Shriver Unchained

If the rest of George McGovern's campaign had gotten off to a halting start, Vice Presidential Candidate Sargent Shriver was already bringing an early New Frontier elan to the race. Some of his bright-eyed lieutenants recruited from the old Peace Corps ranks even seemed to welcome Richard Nixon's lead in the polls. Said one breathlessly: "It's so much more of a challenge this way, don't you think?" TIME Correspondent Timothy Tyler spent four days following the Shriver campaign and offered these impressions: At McGovern-Shriver headquarters in Washington, one of Sargent Shriver's aides was saying on the phone, "He's made a series of errors, goofs, blunders, call them what you will, but we've talked to him, and he's politically not so extraverted now. I hope we haven't quieted him down too much, but that's probably the most unnecessary thing I've ever said." Indeed, Shriver's ebullient optimism is one of the more promising commodities of the McGovern campaign. "It's terrific," Shriver kept saying, "I'm learning a graydeal [a favorite word]. Here, look at my issues book [thick loose-leaf binder]; it's as good as any master's course." In a swing that spotted the nation from Portland, Me., and Charleston, W. Va., to Grand Rapids and the West Coast, Shriver's routine never varied: he would come down the ramp of his chartered 727 wearing facial expression No. 1, a closemouthed, eye-twinkly look of expectation. Then, as he greeted the local Democratic leaders, he would go to expression No. 2, the Shriver grin--jutting out the lower jaw and squinting his left eye, for a conspiratorial Commander Whitehead effect. Sometimes he would shake the same hand two, three times, and once the shakee complained, "You already shook my hand back there," but Shriver didn't mind.

His speeches followed the McGovern line, told of his "shock" at the Watergate affair, blamed Nixon for the rise in welfare and unemployment rolls, promised jobs for all citizens. He had a little trouble laying down McGovern's tax-the-rich line and in the next breath explaining his own wealth. In Boston, Shriver was asked if he might surrender some of his own inheritance in keeping with the McGovern proposal to increase inheritance taxes. "I didn't inherit a nickel. . .I'm just as bad off as you are; maybe I'm worse off," deadpanned Shriver. "Nobody is going to take anything away from me, because I don't have anything."*

Moving through the crowds, he was at his best. At the Westfield, Mass., airport, Bill Kelleher, 65, shook his hand and said afterward, "I love him. I was gonna vote for Nixon until he got on the ticket. I just love the guy, I dunno why, I just do." And in an East Boston public health center, Mrs. Doris Blakey shook Shriver's hand and said, "I love him, oh yes I do, my haht's goin' boom boom boom."

"Terrific," Shriver kept saying, and at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, his press secretary groaned: "I hope the Secret Service can keep him off the rides." They did, but they could not keep him from milking a cow or, in Springfield, Mass., from losing a pool game to an old woman while the senior citizens waited to hear him speak.

Heaven. Back in his plane, Shriver spoke of his years with the Peace Corps as "one of the greatest memories of my life." Then he tried to explain why the voters take to him. "I believe you should always be yourself, whether you're talking to the President or you're that man out there pumping gas on the runway. I'm the same with everybody. I have no feeling of guilt or condescension talking with these people. I feel each person is created for some particular reason, each person has a role to play in life the same as you or I--and in fact he may have a better chance to go to heaven than we do."

Then he walked down the aisle of his plane toward where the press were drinking, gave them his one-two grin, and started talking about the weekend he had spent at Hyannisport: "I went sailing, and I swam, and. . .oh, I just missed the pirate contest. That's where you try to throw a tennis ball into the other fella's sailboat, and if you get it in, then he's eliminated. Great fun!"

*Shriver, whose wife Eunice is, of course, a daughter of the late multimillionaire Joseph Kennedy, said that his own income was $125,000 last year, none of it from trusts or inheritance. He was preparing to release a full statement on his income and assets this week.

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