George Meany - 1972 Presidential Election

1972 Presidential Election

An anti-communist who identified with the working class, Meany expressed contempt for the New Left, which from the start had criticized the labor movement for conservatism, racism, and anti-communism and which in the late 1960s and early 1970s had many supporters of Communist movements, such as the Viet Cong. He criticized the New Left and the New Politics of George McGovern for elitism. A cultural conservative, Meany ridiculed a proposal of same-sex marriage.

Meany opposed the anti-war candidacy of U. S. Senator George McGovern for the Presidency against incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972, despite McGovern's generally pro-labor voting record in Congress. He also declined to endorse Nixon. On Face the Nation in September 1972, Meany criticized McGovern's statements that the U.S. should respect other peoples' rights to choose communism, because there had never been a country that had voted for communism; he accused McGovern of being "an apologist for the Communist world". Following Nixon's landslide defeat of McGovern, Meany said that the American people had "overwhelmingly repudiated neo-isolationism" in foreign policy. Meany pointed out that the American voters split their votes by voting for Democrats in Congress. According to Meany, class resentment was a major reason that Nixon won 49 states against McGovern, despite the dislike of the Vietnam War by a majority of American voters.