Word: mcgoverns
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Unfortunately for Senator McGovern, the voters first saw him as a national figure during the Eagleton debacle, and millions of them decided that they had seen enough. It was then, but not before, that the President's reelection was secure, at least in the absence of stunning revelations about the administration--for example that Vice-President Agnew was on the take or that the White House was deeply involved in Watergate. Earlier, however, Nixon's managers confronted the prospect of a close contest where their own candidate would have to campaign, and they knew all too well that when...
...Senator McGovern later faltered when he appeared in the Eagleton affair to betray the honesty he had earlier exemplified. But that honesty, not the plots of CREEP, won him the nomination. The Nixon campaign's dirty tricks did not determine the Democratic outcome. They did make it harder to unify the Democratic Party. And the cover-up of the pervasive corruption of the administration did deprive the American people of the knowledge that, according to recent polls, would have led them to reassess the relative merit of the candidates and reverse their verdict despite their misgivings about Senator McGovern...
They cannot prove any of that--for if they could, in their desperation they would already have done so. Indeed, despite a massive investigative effort, they have not been able to sustain a single charge against the McGovern campaign, and only minor charges against other candidates last year. But it should not surprise us that the same Nixon who advanced his career by smearing each of his opponents now seeks to save his presidency by smearing the entire political system...
...visit to Harvard two weeks ago, Senator McGovern was asked why he was no longer saying day after day that this was the most corrupt administration in American history. He replied: "I don't need to say it anymore; everyone knows it." The Congress does know it; the American people know it. Now the question is whether they will do something about it--or accept a Watergate mythology which expects nothing more of government than the unworthy and shameful record of the Nixon years...
...fairness, I should close by confessing a personal bias. I worked for two Democratic presidential candidates last year. Both of them are honest and decent men. One of them, George McGovern, honors public service by his part in it beyond any other person I know. He made mistakes in the campaign, but he did not commit crimes. And he did raise before the country a higher standard of respect for truth, for each other, and for "the decent opinions of mankind." More than a year later, I believe the country must still rally to that standard--not to elect Senator...