The McGovern Campaigners: Their Dirty Little Secret
Shapiro, Walter
The McGovern Campaigners: Their Dirty Little Secret by Walter Shapiro In the last few months 1 have read perhaps a half dozen books resurrecting and reassessing the McGovern...
...rather it was locating work which meshed with their finely tuned moral sense, desire for self-expression, and general feeling of self-importance...
...The easy answer is, of course, “Vietnam,” but it is just not convincing to regard the McGovern campaign as simply anotfier manifestation of the peace movement...
...It wasn’t that their naivete sheltered them from the disaster that was taking shape around them...
...Although the campus revolts of the 1960s were chronicled in excruciating detail, generally these post-graduation disillusionments have been shrouded in silence...
...I saw Bob once more during tne campaign...
...The crisis was accentuated by the sneer number of college graduates jockeying for position in the job market...
...experience was more than a fulfilling antidote to boredom...
...None of these campaign memoirs makes even a rudimentary effort to explain why McGovern was so successful in attracting dedicated workers, while Muslue and Humphrey couldn’t arouse the enthusiasm of the “hacks...
...What I sensed about a possible McGovern Administrationand this is perhaps what attracted people like Bob and Sara to the campaign, even in its darkest hour-was tnat here, at least, was one place where 1 would be valued...
...The desperate job-hunting at academic conventions has become something of a cliche...
...He was too busy to do more than nod as he prepared frantically for a Sargent Shriver appearance at a sad and ragged little rally in Warsaw Park in Ansonia, Connecticut . I didn’t work for McGovern, but, toward the end, 1, too, developed a kind of kinship with the campaign...
...It is striking that the majority of McGovern campaign workers were members of those groups in our society that have been the most troubled by the vast chasm separating their aspirations for in teres ting work and the realities of our semi-depressed economy...
...Only in a period when virtually all are convinced that they can become conventional “successes” does the act of rebellion in “dropping out” take on any real meaning...
...One night about a year ago I remember sitting up with two friends who were receiving subsistence salaries from the Connecticut McGovem campaignBob was an advance man, Sara a staff photographer...
...Research would flourish, providing a bonanza for consulting firms and academic social scientists...
...Yet tney continued to work their 16-hour days, almost oblivious to the futility of it all...
...Scattered across tile country are countless young people forced to come to grips with thwarted aspirations...
...It was this collective self-confidence that gave rise to the widespread fantasy of an America brouglit to its knees when they all said “no” to the desperate recruiters from General Motors and Chase Manhattan...
...The prevailing attitudes of the Democratic Party toward the war had changed markedly from 1968 to 1972...
...If colleges couldn’t hire more teachers, then the government probably would, with programs like federal sponsorship of adult education...
...I was broke and jobless as America went to the polls, and I spent election day fantasizing what the job market might be like if McGovern pulled off the upset of the century...
...Leading politicians and some of the nation’s foremost journalists were accessible, often on a first-name basis...
...For tiiose in its middle and upper echelons-press assistants, schedulers, and what-not -the presidential race provided an entirely new, and rather useful, set of contacts...
...Generally lacking in insight, they serve as depressing reminders of the palace intrigues, threatened resignations, and general egomania which were the norm at the campaign’s highest levels...
...Take all tliose who have settled for jobs they hate because they fear unemployment more...
...More than most political efforts, the McGovern campaign attracted two basic types of volunteersthose under 30 and housewives...
...The attitudes of these volunteers were shaped during the late 1960s, which was, despite the dark cloud of Vietnam, a period of almost boundless optimism on our college campuses...
...Sara, who had recently graduated from college, was a photographer of demonstrated talent who had been frustrated in her efforts to obtain a job on a major ne wsp aper . Their involvement in the McGovem campaign was qualitatively different from that of Gary Hart or Rick Stearns...
...All this changed witli the Nixon recession...
...Here we are dealing with realities and perceptions far more subtle than those measured on unemployment charts...
...It was apparent to all but the most cynical that any Democrat elected President last year-except Scoop Jackson -would have quickly ended tile fighting in Southeast Asia...
...Suddenly, these bright-eyed college graduates discovered that tliey no longer nad the option of “selling out” because no one was buying...
...Here, what 1 had to offer would be marketable, in part because of the jobs that would be created, but also in part because of a shared community of beliefs and attitudes...
...For example, back in the early sixties Helen Gurley Brown advised in her best-selling Sex and the Single Girl that political campaigns are just wonderful places to meet attractive, eligible men...
...But the problems extend far beyond the world of colleges and universities...
...The McGovern Campaigners: Their Dirty Little Secret by Walter Shapiro In the last few months 1 have read perhaps a half dozen books resurrecting and reassessing the McGovern campaign...
...When mentioned at all, these volunteers are usually described by such impersonal phrases as “the McGovern army...
...They had no visions of going on the White House payroll if McGovern were elected, but in a Answers to September Political Puzzle: strange sense their faith in the campaign was far stronger than that of many campaign “insiders...
...Students who came to college from the reputed “emptiness” of suburbia were confident that, if they chose, they could equal, if not surpass, the affluence of their parents...
...But this doesn’t really explain my bond to McGovern...
...New social welfare programs-aid to the handicapped or prison reform, perhaps-would absorb the glut of social workers...
...McGovern’s appeal to tnose in their twenties was directly related to the job problems of recent college graduates...
...phone calls, and turn out the right voters on primary day...
...From New Hampshire to California, McGovern’s momentum came from the willingness of tens of thousands of people to canvass, make Walter Shapiro is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...He wasn’t sure what he’d be doing after the election...
...Before the primaries Bob had been working as a janitor for the university where he had been a campus leader in the late 1960s...
...During this halcyon period, the question was not simply finding a job...
...Even our surplus of Ph.Ds would be delivered from driving cabs and working as hospital orderlies...
...But sex aside, the motivation of campaign workers is worth some consideration...
...What is particularly galling is that these books never really discuss the volunteers and the $50-a-week staffers who actually powered tile campaign, especially in the primaries...
...There are no foolproof theories about why people volunteer to work in political campaigns...
...Take the fledgling journalists who dream of emulating Woodward and Bernstein but can’t even find jobs on suburbav weeklies...
...Three weeks before election day, they knew Connecticut -one of the states McGovern unquestionably had to carry-was hopeless...
...If careers in contemporary America are still furthered by connections, then working on the McGovern campaign provided membership in a rather potent old-boy network...
...New programs would sprout in Washington, again making government seem like a challenging place to work...
...Take the 200 college graduates who show up the morning The New York Times runs an ad announcing an opening for one social worker on Staten Island...
Vol. 5 • October 1973 • No. 8
