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He called for party unity, praising not only Humphrey and Muskie and Chisholm and Mills, Sanford and McCarthy, but also George Wallace—"his votes in the primaries showed clearly the depth of discontent in this country, and his courage in the face of pain and adversity is the mark of a man of boundless will."
It was Nixon, said McGovern, who would be "the unwitting unifier and the fundamental issue of this campaign." Then he aligned his themes for November: truth in Government, and above all an end to the war. At the same time, McGovern attempted to calm fears that his defense cuts would disarm the nation. "It is necessary," he said, "in an age of nuclear power and hostile forces, that we be militarily strong. America must never become a second-rate nation." He also promised to preserve the "shield of our strength" for "old allies in Europe and elsewhere, including the people of Israel." It was, among other things, a politic gesture to make, considering the widespread suspicion among Jewish voters that McGovern is "soft on Israel."
Home. But above all, McGovern went on, national security means money for domestic priorities—schools, health, the cities, the environment, the jobless, for whom the Government would be an employer of last resort. More jobs, he said, would depend primarily upon a reinvigorated private economy. Thus, while promising welfare and tax reform, he sought to reassure business.
His peroration sounded like the making of his campaign slogan, "Come home, America." Almost rhythmically, he chanted: "From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America. From a conflict in Indochina which maims our ideals as well as our soldiers, come home, America. From the waste of idle hands to the joy of useful labor, come home, America. From the prejudice of race and sex, come home, America." It was a melange of Martin Luther King ("We have a dream") and Robert Kennedy ("to seek a newer world"), with a paraph by Woody Guthrie ("This land is your land, this land is my land"). Above all, it was perhaps as pure an expression as George McGovern has ever given of his particular moralistic sense of the nation.
To TIME'S Hugh Sidey, a veteran watcher of Presidents and candidates, that moralistic sense is vital to understanding George McGovern and the kind of candidate he will be. Reported Sidey: "McGovern may not be a card-carrying Methodist or what could technically be called a Christian, but he believes devoutly in the prescription of the Bible. There shall be no war. Feed the hungry. Minister to the sick. Take from the rich and give to the poor, and most of all gain your own soul by giving it completely. In Miami Beach, it was like St. John the Baptist on Collins Avenue.
"It is a quality that made Bobby Kennedy once say that McGovern was the only decent man in the Senate. It could win him the presidency, and it could destroy McGovern if it ever got out of hand and became a negative force of self-righteous indignation. Sometimes when he talks there is a faint whiff of William Jennings Bryan about him, of standing on the Lord's side.
"With his call to arms, McGovern will mix some carefully calibrated outrage against Richard Nixon, the Prince