McGovern's First Crisis: The Eagleton Affair

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Guts. Amid all the talk of replacing Eagleton, he kept insisting that he would bow out if McGovern wanted him to but that McGovern was still behind him. At one time Eagleton promised to telephone his doctors and ask them if they could make a statement about his health (he never did). While he was in Honolulu, there came another blow—which, in the unlikely event Eagleton survives, could well turn out to be what saved his candidacy. Washington Columnist Jack Anderson asserted on his daily Mutual broadcast that he had "located photostats of half a dozen arrests" of Eagleton "for drunk and reckless driving." "A damnable lie," Eagleton retorted furiously, and Anderson did indeed turn out to be wrong. After the Anderson disclosures boomeranged, Eagleton grew visibly more self-confident: he was going to fight on whether McGovern wanted him or not. Once, asked if he would take his case to the nation on television, he replied: "I won't put my family on television." He added: "We have a dog, too, called Pumpkin." At a convention of the Retail Clerks International Association in Honolulu, where the McGovern-Eagleton ticket got a labor endorsement that was all the more welcome because of the crisis, Eagleton invoked Harry Truman, a predecessor as a U.S. Senator from Missouri and as a Democratic candidate for Vice President. "I hope I have some small measure of the guts he possessed," said Eagleton. The shouting delegates replied: "Give 'em hell, Tom!" It was an eloquent self-defense and a larruping attack on the Republican enemy. Eagleton: "The people have understanding and compassion in their hearts. I'm a stronger, better person than I was 72 hours ago. You have to come under a little adversity to find out who your friends are."

He had few remaining friends on McGovern's staff. McGovern confessed to one political ally that there were deep and bitter divisions among his advisers over the Eagleton matter. Nobody was enthusiastic about keeping Eagleton; the best that his defenders counseled was a wait-and-see approach. Press Secretary Dick Dougherty and South Dakota Lieutenant Governor Bill Dougherty both favored dumping Eagleton. Fred Dutton, author of Changing Sources of Power: American Politics in the 1970's and McGovern's most thoughtful political adviser, was adamantly anti-Eagleton. An almost Mafia-like atmosphere developed amid the rustic charms of McGovern's retreat, in strange contrast to the serene images of the candidate canoeing and playing with Atticus, his Labrador retriever.