"When I joined Shriver in August," Kearns said, "there was a feeling on the plane that it was going to be a long fight to get the momentum back up. The momentum problem was complex, because in addition to breaking the campaign's money and momentum the Eagleton affair stopped the staff cold for two weeks."
Most important, McGovern looked like a loser for the first time, and this added to the troubles he was having in uniting the Democratic Party behind his candidacy, Kearns explained, "McGovern's best chance of winning back the bosses was to keep piling up the momentum.
Kearns feels that the Democrats would have had difficult time in any case, simply because Wallace had dropped out of the race. But once the foot-shuffling of late July had taken place, McGovern had lost the heart place, McGovern had lost the heart of his appeal. According to Kearns, "The only real chance the Democrats had of winning was to play on a deep-rooted anti-political sentiment. The sixties had produced a revulsion against politics, and if McGovern had stood against traditional politics, he might have found a close affiliation with people. But 'above politics' would have required courage to think outside the rules of the game."
What Was McGovern's Post-Eagleton Strategy?
THE WORST THING ABOUT the Eagleton affair was that it had been unforseen, and it introduced the unwelcome elements of chance and luck into the campaign.
A campaign is a created reality. Campaign advisers decide precisely what themes they want to convey, and then they feed them to the voters in precisely-measured spoonfuls. During the Eagleton flap, observed Doris Kearns, "the newspapers had been writing their own headlines." In a well-run campaign, the candidate writes the headlines.
But Eagleton had happened to George McGovern, and he had to find an image all over again. An in trying to find replacement for Eagleton. McGovern attempted to restore the aura of a truth crusade to his campaign. He made a little publicized offer of the vice presidency to Ralph Nader, the only uncorruptible man in America, and the only man who could have put the McGovern campaign back where it started--"above politics." But like most of McGovern's other top choices. Nader refused the offer.
In deciding finally on War on Poverty chief R. Sergeant Shriver as his running mate, McGovern had implicitly made a choice to link his campaign with the Democratic Party of the 1960s. Another important Shriver selling point was that he came in a package deal with his old friend. Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago. But although McGovern had decided to sound like a Democrat and organize a classic Democratic Party constituency, he still had to decide what sorts of themes he would emphaisize.
"The McGovern people had to use the evening news, because they didn't have any money," Kearns said. "When you go on TV, the only important decision is: What are your visuals going to be?" Kearns said that while she was travelling with Shriver in August, it was obvious that no final tact had been decided on the visuals strategy of the campaign. "You could tell no real decision had been made by the scheduling," Kearns said. "No political goal was determining where we were going."
KEARNS REMEMBERS THAT in late August and early September two competing visual strategies were being argued in high-level meetings chaired by McGovern adviser Ted Van Dyck. One strategy--favored by Kearns, Pat Caddell '72 and many of the younger campaign advisers--would develop class-conscious themes in the campaign. The class appeals would stress that the Democrats were the party of the ordinary man, the Republicans the party of the Nixon-Connolly rich. Class-conscious visuals would show McGovern visiting a neighborhood that had been block-busted, talking about how both blacks and whites get screwed by the big men on top. Or they would put him first in St. Louis talking about bread and butter issues with white workers then in East St. Louis talking the same line with blacks.
A second strategy, favored by Larry O'Brien and other party regulars, argued that Americans have never thought of themselves in class terms, and weren't about to start doing so in 1972, Americans think of themselves as middle-class, it was argued, and when they think of themselves as members of special groups the groups are racial, ethnic or religious. A class-conscious line, it was said, would only make people afraid. And fear worked to the benefit of Richard Nixon.
O'Brien and others counselled separate appeals to the various constituencies in the Democratic Party coalition. Democratic Coalition visuals would show McGovern visiting old people at a hospital in San Diego: speaking before a Jewish Veterans group in Houston; visiting a poverty project in a black neighborhood in Oakland.
The key point of agreement between the competing strategists was a belief that the campaign had to sound clear and simple themes. "In late August and early September," Kearns said, "people went back to Kennedy's speeches in 1960 and realized that he had been saying just one thing-Get America Moving Again. All the speeches and position papers had been expression of that single idea."
But rather than deciding on either strategy, the campaign advisers in effect chose to weld them together. There was a nominal decision to employ the class themes, and to speak out on economic issues; but the decision to stress Democratic unity and party loyalty had also been made. The dual commitments produced a confusing campaign, which to the end lacked a precise theme.
AS SUMMER GAVE WAY to fall the voters still did not know who George McGovern was. Indeed, the strategies had been argued separately from McGovern--as ideal types which could work for any Democratic party liberal in 1972. But not any Democrat was running. George McGovern was and the Nixon strategists had managed to make the personality the hottest issue in the campaign. The welded strategies did not develop McGovern's strengths. In this sense, the Democrats ran a disembodied campaign and a campaign which could not converge in the person of George McGovern made the work of the Committee to Re-Elect the President a good deal easier.
As the election approached a few brave Democrats came to feel that the problems with the campaign was McGovern himself. "About six weeks ago," recalled Martin Peretz. "I suggested to Frank Mankiewicz that we ought to face up to the fact that McGovern was unpopular. I thought we should set up a Committee called Americans Reluctantly for George McGovern. Lyndon Johnson and Eugene McCarthy would have made ideal Co-Chairmen.