Photo credit: Alfredo Flores
World Food Program USA
“I’ve always believed we live in the greatest country on earth. There wasn’t a day that I walked those broad avenues of Washington DC – in 40 years, not one – that I didn’t swell with pride.” George McGovern on the occasion of his 90th birthday. (shown above with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi)
Luminaries from the left and right of the establishment convened at the Newseum to celebrate including Tom Harkin, Jim McGovern, newlywed Barney Frank (shown below in earlier days with McGovern), Jack Quinn, Hunter Biden, USA Today founder Al Neuharth, Carl Leubsdorf, Dennis Kucinich, Vicki Kennedy, Mark Shriver and John Thune.
McGovern is best known, of course, for his presidential campaign of 1972 when he became the Democrat’s nominee.
A reporter looks back while on the campaign trail:
“I remember at the start (of the campaign) he was sort of all alone. Big pols were avoiding him as too liberal; Stalwarts in new Hampshire were Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine.
Then when he kept winning the primaries the platform looked like an overloaded barge as the Democrat heavy hitters got on board.
He stayed with his principles all these years.” said prolific author and veteran Washington Post political & Style reporter Myra MacPherson.
McGovern is the Goodwill Ambassador of World Food Program that partnered with the event.
“After flying combat missions as a pilot during the second world war, Dakota-born George McGovern became a professor of history and political sciences before his election to the U.S. Senate in 1963.
He served as a Senator until 1981, chairing several select committees and running for president in 1972. A lifelong leader in the battle against world hunger, McGovern was appointed the first director of the Food for Peace Programme by President John F. Kennedy in 1960, and was instrumental in the foundation of WFP in 1963.
From 1998-2001, he served as ambassador to the UN Agencies on Food and Agriculture in Rome.
2000 saw the introduction in the United States of joint legislation by McGovern and another former Senator, Bob Dole, which commits an annual amount from the US federal budget to provide nutritious meals to poor students around the world. In 2001, McGovern was named WFP’s first Goodwill Ambassador.” WFP
