RIP, Senator

You were one of the good ones:

George S. McGovern, the three-term senator from South Dakota who carried the Democratic Party’s liberal banner in the Vietnam War era, launched a star-crossed bid for the presidency in 1972, and energized many of the leading Democrats of the past generation, died Sunday at a hospice in Sioux Falls, S.D. He was 90.

I think most people will remember him for his strong anti-war position when he was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, a position that caused a lot of turncoat Democrats to support Nixon. But I think his exemplary military service is the thing that really stands out, and it informs his subsequent anti-war feelings. Those who have seen the horrors of war first-hand are often the ones who loath it the most.