As if that werent enough

As if that werent enough, it soon became public that Eagleton had had treatment, including electric shock therapy, for depression. Unfortunately, back then there was still a great deal of ignorance about the nature and range of mental-health problems, as well as the fact that previous Presidents, including Lincoln and Wilson, had suffered from periodic depression. The idea that Senator Eagleton would be next in line to be President if McGovern were elected was unsettling to many people, even more so because Eagleton hadnt told McGovern about it. If McGovern had known and picked him anyway, perhaps we could have made real progress in the publics understanding of mental health, but the way it came out raised questions not only about McGoverns judgment but also about his competence as well. Our vaunted campaign operation hadnt even vetted Eagletons selection with Missouris Democratic governor, Warren Hearnes, who knew about the mental-health issue.
Within a week after the Miami convention, we were in even worse shape than when the Democrats had exited Chicago four years earlier, looking both too liberal and too inept. After the Eagleton story came out, McGovern first said he stood by his running mate 1,000 percent. A few days later, under withering, unrelenting pressure from his own supporters, he dropped him. Then it took until the second week of August to get a replacement. Sargent Shriver, President Kennedys brother-in-law, said yes after Ted Kennedy, Senator Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut, Governor Reubin Askew of Florida, Hubert Humphrey, and Senator Ed Muskie all declined to join the ticket. I was convinced that most Americans would vote for a peace candidate who was progressive but not too liberal, and before Miami I thought we could sell McGovern. Now we were back to square one. After the convention, I went to Washington to see Hillary, so exhausted I slept more than twenty-four hours straight.
A few days later, I packed up to go to Texas to help coordinate the general election campaign there. I knew it was going to be tough when I flew from Washington to Arkansas to pick up a car. I sat next to a young man from Jackson, Mississippi, who asked me what I was doing. When I told him, he almost shouted, Youre the only white person Ive ever met for McGovern! Later, when I was home watching John Dean testify about the misdeeds of the Nixon White House before Senator Sam Ervins Watergate Committee, the phone rang. It was the young man whom Id met on the airplane. He said, I just called so you could say, I told you so.　I never heard from him again, but I appreciated the call. It was amazing how far public opinion moved in just two years as Watergate unfolded.
In the summer of 1972, however, going to Texas was a fools errand, although it was a fascinating one. Starting with John Kennedy in 1960, Democratic presidential campaigns often assigned out-of-staters to oversee important state campaigns on the theory that they could bring competing factions together and make sure all decisions put the candidates interests, not parochial concerns, first. Whatever the theory, in practice, outsiders could inspire resentment on all sides, especially for a campaign as troubled as McGoverns, in an environment as fractured and contentious as Texas.