George McGovern

George McGovern occupies two positions in the account of the 1972 campaign: he is the Democratic challenger whose unexpected rise unsettles early assumptions about the election, and the candidate whose campaign becomes a target of alleged sabotage while Watergate grows into a national dispute over political accountability. The account also follows how his public criticism and his aides’ allegations were used by opponents to portray the investigation as partisan—sometimes even when the newspaper reporting itself acknowledged that a connection had not been established.

Identity and Political Position

When the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17, less than a month before the Democratic convention, Richard Nixon led all announced Democratic candidates by at least 19 points. The White House and Democratic Party professionals alike regarded McGovern, a senator from South Dakota, as Nixon’s weakest likely opponent. Yet the Democratic primary season was nearing its end, and McGovern was emerging as the clear favorite for the nomination. That contrast—dismissed as a weak challenger but advancing toward the nomination—frames his place in the campaign’s early political calculations.

The account later records a moment that made Nixon’s reelection appear more certain: McGovern announced that his running mate, Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri, was withdrawing from the ticket after Eagleton’s medical history became an issue in the campaign. The narrative does not treat that development as the end of McGovern’s political role. Instead, his campaign remains central to the dispute over sabotage allegations, and McGovern himself becomes one of the most prominent voices demanding an investigation.

Public Challenge to the Watergate Investigation

At a press conference, McGovern called the Watergate investigation a “whitewash” and said that the case implicated both the political life of the country and the morality of its leaders. He argued that the country urgently needed to renew its moral standards and pledged to pursue the case throughout the nation. The statement positioned him not only as Nixon’s electoral opponent but as a political figure making the investigation a question of public ethics.

The account places that declaration against a thin news response to earlier reporting about the secret campaign fund. The New York Times had not mentioned the stories, television networks carried neither, and most newspapers did not publish them. Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott dismissed Watergate as an issue for McGovern and the media rather than the average voter. McGovern’s denunciation thus came amid a struggle over whether the disclosures mattered beyond the press and the political campaigns. His language explicitly raised the stakes from campaign advantage to the standards expected of national leaders.

Sabotage Allegations and Evidentiary Limits

As the campaign continued, Frank Mankiewicz, a senior McGovern campaign figure, gave Bob Woodward a list of ten alleged acts of sabotage against the McGovern campaign. The examples ranged from an attempt by someone impersonating a top McGovern aide to arrange a bogus meeting between McGovern and AFL-CIO president George Meany to harassing calls to campaign headquarters. Mankiewicz believed the acts were so carefully engineered that they must have come from Republicans.

That belief was not proof of a connection to the White House or the Nixon reelection committee. When Woodward asked whether Mankiewicz had evidence tying the incidents to either, Mankiewicz said he did not; he thought they sounded like part of the operation the newspaper had reported. Woodward objected to presenting the accusations as part of a broad campaign without evidence. He feared readers could reasonably conclude that McGovern’s campaign was joining a sabotage bandwagon, and questioned why its representatives had not made the allegations earlier. Senior editors nevertheless assigned a front-page story. Woodward’s article expressly stated that Mankiewicz had supplied no evidence connecting the acts to the President’s campaign.

The resulting headline, “Democrats Step Up Sabotage Charges,” could still reinforce the White House’s claim that the newspaper and the McGovern campaign were conspiring during the final stretch of the election. The episode shows McGovern’s campaign gaining access to the paper with serious claims while the paper’s own reporting struggled to distinguish allegations from demonstrated connections. The distinction mattered: the allegations were news, but the evidence described in the account did not establish who was responsible for the specific acts.

Republican Counterattack and the Politics of Association

Republican leaders used the sabotage dispute to attack both McGovern and the press. At a Washington hotel, Republican national chairman Robert Dole delivered prepared remarks linking the newspaper’s investigative reporting to what he described as the failing fortunes of McGovern’s campaign. He portrayed McGovern and the newspaper as partners in an attack on the Republican Party. His rhetoric made the relationship itself the accusation: reporting on alleged Republican misconduct could be recast as collaboration with the Democratic candidate.

At a press conference, Nixon campaign director Clark MacGregor described McGovern as far behind in the polls and cast the campaign’s charges as “the politics of desperation.” He attacked the credibility of The Washington Post, arguing that it had used hearsay, anonymous sources, and unsubstantiated charges to imply a direct White House connection to Watergate. MacGregor also contrasted the newspaper’s coverage of McGovern- and Senator Muskie-related allegations with its treatment of alleged disruptions aimed at the President’s campaign. His argument placed McGovern’s complaints inside a larger counterattack: rather than substantively resolve the allegations, Republican spokesmen challenged the motives and credibility of the people raising them.

The administration’s press strategy likewise focused on the conduct of the press. Ronald Ziegler said the President was concerned about what he called the techniques used in the stories, including hearsay and guilt by association. He rejected the idea that a White House link had been established and characterized the allegations as unsubstantiated. A later analysis in The New York Times described the administration as assuming that discussion of the allegations would give them greater visibility, while also relying on public skepticism toward the Eastern press. McGovern’s campaign consequently operated in an environment where its claims could be cited as evidence of partisan coordination even as official responses sought to make the reporting itself the issue.

Narrative Role and Significance

McGovern’s role is not limited to supplying an electoral backdrop to Watergate. His rise from the White House’s preferred weak opponent to the Democrats’ likely nominee helps explain why the alleged sabotage mattered within the campaign, while his public demand to pursue the investigation made him a visible political critic of the response. At the same time, his campaign’s allegations were not automatically validated by the newspaper’s coverage: Woodward’s insistence on stating that Mankiewicz had offered no connecting evidence preserves the boundary between suspicion and substantiation.

The account gives McGovern’s political position a sharp irony. Nixon’s reelection appeared increasingly assured after Eagleton’s withdrawal, yet the campaign’s charges and McGovern’s moral argument helped make Watergate part of the contest over public trust. Republican attacks tried to turn that scrutiny into proof of partisan collusion. The narrative instead records a more complicated chain: a candidate’s campaign raised allegations; a reporter challenged their evidentiary basis; editors published them with that limitation stated; and political opponents used the resulting coverage to attack both the candidate and the newspaper. McGovern matters here as an electoral challenger and as a participant in the public struggle over what the Watergate disclosures meant.