburban high school teachers took on the role of pupils Friday, when former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern turned the tables and give them a lesson in living history.

McGovern visited the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago's annual education conference, held at the McDonald's campus in Oak Brook, to discuss his new book on Abraham Lincoln, teach political lessons and reveal what life holds after office.

"It's hard for me to understand people who say history is dull; I always think they must have had a bad history teacher," said McGovern, 87.

A Democrat who lost the 1972 presidential election to Richard Nixon, McGovern represented South Dakota in the Senate from 1963 to 1981. Before that, he served as a decorated bomber pilot in World War II and later earned a doctorate in American history and government at Northwestern University in Evanston.

He told the teachers his years in office taught him to respect a "holy trio" of professions he admires above all others: teachers, journalists and politicians.

"Don't let anybody convince you that all politics is rotten, that nobody in public life can be trusted," he said.

To prove his point, McGovern explained that he teamed up with an unlikely ally after stepping out of the political spotlight: another former U.S. senator and GOP presidential nominee, Bob Dole, with whom McGovern "differed bitterly" during the Vietnam War. Today, they work side by side to provide school lunch programs worldwide.

"This is my passion now," McGovern said. "I hope I live long enough with Sen. Dole that we will reach all of these kids. We now reach about 22 million. That's not enough, but it's a beginning."

He said there are about 100 million hungry children in the world whom they hope to reach through the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program.

McGovern's passion was sparked in 1961, when he was appointed by President Kennedy as the worldwide director of the Food for Peace program. In 2001, McGovern was appointed United Nations ambassador on world hunger, and he and Dole were named the 2008 World Food Prize Laureates for their work.

Even the book on Lincoln was pushed off a bit because of his humanitarian work, McGovern said. But ultimately he was honored for the opportunity to write about the president he admires most - and glad to remind teachers why Lincoln should inspire them.

"Lincoln became our greatest president and, to achieve that, he had to overcome a lot of handicaps," he said. "The biggest of those was a lack of formal education."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=331673">One on one with George McGovern <span class="date">[10/26/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>