McGovern seeks peace

GeorGe McGovern’s call for an end to the Vietnam War propelled him to the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 (and set him up for a landslide loss to President Nixon in the general election). Recently, McGovern asked the two rivals for the party’s nod this year to give peace a chance -- or at least take concrete steps toward presenting a unified front.

As part of the walk-up to Tuesday’s primary in his home state of South Dakota, McGovern proposed that Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign together. There would be one precondition, he told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper: “No attacks on each other. We’ve had enough of that.”

Clinton was willing to give it a go. The Obama camp was more equivocal; McGovern reported that as of early last week, it had not ruled out a joint appearance but warned that the candidate’s schedule was jam-packed. And, ultimately, nothing came of McGovern’s detente plan for Clinton and Obama.

They’re majoring in Obama

If the students who heard Obama’s commencement speech last weekend at Wesleyan University in Connecticut were typical of their cohorts nationwide, his listeners were an overwhelmingly friendly audience.

A recent poll of college students conducted for the Carmel-based Panetta Institute for Public Policy found that support for Obama far outstripped that for Clinton or John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee.

Among those identifying themselves as Democratic primary voters, Obama was backed by 66% and Clinton 20%. Among the 1,004 students surveyed, Obama led McCain, 59% to 27%, while Clinton had a much narrower advantage over McCain, 46% to 39%.

“I don’t think we’ve seen a generational difference like this since the Vietnam era,” said the institute’s director, Leon Panetta, a former California congressman and onetime White House chief of staff for President Clinton. “Clearly, students are excited by the Obama candidacy. The question now is how many of these young people will remain motivated to get out and vote.”

Most told the pollsters they would: Of the 79% who said they were registered to vote, 81% said they definitely would be casting a ballot. By comparison, a comparable spring 2004 survey found 73% of the students who said they were registered intended to vote in that year’s general election.

Here’s an eye-popping difference between then and now, though. In 2004, 22% of college students said they were paying a lot of attention to the evolving campaign between President Bush and Democrat John F. Kerry. The figure for this year’s election is 82%.

Politicians steer clear of Stormy

On any sane politician’s don’t-do list, being photographed with a porn star ranks right up there with crossing state lines for a rendezvous with a high-priced prostitute.

So with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s career-ending sexcapade fresh in everyone’s memory, it was no surprise that there wasn’t a member of Congress to be found when adult film performer Stormy Daniels appeared in Washington on Thursday.

Although she came to the nation’s capital to highlight the adult entertainment industry’s efforts to protect children from inappropriate online content (e.g., the stuff the industry produces), and lawmakers love to tout anything that helps keep kids safe, appearing with Daniels at the National Press Club was rated NC-17, as in: No Chance a politician would get within 17 miles of it.

Daniels was showing off two new public service announcements for the industry’s Restricted to Adults website label. Unveiled last year by the Assn. of Sites Advocating Child Protection -- a group largely funded by the adult entertainment industry -- the label identifies websites that are inappropriate for anyone younger than 18, allowing them to be blocked by filtering software.

“I do not want children viewing my site or adult-only content,” said Daniels, who for the occasion was dressed like a politician in a black business suit and French blue shirt.

Murdoch thinks he has a winner

The New York Times, in a prescient 2005 piece about the friendly attitude Rupert Murdoch seemed to have adopted toward Hillary Clinton -- an article that appeared before he surprised political observers by hosting a fundraiser for her 2006 Senate reelection campaign -- had this to say about the media mogul:

“Much has been made of Rupert Murdoch’s willingness to express a deeply conservative agenda through his worldwide newspaper holdings and most prominently Fox News, but his primary ideological allegiance is to winning.”

That characteristic was on display Wednesday night at a gathering in Carlsbad. There, according to a Hilary Rosen item on the Huffington Post, Murdoch had this to say about Obama (hardly an ideological soul mate): “He is a rock star. . . . I love what he is saying about education.”

Playing political prognosticator, Murdoch also made clear he’s anticipating an Obama administration. “I don’t think he will win Florida, but he will win in Ohio and the election,” he said.

And then there was this personal note: “I am anxious to meet him. . . . I want to see if he will walk the walk.”

We can only assume Sean Hannity has been left speechless.

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Excerpted from The Times’ political blog, Top of the Ticket, at www.latimes.com/ topoftheticket.