Remembering Tom Eagleton

My wife rightly accuses me of being a pack rat because I never throw anything away. My attic is full of a half century of reporters’ notebooks, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, correspondence and other journalist detritus, which is why I went there last week to retrieve my notes from one of the best stories I ever covered.

It was the week-long trip that Sen. Tom Eagleton took in 1972 after being named Sen. George McGovern’s vice presidential running mate at the Democratic National Convention in Miami on July 13. On July 24, he flew from Washington to Custer, S.D., and held a news conference with McGovern in the shadow of Mount Rushmore to announce that he had undergone electroshock therapy treatment for mental health problems three times in the 1960’s.

It was the death knell for any hopes that the Missouri Democrat, who died last week at the age of 77, had that he could help McGovern defeat President Nixon. His startling admission made it impossible for McGovern to keep him as his running mate, even though he said at the time he was still a thousand percent behind Eagleton.

There is a photograph that says it all. It’s in the March 5 issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporting Eagleton’s death that shows Eagleton and his wife leaving the press conference as a grim-faced McGovern stands by.

I flew to South Dakota from Washington with Eagleton, but that was only the beginning of the story. From there, we flew to Los Angeles, Honolulu, San Francisco, Jefferson City, Mo., and back to Washington, and at each stop, McGovern’s “thousand percent” support was eroding.

By the time we got back to Washington on July 31, McGovern had made it clear that Eagleton had to resign, and had named Sargent Shriver as his replacement (Ironically, McGovern had unsuccessfully offered the nomination to Shriver’s brother-in-law, Sen. Edward Kennedy, before picking Eagleton.)

But my notes show that at the July 24 press conference at Sylvan Lake Lodge in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Eagleton was about to commit political hari-kari.

“There have been some rumors circulating as to my health,” he said, adding, “I think that’s a legitimate question.” Then he went on to say, “On three occasions, I have voluntarily gone into treatment as the result of nervous exhaustion and fatigue … I must say I drove myself too hard. … I was hospitalized in Barnes Hospital in St. Louis for about four weeks.”

McGovern looked on, increasingly uncomfortably, has Eagleton explained he was hospitalized again in 1964 for four days at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a third time in September, 1966 for three weeks, also at the Mayo Clinic.

“In the past six years, I have experienced good, sound, solid health,” Eagleton declared. “I believe I’ve learned how to pace myself.”

McGovern, who had known none of Eagleton’s mental health history, said, “I’m fully satisfied that no member of the Senate is more sound in body, mind and spirit. I would stand by my choice if I’d known all of this.”

But the damage was done. No sooner than we’d departed for Los Angeles, the rumor mill kicked in at a fever pace, and by the time we arrived in Honolulu, McGovern’s thousand percent support had dwindled to about 500 percent, and Eagleton seemed resigned to his fate. “I now understand that I made a mistake,” he told a news conference in Honolulu.

And when we arrived in San Francisco, Eagleton denounced a report by columnist Jack Anderson that he had once been arrested for drunken driving, and declared, “I will stay in the race and I will remain as aggressively healthy as I am today.” He added, “I think the Eagleton issue in due course will become old hat and stale news.” But The New York Times‘ Johnny Apple accurately predicted to a group of us reporters at dinner at Ernie’s restaurant that Eagleton was toast.

We flew on to Jefferson City, Mo., where Eagleton’s supporters held a rally for him, but it was a futile effort. By the time we arrived back in Washington, McGovern had decided to replace Eagleton with Shriver.

Richard Nixon didn’t need the Eagleton fiasco to defeat McGovern, but it helped. McGovern never recovered from his ill-fated choice of a running mate.

Eagleton went on to serve a third term in the Senate, where he introduced the amendment that ended the Vietnam war, and introduced legislation to revise the War Powers Act to limit the president’s ability to delcare war.

After leaving the Senate and returning to St. Louis, he said he didn’t miss the Senate, except for not being able to participate in the debate on the “horrible, disastrous Iraq war that … will go down in American history as one of our greatest blunders.”

It was one of the most dramatic, and saddest, stories I ever covered.