The Washington Spectator

...Yet is this any reason for conservatives to be carried away...

...A mobile tank and armored force, also more than twice the size of forces in the south, is poised to drive down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and 1-95 with almost no notice...

...I admit the temptation is strong, particularly when you also hear him announce that he tended to agree with William Bennett's recent Harvard speech on the whining hypocrisy of the nation's elite universities...

...He recently compiled these thoughts after a trip to the DMZ: A parallel which might help to make current problems and perspectives of Korea somewhat more comprehensible in Washington would go somewhat as follows: The United States has been tragically divided, and two competing governments face each other across a neutral zone which stretches from the Chesapeake Bay at about the level of Glen Burnie for 150 miles across Maryland to the west through Gaithersburg...

...On October 31, the Hon...

...Nor does he take himself too seriously...

...What impresses here is not that these issues are necessarily conservative, but that he approaches them in a bipartisan spirit, no small trick for a Democrat in an age of reactionary liberalism...

...The rest of the world seems remote from the crisis and little willing to listen to problems faced by Washington...

...He's soft-spoken, straightforward, and at least as smart as Michael Kinsley and Leon Wieseltier combined...

...Oh, he's such a dear person," my little old lady told me, and then she ran off to put her hand in the hand of the man from South Dakota...

...Of how, when he left politics for good in 1981, he and his wife Eleanor drove around the country to seven national parks and were overcome by the natural beauty of the land...

...It insists that Washington should be relaxed and allow opposition and demonstrations to take place as a part of the normal democratic processes . . . George McGovern and the little old lady next to me grew up in the same small town of Mitchell, South Dakota...

...North of the neutral zone are forces which outgun the forces in the south more than two to one, and many of their effective artillery pieces are targeted directly on key installations in Washington—the Pentagon, the White House, the State Department...

...He was cheering, he said, for the Red Sox in the World Series, and then he admitted with a rueful smile—^'I have to say that, considering that I carried only Massachusetts...

...Of how the true measure of patriotism was in loving one's country enough to want to make it better...

...There's no denying the man's attractive personal qualities...

...As he told the lunch crowd, he remains a firm believer in an affirmative role for government ("nothing to be ashamed o f ) , in the "land and its renewable capacity," and in the fight for "civil rights'^—do not overlook his part in the Senate's attacks on the Rehnquist nomination...

...It is not difficult to imagine that in ten years Carter will return there some Sunday, and little old ladies from Plains will come to see him and drink in his greatness...

...McGovern began his sermon by testifying to the importance of politics in his Hfe, which is not an odd thing at all to say from a Methodist pulpit, especially this Methodist pulpit, which not ten minutes before held Foundry's regular pastor reading from the Methodist bishops' pronouncement on nuclear disarmament...

...For my part, I was there to see whether TNR's would-be President was in any way a closet conservative, as recently rumored in TAS...

...We've all heard about his courageous vote for contra aid...

...There were others, too, come to hear McGovern preach on the topic of "love of country...

...But he's not out to fool anyone...

...Ordinary Americans all, from across the wide expanse of America that was Euid is McGovern Country: Manhattan, Harvard Square, Cape Cod...

...In Washington, students at American University and at Georgetown University are threatening demonstrations which could spill over into the city and erupt in violence...

...But, she told me, they had never met, which is why she was at Foundry Methodist Church to hear and see the man in all his greatness, to drink in those stately gestures and maybe—just maybe—to touch his raiment...

...Richard L. Walker stepped down as our ambassador to the Republic of Korea...

...For those swamped by public life, there is a certain sanctuary in the pulpit, where ideas once scorned can be repeated softly and slowly, with rueful smiles and statesmanlike shrugs...

...The capital in the north, Wilmington, Delaware (Pyongyang), has concentrated on the accumulation of a formidable arsenal of offensive weapons, has positioned most of its military logistic support base underground close to the neutral zone, and proclaims that it is waiting for the opportune moment when protests are sufficiently serious to move south...

...We also know about his commitment to economic growth, as seen in his leading role in tax reform, a feat he's determined to top by finding solutions to the debt crisis in Latin America...

...It was an affecting performance, carried out with a certain grace and humor...

...Down the street no more than a block from Foundry Methodist is Washington's First Baptist Church where Jimmy Carter used to go for spiritual nourishment when he was President...

...GJN...

...McGovern went on to tell us how much he loved his country...

...Washington's allies seem perplexed as to why the leadership seems so jittery and anxious to clamp down on dissension...

...When Sidney Blumenthal asked a side-winding three-part question, he answered the first part and then asked Blumenthal to repeat the second...

...They are being encouraged by broadcasts from Baltimore (Kaesong in Korea...

...Marty Peretz, only half-jokingly, called it the best lunch ever at the liberal New Republic, even though both sides fought to a standstill, the hosts insisting that the guest should and will run for President in 1988, the guest denying any such intention and likelihood...

...And thanks to Norman Podhoretz in the November Commentary, we might finally be asking: What was Bill Bradley doing congratulating the Nation on its 120th anniversary last March...