George McGovern voted for Gerald Ford

This evening on Larry King Live, George McGovern sent the jaws of journalists Bob Woodward and Bob Shieffer agape when he said he voted for Gerald Ford rather than for Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election. In fact, it turns out that most of his family voted for Ford.

He further added that he suggested to President Ford that Richard Nixon be pardoned. He had approached Barry Goldwater, he said, to make a bi-partisan plea to President Ford for the pardon, but Goldwater did not think much of the idea.

Is that a kind of thinking and attitude that is forever gone?