When George McGovern Made Mental Health A Campaign Issue

When Senator George McGovern, who died this past weekend, decided to run for President, he did so as a World War II hero who opposed the Vietnam War. 

A respected South Dakota senator, he helped galvanize anti-war sentiment among young people and ride it to the Democratic Party’s nomination in the summer of 1972.

His election prospects that year were as remote as Senator Goldwater’s had been just eight years earlier.  From opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum, there was much to admire about both of them.  But they were also both too removed from the center of the political spectrum to be electable in the moderate America of those times.

As a vocal McGovern supporter back in 1972, I have long wondered how he felt about the one thing I admired least about his political career – the moment when he let fear about mental illness alter the course of our public policy history.

There is an excellent and recent brief story about this on the National Public Radio website, summarizing a book written by Joshua Glasser entitled The Eighteen Day Running Mate.

Despite growing opposition to the war, Senator McGovern’s path to the Democratic Presidential nomination was far from easy.  By the time he won his nomination, he was a polarizing figure who was behind in the national polls. 

President Nixon’s campaign machinery was also in full swing at the time, doing its damage just after the Watergate break-in.  Had people known at the time all there was to know about the Nixon Administration, any viable Democrat probably could have beaten him.

But it was still a full year before the full nature of that Presidency would come to light in the Watergate hearings.  It was more than a year before Spiro Agnew would resign the Vice-Presidency over corruption, and two years before Nixon would resign the Presidency in disgrace.

So the focus was on McGovern, who was on the defensive politically.  “A” list politicians wanted to stay off of the McGovern ticket.  At the last minute, McGovern finally settled on Senator Thomas Eagleton – a respected Senator from Missouri.  When McGovern asked him if he had any skeletons in his closet, Eagleton answered “no” and accepted the nomination for vice-president.

Within days, there were rumors that Eagleton had a “complicated” medical history.  People didn’t talk much about “complicated” medical histories in those days, but the story bled out over the next two weeks. 

Several years earlier, on three occasions, Eagleton had been treated – ultimately successfully – for depression.

That was the sum total of Eagleton’s “complicated” medical history.

McGovern initially responded by supporting Eagleton – I remember when he declared that he was behind him “1,000 percent.”  But within days, fears began to grow in the media and among the public about whether Eagleton, with a history of mental illness, could be trusted with his “finger on the button.”  Bowing to this fear and prejudice, McGovern backed away from Eagleton’s candidacy, and Eagleton gave up the nomination just eighteen days after accepting it.

How might the course of our public policy history have changed if McGovern had kept Eagleton on the ticket?

Certainly, the discourse of the 1972 campaign would have been different.  Eagleton’s continued presence on the ticket might have stripped away at least some of our prejudices.  We all would have been educated about the nature of treatable mental illness.

And it would have shown an entire nation that mental illnesses were not to be feared, and did not need to prevent people from lives of amazing accomplishment.

It might have changed the course of actual public policy, too. 

If Senator Eagleton were more than just a quiet footnote to Presidential campaign history, would the Community Mental Health Centers Act still have been repealed back in 1981 and replaced with a block grant?

Would fewer people with serious mental illness today be in jail – a percentage that is three times greater than the prevalence in the general population and also three times greater than the prevalence among those incarcerated at the time of the 1972 campaign – and more have access to treatment?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I do know this.  Senator McGovern – whom I otherwise admired until his death – had just a moment on the stage when as a candidate for President he could have permanently altered the way we think about illness and disease.

And he squandered that opportunity.  

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