George Mcgovern

Being a losing presidential candidate is like what Mr. Dooley said about vice presidents: "It isn't a crime exactly. You can't be sint to jail f'r it, but it's kind iv a disgrace. It's like writin' anonymous letters. " So it has been, unfairly, for former Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, the Democratic presidential nominee of 1972 who went down to landslide defeat at the hands of, of all people, Richard Nixon in the very year of the infamous Watergate break-in. Mr. McGovern has just celebrated his 90th birthday, having gone on from that humiliating setback to a later-life career as U.S. ambassador to the UN Food and Agricultural Agencies and then as UN global ambassador on world hunger.

Princeton, N.J. -- Edward Witten, who may be the smartest man in the world, seems slightly puzzled by the question put to him: How, his interrogator wants to know, would he describe a typical day in the life of a theoretical physicist? The question is followed by a long silence, one that threatens to turn uncomfortable. It fills his large, corner office at the Institute for Advanced Study, a theoretical research center that is home to a small group of the world's finest thinkers.Which is what Dr. Witten is doing right now: thinking before he answers the question.

Mary Ann Vecchio was a troubled teen who had panhandled her way to the Kent State University campus from Opa-Locka, Fla. John Filo was the son of a steelworker, a senior ready to embark on a journalism career. J. Gregory Payne was a University of Illinois undergraduate with law school on his mind.On May 4, 1970, their lives entwined irrevocably when four students at Kent State were slain by the Ohio National Guard.Photographed by Mr. Filo as she cried in horror over Jeffrey Miller's hemorrhaging body, Mary Ann, 14, instantly became an icon symbolizing the cost of conviction in America.

This is the 52nd presidential election. In the 47th, held in 1972, Richard Nixon finally had a laugher. He had lost the 1960 election by a margin of 0.17 percent of the popular vote, won in 1968 by 0.3 percent. On his third try, he won by 23.16 percentage points, the most since Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide of 1936. He carried every state but one, something even FDR had not done.The hapless victim was South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, a leader in the anti-war movement. He won the Democratic nomination by getting delegate rules rewritten to disenfranchise traditional Democratic bosses, such as big-city mayors and organized labor.

THOSE who think the talking-heads political analysis television shows from Washington are more show biz than journalism were given a little more validation last weekend.Pat Buchanan's old show, "The Capital Gang," has a feature in which the panelists deliver their "outrage of the week." This is supposed to be a heartfelt editorial comment about some event in the political arena which has, of course, outraged the journalist delivering it.When it was his turn, "Gang" fixture Mark Shields stared in the camera and began expressing his outrage of the week.

Last Sunday, we lost former U.S. Sen. George McGovern ("Liberal icon fought Nixon, Vietnam War," Oct. 22). Although many will recall his disastrous 1972 loss to Richard Nixon and his subsequent leadership in getting us out of Vietnam, his truly lasting legacy will be his war on hunger and malnutrition. In 1977, following extensive public hearings, Senator McGovern's Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs published Dietary Goals for the United States, a precursor to today's Dietary Guidelines.

JOHN O. Requard Jr. waited 30 years to say it: He didn't leak Richard M. Nixon's income tax information to the press. And he thinks he knows who did. Sure, Requard says, he was there in late 1972 or early 1973 when another young Internal Revenue Service guy passed around microfilm prints showing Nixon paid a pittance in tax on a $200,000 salary. And yeah, he admits, he initially told IRS investigators he hadn't seen the prints - a misstatement that would haunt him. But he wasn't the one who dished the information to Jack White of The Providence Journal, blowing another hole in the Nixon presidency and allowing White to win the Pulitzer Prize, says Requard, who recently retired from the IRS. Although, now that he thinks about it, he kind of wishes he was. The illegal disclosure of Nixon's tax data in the fall of 1973 is obscured by more famous contemporary leaks such as that of the Pentagon Papers or those dispensed by Watergate's Deep Throat.

Mary Louise Smith, 82, a moderating force within the GOP who was the only woman to have chaired the Republican National Committee, died Friday in Des Moines, Iowa. She had lung cancer.Ms. Smith, known for her support of abortion rights, chaired the RNC from 1974 to 1977. In 1976, she became the first woman to organize and call to order the National Convention of a major American political party.Rolf Knie, 75, a master elephant trainer who led Switzerland's foremost circus family for half a century, died of heart failure Monday.

Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan has portrayed himself as the grown-up running to be Maryland's next governor. Yesterday, his departure from the Democratic primary underscored that notion. In a brief press conference, Mr. Duncan said he'd been diagnosed with depression. His wife, Barbara, and John, one of five sons, beside him, he said simply that he wants to spend more time tending to his health and to his family. Mr. Duncan did not go into much detail about his illness, noting only that he'd felt more than the usual wear and tear of a campaign and that depression ran in his family.

GEORGE MCGOVERN said Thursday that one reason he won't run for president is "the risk of ridicule."I've been ridiculing him for some months now. Hmmm. Maybe I'm onto something. Hey, Paul Tsongas, Jesse Jackson, Mario Cuomo, John D. Rockefeller IV, Tom Harkin, nyah, nyah, nyah, you stink, you're silly, you're ridiculous!Maybe that will get those liberal losers out of the way so that the only Democrats who have a chance to be elected president in the near future can go to the head of the party.