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* [Politics](/section/politics/)

# George McGovern

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by 

[Gary Hart](https://time.com/author/gary-hart/)

Nov 5, 2012 5:00 AM UTC

by 

[Gary Hart](https://time.com/author/gary-hart/)

Nov 5, 2012 5:00 AM UTC

Forty years later, it is still surprising that so many historians, journalists and concerned Americans want to talk about the 1972 presidential election. George McGovern lost. Even more to the point, America lost. But McGovern and those who supported him helped save the Democratic Party. Following the chaotic Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, he became chairman of the McGovern Commission, established by the Democratic National Committee to recommend reforms in party delegate-selection rules. The reforms were intended to open party participation–especially in nominating candidates–to women, minorities and young people. Because of those new rules, the party survived and has elected three Democratic Presidents since. He was passionate, in his laconic South Dakota manner, about ending an unwinnable war in Vietnam, reducing nuclear dangers and eliminating hunger at home and abroad. But his most important legacy will be his rescue of the Democratic Party.

We will never know the nature of a McGovern presidency. But someday the Democratic Party will find a way to honor him, as it should. I am honored to have known him and served with him.

Hart, a former U.S. Senator, ran McGovern’s 1972 campaign

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