This is something I've been thinking about for a few days.
Dean has been getting hit lately from both Republicans and Democrats alike with McGovern comparisons the past few months. The two parties have different reasons for this comparison, though. The GOP finds it convenient, playing off of McGovern's supposed hippie peacenik stances to make Dean seem weak. Dems simply use McGovern as an example of overwhelming defeat, as it seems more a product of internal party struggles than any kind of ideological gap.
The thing about McGovern, though, is that history has not been kind to either Richard Nixon or the Vietnam War. Yet all of the Dean-McGovern comparisons seem to be from the vantage point of 1972 - it's as if we don't have any kind of hindsight at all.
So I have a few questions. Just how bad is McGovern's image to the general public today? If folks associate Dean with McGovern in the general election, does that mean that they also, consciously or otherwise, associate Bush with Nixon and Iraq with Vietnam?
And finally, could it possibly help Dean's campaign to embrace the legacy of McGovern in the general election? Obviously, it wouldn't work for the primaries, since most Dems equate McGovern with defeat.
I am not suggesting that Dean align himself ideologically with McGovern - I don't think a platform based on leaving Iraq would play. But that doesn't mean Dean couldn't embrace McGovern comparisons by making the Bush-Nixon and Iraq-Vietnam comparisons himself. It seems to me that Bush would suffer from 1972 parallels much more than Dean would.