When Shirley Chisholm ran for president, I was 12 years old. I was vaguely aware that she ran, though I knew nothing about her except her race and gender. I may have known she was from New York City, but I'm not sure. If I knew the word quixotic at the time (doubtful), I would have used it to describe her run.
I bring this up because I just watched the Netflix movie Shirley last night. It taught me a number of facts I never knew, but I excuse myself because I was pretty young.
Because of it, I've been trying to remember what I do recall about the run-up to the 1972 presidential election. It's a poor outline. Nixon was the incumbent, of course, so there's nothing interesting to report there; the action was on the Democratic side. I remember Edmund Muskie of Maine was the front-runner, but then something happened and he was confronted by the press while standing on the steps somewhere, and he cried. That knocked him out of the race.
George McGovern of South Dakota ended up with the nomination, and made Thomas Eagleton of Missouri his running mate. Eagleton was shamed out of running because it was revealed he had been treated for depression. He was replaced on the ticket by Sargent Shriver, who had started the Peace Corps, and was married to Eunice Kennedy.
That's about all I remember about the election in real time.
From the movie Shirley I learned that Hubert Humphrey was also in the race through the Democratic Convention, and Muskie was still in the race through the convention. (I thought he had dropped out.) Chisholm's campaign challenged the big three TV networks' debate rules under the Fairness Doctrine and won the right to be included on national television. That was news to me!
The movie reminded me of Black politicians I used to be more familiar with from my time living in Washington, D.C., like Ron Dellums and Walter Fauntroy, and gave a glimpse of the origin story of current California Rep. Barbara Lee.
At the time, I never knew where George McGovern's candidacy came from, and it sounds as though he was a classic dark horse, similar to Jimmy Carter four years later, though less successful. It also appears that he had a hard time getting anyone to run as vice president. His selection of Thomas Eagleton seems a bit odd to me: two Midwesterners, neither from particularly large population centers. One liberal and one more conservative, I guess, but other than that, not much balance.
The withdrawal of Eagleton's vice presidential candidacy was just as damaging to the campaign as I remembered. I had forgotten that Eagleton had been hospitalized several times, less than 10 years earlier, and had undergone electroconvulsive treatment. I'd also forgotten that what is considered most damaging was McGovern's lack of vetting of Eagleton and then waffling on whether to dump him.
Sargent Shriver, Eagleton's replacement on the ticket, was — like Eagleton — an anti-abortion Catholic. But he was from the East Coast, at least (better balance), and had the Kennedy connection. I don't know if he had broad name recognition, though. It seems unlikely.
Thinking about 1972 made me look up details of what happened to Muskie (that story was not in Shirley).
He didn't cry, that day in New Hampshire: it was snowing, and the supposed tears were melting snow. The subject of the angry interaction was dirty tricks instigated by Nixon operative Donald Segretti*, including a bogus letter "written" by Muskie that used an epithet for French Canadians and rumors spread about Muskie's wife's drinking habits and use of racist language. He was angry at the local newspaper in Manchester for publishing invective against him, essentially.
I found a video of much of the speech Muskie made, and it's pretty clear he never cried, and there was definitely a lot of snow.
Making it even more clear is this video from 2016, in which former United Press International reporter John Milne, who was standing just below Muskie's left toe that day, says Muskie never cried.
Milne says that reporters who were farther away reported they saw tears, while ones who were closer knew it was only snow. He says the key voice in reporting Muskie crying was the influential reporter David Broder from the Washington Post, and that Broder was one of the ones who was farther away. The Associated Press reporter was standing by Milne and also didn't see any tears, and reported the story the way UPI did. AP later changed its story to fit Broder's version without asking its own reporter. UPI, however, stuck with the story as their reporter saw it.
The interviewer on the 2016 video asks Milne, "Was this the first time there was a turning point in how primaries are covered? The obsession with gaffes?" Milne responds,
This is the first time in my memory that an event like this was allowed to undercut a lifetime of honorable public service.
1972... a year of "what if."
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* One of Segretti's claims to fame is being part of the group responsible for coining the term ratfucking. He, along with several other names that will sound familiar from the Nixon/Watergate days, were all associated with student government at the University of Southern California, and formed a group they called Trojans for Representative Government that "engaged in creative tricks and underhanded tactics to win student elections."
Essentially, we all suffer because a bunch of rich college brats from Southern California thought it was fun to prank their campus elections, and then real politicians started paying them to do it.
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