The Election of 1972

Following the 1968 nominating convention in Chicago, the process of selecting delegates for the Democratic National Convention was redesigned. The new rules, set by a commission led by Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, awarded delegates based on candidates’ performance in state primaries. As a result, candidates who sat out the primaries, as Hubert Humphrey had done in 1968, would be at a disadvantage. This system gave a greater voice to people who voted in the primaries and reduced the influence of party leaders and power brokers. It also set strict rules that state delegations sent to the convention must be representative with respect to race, sex, and age. As a consequence, the 1972 Democratic convention in Miami Beach was by far the most diverse that had been held up to that time, and signaled that political power would need to be shared among Democrats from all walks of life.

Figure 1. In November 1968, Shirley Chisholm (a) became the first African American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives. In January 1972, she announced her intention to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. The nomination eventually went to George McGovern (b), an outspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam.

Figure 2. A presidential campaign poster for Chishom, who used the same campaign slogan from her successful run for the House of Representatives: “Unbought and unbossed.” Though she would lose the presidential bid, she would continue to serve in Congress until 1983.

It also led to a more inclusive political environment in which Shirley Chisholm received 156 votes for the Democratic nomination on the first ballot. Eventually, the nomination went to George McGovern, a strong opponent of the Vietnam War, who exploited the new primary rules to run a grassroots campaign that circumvented party leaders. Many traditional Democrats refused to support his campaign, however—even the powerful AFL-CIO labor union stayed neutral in the election for the first time. Working- and middle-class voters turned against him too after allegations that he supported women’s right to an abortion and the decriminalization of drug use. McGovern’s outsider campaign also struggled to project competence. A chaotic role-call at their convention in Miami delayed the senator’s acceptance speech to 3 a.m., and his initial running-mate was dropped from the ticket when his history of mental illness came to light.

Nixon and the Republicans led from the start. To increase their advantage, they attempted to paint McGovern as a candidate of “acid, amnesty, and abortion”—each an affront to conservative middle-class values. Ultimately, Nixon won over 60% of the popular vote. In the Electoral College, McGovern carried only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. Nixon won a decisive victory of 520 electoral votes to McGovern’s 17. Many of these voters had customarily supported Democrats but found McGovern too far left of the mainstream. As McGovern noted ruefully afterward, “I opened the doors of the Democratic Party and ten million people walked out.”George McGovern, "Grassroots: the Autobiography of George McGovern," (New York: Random House, 1977), 256.[/footnote

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

Nixon’s victory over a Democratic Party in disarray was the most remarkable landslide since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reelection in 1936. But Nixon’s victory was short-lived, for it was soon discovered that he and members of his administration had deliberately engaged in unethical and illegal behavior during his first term. Following the publication of the Pentagon Papers, for instance, the “plumbers,” a group of men used by the White House to spy on the president’s opponents and stop leaks to the press, broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to steal Ellsberg’s file and learn information that might damage the activist's reputation.

Figure 3. The Watergate hotel and office complex, located on the Potomac River next to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, was the scene of the 1972 burglary and attempted wiretapping that eventually brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon.

The most notorious operation of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (officially abbreviated CRP but more often mocked as CREEP) was its break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC, as well as its subsequent cover-up.

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). After being tipped off by a security guard, police found the men attempting to install sophisticated bugging equipment. One of those arrested was a former CIA employee then working as a security aide for the Nixon administration’s Committee to Re-elect the President. In the following weeks, yet more connections were found between the burglars and CREEP, and in October 1972, the FBI revealed evidence of illegal intelligence gathering by CREEP for the purpose of sabotaging the Democratic Party. Little at this time suggested that Nixon was personally involved. Nixon's press secretary dismissed the break-in as "a third-rate burglary attempt" and most of the press moved on from the story in the midst of a busy election cycle.

However, in the weeks following the Watergate break-in, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, reporters for The Washington Post, received information from several anonymous sources. One, known to them only as “Deep Throat,” led them to realize the White House was deeply implicated in the break-in. Woodward and Bernstein continued to dig and publish their findings, keeping the public’s attention on the unfolding scandal. Years later, Deep Throat was revealed to be Mark Felt, then the FBI’s associate director.