The democrats Begin Again

HIS blue eyes dimmed and his thinning hair awry, a tired George McGovern clearly showed the strain of his ordeal over finding a vice-presidential candidate. But after Sargent Shriver had been formally placed on the ticket at a miniconvention of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, McGovern was free to plunge eagerly into the formal debut of his presidential campaign. He deliberately chose New Hampshire, where five amazing months ago he won his first primary victory. In his two-day swing through three New England states, the crowd response was warm, and McGovern grew buoyant again in his quiet way.

This week, in Wisconsin, Ohio and Illinois, he planned to continue wooing the old Democratic chieftains, a process that had begun at the unprecedented committee meeting in the Capitol. Wisely controlled to minimize any new internal squabbles over procedures or credentials, the gathering was nevertheless a kind of public confessional as speakers talked frankly about the campaign's bad start, its lack of funds and party disunity. "Come home to your party where you belong," pleaded Hubert Humphrey to disaffected Democrats, adding with a touch of personal bitterness: "Richard Nixon is in the White House because too many Democrats didn't come home in 1968." Now some of them seemed to be returning. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley congratulated Shriver, and one of Daley's close associates, Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, made a nominating speech for the vice-presidential candidate.

The committee meeting was largely a gathering of old pros, contrasting with the more youthful convention in Miami Beach. It gave Tom Eagleton such an enthusiastic reception that he looked like a winner rather than a man bumped from the ticket because of his past mental-depression treatments. Yet there was an almost solid show of unity behind Shriver on the committee roll call. He got all of the 3,016 votes except Missouri's 73, which went sympathetically to Eagleton, and four in Oregon that went to former Senator Wayne Morse, who is seeking a comeback there this year. In introducing Shriver, McGovern's speech hit only one high point. He drew a standing ovation as he ridiculed charges that he is too radical. "What is right has always been called radical," he said, "by those with a stake in things that are wrong."

Shriver quickly made many people wonder why he had not been the first choice all along. He bounced into the hall, smiling, laughing, pumping hands. He introduced his 90-year-old mother, interrupted his speech (written with the help of two former Kennedy aides (Mike Novak and Adam Walinsky) to direct attention to "my brother-in-law. Ted Kennedy, sitting there with that pensive look. What is he thinking about?" Surprised, Kennedy looked uncomfortable. Said Shriver: "I am not embarrassed to be George McGovern's seventh choice for Vice President. We Democrats may be short of money; we're not short of talent. Pity Mr. Nixon --his first and only choice was Spiro Agnew." Contending that America was suffering from "a famine of the spirit," and that the Nixon Administration lacks "compassion," Shriver ended on an unusual note. He urged that "we harness for God the energies of love." To do so, he said, would mean that "for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

A few days later, Shriver ignited his first political fire by saying he had stayed on as Ambassador to France under Nixon only because he thought Nixon was going to pursue peace in Viet Nam the way Dwight Eisenhower had in Korea. When the Paris peace talks began in 1969, Shriver claimed, "Nixon had peace handed to him literally in his lap--but he blew it." If Nixon had then offered terms anywhere near as lenient as those he has recently offered, Shriver contends, they would have been readily accepted by the North Vietnamese. Instead, he pushed his Vietnamization policy, which accented a military solution that has not yet brought peace. In angry riposte, Secretary of State William Rogers termed Shriver's claim a "political fantasy" and declared that if Shriver saw such an opportunity to end the war he was "miraculously quiet about it" at the time.

The war was also on McGovern's mind and on the minds of many of his well-wishers as he campaigned last week. Getting back to New Hampshire lifted his spirits. He toured the J.F. McElwain Shoe Co. "My God," one worker observed, "they all shake hands in the primaries and then you never see them again. I think he is the first man who ever came back." McGovern repeatedly asked the shoemakers what they would want most of him if elected. "Get our boys back," said one. "Stop importing shoes," said another. "Take care of our own people instead of helping people abroad," said a third.

Marvelous. Mostly McGovern listened. Shown a front-page editorial in the Manchester Union Leader in which its archconservative publisher, William Loeb, said McGovern had "neither the mentality nor the stature to be even a minor legislator in a small state," McGovern noted that the picture was flattering and his name was spelled right. He blithely called it "marvelous free publicity." Asked about the announcement that former Secretary of the Treasury John Connally had formed a Democrats for Nixon organization, McGovern said snappishly: "Does it really surprise anybody that those Texas oil billionaires are for Nixon?" He plans to reveal soon his own committee of Republicans for McGovern. Some women even screamed as McGovern walked through headquarters of the Aetna Insurance Co. in Hartford, Conn., and the candidate looked elated.

On McGovern's visit to Providence, some 4,000 highly enthusiastic residents jammed Westminster Mall, especially cheering his attacks on the continuing war. In New York, McGovern held a press conference to announce that former Mayor Robert Wagner would be his state campaign chairman. Amid all the activity, he wrote Nixon that he would not personally take up the President's offer of foreign policy briefings, but designated as his stand-in Adviser Paul Warnke, who served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Johnson Administration.

Repeatedly last week McGovern expressed his pleasure that the campaign was returning to issues instead of focusing on personalities. Yet there is increasing evidence that the Nixon-McGovern personality differences might be McGovern's best asset (see TIME Citizens' Panel, page 14). Contends Richard Scammon, a top Washington expert on the electorate: "The best thing that George McGovern has going for him is that he ain't Richard Nixon. He had better stick with that." But there are mystifying crosscurrents moving at this stage of the campaign. Even as a Harris poll was showing that the Eagleton affair had sent McGovern to a miserable 34% rating behind Nixon's 57% in voter preference, a Gallup poll disclosed that 53% of Americans believe that the Democratic Party can handle the problems that most concern them better than the Republicans. The reverse was true when Humphrey began his campaign against Nixon in 1968; yet Humphrey very nearly won as Nixon's once commanding lead evaporated down the home stretch.

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