Forget the party label: Dole salutes McGovern

Former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole pays tribute to his friend, Democrat George McGovern, that's as much a lesson about bipartisanship as it is a moving salute to a politician who should be known for more than losing the presidency.

McGovern, a former U.S. senator and the 1972 Democratic nominee for president, died Sunday at the age of 90.

In an op-ed column Monday for The Washington Post, Dole recounts how he and McGovern worked together for years after they left the U.S. Senate to help reduce hunger in the world. At home, as legislators, Dole and McGovern worked to overhaul the laws dealing with food stamps and lunches for school kids. Around the globe, a program they proposed has provided 22 million meals to hungry children in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Theirs was a bond that transcended the party labels of Democrat and Republican, Dole said.

"No matter how many times we replayed it, he never did defeat President Nixon, and I never did defeat Bill Clinton," Dole, the 1996 GOP presidential nominee, wrote about McGovern. "We agreed, however, that the greatest of life's blessings cannot be counted in electoral votes."