David Mikics:

The Democratic presidential wannabes of 1972 were a rabbit hutch of also-rans, another sad likeness to the present day. “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here … Except Maybe Ted Kennedy …,” Thompson wrote—but Kennedy wasn’t running. Instead, Hubert Humphrey was in the house, “a treacherous brain-damaged old vulture,” Thompson observed. By late spring Humphrey, the Joe Biden of his day, was the last chance of the anti-McGovern faction.

The runt of the litter was John Lindsay, mayor of New York, a basket case of a city with a towering crime rate and over-the-top welfare rolls. In Florida he courted the Jewish vote, donned a scuba suit and acquired a tan, but this didn’t help him in the primary. Instead Florida went to the racist troglodyte George Wallace.

The early front-runner was Maine Sen. Ed Muskie, anointed by Big Labor and the Democratic establishment. Muskie called his chartered election train the “Sunshine Special.” On board was football star Rosey Grier, who sang “Let the Sun Shine In” (Grier had tackled Sirhan Sirhan after he killed RFK). Muskie gave people absolutely no reason to vote for him, and so he was a goner. After “crying in the snow” in New Hampshire, Muskie was eclipsed by McGovern, who crushed the competition in Wisconsin’s primary.

Here Nixon showed the streak of nobility that so many have denied him. The president wrote a letter in longhand to Eagleton’s 13-year-old son Terry: “What matters is not that your father fought a terribly difficult battle and lost. What matters is that in fighting the battle he won the admiration of foes and friends alike because of the courage, poise and just plain guts he showed against overwhelming odds.”

The Eagleton scandal was a serious blow, but even without it, McGovern would have lost. He was forever saddled with the spectacle of the hippies who canvassed for him, knocking on suburban doors with their unkempt beards, psychedelic shirts and sandals. McGovern didn’t even favor legalizing pot, but that didn’t matter. Except for the Black communist Angela Davis, who campaigned for the Kremlin stooge Gus Hall (and later ran with him twice on the Communist Party ticket), every crackpot domestic terrorist-sympathizer in the land was for George McGovern.

The 1972 Democratic convention, held in Miami Beach of all places—headquarters of Jackie Gleason, where the hotel lobbies were chilled to 60 degrees so that ladies could wear their furs—looked like the disgruntled celebratory dirty flowering of 1960s youthcult. The New York and California delegations, which Mayor Daley had kept to the back of the auditorium in 1968, were now front and center, and full of colorfully attired freaks.