Whatever Gave You The Courage?
Pour me a martini, would you, George?
On October 21, 2012, I celebrated my 44th birthday. It was a Sunday. That day came just three days after the Beaven v. DeSantis debate and sixteen days before Election Day. It was also the day George McGovern died.
Ten months before George McGovern fell on the library steps of Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, South Dakota. He fell where he met Eleanor. It was the place he left to fly B-24 bombers in World War II. Professor McGovern fell where he taught history. The man who went on to pass legislation for mobile libraries in support of rural Americans fell on the library steps. I will always find poetry in that.
On October 26, 2012, George McGovern was laid to rest.
George McGovern “gave courage to people who didn’t have the courage ...”
Senator George McGovern once looked his colleagues squarely in the eye and said, “I am sick to death of old men dreaming up new wars for young men to die in.” The hero with a Flying Cross. The man who flew thirty-five bombing missions on a plane they called the “Flying Coffin.” The man who didn’t lose a single crew member. The man who lived with night terrors for years after returning home stood firm in his convictions, and for it, right-wingers branded him a coward.
In George McGovern’s eulogy, then Vice President Joe Biden said his “instinct toward decency transformed the Democratic Party,” and he reminded his family to think of all the hundreds of thousands of people who are alive today because of George McGovern’s laser-like focus on hunger at home and abroad. He is commonly mocked for his 1972 defeat but, as it turns out, Richard Nixon’s legacy pales in comparison to George McGovern’s.
A few years after George passed, I phoned Matt McGovern, George’s grandson, and I wanted the family’s permission to write about my friendship with George. With his okay, I began resurrecting each lesson learned, each pearl of wisdom, and each drop of the martinis he poured.
Soon, I realized the business of publishing a book is way more complicated and - dare I say - insidious than I realized. If you aren’t already famous or already a published author, it’s all kinda overwhelming. So, as life kept ticking by, the book stayed just a pipe dream. Until one day in 2020, it all just burst forth. I wanted it done and published by 2022. The tenth anniversary of George McGovern’s passing seemed fitting to me. It could, after all, be the last first-hand account of George McGovern.
But, as I said, the business of publishing is insidious, and the more expert advice you seek, the more contradicting expert advice you get. “DeSantis is your hook” was about the only universal advice I received. So, I recalibrated, and “Martins with McGovern” became “My Year in the Middle” because I figured I was somewhere in the middle politically between the two. As I wrote, the words found themselves drifting to a common refrain. How could these two men, with substantially similar personal histories, see America so differently?
As I wrote, I came to two main conclusions: The hippies were right and I’m a hippie.
McGovern and DeSantis could not be further apart on their reading of the Constitution, their view on civil rights, or their governing philosophies. If we were talking about Christianity, I would say “Ron DeSantis is an Old Testament Christian and George McGovern is a New Testament Christian.” And I am not somewhere in the middle.
Meanwhile, my editors were pushing me to infuse more of my own story. “No one,” they told me “but you can write this story.” It would be the last first-hand account of George McGovern and the first first-hand account of Ron DeSantis. As it moved into a mash-up between biography and autobiography, I began to see the promise in that. That’s when “Uncontemplated” was born. I wanted to explore what it means to love a nation that doesn’t contemplate you in its founding document and how that should inform our voting behavior.
It’s done now. All 99,000 words. Which I am told is way too long. I completed it and then set about figuring out how to get it published. Which I am told is dumb. So, why hasn’t it been picked up? I don’t know. I haven’t connected with a literary agent who is willing to tackle politics. It would appear the insidious side of publishing is only outmatched by the insidious side of politics. Or, perhaps, I am a shit writer.
What I do know is that in the Fall of 2023, something told me to hold off. I could feel that the DeSantis campaign was spiraling. I told myself if he won Iowa or if Trump found his way to a prison cell, I’d start pushing hard for a publishing deal again.
As things got worse and worse for DeSantis, I was thinking, “Great, now what am I going to do.” My book could benefit from him staying in the game but my country would suffer. I guess that’s what they mean by “voting against your own self-interest.”
Well, Ron is gone. For now, anyway. And I am left eager to empty my head of expert advice and return to “Martinis with McGovern.”
Wish me luck.
