Thomas Eagleton

Thomas Eagleton was nominated for vice-president in 1972 and dropped from the ticket eighteen days later when it emerged he had been hospitalised for depression and given electroshock therapy. He was a Missouri Democrat who had been the youngest circuit attorney, attorney general and lieutenant governor in the state's history, and was elected to the Senate in 1968. George McGovern chose him after several others declined, in a rushed process; the vetting amounted to a phone call, and Eagleton did not volunteer the hospitalisations. When reporters found them, McGovern said publicly that he was behind him a thousand per cent and then removed him within a week, which damaged McGovern more than the disclosure had - the reversal became the standing example of a candidate destroying his own credibility. Sargent Shriver replaced him and the ticket lost forty-nine states. Eagleton was re-elected to the Senate twice afterwards by his own state and served until 1987, and his substantial work is there: he wrote the amendment that cut off funding for the bombing of Cambodia in 1973, co-authored the War Powers Resolution and then voted against the final version as too weak, and worked on clean air and on the Americans with Disabilities Act. The episode is credited with beginning the long change in how mental illness is discussed in American public life, though the change took decades and he did not enjoy being its occasion. He taught at Washington University in St Louis after leaving the Senate and wrote a newspaper column. McGovern said many years later that dropping him was the worst mistake of his campaign. Eagleton died in 2007 and the two men had long since reconciled.

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