Chris Carlson of the Carlson Chronicles remembers reporting on the 1972 Democratic National Convention that nominated South Dakota Sen. George McGovern:

A truly decent man had been slandered and demonized beyond belief.  Especially puzzling to many was McGovern’s failure to reference or even talk about the fact that he was a legitimate and decorated war hero having piloted a B-24 through 35 dangerous missions over Europe during World War II. Like many veterans, he’d seen war up close and understood that too often old men full of false bravado send young men off to die in the misadventures created by their bluster. What I will most remember McGovern for though is the fine, poignant and sad book he wrote, entitled Terry, about he and Eleanor losing a beloved and talented daughter to alcoholism.  It was an honest, candid, unsparing account of their ultimately unsuccessful effort to save her from her eventual premature death. More here. (AP file photo of McGovern from January 2012)

Question: Did you vote in the 1972 presidential election?

George McGovern once joked that he had wanted to run for president in the worst way – and that he had done so. It was a campaign in 1972 dishonored by Watergate, a scandal that fully unfurled too late to knock Republican President Richard M. Nixon from his place as a commanding favorite for re-election. The South Dakota senator tried to make an issue out of the bungled attempt to wiretap the offices of the Democratic National Committee, calling Nixon the most corrupt president in history. But the Democrat could not escape the embarrassing missteps of his own campaign. The most torturous was the selection of Missouri Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton as the vice presidential nominee and, 18 days later, following the disclosure that Eagleton had undergone electroshock therapy for depression, the decision to drop him from the ticket despite having pledged to back him “1,000 percent”/Associated Press. More here. (AP file photo)

Question: Did history vindicate McGovern?

In this April 18, 2009, file photo former Sen. George McGovern delivers remarks at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. Ann McGovern, the former senator's daughter, said Wednesday, it's a blessing that she and other family members are able to surround her father as he declines in hospice care in South Dakota. (AP Photo/Bill Haber, File)

I’ve had the fortune – mostly good and a little bad at times – to have lived all my adult life in two states where Democrats have become endangered species – South Dakota and Idaho. The news this week that former South Dakota U.S. Senator George McGovern is in the last days of his 90 years is a reminder once again that even given our nasty, polarized, hyper-partisan politics one man can have an impact. The fact that McGovern, an unabashed liberal, made his impact for so many years in South Dakota, a state almost as conservative as Idaho, is remarkable. No less remarkable than the long runs of Idaho Democrats Frank Church and Cecil Andrus/Marc Johnson, The Johnson Report. More here.

Question: What will be McGovern's legacy?