George McGovern, 1972
Energized by pressing issues of the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, and the Economy voters stayed home in droves. The '72 election had the lowest voter turnout in 20 years. Only 55% of the voters turned up, but those 55% went solidly for Richard Nixon, thanks largely the efforts of a committed group of idealists called the
Committee to
Re-
Elect the
President or
CREEP.
1 The folks at
CREEP had a number of cool ideas, possibly the coolest of all came after the attempted assassination of former presidential loser, George Wallace; Nixon said if they could get to the scene before the FBI and scatter some Democratic campaign literature, it would look like the liberals were behind the attempted murder of America's most beloved segregationist. This plan never panned out, but enough ideas came to fruition that the Democrats were pretty much sabotaged coming and going. To wit, breaking into a psychiatrist's office uncovered the juicy tid-bit that the vice-presidential candidate, Eagleton, had received electroshock therapy for depression. Americans were rightly outraged at Eagleton's lack of gumption, if you're depressed, by golly, then just cheer up!
2 Eagleton was dumped and replaced with Sargent Shriver, whom many Americans thought was an album by the Beatles and others a famous canine movie hero similar to Rin-Tin-Tin. The highpoint of
CREEP's antics was a bungled break-in of Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. (The burglars found nothing of use, by the way.) All of this came to light during the Watergate Hearings, during which, a crucial piece of evidence were tape-recordings that Nixon himself had authorized. This really calls into question whether Nixon or Eagleton was more in need of psychiatric counseling. Being a criminal may not neccessitate a genius IQ, but at least it calls for a minimum amount of non-dumb-ass-ness. By God, if you're going to subvert the Constitution, then for heaven's sake, don't freaking tape-record your conversations. Not since presidential loser James Blaine was brought low by an incriminating letter ending with the instructions "burn this letter," has any political felon shown such wild disregard for common sense.
All of that came out later; in the meantime, it was a landslide with McGovern under it. McGovern didn't even win his own state of South Dakota.
Result
Richard Nixon: 520
George McGovern: 17
1. Nixon's campaign staff had many abilities, but coming up with good acronyms wasn't one of them.
2. It was put about that Eagleton told an interviewer that McGovern was in favor of "amnesty, abortion, and acid." This is untrue. Eagleton distinctly said "pot" not "acid."
