I've just finished Nixonland, Rick Perlstein's history of the 1960s. Some things I learned: Richard Nixon was a genius, albeit an evil one; the 1960s never ended; Rick Perlstein is my new favourite political author.The book also reminded me of a sad episode in the history of psychiatry.
George McGovern ran against Nixon as the Democratic candidate for President in 1972. He was essentially the Obama of the 60s generation: unashamedly liberal and intellectual, he unseated the "established" candidate, Hubert Humphrey, to clinch the Democrat's nomination after a bitter primary campaign thanks to his idealistic young grass-roots.
McGovern had difficulty choosing his vice-presidential running mate, and eventually chose a little-known Senator from Missouri, Thomas Eagleton (left in the photo). It seemed a safe enough choice. Until Eagleton's first press conference.
Eagleton revealed that he'd been treated in a psychiatric hospital for "exhaustion" - everyone knew he meant clinical depression - three times, and that he had received electroconvulsive therapy twice. McGovern hadn't known this when he picked him.
From there it was all downhill. McGovern initially said he backed Eagleton "1000%". But to some, the idea of putting someone who'd had shock therapy a heartbeat away from the Presidency was unacceptable, and after two weeks of gossip, McGovern dropped him from the ticket.
Perlstein notes that this move wrecked McGovern's image as the idealistic and authentic alternative to politics-as-usual. Polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly trusted Nixon over McGovern, even as the facts about Watergate were emerging. Nixon won a landslide.
10 comments:
My general rule is that the winner of a US presidential election will be the one who comes across as less preachy and strident. If the undertone is that "you _have_ to vote for me or there's something wrong with you", it spells doom. (Possible exception Carter in an exceptional year).
By that standard, McGovern was hopeless. The finger-wagging moral superiority was bad enough. But the voice was so abrasive it could shatter glass and peel paint.
@Roger - McCain was more strident, O more preachy. No?
McCain projected an impression that there was some kind of obligation to vote for him because he had the Right Stuff. It wasn't heavy, but it was there.
More on topic, the political consultant and campaign manager Lee Atwater commented that nobody would vote for a potential president who had been "hooked up to jumper cables". On the short list for most tasteless remarks of all time, but it makes me grin -- guiltily. Atwater's trade was bringing out the worst in people in an engaging way.
I'm not sure what was so damaging about the ECT news. I don't remember if they made it clear that it was for depression. In the public mind it is (or was) for "craziness". Or perhaps people were thinking of a "nervous breakdown" with the impliction that he might have trouble with the stresses of the job.
An interesting fact from Wikipedia - one of the reasons why McGovern was reluctant to drop Eagleton was that his own daughter was depressed.
Despite my frequent protestations on this blog that depression isn't as common as drug companies would have us think, there's no doubt it's prevalent, even or maybe especially so amongst "high achievers".
Yes, they did make it clear that Thomas Eagleton received ECT for depression, but that didn't help. I heard that Eli Robins and/or Sam Guze at Washington University in St. Louis were involved in Eagleton's care.
In the UK, meanwhile, Winston Churchill reportedly received ECT while he was P.M. during WW II. And I have heard talk that E II received ECT when she developed a postpartum depression following the birth of Charles. The treatment was said to have been administered by Denis Leigh, a well known London psychiatrist who, incidentally, described Leigh's disease (syn. Leigh syndrome), a childhood mitochondrial disorder. In those days, the early 1950s, ECT was often done solo. The story goes that when Leigh arrived at the palace to do his thing he was shown in by the tradesmen's entrance.
Churchill and the Queen were well known to the public. All they knew about Eagleton was that he was a clean cut Senator with a history of severe of episodic psychiatric illness who didn't tell McGovern about it before he was selected. I came across a poll in which 77% said they had no trouble with the psychiatric history.
McGovern would have gone down in flames anyway. His political stands included a guaranteed income. And he represented the anti-war, druggy, sexually permissive movement that was perfect for Nixon to exploit. I remember an informal interview at the Convention with Gloria Steinum. It looked like she had taken a handful of Valium because she was speaking veeeeery slooowly and seemed to be making a major effort to achieve syntax. She got off on a recital of the excluded groups that were prevailing. The gaaaaaay commmuuuuunity, the blaaaaack commmuuuuuuunity ... I remember thinking that with each phrase 10 electoral votes vaporized. An epithet of the times was "space cadet".
Another unfortunate intersection of psychiatry and politics was the statement by a group of psychiatrists in the 1964 election that Goldwater was mentally unbalanced. The consensus was that this is unprofessional. The Republican slogan was "In your heart you know he's right." To which some of us appended "And in your guts you know he's nuts."
Roger Bigod said, referring to George McGovern,
"The finger-wagging moral superiority was bad enough. But the voice was so abrasive it could shatter glass and peel paint."
I agree with your sentiments, but would modify your description of McGovern's voice--"abrasive" yes, but I'd add it was abrasive because of its whiny, nasal characteristic. In fact, I once said to a group that McGovern "sounded gay" and everyone in the group reacted with "Yeah, that's it....he does." His voice has more than a trace of Liberace in it. Picture him in a fur coat talking to an audience.
Strange mixture--a Liberace-sounding bomber pilot.
"I came across a poll in which 77% said they had no trouble with the psychiatric history."
I'm 61. Don't believe that poll. No way in the world that electro-shock therpy or depression or anti-depressants or the like were topics of discussion in those days. The term "nervous breakdown" is what was applied to him and to most people that meant mentally unstable. Period.
I agree, more whiny than abrasive. But that's just as bad in a presidential candidate.
I don't remember the "gay sound", but his father was a minister and he could have been influenced by the delivery, which can sound unmasculine. Billy Graham was worse than Liberace, but no one suggested he was gay. It was just the way some preachers act.
My first time eligible to vote in a Presidential election was the McGovern-Nixon race. I had just gotten my first "real" job after graduating from college, and I certainly possessed more than the requisite mixture of self-righteousness, naivete, and smugness that go into concocting a liberal.
The day after the Democratic convention, I went downtown to an old union hall that often served as headquarters for democratic candidates in my town, a devoted union town since it was an industrial center. Nothing there. After two weeks and several phone calls, I finally found an organization loosely connected to my county's democratic committee. Phone calls to what was supposed to be the county's Democrat Committee had resulted in "this number has been disconnected."
I finally reasoned that as this was California, Nixon's home state, the Dems had no plans to spend money where they had no chance of winning. I was very disillusioned--all that dreamy idealism, all that self- assuredness (and smugness) and no place to put it to use.
As I aged, I grew very glad indeed that I never worked for him. Nothing he has ever said or done publicly since then has ever given me reason to think he would have been a good President. In fact, I think he's a self-righteous jerk. The last time I saw him interviewed, he seemed as pissed off as ever that Americans were not as impressed by him as he was impressed by himself.
Ahhh, youth.
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