I assume that everyone here is impressed with my control of this convention in that my choice for Vice President was challenged by only 39 other nominees. But I think we learned from watching the Republicans four years ago as they selected their vice-presidential nominee that it pays to take a little more time.
WITH those wry words, George McGovern began his acceptance speech in Miami Beach three weeks ago. The hour was horrendously late because of all those unruly, facetious vice-presidential nominations from the convention floor, but McGovern was saying to the delegates that he did not mind because Senator Thomas Francis Eagleton of Missouri was so clearly a superior alternative to Spiro Agnew. Only moments before, Eagleton had stood on the podium with his running mate, arms raised in triumph, a partly dazed but wholly rapturous grin spread across his boyish, Jack Lemmony face.
In fact, of course, George McGovern and the Democrats had not taken more time; they had probably taken less time than any major party in history to choose their vice-presidential candidate. The great Democratic reforms had somehow not got round to improving the haphazard system of choosing a Vice President (see TIME ESSAY).
Tom Eagleton, 42, was the product of a half day's furious scrambling, a choice agreed on only an hour before the deadline, after five or six other men had turned down the No. 2 spot. Last week, when it was revealed that he had been thrice hospitalized for mental illness, the disclosure threatened to wreck the McGovern candidacy before the presidential candidate ever hit the campaign trail against Richard Nixon.
The debacle cast doubts in every direction. McGovern, who has premised his campaign on candor and openness, angled and maneuvered, his judgment open to question. His brilliant young staff, which had brought off a modern political miracle in delivering him the nomination, proved to have stumbled badly in processing Eagleton's selection. Eagleton emerged as either naive or overambitious and dishonest in not telling McGovern about his past illness. Yet there was considerable sympathy for him as he rode out the incredible week with reasonably good humor and grace. It was, after all, not easy to be brought from relative obscurity to the relative glory of a vice-presidential candidacy, only to face the prospect of being flung down again.