DEMOCRATS: The Long Journey to Disaster

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Even when he returned to the issues that deeply stirred him—the war, corruption, morality—he could not often arouse his audiences. Nothing could have been more personally painful to him than the findings by the TIME/Yankelovich Poll, among others, that the former "Tricky Dick" Nixon was now judged the more "open and trustworthy" by two-thirds of the sample and was seen as the "peace candidate" by 54%. The Kissinger announcement that a Viet Nam settlement is "at hand" merely reinforced Nixon's peace image. The Watergate incident and related activities, McGovern supporters felt, never had the popular impact that they deserved. Yet even if people did worry about these and other flaws in the Nixon Administration, McGovern never established himself as a believable alternative to Richard Nixon; he never seemed sufficiently "presidential."

Combination. There were many more difficulties—Nixon's 2-to-1 advantage in campaign funds, the labor split, Nixon's success in insulating himself in the White House. But there was something else, something that went beyond a litany of the Democrat's blunders and bad breaks. "A combination of circumstances may have conspired against McGovern's success," observes TIME Correspondent Dean Fischer, "but more significant are the shortcomings of the candidate himself. He failed to articulate a vision of the nation. He talked vaguely of his goals once peace is restored, but they sounded like campaign promises instead of a philosophic summons to national greatness." His personality thus became an additional reason for resisting the change he urged.

McGovern will now return to the Senate, at least until his term expires in 1974. And he has indicated that he would like to stay longer. "McGovern's rigidity," concludes Fischer, "his sense of moral conviction, was at once a strength and a weakness. It is a strength that will enable him to survive the overwhelming defeat; he won't be shattered because he believes that his cause is just. But it is a weakness because it causes him to ignore shadings and to consider problems in an inflexible, moralistic manner. The issues McGovern discussed during the campaign are central to the nation's future. He deserves credit for focusing on them. But he failed to persuade the public that he had the ability to guide the nation in the direction he pointed to."