The Eighteen-Day Running Mate
McGovern, Eagleton, and a Campaign in Crisis
-
-
4.5 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $19.99
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
No skeletons were rattling in his closet, Thomas Eagleton assured George McGovern’s political director. But only eighteen days later—after a series of damaging public revelations and feverish behind-the-scenes maneuverings—McGovern rescinded his endorsement of his Democratic vice-presidential running mate, and Eagleton withdrew from the ticket. This fascinating book is the first to uncover the full story behind Eagleton's rise and precipitous fall as a national candidate.
Within days of Eagleton's nomination, a pair of anonymous phone calls brought to light his history of hospitalizations for ̶nervous exhaustion and depression” and past treatment with electroshock therapy. The revelation rattled the campaign and placed McGovern's organization under intense public and media scrutiny. Joshua Glasser investigates a campaign in disarray and explores the perspectives of the campaign’s key players, how decisions were made and who made them, how cultural attitudes toward mental illness informed the crisis, and how Eagleton's and McGovern's personal ambitions shaped the course of events.
Drawing on personal interviews with McGovern, campaign manager Gary Hart, political director Frank Mankiewicz, and dozens of other participants inside and outside the McGovern and Eagleton camps—as well as extensive unpublished campaign records—Glasser captures the political and human drama of Eagleton's brief candidacy. Glasser also offers sharp insights into the America of 1972—mired in war, anxious about the economy, ambivalent about civil rights.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Glasser's examination of the low point of George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign offers a gripping account of the political earthquake that ensued when Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton, the hastily picked and poorly vetted vice-presidential candidate, was forced to disclose a history of hospitalizations for depression and treatments that included electroshock therapy. This proved disastrous for the Democrats, after a bitterly contested convention in which South Dakota senator McGovern, whose reputation for basic decency but weakness in delegating and exercising authority was tested by the scramble to secure the nomination. McGovern's agonizingly indirect process of dropping Eagleton from the ticket is meticulously described by Glasser, a researcher for Bloomberg Television. Glasser maintains an even tone in his well-researched recounting of the nomination process, which included a failed bid to bring scandal-plagued Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy onto the ticket, but points out "wishful thinking and arrogance alone cannot explain the McGovern campaign's lack of planning for the vice-presidential choice." As reporters hustled to ferret out the details of Eagleton's hospitalizations and (generally effective) electroshock therapy, American voters confronted the issue of mental illness. While Eagleton's reputation became one of strength and resilience, there was considerable support for the notion that "the Eagleton affair indelibly tainted perceptions of McGovern," resulting in Richard Nixon's landslide win.
